Chapter 34

CHAPTER 34

She expects to step out of the airport and see mountains rising above her, but instead she sees: a city. A low, spread-out city, wide roads, a strange quality to the light. She has arrived on one of the sixty-five days a year without sunshine. But it feels—okay, it feels okay.

All she wants is to meet Carter once, just once, or maybe twice.

Probably there'll be nothing between them. Then she'll know that they had a good relationship that wasn't fundamentally different from any other good relationship she could have; that he is not her destiny, the purpose towards which all the other husbands point. And then she can go back and get on with her life.

Or if it feels special, she can plan around that. Maybe they'll get together immediately, sure, but that's not the only option . It could be: go home, exchange more husbands, find someone else she's divorcing, and make a slower, gentler approach. Or: switch five hundred times, a thousand, five thousand, until Carter comes back; that must be possible, right? If they're meant to be then there must have been more than one version of the world where they met? If she spends two hours a day exchanging husbands—and plenty of people watch at least two hours of television a day so that's not an unreasonable time commitment—if she spends two hours a day exchanging husbands, and if she exchanges on average one husband a minute, that's 120husbands a day, 10,000 in a few months.

But first, she has to know. She has to see him. Say hello. Smile. See what it feels like when they look at each other again.

And the rest of the time she can have a nice holiday. She can look at nature, she can explore the city. Her hotel is near a train station, which she finds surprising—for some reason she'd never thought about America having trains—but comforting. A bus can go anywhere, but there're only a few ways to go wrong with a train.

She's arranged to meet Carter at his workplace on Friday; she gets to the hotel late on Wednesday afternoon and sets about getting over the jet lag. Unpacks her suitcase and hangs up her clothes, plugs in the UK-to-US power converter that she's proud she thought to bring. Showers. Blow-dries her hair, because you never know when you might run into an ex-husband, and heads out.

In a nearby bar she discovers the differences between the tedious London craft beer scene and the tedious Denver craft beer scene, namely (1) people in the US will try to have conversations with you even if they're not trying to pick you up, and (2) the beer contains substantially more alcohol, so perhaps you will let them.

She ends up speaking to a couple called Ryan and Tyler, which she is delighted by: real American names. "Ryan!" she says. "Tyler! Like in the films!" She is playing up her foreign-ness, she knows, normally she'd say "movies."

"I don't think I know anyone in a movie called Lauren," Ryan says slowly—is that a drawl? Is he drawling ? They're not as handsome as Carter but they do have something of his expressions, his mode of being. When she thought it was love, was it just being from Denver ?

Ryan is having a party on Saturday and she should come, they assure her, it'll be great, there'll be a bonfire and s'mores, which again feels so unlikely to her, that people actually make and say "s'mores." She should have come to Denver years ago.

"I'd love to," she says, and gives them her number. How delightful! Maybe when she and Carter meet on Friday they'll hit it off and she can bring him to the party and he'll be so impressed that she's made friends in town already and they'll have such a good time together! What a great bar. What a great city.

○○

In the morning, the sleep from the hangover cancels out the early waking from the jet lag, and she opens her eyes at quarter past eight.

She doesn't want to meet Carter properly until she's feeling her best, but she goes to the diner opposite his work and waits outside until a table by the window opens up, then rushes in and lays claim to it, and watches from a distance to see if he appears.

It's not stalking; it's just research.

And at 12:53, heading out for lunch she guesses, there he is. Walking along the other side of the road, looking at his phone. Wearing a suit, like when they went to Elena's wedding. Carter. Her husband.

Well, she thinks it's Carter. It's been a while, and there are a lot of guys around Denver who kind of look like him. But then he uses the knuckle of his pointer finger to press a button at the pedestrian crossing, and she recognises the gesture. It's him; it's him.

She obviously isn't going to follow him through the streets—quite apart from anything else, if he's off to look at houses, presumably he's going to drive.

So instead she decides to work through a list of the ten best things to do in Denver and furnish herself with stories about how much fun she's having.

The nearby art gallery is a huge strange building, jagged shards and looming menace. It costs money to get in, and more for her as she's not a Colorado resident, and once she's inside she wanders from room to room looking at paintings. The portraits in particular are too much: just men's faces, the dating apps all over again.

She does, however, find a shop selling the pretzel M he picks up papers and clips them together.

