by Will Carver
‘We were just heading out for a coffee, Mrs May. Abe here is going to show me around a little.’
‘There’s a good boy, Abe.’ She isn’t trying to sound patronising but that is how it comes across. ‘I’m going to do a little pruning before my lunchtime nap, so I guess we’re all living life on the edge, eh?’ She turns away for a second as if to leave then brings herself back. ‘The strange thing is, I remember leaving my pruning shears in the back garden and somehow they ended up in a flower pot at the front of the house.’
Mrs May keeps her focus on Abe as she speaks. In her periphery, Blair motions tipping a glass of wine into her mouth while rolling her eyes. Abe bites his lip.
Then says, ‘I’m always doing things like that. Took me ten minutes to find my keys this morning and they were in the key bowl the entire time. I mean, why would I ever look in there?’
Cue polite laughter.
‘Well, enjoy yourselves.’ She finishes her wine. ‘Time for my siesta.’
The youngsters watch as she dodders merrily back to her corner of The Beresford.
‘Well, doesn’t she have the life?’ Blair offers, her face aglow with youth and naïveté. ‘Does she ever leave the place?’
‘I think she came with the building. It’s like the ravens at the Tower of London, if she ever leaves, the whole place will fall to the ground. Shall we?’ Abe puts his hand out for Blair to go through the door first.
Chivalrous Abe. Abe the protector.
Abe the amputator.
It was good for him to get out of the house.
TWENTY–THREE
She couldn’t get Abe out of her mind. Something seemed different about him. Not bad, necessarily, but unsettling for the old lady.
On returning to her apartment, Mrs May poured herself another glass of wine, smaller this time. She closed all the curtains in every room, and lit two candles in the lounge. She sat, staring at the flames for a minute, conjuring as vivid an image of her favourite tenant as she could.
Then she took a large gulp of her midday wine, set it down and adjusted the charm bracelet on her right wrist. One of the charms, a small, silver bell – a gift from a lover long gone – tinkled quietly, asking the air to be purified.
Mrs May spoke to the fire. She asked for compassion towards Abe. That perhaps he may find the courage to pursue things with this new girl. She envisaged his face in detail, hoping that any God listening would know exactly who she was thinking and speaking about.
With Abe so vivid in her mind, she found herself feeling tearful. She didn’t feel sorry for the skinny, Jewish wallflower. It wasn’t pity. She liked Abe. She always had. She watched him struggle. With himself more than anything. She just wanted him to have something for himself. Something that would pick him up a little, maybe. Something to make him feel positive about the world.
People pray for things every day. A school shooting, people pray for the families. A terrorist attack, they pray for peace. Yet, there are still guns that are easily available and there will be more school shootings. Another splinter from another religion will drive a truck into a crowd of innocent tourists or a bomb into the bottom floor of a high-rise building.
The prayers didn’t seem to work.
But these people probably did not pray like Mrs May.
She wept. And she meant every saline droplet. She cried and she did not hold back that emotion. She envisaged that forgettable face and she passionately called out for some kind of sympathy towards his efforts. That he might understand the sensation of success.
Her plea flowed without constraint.
Then she whispered something to herself and blew out the candle.
‘So it is done.’
The curtains were opened – apart from in the bedroom – and she looked out of the window, but the young coffee drinkers were long gone. Mrs May would have to wait and see whether she’d had any effect.
There was still a little wine left in the glass, but she could have that later. The old lady was true to her word and her daily schedule. She lay down on her bed, in the darkness, and was asleep within minutes.
TWENTY–FOUR
Your daughter leaves home and moves in to a big house with a bunch of strangers that is run by an old woman who drinks all day and listens to strange music and cries when she prays, the person you want showing her around town is Abe Schwarz.
The old lady seems harmless, but unsettles you with her idiosyncrasies. There’s the tortured artist in the building that seems perfect fodder for a one-night encounter, or he’ll lead her on and break her heart. You don’t know that there’s no need to worry about him because he has been cut into twenty-three pieces – so far – and part of him has already melted away and been flushed down a plughole or toilet.
So, by default, your daughter ends up with Abe Schwartz.
But even if Mrs May was a straight-talking businesswoman and Sythe was in one piece, and he didn’t have a pretentious name and he was benevolent and grateful for his success, you’d want that little girl of yours to be across the table from Abe Schwartz, spooning the cocoa powder from the top of her cappuccino with a wooden stirrer.
The man she is looking at across that table is the man you want him to be. He’s nervous around her because he respects her, he doesn’t want to say the wrong thing. He wants her to enjoy his company. He’s not thinking about fucking her. Not yet. And he hasn’t rushed ahead to what might happen later that day, that week, that month.
Abe Schwartz lives in the moment.
And he appreciates it.
In this moment, he is a friendly tour guide. He’s a knowledgeable neighbour. He can talk about coffee and books and local plays. He can make her laugh.
