Centre of the world

You'll recognize me. I'll be the one dressed in black, with boots
that look like wellies but in leather. I'll be the one in pink and
green and red, with shoes inadequate against the weather. I'll have a
stripy scarf wound round my neck four times. You will remember how
unreasonably cold I get. And when you come closer and I have goosebumps
all over my skin, the cold will be my excuse. I will hide myself under
layers of clothing and then I will take them all off, one by one. Until
I'm down to jeans and a t-shirt, with the name of a band printed across
it. It'll be a band you will remember hearing on my stereo, in my room,
on a Sunday afternoon in December. If you don't, I will remind you. And
then you'll recognize me. You will be wearing a suit. It will be smart,
well cut, expensive. It'll be something or other designer, that you
picked up on your way back from work one day, casually. It'll be a
casual suit, and you'll accessorise it with novelty cufflinks. It'll be
a suit made out of silk, it'll be dark blue and it'll catch the light
and shine silver. You will be modern, in jeans and one of those chunky
jumpers they sell in Camden and also in French Connection. You'll be
wearing a shirt, in a shade of blue that isn't called anything in
particular, but is the same as your eyes. A Hawaiian shirt, made out of
polyester, because you'd look good in anything and your sweat smells
like a damp evening in autumn. We will have met by accident. We will
have met because someone once said that if you stand in the centre of
your world and wait for long enough, everyone you have ever met will
pass by. Because I have been standing on a corner of the Charing Cross
Road, by the entrance of Leicester Square tube, in the centre of
London, waiting for you. We will have met because they say you always
meet people twice, because there is always a second chance if you are
there to take it. You will have been in a pub in Covent Garden,
watching the crowds and the jugglers, drinking pints of Guinness. You
will have been in a bar where everyone wears suits and reads the Times,
sipping wine and fiddling with your silver cigarette lighter. You will
have been at work, or for a walk, shopping for socks, for a new pair of
loafers. You will be passing by on the way to somewhere else. You will
be there to catch the Northern Line to Camden Town, where you will be
meeting some friends for lunch, or the Piccadilly Line to Wood Green,
to your flat by a park, near a pub, under a bridge. You will be there
meeting clients for a drink to discuss important business. Showing a
friend from another country the sights. You will be there for the same
reason as me. I'll say all the things that people say in situations
like this. How are you and What've you been up to, and Wow! This is
weird! I'll say It's been a while and you'll agree while hurriedly
subtracting years. I'll put my hands in my pockets so you don't notice
they're shaking and suggest a drink. A chat. A walk. You won't be sure.
You'll be reluctant to be taken in by chance meetings with the past in
a city so intent on moving on. You'll stare at your watch for a few
seconds. Then you'll look up and recognize something in my smile and
say you know a pub that sells good Guinness. You'll recognize me. I'll
be the one that reminds you of nothing at all. I will evoke no memories
in you, your head will be full of women's faces but mine will not be
among them. Women all around, standing at bus stops and street corners,
reading their books, fixing their hair, checking their reflections in
car mirrors, all those random women that you've never met before, they
will all look familiar compared to me. I will stand there, changed, the
product of a certain way you had of looking at me. Of the nights I
watched you sleep, waited for you to wake and leave for work before I
slept. Of the hours I spent counting you as my blessing on fingers and
toes and fingers and toes all over again. Of too many things to
mention, of which you will remember nothing. I will stand there changed
because you changed me and I will remind you of nothing. It'll be
because I will have grown and learnt a lot of things and read a lot of
books. It'll be because I will know things I didn't know before, about
football and politics and poetry and how to say I love you even after I
think it's too late. I will explain all this to you, and you will
recognize me. You'll be the same or maybe not. You'll have an older
face, a newer smile, a line or two around your eyes. Your hair will
shorter, it will be longer, it'll be littered with grey. You will have
dyed it red. You will have quit your job and become a painter. You will
have been promoted, you will be rich. You'll be unemployed and very
happy, living off the taxpayers. You will have joined the AA and come
out clean. You'll be a vegan, fighting for the rights of animals.
You'll be a fat man with an eighties hairstyle. You'll be the same.
You'll be the one that gives me goosebumps every time. We will have met
because I will have asked you to. Because I will have called you on
that number I have failed to forget and asked you to meet me. You will
have moved; I'll have found your number in the phonebook. I will have
found it on the internet. You will have been surprised to hear from me,
asked how I found you. I will have laughed and said It's easy these
days. I will have met someone who knows you, works with you, someone
who had your address. I will have written you a letter. I'll have
written you a note, with a date, a place, a name and a question mark.
You will have come out of curiosity. Out of weakness. Out of love.
Because you had nothing better to do. Because you will have tried to
find me too but my number wasn't listed. We will study each other from
some distance, our arms crossed over our chests. I will take a few
steps forward and give you the wrong hand to shake. You'll recognize me
and you'll laugh. You'll ignore the hand and kiss me on both cheeks.
You will smell of autumn evenings and warm pubs and unmade beds, and I
will have goosebumps all over my skin. We will sit in a pub overlooking
the dirty waters of the Thames and I will tap the window and say That
is what they make us drink in this city. You will order our drinks and
I will pay. You'll remember how it always used to the other way round
and I will smile and say Things change. I'll ask you a lot of questions
about the how and why and where of your life since me, and I will
listen without interrupting. I will impress you with my knowledge on
football and politics and books and lands far away. I will hide myself
beneath small talk and current affairs and grown-up conversation and
the years since I cried and you drove away in your company car. And
then I will let them all fall, one by one, around our table and by our
feet until I'm down to where we started. And when you recognize me, I
won't have to tell you anything more. I won't have to, but I will. I'd
recognize you in anything. Even in this crowd of Saturday shoppers and
weekend tourists and women reading books and fixing their hair and
meeting their friends for a drink, and men staggering in and out of the
pubs, singing football anthems to themselves and to the people passing
by with their shopping bags and kids and cans of extra strong lager. I
recognize you but you don't see me. You're in a hurry like everybody
else. But the world slows down a little where I'm standing, and I
recognize your shoulders and your hair and the way you wear your jeans,
and your hand, holding a bag from Waterstones, swinging it back and
forth as if there's enough space to do such a thing in a crowd. And as
you turn the corner towards Leicester Square, the sun shines a little,
like it almost never does, and something gold glimmers on your right
hand, and on hers. I don't see your face but she turns around for an
instant to adjust the strap of her bra. And she looks like me. I think
about that for a while, standing there, with goosebumps all over my
skin. But I can't decide whether her face is consolation or the
opposite of that And then it doesn't matter. Because even if the people
all around us and between us were to drop, one by one, by our feet,
even if you and me were the only ones left standing, clutching our
bags, staring straight at each other, you wouldn't recognize me. Not as
I am. Not with all the years added on. Not for all the second chances I
could summon. Not. Because this isn't the centre of your world, it's
just Leicester Square and your wife felt like doing a bit of shopping
and you bought a book or two and now you're going to have lunch and
talk about calling the plumber cause that tap in the kitchen is leaking
again. Because it's London and some faces look familiar and you might
stop for a second, and then you move on. I wind my scarf around my neck
four times. I can't stand the cold, it gives me goosebumps. I suppose I
should get some better shoes. I rub my arms until the skin is smooth
again. Then I bend down, tie my laces and join the crowds to wherever
they're going. 3