Like it Matters

by David Cornwell

  But when he opened the door he was fully dressed, his hair was brushed forward and down, he looked wide awake and there was no sign of a bed or a mattress or even a sleeping bag anywhere.

  What’d he been doing in there?

  I’m not sure why, but it made me so happy to think that even Duade was capable of small mysteries—so happy that I hugged him hello.

  “Hey, howshit, Ed!” he said. “God, what happened to your fashe?”

  “I got punched fucking hard. How’ve you been, Duade?”

  “Ag, shame old, shame old. Are you in trouble? Where’sh your girl?”

  Two pretty tough questions, Duade.

  I smiled and shook my head. Eventually I said, “Ja. The last time you saw me things were good, weren’t they?”

  He was quiet for a second. Then his eyes lit up and he said, “Hang on, hang on. I’ve shtill got cash for you.”

  He went off to his desk and started opening drawers.

  “No, Duade,” I said. “Don’t. I’m fine with money, really.”

  He came back with an envelope in his hand. He was smiling at me and flapping the envelope. He was smiling, but he couldn’t quite look at my face. “No, come. Take it. It’sh yoursh.”

  “Duade,” I said, “please keep that money. I mean it. And I’m sorry, but I need to ask you a favour.”

  “Anything.”

  “No, Duade, please. Just listen.”

  I was about to ask him if I could hang out there till night time, except if anyone ever asked, like a cop or whatever, he had to tell them he hadn’t seen me for months.

  But in his eyes, I could see what he wanted me to say—he wanted me to ask if I could have my job back, and his eyes were so expectant, his mouth was chewing itself, just ready to shout Yesh!

  And in the end I got to feeling so raw, so guilty, that my eyes welled up

  And I just stared at a spot on the floor and I said, “Duade, you’re probably the kindest person I’ve ever met. Never mind about the favour. Just be careful, okay? There’s wolves out there, man.”

  He shook the envelope at me again. “Take it, bru. Every bit helpsh.”

  I shook my head.

  “Just … I hope you have a good life, Duade. I mean it. I really hope you have a good life,” I said, and I kind of ran out the door.

  I’D GOT PRETTY DRUNK AT THAT RESTAURANT when twilight finally came down

  And I almost sprinted over to the super tubes, suddenly worried I was going to be late

  But the second I got to the beach, this smell—you couldn’t imagine it—flooded through my nose and straight down to my stomach.

  It was so bad it was like I was chewing on it. I had no idea what it could’ve been, I was just gasping by the sand line

  When I heard her voice

  “Fuck! That’s you, Ed, what the fuck?”

  She giggled. I knew that sound, it was a happy sound

  And obviously, I’d had a plan—

  A whole symphony of things I’d wanted to say to her, different movements I’d wanted to put her through, different moods I’d hoped were going to show me, at last, what she was

  A witch or a redeemer—

  But just like that, it was all fucked. I heard her ask me what happened to my face and all I could blurt out was, “Jesus, what’s that smell?”

  “Ja,” she said. She looked delighted to see me, maybe just a bit freaked out by my bruises. “There’s a dead whale like fifty metres up the beach. I found this place though, it’s better,” she said, and she took my hand, her hair flaring beautifully in the floodlights, and started leading me to this big, circular drain a bit further down the sand.

  We went and stood in the little tunnel and the smell was better. It was just very dark in there, and I wanted to be able to see her face.

  I tried to get myself back on script.

  “Ja, Charlotte, it’s me, not Dewald. Isn’t that a fucking surprise?”

  “Where’s Dewald?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “Ed, okay—”

  “Is it as bad as I think, Charlotte?”

  “No, Ed, just wait—”

  And I grabbed her—I’d never touched a woman so roughly before in my life, it didn’t feel good—and I almost pushed her up against the wall, but instead I just screamed, “What the fuck?”

  And she started crying, these big, hysterical sobs, and she went down on her knees and I had to wait for ages before she said, “That—that night, Ed. Before he went out the door. Dewald, he—he showed me the guns, Ed …”

  “Is that why you were crying?”

  She nodded her head.

  My eyes were getting used to the darkness, and I could see the tears running down her face in silver lines.

  “And you didn’t say anything to me?”

  “I smsed him like five times, Ed. I begged him not to do it—”

  “Who the fuck is Dewald to you, Charlotte? He’s not your fucking cousin, you’re not even—”

  She moaned again, then started gripping and pulling at her clothes like they were on fire or something. I’d only ever seen grief like that on TV before, like in a war zone or after a hurricane or a flood—

  This is real, Ed.

  This is real.

  “Just—just some guy. Some guy who kept promising me money and drugs.”

  “Okay. Because that sounds a bit like me, Charlotte. Did you fuck him as well?”

  “No, Ed! No, I promise. I promise.”

  “But you would have? Right? If he’d got home that night with everything like you planned? Fuck that, I’m going.”

  I turned to leave, but I heard her say, “Wait, Ed …”

  And my legs locked

  And, I don’t know, maybe because I hadn’t got the chance to say all the things I wanted to say to her earlier, maybe because I could feel this was my twilight of the gods and I didn’t want to be short-changed by it—

  I thought to myself, One more chance.

