Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

High Fidelity
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Page 54 of 112
6/20/2006
We go to a bar near her work—not a pub, a bar, with pictures of baseball players on the wall, and a
food menu chalked up on a noticeboard, and a conspicuous lack of hand-pumps, and people in suits
drinking American beer from the bottle. It’s not crowded, and we sit in a booth near the back on our
own.
And then she’s straight in with the “So, how are you” as if I’m nobody very much. I mumble
something, and I know that I’m not going to be able to control it, I’m going to come too quickly, then
it’s, bang, “Have you slept with him yet” and it’s all over.
“Is that why you wanted to see me”
“I guess.”
“Oh, Rob.”
I just want to ask the question again, straightaway; I want an answer, I don’t want “Oh, Rob,” and a
pitying stare.
“What do you want me to say”
“I want you to say that you haven’t, and for your answer to be the truth.”
“I can’t do that.” She can’t look at me when she’s saying it, either.
She starts to say something else, but I don’t hear it; I’m out in the street, pushing through all those
suits and raincoats, angry and sick and on my way home to some more loud, angry records that will
make me feel better.
The next morning the guy who bought the Sid James Experience album comes in to exchange it. He
says it’s not what he thought it was.
“What did you think it was” I ask him.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Something else.” He shrugs, and looks at the three of us in turn. We are all
staring at him, crushed, aghast; he looks embarrassed.
“Have you listened to all of it” Barry asks.
“I took it off halfway through the second side. Didn’t like it.”
“Go home and try it again,” Barry says desperately. “It’ll grow on you. It’s a grower.”
The guy shakes his head helplessly. He’s made up his mind. He chooses a secondhand Madness CD,
and I put the Sid James Experience back in the rack.
Laura calls in the afternoon.
“You must have known it would happen,” she says. “You couldn’t have been entirely unprepared.
Like you said, I’ve been living with the guy. We were bound to get around to it sometime.” She gives a
nervous and, to my way of thinking, highly inappropriate laugh.
“And, anyway, I keep trying to tell you, that’s not really the point, is it The point is, we got ourselves
into an awful mess.”
I want to hang up, but people only hang up to get called back again, and why should Laura call me
back No reason at all.
“Are you still there What are you thinking”
I’m thinking: I’ve had a bath with this person (just one, years ago, but, you know, a bath’s a bath), and
I’m already beginning to find it hard to remember what she looks like. I’m thinking: I wish this stage
were over, and we could go on to the next stage, the stage where you look in the paper and see that Scent
of a Woman is on TV, and you say to yourself, Oh, I saw that with Laura. I’m thinking: am I supposed
to fight, and what do I fight with, and whom am I fighting
“Nothing.”
“We can meet for another drink if you like. So I can explain better. I owe you that much.”
That much.
“How much would be too much”
“Sorry”
“Nothing. Look, I’vegot to go. I work too, you know.”
“Will you call me”