Again, Cohen paused, remembering the black-eyed fury of Jim Ford at his worst. He cleared his throat, swallowing with difficulty, before writing some more.
And River? Where did that come from?
River chewed on her lip for a moment, worrying the flesh between her teeth, a furrow forming in her brow. She reached for the pen, writing slowly, as though still pondering her thoughts even while in the act of transcribing them to paper.
My mother – my birth mother, that is, not Mama – named me River. I don’t know why. I probably never will. But Mama said it never occurred to her to change it. She always says that I’m like a river, rushing from one point to another, quick and quiet, and that to understand a river, you have to look into its hidden depths.
She blushed suddenly, her pen hovering above the paper. Cohen stared at her, tantalised, waiting for her to continue.
Most people don’t stay long enough to look for my hidden depths, she wrote, with woebegone eyes. They simply see that I’m deaf and then turn in the other direction.
Cohen’s reply was instant. I’m not like most people, he wrote quickly.
River smiled, resting an elbow on the table and her head on the palm of her hand. No. No you’re not, Cohen.
Abruptly, she dropped the pen. Pointing at his name, she made a firm, rhythmic movement with her hands. Five letters spelled out hurriedly so that he could only frown, lost in the fluent dance of her fingers. River shook her head, admonishing herself, and showed him again, her sign language slower this time, her movements direct but calm. When she’d finished, she took hold of his hands, helping him to repeat his name back to her.
Cohen could only stare at her, awe-struck.
I’d like to get to know you, Cohen, she suddenly wrote.
His mouth was dry when he took up the pen. All I want right now, he wrote, is to know you better. To find those hidden depths, River.
Her smile was blinding, and for several moments they sat there, grinning at one another.
Can you call here next Tuesday? River finally wrote. I want to give you something.
I’ll go anywhere you want me to, whenever you want me to, Cohen replied.
She laughed at that, her mouth wide, her eyes bright, and Cohen felt a dart of pleasure at her happiness. He knew then that nothing, not the sound of a champagne bottle popping, or the best note rolling off a baby grand would ever be able to compare to the soundless noise of this woman laughing.
Her laugh was the most beautiful thing Cohen had never heard.
Tuesday will do, Cohen. It’s the only day of the week when Mama isn’t here.
She took his hands in her own, moving them to form words, pointing at the paper.
Tuesday, she signed to him.
Tuesday, he signed back.
As he left The Great Greenwich Ice Creamery, shoving his destroyed phone into a pocket, Cohen couldn’t help but reflect on his life.
His first few meetings with Christine cost him thousands of dollars in wine and expensive restaurants, and he could hardly recall a thing about them.
But he could recall every second he had ever spent with River, and all that time had cost him were a few words with his hands and his honest thoughts, scribbled on a scrap of paper.
There was a feeling swelling in his chest and stomach that he imagined might be pure happiness.
He turned towards the train station, looping his scarf around his neck twice, trying to keep out the biting cold of the December wind. He walked through the slushy streets, a lightness to his steps, taking in the merry crowds around him, the tourists and Christmas shoppers bright in their winter coats, hats and scarves. He made it so far as the main road when he felt a pull on his coat, and he looked down to see a flustered and shivering River holding out both a folded sheet of paper and a spoon. He couldn’t help the delight that spread through him at seeing her again so soon, and he could only stare at her while she smiled at him, tucking the paper into his pocket before offering him the spoon.
It was the same chocolate ice cream from before, but when Cohen tried it now, he found it less bitter, with a divine sweetness that played upon his palate. Even the ice cream itself seemed to sparkle, with a golden sheen to the frozen cream that shimmered under the Greenwich lamplights.
Bitter chocolate, River signed, before holding up a scrap of paper for him to read.
Bitter chocolate, Cohen read, with hopeful gold sugar dust.
Before he had time even to smile, she was kissing him. Her lips were against his, her tongue pressing lightly into his mouth, and he pulled her closer, wrapping her small frame into the protective confines of his coat. Together they tasted like chocolate. Together they tasted like sweetness.
Together they tasted like hope.
And as River pulled away, pressing one final kiss to his mouth, Cohen could not help the smile that spread across his face.
Because he knew he was coming back here next Tuesday.
Chapter Four
Vanilla
Cohen practically floated on air from the ice creamery to the DLR, hardly noticing the jerky movements of the train, the screaming baby three carriages down or even the faint smell of booze emanating from the fast asleep drunk passed out on the floor next to him. When he got to Bank station he changed onto the tube effortlessly, before drifting through the throngs at Oxford Circus to catch the Bakerloo line up to Marylebone. The commute was effortless, and London seemed to shine in the early evening sky. Christmas lights twinkled from every window, matched in part by the stars above in a clear winter sky. The rain from earlier seemed to have swept away the usual London grime, and the city now seemed heavy with the warm smells of December, of cinnamon and mulled wine and coal fires. The air was crisp and cool on his face, and Cohen even looked fondly on the rain puddles that littered the ground, glistening like baptismal water in which one could be made clean.
That’s how good River’s kiss was.
It was only when he got past Marylebone, ducking into the Sir John Balcombe for a quick pint before he headed home, that he remembered the sheet of paper River had pushed into his pocket. He’d been so caught up in her kiss, in the delicious memory of her tongue in his mouth, of her body flush to his and the taste of happiness on her lips, that he’d forgotten about it.
Instantly Cohen dug it out, unfolding the paper gently, as though frightened of tearing it, of damaging it – and by default her and all they’d shared – in any way.
It was a printed sheet, the text slightly blurred from where River had clearly hurried it from the printer. Let’s get to know each other, Cohen, she’d scrawled across the top, in the same looping cursive he remembered from The Great Greenwich Ice Creamery’s door.
It was a questionnaire. The sort of document he recalled from his orientation days at high school and college. It was also the sort of form he occasionally still had to fill in on dreaded work team-building days run by Tarquin Fowler, head of HR for Roberts-Canning, and the thorn in Cohen’s working career. For a moment, Cohen felt his stomach sink. He didn’t want to get to know River through a tacky collection of queries like ‘What’s your favourite colour?’ or ‘Where do you see yourself in ten years?’ Although he still took delight in the memory of Fowler’s pasty face turning red when he’d seen Cohen’s flippant reply to that question, hauling him in to HR like a wayward child to explain just why he thought it was appropriate to declare that ‘in ten years he’d probably be in prison for choking Fowler to death during a work juice cleanse gone wrong’.