‘S’e drunk again?’ Lou asked, opening his bleary eyes and turning around to watch Raphie walk to the car.
‘No, he’s not drunk,’ Gabe said, watching Raphie’s slow walk back to the car in the rear-view mirror.
‘Then what is he?’ Lou snarled.
‘He’s something else.’
‘No, you’re somethin’ else. Now drive me home.’ He clicked his fingers and laughed. ‘Actually, let me drive,’ he said grumpily, and started squirming in his seat to get out. ‘I don’t like people thinking this is your car.’
‘It’s dangerous to drink and drive, Lou. You could crash.’
‘So,’ he huffed childishly. ‘That’s my problem, isn’t it?’
‘A friend of mine died not so long ago,’ Gabe said, eyes still on the garda car that was slowly driving back down the road. ‘And believe me, when you die, it’s everybody else’s but your problem. He left behind a right mess. I’d buckle up if I were you, Lou.’
‘Who died?’ Lou closed his eyes, ignoring the advice, and leaned his head back on the rest, giving up on his idea to drive.
‘I don’t think you know him,’ Gabe said, indicating as soon as the garda car was out of sight and moving out onto the road again.
‘How’d he die?’
‘Car crash,’ Gabe said, pushing his foot down on the accelerator. It jerked forward quickly, the engine loud and powerful all of a sudden in the quiet night.
Lou’s eyes opened slightly and he looked at Gabe warily. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yep. Sad really. He was a young guy. Young family. Lovely wife. Was successful.’ He pressed his foot down harder on the speed.
Lou’s eyes were fully open now.
‘But that’s not the sad thing. The saddest thing was that he didn’t sort out his will on time. Not that he’s to blame, he was a young man and didn’t plan on leaving so soon, but it just shows you never know.’
The speedometer neared one hundred kilometres in the fifty-kilometre zone and Lou grabbed the door handle and held on tightly. He moved from his slouched position, pushing his buttocks firmly to the back of the seat. He was sitting up poker-straight now, watching the speedometer, and the blurred lights of the city across the bay whizzing by.
He began to reach for his seat belt, but all of a sudden, as quickly as Gabe had sped up, he took his foot off the accelerator, checked his wing mirror, indicated, and turned the wheel steadily to the left. He looked at Lou’s face, which had turned an interesting shade of green, and he smiled.
‘Home sweet home, Lou.’
It was only over the next few days, as the hangover haze had begun to lift, that Lou realised he didn’t recall once giving Gabe any directions to his home that night.
‘Mum, Dad, Marcia, Quentin, Alexandra!’ Lou announced at full boom, as soon as the door had been pulled open by his startled-looking mother. ‘I’m ho-ome,’ he sang, embracing his mother and planting a smacker on her cheek. ‘I’m so sorry I missed dinner, it was such a busy evening at the office. Busy, busy, busy.’
Even Lou couldn’t keep a straight face for that excuse, and so he stood in the dining room, his shoulders moving up and down, his chest wheezing in a near silent laugh, watched by startled and unimpressed faces. Ruth froze, watching her husband with mixed feelings of anger, hurt and embarrassment. Somewhere inside her there was jealousy too. She’d had a day of dealing with Lucy’s uncontrollable excitement that had been channelled in all the positive and negative ways a child could possibly behave, and then later dealt with her nerves and tears as she wouldn’t go on stage until her father had arrived. After returning from the school play, she’d put the kids to bed and run around the house all evening in order to get the dinner ready and bedrooms ready for guests. Her face was now bright red from the hot kitchen and her fingers burned from carrying hot dishes. She was flushed and tired, too, physically and mentally drained from trying to stimulate her children in all the ways a parent should; from being on her knees on the floor with Pud, to wiping the tears and offering advice to a disappointed Lucy, who’d failed to find her father in the audience despite Ruth’s attempts to convince her otherwise.
Ruth looked at Lou swaying at the doorway, his eyes bloodshot, his cheeks rosy, and she wished that that could be her, throwing caution to the wind and acting the eejit in front of their guests. But he’d never stand for it – and she’d never do it – and that was the difference between them. But there he was, swaying and happy, and there she was, static and deeply dissatisfied, wondering why on earth she had chosen to be the glue holding it all together.
