Johnny Ruin

by Dan Dalton

  A thing I do sometimes is talk to my dog. His name is Fisher. Technically he doesn’t exist, being imaginary and all, but that doesn’t stop him taking walks with me. Or following commands. Sit. Siiiiit. Good boy. He walks by my heel and wags his tail and pants and is an absolute joy.

  That thing you read about dogs being the key to happiness.

  I’m thirteen, sitting on my bike at the top of a set of steps near my house. There are eight. I’m trying to find the courage to ride down them. I’ve sat here for hours, too scared to do it. My brother has done it. Paul has done it. Fuck it, I say, and go. It’s easier than I ever imagined.

  The mountains – slate grey, snow-capped – look like the Rockies, but not just the Rockies. The hills of my childhood are here too. Lesser peaks of the Lake District, limestone pavement of the Yorkshire Dales. A slope behind our house that my brother and I used to sledge down.

  He tosses me my notebook. You write today, champ. I roll it up, hold it in both hands. I’ll write tomorrow, I say. He stands in the aisle, stretches. Well, you know what they say, he says, holding the ends of his feet. Women weaken words.

  Announcement: Remember when she said she just wanted to work on herself for a while.

  When Sophia broke up with me, I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t work, couldn’t read. Couldn’t write. A week later, I quit my job. Figured I’d find something else. I didn’t. Life is consequences.

  The way I quit my job was by dumping my laptop on my manager’s desk, saying, I’m done, and walking out. HR tried to call, but I turned off my phone. I also changed the Twitter password and the recovery email address. Before I left I scheduled a few final tweets.

  Sample tweet: Protects everything but your reputation. Bye JoeSeal.

  Sample tweet: Load up on guns and kill your fence. Bye JoeSeal.

  Sample tweet: Don’t judge a tin by its Twitter. Bye JoeSeal.

  BASE Fatality #5 is Pauli Belik. Between jumps his pack got wet and froze during transit. By the time Pauli jumped from the Kaknäs tower in Stockholm, his canopy was encased in ice and didn’t inflate. He died on impact with the floor. It was 7 March 1983. I was five days old.

  Jon is hopped up on coffee. I ask him the plan. We deadhead this wagon to the next stop, he says, at which point we try and gank a whip to the end of the line, see if we can’t find the key and flip the doohickey that fixes you. He slaps my shoulder and I nod like I understand.

  The track has levelled off. The train lurches underfoot. We clutch at headrests to brace ourselves. Jon looks out of the window. A churn of cedars wash past. She’s pulling too fast, he says. The highball on one of these engines is a buck-fifty. We must be pushing a buck-seventy, seventy-five.

  Say what you want about Jon Bon Jovi, he knows his trains.

  We skip through the carriages at full clip, each filled with faces and bodies I’ve known, all my past crushes, sitting in seats, talking among themselves. My barista, a girl from my gym. A popular blogger. A woman I saw on the bus the other day. They don’t notice me.

  I realise I’ve stopped running. Jon takes my arm. I ask him if this is about obsession. It’s about addiction, he says. But these are crushes, I say. I wasn’t addicted to them all. The carriage doors slide open. I meant collectively, Jon says. You’re addicted to women.

  We push through another two carriages before we arrive at a door we can’t open. A keypad sits square in the middle of the door. Jon punches a few numbers. A series of red LEDs flash above the keypad. He slaps the door with an open palm. Dammit. I ask what he tried. My birthday, obviously. The door is cold rolled steel, no seams, no rivets. It has no business being here. I tell him to try my birthday, if he even knows it. Of course I know it, he says, you just write it funny.

  Through a window I can see the engine as we curve around a bend, the livery gleaming white like an unpainted model train. We’re a few cars back. Below, a mountain meadow hosts a crop of her hair. The strands, glossy, golden, shimmer in the breeze. Jon punches my birthday. The LEDs flash green. The door swings out towards us to reveal iron bars, a cage door without a key. Jon grips a bar with each fist. Got a plan there, chief.

  I was thirteen when I first learned Jon and I share a birthday: 2 March.

