Pink Clouds by Samuel Snyder

I suppose it was meant to happen on the first of December. It was then that Christoph died as I believe he foresaw. I’ll tell you that story now.

It was sometime in the afternoon a few days before–around four or five, I think– and Christoph and I were walking along the riverside of the Thames in London. In the winter, the sunset is around four-thirty and the pink cream of the clouds above is beautiful at that time. I had quit smoking by then but Christoph had not, and the smell of his cigarette wafted sweetly in the air. He pulled in on it and blew. We had just left the Hotel Chamberly, where his brother had his gala in two hours. It was cold, so we wore our jackets out.  Our shoes tapped on the cobblestone. People fluttered by, The Shard loomed across the river. Christoph chained his cigarettes.

“Do you know Henry?”

“Who?” I said. I looked at a woman in black walking by.

“Henry McGill? He’ll be here tonight, I’ll point him out to you. Real asshole.”

“Why?”

“Married seven times. Fourteen children–two with each wife. Doesn’t speak to any of them.”

“He sounds like a fairytale. Two with each wife?”

“Yes. Although one from the first wife is actually illegitimate–married her after its birth.”

“Ah, at least he reformed his character early.”

Christoph laughed. I waited a little.

“So when does the illegitimate child get revealed?”

Christoph shrugs, “In about two weeks.” He dragged on the cigarette.

“Is he not married now? Or does he just not speak to his children of the current wife?”

Christoph considers. His eyes wrinkle, “He’s not married now. Although he has a lover, perhaps the eighth time is the charm. What’s two more kids anyway?”

I smile and snort a little.

Christoph pulls on his cigarette, looking down at his shoes. He looked very small and tired. I remember his thumb and index–tips stained from smoking–were tapping together in his offhand. Our shoes tapped on the cobblestone and the city seemed quiet save for that tapping. His fingers and our shoes seemed in-unison, like his fingers clicked on stone. I wrapped my arms around my chest, my hands hidden in my armpits from the cold. I remember seeing the London Eye, rotating in the distance like some living ring. Its lights were on and were contrasting against the darker pink of the clouds behind it. I watched it turn, the wheel. I suddenly wanted a cigarette. I took out nicotine gum instead and chewed it slowly. We walked past a Tube station and people headed out of it towards Covent Garden. Maybe they went to Soho. I don’t know. Thinking of Soho then had me wanting alcohol. I had no alcohol gum so I chewed my nicotine gum more intently. Christoph had come out of his trance and realized I was chewing the gum.

“Shit, sorry.” He dropped the cigarette and drove his heel into it. Our shoes stopped tapping.

“It’s okay. I need to get used to being a second-hand smoker now.”

Christoph shook his head and walked to the riverside to lean on the rail. I followed, glancing at his dead cigarette, abandoned and flattened like roadkill. I leaned on the rail next to him. An observation boat floated up the river like a fat trout in spring. The passengers looked cold. A young girl clung to her mother who pointed out Big Ben, its clock face like an early appearance of the moon. The girl didn’t seem too impressed.

“I saw you just now,” Christoph said. He was looking at me with his head just barely turned towards me. The sun was getting lower and his black eyes reflected the city lights like stars in the void or angels floating dead in oil.

“What was I doing?”

“You were flying back home, I think. Back to the States.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“Any idea how long till that?”

Christoph looked ahead across the river. “Five days.”

“Five days?”

“Yes.”

“That’s awfully confident.”

Christoph nodded his head. “I saw the date on your phone.”

“Ah,” I nodded too. I was watching him then. His lips were drawn to a thin line.

“Something bad puts you on the plane but I’m not sure.” He looks to the left down the river, turning his head away from me.

The boat of tourists floated past us, headed towards the sunset. A car honked behind us on Kingsway or some other street. I put my hand on Christoph’s.

“What makes you say that?”

He looks forward to where I can see his face again, but doesn’t look at me. He shrugs, “You didn’t look happy, that’s all.”

“‘Didn’t look happy.’ How?”

“As in: you looked unhappy.”

“Ho ho ho, fuck you,” I said. I took my hand off his.

Christoph grinned a little but not a whole lot. “Could you put it back?”

“Huh?”

“Your hand.” He was looking ahead. He was not grinning at all now.

“Sure.” I placed my hand on top of his again.

He moved his hand a little and grasped my fingers. He smelt like cigarettes. The whole city smelt like cigarettes. “This makes stuff easier,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. The sun was then almost set. You could see just the top of it, like the dome of some great god’s head, disappearing from this world forever behind the city and the earth and it made you feel cold and in your heart you knew that stuff would end but that really didn’t matter when you touched someone else. Cars darted across Waterloo Bridge and a double-decker bus was among them.