The only problem with Abe is that moment he lives in. It’s so rare for people to stop and take notice of the world that is rushing by. To really have gratitude for what they have rather than worrying about what they don’t have. This is Abe’s gift. But also his flaw. Because, when he is there with your daughter, he is nowhere else. She feels like she has his attention, like she is being listened to – maybe for the first time. The Conroys would want that for Blair.
Then there’s that other moment. The time an artist lost his temper and tried to take out his frustrations on the little guy. The moment of retaliation. The killer moment. When Abe Schwartz felt angry and bullied for the last time. He felt strong. Abe was lost. Punching Sythe’s arrogant face repeatedly until he was too weak to fight back against Abe’s tightening choke around his neck.
There was nothing else.
Sythe got all the attention.
Maybe for the first time.
Certainly for the last.
Abe Schwartz had never hurt another person in his entire life before then.
It was a moment.
It wasn’t a lapse in concentration, you can’t blame it on that, it was complete concentration. Utter focus. He meant it. And maybe that’s why it seems as though he is okay with it. Maybe it’s just because he’s out of the house. He’s away from it.
‘So, this is the posh stuff. One cup of coffee costs as much as a new paperback but it’s just amazing, right.’
Blair nods, licking foam from the stirrer.
‘And you can choose any of the pastries and they will light up your world. Honestly. Also, you can throw that cup in any direction when you’re finished and find a novel/screenplay/poem written on a MacBook or a well-manscaped beard, if that’s the kind of thing you’re into.’
Abe paused as though waiting for a confirmation that she preferred the slender Jewish type. But Blair just laughed along with his seemingly effortless quips.
He let her talk and she was pleased to have someone who would listen. She told him that her parents were very religious but that she had fallen out of love with that side of life quite early on. Not because anything traumatic had happened to her, it was that it was everything to her parents, and that was tiring.
She apologised to Abe in case he was offended by her atheism
, but Abe brushed it off, saying that he had come from something similar, though his memory of it was hazy. He was veering towards agnostic rather than atheist, more out of hope than anything else.
Blair had never been comfortable enough around anyone in her hometown to ever discuss such a thing, yet there she was, divulging diary-entry information to an almost-stranger.
‘You come here a lot, then?’ she inquired.
‘I rarely sit in here, it’s not really my scene. Tries to be cool, which isn’t really cool. I prefer something simpler. But the coffee and pastries are delicious. I generally grab and go.’
‘So why did you bring me here?’
‘I don’t know what your scene is.’ He sipped at his black coffee and shut his eyes for a moment to savour it. ‘I wanted to show you this before I take you to my place.’
Blair was trying to get the measure of Abe. Was he, actually, cool because he didn’t care, because he didn’t try? Whatever he was, she felt at ease with her new friend.
There was a period of silence. In no way uncomfortable. The way old friends can just be together.
Abe broke the silence.
‘You want to see it?’
Blair nodded, emphatically.
‘Okay. Let’s get out of here.’
‘This place is dead, anyway.’
TWENTY–FIVE
The doorbell to The Beresford rang and Mrs May woke up from her early siesta in the dark of her room.
She waited to see whether the person would go away and she could return to her slumber.
The bell rang again. This time more aggressively. Six or seven times in a row.
Again, she waited.
Again, aggression. This time there were ten rings.
‘Oh, for crying out loud.’
The old lady sprung out of bed like a person half her age. She wrapped a dressing gown around her and stomped to the front door. When she got there, the woman was making her way down the steps. She turned at the sound of the door opening.
‘Can I help you?’ Mrs May spat out the word ‘help’.
‘Oh, you’re in.’ The woman was in her forties. Straight blonde hair. Dark eyes. She looked ill.
‘I am in. And I am awake after my doorbell sounded fifty times.’
Mrs May was not the kind of person who was this short with anyone. She was a woman of few words, and those words always meant something. She was old and did not have time to waste on verbosity or frivolity.
‘I’m sorry, I just…’ The tired-looking woman began to move closer to the house. Mrs May could see her face more clearly. It was not a look of tiredness. It was desperation.
‘I’m looking for my daughter.’ The words were breathed out of her as though they could almost be her last.
Mrs May had never had children. She had come close several times, some more devastating in their loss than others, but she recognised that look. The sunken eyes. The black bags. The day-overdue hair wash. She had been it and she had seen it.
Her first thought was that the new girl, Blair, had run away from home. She looked wholesome and sweet and clean, but you never could tell. The rent was low at The Beresford and it attracted all types. And Mrs May was not one to discriminate.
Some were running away from something, and others were heading towards it.
None of that mattered. Pay your rent and stay, stop paying and leave.
The rooms would always be filled.
She remained cold. ‘And who is your daughter?’
The woman explained and Mrs May listened. She did not invite her into The Beresford, and the door remained open just enough to frame its owner’s face. Her daughter had left home and she thinks she may have got involved with the wrong crowd while in the city. Her messages became abrupt. She didn’t sound like herself. She cut off some of her friends and family ‘back home’. Blah blah. She had definitely lived at this address at some point, and it was a long shot but perhaps her daughter had left a forwarding address for the mail because nobody had heard from the girl for a couple of months now and yawn, cry, roll the eyes.
