Benighted

by Kit Whitfield

  “You play the piano?” He bounces up at the thought of this, looking enchanted.

  “No.” I sigh. “I used to. I don’t have room for one here.”

  He lies down, scoops me onto his chest. There’s a moment of vertigo. He’s stronger than he looks. “There’s a piano in one of our occupational rooms quite near here, it’s open access. Like a library. You could play that.”

  I make a noise of disagreement, knocking my head lightly against him. “You’ve only known me a few days. You aren’t allowed to certify me yet.”

  He laughs, puts an arm around me. We could argue, heckle each other, or set about renewing foreplay, or he could get up and leave. None of these happen. I lie still, and listen to his heartbeat, a soft double stroke pressed against my ear.

  It’s dark again, and he suggests we go out. What he wants to do is go and have dinner. I am hungry. Neither of us has had anything but cereal all day. The trouble is, it’s cold outside, icy cold.

  The trouble is, I don’t want him to leave.

  “Come on, I’m starving.” He jostles me, trying to persuade. “Don’t tell me I don’t get a second date.”

  “What?”

  “Anyway, we’re all out of condoms…”

  “Thought that was encouraging our invention.”

  “Yeah, but we could be even more inventive if we had some. Look, I think we should shift venues. There’s actually food at my place.”

  “Your place?” I look at him, try not to look away. I don’t know what he sees in my face.

  “Yeah, look. Let’s go and get some dinner, then go back to mine.” He’s drawing patterns on my forehead with his fingers.

  You’ve already had dinner with me, I think. Why aren’t you making an exit? Do you just want another day of this?

  We shower, dress, and go out. We eat again, and I’m hungry. I eat like I haven’t eaten in months. Then we go back to his apartment.

  And on Sunday, he asks to see me during the week.

  How have I got into this, part of me wants to know. I didn’t do anything clever. I didn’t do anything good. Yet somehow, here I am, lying in the arms of a man named Paul, who laughs at my jokes, who likes my hair, and who doesn’t want to escape from me.

  I want to ask him why, but I don’t. I don’t want to do anything that might change his mind.

  TEN

  Skinless, I walk into work. Air brushes against me, sounds print themselves indelibly inside my ears, and everything impresses me. I keep my balance. I tell myself that I’m only unsteady because I’ve spent two days horizontal. When I woke this morning I felt good, light-bodied, air flowed easily into my chest. I move with a cautious step, fearful of breaking this.

  Bride trundles into my office as I’m filing. “Morning,” she breezes. By this time it’s early afternoon, but I don’t bother to point this out.

  “Hi, Bride.” I smile at her in a surge of fondness, only mixed with a little trepidation that she may be bringing bad news.

  “I see you’re terribly busy, love.”

  “I can’t work in a mess,” I say, rather than explain that I’m trying to keep a good mood and at least heavy boxes of paper don’t tangle my mind into a thorn bush.

  “You weren’t answering your phone.” Bride settles herself in a chair and helps herself to one of my cigarettes, giving me an accusing look.

  “Have a cigarette. No really, don’t be shy, take one. Anyway, you haven’t called me this morning, have you?”

  “I mean, over the weekend.”

  I keep my eyes on the files. “Why, were you trying to call?”

  “Might have been. Where were you?”

  “Home.” I shrug. “Guess you called when I was in the bath or something.”

  Bride bends a look of suspicion on me.

  “What?” I try to look innocent. If Bride wants to know something, she will find it out; she’s like a dog that won’t let go of the ball, able to understand “fetch” but not “drop.” And if she guesses anything like the truth, she’ll be delighted. She’s always nagging me to get myself male company. The trouble is, if she knows then she’ll want to know what happened, and what will happen next, and what will happen after that, and I don’t want to have to deal with the fact that I don’t have any answers. This weekend…it would be unlucky to speak of it aloud.

  Bride uncrosses her legs, sits up. “Right, love, out with it. What were you up to?”

  “Nothing.”

  “If you won’t tell me, then I won’t tell you my news.”

  “If it’s news worth hearing, you’ll tell me anyway.”

