The Accounts

We are old friends now, I realise as I sit down across from him at the café. We’ve met regularly for seven years, yet only seen each other seven times, every spring in connection with the tax return, when he goes through the accounts and helps me with deductions. It’s more of a sideline these days, since with each declaration we discover something new to brush into view about one another, and he says, have you considered that even kindness can be a form of performance?

In fact, he works with addicts, alcoholics, drug users, people on the edge of the absolute edge, and his support can sometimes provide just enough balance to tip them into safety. Only one person has ever thanked him for that extra weight, so the affirmation he hoped for came sparingly. Being good is watertight, he says, but still the same as everything else. He needs somewhere to rest his heart after the working day, runs an accountancy firm, goes through my purchases and invoices from the previous calendar year and thinks I’m bordering on too meticulous, and he says, I get a little better with women each time I try.

Two tax returns ago I had separated from the mother of my children. Last year, it was his turn. This year, we’ve both started meditating, have calibrated inwards, added a few more decimals, been on retreat. I’ve burned out and found a method of focusing on the left side of the body that short-circuits the brain, and he says: It’s around your age people start running out of strength, and then they can choose to change or to keep going, and not many who keep going make it to my age.

Once he worked nights at the church, but the priests were neurotic and the council spiritually impoverished, Christ’s message remote. I show him my text about the church caretaker who discovers hidden, possibly inner, rooms, and he tells me about his new novel or non-fiction book about notorious winners, who follow systems to the point of absurdity, who know they’ll lose thousands every week for a year, right up until they win. I say, happiness isn’t something you become, it’s something you are.

The declaration is dealt with in under a minute, because I’ve already submitted it and filled everything in correctly, since I know how to do this now and we both know that.

These aren’t difficult matters, but they are a reason.