by Les Zig
We don’t move and I think we share an understanding now that this is it, that the next word spoken or the next action taken is the one that makes or breaks everything for good. I know if I reach out for her, if I just open my arms, she’ll melt into me, and maybe things will be okay; and she knows there’s nothing left for her to say, that it’s not even about my acceptance now, because she’s right—it’s not just the way things are, but the way we are, the way I am.
She returns to the bedroom and I hear her dressing. I close the fridge door, and sit on the couch. When she comes out of the bedroom, she walks past me without looking, and leaves my place. She doesn’t slam the door and in my head, I time how long it would take for her to get to her car and start it, feeling the glimmer of hope she might turn and come back in. But, sure enough, I hear her car splutter to life and then drive off, the rumble of its engine fading into the night.
Then it’s nothing.
Nothing but the silence.
Futures
24
I climb back into bed and the rest of the night is interminable, with the sense something is wrong but that come morning it’ll be okay. Only when the morning comes, all I have is the reality of what went on.
Everything seems darker when I get up. There’s not enough light in the lounge and the kitchenette. Breakfast is colourless. Outside, the trees are charcoal, and the blueness of the sky is subdued, like I’m seeing it through gauze. The community theatre is a blob of brown, and when I get on my train the conversation of morning commuters is muffled. At work, the chorus of the floor is hushed, like somebody told them to be as quiet as possible. Boyd stands in his corner, arms folded over his chest.
I walk to my desk, preparing to exchange the usual pleasantries. Sam flashes that big smile of his—I see he has shots of beaches up on his computer. Ronnie nods to me, and when I sit down and put my headset on, he rolls his chair up.
‘You okay?’ he says.
‘I guess.’
‘You need something, shout.’
‘Thanks.’
He rolls back to his own desk.
The morning takes the route of mornings as I used to know them—call strangers to ask them to donate for the benefit of research into heart disease. I repeatedly check the time on my computer. The morning crawls, but I don’t mind, because at least it’s something to do. Boyd keeps watching.
I hit the number for my next caller as my eyes fall on my desk drawer. Of course. I jerk it open and there sits the satchel Julie gave me. In my headset, the phone rings. I pull out the satchel, run my hands over its soft leather, then open the flap. The phone continues to ring in my ear. Fanning out from the satchel are the flyers from the theatre I stuffed in there, as well as some of the pages of my play. It all seems inconsequential now. The flyers might be fast food menus. Julie’s scribbled notes on my play might be hieroglyphs.
The ringing stops, and a familiar gravelly voice answers. ‘Hello?’
I check my computer, although I know the name I’m going to find before I see it: Harold Weekes.
‘Hello, Mr Weekes, I’m calling on behalf of the Heart Disease Research Foundation,’ I say. ‘I was hoping I could impose—’
‘How many times do you need to be told to get fucked?’ Weekes asks.
I close the satchel, sit it on my desk, and lean back in my chair.
‘You must be so fucking dumb,’ Weekes says, ‘that I need to keep telling you to get fucked. What is it that’s not clear about me telling you to get fucked?’
I close my eyes.
‘You fucking there, you fucking moron?’
‘Go fuck yourself.’ I barely breathe the words out.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I said, go fuck yourself,’ I say louder now.
‘How dare you—’
‘How dare me? How dare you, you fucking child!’ I spring up from my chair and faces turn to me. ‘I’m trying to raise money for a good fucking cause—you hear me? A good fucking cause!—and I don’t need your fucking childish attitude!’
‘Now—’
‘You don’t want me to fucking call, you ask to be taken off our fucking list!’ I say, and now I’m aware that everybody in the floor has stopped to watch me, but I don’t care. ‘You don’t fucking play the prick, you fucking fucked-up motherfucking fuckwitted fuckhead—’
The phone goes dead, but it’s not Weekes who’s hung up, but Boyd who’s rushed over to disconnect the call. Then everything happens in gestures: he gestures to my headset, that I should take it off, and I do and lay it on my computer keyboard; he beckons me to follow him, and leads me into his office; he points at a chair opposite his own, and I sit down as he closes the door behind me. Then he sits down in his chair.