  “Don’t be mean, Lolie. Where else can I get my thrills?” She’s still grinning at me, cigarette burning in her hard-knuckled, boxer’s hand, but the grin doesn’t quite work. I know she’s had a lot of evenings at home lately. A lot of hours behind a shut door, watching her husband’s health, avoiding excitement, keeping him cheerful, staving off death with a pack of cards and some low-fat cooking. Too many hushed nights.

  I take my cigarette pack away from her so I can touch her hand in passing. “I’ll just let you imagine it. I’m sure you can come up with something more exciting than I did.”

  Her eyes waver, and for just a moment her face goes dead. Then she settles deeper into her chair, finds her grin, takes a deep drag on the cigarette, cupping her hands around it as if a wind was blowing through this airless room to snuff it out.

  I sit down, rest my head on my hand. “Marty’s better,” I say. “I went to see him on Friday.”

  Bride sits up, looking healthier. “I heard he was better,” she says. “How was he?”

  I shrug. “Quiet. Injured. Fighting the twitch.” I stop. Bride wants to hear that he’s well, she wants to hear the bright side. We could all do with a little good news. “But he was still himself, you know, polite as could be, all friendly, good boy that he is.” I keep my mind on my hand, buried in my hair next to the consoling warmth of my scalp. He’s a good boy. I remember his soft-spoken mother, and try not to think how much she must love him. “He’s dealing well,” I tell Bride. “The boy’s going to be fine.”

  “There’s a relief.” She takes hold of this bit of happiness with both hands. “And it’s not so bad for you, either. You can tell the brass that he’s recovering. Unless he’s going to stand up and blame you.”

  “No.” I lift my head off my hands. “No, he won’t do that.”

  “Well, there you go.”

  I sit up. Maybe it’ll be okay. Maybe that good boy who should be out in the bright healthy world will patch together and get over his nightmares and make it through his life more or less unscathed. I think about Paul, how whole he is, how scarless. I’d like that for Marty, but it isn’t mine to give.

  “Nate said you didn’t have much luck with our man downstairs.” Bride cuts into my thoughts.

  “What?” I disentangle my mind from my senses.

  “Darryl Seligmann, that one.” Bride’s face darkens and goes still. “He says you grilled him but he didn’t say much.”

  I’m angry with myself for shivering, with Bride for bringing Seligmann into my day. I liked the world this morning. “Nothing repeatable, anyway,” I say, my voice harder than I expected, more useful. “He’s yours, isn’t he?”

  “My very own.”

  Since she’s investigating his case, she has say-so over him, about more or less everything. “You letting him make calls?”

  “No. And I don’t plan to, either.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “This morning.” Bride flexes her hands. I lay my own together, side by side, as if to pray. “Nothing out of him. I say we just let him sit for a while. I shifted him to Block C. He can wait it out down there.”

  I could probably talk her out of this if I wanted to. I don’t. When Bride leaves, I close my eyes, listen to the quiet. I check my e-mail. There’s a note from Paul, saying nice things, and this is something to be glad of. I read it over, and if I breathe evenly, Seligmann and Ma
rty and Bride’s lifeless face will settle into the silt at the bottom of my mind and nothing violent will stir them up to muddy the pool. Just for a while, I’d like a little clear water.

  At the end of the day, I am calm. I step out into the dark streets, feel cold air on my face, and pull my gloves on, quietly. My apartment awaits, my little hideout, where I could go home, sit down, have a bath, remake my bed, sit on my own and listen to the silence. Me and my TV, me and my radio.

  I think about it. Then I take a bus and go to visit Becca.

  When I knock on the door, I’m all smiles as she answers. I’ve been thinking about her on the way, the times we played as children, the look on her face when she knew she was pregnant, and by the time I get there I’m actually looking forward to seeing her. She lets me in, and something’s wrong. Her face doesn’t change as she sees me. She admits me without much comment, and gestures to a chair, sitting down by Leo’s cot.

  I offer to make tea. She gives me half a smile, and I go into the kitchen. This is when I find her without food. There are the remnants of a loaf of bread in the house, some scrapings of butter, a blackened banana.

