Alison said, “You’re making this hard for yourself. Just give them another story then. Change it. Or start a new one. Give them what they want. They love the detective, they love him.” She chewed the last olive and put the little stick next to the others, and moved the one Martin had placed across so that it was standing in line.
The bar lady was back.
“Table six is ready now,” she said. “Sorry again about the wait.”
As Alison gathered her bag and her wine glass, Martin said, “And you, are you still with the person you stayed here for? I mean, did it work out?”
Alison looked up sharply, and said, “Martin, that’s none of your—” but the bar lady cut her off.
“Oh no, it’s okay,” she said. She was blushing, crimson showing on her tanned cheeks. “It didn’t work out with that guy. He turned out to be a total loser, but I’m with an amazing fella now that I would never have met if I hadn’t stayed in the first place. So it did work out. Not the way I thought it was going to. Not quite a fairy tale, but—”
Alison put her hand on the bar lady’s arm and said, “Really, I must apologise for him.”
The bar lady just smiled. The redness was fading from her cheeks now. “That’s okay, really. Number six is over there by the door. Enjoy your meal.”
As the evening turned, Martin couldn’t help but look around at the other diners. He watched them chew and mumble, saw heads tilt and eyebrows rise as they listened and were listened to. He saw one woman put down her fork, reach across and put her hand on the hand of the woman sitting opposite. The man at the next table was twisting and twisting his napkin in his hands just below the table edge. He and Alison talked about the present, guessed about the future, and laughed about the past. Maybe he was wrong about no-one in this room having life-changing moments.
A lifetime is long. He was thinking too quickly. He was thinking of change as being something instant, but change can happen at a creeping pace. It depends on the pressure. Change takes pressure and pressure needs to build. That build was one long moment, he just didn’t know when it would end.
Later, while Alison was looking at the dessert menu, she said, “If you do continue the Lucy story, don’t kill her off.”
Martin sat back in his chair, then forward. “What? Kill her off?”
“Well I’ve only read a few of your stories, but it seems like if there’s an attractive girl, she gets killed off.”
“Come on. How can I kill her off if it’s her story?”
Alison shrugged. She looked back at the menu. Martin leaned back again.
“I’ll just have a coffee, I’m full. You go ahead.”
“What age is Lucy?”
“Em, about your age actually, but I’ve been thinking of making her younger.”
“And what does she do? She doesn’t work in property, does she, Martin?”
“No, no, of course not. That would be far too … no, don’t worry, babe. I can be creative you know.”
“I know, I know.”
***
Chapter Eight
When Gregor comes through the door, he picks the sleeping Lucy up and carries her into the lounge, putting her on one of the sofas. He disappears and then comes back with a blanket which he puts over her. He disappears again.
Lucy hears the sounds of plates and cupboard doors, something being poured. Gregor comes through from the kitchen with a tray full of food, all in little silver trays. The smell makes Lucy’s stomach leap and she sits up. Her head feels too heavy for her body. She is suddenly aware of a great hollowness which has opened up inside her. Gregor puts the tray in front of her and passes her a plate.
“Go ahead,” he says, “it’s late, I know, but it’s really good, especially this.”
He takes a pancake roll from one of the trays and starts to eat. Lucy does the same. Inside the soft pancake is spinach and goat cheese, with the woody, fleshy meat of mushroom. The taste sends shivers to the bottom of her skull. She finishes the rolled pancake in two mouthfuls. She picks up a handful of light batter parcels and feels her teeth crunch into sharp explosions of anchovy and garlic.
Lucy starts to eat voraciously, grabbing some thinly sliced fried potato in a tomato dressing, feeling the kick of peppercorns send spikes of flavour through the roof of her mouth, up behind her eyes, and directly into the front of her brain, knocking at the inside of her forehead. She is picking up prawns in oil, tearing soft fresh bread, taking food from the foil dishes in both hands, luxuriating in the strong flavours, the salty roughness of cured pork, the juices of cherry tomatoes are dripping from her mouth down her chin.
She looks up to see Gregor sitting on the floor, cross-legged, with his rolled pancake still in his hand, watching her devour this food, but she doesn’t care. A pressure has been released. Oils and juices coat her fingers and smear across her face as she wipes her cheeks, as she cries and laughs and eats.
* * *
The next day Lucy wakes under the warm weight of a thick duvet. Her clothes are still on. Her face muscles ache, her jaw is stiff, and her head pounds as she squints around the room, at the brass lamp on the bedside table, the little girl on the wall, and the window, through which she can now see a blue sky.
There is a dressing gown on the window seat. She takes off the tracksuit leggings and boxer shorts and puts it on. She goes downstairs, following the smell of fresh coffee to the kitchen. She walks through the door then steps back again, stepping behind the frame.
Inside, Gregor is standing at the centre plinth with two other people. There is a black case on the green marble top. He has seen her back out of the doorway and gestures her in. The other two turn to face her. One is a woman, short and stubby with a massive shock of thick dark hair which is standing at impossible angles. She greets Lucy with a big smile. The other is a man, lean and angular, with a shaven head, slim glasses, orange t-shirt, braces, and a suit jacket. The woman stands as if to attention, and the man seems to be leaning against an invisible wall.
