Lou stared deep into his Jack Daniel’s and ice and ignored the barman, who was leaning over the counter and speaking aggressively into his ear.
‘Do you hear me?’ the barman growled.
‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’ Lou’s tongue stumbled over his words, like a five-year-old walking with untied shoelaces, already unable to remember what he’d done wrong. He waved a limp hand dismissively through the air as though wafting away a fly.
‘No, not whatever, buddy. Leave her alone, okay? She doesn’t want you to talk to her, she doesn’t want to hear your story, she is not interested in you. Okay?’
‘Okay, okay,’ Lou grumbled then, remembering the rude blonde who’d kept ignoring him. He’d happily not talk to her, he wasn’t getting much conversation out of her anyway and the journalist he’d spoken to earlier didn’t seem much interested in the amazing story that was his life. He kept his eyes down into his whisky. A phenomenon had occurred tonight, and nobody was interested in hearing his story. Had the world gone mad? Had they all become so used to new inventions and scientific discoveries that the very thought of a man being cloned no longer had shock value? No, the young occupants of this trendy bar would rather sip away at their cocktails, the young women swanning about in the middle of December with their tanned legs, short skirts and highlighted hair, designer handbags hooked over extended brown arms like candelabras, each one looking as exotic and as at home as a coconut in the north pole. This they cared more about than the greater events of the country. A man had been cloned. There were two Lou Sufferns in the city tonight. Bilocation was a reality. He laughed to himself and shook his head at the hilarity of it all. He alone knew the great depths of the universe’s abilities, and nobody was interested in learning.
He felt the barman’s stare searing into him and so he stopped his solo chortling and instead concentrated again on his ice. He watched it shifting in the glass as it squirmed around trying to get comfortable, falling deeper and deeper into the liquid. It made his eyes droop just watching it. The barman finally left him to his own devices and tended to the others crowded around the bar. Around the lonesome Lou, the noise continued, the sound of people being with other people: after-work flirting, after-work fighting, tables of girls huddled together with eyes locked in as they caught up, circles of young men standing with eyes locked outwards and shifty movements. Tables were dominated by drinks covered with beer mats, the empty seats around them a sign that the people belonging to the glasses were outside striking up matches and new relationships in the smokers’ quarters.
Lou looked around to catch somebody’s eye. He was fussy at first about his chosen confidant, preferring somebody good looking to share his story with for the second time, but then he decided to settle on anybody. Surely somebody would care about the miracle that had occurred.
The only eye he succeeded in meeting was that of the barman again.
‘Gimme me nuther one,’ Lou slurred when the barman neared him. ‘A neat Jack on th’rocks.’
‘I just gave you another one,’ the barman responded, a little amused this time, ‘and you haven’t even touched that.’
‘So?’ Lou closed one eye to focus on him.
‘So, what good is there in having two at the same time?’
At that, Lou started laughing, a chesty wheezy laugh with the presence of the bitter December breeze that had darted into his chest for warmth as soon as it had seen his coat open and his chest revealed, moving quick like a frazzled cat through a doorflap at the sound of a firework.
‘I think I missed the joke,’ the barman smiled. Now that the bar counter was quiet, he may have had no drink to give to pass the time, but he’d time to give the drunk.
‘Ah, nobody here cares.’ Lou got angry again, waving his hand dismissively at the crowd around him. ‘All they care about is Sex on the Beach, thirty-year mortgages and St Tropez. I’ve been listenin’ and that’s all they’re sayin’.’
The barman laughed. ‘Just keep your voice down. What don’t they care about?’
Lou turned serious now and fixed the barman with his best serious stare. ‘Cloning.’
The barman’s face changed, interest lighting up his eyes, finally something different for him to hear about rather than the usual woes. ‘Cloning? Right, you have an interest in that, do you?’
‘An interest? I have more than an interest.’ Lou laughed patronisingly and then winked at the barman. He took another sip of his whisky and prepared to tell the story. ‘This may be hard for you to believe, but I’, he took a deep breath, ‘have been cloned,’ he began. ‘This guy gave me pills and I took them,’ he said, then hiccuped. ‘You probably don’t believe me but it happened. Saw it with my own two eyes.’ He pointed at his eye, misjudged his proximity and poked himself. Moments later, after the sting was gone and he had rubbed away the tears, he continued chatting. ‘There’s two of me,’ he continued, holding up four fingers, then three, then one, then finally two.
