Chapter Text
For once, Crowley arrived on time for their Friday dinner. Anyone who knew Crowley would have deduced from this that a fundamental change must have taken place in his life.
As the bell of the nearest church tower rang 6 pm, Crowley spotted their regular meeting place in the distance. The Primavera was a cosy Italian restaurant on the ground floor of a brick building at the junction of Hatton Hill Road and Selfton Road with its lower half painted creamy white. It was dark enough that the sparsely sown streetlights had sputtered on; their unhealthy grey light polluted the street more than it helped illuminate it. Crowley strolled along the pavement, kept his head down and buried his hands in the pockets of his black suit jacket.
But Crowley's casual walk was deceptive. In reality, every muscle in his body was tense. It wasn't because of the sometimes suspicious, sometimes curious glances that oncoming passer-bys threw at him. As a man with his hair dyed hellish red, who always wore black and had sunglasses on even at night, Crowley was used to stares. No, he was on edge like someone who had willingly stepped out of the still waters of a predictable life into faster drifts, and now sensed the potential change like a faint electric current in the air. All nerves of his body hummed, just as the power line that followed the side of the road.
When he reached the crossroads, he stopped in front of one of the large windows of the Primavera. Light flooded through the pane and caused the smell of pizza dough and basil to fill Crowley's nose just by looking at it. Inside, couples and families sat at wooden tables, drinking wine and juice, joking with each other or bending over their plates in silence. A huge photograph of a Tuscan landscape hung on the wall.
Crowley leaned closer to the window. Something about the ambience had changed compared to the last time, but Crowley couldn't say exactly what. This irritated him.
In any case, he could see that one thing hadn't changed. In the left-hand corner, like every Friday, sat Azi, waiting for him. He was leaning back in the leather-upholstered bench and had his eyes closed. A tiny smile curled his lips, which a stranger wouldn't have been able to distinguish from a neutral face. He seemed to be meditating amidst the noise of the restaurant, merged with the universe around him like a Buddah. Crowley looked Azi up and down. He hadn't seen him for four weeks. He had travelled to Rome with his parents, as befitted a clergyman, and had visited some Catholic monuments. Crowley waited a few more minutes in the cold. His minimum requirement for being late was a quarter of an hour; he had never been more on time for a meeting. Then he pushed the door open with a flourish.
He walked briskly across the room, stopped in front of Azi, knocked twice on the table. Azi startled and looked at him with glazed eyes, like someone who had awoken from a beautiful dream. "My dear friend Crowley," he said, raising his eyebrows, "punctual as ever."
Crowley bowed slightly and dropped into the vacant chair. He propped his elbow on the tabletop, looked in another direction with as little concern as possible. "I see that you met the good old sun again," he said, tapping his forehead and nose to indicate the sunburn on Azi's face. "Does she still look the way I remember her?"
"Round and radiant as ever." Azi smiled his quiet, peculiar Azi-smile that melted like butter on one's tongue. "You'd think Rome in September would no longer be cancer-inducing. But we were wrong."
A young, somewhat chubby waitress with wire-rimmed glasses and a red apron approached their table. She held a notepad in her hand, which she pressed against her chest. She asked for their orders in a high, shaky voice.
"You're new here," Azi remarked. He gave the waitress a beaming smile, as if to convey to her that she had nothing to fear. "Francesca will certainly be pleased to have your help. What's your name, young lady?"
The waitress narrowed her eyes. She did not return the smile. In a mixture of uncertainty and defiance, she clutched the notepad with her other hand, too. "I don't think that's any of your business, um..." She looked down at her feet, which were tucked into fashionable black trainers. "Now, what would you like to drink?"
Azi's smile stiffened. He visibly struggled to keep it up. His eyes flitted to Crowley, as if to ask if he had crossed a line, or if the waitress was simply being rude. Azi had always been bad at judging these things.
Crowley shrugged. Young people, he meant to say. Azi ordered a bottle of Chianti, and to celebrate Azi's return they took the truffle pasta for both. The waitress nodded and disappeared into the kitchen.
"Being interested in other people isn't as high on the agenda these days as it used to be," Crowley said. "Not that I'm complaining."
Azi unfolded and refolded his napkin as if he wanted to punish it for something it hadn't done. "We're not that old, are we?"
After a few sips of the delicious, deep red Chianti, Azi had recovered his good humour. Crowley knew that Azi knew that Crowley wanted to hear his stories, where he'd been, what he'd done, how he'd liked it. Crowley didn't need to ask. Azi gesticulated vividly about ancient fountains spewing out water that stank of chlorine, about crowded streets and honking scooters and narrow alleyways where exhaust fumes clogged the air. He and his parents had visited the papal palace in Castel Gandolfo. Pope Francis, he explained, had converted the Renaissance building, which had been used as a summer residence by previous popes, into a museum. Crowley imagined Azi under the blazing Roman sun, trudging past symmetrically trimmed hedges and cypresses along endless white gravel paths and, as soon as he set foot in the cool, magnificent entrance hall, greedily yet respectfully sipped the lemonade he had brought with him.
"Have you decided what furniture you're going to put up when you're elected pope?" Crowley said.