I can’t hold his gaze—not that there’s any belligerence in Boyd, or that he’s at all intimidating, but it’s the awareness of what I’ve done. I look this way and that. Boyd’s office is small, with one bookshelf containing manuals, another filled with paperbacks. On his desk sits a Newton’s cradle, and also a picture of him with a pretty brunette and two girls who can’t be older than eight.
I finally force a strained smile. ‘I’m sorry. I’m going through a few things.’
‘August, after something like that …’ Boyd holds out his hands helplessly.
‘I understand.’
‘I can refer you to counselling—’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Are you sure? That was … explosive.’
‘I think it’s been building for a long time. I’ll be all right.’
I wait to be dismissed but Boyd doesn’t move. There’s such concern in his face, such worry in his unblinking eyes, that I feel bad I’ve put him in this position. He leans back in his chair and sighs, but his gaze doesn’t deviate from me. I look down at the carpet, rub my feet into it.
‘It’s all right, Boyd. I’m sorry.’
I get up and Boyd springs from his chair, comes around his desk and thrusts out his hand. It’s bizarre he wants a handshake, but I do it anyway.
‘If there’s anything I can do to help you, August …’
‘Thanks.’ I turn and open the door.
‘Good luck, August.’
I walk across the floor, back to my desk, grab my satchel. Everybody stares at me. Sam has his face covered behind one hand, like he’s embarrassed for me. Ronnie, wide eyed, jumps up.
‘You all right?’ he says.
‘Yeah.’
He walks me to the elevator. Some people titter with laughter. Ronnie scowls at them so they shut up, pushes the button for the elevator, then throws an arm around me. The elevator arrives and the doors open. Ronnie releases me and I step in. The doors start to close and Ronnie thrusts his hand out. The doors retract.
‘Are you okay?’ he says. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘I’m all right.’
‘Are you sure?’
I nod.
Ronnie mimics a phone with his hand, holding it to his ear and his mouth, and says, ‘Call me if you need to’, as the doors close on the call centre.
When I leave the building, it actually has become dark—storm clouds have gathered, ready to burst onto the city, while a cold wind carries away the occasional spatter of rain before it can hit the ground.
I shove my hands in my pockets, unsure what to do, so I walk until I end up back at Charisma’s. It’s too early for the lunchtime crowd, so my usual booth is empty. I rest with my back against the window, and drop my satchel on the table.
Within moments, Nicole arrives. She purses her lips. ‘You look like shit.’
‘Thanks.’
She smiles. ‘Welcome to the real world.’
I hold her gaze, but she doesn’t flinch, brazen in her defiance as she rests her hands on her hips, as if challenging me.
‘I don’t want to live in the real world,’ I say.
‘We don’t always get what we want. What can I get you?’
I order a beer, and Nicole’s
no sooner left than my phone rings: Gen. Ronnie probably messaged her that I’d been fired. I decline the call and message her that I don’t feel like talking—at least not yet. She responds to tell me to call her.
Nicole returns with my beer. I take a gulp, but it’s so bitter in my mouth I almost spit it out. The barista, that good-looking European, watches me and snorts. I can see what he’s thinking: I’m pathetic. He’s probably invented a narrative that I bombed out with Julie, and I’ve got what I deserve because she was so far out of my league. He should’ve been with her. That’s what he believes. I wonder how he would’ve handled her secret. He’d leer. Love it. See it as an opportunity to do in life what Julie does in her films. I finish my beer, downing it in several gulps, and when I order a second beer, the barista comes out and delivers it himself.
‘We’re not a bar,’ he says. His little name tag identifies him as Dominic.
‘What?’
‘We’re not a bar. You gonna drink, and just drink, go to a bar. Okay?’