  A thing people never say: Talking to your imaginary dog is the first sign of madness.

  An idea. What would Jon Voigt do, I say. Like most people, Jon is a fan of the 1985 classic Runaway Train, in which Jon Voigt uncouples the engine, saves the day, dies a hero. Spoiler alert. I’m suggesting the uncoupling part, not the blaze nor indeed the glory. No good, Jon says. She’s got a helper, mid-train. I wait for him to explain. A second engine helps the main one push up steep grades, Jon says. We have to get behind it. Or you could just unlock this gate. I tell him I don’t have the key. I believe you, he says, as if it were in question.

  There was nothing more erotic than her hip bone. The pale softness off it. The jutting angular form of it. In our bubble I’m biting her hip, kissing it, gripping it with my free hand as we fuck.

  Announcement: Remember when she stopped texting back.

  Beyond the iron gate, the door to the next carriage swings open and we find ourselves face-to-shifting-face with him, the Many-Faced Man, separated only by iron. It looks like he’s smirking, all of his faces pulling the same satisfied grin. He takes a key from his pocket, steps forward, lifts it to the lock. I ask Jon who that is. Let’s not stick around to find out, he says.

  The carriages have shifted. Memory is impermanent. Inconvenient. The train worms its way through a series of tunnels in the mountain rock, each time changing the setting around us. Outside, snow-wrapped mountains flicker like torches as we race past. For minutes at a time the train is wrapped in a cloak of black. We run in the shade.

  Cut to a gym car filled with several versions of me, honing their already well-conditioned physiques. The walls of mirrors make them look infinitely better, me much worse. Their muscles, taut, tanned, were once mine. Old priorities, fresh anxieties. They watch me walk, heckling my body. Jon turns back to me. You used to be a real dick.

  Darkness.

  Cut to a carriage piled with newspapers and pizza boxes and trash, and a voice telling me I’m a slob. Cut to a carriage where I’m masturbating to memories of Sophia months after she ended us. Each a scene from the lives I’ve lived. Each an addiction. The train speeds up. One-eighty. One-ninety. We climb along the aisle using headrests for traction. Hold on, Jon says. We’re nearly there. You’ve got this. But I haven’t.

  Cut to a carriage where I’m in bed, unable to shower or shave or eat or get dressed or do anything but stare blankly at my phone because a depressive state is addictive too and once you’re down and prone to wallow without energy to try it’s so tempting to let yourself slip further from any semblance of humanity until you’re convinced you deserved this and she’s better off without you. Darkness.

  Our first conversation was all wide eyes, long takes. We shared cigarettes between bands, laughed, teased, looked. I was nicotine high, drunk on bourbon and promise. It was a dance, really. The kind of conversation where the subtext is I want you in my mouth.

  Over the loudspeaker, her voice: I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It repeats on a loop. What she’s sorry for is breaking my heart. It’s what she kept saying when it ended. I’m sorry. It was the answer to every question. I’m sorry. It echoes in my head. I’m sorry.

  I say: Why do you think I’m addicted to women.

  He says: Why do you think that you’re not.

  I say: My dick doesn’t work any more.

  He says: That’s not entirely true.

  We’re between carriages when he turns, offers me a drink. I decline. He takes a swig, says something, but the cladding on the car is thin and I can hear only the train. I nod along. He gives me a pat on the shoulder, strides into the next carriage. I caught none of it. Everything was vestibule and nothing heard.

  Voices behind us now. We race into the next carriage, barricade the door w
ith our bodies. One more, Jon says. He reaches for the kind of pipe that’s always lying around in these situations, slides it through the handle, barring the door. I stand to find myself an inch away from the Many-Faced Man, our noses separated by glass. His features, unmoored, random, shift in the strobing light of the vestibule. He’s flanked by more bodies, by my wrongs. They’re shouting, angry. He reaches for the door handle, wrenching it. Jon pulls me towards the other end of the car.

  We open the door, stop. The back carriage is already uncoupled. Sophia stands in the doorway, drifting away from us. Over the loudspeaker, a record skipping: I’m sorry. Behind her a handsome Golden Retriever pants happily. Fisher. She’s got my dog. I’m sorry.