“This is Ula, and this is Franz,” he says. “Ula will take care of your hair and stuff, and Franz will fit you. Tell them what you would like, anything. I trust them. You can.”
He hands her a coffee and points to the table near the glass doors. Outside the doors the garden is green and glistening with freshly fallen rain. Next to the table there is a rail of clothes and on the tabletop sits a pile of materials.
“There’s food in the fridge. I have to go out.”
Gregor takes the black case and points to a mobile phone on the green marble.
“If you want to call me, call me. It’s the only number.” He turns to Ula and Franz. “Whatever she wants.”
They nod, Ula enthusiastically, and Franz languidly. Gregor walks from the kitchen out to the hallway. The door shuts.
Franz looks her coolly up and down, and Ula comes to her, arms outstretched. “Gregor is right, you are beautiful. We’ll take care of you. You are going to look amazing sweetie,” she says. Lucy holds her dressing gown tight around her.
“I have nothing … nothing to wear.”
Franz says, “I’ve got it darling. Let’s start comfy, the high fashion can wait. Let’s find out what you like. We can have some fun with it. While the cat’s away.”
He turns to the dining table and picks up an armful of clothes and materials. He is smiling now, patting and stroking the clothes on his arm.
“Take your coffee darling, shall we adjourn to your boudoir? Ula, can you bring some of those sweet pastries? We can do fitting and pastries. Upstairs?”
* * *
Gregor stays the first two nights with her in the house, both nights wishing her good night before going into his room and closing the door.
When he is in the house, he is walking in circles around the central plinth in the kitchen talking on the phone, or typing on his computer in the TV room. Once she opens the door of the upstairs gym room and sees him on the running machine, his muscular frame keeping a steady rhythm, sweat m
aking a V down his broad back, while some singing woman is being judged by four people behind an elaborate desk on the huge TV screen.
The rest of the week, he is gone.
During that first week Lucy spends a lot of time in bed, sleeping for hours and hours during the day, moving from one side of the double bed to the other, waking up sideways, looking from underneath the thick duvet at the cream walls, the cushioned window seat, the portrait of the little girl on the brink of tears. Her muscles ache and her head pounds.
At night she goes downstairs and sits in front of the big flat screen switching between channels. At these times, late at night in the empty house, she gets an urge to call Archie, to score a baggie or some pills. In her mind, he’s still lying in a pool of blood in his vest and pants, his nose cracked in the middle, fire rising up the walls around him as he blubbers and moans.
She wishes sleep would come. Hours stretch. She wants something to surrender to, something to drown in. When sleep does come, she dreams, and when she wakes, she remembers her dreams. It’s been a long time since she has, and she doesn’t want to. She longs for the dreamless blackness, the escape from her mind.
By the third night alone, she’s been through every drawer in every open room, searching for something to take. The vain hope that Gregor has a stash of something keeps her looking, and she checks and rechecks, but she finds nothing. On the shelves are books and art pieces, and when Lucy opens the drawers they’re all empty, but for the instructions for the television entertainment system in the TV room and a pair of leather gloves still in plastic wrapping. In the kitchen behind the cupboard doors there are stacks of plates and rows of glasses, upside down, never used.
On the evening of her fourth day alone in the big house, Gregor is back, preparing some food and putting clothes through the wash. There is a box on the marble plinth in the kitchen. Popping out of the top of the box are celery stalks, foil wrapping, and the tops of wine bottles.
Lucy takes a bottle and opens it immediately. Gregor sees this and smiles, taking glasses from the shelf. Lucy pours and starts drinking. Gregor picks up his glass and takes a sip.
When the spinning of the drier finishes he takes the clothes out and checks them, looking closely at the fabric before shaking his head and taking them out to the garden. He takes the grill off a barbecue bowl and puts the trousers and shirt in and splashes them with lighter fluid. He throws in a match, and as the flames catch, strolls back through the glass double doors, into the kitchen and stirs the pot.
“I need more clothes,” she says.
“In the morning Franz will be back with a selection of clothes for you. This is smelling really good, I hope you’re hungry.”
“You don’t have any music in this house.”
“There’s the TV.”
“That’s not the same.”
“What do you mean? There’s music channels on the TV.”
“You don’t own any music.”
“No. I don’t own any music. There’s music on the TV if I want it.”
“If you hear something you like don’t you want to own it, to hear it again?”
“No.”
“When you do watch TV, you only watch crappy reality shows.”
“True. Not all crappy. Some are really good.”
“How about good movies? Or horrors, or comedies?”
“Well you get all that in real life. Why bother looking at or reading something someone’s made up when you can see something that really happened? Isn’t that more interesting?”
“There’s something wrong with you. Something missing.”
