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29
I stride across the parking lot towards the man standing next to the huge motorbike.
‘Hi!’ I say, my hand extended forcefully, ‘I’m Joshua Harris. You must be Kris.’
Kris grips my hand inside his and crunches it slightly. I try not to wince.
‘Yes! Kris Doll. Really great to meet you!’
He eyes me up and down and for a moment I think maybe he’s checking me out, but then I remember that he used to go out with sexy Mati from the Magdala so that is highly unlikely, and I realise he is simply making sure I’m sensibly dressed for the back of his bike. He nods approvingly and then brings some paperwork out of a shoulder bag.
‘Okey dokey,’ he says, peeling through the papers with his fingertips. ‘I just have to ask you to sign a few things, if youwouldn’t mind. Just disclaimers. Housekeeping stuff. Ts and Cs. If you want to take the time to read them, please feel free, we’re in no rush.’
He hits me with a super-smile. He is very attractive but could, in my opinion, take more care over his skin; it’s very dry. And his dark shaggy hair is in dire need of deep conditioning and a good cut, but I suppose if he spends all day in a crash helmet, it probably doesn’t feel worth the effort. I age him at around thirty-eight. I take the papers and I sit on a bench and flick through them, sign themJoshua Harriswith a flourish, pass them back to him.
He peers at them briefly. ‘Fan-tastic. Super. Right. Let’s get you set up. You ever been on a Gold Wing before?’
‘Nope. No, never.’
‘Any kind of bike?’
‘Well, yes. Once or twice. Been given lifts by friends. But never as a hobby. Or as a thing.’
‘I don’t suppose you can remember the names or the makes of the bikes you’ve been on?’
I shake my head apologetically. I have let him down. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
He rallies. ‘No problem. That’s OK. Anyway, this is themostcomfortable ride you can ever have, believe me. You will never want to ride pillion on anyone else’s bike, ever again. Let’s get you up there.’
He gets me up there and I sit up high, like a little princeling about to be carried aloft on a golden sedan. He talks me through our route for the day, but I’m not listening. I stare at the back of his head as he takes his seat at the front of the bike and puts on his own helmet; then I stare at his shoulders: they are as broad asbefits a man who once rowed people across lakes for a living. I am feeling the one degree of separation that exists between me, him and Phin, wondering if I will find the moment to scatter my connection to our mutual friend into the path of our conversation. It needs to be natural. A bizarre coincidence. He cannot feel interrogated. I must not tread too fast.
Kris drives us down the so-called ‘Magnificent Mile’, a fine avenue of skyscrapers abutting the banks of the Chicago River.
‘Where do you live in Britain?’ he turns to shout to me.
‘London,’ I shout back.
‘Cool,’ he says.
‘Have you ever been to the UK?’
‘Yeah. A few years back. I was seeing a British girl.’
‘Whereabouts did you stay?’
‘At her place. She lived in Milton Keynes.’
‘Ah,’ I say. ‘That’s nice.’
He points things out to me, churches and whatnot, but I can tell he’s not interested, and neither am I. Eventually we descend into a companiable silence, and I watch the moving scenery and inhale the scent of petrol streets and the slightly musty inside of a crash helmet (heaven knows how one cleans the inside of a crash helmet – I try not to ponder it too deeply), and then, as the streetlights flick on and the city peters out into the banks of Lake Michigan, the bike comes to a stop next to a sandy beach and we dismount.
Kris takes a blanket from the pannier and unfurls it on to the sand. He grabs himself an alcohol-free beer from the ice bag and the half-bottle of champagne, which he uncorks and pours into aplastic glass for me. The sky across the lake is turning sugar pink; the tall buildings of the city beyond are black paper cut-outs. The air is soft June warm, and I have had a wonderful afternoon on the back of Kris’s bike, looking at a city that I have never seen before. There has been an unexpected intimacy about the experience, as if we are now somehow bonded in a small way, and I wonder if everyone who takes one of his tours feels the same way or if it’s only lonely, damaged people like me who take such strange comfort from them. I’ve barely eaten and the cheap, not-quite-cold-enough champagne goes directly to the bottom of my stomach and into my bloodstream and I find, as my eyes take in the beauty of Chicago’s skyline reflected in the rose-gold mirror of the lake, that I am crying.
I turn my head a few degrees so that Kris won’t see, and surreptitiously rub my cheeks against my shoulders.
‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ he says, and I nod, not trusting myself to speak. I am awash with emotion for which I have insufficient language. A churning in my soul of loss and emptiness and lack and incompleteness. I amincomplete. I have always felt incomplete. And I have thought at various points throughout my life that just around the next corner would be the thing that would complete me. I thought finding Libby would complete me, that returning to my childhood home would complete me, being rich and successful, being buff and pretty, having good sex with bad men, bad sex with good men, love affairs with no love, a stunning kitchen with touch-to-open cupboard doors – I have thought that all of these things would complete me and none of them has. And now I am here on the shores of Lake Michigan with a handsome man called Kris Doll sitting by my side thoughtfully sipping alcohol-freelager from the bottleneck and the sky is on fire and nobody loves me and I love nobody and I am alone, I am so, so alone and Jesus fucking Christ I have to find Phin. I have to find Phin and if finding him doesn’t fix me I swear to God I will swim across this lake and throw myself into that acid-orange sun and let myself burn to a smudge of ash.
I clear my throat and straighten my back. ‘How long have you been doing this?’ I ask Kris.
