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Her Name was Lola
Part 8

By Steve Finbow

Click here to read from Part 1

He spent the next few days composing text messages and deleting them without sending, composing more. They met up on Wednesday night for a Chinese meal at Fueng Shang on Regent’s Park Canal. They had little to say to begin with but slowly warmed to each other. The night was a success, and he walked her home. They met two nights later, his weekend indelicacy forgotten. They went to karaoke one last time and he nearly got into a fight with two builders. With four days left of her stay they had dinner in the New Inn and it was like the first week they knew each other and they talked and she played Mr Blue Sky on the jukebox. He felt that time was concertinaed, telescoped, and it was. He arranged to meet her after her show on Thursday. Her mother would be there. So would her boyfriend.

He got to the Oval forty minutes early and tried to find a pub to have a drink in, but the pubs were all busy, so he went to the theatre and had a drink there. He spotted her boyfriend sitting near the rear of the bar and decided he would avoid him until the very last minute. He was unsuccessful. As he crossed the bar to the toilets, the boyfriend saw him and he joined him and a friend and they spent fifteen minutes chatting politely. The boyfriend pointed out Lola’s mother and aunt to him and he waited until they needed to use the toilet and he held the door open for them and smiled. The play began and Lola was superb as Ase, her voice commanded attention. Much to his surprise, he enjoyed the play. During the break, he watched her mother and aunt talking to the boyfriend and decided he’d introduce himself after the show. In the second part, Lola played the Buttonmoulder and was extremely funny and, he thought, quite brilliant. She was easily the best actor in the show. He thought again about the future and if she would become famous and he thought she would. He didn’t want to intrude on the family get-together so he left soon after the show finished. He hadn’t talked to her mother and aunt. He texted her ‘Bravo!’ and she texted back ‘Where are you?’ And he apologised and said he’d see her Saturday. The last day.

He went to Tottenham Court Road the next day and bought her a green iPod mini as a going-away present. They met on the Saturday and he gave her the present and, as always, he felt her response was inadequate, he sulked, and he sulked more when she said goodbye to a guy she knew. But then something clicked inside and he realised he had to make the most of the day and they spent it pub crawling, going to places they’d been and places she wanted to go, and they ended up in the place they had met. And he walked her home thinking this would be the last time he would see her and she asked if he would take her to the airport as her mother and aunt were catching an earlier flight and he said he’d be delighted to and couldn’t believe he’d said ‘delighted’.

He picked her up in a cab and they drove in a strained silence to the airport. She checked in, her flight was on time, they went to the bar and talked as if there was not enough time to say everything, and there wasn’t. She asked him to keep an eye on her bags while she went to the toilet and he did and he saw that her passport was on top of her bag and he picked it up thinking he would memorise the photo. He opened it, the photo was a good one, he read the information page, and it read:

BROWN

DEBORAH LAUREN

12 Jan 1984
F Texas/USA

And he read it again and it read:

BROWN

DEBORAH LAUREN

12 Jan 1984
F Texas/USA

He slipped the passport back into the bag and she came behind him and put her hands over his eyes as she had done before and he could feel tears in his eyes. She said she’d miss him a lot and he said he’d miss her and then she said she loved him and then she was gone. And he mouthed, ‘Sweet dreams.’ He crossed the concourse and headed for the Underground.

He sat on the Tube, opened his bag, and took out two books, he couldn’t decide between a biography of Robert Louis Stevenson and Nabokov’s The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. He took out his phone and searched for Lola and texted her ‘I love you’ knowing she would never receive it.

Click here for Steve Finbow's bio and a list of works published.

© 2005 Me Three