After the rain, London always looks as though it knows something it has no intention of telling you.
The pavements reflect windows, streetlights and people walking briskly, pretending to have somewhere in particular to go. It is almost eleven. Across the street, a man is waiting outside a blue door.
He checks his phone. Puts it back in his pocket. A few seconds later he checks it again. Perhaps someone has told him they are on their way. Perhaps nobody has said anything at all.
At a certain age you learn that the two can look exactly the same.
I watch from the window, holding a cup that has long gone cold. People interest me when they think nobody is watching. For a few seconds, they stop managing their image.
My phone lights up on the table.
Are you still awake?
The message is from a man I haven’t heard from in almost three months. One of those who disappear without an argument, without a goodbye and, most annoyingly, without dying. That last part is particularly irritating: you can’t even idealise them.
I read the question again. He doesn’t ask how I am. He doesn’t say he has missed me. He only wants to know whether I am still awake. I am. But I don’t reply.
Being available and making yourself available are not the same thing. It is a distinction I learnt late, along with the importance of a good face cream and the complete futility of arguing with a man who only replies in emojis.
The blue door
I look outside again. The man at the blue door has lit a cigarette, sheltering it from the rain with one hand. He is over fifty, perhaps only just. His coat is too light for the season. He has that particular posture of someone hoping to be desired without wanting to look as though he is waiting.
I know that posture. We have it when we check whether someone has read a message. When we say a relationship “wasn’t anything serious”, although for weeks we imagined where to put his toothbrush. When we call an evening independence, when really we wish someone would knock.
The phone lights up again.
I was thinking about you.
The sentence that reopens every door we had closed with great dignity and terrible carpentry.
I could pretend to be detached. I could write something short, elegant and vaguely cruel. I have enough experience to know which words to use, and enough vanity to want them to have an effect.
Instead, I put the phone face down on the table. Not because I have suddenly become wise. I am still romantic, against all available evidence.
For years I would have read that message as confirmation of my worth. Today I try to make a distinction.
Being sought out doesn’t necessarily mean being chosen.
Sometimes it simply means remaining available in someone’s memory. A light they know they can switch on whenever they want to see whether we are still there.
A light upstairs
The blue door finally opens. Another man appears. They don’t embrace straight away. For a moment they stand still, separated by a few centimetres and everything they have not yet said.
Then one of them smiles. A small, almost cautious smile. The other looks down. The door closes behind them.
I stay at the window for a few more minutes. The street is empty again, but a light comes on upstairs in the house.
Perhaps they will love each other. Perhaps they will simply spend the night together. Perhaps tomorrow one will say he isn’t ready for anything serious, as though love were a flat still under construction.
I cannot know. What interests me is what happens between desire and fear. Between a message written and one deleted. Between a changing body and the stubborn, almost comical need to feel chosen again.
The phone doesn’t light up again. For a moment I feel something that might be sadness. Or relief.
At a certain age you learn that these two things, too, can look exactly the same.
Outside, it starts raining again. Upstairs in the house with the blue door, the light stays on.