The Inside Out Man

by Fred Strydom

  But that didn’t happen. Jolene was alone.

  What’ve you been up to? I tried to sound unconcerned.

  Looking for something, she said, stroking a salmon-coloured scarf as she held it up.

  I see. Where was it?

  In Leonard’s room. I left it there a while ago.

  Of course I knew what that meant. The unabridged version being that she’d left the scarf in the room on one of the occasions she and Leonard had been together, in that bed. It wasn’t as if I didn’t already know about this, but the fact that she thought it fine to go rummaging for her stuff in his bedroom while I was around stirred up something akin to anger. More anger than outright jealousy, I reckoned.

  So, with all the rooms in the house, you’re staying in Leonard’s? she said, following me down the last few stairs.

  Excuse me?

  His room. You’ve been staying in his room. Sleeping in his bed. It hasn’t been made. It’s pretty obvious, Bent. All your stuff’s on the floor.

  All I said was yes.

  We walked to the patio. She was clearly not amused that I’d taken over Leonard’s room—if anything, her face clouded over with disgust. I gave her the drink I’d mixed for her, and she took a sip as she leant her backside against the table.

  I should be off, she said suddenly, already heading for the door. It was just supposed to be a pop-by to say hi.

  See you tonight?

  She winced and cast her eyes about, as if looking for some kind of hook, one that might pull her from a scene where she’d forgotten her lines.

  Not tonight, she said. I’m just so tired. I’m thinking of taking it easy and having an early one. You don’t mind, do you?

  Of course not, I said.

  She opened the front door, letting in the white-hot day, then she turned one last time, pecked me on the cheek, and put on her sunglasses. That was it. She was done. She wasn’t going out with quite the enthusiasm she’d displayed coming in, and I wondered if this might have anything to do with her trip upstairs.

  Treat yourself, Bent. Do something fun. You need it. The gravel crunched as she walked to her car. Turning, she said, I’ll see you soon. I promise.

  Those last two words. Nobody uses them unless they’ve at least considered the possibility of not following through. I stepped out onto the porch. Jolene waved her scarf at me, and it fluttered briefly before she got into her car. I watched her pull away and chug down the gravel she’d arrived on just fifteen minutes before. That’s how long the visit had lasted, so what had the point of her pop-by been? To fetch her scarf?

  I closed the door, went upstairs, past Leonard’s locked door, to the bedroom, where I watched Jolene drive to the gate. I was still holding my drink, and I threw back the last of it. I couldn’t come to any conclusion regarding Jolene’s visit—why she’d turned up like that, unannounced, and why she’d left in such a damn hurry.

  I’ll see you soon. I promise.

  I promise.

  With a sigh, I fell into an armchair at the window. My glass slipped from my fingers and hit the floor. It rolled in a semi-circle, drumming a tune till it came to a stop. And that’s when the chuckling began.

  Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle … and then the voice floated into the room.

  I do love that woman’s perfume. A long, exaggerated inhalation, and then, with a raspy gurgle, he seemed to muster the strength to go on. So you think you’ve got it all worked out … Bent? Think you know exactly what’s going on here, do you? Truth is … you have no idea at all. And now you’re wondering … if Jolene was here, if she was in the corridor, why didn’t I take my one chance to get out? Hmm? Well, let me tell you something: Jolene came up here because she knows—she knows more than you think she does—and because it was time she and I had a chat about things … about moving forward. So that’s what we did. We chatted. I told her what a horrible individual you are. She said she knew … and she was sick of pretending to like you. And you know what I said to Jolene? I said, hang on, baby, you hang in there just a little longer. Suck it up. Go to the bedroom and grab that scarf you left behind. Tell him that’s the reason you went there. Stick it out a bit … because any day now, Bent’s gonna get a new visitor at the door. Someone I arranged for months ago. Mr. Phase Two. Someone to help out … to put all the pieces in place. Cos honestly now, Bent, you can’t possibly think I’d come in here without a plan, hey? You don’t really think I’d let you shit all over my life? I mean, don’t you find it the least bit strange how Jolene just … latched on to you? Why would that be? After all, you aren’t the most charming sonofabitch in the world. You’re okay-looking, but there’s not much else on offer in any other department … and from what she tells me, I do mean any department, chief.