  Fisher’s tail wags hard, clips the edge of a metal rack. Drops of blood spatter the wall. Happy tail. She looks at him, then at me. I’m sorry. My heart is tied to her carriage by an invisible thread. The door slams shut and rips it from my chest like a loose tooth. I’m sorry.

  In our bubble we’re arguing. She grabs her bag, heads for the door. Don’t go, I say. She leaves. I get a text a few minutes later. Was that supposed to make me stay, she says. At least say it like you mean it. I run after her but it’s too late. She’s gone. I text back. I meant it, I say. Really.

  BASE Fatality #74 is Bill Frogge. On 27 January 2003, during a jump in Utah, Bill deployed his pilot chute, only for it to pull free. He fell to the desert floor, died on impact. The knot securing the chute to the main canopy was never tied. There was no inquest. He prepared his own rig.

  Is it still suicide if you drop the catch.

  I clutch at my chest, somehow still intact. What does she need Fisher for, I say. Jon is pacing, thinking. I know that hurt, he says, but this mustang’s still running and we don’t have any reins. Behind us, my wrongs beat at the carriage door. Jon opens the side of the car, licks a finger, raises it to the wind. Bad news: we’re pulling two-hundred. He grabs a handle, hangs out of the door. Worse news, there’s a curve ahead we won’t make at this speed. I stick my head out, see a bridge swerving away from us over a mountain lake. We have to jump, he says. We peer down at the lake. If I die in here, I say. He interrupts. No time. He takes my hand. We jump on three.

  If we were wearing chutes, this would count as a Span jump. Span is the S in BASE. A bridge is a span. But this isn’t a BASE jump. We’re not wearing chutes. There’s nothing to catch us.

  The fall sucks the air from my lungs. Every nerve ending fires at once. My stomach somersaults. Something beats where my heart used to be. Time moves at half speed. We’re still falling. There’s nothing to catch us. It’s not suicide if you’re trying to save your life.

  We hit the water hard and keep falling. We float, dazed, confused. Suspended and embryonic in the freezing lake. I feel Jon kick and do the same. We surface, still holding hands, expecting explosions, fireworks. But there is no crash, no wreckage.

  The train navigated the curve without incident, marched on without us. Huh, Jon says. He grins at me like the sheriff who shot the shark. I always wanted to do that.

  I punch the water, play-acting. He looks worried. Fuck, I say. Lost my train of thought.

  Jon laughs so hard he almost drowns.

  Ten

  Nebraska / Greed

  We’re halfway up a river we’ve never heard of in a boat we don’t own when the storm begins in earnest. The skies open with great rips, tin foil clouds being torn apart by their own fury. Our boat has a bum fuel gauge and a leaky hull, a pebble making ripples in a puddle. Jon sticks his head out of the cab. Strap in, chief, he says. No time to find a bigger boat.

  I’m sitting at the stern, sullen, watching Jon sing. He’s having the time of his life, belting sea shanties, making short work of a rum stash he found below deck. He’s a great entertainer, even if you’re not in the mood to be entertained. He swigs rum, shouts over his shoulder. What I’ve been wondering is this, he says. Is it still a road trip if you’re nowhere near a road.

  That thing you read about love having the same effect on the brain as cocaine.

  Would you have let her go, he says.

  I might have, I say. I don’t know.

  Then why say that you would.

  Because I want her to stay.

  I still dream about her. Sometimes we meet for the first time and flirt. Sometimes we undress each other and kiss. I always wake as we’re about to fuck. Sometimes I’m watching her flirt with someone else. Those aren’t the worst dreams. The worst dreams are the ones where we’re happy.

  I’m six, playing in the sea with my brother, swimming in inflatable rings. The tide carries us out further than we realise. Mum runs to the sea, stands up to her knees, calls to us. It looks like she’s waving. We wave back, laugh like it’s a game. It isn’t. She starts shouting. We kick harder, and she walks out to meet us. When we reach her, she hugs us both tight. Don’t ever do that to me again, she says. She’s crying. We start crying too. We didn’t mean to, I say. She lets go and looks at me. It’s okay now, she says, shaking. I just needed you to swim back before you drifted away.

