Centre of the world

You’ll recognize me. I’ll be the one dressed in black, with boots that look like wellies but in leather. I’ll be the one in pink and green and red, with shoes inadequate against the weather. I’ll have a stripy scarf wound round my neck four times. You will remember how unreasonably cold I get. And when you come closer and I have goosebumps all over my skin, the cold will be my excuse.

I will hide myself under layers of clothing and then I will take them all off, one by one. Until I’m down to jeans and a t-shirt, with the name of a band printed across it. It’ll be a band you will remember hearing on my stereo, in my room, on a Sunday afternoon in December. If you don’t, I will remind you. And then you’ll recognize me.

You will be wearing a suit. It will be smart, well cut, expensive. It’ll be something or other designer, that you picked up on your way back from work one day, casually. It’ll be a casual suit, and you’ll accessorise it with novelty cufflinks. It’ll be a suit made out of silk, it’ll be dark blue and it’ll catch the light and shine silver. You will be modern, in jeans and one of those chunky jumpers they sell in Camden and also in French Connection. You’ll be wearing a shirt, in a shade of blue that isn’t called anything in particular, but is the same as your eyes. A Hawaiian shirt, made out of polyester, because you’d look good in anything and your sweat smells like a damp evening in autumn.

We will have met by accident. We will have met because someone once said that if you stand in the centre of your world and wait for long enough, everyone you have ever met will pass by. Because I have been standing on a corner of the Charing Cross Road, by the entrance of Leicester Square tube, in the centre of London, waiting for you. We will have met because they say you always meet people twice, because there is always a second chance if you are there to take it.

You will have been in a pub in Covent Garden, watching the crowds and the jugglers, drinking pints of Guinness. You will have been in a bar where everyone wears suits and reads the Times, sipping wine and fiddling with your silver cigarette lighter. You will have been at work, or for a walk, shopping for socks, for a new pair of loafers. You will be passing by on the way to somewhere else. You will be there to catch the Northern Line to Camden Town, where you will be meeting some friends for lunch, or the Piccadilly Line to Wood Green, to your flat by a park, near a pub, under a bridge. You will be there meeting clients for a drink to discuss important business. Showing a friend from another country the sights. You will be there for the same reason as me.

I’ll say all the things that people say in situations like this. How are you and What’ve you been up to, and Wow! This is weird! I’ll say It’s been a while and you’ll agree while hurriedly subtracting years. I’ll put my hands in my pockets so you don’t notice they’re shaking and suggest a drink. A chat. A walk. You won’t be sure. You’ll be reluctant to be taken in by chance meetings with the past in a city so intent on moving on. You’ll stare at your watch for a few seconds. Then you’ll look up and recognize something in my smile and say you know a pub that sells good Guinness.

You’ll recognize me. I’ll be the one that reminds you of nothing at all. I will evoke no memories in you, your head will be full of women’s faces but mine will not be among them. Women all around, standing at bus stops and street corners, reading their books, fixing their hair, checking their reflections in car mirrors, all those random women that you’ve never met before, they will all look familiar compared to me.

I will stand there, changed, the product of a certain way you had of looking at me. Of the nights I watched you sleep, waited for you to wake and leave for work before I slept. Of the hours I spent counting you as my blessing on fingers and toes and fingers and toes all over again. Of too many things to mention, of which you will remember nothing. I will stand there changed because you changed me and I will remind you of nothing.
It’ll be because I will have grown and learnt a lot of things and read a lot of books. It’ll be because I will know things I didn’t know before, about football and politics and poetry and how to say I love you even after I think it’s too late.
I will explain all this to you, and you will recognize me.

You’ll be the same or maybe not. You’ll have an older face, a newer smile, a line or two around your eyes. Your hair will shorter, it will be longer, it’ll be littered with grey. You will have dyed it red. You will have quit your job and become a painter. You will have been promoted, you will be rich. You’ll be unemployed and very happy, living off the taxpayers. You will have joined the AA and come out clean. You’ll be a vegan, fighting for the rights of animals. You’ll be a fat man with an eighties hairstyle. You’ll be the same. You’ll be the one that gives me goosebumps every time.

We will have met because I will have asked you to. Because I will have called you on that number I have failed to forget and asked you to meet me. You will have moved; I’ll have found your number in the phonebook. I will have found it on the internet. You will have been surprised to hear from me, asked how I found you. I will have laughed and said It’s easy these days. I will have met someone who knows you, works with you, someone who had your address. I will have written you a letter. I’ll have written you a note, with a date, a place, a name and a question mark. You will have come out of curiosity. Out of weakness. Out of love. Because you had nothing better to do. Because you will have tried to find me too but my number wasn’t listed.

We will study each other from some distance, our arms crossed over our chests. I will take a few steps forward and give you the wrong hand to shake. You’ll recognize me and you’ll laugh. You’ll ignore the hand and kiss me on both cheeks. You will smell of autumn evenings and warm pubs and unmade beds, and I will have goosebumps all over my skin.
We will sit in a pub overlooking the dirty waters of the Thames and I will tap the window and say That is what they make us drink in this city. You will order our drinks and I will pay. You’ll remember how it always used to the other way round and I will smile and say Things change. I’ll ask you a lot of questions about the how and why and where of your life since me, and I will listen without interrupting. I will impress you with my knowledge on football and politics and books and lands far away. I will hide myself beneath small talk and current affairs and grown-up conversation and the years since I cried and you drove away in your company car. And then I will let them all fall, one by one, around our table and by our feet until I’m down to where we started. And when you recognize me, I won’t have to tell you anything more. I won’t have to, but I will.

I’d recognize you in anything. Even in this crowd of Saturday shoppers and weekend tourists and women reading books and fixing their hair and meeting their friends for a drink, and men staggering in and out of the pubs, singing football anthems to themselves and to the people passing by with their shopping bags and kids and cans of extra strong lager.

I recognize you but you don’t see me. You’re in a hurry like everybody else. But the world slows down a little where I’m standing, and I recognize your shoulders and your hair and the way you wear your jeans, and your hand, holding a bag from Waterstones, swinging it back and forth as if there’s enough space to do such a thing in a crowd. And as you turn the corner towards Leicester Square, the sun shines a little, like it almost never does, and something gold glimmers on your right hand, and on hers. I don’t see your face but she turns around for an instant to adjust the strap of her bra. And she looks like me. I think about that for a while, standing there, with goosebumps all over my skin. But I can’t decide whether her face is consolation or the opposite of that

And then it doesn’t matter. Because even if the people all around us and between us were to drop, one by one, by our feet, even if you and me were the only ones left standing, clutching our bags, staring straight at each other, you wouldn’t recognize me. Not as I am. Not with all the years added on. Not for all the second chances I could summon. Not. Because this isn’t the centre of your world, it’s just Leicester Square and your wife felt like doing a bit of shopping and you bought a book or two and now you’re going to have lunch and talk about calling the plumber cause that tap in the kitchen is leaking again. Because it’s London and some faces look familiar and you might stop for a second, and then you move on.

I wind my scarf around my neck four times. I can’t stand the cold, it gives me goosebumps. I suppose I should get some better shoes.
I rub my arms until the skin is smooth again. Then I bend down, tie my laces and join the crowds to wherever they’re going.


Copyright 2004 Daphne Kapsali