‘Is that so?’ the barman asked, picking up a pint glass and beginning to pour a Guinness. ‘Where’s the other one of you? I bet he’s as sober as a judge.’
Lou laughed, wheezy again. ‘He’s at home with my wife,’ he chuckled. ‘And with my kids. And I’m here, with her.’ He directed his thumb to the left of him.
‘Who?’
Lou looked to the side and almost toppled off his bar stool in the process. ‘Oh, she’s – where is she?’ He turned around to the barman again. ‘Maybe she’s in the toilet – she’s gorgeous, we were having a good chat. She’s a journalist, she’s going to write about this. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m here having all the fun, and he’s,’ he laughed again, ‘he’s at home with my wife and kids. And tomorrow, when I wake up, I’m going to take a pill – not drugs, they’re herbal, for my headache.’ He pointed to his head seriously. ‘And I’m going to stay in bed and he can go to work. Ha! All the things that I am going to do, like,’ he thought hard but failed to come up with anything, ‘like, oh, so, so many things. All the places I’m going to go. It’s a fucking mir’cle. D’ya know when I last had a day off?’
‘When was that?’
Lou thought hard. ‘Last Christmas. No phone calls, no computer. Last Christmas.’
The barman was dubious. ‘You didn’t take a holiday this year?’
‘Took a week. With the kids.’ He ruffled up his nose. ‘Fucking sand everywhere. On my laptop, in my phone. And this.’ He reached into his pocket and took out his BlackBerry and slammed it on the bar counter.
‘Careful.’
‘This thing. Follows me everywhere; sand in it and it still works. The drug of the nation. This thing.’ He poked it, mistakenly pressing some buttons, which lit up the screen. Ruth and the kids smiled back at him. Pud with his big silly toothless grin, Lucy’s big brown eyes peeping out from under her fringe, Ruth holding them both. Holding them all together. He studied it momentarily with a smile on his face. The light went out, the picture faded to black and the device sat staring at him. ‘In the B’hamas,’ he continued, ‘and beep-beep, they got me. Beep-beep, beep-beep, they get me,’ he laughed again. ‘And the red light. I see it in my sleep, in the shower, every time I close my eyes, the red light and the beep-beep. I hate the fucking beep-beep.’
‘So take a day off,’ the barman said.
‘Can’t. Too much to do.’
‘Well, now that you’re cloned, you can take all the days off that you want,’ the barman joked, looking around so that nobody else could hear him.
‘Yeah,’ Lou smiled dreamily, ‘there’s so much I want to do.’
‘Like what? What do you want to do now, more than anything in the world?’
Lou closed his eyes and, taking advantage of his closed eyelids, the dizziness swept in to knock him off his stool. ‘Whoa –’ He opened his eyes quickly. ‘I want to go home, but I can’t. He won’t let me. I called him earlier and said I was tired and wanted to go home. He wouldn’t let me,’ he snorted. ‘Mr High Almighty said no.’
/>
‘Who said?’
‘The other me.’
‘The other you told you to stay out?’ The barman tried not to laugh.
‘He’s at home, so there can’t be two of us. But I’m tired now.’ His eyelids drooped. They opened wide again as he thought of something. He leaned in close to the barman, dropped his voice. ‘I watched him from the window, you know.’
‘The other you?’
‘Now you’re getting it. I went home and watched him from outside. He was in there, moving about with his sheets and his towels, running upstairs, running downstairs, running from room to room like he thought he was something special.’ He snorted. ‘One minute I’m watching him tell his stupid jokes at dinner and then the next he’s making beds at home. Thinks he can do both.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘So I came back in here.’
‘So maybe he can,’ the barman smiled.
‘Maybe he can what?’
‘Maybe he can do both,’ the barman winked. ‘Go home,’ he said, taking Lou’s empty glass before moving down the end of the bar to serve another customer.
