Broken Table
It’s lying on its side, legs sticking up in the air like an anti-tank roadblock on a Kiev street. My eye’s immediately drawn to it cos it’s huge and awkward and white and takes up half the kitchen and blocks the view to the living area. His apartment’s beautiful apart from the broken table. He clearly has taste. In the living area there’s a teal green velvet sofa and a modern coffee table, a record player, vinyls and leafy green plants on shelves. Three A4 frames hang on the wall above the TV. Only one has a picture in it – doodles by his favourite tattoo artist – but the other two frame nothing but cardboard. Just above them, on a shelf, sit three squat Russian dolls.
“What’s this?” I’m standing in the kitchen.
“Oh,” he says. “It’s broken.” His tone is slightly whiney, as if he’s used to complaining.
“How long’s it been broken?”
“Oh I dunno, a few weeks. It’s not mine, it’s my landlord’s. I want to throw it out but I need to unscrew the legs to get it through the door.” His English is very good. Israeli’s watch a few episodes of The Simpsons and somehow become fluent.
“I see.” I kiss him on the cheek and walk past the table to sit on his teal green sofa. He brings me a glass of soda and sits down next to me.
On our first date his nervousness almost completely obscured his personality. But there was a sharpness and movement in his green eyes that made me want to know more; to get to know the version of him that’s comfortable. But while I wait I’ve been project-managing our relations, making all the first moves until he’s ready to make some of his own.
He’s still nervous, so I curl my legs up and turn towards him and lay my arm on top of his.
“Why are those picture frames empty?”
“I never got round to filling them.”
“Want me to draw a picture for you?”
“Sure. What will you draw?”
“A pig.”
“Ok. Draw me a pig.”
I lead the evening, just like I’ve led all our dates so far. I share information about myself in the hope he’ll share more too and he does open up, a little. He tells me he has a sister and a brother and his parents are divorced. He tells me about his ex, and how they broke up after she unleashed a torrent of insults on him. He didn’t say anything back, just sat there silently. He tells me he didn’t speak to her for two weeks after that argument. I imagine her writhing in pain.
We make out on his sofa. His eyes are so bright they seem retroreflective. He opens up enough to keep my curiosity alight.
A few days later, when he’s on his way over to help me pack, I get a string of messages from different friends.
Are you ok?
Have you seen the news?
You alright pal?
My stomach sinks. I open my laptop and type Haaretz into the browser.
GUNMEN OPEN FIRE IN DIZENGOFF CENTRE
2 DEAD 10 WOUNDED
2 GUNMEN NEUTRALISED
MANHUNT UNDERWAY FOR THIRD
My heart sinks and pounds simultaneously. Dizengoff Centre’s a 15 minute walk from my house. That gunman’s not very far away at all. I realise I must care about Samuel because my brain clouds with concern. He should’ve been here by now. I hope he’s ok.
When I message, he responds right away.
Be there in 5
He’s wearing glasses today. They’re round and gold and they make his eyes sparkle turquoise. I’ve never seen eyes like it. They’re azure. The colour of a mermaid’s tail.
We’re both excitable and charged. One little-known side effect of rockets and shootings is they act as an aphrodisiac. I learned that when the sirens went off last May. Something about being scared for your life really makes you want to fuck. So today, for the first time, it feels like our energy matches. He has more to say. Our conversation flows, he’s more flirtatious and more confident, and later when those green eyes look up at me from between my legs I feel like I could melt.
The next morning, before my flight, I check the news.
GUNMAN NEUTRALIZED IN JAFFA
I live just north of Jaffa. He must’ve run through my area last night, around the time Samuel scooted home.
I focus on getting to the airport, so it only hits me when I’m back in London. Something about seeing Boots and Cafe Nero and Wagamama and inhaling the impenetrable confidence of the UK air reveals how afraid I’d been. I cry on the tube to my mum’s house. There’s a Metro on the seat next to me and it says there’s a fuel crisis.