  I pushed myself up and out of the armchair and moved along the corridor towards Leonard’s locked door. I didn’t buy any of what he was saying; it was all a trick. One moment he was pissed off that Jolene and I had found each other—and the next he was saying she was part of some grand plan?

  Believe me or don’t believe me, Bent, but that’s what Jolene and I talked about. And I know exactly what you’re thinking: if that’s all true, why would I tell you? What would be the point? Well, like they used to say in the movies … that’s for me to know and you to find out. Because, frankly, at this stage … you’re so deep in your own shit it’s not gonna make an iota of difference either way. You’re on a one-way trip to the town of Fucked. And you know what my only regret is? That I won’t get to see your face when you realise what’s coming your way.

  50.

  There’s little that consumes one as much as envy does.

  Sadness. Disappointment. Regret. They can screw us up, do their worst—but in the end, they all have noble roots. Envy, on the other hand, does not. It eats and eats and shits where it eats. Envy is a tapeworm moving through our bowels, so primal, so efficient, that it’s never needed to evolve. Envy doesn’t just starve us out. It inhabits us.

  I didn’t believe Leonard’s story, but still I felt envy. The idea that I was on the outside of some secret arrangement between Leonard and Jolene began to consume me. The most likely explanation, I tried to persuade myself, was that Leonard was full of shit. I could tell when I was being had. Leonard, yes. Jolene, no. She’d shared genuine feelings with me. She’d trusted me enough to introduce me to her son. She’d never bring her kid in on a con, would she? No. Leonard was lying. He was desperate. And I wasn’t falling for it.

  I was still confused about Jolene’s sudden arrival and her even more sudden exit, but there were a dozen possible explanations for that. Surely Leonard, figuring I wouldn’t be coming by with a casserole any time soon, would have wanted to pull the plug on the plan? Who knew what was going on inside his head? Maybe I’d underestimated his commitment. Maybe he wasn’t ready to come out. Maybe he’d be happy for that door to open only after he was a pile of bones. After all, nothing says anti-materialism quite like becoming a goddamned ghost.

  As for Jolene, well …

  If only I’d been able to record her visit with a camera, and pore over each word, each gesture. That might’ve been helpful. Then I’d fix a whiskey, grab an armchair, play the video on a big screen, study every smile and non-smile and blink and tic and sigh and nod, and I’d take notes, and rewind, and watch again, and take more notes.

  That’s what I’d do.

  Because even though Jolene had suggested we have a quiet night apart, I wasn’t convinced that’s what she’d meant. She was setting tests of her own, hoping I’d say something to reel her in again. How many times had she gone out of her way to see me? That’s what she really wanted from me. That same level of boldness. Guts. Proof I could be just like Leonard … the part of him she wanted, anyway. Resilient. Determined. Mr. Take Charge.

  But how was I meant to behave to prove I could be the man she wanted me to be?

  51.

  It was between Bentley for Men Intense and Tom Ford’s Neroli Portofino, my two favourite col
ognes. I’ll admit, the regular Bentley for Men is not bad (fragrant wood and leather with black pepper and bergamot) but the Intense is an improvement. It’s out with the bergamot and the bay leaves and in with the labdanum and sandalwood. Bold. Powerful. Intimidating. That would have been my first choice, but for the specific purposes of the evening ahead, I went with Tom’s Neroli. Casual. Confident. Approachable. Summer-come-early.

  I put it aside to shave and floss. I picked out a black Louis Vuitton jacquard button-up and a pair of reverse-pleated khakis. A Rolex Submariner. Tan leather monk straps. Then two spurts of Neroli. After that, I went downstairs, grabbed a bottle of wine from the kitchen, decided on the Mustang, and hit the road. The sun morphed from yellow to late-evening gold as I imagined Jolene throwing her arms around my neck, her I knew you’d come, been waiting for you! and the dinner she’d made, and working our way through a few bottles, maybe even some board games with Edgar, and if things got late, her invitation to stay over …

  By the time I arrived, the sun was gone but a pinkish glow still hung on the horizon. I parked in a quiet cul-de-sac, got out, and walked up a steep slope to her gate. No bell. No intercom. But I knew to slide my arm over and undo the latch, and the gate obliged.

