Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

High Fidelity
http://www.fictionbook.ru/author/hornby_nick/high_fidelity/hornby_high_fidelity.html
Page 92 of 112
6/20/2006
“You used to care more about things like Solomon Burke than you do now,” I tell her. “When I first
met you, and I made you that tape, you were really enthused. You said—and I quote—‘It was so good
that it made you ashamed of your record collection.’ ”
“Shameless, wasn’t I”
“What does that mean”
“Well, I fancied you. You were a DJ, and I thought you were groovy, and I didn’t have a boyfriend,
and I wanted one.”
“So you weren’t interested in the music at all”
“Well, yes. A bit. And more so then than I am now. That’s life, though, isn’t it”
“But you see … That’s all there is of me. There isn’t anything else. If you’ve lost interest in that,
you’ve lost interest in everything. What’s the point of us”
“You really believe that”
“Yes. Look at me. Look at the flat. What else has it got, apart from records and CDs and tapes”
“And do you like it that way”
I shrug. “Not really.”
“That’s the point of us. You have potential. I’m here to bring it out.”
“Potential as what”
“As a human being. You have all the basic ingredients. You’re really very likable, when you put your
mind to it. You make people laugh, when you can be bothered, and you’re kind, and when you decide
you like someone then that person feels as though she’s the center of the whole world, and that’s a very
sexy feeling. It’s just that most of the time you can’t be bothered.”
“No,” is all I can think of to say.
“You just … you just don’t do anything. You get lost in your head, and you sit around thinking instead
of getting on with something, and most of the time you think rubbish. You always seem to miss what’s
really happening.”
“This is the second Simply Red song on this tape. One’s unforgivable. Two’s a war crime. Can I fastforward”
I fast-forward without waiting for a reply. I stop on some terrible post-Motown Diana Ross
thing, and I groan. Laura plows on regardless.
“Do you know that expression, ‘Time on his hands and himself on his mind’ That’s you.”
“So what should I be doing”
“I don’t know. Something. Working. Seeing people. Running a scout troop, or running a club even.
Something more than waiting for life to change and keeping your options open. You’d keep your
options open for the rest of your life, if you could. You’ll be lying on your deathbed, dying of some
smoking-related disease, and you’ll be thinking, “Well, at least I’ve kept my options open. At least I
never ended up doing something I couldn’t back out of.” And all the time you’re keeping your options
open, you’re closing them off. You’re thirty-six and you don’t have children. So when are you going to
have them When you’re forty Fifty Say you’re forty, and say your kid doesn’t want kids until he’s
thirty-six. That means you’d have to live much longer than your allotted three-score years and ten just to
catch so much as a glimpse of your grandchild. See how you’re denying yourself things”
“So it all boils down to that.”
“What”
“Have kids or we split up. The oldest threat in the book.”
“Fuck off, Rob. That’s not what I’m saying to you. I don’t care whether you want kids or not. I do, I
know that, but I don’t know whether I want them with you, and I don’t know whether you want them at
all. I’ve got to sort that out for myself. I’m just trying to wake you up. I’m just trying to show you that
you’ve lived half your life, but for all you’ve got to show for it you might as well be nineteen, and I’m
not talking about money or property or furniture.”
I know she’s not. She’s talking about detail, clutter, the stuff that stops you floating away.
“It’s easy for you to say that, isn’t it, Mzzzz. Hot Shot City Lawyer. It’s not my fault that the shop
isn’t doing very well.”
“Jesus Christ.” She changes gears with an impressive violence, and doesn’t speak to me for a while. I