  I’m thirteen, on a family holiday in France. I read that a girl drowned in a nearby lake. It was a public holiday, and the lake was crowded with families. Hundreds of people watched the girl drown assuming someone else would help. By the time someone jumped in, it was too late.

  That’s how I felt much of the time, like I was sinking, and no one would jump in to help.

  I guess it’s hard to tell if someone is drowning when they’re on dry land.

  Jon is nine verses into a shanty he wrote when the engine quits. We’re adrift on a raft we can’t steer in a river we can’t see. He starts hitting things with a spanner. The water runs rough beneath us. I can make out the firs of submerged trees before they disappear into fog. Maybe this is where addiction gets you, floating aimlessly down a river of your own poor judgement.

  Twice now I’ve watched Sophia leave and done nothing.

  I’m thirty, at a gig in Camden. The first time I see her she’s standing in the middle of the room, swaying, burning, casually oblivious to the world orbiting around her. The band are terrible. Not that I’m listening. She smiles and suddenly nothing else matters. When we lock eyes I’m already lost. Man down. As we move towards each other, colour drains from everything but her. Later we’ll learn we both work in music, her for a label; me, a magazine. But now I lean close, say something I don’t remember, something she doesn’t hear. It doesn’t matter. We don’t need words.

  We stand by the bar, achingly close. She’s wearing a leather jacket over a dress. I’m wearing black jeans, nerves. I’m staring at her lips, trying not to shake. Her head is tilted towards me, her mouth open a touch. We hold still, each daring the other to make a move. She grabs my collar, pulls me towards her. Lips meet, then bodies. She tastes of wine, cigarettes. She presses against me, gets me hard. I can feel her pubic bone through her dress. As we part, I utter a single fuck. I raise my fingers to my lips, find traces of her there. She smiles and the world grows distant.

  The ship has turned sideways in the current. Jon is leaning into the engine bay, cursing. I’m thinking about her. I feel sick. That sunken stomach you get when your heart breaks, when an addict goes cold turkey. I rush out to the stern, lean over the side, loose my guts into the water.

  I’m thirty-one, sitting at my desk when the text arrives, the one that says she’s ending it. I run to the bathroom, drop to my knees, eject vomit and tears and mucus. From the floor of the toilet I manage a one-word reply: Why. I curse at myself for sending it so soon.

  Boats, heartbreak: I don’t have the stomach for either.

  I’m watching the bile slick I just formed float away when I notice the propeller is snagged on something. Skipper, looks like we’re caught up. Jon sticks his head up from the engine bay and raises high his wrench. We’ll make a sailor of you yet, lad, he says.

  I hold his legs while he reaches down to grab whatever we’ve hooked. A few seconds later I’m hit square in
the face with a bundle of sodden fabric. Here’s your culprit, Jon says. I unroll the shredded cloth. It’s a dress. One of Sophia’s. I toss it down to the deck, lean over the side, dunk my arm into the sound. I hold fast a second, then feel something brush my fingertips. I pull it into the boat. Another dress. I fish again, pull up a pair of lace knickers I bought her, part of a set.

  A few minutes of fishing later and my haul includes pyjamas, socks, some band T-shirts I gave her, stockings, summer dresses, more lingerie. We sway with the roll of the hull, sizing up our haul. Jon holds up a bra: black, lacy. Your girlfriend isn’t even here and she’s holding us back.

  Girlfriend. Jon looks sorry as soon as he says it. The word glows neon, hangs overhead, floating through the fog until it’s just a blur of green light.

  In our bubble we’ve just got home from a gig. We strip, too drunk to fool around but we fumble and paw anyway. Her phone beeps, lights up. It’s well after one. I ask who it is and she says, It doesn’t matter, and I say something like, Maybe you should sleep at his. Tears then as she slumps to the bed, crushed under the twin weight of jealousy and fatigue. I can’t do this any more.