‘Dad!’ Lou announced. ‘I haven’t seen you for ages! It’s been so long, hasn’t it?’ He smiled, walking towards his father with an extended hand. He sat down in the chair beside him, pulling it closer and scraping the floor so that their elbows were almost touching. ‘Tell me what you’ve been up to. Oh, and I wouldn’t mind some of that red wine, thanks so much. My favourite, honey, well done.’ He winked at Ruth, then proceeded to spill most of it on the white linen as with an unsteady arm he poured it into an unused glass.
‘Steady there now, son,’ his father said quietly, reaching out to help him steady his hand.
‘Dad, I’m fine.’ Lou pulled away from him, splashing wine over his father’s shirt sleeves.
‘Ah, Aloysius,’ his mother said, and Lou rolled his eyes.
‘It’s fine, love, I’m fine,’ his father said, trying to make light of it.
‘That’s your good shirt,’ she continued, reaching for her napkin, dunking it in her water glass and dabbing at her husband’s white sleeves.
‘Mum,’ Lou looked around the table, laughing, ‘I haven’t killed the man, I just splashed wine.’
His mother threw him a look of scorn and looked away again, continuing to help her husband.
‘Maybe this will help.’ Lou reached for the salt and began shaking it over his father’s arms.
‘Lou!’ Quentin raised his voice. ‘Stop it!’
Lou stopped, then looked at Alexandra with a childish sheepish grin.
‘Ah, Quentin,’ Lou nodded at his brother, ‘I didn’t notice you there. How’s the boat? Got any new sails? Any new equipment? Won any competitions lately?’
Quentin cleared his throat, and tried to calm himself. ‘We’re actually in the final in two wee—’
‘Alexandra!’ Lou exploded, mid Quentin’s sentence. ‘How can I not have kissed the lovely Alexandra?’ He stood up and, bumping against the backs of everybody’s chairs, he made his way over to her. ‘How is the beautiful Alexandra tonight? Looking ravishing, as always.’ He reached down and hugged her tight, kissing her neck.
‘Hi Lou,’ she smiled. ‘Good night?’
‘Oh, you know, busy, busy, lots of paperwork to get through.’ He threw his head back and laughed again, loud like a machine gun. ‘Ah dear. Oh, what’s the problem in here? You all look like somebody’s died. You could do with rockets shoved up your arses, come on.’ He shouted a little too aggressively and clapped his hands in front of their faces. ‘Boring.’ He turned to look at his sister Marcia. ‘Marcia,’ he said, followed by a sigh. ‘Marcia,’ he repeated. ‘Hi,’ he simply said, before making his way back to his chair, smiling childishly to himself.
Gabe hovered awkwardly by the dining-room door in the long heavy silence that followed.
‘Who have you brought with you, Lou?’ his brother Quentin interrupted, holding out his hand and moving towards Gabe. ‘Sorry, we weren’t introduced. I’m his brother, Quentin, and this is my wife, Alexandra.’
Lou wolf-whistled, then laughed.
‘Hello, I’m Gabe.’ Gabe shook Quentin’s hand and entered the dining room. He made his way around the table, shaking hands with all the family.
‘Lou,’ Ruth said quietly, ‘perhaps you should have some water or coffee, I’m about to make some coffee.’
Lou sighed loudly. ‘Am I an embarrassment, Ruth, am I?’ he snapped. ‘You told me to come home. I’m home!’
There
was a silence around the table as people awkwardly tried to avoid each other’s gazes. Lou’s father looked at him angrily, the colour rising in his face, his lips trembling slightly as though the words were rushing out of them yet weren’t making any sound.
Gabe continued to make his way around the table.
‘Hello, Ruth, I’m very pleased to finally meet you.’
She would barely look him in the eye as she limply took his hand.
‘Hi,’ she said quietly. ‘Please excuse me while I just take all this away.’ She stood up from the table and began carrying the leftover cheese plates and coffee cups into the kitchen.
‘I’ll help you,’ Gabe offered.
‘No, no, please, sit down.’ She rushed into the kitchen with a load in her arms.
