Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

High Fidelity
http://www.fictionbook.ru/author/hornby_nick/high_fidelity/hornby_high_fidelity.html
Page 86 of 112
6/20/2006
always lose someone, or they lose us, in the end. I’d rather not take the risk. I’d rather not come home
from work one day in ten or twenty years’ time to be faced with a pale, frightened woman saying that
she’d been shitting blood—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but this is what happens to people—and then we go to
the doctor and then the doctor says it’s inoperable and then … I wouldn’t have the guts, you know I’d
probably just take off, live in a different city under an assumed name, and Laura would check in to the
hospital to die and they’d say, “Isn’t your partner coming to visit” and she’d say, “No, when he found
out about the cancer he left me.” Great guy! “Cancer Sorry, that’s not for me! I don’t like it!” Best not
put yourself in that position. Best leave it all alone.
So where does this get me The logic of it all is that I play a percentage game. I’m thirty-six now,
right And let’s say that most fatal diseases—cancer, heart disease, whatever—hit you after the age of
fifty. You might be unlucky, and snuff it early, but the fifty-plus age group get more than their fair share
of bad stuff happening to them. So to play safe, you stop then: a relationship every couple of years for
the next fourteen years, and then get out, stop dead, give it up. It makes sense. Will I explain this to
whomever I’m seeing Maybe. It’s fairer, probably. And less emotional, somehow, than the usual mess
that ends relationships. “You’re going to die, so there’s not much point in us carrying on, is there” It’s
perfectly acceptable if someone’s emigrating, or returning to their own country, to stop a relationship on
the grounds that any further involvement would be too painful, so why not death The separation that
death entails has got to be more painful than the separation of emigration, surely I mean, with
emigration, you can always go with her. You can always say to yourself, “Oh, fuck it, I’ll pack it all in
and go and be a cowboy in Texas/tea-picker in India,” etc. You can’t do that with the big D, though, can
you Unless you take the Romeo route, and if you think about it …
“I thought you were going to lie in that flower bed all afternoon.”
“Eh Oh. Ha ha. No. Ha.” Assumed nonchalance is tougher than it looks in this sort of situation,
although lying in a stranger’s flower bed to hide from your ex-girlfriend on the day that her dad is
buried—burned—is probably not a sort, a genre of situation at all, more a one-off, nongeneric thing.
“You’re soaking.”
“Mmm”
“You’re also an idiot.”
There will be other battles. There’s not much point in fighting this one, when all the evidence is
conspiring against me.
“I can see why you say that. Look, I’m sorry. I really am. The last thing I wanted was … that’s why I
went, because … I lost it, and I didn’t want to blow my top in there, and … look, Laura, the reason I
slept with Rosie and mucked everything up was because I was scared that you’d die. Or I was scared of
you dying. Or whatever. And I know what that sounds like, but … ” It all dries up as easily as it popped
out, and I just stare at her with my mouth open.
“Well, I will die. Nothing much has changed on that score.”
“No, no, I understand completely, and I’m not expecting you to tell me anything different. I just
wanted you to know, that’s all.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
She’s making no move to start the car.
“I can’t reciprocate.”
“How do you mean”
“I didn’t sleep with Ray because I was scared of you dying. I slept with Ray because I was sick of you,
and I needed something to get me out of it.”
“Oh, sure, no, I understand. Look, I don’t want to take up any more of your time. You get back, and
I’ll wait here for a bus.”
“I don’t want to go back. I’ve thrown a wobbler too.”
“Oh. Right. Great. I mean, not great, but, you know.”
The rain starts again, and she puts the windscreen wipers on so that we can see not very much out of
the window.