"So," he says as they settle into a glass-walled meeting room, "Denver! What brings you here?"

"Oh, just work."

"That's great, we'll need a load of boring paperwork about the job and your credit but I can send that over for you to fill out in your own time. Do you have a sense of the budget range you're looking in?"

"Well," she says. She's never had to deal with this sort of thing: inherited half the flat, stayed there because it was easier, doesn't know how to actively choose somewhere to live. But she's done her research. "My place in London is on the market for 500k in US dollars." She has rounded way, way up to get it into a plausible price range for buying the sort of places that Carter's selling.

"And you own it outright?"

"Yes," she lies; Amos has no claim on it, thank god, but of course, half of it is Nat's.

"And it's just you?"

"Yes," and she smiles. "But I'd love a spare room for when friends come to visit." It's important that he knows that she has friends.

"With the budget you get moving from London to Denver," and he gestures towards the window, "that shouldn't be a problem. You said you were thinking about apartments rather than houses?"

"Yeah." In this fantasy life she is not trying to cultivate plants in the hard Denver soil, she is going out to nice bars and joking with friends and maybe they all drive to a lake in the summer.

"Okay," he says, "well, we can definitely work with that. Tell me about neighbourhoods. I was in London for a year—"

"Oh, lovely," she says, in careful surprise.

"—so I can speak London boroughs. Tell me what you're interested in and I'll, y'know, translate it to Denver."

She had wondered if maybe she wouldn't be struck by him the same way here, that perhaps she had been beguiled by the quiet confidence and the sense of being in the fresh air that he carried with him in London. But even here, surrounded by men like him, he is her favourite.

"I'm in Norwood Junction, which is south-east, kind of near Crystal Palace? Bit further out."

"I love London suburb names. Crystal Palace!" He gestures widely. "Very Lord of the Rings ."

She grins back. "I'd love to be more central here, though. Something like, maybe the equivalent of Bermondsey? Not in the centre-centre but with little art galleries and coffee shops and bars and stuff going on. For me that's part of the benefit of leaving London. In a smaller city I can live closer to everything." She's starting to convince herself with this: maybe she could move to Denver? She doesn't have a job offer but maybe she could get one?

"Okay, good guidance…"

"Maybe near a park." She likes nature, she thinks, she could be someone who likes nature.

"There are plenty of great options," Carter says, and he scans through some pictures, apartments, one little house. Tells her about locations: this one's near coffee shops, that one's right by a few different rooftop bars.

"Love a rooftop bar," she says. Outdoorsy! See? "Okay," as he shows her more and more apartments. "I like that one," more or less at random. "And that one," a place he's slowed down on, one that she thinks he wants her to pick.

"Good taste," he says. " How long are you in town for? Are you free Tuesday to have a look at some of the properties?"

She leaves Tuesday night; she could do it, but if looking at properties is the thing that's going to throw them together, it's cutting it tight. "You can't do anything on Monday? Or even this afternoon?"

"I don't think so," he says.

"Okay. Tuesday is great. Line 'em up. I trust your judgement."

It'll be okay. An hour or two to spend together: if romance is going to kindle, then that's enough time.

"Got anything fun planned for the weekend?" he asks as he packs up his papers and his tablet.

He's making conversation; this is the normal thing you ask someone when you meet them on a Friday afternoon. Nothing more than that. Unless it is. "Yeah," she says, "some friends are having a big bonfire party by a lake."

"Oh wow, that sounds cool."

It is cool, she thinks, I have friends, I made new friends in two days. She is sociable and likeable and Carter would have fun with her if they were married to each other, which they have been in the past and perhaps one day could be again. And then, like grabbing the plant mister, she doesn't let herself think it through, she just opens her mouth:

"Let me know if you'd like to come," she says.

"Oh," he says, and looks confused. But then he smiles, friendly, flattered, she thinks, and yeah, this is his job, but it seems like a real smile, and she would know: he was her husband. "I can't, I've got a friend's birthday. One of those rooftop bars, you know. But you have a great time."

"I will," she says. "I'm looking forward to it. And to seeing you on Tuesday."

"Tuesday it'll actually be my colleague Lautaro, I've got some appointments out of town. But I'll catch him up on this, and he'll be able to take you around. Have a good bonfire!" And he holds up the folder in a goodbye.

Ah, Lauren thinks. Well, fuck.