He messages me every single day the entire time I’m away, which I respect. It takes confidence to show such interest. His chat is pure shit though.
Shalom
How was your day
Good thank you, just had lunch with my mum and about to meet some pals in east
How’s your day going?
Fine thanks
But the messages keep on coming, and if we don’t speak all day he’ll message me that evening. We chat on the phone a couple times, which we both enjoy. I like feeling like I have someone.
He tells me he’s taken Adderall every day for the last 3 months to get through his final exams, and now they’re over he’s gone cold turkey. He spends most of his days sleeping and doesn’t seem able to fill up his time. After studying non-stop for over 5 years, he isn’t enjoying his spare time at all. It’s only later I realise he probably decided to be a doctor so he’ll always be busy and won’t ever have to fill up his time. It’s a socially acceptable way to be totally unsocial. A life-long reason to say no.
I fly the five hour return flight from one world to another, and when I see him again I’m surprised by the strength of my feeling. My stomach flips when I open the door and the attraction feels magnetic. I like it when he wears his glasses. We lie on my bed and our hands fit together nicely and I belly laugh and so does he.
His silence makes me want to know more so I fire questions at him, just like I do for work. I ask if he’s friends with his exes. “There are so many people on this planet,” he says. “Why would I choose an ex?”
The next time I go to his apartment, the table’s still lying on its side. “You know what we should do,” I say. “We should unscrew those legs.”
“No,” he says. “I should do that.’
“Seriously, let’s do it right now. I want to.”
He gets a screw driver out a drawer and starts removing a screw. I do the next one, and we kneel there taking it in turns until the monstrous road block’s disengaged from the table top.
“Let’s take it downstairs.”
“No, no. Let’s not do that.”
“Why not?”
He holds my shoulders and looks right in my eyes. “Not tonight. Please.” His eyes are wide. I get the sense I’ve hit some kind of wall within him. It’s solid and unmoving and there’s nothing I can do or say to shift it. That table is not going anywhere tonight.
“Ok ok.”
“I’ll do it myself this week.”
That weekend we play ping pong. He’s fiercely competitive. He says yes under his breath every time he gets a point, and serves when he knows I’m not ready. It surprises me how competitive he is, seeing as I haven’t seen any strength of feeling assigned to anything else so far. I ask him if he ever cries. “Sometimes,” he says. “At movies.”
I tell him about my dad while we’re lying in bed one afternoon and when a tear falls out he says “It’s ok, baby. You can cry. I won’t judge you.”
He tells me his dad is gay but never actually came out. When his parents divorced, his father simply moved in with a man and never moved out again. To this day they haven’t spoken about it.
He enters my life like a spirit in the night. Some people cause a tsunami. Samuel makes barely a ripple.
He comes over one evening as I make dinner. “How was your day?” I ask.
“Fine thanks. Yours?”
“Samuel, that’s not a response. I genuinely want to know how your day was.”
“Ok, ok. I helped a man transition into a woman. I turned someone’s dick inside out.”
“See,” I put my arms round his neck. “Was that so hard?”
We’re lying in his bed this time, the table’s still in the kitchen, and I ask if we should be exclusive. “Um it’s not very moral to date two people at the same time is it?”
I tell him no, but unless we’ve had this chat we’re both within our rights.
“Well I don’t want to date anyone else,” he says.
I tell him I need a lot of attention and ask if he’ll have enough time when he starts working.
“Am I giving you enough time now?”
I nod.
“Ok then we’re good.”
I ask if he wants to meet my friends. He rolls his eyes. “I hate feeling like an accessory,” he says.
I read somewhere that scorpios are stubborn as fuck and great in bed. He hints that he’s read an article I’ve written but refuses to say which one. When I ask if he listens to my radio show he says “wouldn’t it be weird if I did?”
I ask if he wants to come to Jenny’s gig and he says no at lightning speed. “I’m busy,” he stammers. “I have work that night.”
