The Art of Breathing Underwater

Chapter 20

I missed Robbie. With him being on-set fourteen hours a day, we rarely spoke. The odd snatched phone call here and there was the sum of our communication. I often thought about him, wondering how he was getting on. I'd make a quip my workmates found funny, and wish Robbie had been there to hear it. Relating an amusing incident, when the other person wasn't there, diminished the effect.

Robbie contacted me on the 14th. "Hey, birthday boy," he shouted down the phone.

"Didn't think you'd remember."

"Hard to forget Valentine's day."

"Some irony that."

"What?"

"A perennially single guy having to commemorate the date of his birth on a day the world set aside to celebrate romance and love."

"Could be worse."

"Like how?"

"You could have been born on April Fool's day. Better to be unloved on a day for lovers, than a fool on a day for fools."

I laughed. "Don't apply for a position at Hallmark."

I was proud that his career was taking off. We never mentioned it. I sensed it was an aspect of his life he was not comfortable discussing. Though I longed to hear stories of life on a shoot, I guessed if I worked fourteen hours a day on set I wouldn't be keen on rehashing it on my downtime, either.

I read an interview Robbie had given to a national paper. He had made no mention of it. I stumbled across it by chance. Often my dad brings home newspapers that people leave in the offices he checks at night. I scan through them the following morning over breakfast. It helps me get through the fibre-laden cereals my mum gets. I can't stomach them, but my mother insists they are a healthy option. She is the one hauling trolley loads of groceries into the car every week, so who am I to argue. I was slogging through bran flakes and flipping pages in the paper when Robbie's features stared back at me from the entertainment section. The photo failed to capture his essence. His tight-lipped smile made him appear dour and aloof. Although the interviewer called him a charming and intelligent young man, the quotes were devoid of Robbie's usual irrepressible wit. Not surprising, given the writer referred to him as a black actor. Like his skin tone impacted his acting abilities. I suppose promotion work is like bran-cereal when somebody else is paying, you chomp down and force a smile.

Deep into March, a break in the shooting schedule afforded us the chance to meet in person. A phantom case of food poisoning bought me the night off work. My supervisor, assured the factory will not come to a standstill over a single absentee, never questioned my phoney illness. Teachers, familiar with every no-show excuse known to man, are an altogether more suspicious and distrusting bunch. In the absence of any grand scheme worthy of a Bond villain, I resorted to unplugging the house phone and simply not showing up for school.

Robbie and I stood appraising each other for a few moments. As you do when you haven't seen a person for a length of time like you expect them to have dramatically altered in their absence.

In an instant, we slipped into the old routine. No playing catch up, straight down to bullshitting about movies and the albums occupying our hearts and minds, the usual.

We hopped on a bus out of the city en route to the strawberry beds. A name I automatically associated with the Beatles song, Strawberry Fields Forever. We walked for about an hour, rambling along the secluded banks of the River Liffey. As tiredness kicked in, the sun deigned to poke her face out from behind the nebulous mass, and we crashed out among the thick grass.

With bare feet dangling in the cold water, we each rolled a joint from the paltry amount of weed Robbie had wrangled from an assistant on the shoot. Not saying much, we watched wisps of grey smoke float over the serene waters.