‘I’ll have a ham and cheese focaccia, please.’
‘A ham and cheese focaccia?’
I nod. ‘A ham and cheese focaccia.’
‘A ham and cheese focaccia?’
‘Yeah. A ham and cheese focaccia.’
Dominic rolls his eyes, but retreats to the counter to prepare my lunch. I’m not that hungry, so I think about what exactly it is I should be doing. Nicole brings over my focaccia, and I eat it mechanically, needing a third beer to get through it. That’s when it occurs to me that maybe I’m here hoping that Julie will come in, like she used to for lunch. I don’t know what I’d do if she did, so I finish my focaccia, drink only half my third beer, pay my bill and leave.
25
My course is undeviating when I arrive home: up the stairs, through the heavy metal blaring from the neighbours’, into my place and straight into the bathroom. I pick up the bottle of scotch from where it lies, and clamber into the tub. The closeness of it—like a cocoon—surrounds me.
The first gulp of scotch has me coughing; the second makes me splutter. I cap the bottle and focus on how hard and cold the tub is under me. Now, the neighbours’ music is barely audible. I wish it were louder—so loud that it would drown everything out.
I fold my arms over my chest and look at the light fixture in the ceiling. After my wrist was stitched up, a hospital counsellor came to speak to me. She told me that when I found I was losing myself in my thoughts, to perform an exercise in mindfulness—pick an object, any object, and observe it. Describe it. The exercise would help me externalise.
The light fixture is round. Bulbous. About the size of a rockmelon. It’s grey. The smallest shadow is cast to the right of its rim. I can see a screw in the rim—the first time I’ve ever noticed that, since I’ve never had to change the bulb inside. On and on my observations go, and I find myself not only externalising, but losing myself until the bathroom dissolves around me, and then me with it, and I’m floating, disembodied, other than for my memories of Julie.
She’s so unreal to me—things we did are unreal to me. Being together. The sex. Her encouraging me to finish my book. The memories unravel. Then it’s Lisa. The arguments. But the security. She was a constant. The blissfulness when Bobby was born. The happiness of Lisa telling me she was pregnant. Despite Bobby’s parentage, that happiness had at least been real. Even after I found out the truth, the love and bond I had with Bobby was real. I’d loved Lisa, too. That had been real. And as much as finding out she’d cheated on me had devastated me, worse had been the doubt that being who I am—with all the doubts, insecurities, and obsessiveness—had driven her away to somebody else. Then it’s my life. Coming away from Mum and Dad’s funeral. Wanting to do something important. Wanting to write. Wanting to have a life so complete—the partner, the kids, the dog, the house with the little lawn—that it would insulate me from my loneliness.
The front door opens. Jingling. Then heavy breath. The front door closes. Little hurried footsteps, and steam-train panting. Lighter footsteps, tentative almost. A thump on the bathroom door that makes me jump. Then scratching. I sink further into the tub. The bathroom door opens. The little footsteps scurry to the tub, then Jet’s face gawps at me, panting, and her ears go back. The shadow of Gen forms above her. Gen sinks onto the floor, lifts her knees to her chest, and folds her arms around her legs. Jet whines.
‘What happened?’ Gen asks.
‘Why do you think anything happened?’ I try to be glib.
‘August.’
I’m embarrassed now that Gen should find me like this. When I called her following my aborted suicide attempt, I was sitting in the tub, clutching my wrist. She came over, calmly took a towel from my linen cupboard, and folded it around the cut—she didn’t even ask about it.
‘Well?’ she says.
‘We broke up. What else was going to happen?’
Gen lowers her face. I can hear her thinking about what she should say—there’s the typical stuff, but she knows it’s not going to work.
‘I did the right thing, right?’ I ask. ‘I mean, how long were we together? A couple of weeks? I shouldn’t let this bother me. I did the right thing. Right?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘You had no problem telling me that when I was with Lisa.’