I get used to our daily messages. I like feeling like I have someone and I enjoy the challenge of getting to know him, the slow revelations of his hidden personality. But after two months we still haven’t slept in each other’s beds, and he really doesn’t want to meet my friends, or me to meet his. I ask if he wants to play ping pong with me and Mia when I know he’s doing nothing at home. He says no. In that moment I’m face-to-face with that wall inside him and there’s no way I’m getting in. I feel a dull ache then, like I’m by myself after all.
Sometimes I’ll ask how his day is going and he’ll say “good thanks, you?” and it feels like my question’s a tennis ball and his answer’s the wall.
One time I leave him a voice note saying I wish he’d respond genuinely when I ask him these questions. Passing it back to me means I’m doing all the leg-work. Connection and communication is a two-way street. He takes it well, and says he’ll try and be more communicative in future.
I ask if he’d like to meet the puppy I’m looking after.
No, not really
You say no to everything 🙁
Heyyy where’s that coming from? I just don’t want to go to some random person’s house to meet their puppy
But the random person won’t be inside the house
We go for a walk around Jaffa one evening. I’ve got a new analogue camera and I want to test it out.
“You can take a picture too,” I say.
“No,” he says, automatic like my settings.
He does take a picture in the end. We’re standing on the port, boats lapping the water behind me, the sunset obscured by clouds. He takes a close-up of my right eye. Afterwards we walk to the bureka place by the clock tower. He gets potato and spinach, I get cheese, and when we get back to his house the table’s still there, dismembered, lying on its side. “Why don’t we take it down now?”
“No, please. Not tonight.”
I like his tattoos though. The rose slapped on his inner forearm and the creepy kids trick-or-treating on his leg. I like the sharpness in those green eyes, the cynicism, the fatigue. He doesn’t like people complimenting them. “It’s not like I did anything to get them,” he says. I like the way he sits with one leg up on the coffee table, one arm behind his head and the other straight across the back of the sofa. But whenever he says no I feel this heavy thud of isolation and I know it’s not coming from me.
I try to talk to him about it one evening. “You just need to be patient with me,” he says. “I take things slower than other people.”
“Have you had bad experiences in the past? Like with meeting people’s friends?”
“Umm. Not really. I mean maybe. But that’s not relevant.”
“Can you tell me anyway.”
“It’s not relevant.”
“I’d really like to know what happened.”
“Fine,” his sigh is unhappy. “I was dating someone and she wanted me to meet her friends and when I did she broke up with me that evening. But it wasn’t because of her friends, that’s why it’s not relevant.”
“Why did she break up with you?”
“It’s not relevant.” I hit the wall again.
I know it’s going to be the last time I see him. I could feel it in my stomach all day. I knew it wouldn’t work out all along of course, but sometimes I kid myself to serve a purpose. That’s why I never drew him that pig. I don’t want it hanging above his TV long after I’m gone.
At dinner I ask about his day. “It wasn’t great,” he sighs. “I wanted to clean my apartment but I didn’t get round to it.”
“What did you do instead?”
“Just slept, watched TV.”
I imagine him lying on his bed, wanting to move but unable to, feeling overwhelmed by menial tasks. Something isn’t right, but there’s nothing I can do if he won’t speak to me.
After dinner we get ice cream near his place in Jaffa. My stomach’s churning because I already know the answer but I ask him anyway, just to make sure. “Clem’s having drinks at her place round the corner,” I say. “Do you want to go for a bit?”
“No,” he says.
“Why not?”
“I’m tired.”
“Is there any other reason?”
“No, there’s no riddle here,” he snaps. “I’m just tired.”
We walk in silence. “Are you angry?”
It’s strange that he’d ask me that. I guess other people react to his road block with anger, when really they’re just sad they couldn’t get in. I tried my best to move it, too, but I couldn’t. “Of course I’m not angry,” I say. I don’t tell him I’m just disappointed.
-Alice Austin