As the young customer rattled off his order, Lou thought long and hard about that. If he couldn’t go home, he had nowhere else to go.
* * *
‘It’s okay, sweetie, it’s okay, Daddy’s here,’ Lou said, holding Lucy’s hair back from her face and rubbing her back as she leaned over the toilet and vomited for the twentieth time that night. He sat on the cold bathroom tiles, in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, and leaned against the bath as her tiny body convulsed one more time and expelled more vomit.
‘Daddy …’ Her voice was tiny through her tears.
‘It’s okay, sweetie, I’m here,’ he repeated sleepily. ‘It’s almost over.’ It had to be, how much more could her tiny body get rid of?
Every twenty minutes he’d gone from sleeping in Lucy’s bed to assisting her in the bathroom, where she’d thrown up, her body going from freezing to boiling and back again in a matter of minutes. Usually it was Ruth’s duty to stay up all night with the children, sick or otherwise, but unfortunately for Lou, and for Ruth, she was having the same experience as Lucy in their own bathroom down the hall. Gastroenteritis, always an end-of-year gift brought around the Christmas season for those whose systems were ready to wave goodbye to the year before the calendar was.
Lou carried Lucy to her bed again, her small hands clinging around his neck. Already she was asleep, exhausted by what the night had brought her. As he laid her down on the bed, he wrapped her now cold body in blankets and tucked her favourite bear close to her face, as Ruth had shown him before running for the toilet again. His mobile vibrated again on the pink princess bedside locker. At four a.m., it was the fifth time he’d received a phone call from himself. Glancing at the caller display, his own face flashed up on the screen.
‘What now?’ he whispered into the phone, trying to keep his voice and anger at a low.
‘Lou! It’s me, Lou!’ came the drunken voice at the other end, followed by a raucous laugh.
‘Stop calling me,’ he said, a little louder now.
In the background there was music thumping, voices loud and a gabble of non-specific words. He could hear glasses clinking, various levels of shouts and laughter exploding every few moments from different corners of the room. Alcohol fumes almost drifted down the phone and penetrated the peaceful innocent world of his daughter. Subconsciously, he blocked the receiver with his hand, to protect her from the intrusion of the adult world seeping into her sleeping world.
‘Where are you?’
‘Leeson Street. Somewhere,’ he shouted back. ‘I met this girl, Lou,’ came the voice. ‘Fucking amazing! You’ll be proud of me. No, you’ll be proud of you!’ Raucous laughter again.
‘What?!’ Lou barked loudly. ‘No! Don’t do anything!’ he shouted, and Lucy’s eyes fluttered open momentarily like two little butterflies, big brown eyes glancing at him with fright, but then on seeing him – her daddy – the alerted look disappeared, a small smile crept onto her lips and her eyes closed again with exhaustion. That look of trust, the faith she had put in him in that one simple look, did something to him right then. He knew he was her protector, the one that could take away the fright and put a smile on her face, and it gave him a better feeling than he’d ever felt in his life. Better than the deal at dinner; better than seeing the look on Alfred’s face when he’d arrived. It made him hate the man at the end of the phone, loathe him so much that he felt like knocking him out. His daughter was at home, throwing her guts up, so much so that her entire body was so exhausted she could barely keep her eyes open or stand, and there he was, out getting drunk, chasing skirts, expecting Ruth to do all this without him. He hated the man at the end of the phone.
‘But she’s hot, if you could just see her,’ he slurred.
‘Don’t you even think about it,’ he said threateningly, his voice low and mean. ‘I swear to God, if you do anything, I will …’
‘You’ll what? Kill me?’ More raucous laughter. ‘Sounds like you’d be cutting off your nose to spite your face, my friend. Well, where the hell am I supposed to go, huh? Tell me that? I can’t go home, I can’t go to work?’
The door to the bedroom opened then and an equally exhausted Ruth appeared.
‘I’ll call you back.’ He hung up quickly.
‘Who was on the phone at this hour?’ she asked quietly. She was dressed in her robe, her arms hugging her body protectively. Her eyes were bleary and puffed, her hair pulled back in a ponytail; she looked so fragile, a raised voice might blow her over and break her. For the second time that night his heart melted again and he moved towards her, arms open.
