The Gap of Time Read Online Free Page B

No.”
    “Then surely this is madness?”
    “You calling me crazy, Cameron? You calling me crazy?”
    Leo slammed the halves of the pencil onto the desk and came round to Cameron. Cameron squared his feet, relaxed his knees, locked his stomach muscles and stood quite still as Leo walked up to him. Cameron knew how to handle himself. And he knew about Leo’s temper. Leo’s face was so close that Cameron could see his pores. He was careful not to make eye contact.
    Leo stepped back and swung his body to look out of the window.
    “Amsterdam,” he said as the plane took off. Then, without turning round, he said, “She can see the man she’s seeing every day of the week and no one thinks about it twice. Except me. I think about it sixty times a minute.”
    “I can’t follow you, Leo,” said Cameron.
    “It’s Xeno.”
    There was a pause while Cameron took this in.
    “Xeno is your closest friend. You are in business with him.”
    “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, Cameron, eh?”
    “But you said yourself, you have no grounds for this suspicion.”
    Leo turned back into the room. “It’s not just women who have intuition, Cameron. I’ve known Xeno all my life.”
    —
    Xeno all my life.
    They had met at boarding school at thirteen. Both boys had been sent away by fathers who had gained custody over unfit mothers. Leo’s mother had left his father for another woman. Xeno’s mother was alcoholic and mentally unstable. The boarding school was neither fashionable nor academic but it allowed their fathers to believe that they were bringing up their sons when in fact their sons were barely at home.
    Weekends at the school were quiet because most of the boys went home. Leo and Xeno invented worlds where they could live.
    “I’m in a forest,” said Xeno. “My own cabin. Rabbits come and I shoot them. Bang bang bang.”
    “I’m on the moon,” said Leo. “And it’s made of mozzarella.”
    “How are you gonna walk on a ball of mozzarella?” asked Xeno.
    “Don’t have to walk,” said Leo. “No gravity.”
    They listened to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and Xeno got into country and western. Sometimes he thought he was Emmylou Harris.
    They didn’t want to be like the other boys and that was just as well because they weren’t like the other boys.
    By fifteen they were inseparable. They joined the school shooting club and competed at the target range. Xeno was more accurate because he was calmer. Leo was faster and sometimes won because he fired more shots. They invented a game: GUN BULLET TARGET. Win two rounds and you were the gun. Lose one and you were the bullet. Lose two, and you were the target. Then Xeno added MOVING TARGET and said it made him feel free. Leo didn’t understand that. He just wanted to be the gun.
    One night after target practice they had sex. It was a cliché. Shower. Hard-on. Three-minute handjob. No kissing. But the next day Leo kissed Xeno in the bike shed. He kissed him and he touched his face. He tried to say something but he didn’t know what it was. Xeno didn’t say anything. That was like him. Xeno was a bit of a girl anyway, Leo thought. He had grey eyes like a cat and soft, dark hair that fell over his eyes.
    Leo was bulkier, tougher, taller, stronger. Built like a rugby player, he moved with confidence but without grace. He liked the watery quality Xeno had.
    They went swimming, the sky low, the water warm, gulls patrolling the shoals. Leo was showy and noisy and fast and got tired before Xeno and his long, methodical distance swimming.
    Leo waded out of the water, his feet making deep prints on the wet sand. He turned back, hands on his hips, to shout something to Xeno. The sun was in his eyes. He couldn’t see his friend and for a second he felt fear.
    But there he was, his head and shoulders graceful as a dolphin, swimming back to shore. The image was blurred but it seemed to Leo that Xeno moved like a wave over the water.
    Xeno splashed onto the