Deep down, in my innermost marrow, I knew that when I’d agreed to meet Karim El-Amin at his brother’s chippy, I had implicitly consented to being—in sentiment if not in practice—picked up and twirled around by a middle-aged man on a Tuesday afternoon in front of several of his relatives.
“Nrrgk!Aye!I’m—!Luvyoutoo!”I wheezed.
My enormous sponsor released me and gave a gap-toothed smile that sparkled through his salt and pepper beard.“Welcome back,habibi!How was the land of the Whopper?”
I straightened, attempting to realign both my spine and dignity.The moment I met his gaze, the moment I allowed this benevolent black hole of a man to peer through the windows into my soul, this brief stint of illusory calm would crash around my ears in a jangling mess.
Sure enough, Karim sucked his teeth.“All right?”
I shoved my hands into my pockets and figuratively grasped the last vestige of objective proof that I was, in fact, doing my best.“Day five.I ...It’s not so rough this go.”I swallowed.We both remembered the last time I’d detoxed at the Innana Center.“Headache, the shakes, but I’ve been sleeping.”I tried to smile.
Karim’s eyes narrowed, his mouth still pursed, and he tilted his head toward the table near the window, where two of his nephews were refilling napkin holders.“Yalla, let’s get some coffee and sugar into you.”He shooed the kids away, each receiving a kiss on the head, and motioned for me to take a seat.
Once I had, Karim presented me with a plastic tub of napkins and pointed at the line of empty holders.I began stuffing them, and almost immediately, the mindless repetitive motion combined with the sense of low-stakes—but nonetheless quantifiable purpose—spread through my body like cool water.It was almost like inking.When Karim tapped my shoulder to offer a small coffee and an enormous plate of zalabiyeh, breaking the surface of my dissociation bubble barely hurt.The world remained habitable.
“You’re in love, eh?”
I choked, nearly spraying coffee all over my cookies.“Bloody hell,Sidi.”
“Stuff’s better ’en benzos,” he grinned.“I’m joking.But it’s good to have a new passion to hold on to through early days, and it sounds like the waters weren’t so deep this time?”
I carefully arranged the top napkin in one of the dispensers.“Aye.I kept to the shallows.”I glanced at him guiltily.“Wet my keks, though.”
Karim smiled and crunched on a cookie, raising silvery eyebrows at me.“You’re a good egg, Armand Demetrio.”
I blushed and turned back to my little pocket of order and sense.I’d finished two more dispensers before I finally managed, “It’s too soon.”
He knew what I meant, and rolled his eyes with the weight of centuries—centuries of humanity’s history, victorious over biology, centuries of Man’s attempts at tabulating his own unfathomable miseries into parsed and parceled knowables, little beads of swallowable chaos that could, alas, be arranged internally, lined up against the windows of the heart as evidence of productivity and skill.Like napkin dispensers.Most likely, it was centuries of old men listening to young men simper and mewl about love.
I rarely felt young these days, and it was unsurprisingly accompanied by a sticky, adolescent resentment.“How doyouknow about that?”
“How do I know about the bloke everyone saw you making goo-goo eyes at on the internet?”Karim leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach.
“You watched?”I was suddenly desperate for a cigarette.The video had gone viral, but virality implied strangers had seen it, notuncles.I defensively inhaled some zalabiyeh, downed the last of my coffee, and fidgeted with a stained napkin.“You watched the livestream of the con?”
“Nah, love.Saw it on the news.”
Deargod.
“We’re all very proud of you.”Karim gave me a chiding look; he knew I was suffering.“Local boy makes good.Your Lakshmi told me you brought the fella back with you.Not bad-looking.”
Local boy makes good, brings home not-bad-looking white American fella.Can he keep him?Tune in to Channel Four for anyone’s guess.
“And you don’t think I’m ...”I looked down at the small radius of destruction I’d created around me—shredded napkin, coffee stains, and flaky cookie crumbs.My natural tendencies toward chaos could not be contained, even by the patient, forgiving menial tasks relegated to children.“Self-sabotaging?”
Karim considered me for a few moments.“Do you?”
I tried to translate the concept of Lucas into these terms.To imagine him as a weapon turned inward against myself.“He’s soft,” I said, before I could catch and curate my thoughts.Heat flooded my cheeks, a prickle starting at the back of my neck.“I mean, he’s kind.”That was true, but itwasn’twhat I meant.While Lucas was soft and kind and sweet and nice and a thousand other unambiguously pleasant things, he was also sharp and firm when necessary.He had no trouble giving me a good bollocking, making demands, or setting boundaries.At least as a flatmate.So far.“He ...”We’d just met.We’d just met.“I’m gonna fuck it.It’ll be proper fucked.”
Karim’s eyes were piercing.I couldn’t meet them.I didn’t need to; his expression told me:You’re not a stupid man.But you are a bloody melt.
I focused on a flashy black Porsche parked across the street, glittering in the drizzle.It looked oddly out of place in this neighborhood, and reminded me of Lucas sparkling in my flat, so clearly a disaster waiting to happen.Like the drop in my stomach, the hollowing out of the known universe I’d experienced listening to Lucas and Lakshmi plan the foreseeable future of my career.
Lucas’s utter certainty that if I let the world see me, it wouldn’t immediately recoil in revulsion.His excitement about cracking me open and laying out each and every manky part of me for consideration and consumption, as if my history were anything but a series of cautionary tales; the kind of spectacle the public would happily leer at but not quite care to touch.Let alone embrace.
“You’re a good egg, Armand Demetrio,” Karim said again, softer this time, one burly, beautifully square hand patting mine across the table.I forced a smile and started gathering the mess I’d made.A nephew came by with double my usual order of chips and curry sauce, and Karim tried to get me to stay for another cup of coffee, but I explained that I needed to get back to Lucas, the jetlag was hitting, I had work to do—all true.But as usual Karim reached past the bullshit and grasped the heart of me.
“I’ll see you in group tomorrow?”he prodded.“Lads could certainly do with a success story.”
