CB750 

They stand opposite each other like two marble statues. Pax chose a black leather jacket and a pair of dark blue jeans. He thought about his outfit for a long time, as if it might affect Alex’s ability to see through him. His guilt is playing tricks on him—whether he turned up in a dark suit, a floral print shirt, or a ski suit, Alex would never guess how their paths had first crossed. How could he? He is focused on a single criminal—the one who left him for dead and is still out there.

Pax is captivated by his mismatched eyes. He expected to find a twisted and disfigured face, but instead the anomaly lends him a unique and heart-rending beauty not unlike his mother’s. He turns towards Emi, who’s resting against the bookcase. He is incredibly touched to see the way his presence has filled her with hope—it leaves him breathless.

Alex speaks first. He’s leaning back slightly, uncomfortable when people get too close.

“Mum says you’re an actor?”

“I did a film with Matthew McConaughey, this year,” replies Pax. “I really admire him.”

Of all the roles he’s ever played, this one is the toughest. His heart feels like it’s about to beat right out of his chest despite the beta blocker he took earlier. He tries to focus on the details: Alex’s T-shirt, which reads “Alive”, his unbrushed brown hair, the back of his neck, the elegant line of his shoulders. He gets his delicate physique from his mother.

“It’s a Sveberg film. Don’t,” he explains. “Matthew plays a wronged man on a quest for revenge. I play a bartender who becomes his confidant.” Embarrassed by his exaggeration, he adds, “It’s a small role, but we got on well.” Everything seems so fragile—a building under construction that could collapse if he chooses the wrong word. “Matthew taught me an important lesson,” continued Pax. “He taught me to listen to my rage. ‘In each scene, what’s the main emotion? Rage, man. Rage is the one that makes stuff happen’, he told me. He said he’d learned it on the set of Dallas Buyers Club. Ron Woodroof followed his rage.”

He’s twisted the facts somewhat. McConaughey didn’t share this lesson with him but with the Telegraph, in an interview he gave when the film came out. But Pax isn’t trying to make himself look good. He just wants to connect with Alex. Last night, he jotted down a hundred quotes and lines by the actor, and re-watched Dallas Buyers Club. This time it really affected him since Alex was in the back of his mind throughout. When Woodroof learns his life is over, when he places the gun on his temple to end it; then when he decides to fight, when he finds new meaning in his life.

Alex is a clever young man. He knows the quote was specially chosen for him. After his mother spoke to him about Pax, he thought back to the film as well. He studied the poster still hanging on his wall, where McConaughey holds the motto Dare to live in his hands. A fleeting thought suggested to Alex that he might use it to pull himself up and begin moving forward again. Maybe he hadn’t chosen it for nothing four years earlier, maybe he had been driven by protective powers, in light of the tragedy that awaited him.

Protective powers? He thought: why me, why me, why me? And he pushed the idea out of his head.

But now Matthew McConaughey is here again, speaking through Pax Monnier, talking to him about rage, a rage that seems nothing like the one he knows, the one that’s devouring him. This rage is constructive—a rage for life.

Emi places the tea on the coffee table. Pax sits down to catch his breath and observe Alex in profile. The boy that he . . . That he didn’t. That he could have.

He didn’t plan for this—for the shock of reality. If he reached out his hand, he could touch the skin, the body that suffered and continues to suffer. A slowed, hindered body. He suddenly wants to throw himself at Alex’s feet and beg for forgiveness. But he can’t.

He drinks slowly, the spoon rattling in his cup. Why didn’t he put it down on the saucer? He breathes in the steam and the tea’s faint scent of toasted rice. He doesn’t dare look at Emi or her son for fear of betraying his emotions.

“Matthew also says we shouldn’t repress our fears. We should speak them out loud,” he continues. “He says it’s the only way to overcome them.”

“What are you afraid of?” asks Alex.

“It’s complicated,” Pax replies with a sigh. His features tense. “It’s hard to say it out loud. Maybe I’ll never overcome it after all.”

Emi is annoyed. Why is he talking about himself? She was counting on Pax to distract her son from his anxiety, and instead he’s dumping his own on her son as well. She remembers when he nearly passed out before their last training session. Then she thinks back to the first time they met, to the rift she’d sensed in him; it had brought them together then, but now it worries her.