Gabe disobeyed and followed her anyway. She was leaning against the counter where she had placed the crockery, her back to him. Her head was down, her shoulders hunched, all life and soul of the woman gone at that very moment. He made a noise placing the plates beside the sink so that she knew he was there.
She jumped now, alert to his presence, composed herself, life and soul returning from their time-out, and she turned around to face him.
‘Gabe,’ she smiled tightly, ‘I told you not to bother.’
‘I wanted to help,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sorry about Lou. I wasn’t out with him tonight.’
‘No?’ She folded her arms and looked embarrassed for not knowing.
‘No. I work with him at the office. I was there late when he got back from the … well, from his coffee meeting.’
‘When he got back to the office? Why would he …’ She looked at him with confusion and then, ever so slowly, a shadow fell across her face as realisation dawned. ‘Oh, I see. He was trying to drive home.’
It wasn’t a question, more a thought aloud, and so Gabe didn’t respond, but she softened towards him.
‘Right. Well, thank you for bringing him home safely, Gabe. I’m sorry I was rude to you but I’m just, you know …’ The emotion entered her voice and she stopped talking and instead busied herself scraping food from the plates into the bin.
‘I know. You don’t have to explain.’
From the dining room they heard Lou let out a ‘Whoa’ and then there was the sound of a glass smashing, and his laughter again.
She stopped scraping the plates and closed her eyes, sighing.
‘Lou’s a good man, you know,’ Gabe said softly.
‘Thank you, Gabe. Believe it or not, that is exactly what I need to hear right now, but I was rather hoping it wouldn’t come from one of his work buddies. I’d like for his mother to be able to say it,’ she looked up at him, eyes glassy, ‘or his father, or it would be nice to hear it from his daughter. But no, at work, Lou is the man.’ She scraped the plates angrily.
‘I’m not a work buddy, believe me. Lou can’t stand me.’
She looked at him curiously.
‘He got me a job yesterday. I used to sit outside his building every morning, and yesterday, totally out of the blue, he stopped and gave me a coffee and offered me a job.’
‘He mentioned something like that last night.’ Ruth searched her brain. ‘Lou really did that?’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘No, I’m not. Well, I am. I mean … what job did he give you?’
‘A job in the mailroom.’
‘How does that help him out?’ she frowned.
Gabe laughed. ‘You think he did it for his own good?’
‘Oh, that’s a terrible thing for me to say.’ She bit her lip to hide her smile. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. I know Lou is a good man, but lately he’s just been very … busy. Or more distracted; there’s nothing wrong with being busy, as long as you’re not distracted.’ She waved her hand dismissively. ‘But he’s not all here. It’s like he’s in two places at once. His body with us, his mind constantly elsewhere. The decisions he makes lately are all to do with work, how to help his work, how to get him from one meeting to the other meeting in the quickest time possible, yada, yada, yada … so him offering you the job, I just thought that … God, listen to me.’ She composed herself. ‘You obviously brought out the good side in him, Gabe.’
‘He’s a good man,’ Gabe repeated.
Ruth didn’t answer, but it was almost as though Gabe read her mind when he said, ‘But you want him to become a better one, don’t you?’
She looked at him in surprise.
‘Don’t worry.’ He placed his hand over hers and it was immediately comforting. ‘He will be.’
When Ruth told her sister the next day about the exchange, and her sister ruffled her nose thinking it all very weird and suspicious as she did most things in life, Ruth only then wondered why on earth she hadn’t questioned Gabe, why she hadn’t felt it all so very odd at that moment. But it was the moments that counted, being in the moment, and in that moment she hadn’t felt compelled to ask. She believed him, or at least she had wanted to believe him. A kind man had told her that her husband would be a better man. What good was an afterthought?
16.
The Wake-Up Call
Lou awoke the morning after to a woodpecker sitting on his head and hammering away consistently with great gregariousness at the top of his skull. The pain worked its way from his frontal lobe, through both his temples, and down to the base of his head. Somewhere outside, a car horn beeped, ridiculous for this hour, and an engine was running. He closed his eyes again and tried to disappear into the world of sleep, but responsibilities, the woodpecker, and what sounded like the front door slamming, wouldn’t allow him safe haven in his sweet dreams.