“I wonder what Julie is up to,” Christoph said. “I didn’t call her today. Or the kids.”

“You could’ve seen her if you had checked before today.”

“I never try to with them if I can help it. Sometimes it still happens but I prefer to ask them. Feels better to have someone I don’t try to pry into.”

“You pry with me often?”

He considered that, “No, but I did just then when I saw you on the plane.”

“What made you look at me now?”

“No particular reason,” he looked at the bridge, away from my face.

He played with his wedding ring with his left thumb. His right hand was still holding my left. I watched him. I didn’t say anything.

“Something really bad will happen to you.” He looked back at me. His eyes were wet.

I didn’t say anything. His hand squeezed mine. He looked across the river.

“That bad thing will happen and there is nothing I can do to stop it.” He bit his lip.

“Can I?”

His eyes darted on the water. “No. I’m sorry, George.”

“Wow. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about this.” I smiled.

“Don’t laugh. It’s serious. It’ll hurt you. I mean–not physically. You won’t get hit by a bus or anything but it’ll hurt you just the same.” He turned to me and his cheeks were wet.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I can.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s stay like this for a while.”

“Okay, for as long as you’d like.”

“I’d like it to be forever.”

I didn’t say “me too” but I thought it. I just smiled a little. I was always bad at that sort of thing. Where I was harsh and bad, he was gentle and good.

There was a traffic jam on the Waterloo bridge and the cars honked. The sun was down and the face of Big Ben was bright and beautiful and the lights of the city blinked and the boats on the river were slow and the water kissed the sides of them. We went back to the gala after an hour. Later, during the dance and the champagne, Christoph and I hugged for a long time with the music and then went to bed drunk. Other people did not notice us leaving and we did not notice them. I slept. In the morning I saw him and his brother and we went to dinner that evening and I had a steak and a red wine and Christoph had a white wine and fettuccine. I smoked a cigarette with him on a bench in Hyde Park and we talked about college and his brother and his ex-wife and his children and war and the British Monarchy and Van Gogh and Marie Curie and we laughed about death and Calvin and Hobbes and we leaned on each other from the laughter and it was good. As the night took us and the moon was there– a crescent in the sky–and the city was still awake, we were happy. We bought wine from a midnight store and drank it publicly and walked to Islington and the townhouses there where it was quiet and then we went to bars and we drank beer and danced with some people who were young and laughed gaily.

We saw foxes along the canals and the boats there where people lived were numerous and their lights turned on as we passed laughing and leaning on each other and people looked out and were unhappy with sleep in their eyes but we did not care. It was cold but we were warm from the alcohol and each other and the night seemed to never end as if it were a dream you were lost in which you did not want to wake from. But time is not our domain and so all things must end for us and all we are left with are apprehensions and memories and the few milliseconds right now in this moment. In all of us there is a place where we cower from the world and time and suffer quietly with ourselves and other people do not see that place except perhaps one person who is rare and sweet and good to you when it matters most, again and again, and you show that place to them and it is beautiful and they live there inside you, keeping you warm against the cold outside. Perhaps no one can show all of that place to another but just a part of it is enough to prove that living can still be beautiful. Our hearts are sensitive and surreal and are not meant to be here in this world but they are and we must make peace with that and I could only do that when I was with him and I suppose really all of us can only make peace with our existence when we love someone or something because if we do not love: why exist?

We wandered through an industrial park and bought more wine from a store and drank it on a playground. Someone threatened to call the police and we laughed and drank the wine and ran drunkenly away leaning on each other like fools. We rented a bike through the bikeshare and tried to ride it together but fell and laughed, our elbows scraped and our knees bruised. We abandoned the bike on a sidewalk and took to running fast together but we were tired and the alcohol was heavy on us and so we hailed a cab and the driver took us to the hotel. We sang in the back of the car and the driver smiled but politely closed the glass partition. When we arrived at the hotel we tipped her generously and thanked her. We stumbled up the stairs to bed. Neither of us said anything and he was sad and I held him and he died the next day. He had a heart attack coming down the stairs in the morning. I was not with him, I did not want to get up from the bed. He had gone to get ice for the hangover and I had laid and watched TV.

I was on a plane two days later and I was unhappy. The day before, Christoph’s brother and I had cremated Christoph’s body. His ashes were in a simple urn with his brother. He did not want me at the funeral after I mentioned what was between his brother and I. I turned on my phone and watched a movie but could not focus on it so I tried to sleep but I couldn’t so I watched the pink clouds below instead.

Samuel Snyder

Image by luxstorm from Pixabay – Nightime view of a walk by the River Thames with lights across a bridge and twinkling from the opposite bank