Gef was big. He had always been tall, but when he left his teens behind and took a life of inertia behind a computer terminal, he became broad too. Fat, his father said. Gef said it was the way he was designed, pointing towards Big Uncle Rob as evidence of genetic predisposition. Big Fat Uncle Rob, his father said.
When Gef was six, his parents gave up on teaching him to pronounce his name properly, and started calling him Gef. His name, until that point, had been Stephen.
One day in his twenties Gef decided he didn’t want to be big. It was the day his best friend Dave got engaged, the same day he realised he could no longer fit between the arms of his swivel chair. He told himself, I don’t have to be the shape that I am. And he made himself thin, just by wanting it.
Gef understood then that if he wanted it enough, he could be anything. He grew handsome and confident, and rich. One day, on holiday in Greece, he decided that he wanted to walk from one island to the next so, imagining that it was glass, he stepped out onto the water and he walked across the sea.
*
Marta never wanted to be anything. When she was fifteen, taking a GCSE Economics paper, she came to the realisation that, not only did she not care about finishing the exam in the allotted time, she didn’t care whether or not she walked out of the room at the end of it. She and her paper could ignite and turn into ash. She didn’t care.
When she was thirty, she decided to walk into the sea, but as the water reached her chin, she started to think about how she would be judged. By then she was treading water and her feet were skipping across the sea bed like two butterflies on a bed of flowers. She couldn’t turn back. She panicked. As the waves came over her head, she thought, this won’t take long.
But then she was being lifted out of the water by two strong arms. I’m Gef, her rescuer said.
*
Later, Gef told Marta what he had learned, that she could do anything and become anyone. Marta said she wanted to walk into the sea. Gef said, if she really wanted to, she would do it.
Marta said, what’s your real name.
When I was born, I was called Stephen, but Gef is my real name.
I like Stephen, she said.
After that, she always called him Stephen, even though he called himself Gef. She discovered that she cared about him, certainly more than she cared about herself. He got big again, but never so big that he couldn’t fit between the arms of his chair. And he forgot about walking on water, and she forgot about walking into the sea.