  One more chance.

  I didn’t move, but she got to her feet and came in close to me. I could hear just from her breathing that she’d calmed down.

  She was close to me, but still, I couldn’t see much. Just from the shadows I could tell she was pulling something out of her jeans, maybe a compact mirror.

  “What’re you doing?” I said.

  “You know.”

  And I wished she wouldn’t, right then. I mean, I understood, but it made it harder to believe in her. She fiddled a bit more, and then she said something that I just couldn’t read at all.

  She said, “Ed, don’t laugh, okay? But I’ve been praying this last week. I promise. I even visited my dad one day and went out in the van with him, just in case it helped. Every day I’ve been praying, because I didn’t know what else to do. And every time, Ed, I swear, all I wanted was for you to be okay.”

  There was a wet sniffing sound in the dark and when she spoke again it sounded like she’d caught some hay fever.

  “I just … it just … it went out of control, Ed. I’m sorry.”

  And then she leaned her face right close to mine, and she lowered her voice so it tickled on the inside of my ear. “But I learnt, Ed. These last five days. I learnt that I love you.”

  Faintly, I could see she was holding something up in front of me. It looked like a tiny spoon. She brought it closer to my nose—I could smell the powder even above the stench of the whale

  And I think I was meant to bend forward and snort it up, maybe she hoped that afterwards we’d kiss—

  But right then, just when it was so easy to give in

  This new kind of fear ran through me. This cold, heavy dread that brought me so close to the laboured pumping of my heart, the sour taste of my breath

  All of a sudden I could see it—I was there with her in the room the next morning

  There was no mystery about it

  I was awake before she was

  Lying there watching the sunlight climb the curtains, already th
inking about when we could take something again, if she had any left over, or if we were going to have to organise some

  The day yawning ahead of me—

  Another morning of war with that compulsion to disappoint myself

  Another morning of feeling so unworthy of my suffering

  Another spin on the sick-hearts carousel—

  How else, Ed?

  How else’s it going to go with her?

  I felt this fire in the pit of my stomach, this gut-needling I’d felt exactly once before in my life—in Phil’s car at that traffic light in the rain.

  “No, Charlotte,” I said. “Not now. What happens from here? You tell me what happens from here first.”

  “What’s in the backpack?”

  “Dewald’s money.”

  She giggled. “You’re amazing,” she said. “So we can go to Mozambique?”

  “And?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, like with the drugs and stuff—”

  She started to say something, but then her eyes cut away down the tunnel.

  She pulled back and went, “Oh, fuck.”

  I looked back to the beach, and just at the mouth of the drain, I saw it too. A torch beam flashing around on the sand.

  She started to say something else, but it was only a few seconds before the torch light slammed us both in the face.

  “Fuck, Freddy,” she said. “I told you to wait in the parking lot.”

  The torch went off, and there was Freddy in silhouette at the end of the tunnel, with just a faint gleam from the gun he had in his right hand.

  “You are fucking kidding me,” I said, and I think I was going to hit her, or at least spit at her, or something

  But then Freddy came over and gun-smacked me on the shoulder. It fucking hurt, I had to go down on my knees. I slipped that arm out of the backpack and held it across my chest.

  Freddy said, “Ja, chill there, foknot. Take it easy.”

  Charlotte was hysterical. She screamed at Freddy, and then she was saying, “No, Ed! No, you don’t understand.”

  “What? That you’re fucking evil?”

  “No, I thought you were going to be Dewald, man. So then Freddy was going to arrest him in the parking lot. But it’s Ed, Freddy, so the fucking thing’s off!”

  Freddy sounded bewildered.

  “It’s Ed, not Dewald,” she said again. “He made it, so no one’s getting arrested. You can still have some money.”

  “But you said—” Freddy started

  And I just laughed.

  “What’s so fucking funny?” he said, and he came up to me like he was going to hit me with his gun again.

  “You,” I told him. My shoulder was still sore, but I lifted myself up and I stood in front of him. “And me, obviously.”

  I tried to walk over to Charlotte but Freddy blocked me off.

  He stood right in front of me again and pointed the gun in my face. “Uh-uh, sorry, poes. You stay right there,” he said.

  But, honestly, I was done.

  I was finished with it, my life—my whole hearthless, lawless, faithless life—I wanted him to shoot me

  “Jesus, just pull the fucking trigger then,” I said, and with my good hand I grabbed his wrist and sort of forced the gun right up onto my forehead.

  I heard myself breathing—two hoarse breaths.

  “But you won’t, Freddy, I know you won’t. And you know why? Because you don’t really care about the money. Same as me, you’re here because you hope it’ll make her love you.”

  I turned to her again.

  “But you, Charlotte, you’re just … Your whole life’s a fucking sinking ship, and you just run around and plug the holes. Any fucking way you can.”

  I was spitting the words at her, and it was close to what I wanted to say, except it didn’t sound so bad when I put it like that.

  She tried to speak again but I was angry, and it felt good, I felt righteous, and I just kept on going. “I mean, do you understand what I’ve done? What I’ve seen? I had—”

  “Hey, shut up, man,” Freddy said. “Fucking save it.”

