False Dichotomies

He stood in the growing shadow of his college room and slapped more gouache onto the canvas. Impasto. To lay paint on thickly. Joshua liked to repeat unusual words to himself and rehearse their meanings, noticing the moments in his life they became relevant. Now he wondered if he hadn’t overdone it. He wondered if all this paint wasn’t some attempt to offset the emotion of the last few days. Chloe would call soon. The invitation to meet up for drinks still stood, even after all that had taken place. Joshua felt a draught in the room but didn’t do anything to stop it or wrap up warmer. Nor did he turn on the light.

He decided to rehearse the testimony he would give against her. When he’d come back and told Marcus what had happened Marcus had been disgusted. “She’s worse than Caroline,” he’d said, Caroline being Marcus’ ex who had ended things after a month. Joshua had defended Chloe. Marcus didn’t understand, things couldn’t be neatly categorised and packed into easily comprehensible boxes. Now he wasn’t so sure. Away from Marcus, he felt the need to make his case for the prosecution.

Had he known the relationship was that precarious, would he have gone to Rome with her? He never had an inkling. It had been a whim, a delicious piece of spontaneity, to book flights and escape classes and lectures for three days, with this sophisticated, spiritual young woman he had only known for five weeks. She was unlike anyone he’d ever met: her teasing smile and the way she talked about life was as near to poetry as he’d encountered in a lover. On that first day in Rome she talked about sitting in the sunshine and knowing God was making love to her.

Should he have been alarmed from the moment she’d mentioned her initial reasons for choosing Rome? That an ex lover lived there, Roberto, almost a mentor figure to her, a boutique owner 10 years her senior, who had whisked her away from a pursuing army of prospective but unwanted Romeos twelve months earlier. She had no intention of seeing Roberto, she’d said when she invited Joshua. “He doesn’t even know I’m coming. It’s just I always planned to go now, so why not with you?”

How culpable was Joshua? He’d been too clingy, too uptight on the journey from Oxford to the airport and then, in Italy, on the way to the Piazza Campo dei Fiori. Later, on the first full day, in the old neighbourhood of Trastevere, he’d bought a tall orange juice and she’d not bought one for herself, watching her money. He offered her a sip but didn’t think to buy her one. Had little things like that been his undoing?

First there’d been the phone call. They’d just arrived in Rome, literally stepped off the plane and were walking towards passport control when Chloe’s phone rang. She took it out and looked at it aghast, like it was some infectious piece of alien matter to be feared. “It’s him,” she said. “Who?” Joshua asked. “Roberto.” But the phone didn’t show any caller ID. She said she ‘knew it was him’. Had she told him she was coming? No. But they had this “telepathic link” she said. He’d sensed her arrival. She didn’t answer and didn’t want to call him back.

Then was the first evening. They had a meal together outside in the piazza, around all the Italian ragazzi and the tourists seizing photo opportunities. After they finished she said it: “Joshua, I cannot be your girlfriend, not how you want me to be.” Joshua didn’t know what this meant and Chloe didn’t have the answers. But he understood she didn’t like the cosiness of a conventional relationship. “I still want you to be my lover,” she said. “I still want you to make love to me tonight.” An African man in a brown leather jacket came over and tried to sell Joshua a rose to give to his young lady. He declined, Chloe’s words still echoing in his ears. “I cannot be your girlfriend.”

The next day was Trastevere. A hot day of walking. The orange juice incident and a film in the afternoon. But there was a tension they carried around between them, That night, in the probably once welcoming albergo, Chloe told him: “I cannot make love to you.” She had sensed anger when they had had sex the night before. And now she felt…estranged. Joshua felt as if he were watching a film, in which these events were happening to someone else. Yet he found them hard to accept. First “I cannot be your girlfriend” and now “I cannot…” Cannot until when? What does this mean? She couldn’t say.

Enkephalin. Either of two morphine-like peptides in the brain thought to control levels of pain.

He told her he was going for a walk and left the hotel room without waiting for her response. He wasn’t wearing a watch but he noticed the Roman numeral clock in the piazza said it was 1. When he returned, having mulled things over until he was positively angry, the liquid crystal display clock in the room said 3:23.

Their last full day in Rome. And here it was. Chloe said she wanted to see Roberto. Just for the morning. To say she was here and she wasn’t interested in being with him and hello. Joshua agreed. What could he do? He spent the morning walking around the shops at the foot of the Spanish Steps. He picked up a post card and wrote to his friend Jon. “I’ve had an unexpected and… interesting time. Will tell you more when I get back.” He sat in the cathedral at the top and met her when she agreed. In the afternoon they had a beer outside a café in the sunshine and he laughed for what seemed the first time in three days.

But there was one more trial. She had told Roberto she would visit a final time, in the early evening, just to say goodbye, a half hour visit. So Joshua waited for her in the hotel room. She returned with the same wild look she’d had when she’d taken that phone call. The first thing she did was strike her forehead with the heel of her hand and exclaim: “I’m so stupid.” Joshua told her to calm down. What had happened?

Roberto had put to her an ultimatum. She had to “be with him” – with Roberto – tonight, and now, or never see him again. In these moments Joshua felt like rushing out the room and running, as far across the city as he could, until he had no more strength or breath. But instead, he just told her he felt that way.

“I’m not going to go to him,” she said.

It surprised Joshua. He couldn’t understand why she would choose this hotel room, with him, rather than across town with Roberto.

“I feel like he’s a wise being, calling to me from my future. But it is still the future and I can’t be there with him.”

That night they walked in silence through the nearby cobbled streets. There was nothing to say.

In the morning, their final few hours in Rome, they went to the Coliseum. There they saw someone paid to dress as a Roman soldier. He was smoking a cigarette. He might have been on his break or he might have just been apathetic and casual about his work. He stood on a little stone podium and curled his lip up in an unimpressed sneer.

“Where you from?” he asked Joshua and Chloe.

“England.”

“Huh.” He grunted. “England. You English don’t know how to soddisfy the ladies.”

The funny thing is the two of them had finally had fun together that last morning. Freed from something, some burden removed, they’d laughed at the soldier and told jokes on the flight back. That was why Joshua felt compelled to defend her to Marcus. How could he understand?

And now Chloe expected him for drinks, some event in a converted church where students were to wear lounge suits.

His phone rang. He knew it was her.

“Rain check?” she said.

“I’ll be there in twenty,” he replied, and turned on the light.