  Her front garden looked different. I couldn’t say why, since everything seemed to be in the exact same spot. The pots in the trees. The lumpy couch beside the tabletop made of small triangular shards of mirror. The satyr and the pissing cherub. The untended, throttling vines.

  I leapt up the three chipped concrete steps, past the pond with the reeds sticking out and its four lippy fish, and stepped onto the lawn that ran around the old house. It was standing before me now, flaking farmhouse-white, red-roofed, veined with creepers.

  Laughter and voices were coming from the house. I couldn’t see anyone, but lamplight from the window gilded the garden. Shadows fluttered against an inside wall. Clinking sounds, as cutlery hit crockery. I stood at the blue front door, looked up, saw that the sky was black.

  Music. Clearly a recording. Piano. Crooning.

  A laugh. Mumble-mumble-mumble. More clinking. And then a chorus: Cheers!

  I made my way to the dining-room window. Peering in, I could see her—dressed in a black dress, but accessorised with the salmon-coloured scarf—laughing and flirting with a table of strangers who sat in front of their food. I didn’t recognise any of them. An old black woman. A tall man in his late forties wearing a beret and tortoiseshell glasses. A blonde. A hotshot kid in his twenties. Good-looking, with gelled-up hair and a leather jacket.

  A bearded man beside Jolene dabbed his mouth with a napkin and leant over to say something in her ear. She smiled, slapped him on the wrist, and topped up his wineglass.

  Not one of them saw me.

  Invisible me, in her front garden, standing beneath a sky that had metamorphosed into night. Who were these people? Why hadn’t I been invited? Why had she lied to me about taking it easy, having an early one? I began to feel queasy, right in the gut. I didn’t understand any of what I was seeing, but the vacuum created by my incapacity to fathom the situation was soon filled with a new and terrible feeling.

  No. Not just a feeling.

  Something else. A gestation. Some oleaginous thing throbbing in my stomach. Something hungry. Something ambitious. Not just Envy the Tapeworm, but something that would keep growing, burst right out of me, abandon the broken husk of my body, get hungrier, eat the world, swallow the sun—until it digested all of time and space.

  I stared into the warm and busy house, close enough to the window to fog the glass, losing sight of them all with each burst of white breath, and then seeing them again, and then losing them, and seeing them, and losing them, and seeing them …

  I arrived back at the mansion totally sopping. The clouds had decided to hold a meeting and concoct a plan to piss the proverbial. I headed to the front door. I flipped the light switch, but the weather had knocked the power out. In the dark, I climbed the stairs. Each step thudded, like a dull faraway knock from inside a buried coffin.

  At the top of the landing, I felt my way around until I found another switch. I flicked another dud. The blackness was thicker along those top corridors, despite the drizzle of blue moonlight on the staircase landing. I stroked my hand along the wall, turned a corner, feeling my way until I stood in front of a closed wooden door. My hand slid down to the handle, turned it. Locked. I let go, kept walking. Pat-pat-pat. Tap-tap-tap. A second door. Locked. Same with the next three doors.

  I was about to turn around, make my way back to the staircase and start again, but I couldn’t. I’d taken one too many turns. I was disorientated. Demagnetised. I flung my arms about, grabbing at nothing, until I struck yet another locked door.

  And then, at that absurd moment, I heard a lunatic’s laughter, a sound that carried along the corridors. If it weren’t for my frustration (and my mental image of Jolene’s flirty smile and her slap), I’d have been more surprised that Leonard still had the energy to be amused after five days without food. His voice was gravelly and his breath short—but it was him, all right. He’d never be able to keep this up, though. Soon enough, he’d go silent.

