Another weekend, another cinema, another film.
I'm here with my ex. It's a way of passing time together companionably without actually having to talk - which is what keeps it companionable. He's been in the Middle East for a week and is about to leave for Stockholm, Strasbourg and then Brussels. He spent the period after Christmas in the States. When not in flight or in conference, he spends his time between anonymous hotel rooms and, so my kids tell me, a less-anonymous-than-it-was, one bedroom flat which, when I last visited had nothing but a single bookshelf of Arabic books and a television. Though it was all seductively tidy seen through the eyes of someone who wades through a sea of trainers in the hallway every night, I looked around at the sparse, shonky rental furnishings, the tiny two-seater sofa, the bare dining table and realised just how much he must have wanted to get away from me and the domestic accoutrements of family to have preferred this, which he does. He likes living alone. He likes being able to please himself. He likes not having any demands on his person or his time. And of course, there's the girlfriend who visits now and again, but not often enough that he's never available at the weekends to go to the cinema.
We're watching Up in the Air. The sterile, unencumbered character of Ryan, a man who fires people for a living, and who lives in an efficiency apartment when not - as the title suggest - 'up in the air', aiming to clock up 10 Million frequent flyer miles, makes even George Clooney look tired and in need of a shower.
His wallet bulges with plastic loyalty cards as packs his folded underwear into a his carry-on suitcase, slots his ties into a leather case, sets it on top of his capsule wardrobe, then zips his life up into a case small enough to fit on an overhead locker. Even his fridge is stocked with miniature bottles of hootch.
The last scene features him in a plane, with a voice over saying:
'Tonight, most people will be welcomed home by jumping dogs and squealing kids. Their spouses will ask about their day and tonight they’ll sleep. The stars will wheel forth from their daytime hiding places, crowning their neighbourhood with lights. And one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest, will be my wingtip, passing over.'
Credits.
I was so depressed I could hardly get out of my seat and it seemed there was a long, communal sigh from the audience as they scrambled to their feet in the dark, to the crunch of underfoot popcorn.
'So, did anything in that last monologue resonate with you?' I asked the ex as we walked out into the equally dark night.
'Yes, it did a bit,' he said after a pause long enough to fit in a set of golf clubs.
'No jumping dogs, no squealing children, no spouse...' I added, just to rub it in. I've never been one to go for the understatement. 'He's exactly like you, right down to the British Airways Gold Card, except that you chose this life over the alternative.' Salt and wound, I'm thinking - it's never been that much of a surprise that the man would prefer solitude and air pressure to me turning the screws, though actually rubbing salt into a wound that isn't gaping and has healed over is actually just a salt scrub and
'Well, not exactly. I mean I don't have nobody.'
'Erm, you kinda do.'
'No, I don't. I've still got you in a way.'
'No you don't. The pictures once a week isn't 'me'. I'm not waiting for you at home. I don't know where you are or when you come back. You return to an empty flat with nothing in the fridge, and nobody to welcome you. It's not like Natasha is even waiting for you since she doesn't seem to be here most of the time.'
'Well, I've got the kids.'
'The kids are mostly gone and it's not like when they were babies and you lived with us and they would ask "when is daddy coming back", they don't know whether you're in the country or out of it. You've removed yourself and they've got used to it.'
He goes quiet.
I look at him wearily, waiting, wishing he would say something to indicate he feels some sense of our absence.
'Well, I must say, I wouldn't mind his 10 Million frequent flyer miles.' He adds.
And he laughs.