His mouth was so dry, he found himself smacking his gums together and thrashing his tongue around in order to gather the smallest amount of moisture to give him the honour of avoiding the loathful task of dry-retching. And then the saliva came, and he found himself in that awful place – between his bed and the toilet bowl – where his body temperature went up, his mind dizzied and the moisture came to his mouth in waves. He kicked off his bedclothes, ran for the toilet and fell to his knees in a heavy, heaving, worshipping of the toilet bowl. It was only when he no longer had any energy, or anything left inside his stomach, for that matter, that he sat on the heated tiles in physical and mental exhaustion, and noticed that the skylight was bright. Unlike the darkness of his usual morning rises at this time of the year, the sky was a bright blue. And then panic overcame him, far worse than the dash he’d just encountered, but more like the panic that a child would experience on learning they’re late for school.
Lou dragged himself up from the floor, and returned to the bedroom with the desire to grab the alarm clock and strangle the nine a.m. that flashed boldly in red. They’d all slept it out. They’d missed their wake-up call. Only they hadn’t, because Ruth wasn’t in bed, and it was only then he noticed the smell of a fry drifting upstairs, almost mockingly doing the can-can under his nose. He heard the clattering and clinking of cups and saucers. A baby’s babbles. Morning sounds. Long, lazy sounds that he shouldn’t be hearing. He should be hearing the hum of the fax machine and photocopier, the noise of the elevator as it moved up and down the shaft and every now and then pinged as though the people inside had been cooked. He should be hearing Alison’s acrylic nails on the keyboard. He should be hearing the squeaking of the mail cart as Gabe made his way down the hallways …
Gabe.
He pulled on a robe and rushed downstairs, almost falling over the shoes and briefcase he’d left at the bottom step, before bursting through the door into the kitchen. There they were, the three usual suspects: Ruth, his mother and his father. Gabe wasn’t anywhere to be seen, thankfully. Egg was dribbling down his father’s grey stubbled chin, his mother was reading the newspaper, and both she and Ruth were still in their dressing gowns. Pud was the only one to make a sound as he sang and babbled, his eyebrows moving up and down with such expression it was as though his sentences actually meant something. Lou took this scene in,
but at the very same time failed to appreciate a single pixel of it.
‘What the hell, Ruth?’ he said loudly, causing all heads to look up and turn to him.
‘Excuse me?’ She looked at him with widened eyes.
‘It’s nine a.m. Nine o-fucking-clock.’
‘Now, Aloysius,’ his father said angrily. His mother looked at him in shock.
‘Why the hell didn’t you wake me?’ He came closer to her.
‘Lou, why are you talking like this?’ Ruth frowned, then turned to her son. ‘Come on, Pud, a few more spoons, honey.’
‘Because you’re trying to get me fired is what you’re doing. Isn’t it? Why the hell didn’t you wake me?’
‘Well, I was going to wake you but Gabe said not to. He said to let you rest until about ten o’clock, that a rest would do you good, and I agreed,’ she said matter-of-factly, appearing unaffected by his attack in his parents’ presence.
‘Gabe?’ He looked at her as though she were the most ludicrous thing on the planet. ‘GABE?’ he shouted now.
‘Lou,’ his mother gasped. ‘Don’t you dare shout like that.’
‘Gabe the mailboy? The fucking MAILBOY?’ He ignored his mother. ‘You listened to him? He’s an imbecile!’
‘Lou!’ his mother said once again. ‘Fred, do something.’ She nudged her husband.
‘Well, that imbecile,’ Ruth fought to stay calm, ‘drove you home last night instead of leaving you to drive to your death.’
As though just remembering that Gabe had driven him home, Lou rushed outside to the driveway. He made his way around the perimeter of the car, hopping from foot to foot on the pebbles, his concern for his vehicle so great that he couldn’t feel the occasional sharp corner breaking through his flesh. He examined his Porsche from all angles, running his fingers along the surface to make sure there weren’t any scratches or dents. Finding nothing wrong, he calmed a little, though he still couldn’t understand what had made Ruth value Gabe’s opinion so highly. What was going on in the world that had everybody eating out of Gabe’s palm?
Cecelia Ahern 2-book Bundle Page 11