  “Fuck you,” I said

  And then Freddy punched me in the stomach.

  I bent over but I heard Charlotte slap him, it was a good one, and then she was shouting, “Fuck off, Freddy! Leave him alone. I don’t want you here!”

  I looked up and Freddy was standing just the same as me, bent double at the waist, holding his guts, with Charlotte between us. It was almost like she’d just won a drinking contest.

  I still didn’t have enough breath to talk, and she came over to me and grabbed my arm and said, “Come, Ed. Come quickly, let’s go.”

  Freddy said, “Fuck that,” and waved his gun.

  Finally I managed to stand up properly, and I took the backpack off my shoulders. They were both quiet, just looking at me.

  I unzipped it and I started pulling out some cash bricks—probably more than I really meant to—and I let them fall on the floor. “There you go, you two,” I said. “Fucking make hay.”

  I looked at her—she looked so scared, and so young—and I desperately wanted to say something.

  A touchstone, a relic, something she’d remember forever.

  What, though?

  I could’ve told her that from the first second I saw her I knew she was trouble—and that I loved her for it then and that I still did. I could’ve reminded her I knew exactly how it was, how it goes when you start finding yourself doing things you’d never’ve even thought were possible for you. How it feels to know you’re hurting people, and still, you don’t stop. I could’ve given her my forgiveness for all of that, and I could’ve even told her to go easy on herself when she thought back on me. My beautiful wrecking ball. I could’ve told her—just one last time—that my life had always been a bit short on beautiful things but she was definitely, definitely one of them

  But the funny thing, the whole way along, at every turn, this loud voice was shouting in my head, What’s the fucking point?

  She knows all that.

  How’s it going to help?

  I put the backpack over my good arm and I left the tunnel. Freddy didn’t do anything to stop me, and soon I was on the beach and dealing with the floodlights in my eyes and that sour smell in my throat again.

  She caught up with me and started pulling on my arm.

  “Ed, please. Just stop. One second,” she said

  And sometimes, already, I wish I’d let her speak right then, as she stood in front of me—breathless, with the floodlights shining in her hair like a glory—I wish I’d listened to that bereft music one more time, that out-of-tune violin.

  But what I did instead, I said to her, “Charlotte, whatever I need to do, it’s not going to work if you’re around. You know,” I said—

  And it felt like I was pulling a splinter out of my heart—

  “I don’t even think it’s your fault. I mean you’ve done some stuff, but really, hear me, Charlotte, I don’t even think it’s your fault. My eyes were open. The whole way.”

  I started moving off towards some stairs that went back up to the road.

  I hadn’t quite reached the bottom step when she grabbed hold of me again.

  She said, “I promise, one second.”

  Then she took my hands and she kissed them.

  She posed them in the air with the palms open and facing out to her. In that orange floodlight, they didn’t look real. They looked like pieces of coral.

  “Just … I’ve missed your hands, Ed. You have good hands.”

  She took her fingers and stroked them lightly over my palms—making long, slow patterns that flowed between my fingers and sent shivers down my wrists.

  She stopped stroking my hands and I could feel them burning.

  They were burning

  But I just turned and went away, up the stairs and down the bright street and I clenched my teeth and balled my fists and I told myself

  No matter
what

  No matter what

  Don’t you dare turn round and look.

  I had no idea where I was going, or what I was going to do—I had no direction and no ideas.

  But instead of feeling frightened about it, or daunted or thrilled in any way, good or bad—the only thing I really felt while I walked away from the beach was tired.

  I felt so scraped out—it felt impossible I could still be awake.

  Before I knew it, I was back on Atlantic Road and I looked up and down for a taxi but I couldn’t see one anywhere. I kept going, up to the bridge

  And then I just couldn’t go any further

  And I turned down the slip road and ducked through the broken fence and then I was standing in the yard at Helluva Rides.

  All the rides were covered in sheeting—darker bruises on a very dark night. I was so tired, it felt like my legs were trembling under the weight of the stuff I was taking in through my eyes—blurry, wheeling visions of the night sky, the shadow shapes on the lawn, all of them with a smell that sighed from their plastic covers like moist breath.

  I dragged myself forward and then I was in front of the big one, the carousel. I looked up at the sky again and blinked, and focused. There was a soft moon and lots of clouds overhead—it looked like the negative of a print of Antarctica or something, some place full of ice and deep water except with the bright and dark all reversed.

  I was so tired, I sank onto my knees. I could feel sleep bearing down on me and I knew if I let my head rock forward my eyes would close and then that’d probably be it—and I wanted that oblivion, and if I didn’t have any horse or even any unga around to put in a cigarette, or weed to roll up, or one of those incredible painkillers Dewald used to bring around, then sleep was going to have to be it

  And I walked on my knees and ducked under the heavy tarpaulin—

  But I still didn’t lie down, even though it was warm inside and black as a coma.

  Damp grass, wet metal, sweating canvas—thick, close air—and I could feel the bulk of the carousel in there with me, and I thought about the horses and I wondered if they’d been painted yet, if Duade’d had a go, or if they were still white, still waiting for paint from Charlotte and me.