CHAPTER 35
“Look at me, look at me,” I declared loudly, tottering down the street. “I’m walking and I don’t even care how many steps I’ve taken.” I turned to Mark and waved my arms about. “One, two, five hundred and eight, one thousand and . . . WHO CARES? Not me! I don’t even have my phone on me. Hashtag ten thousand steps a day, who knows?”
Mark laughed as I kept on walking, taking small steps and then long strides. It was about two hours since the gin had started flowing, and I was about three big, beautiful glasses of gin down—zero photos taken. I’d landed up chatting to the delicious Zack guy for about an hour, but then he’d had to leave. And now Mark and I were walking home.
“Oh my God.” I stopped walking and faced him. “And I don’t even know what my heart rate is! How about that! And you know what? I have no way of checking.” I burst out laughing. “No way of knowing how many beats per minute my ticker is taking. No way of knowing how many calories were in that delicious gin, no GPS to guide me home and no way of knowing if it’s going to rain, or not!” I threw my hands in the air and looked up. The sky was completely clear and cloudless and I looked back down at Mark. “Okay, so I could probably guess that it isn’t going to rain, but I have no idea what the temperature is today, or the humidity. And more than that, I have no idea how I feel about that! Happy emoji face? Sad emoji face? Who the hell knows?”
“What a novelty,” Mark teased. “Looking up at the actual sky to gauge what the weather is, simply through the keen skills of observation alone. Revolutionary.”
“HA HA! Don’t diss my weather app,” I said sarcastically. “You would want to know if a hurricane was approaching.”
“We don’t get hurricanes here.” He was smiling at me. He had a nice smile.
“Use your imagination, Mark. Say there was an approaching hurricane . . . you guys wouldn’t know. But my weather app would and then I would be able to warn the entire town and I would be a local hero! You might even write about my heroics in your local paper.”
Mark laughed at this. I’d encountered the local paper today at the bar. A small two-pager written by a local, printed and then distributed. It contained really arb news, but Harun had made the front-page headline. “Warning, suspected jackal spotting in town.” Mark, Samirah and I’d had a giggle over that. I stopped walking, tipsy enough to feel the wobble in my legs. The one that told me if a policeman pulled me over and asked me to walk a straight line, I would stumble.
“It’s like, I knownothingaboutanythingright now!” I said thoughtfully.
“What?” Mark asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Try,” he urged.
“I always like to know things and plan things. All the time. Like what time the sun is setting, and how many hours of work versus exercise I do. How many carbs versus proteins are in my meals, and calories I’ve burned from walking and what kind of sleep I have, and how deep my sleep is and how productive my week has been and how many goals I reached.”
“Which you do on your phone?” he asked.
“Exactly!” I clicked my fingers together. “And now that I don’t have my phone, and I can’t do them, it’s like I’m not missing them.” I paused. “Although, maybe that’s because I drank too much of your gin.”
Mark laughed again but it wasn’t a mocking laugh. It was sweet and playful.
“And you know what else, I can’t even stalk Zack.”
“Why would you want to stalk him?” he asked, his voice not as light-sounding as it had been before.
“Because that’s what I do when I meet new people. I stalk them. You never know someone until you look at their photos, and their Tweets. Know what I mean? You can tell a lot about a person by their Tweets!”
Mark shook his head. “Not really. I guess I always assumed you can get to know someone by having a conversation with them.” He paused. “Like this. We’re getting to know each other now, aren’t we?” His voice had taken on a slightly strange tone and I wasn’t sure what it was. But I had to agree with him, we were getting to know each other, and I hadn’t even looked at his first Facebook profile picture yet to make sure he wasn’t a creep in disguise.
“I guess we are, Mark, I guess we are.” I walked down the road, swaying my arms from side to side happily. I felt so strangely free all of a sudden. Like I was a bird that had been caged, but now I’d been released and was stretching my wings for the first time. This idea of freedom was exhilarating, albeit a little terrifying too.
Mark and I turned off the tarred road and back onto the dust. It was starting to look familiar here. In the beginning the elements of the desert all looked the same to me, but now I was noticing little details that made it unique; like that little bush there that looked like a rabbit, that rock with a vein of bright orange running through it. I started humming something and then stopped when I realized how loud it had gotten.
“You’re a really good guitar player,” I said.
“Thanks.”
“You’re really good. Like, really good. You should quit your day job,” I said. “Pursue it professionally and get rich and famous.”
Mark smiled at this, but it looked forced. I stopped walking when I saw the expression that flashed across his face. The little dark clouds that moved over his eyes briefly.
“Nah, I’m not that good.” He was brushing me off.
“I’m being serious. If you posted TikTok videos, you’d be TikTok famous,” I said and waited for him to respond to this. But when he didn’t, when he strode ahead suddenly and I had to rush to catch up, I dropped it. I was feeling too happy to talk about something he clearly didn’t want to. I carried on humming, I didn’t even know what song it was, and I didn’t have Shazam to tell me, but I didn’t care. I was in that nice buzzy state of fun, intoxication. The kind where you are still totally in control of your faculties. You’re just happier and chirpier than usual. Alcohol is like that. Just the right amount and it’s like Prozac, the wrong amount and it sends you spiraling into weeping, sad hell. Crumpled on the floor, calling ex-boyfriends. But I wasn’t like that tonight. I turned to Mark again.
“If you were my ex-boyfriend I wouldn’t call you now!” I declared loudly, even though I knew that only made sense to me, thanks to the lively conversation in my head.