“You’re talking about stage fright, right, Pax?” she asks in an attempt to change course. “The fear of going on stage to face the camera or an audience?”

She’s so far off the mark.

“That’s understandable,” Alex says softly. “It takes courage to be someone else.”

Every word they speak seems to contain ten different meanings, ten arrows, each of which hits its target. The silence grows uncomfortable. Pax wishes he could think of something to say to lighten the atmosphere, but he needs to be alone. He gets up and asks Emi where to find the toilet. As he locks the door, he spies the posters featuring Gilda Texter and Sonia Shimizu on their flashy red Hondas. The unexpected images hit him hard and remind him of Dallas Buyers Club yet again—Miss February 1985 sitting on her motorbike in Ron Woodroof’s calendar.

When he returns to the lounge, he’s got his topic.

“It looks like one of you likes motorbikes!”

“My grandparents had a dealership,” replies Alex. “The brunette in the poster is my grandmother, Sonia. She gave me her CB750 for my eighteenth birthday.”

He doesn’t mention his father, who tacked the posters to the wall but now drives an electric car.

“Wow, nice gift.”

“It was,” replied Alex. “Or, let’s say it could have been.”

Alex grabs a case sitting on the coffee table, pulls out a pair of aviator sunglasses and puts them on. They’re too big for him—they accentuate his hollow cheeks.

Of course, thinks Pax. It’s Matthew. All he needs now is a cowboy hat.

“Alex doesn’t have a driving licence,” explains Emi. “He was planning to take the test after his exams—”

Her son cuts her off. “And now I haven’t taken my exams or the driving test. The 750 is rusting quietly in the garage. Like its owner, really.”

Pax decides to ignore the boy’s bitter remark. He sticks to his intuition and his goal of finding something he and Alex can bond over.

“The tyres should still be okay if they were in good condition. You’ll need to change the oil, petrol and coolant before starting it again, though. Probably need to replace the oil filter and check the fuses, battery and brakes, too. And clean the air filter. A CB750 deserves respect.”

Emi stares at Pax, astonished. His comments take her back to her past, to the garage, to her ex-husband’s fascination, to his excitement when he tried out the latest models her parents lent him, to Alex’s joyful shouting when Sonia pulled him up onto the motorbike in front of her (Emi was afraid he’d fall off and hurt himself, and was angry with her mother who teased her gently, explaining that she’d never had even the slightest accident in forty years).

“Do you have a motorbike?” she asked.

“Not any more. I had two stolen from me. The last one was a black Virago 1100. I gave up on the idea of buying a third. But I must admit I miss it—the sound of the engine, the speed, the freedom.”

Alex smiles. For a brief moment, he joins Pax in a world inaccessible to anyone else. “The way your stomach flies up into your chest, the vibrations that reach your skin through your jacket,” he whispers.

“So that’s why you wanted to be a pilot,” says Pax, more for himself than for the others. “That’s what you were looking for: the thrill of acceleration, the feeling of leaving everything behind you, of rising above it all.”

He suddenly feels like he’s figured Alex out. The root of his motivation and goals. The insurmountable despair of having them taken from him. But at the same time, Pax thinks he can see a way out. Maybe he’ll fail, maybe he’ll wash up on the beach like an overly confident new swimmer. Only time will tell.

“I could drive it. I could take you out on it, if your mother agrees.”

“I’m an adult,” replies Alex, without accepting or refusing the offer. “I do as I please.”

“There are lots of nice roads around here, through the fields and the woods. That’s the great thing about living outside the city. As soon as you put some distance between yourself and the main road or the train station, you’re alone. Well, just the two of us, if you agree to ride with me.”

Alex lifts his sunglasses to make sure this is all real. He feels like he must be missing something. He runs his hand through his hair to feign nonchalance as he studies his mother’s reaction. He knows why she looks worried: he could have an accident, lose his good eye or a limb—he could even die this time. His voluntary self-isolation does have one advantage: Emi always knows her son is safe behind a reinforced door. But she also knows Alex will suffocate if he stays in this flat forever. They both know it. The music he composes and listens to again and again is slowly pulling him further away from the real world. He needs to get out, one way or another, to find his place in the world again, or there will be no future for him.

Emi nods gracefully. “That’s a great idea,” she says.