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Sport 29: Spring 2002

Chris

Chris

Of course he doesn't stay with his mother. Since leaving his father she has created and discarded several lives, with half brothers and sisters to Chris falling like side streets off a main road. Two of Chris's sisters page 123 are named after saints. Both have filthy tempers. Chris is a drinker, or as others might say, ‘a terrible drunk’. We didn't understand this when we were young. His obstreperousness was part of the weekend's danger. Once, during a concert by an international act, Chris knocked over the lead singer's microphone stand. The show stopped for five minutes while the singer was persuaded to return to the stage. Five hundred people in the audience; Chris was ejected. Did I follow him out? I can't remember, so it's safe to assume the negative. If drunk and offered the choice, Chris would die for me.

His mother, I'm sure, must understand that relationships need not always include outright loyalty. She has installed him in a hotel downtown. The room is pastel, the air stale. You notice variations in air quality here because they exist. The radio receives two stations, both talkback.

‘Do you think this is too much?’ asks Chris. He is wearing cream pants with sharp press lines, brown and white patent leather shoes, an orange shirt and a short plump tie that shines like fish skin. Chris is piss-elegant, the most fastidious man I know. Behind him, clothes cram the small hotel wardrobe. He's here for one week.

The weather is humid, so I've brought gin. We'll drink it in that impotent celebration of absence that accompanies an old pal's return. I volunteer to get some ice. Because I believe that travel should lead somewhere I've become more helpful. Before going away, I prided myself on what I could extract from people. I once bought an expensive jacket from Chris for a song; he was broke. I was such a bastard; I thought I wasn't strong enough to survive; cruelty seemed an appropriate demonstration of mettle and the only people to practise on were buddies. When I changed I didn't undergo some Damascus Road event, I just missed my friends.

Chris believes experience should confirm personality. During the week, he will repeat, ‘When we're 70, we'll be in our wheelchairs and we'll be exactly the same.’

‘What's the point of that?’

‘That is the point,’ Chris says.

When I return with the ice, Joseph, a schoolmate of Chris's, has arrived and is smoking the Japanese cigarettes that Chris bought dutyfree. page 124 Joseph is currently sleeping with my old girlfriend, though it won't last. Joseph is a tonic. He makes women happy, then they move on. I know the effect. He makes me feel cool.

‘You're looking good,’ Joseph says to Chris. It's not a crime to compliment each other because we're on a similar plateau. We look good. Our habits have yet to tell, our hairlines have not retreated, we're slim. We agree that age is kind to men, but drop the subject lest we jinx ourselves. Joseph is in film. Later he tells me, ‘If you have one idea for a film, then it could go all the way as far as …’ He names a famous director whom some friend of his apparently did a favour for. The famous director ripped a dollar bill in two, handed him one and said, ‘Everyone deserves a break. This is yours.’ When the halves meet, the favour will be returned.

‘Hollywood,’ I say. Joseph agrees. Neither of us has been to Hollywood.

People flit in and out of the room. Some I know, others are introduced. They sit where they can and I forget their names immediately. What have these new friends got that I haven't? Does Chris feel like this each time a new stepfather is introduced? A joint circulates, then another. I lose track, I haven't smoked in years. I go and sit by Samantha, who doesn't seem to want to discuss Kathleen; they've fallen out again. I wish everyone were happier. I want to shout, ‘I've been on holiday for two years!’ I'm surprised my friends could be so morose on alcohol; it's as if a promise has been broken. Through the floor we can hear the bass of the hotel disco.

Only the lamp beside Chris's bed is on, so we are in semi-darkness.

Chris sways, angrily decrying marijuana, but he stops the joint each time it reaches him and takes a massive hit. Ash falls on his trousers. He hears someone say Neil's name. Neil is, I mean was, our friend Kirsten's husband.

‘I don't feel anything,’ says Chris. ‘Neil didn't like me; I didn't like him. Why should I change just because he's dead?’ He rolls up his shirtsleeves. His forearms are muscular. If past behaviour is anything to go by, soon he'll be challenging everyone to wristwrestles.

I stage a diversion. ‘Orgy time, let's break out the cooking oil and have some fun.’ Someone titters. It's not me speaking but a Canadian page 125 I knew overseas, the driest guy I ever met. He was physically plain, but his girlfriend was pretty; I thought of them as a match of opposites. At my farewell party, five thirty in the morning—his girlfriend having gone home at about two—he sat at the bar, his hand in a secretary's lap, kneading. The secretary's face held no expression. Outside, some office building lights glowed and some didn't and they made patterns that were like undulating number sequences you get when you calculate pi to the gazillionth decimal place. I want to be this Canuck, because nothing ever surprised him. We have been here for hours and hours.