Gregor laughs and stirs the pot some more, leaning his head over the steam to smell the aromas. He puts in a handful more of herbs. Through the glass double doors she can see the flames leaping up from the barbecue bowl.
“What kind of music do you like?” Gregor asks.
“Old stuff, swing.”
“Old stuff? Like what?”
“Swing.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“You don’t know swing? Like Frank Sinatra? They don’t play it much on the radio.”
“Wasn’t he an actor? Black and white? I didn’t know he did music. How did you get to hear it? Aren’t you way too young to be into that stuff?”
“My daddy used to play. What age do you think I am?”
“I think you are nineteen or twenty. What age do you think I am?”
“I don’t know. Too old for me.”
Gregor laughs again, still stirring the pot.
Now she changes the tone of her voice, the words get longer, more needy. Her accent becomes more pronounced as she says,
“Gregor, I don’t feel good. I need some medicine.”
“That’s okay. It’s okay not to feel good for a while. Give yourself a few more days. As long as you eat well, really, that makes all the difference. Come on, we will eat at the big table.”
Lucy watches as he lays out place mats and knives and forks and spoons on the thick wooden table, before going back and stirring the pot again. She’s finished her glass of wine. She pours some more.
“My mother showed me how to make chicken casserole when I was a boy. Of course, back then she picked the herbs from the garden and the verges. She made special dumplings but I’ve never been able to get them right. I did try, but I’ve given up on them, but the casserole …”
He lifts the stirring spoon to his lips and tastes.
“Well, you’ll see, it’s really something, even without my mother’s herbs. It’s missing something, ha ha, like me, but it still tastes … mmm, it’s nearly ready.”
“I’m not hungry. These lights are too much. I need something else, not food. Everything’s sharp. Every corner’s … cutting me. I need something. You know? Wine isn’t enough. Do you know? Have you ever felt like this?”
Gregor dims the lights and takes her by the elbow, walking her across the room to the big wooden table.
“Food. Really, the secret is in good food.”
As she sits she sees that the flames outside are dying down and night is coming in.
“Franz will have some great clothes for you, I can guarantee it. He knows what looks good. That’ll make you feel better, won’t it?”
He pours the rich red wine into her half-empty glass, filling it back to the top.
“I will be away tomorrow but I can come back late. He’ll be here during the day and I’ll get back later. You’ll feel better tomorrow. Come on let’s eat.”
“You don’t know anything about me. Do you even want to know anything about me? You haven’t asked about my family, or where I’m from, or Archie, or anything? Don’t you want to know about me?”
“You can tell me whatever you want to tell me. I know about Archie, and I know that you are too good for a lowlife like him. But you didn’t like him either, did you? I mean, you wanted me to cut his throat.”
Lucy doesn’t say anything.
“You know,” Gregor goes on, “you haven’t asked about me either, so we will discover each other. How about that?”
He goes back into the kitchen and serves the food onto two plates.
“You tell me about your daddy playing swing and I’ll tell you about my mamma cooking casserole.” He sets the dish in front of her.
As he walks around the table she says, “When are you going to let me leave the house?” The neediness, the whine has gone from her voice and the question is short and staccato, and stays in the air.
He sits opposite her, blocking her view of the darkening garden. The dying flame in the barbecue bowl flickers on his shoulders. The statue of two-becoming-one to his right is disappearing into the thickening night.
He eats a mouthful of the chicken casserole while looking at her. Lucy does not pick up her fork. He motions to the plate in front of her as he chews. She doesn’t look down, but holds his gaze. He stops chewing and swallows a mouthful of wine. Still looking at her, he replaces his glass on the table and turns the stem
in his fingers. The sound of the glass revolving on the wood of the table is the only sound in the room. He stops. For a moment neither of them moves. This is the longest they have looked into each other’s eyes.
Gregor says slowly, “If you want to leave, you can leave.”
Lucy holds his gaze for a second more, then picks up her knife and fork and starts to eat. A rush of flavours hit her palate. She wonders as she chews whether she has ever eaten so well, or if the withdrawal is heightening her taste. Gregor is eating across the table, with his eyes closed and a pensive expression as if trying to conjure the memory of the taste. They continue eating in silence.
Behind Gregor it is dark now, and the fire in the garden is out. Just the ashes of the clothes remain. Outside has disappeared and the glass doors now reflect what is on the inside.
***
Chapter Nine
As the months went by Martin continued to write, to redraft what he had sent. The story grew. It began to fill the writing room. Martin hand-wrote potential plots and stuck them to the walls, with wall planners depicting timelines to make sure the episodes he was writing would make sense. About once a week Alison went inside and collected the empty cups and glasses, the plates and biscuit wrappers. She never touched the bundles of paper or stacks of books. Once she stopped and picked up the top page of one of the bundles.
Gregor was holding a syringe to someone’s neck. The person was tied to a chair, with tape around his mouth and dirty sweat covering his face. His eyes were wide with terror as Gregor was advising him not to move, lest he miss the vein and cause some damage. He was wondering aloud if this amount was enough to overdose on.
The Fly Guy Page 6