  Going back into the sitting room, I look at Becca. Her face, still puffy from the pregnancy, has somehow managed to shrink.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” I say.

  She closes her eyes, shrugs. “Yes.” Her voice with its pretty accent is dry, unused. She doesn’t even try to explain the situation.

  I sit her down and make her dictate a list for me. She doesn’t demur, and this scares me, that my wary sister hardly puts up a polite protest before telling me what she needs. I go to the supermarket, and she hardly protests either when I offer to take Leo along for the ride. Some fresh air will do him good, I tell her, without looking at the piles of unwashed plates or sniffing at the stale smell in the room, and it’s true, it will. It will also be nice to be able to see him without her influence, her eyes on me.

  I take him shopping. He’s fractious, then worried, then good as gold as he gets used to me again, and when I bring him home, I find Becca asleep on the floor.

  This is terrifying. Becca who scolded me for letting my socks slide down, who always carried a handkerchief and brushed my hair and made me make my bed neatly has slumped in a heap on her untidy floor, not even curled up gracefully but collapsed in a heap of sticky, child-bloated flesh.

  “Exhausted,” she says when she wakes up. Her eyes skitter like a suspect’s under questioning, she’s confused, confounded with the weight of her fatigue. I make an offer I wouldn’t have ventured with a healthy, trim, real Becca.

  And she accepts. And through this, unexpectedly, a little more goodness comes into my life.

  What I do is take Leo for walks. Over the next few days I reorganize myself, rise early and work late, so I can walk him at lunchtime while Becca sleeps. I could walk him in the evenings, but I don’t want that. It isn’t that I’m afraid of muggers and tripping in the dark. It’s something to do with his serene, intent face, his footie pajamas, the way the spokes of the carriage glint in the light. A woman who pushes a carriage gets to craving the sun on her face. I don’t know what ad or poster I’ve been taken in by.

  We go to the parks, Leo and I. We like the parks. Daytime, there’s nothing in them but people walking two-footed and safe. Considering that this city, like most, is built around its parks, each circular expanse ringed with houses, I haven’t been in them very much. Not in the light. My place is in a cheap area, which means it’s far away from the parks; actually it’s at an intersection, where the districts around Queens and Abbot’s meet, which is about as cheap as you can get, and parks have not been part of my daytime life. Until now. Leo and I enjoy the parks, we stride through them and admire the glistening grass. Some days I even think of taking him into the woods, watching the watery winter sun cut through the bare tree limbs, although I never quite do it. Instead, we walk the paths, and I sing to him.

  Dance for your daddy

  My little laddy

  Dance for your daddy

  My little man.

  Then I think I shouldn’t sing that. Leo has learned to focus his eyes, and his daddy wasn’t there. Any day now he will learn to smile, and his daddy isn’t here. I change it to something I like better.

  Dance for your auntie

  My little laddy

  Dance for your auntie

  My little man.

  You shall have a fishy

  On a little dishy

  You shall have a fishy

  When the boat comes in.

  I sing, and we dance. I take his soft hands and move them, gently so as not to hurt his shoulders, and dance with his arms. One potato, two potato. Seventies disco. Locomotion. Flamenco, even, curling his little wrists back and forth. We can dance anything.

  I tell him when he’s older I’ll buy him ice cream. I tell him I’ll let him chase the pigeons and never ask him to stop. I tell him I’ll carry him on my shoulders, my back, and he’ll see how high the world goes. I steal paper from work, colored paper meant to write memos on, and fold it, doing origami patterns I first learned to while away the cold hours of moon night in the creches. For Leo, I make tiny airplanes as long as my little finger, whirly star shapes, birdies, and string them from the hood of his carriage, where they jump and spin in the wind. I tap them as I sing the words. “You shall have a fishy, on a little dishy, you shall have a fishy when the boat comes in.” He and I, we roll through the parks together, and I pull his blankets up around him when the wind bites my face, and promise him fishies.