‘August, I want you to be happy. Pat, me, Oscar, Jet, we all want you to be happy—whatever that takes.’
Of course they do, but I’m the bane of their existence that they’re always having to worry about, the shadow on their lives.
‘So this is what you’re going to do instead?’ Gen asks.
I grunt noncommittally.
‘You get knocked down, you stay down.’
I say nothing.
‘Just gonna stay in the tub.’
‘Maybe I’ll live in here.’
‘Come on, August. Get up.’
‘It could become a trend, living in the tub.’
‘August.’
‘Get everything delivered to me.’
‘Talk to me,’ Gen says. ‘Properly.’
‘You know it all.’
‘Talk to me.’
‘I don’t know how I got here.’ My voice almost breaks, and I swallow, feel the tears threatening. I take a deep breath to compose myself. ‘I don’t know how I built my life to become this.’
‘We all get knocked down. It’s not exclusive to you.’
‘I seem to be especially good at thinking I’m building something. But then everything I know crumbles. Lisa, then …’
Gen says nothing. Jet’s collar jingles as she heads over and I hear her plump weight hit the floor, and then a groan, like she wants attention. Gen strokes her head. It’s the perfect distraction for Gen. She’s not going to counter me. She’s going to let me unravel.
‘It’s not even about Julie—not specifically, but …’
‘What?’
I sit up in the tub. ‘Just that somebody could be interested in me after Lisa, with my life being … this, with me being … me.’
‘Is that it?’
I shrug, lay back in the tub. ‘Why is my life always a lie? Why is that what it always turns out to be? For five years, I thought I had it good with Lisa, and that was a lie. She was fucking somebody else! The child I thought was mine was somebody else’s! And I keep thinking maybe I did that; maybe I drove her to that because I’m this bundle of shit. Still, I try to put myself back together—this place, that job, that stupid fucking book I’m writing. I met somebody and she wasn’t who I thought she was. Everything crashes down around me!’
‘Then you get up and try again.’
‘That’s it? Blunder into the next fucking mess? That simple?’
‘It’s not simple. It’s hard. It’s cruel. And it can be torturous. But it’s what you have to do, and keep doing, even if nothing ever works out. You keep trying. That’s life. It can be a bigger cunt than Lisa, and more sadistic than you’ll ever know, but it’s why you live:
the journey, the desire to keep pushing, to see what comes next. Even if you accomplished everything you ever wanted—if you wrote bestseller after bestseller, met the woman of your dreams, and had a house full of brats—you keep pushing, you keep pushing forward, keep going, because there is no end point where you can be satisfied or fully realised. The only finish line in this life is death—like Mum and Dad. Their lives have ended. Our lives are going on. You keep moving forward, despite the pain, despite the setbacks, despite whatever thwarts you.’ Her voice chokes.
‘You should write a self-help book,’ I say.
Gen gets up, and I hear Jet thump to her feet. ‘You’re my brother and I love you and I’ll always be there for you. What Lisa did to you was unimaginably shit so I can understand—we can all understand—why it knocked you around. It would knock anybody around. And what happened with Julie, well … I don’t know what to say about it. But you need to start dealing with things. Things hit you and you let them keep you down. You’ve gotta get up and try. I have Pat. I have a baby at home. I have Jet here. People have lives and problems aside from you. I’ll always be there for you, and I’ll always help you, but only as long as you try.’
She throws something that glints through the air. Jet leaps for it and balances against the rim of the tub with her front legs as she watches the object clank against the wall, ricochet and disappear under my back. I scrounge around, until I feel something cold and jagged against my palm, and close my hand around it—my spare key.
‘Come on, Jet,’ Gen says.
She leaves the bathroom. Jet gives me one last almost regretful look, then waddles after her. I listen to them until they leave my place and close the door. Then they’re gone, and nothing remains but me and the darkness, and that’s when I suppose I have two choices: stay here or take her advice and force myself to move. But right now, I can’t.
I can’t.