Two months?
Mrs May remembered the girl. Her mother was right. She had started spending time with the wrong people. She had changed. She was dirtier and lazier, and she had male visitors. And, more importantly, she disappeared and stopped paying her rent, and her room was filled by a young, unknown artist, who went by the name Sythe.
‘I see a lot of people come and go in this place. Some leave without saying a word, others are more polite. But none leave a forwarding address, I’m afraid. I’m old. I don’t have time to wrangle everyone’s postal affairs.’
The desperate mother said nothing.
‘I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. I hope you have better luck elsewhere.’
And the door was closed.
Mrs May watched the bedraggled searcher slink off the veranda, looking like Nicole Kidman’s corpse, and two things entered her mind. A sigh of resignation that this missing girl was undoubtedly dead. As dead as her mother looked. And relief that it wasn’t Blair that she was looking for.
It was time for her afternoon drink.
TWENTY–SIX
The floor wasn’t clean, the windows were smeared, the coffee smelled burnt and bitter, and it tasted cheap. It was perfect.
Blair could see that Abe was more relaxed in the second coffee shop. The clothes were more casual as you looked around the place, and the beards were scragglier. Nobody there was trying to be anything that they were not. What you saw was what you got. You knew the coffee wasn’t great, and that was okay because it wasn’t boasting the finest Arabica roast or a foamed milk that was enhanced with the flavour of tonka beans or the essence of Peru.
It was simple and honest and real.
Like Abe.
‘This is more like it, eh?’ Abe laughed as he handed Blair a coffee that looked as though it had come out of a vending machine.
‘It’s very different to the last place.’ It dawned on Blair that this may be some sort of test from Abe. That he was examining her reactions to see which coffee shop she preferred. If she chose the first one, it meant that she was like those people, but if she picked this one, she was like Abe. ‘I prefer it.’ She smiled back at him. It was true. She meant it.
They talked about anything. It was either the beginning of a close friendship or the start of something more romantic. At that point, neither of them knew which it was. And neither of them cared. They spoke about food and religion and political leanings. They discussed their childhoods and education, and even dipped into sports. Even the odd silences were comfortable.
‘That Mrs May is quite eccentric, isn’t she?’ Blair offered.
‘She certainly is one of a kind. But she is a lovely old lady; she means well. She has been around forever, and if you get the chance to hear some of her stories, you’re in for a real treat. I have no doubt that she will offer to have you over for dinner or drinks at some point. She does it with almost everyone.’
‘Did you say “almost” in case she doesn’t ask me?’
‘Ha! No. It’s just that some people have only been there a couple of weeks before they disappear.’
‘Unlike you.’ Abe nods. ‘And the artist guy.’
Abe keeps his cool. ‘Oh, Sythe. Yeah, he’s been there a good few months, and I don’t think he’s going anytime soon.’
For the first time since leaving the house with Blair, Abe finds himself wondering how long it would take for the flesh to dissolve from Sythe’s arms and legs.
TWENTY–SEVEN
They could be heard laughing from thirty yards away. Mrs May was drinking another glass of red wine when she spotted Abe and the new girl from her window.
She knew young love when she saw it.
Moments later she was opening the front door and giving them a knowing raised eyebrow.
‘Having fun?’
Blair answered. ‘Abe has taken me to some of the area’s best coffee spots.’
‘Well, isn’t that kind.’
Abe blushed at this but Blair came to his rescue.
‘He’s a very kind, young man. With awful taste in coffee.’ The new friends laughed again.
The very kind man bid his housemates a fond adieu before very kindly returning to his own apartment, kindly removing his clothes before kindly sawing through both of Sythe’s thighs, dumping his limbless torso into the tiled corner of the bathroom and submersing the arms and legs in a bath of lye, kindly.
He lay down on his bed, his hands behind his head, and he disassociated himself from the situation in the room next to him in order to think about Blair.
What was going on? He’d been with women before, he wasn’t the asexual idiot the kids in his school had teased. He’d fucked around at university, but there was no emotion there. Not like the connection he felt with Blair. But, then, he’d never been friends with a woman, either. Maybe that’s what it was.
Abe was starting to tie himself up about it. If he tried to advance things and Blair thought they were just friends then he would blow that and end up with nothing. And he was so sick of having nothing.
If it was more than a friendship, if Blair liked him in the way that he thought he liked her, he could have everything. He could have love. He wouldn’t be alone. His books were company, of course, and there was someone in his apartment with him, but the conversation was rather one-sided.
Abe decided that he would let his own emotions flourish and develop into whatever they wanted, and he would wait until there was a clear sign from Blair. If it was friendship that she wanted, he would take it. If it was love, he would grab it with both hands.
So rational.
In a bag, Abe threw an old hooded jumper he no longer wore, a copy of a courtroom crime thriller he had no intention of ever reading, a wicker basket he had bought on a whim to spruce up the lounge, though he had never decided on what he could place inside the thing, and the bones from Sythe’s fingers and toes.