‘It was just a guy I know,’ he whispered, stroking her hair. ‘He’s out drunk, I wish he’d stop calling. He’s a loser,’ he added quietly. He snapped the phone shut and tossed it aside into a pile of teddybears. ‘How are you?’ He pulled away and examined her face closely. Her head was boiling hot, but she shivered in his arms.
‘I’m fine.’ She gave him a wobbly smile.
‘No, you’re not fine, go back to bed and I’ll get you a face-cloth.’ He kissed her affectionately on the forehead. Her eyes closed and her body relaxed in his arms.
He almost broke their embrace to punch the air and holler with celebration, because for the first time in a long time he felt her give up the fight with him. For the past six months, when he held her she had been rigid and taut, as though she felt by doing that she was showing him she wasn’t accepting his ways, she was protesting and refusing to validate his behaviour. He revelled in the moment of feeling her relax against him; a silent but huge victory for their marriage.
Among the pile of teddies his phone vibrated again, bouncing around in Paddington Bear’s arms. His face flashed up again on screen and he had to look away, not able to stand the sight of himself. He could understand how Ruth felt now.
‘There’s your friend again,’ Ruth said, pulling away slightly, allowing him to reach for his phone.
‘No, leave him.’ He ignored it, bringing her closer to him again. ‘Ruth,’ he said gently, lifting her chin so she could look at him. ‘I’m sorry.’
Ruth looked up at him in shock, and then examined him curiously for the catch. There had to be a catch. Lou Suffern had said he was sorry. Sorry was not a word in his vocabulary.
From the corner of Lou’s eye, the phone vibrated, hopping around and falling out of Paddington Bear’s paws and onto Winnie the Pooh’s head, being passed around teddy to teddy like a hot potato. Each time the phone stopped, it quickly started again, his face lighting up on screen, smiling at him, laughing at him, telling him he was weak for uttering those words. He fought that side of him, that drunken, foolish, childish, irrational side of him, and refused to answer the phone, refused to let go of his wife. He swallowed hard.
‘I love you, you know.’
It was as though it was the first time she’d ever heard it. It was as though they were back to the very first Christmas th
ey’d spent together, sitting by the Christmas tree in her parents’ house in Galway, the cat curled in a ball on its favourite cushion by the fire, the crazy dog a few years too many in this world outside in the back garden, barking at everything that moved and didn’t move. Lou had told her then, by the fake white Christmas tree that had been fought over by Ruth’s parents only hours before – Mr O’Donnell wanting a real pine tree, Mrs O’Donnell not wanting to have to continuously vacuum the pine needles. The gaudy tree was slowly lit up by tiny green, red and blue bulbs, and then the lights would slowly fade again. This happened over and over, and, despite its ugliness, it was relaxing, like a chest heaving slowly up and down. It was the first moment they’d had together all day, the only moments they’d have before he’d have to sleep on the couch and Ruth would disappear to her room. He wasn’t planning on saying it, in fact he was planning on never saying it, but it had popped out, as naturally as a newborn. He’d struggled with it for a while, twisting the words around in his mouth, pushing, then withdrawing, not brave enough to say them. But then the words were out and his world had immediately changed. Twenty years later in their daughter’s bedroom, it felt like the same moment all over again, with that same look of pleasure, and surprise, on Ruth’s face.
‘Oh Lou,’ she said softly, closing her eyes and savouring the moment. Then suddenly her eyes flicked open, a flash of alarm in them that scared Lou to death about what she would say. What did she know? His past behaviour came gushing at him as he panicked, like a school of ghostly piranhas, coming back to haunt him and nipping him in the backside. He thought of the other part of him, out and drunk, possibly destroying this new relationship with his wife, destroying the repairs it had taken them both so much to achieve. He had a vision of the two Lous: one building a brick wall, the other moving behind him with a hammer and knocking down everything as soon as it was built. In reality that’s what Lou had been doing all along. Building his family up with one hand, while in the other his behaviour was shattering everything he’d strived so hard to create.
Cecelia Ahern 2-book Bundle Page 15