The eggs are grey and taste like an eraser. The hash browns are greasy and lukewarm. In fact, eating breakfast at McDonald’s ignores just about every aspect of aesthetics, taste or ethics I can think of. But they do have free wifi, and with free wifi I can use Skype to call Ricardo. Waking up alone for the first time in fifteen months has left me desperate to hear his voice.
The second I switch my phone on though, the unadjusted clock informs me that it is now one a.m. in Bogotá – the call will have to wait.
I check my email, hopeful that Jenny will have replied but find an email from Ricardo instead.
Hello Chupa Chups.
So it is done. Maman est morte. And buried. And Ricardo is drunk.
I hope you have not arrive too late for the mother of Jenny. I can’t really believe what you say that they keep the body for a week. I probably shouldn’t ask, but doesn’t it smell? In Colombia we prefer not to hung around. Death is a well-oiled machine here, but then you know that.
Everything here is fine. It was lovely to see all family, but I drink too much, first at the wake with mother, then after at the goodbye dinner. Yes, too much drinking. But I miss you Chupa Chups. I realise that you are my family now. And the bed is empty without you.
Love Ricardo.
Slightly watery eyed, I reply, telling him that I miss him too, that my phone isn’t working and that I’ll send him a new number as soon as I have organised a UK sim card. And then I Skype Jenny’s home number but of course, she’s still not there. Hearing the ghostly voice of her mother on the answer-phone is unsettling.
I phone Saint Paul’s church too, and the vicar confirms that the funeral is tomorrow at 2pm. And then I look down at my breakfast and think, “Twenty four hours in London. What do I want to do?”
I raise another mouthful of “egg” towards my mouth and then let it drop back onto the tray. One thing I don’t want to do, it seems, is eat grey, rubbery, McDonald’s egg.
I spend a nice enough day in London. The good weather holds and the place feels familiar and pleasant as I head for Oxford Street to buy a sim card for my phone, as I browse the books in Prowler Soho, as I head out to the Tate Modern to spend a few hours wandering, wondering, “But is it art?”
But ultimately the main thing I notice about London is that Ricardo isn’t here. Everything I see that impresses me, I want to show to Ricardo. Everything that shocks or amuses me, I want to discuss with Ricardo. Amazingly, after little more than a year together, I’m realising that, without him, I feel like half a person.
In the evening, I head, for familiarity’s sake, back to Soho. There’s a great atmosphere in Compton’s – the place is buzzing with the after-work crowd. I even get chatted up by a cute beary red-head who tells me that he’s, “in media.”
But even Compton’s feels flat without Ricardo: the only reason I ever used to hang around in gay bars was because they held the possibility of finding love. And now I don’t need the product I once hoped they would provide, they seem about as much use to me as a plumbing supplies store. Further, without that all-consuming hunt for love to occupy me, I’m at a loss to know how to spend even a single evening in London.
After two pints and a lonely veggie buffet down the road, I head for an Internet café. In the end, the only thing I can think of that I really want this evening is a full-sized keyboard so that I can send Ricardo a proper email telling him how much I miss him. I can’t decide whether this is pathetic or rather beautiful.