  Coughing. Raw and rough. You thought you were special. You thought you were in love. Yeah? Maniacal laughter. Okay, here’s the truth. You ready for it? Right, let’s start with ownership and exclusivity. That’s what this is about. The source of all your pain. Not love. Not loyalty. Not some … special connection. A cough collapsed into a laughing fit. Nope. You thought you had her to yourself. Thought you’d bought her, didn’t you? Livestock. Branded with your big hot poker. Ownership and exclusivity—all we ever really want.

  I careered along the darkness of the corridor, trying one door after another. Each doorknob rattled, wouldn’t budge—wouldn’t offer entrance or escape.

  Leonard’s voice rasped on: Hey! We do it every day: it’s not yours—it’s mine! My sunset! My favourite song! My best friend! My heartache! My home! My woman! My. My. My. Me. Me. Me. Mine. Mine. Mine.

  I surrendered. Slumping to the floor, I decided to stay right there—until the sun came up, or possibly forever, until every clock of the world got wise and parked its hands. I calmed my breathing, closed my eyes, listened to the beating rain, the thunder. And beyond, I could still hear Jolene’s laugh, that Cheers! as they’d all raised their glasses. Beneath everything, there was the phlegmy cackle of a man who’d long ago left behind his own black, byzantine corridor.

  Found his open door in the darkness.

  His own way in. His own way out.

  52.

  The pale light of morning told me I was in Leonard’s bed. At some point I must have got up, and in a somnambulist state, sans panic, I’d managed to pilot myself through the darkness with involuntary ease.

  The first thing I did was call Jolene. I was still reeling over what I’d witnessed, but the prospect of not seeing her was worse. On the phone, I was brief and polite, said I’d like to meet up with her. I made a bad joke. She didn’t laugh, just said I could join her at the supermarket. Grocery shopping wasn’t exactly the get-together I’d had in mind, but that was the extent of the offer, so I took it.

  The supermarket was a sterile white, the colour of corporate heaven. Shoppers glided around like angels who’d had their wings clipped, trying to make up for it with the crap in their trolleys. The pan-flute rendition of a movie soundtrack was periodically interrupted by a voice reminding us of a washing-powder discount. Jolene steered her trolley along an aisle lined with an absurdly large variety of cereals, where actual fruits were nothing more than the dead and forgotten ancestors of “five fruitilicious flavours,” hawked by sunglasses-wearing starfish and giraffes sporting basketball vests.

  I hardly knew what to say to Jolene. I walked alongside her as she strolled from aisle to aisle, working her way through a handwritten list. Edgar had his own plan, running from shelf to shelf, pointing out one thing after another to his mother, who mostly turned him down with a sweet
smile.

  Half the time I don’t know what Edgar’s showing me, she observed as I ambled beside her. I don’t have to, though. The more fun it looks, the worse it is for his health—that’s the general rule.

  I said nothing. Though I’d half looked forward to our little supermarket walk, now that I was there, the anger was back. Minutes ticked by, and still she didn’t come clean about the dinner. My resentment bubbled up. Every passing second was a new insult on top of the last. She just kept on pushing her trolley, smiling at Edgar ahead.

  So, d’you have a g’night in? I finally said, a syllable or two short.

  Excuse me?

  Last night. You and Edgar. You had a good night in?

  She paused, then, Yes, thank you.

  That’s good.

  Yip.

  A little mother-son time.

  Sure.

  She grabbed a carton of soy milk, read the information, or didn’t, and put it in with the rest of the stuff.

  What did you get up to? I asked. Movies? Board games?

  Neither, actually. Jolene stopped, turned to me, a dead smile pegged to her lips. But we’re flattered by your interest in how we like to spend our time.

  Edgar ran up to us and told his mother about a new something he’d seen. A chocolate spread. She gently told him she couldn’t make any promises. He ran off. We kept walking. Not talking.

  And then I said: I know.

  Know what?

  About last night, I pushed on. Held my breath a second or two, then said, You had one of your dinners.

  She pierced me with her gaze. How would you know something like that?