  ELEVEN

  Ellaway claims to have been driving home when his car broke down. Checking the map, I see that he was on the road from northeast to central. He works north, he lives central. His apartment is on the east side of Kings, a lovely area and an expensive one.

  If his car broke down, then he would have abandoned it and gone to look for a shelter. That’s what he claims to have done, and it makes sense: no one would stay in their car if they started furring up, not unless they wanted to destroy it. Every now and again you get some fool trying to claim insurance that way, sitting in their car and waiting for the moon to rise so they can claim it wasn’t their fault they demolished the inside. Usually you find them collapsed on some road, stunned, and bleeding from a dozen glass cuts.

  So the car would have been there the next morning. If it was on a major roadway, DORLA agents would have towed it away; if it was on a small side road, they’d have left it to the daytime shift, lycos who will have ricked and recovered. Ellaway left it on a main street, which is touch and go; DORLA tow trucks might have picked it up, or they might have left it, depending on how tired they were.

  And what happened then? Ellaway would have been informed where his car was, and would have arranged to have it fixed. I don’t see him doing without his car for more than a few days. It would have been fixed, and he would have had it back. What I need to do is dig out the mechanic who fixed it, to testify if it was broken down.

  Then there’s the other question: why didn’t he reach a shelter? There were two nearby. Even if he didn’t know the area, or didn’t know where the shelters in it were, he should have known what to do; they’re set out logically, and kids get what-to-do-if-you-get-stuck-outside talks from about eight years old. He crippled Johnny. Pleading carelessness would be tantamount to walking him to the prison myself. Franklin won’t have it. I need honest error. If he really didn’t know the area, it’s possible he got lost, underestimated how long it takes to walk places because he’s used to driving, tried to find a shelter by trial and error rather than following the drill. Stupid, but not criminal. It’s possible.

  It just isn’t likely.

  I do some hacking, some hunting. The details of Ellaway’s car are easy enough to find: blue Maserati, two years old, registration E99 PRM4. Two hours turn up nothing more useful. Internet searches have never been my strong point, and by the end of the afternoon, I’m seeing green flashes every time I turn my eyes.


  I telephone Paul. He picks up within a couple of rings, and I grip the phone with both hands. “Listen,” I say, “I think I may have to work late.”

  “Oh, don’t do that.” We were going to meet tonight. I so want to. If I keep working efficiently, I ought to be able to make it.

  “I don’t think I can, Kelsey. I have to—I have to…” My voice rattles like a stick dragged along rough ground.

  “Don’t panic,” he says amiably. “Take a breath, tell the nice man what you have to do.”

  I rest my head on my hand. “Turn water into wine. I want to go home.”

  “Yes, do that. That’s a better idea.”

  “I can’t. I have to stay here and turn water into wine.”

  “Aha,” says Paul, sounding almost excited. “Now, this is a splendid opportunity for an object lesson I had in mind. Are you sitting comfortably?”

  “I—I’m sitting.” I’ve had a few of Paul’s object lessons before now. They’re one of the reasons I want to see him tonight.

  “Now, for this you will need a pack of bubble gum.”

  “Paul, I’m in the DORLA building. We’re grown-ups. Nobody has bubble gum. You have to pass through a bubble gum detector at the door.”

  “You do have bubble gum. I put some in your briefcase the other day.”

  “You were going through my briefcase?”

  “You really should tidy that thing up, you know. No wonder you didn’t spot the bubble gum under all that mess.”

  “Paul, I can’t believe you went through my briefcase.”

  “I didn’t go through it,” he says, like a perfect innocent. “I just put some bubble gum in it.”

  “You—” I give up. The man is not going feel guilty about this. “Well, I just hope you didn’t unwrap it first. And don’t do it again.”

  “Actually I believe in English it’s pronounced ‘thank you.’”

  “Ohh…thank you.” I glare at the phone and drag my briefcase onto my lap. Sure enough, right at the bottom there’s a narrow package, virulent green with big chunky letters, informing me that I’m the owner of a pack of Apple Bomb. “I’m dating a man who puts gum in my bag,” I say, pushing my luck, just a little push, because I’d so love to see it right itself.