Signs of Life Read Online Free Page B

sure Johnny was not suspicious the night of the kiss with Carl, the fact is I don’t know for certain. I don’t know very
much at all about how it was for Johnny.
    I do still have a photograph of Carl. It is at the bottom of a box of pictures that I have been meaning to put into albums for years. I remember taking out all the other photos
– the envelopes at the top were dusty because the box has no lid – and laying the picture against the brown cardboard at the bottom, piling everything back on top. I did this quite
deliberately, as though I was hiding it from myself. The photograph is of a group of colleagues. We worked closely together for a time and there was a great sense of camaraderie between us, but I
am not in touch with any of them now. In the photograph, Carl is crouching on the ground and smiling up at the camera, squinting slightly against the sun.
    I don’t know why I kept it. I thought I had washed my hands of the affair. Did I keep it as a souvenir of the darkness?
    Yesterday, I went to the cupboard in the corner by my bed (awkward to open because the room is too small, really, for the bed, which I brought from the old place), found the box of old photos
and took out the picture. Thick grey dust stuck to my fingers, I was surprised how soft the dust was, I thought that’s how fog would feel, if you could touch it.
    Johnny’s best friend Juan would have been able to tell me how fog felt because he was a climatologist involved in milking clouds to obtain drinking water. The technology
was basic: nets. I remember him talking about special atmospheric conditions that occur along the Pacific coast of Chile and southern Peru, where clouds settling on the Andean slopes produce dense camanchacas – perfect for milking. In the foggy season it is possible to collect enough water every day for a really big family. Juan was passionate about desert fog. His eyes lit up
every time he mentioned the mists of Iquique in northern Chile, where he now lives, I believe, possibly with a really big family of his own, trekking through the Andes with a giant net, catching
clouds.
    The photograph was at the very bottom of the box, as I remembered, inside a plain brown envelope, which I don’t remember. Finding it didn’t solve or satisfy
anything. I couldn’t write afterwards. It has been an effort to write again today. There is something in the back of my mind, just out of sight, troubling me, something – like the
photograph – I have kept but can’t look at.

Five
    The week after I told Carl it had been a mistake, he asked me to go to lunch with him. I had misgivings, but since we started out as friends and had agreed to continue that
way, I went. He was quiet, almost shy, on this occasion. I still knew very little about him and I think he was aware of that and was being careful to show himself in the best light he could. He
apologized for what had happened that night in the bar and this pleased me because it meant I didn’t have to take any responsibility. He had bought me a bottle of expensive perfume and
offered it to me tentatively, perhaps thinking I wouldn’t accept it. The gift made me anxious straight away: there was Carl’s gesture, there was Johnny’s ignorance of the whole
matter, there was my surprise at being given this perfume. I have since become much better at saying no, but back then I found it hard because I imagined I was disappointing people. I got myself
into awkward situations where I said yes to an arrangement for the same time with more than one person and then had to try and combine the plans or back out of one. Since I was more confident
letting down the people I knew well, I got into trouble with members of my family and old friends for messing them about. Until they got angry with me I didn’t see what I was doing and then,
although I knew they were right, I resented being told.
    I accepted the perfume from Carl, even though it was not the wholesome thing to do. I