"The library could still use an extension. But I don't think I would be as generous as Francis. The arabesques on the vaulted ceilings are far too pretty to be worn out by tourist eyes."
The unnamed waitress brought the truffle pasta. Azi started eating immediately, but Crowley took his time. He kept rolling his tagliatelle with his fork into a ball that turned out either too big or too small. The interruption to their conversation had reminded him why he had been so excited this whole time. He wanted to tell Azi about the new turn his life had taken. But the problem with words was that the right ones were hard to find, just like friends. Over the course of their decades-long friedship, Azi had always been the one to put things into words, and Crowley put those words into action. He was the bloodhound, so to speak, the man for the dirty work. His almost perverse anticipation from earlier had disappeared. He would rather have got up and walked out the door than say what he had to say.
But before he could pull himself together, Azi took the initiative. "How’s the situation here? Everything the same?"
Crowley sipped his wine. He raised his hand to take off his sunglasses, but at the last moment he reconsidered. Suddenly he realised what was bothering him about the restaurant: the tea lights on the tables had been replaced by similar-looking fake candle lamps. Crowley took the small lamp from the centre of their table and switched it off. "Everything's the same. That is, not quite. I've made a new acquaintance."
Azi paused in his movement. A noodle slipped off his fork and fell back into the plate. "Oh? Who is it?"
"The name's Michael. Works with computers or something. I met him in the pub. He's invited me for bowling."
"That - that's nice."
There was an obvious question in Azi's eyes. Crowley had no intention of answering it. It was better to tick such topics of conversation off quickly, or better, ignore them and move on to more interesting things.
"That's nice. Really." Azi had apparently decided that it had to be the way he thought it was. He even managed another smile. "I'm happy for you."
"Give me half a break, angel. I don't know what you mean. It's an experiment, nothing more."
Azi frowned. He took his time collecting the rest of his pasta on his fork, shoved it into his mouth, chewed thoroughly and swallowed. Then he dabbed his mouth with his cloth napkin and looked Crowley in the face. "You can't say things like that. A human being is not a toy. Or an experimental kit."
Crowley leant back, letting one arm dangle over the backrest. "I remember you used to always make a mess in chemistry class back then. One time you spilt acid all over that blonde girl's hand, remember? I heard that her thumb still doesn't grow a fingernail. No wonder you're scared of experiments."
"Do you really have to remind me?" Azi widened his eyes theatrically, and Crowley laughed. "Besides, please don't call me that."
"What, angel? You've never complained about that before."
Azi turned his head towards the window. With this he signalled that he thought the conversation was over. Sometimes he did it for reasons Crowley didn't understand, but Crowley respected them anyway. There was a tense line around Azi's mouth. He had looked this miffed the last time Crowley had used one of his books as a wine glass coaster.
After a few minutes of silence, Crowley waved to the waitress. He was full and completely satisfied. The pasta and wine had been great, and Azi's reaction made him even happier. Ever since the day they met at All Saints High School, Crowley's secret passion had been to demystify Azi's proverbial halo and prove that he was not immune to lower emotions. The waitress brought the bill. She still kept her eyes fixed on the floor and refused to return Azi's smile. Crowley tipped her £5 - such strength of character had to be rewarded, he thought. With a sour expression, Azi forced himself to put an extra 50 pence on the table.
When they stepped out into the night, it had begun to drizzle. The cold, damp air washed over them like an ocean, and Crowley drank deep breaths of it. Liverpool’s harbour area emanated a dirty aura that hung low over the nearby houses. Azi opened his umbrella and held it a little higher so Crowley could fit underneath. They walked in silence to the next bus stop. There they had to wait five minutes, so they stood in the bus shelter, which was missing a plexiglass pane on the side.
"I thought you didn't like bowling," Azi said suddenly. He folded the umbrella and adjusted the collar of his camel hair coat, pulling it tighter around his neck. "I quote: throwing skittles with balls is as stupid as any other game mankind has invented to distract itself from suffering and death."
"It's the shoes that bother me," said Crowley. "Who wants to walk around in those ugly rubbers soaked in the sweat of thousands of people's feet? Michael doesn't know me very well."
"And yet you went with him."
"Yep."
The rain became heavier. It drummed evenly on the tin roof of the bus shelter, splashed on the pavement and gurgled in the drainage. Two flickering beams of light announced Crowely's bus. He nodded goodbye to Azi.
"Until next Friday."
"Yes. See you then." Azi offered him a last, pitiful smile, as if he wanted to give it to Crowley to keep until their next meeting. He looked miserable, all alone in the bus shelter, surrounded by night and pouring rain, like a freezing dog, even though he was wearing a warm coat and Crowley only his thin jacket. Crowley blamed the bad weather. Azi only thrived in sunny warmth, like a citrus tree.
During the ten-minute ride to the pub, Crowley had to force himself to sit still. As soon as the display changed to his stop, he jumped up and waited in front of the door like a wild animal about to be freed from its cage. The anticipation, which was not focused on anything but surrounded his body like an electrically charged atmosphere, pulsed through him more strongly than before. He would continue the experiment with Michael, perhaps even extend it, he thought. Who knew what the future held in store? A rolling stone gathers no moss, or something along those lines.
Crowley was particularly looking forward to telling Azi about his adventures next Friday.