by Lee Kerr
I shake my head for the hundredth time, silently telling him I still don’t want this.
He tuts, showing his open frustration. ‘I have a life too, I hope you realise this. I need to get back to my family, to my wife and my little girls. They are petrified by everything that’s happening right now. My wife won’t let my girls watch TV anymore because the other day, Peppa Pig was interrupted in the middle by a BBC news broadcast. I mean, in the middle of a kids’ programme, can you believe it? This world is fucked and you are my last job.’
He stands up; I stay seated. Even now, his head is only a little above mine. ‘If it’s any consolation, a quick and painless death might be the best way to go, especially if the reports are right. All of the United Kingdom is under curfew and it’s doing better than most places. My counterparts in the United States have mostly disappeared. It’s a blood bath out there.’
I listen to him talk, realising that I have not given enough credence to the stories of distant worries that might actually be true. When you haven’t seen something for yourself, it’s hard to process and even harder to believe. He’s still talking as I try to face the idea that all of this is true, that what he plans will happen and that, unless I escape now, I will not be able to stop him. I know that I have to take this chance to get out of here and as far away from him as possible. He raises his arms to reinforce whatever point he wants to make, but I choose not to hear it, not to be a victim to my own poor decisions, and I kick one of his knees.
I’ve never kicked someone before, not properly, and I’m surprised how much damage I seem to do: he immediately falls to the floor and cries out. I watch him for a moment as he grabs his injured knee with both hands and wriggles around on the floor. It’s only when he looks at me that I get up. He takes a hand off his knee and attempts to grab my ankle, but I’m quick enough that I move away in time. He starts to crawl towards me, then uses the bench to hoist himself up. I start to make my escape, running away, realising that he cannot possibly follow me. After a few strides I turn to see him shouting at me, telling me that I will never be able to hide from him, no matter where I run.
I take one final look at him and then up to David, wondering if I will ever see either of them again. The stone man gives me nothing. I wonder how many goodbyes I have said to him in my short life, and whether this will now be the last.
‘Mugger!’ I hear from Vance. He is now hobbling forward, obviously knowing he will not catch me without help. He must know that if people intervene and the police are called then his cover will be blown, but he points at me nonetheless, screaming that I have taken something from him.
People stop and stare at me, the absence of the usual crowds making me easy to spot. Vance is shouting that someone should stop me. I look around, wondering whether anyone will be brave enough, considering how uncertain these times are, and I suddenly feel a hand grab my shoulder. I turn around and raise a hand, no longer willing to be a victim in my own nightmare. As I turn, I feel someone grabbing it. They restrain me and tell me to calm down. It takes me a moment to realise that it’s Mike, his blue eyes, still full of energy and hope, staring into mine.
He manages a smile and says ‘calm down, it’s only me.’
‘Mike!’ I shout, grabbing him and trying to push him away. ‘We need to go now, so don’t ask, please just run.’
He doesn’t move, and looks around at the spectators, then finally towards my accuser. ‘Who the hell is he and what’s going on?’
‘Why don’t you tell him?’ Vance shouts, starting to hobble towards us, becoming bolder and possibly more desperate by the second.
‘Yes, why don’t you tell me? Don’t you think it’s about time I knew and especially before everyone else in this room?’
I look at Mike. He’s so close; his breath is brushing against my skin. He’s always been there, always been willing to help me, even when I have not wanted to ask or tell him anything. ‘I’ve been quiet for too long,’ I say, knowing that my ample silences and regular disappearances have given him many chances to walk away, but despite this, he has always chosen to stay by my side. ‘We need to get out of here and back to the hotel. I can’t tell you now, but I promise if you get us there then I will tell you everything.’
He stares at me, then gazes over my shoulder before looking at me again. I know Mike, and I know he will think that Vance holds some of the answers he wants to hear. His keen mind quickly comes to a conclusion, and he grabs my arm and pulls me away. We run out of the main hall and away from David. I hear Vance’s screams echoing down the corridor behind us. I can’t really see anything else as I trust our escape and my future life to Mike. It’s probably something I should have done years ago – maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess if I had have done just that. But now I have no choice. I feel a rush of air when we burst through a fire exit and back into the outside world.
I turn to see Vance still following us, two security guards catching up with him. It doesn’t take long for them to look over and see me, then make their way over towards us. I’m busy preparing my explanation; I decide that I will demand for the police to be called immediately, knowing that the only crime that has been committed is my assault on Vance. I’m so preoccupied with contemplating my lack of understanding of the laws and morals of this country, and just how powerful his organisation could be, that I barely realise that I’m being bundled into the back of a car. I turn away from Vance and his new allies to see that we’re in a taxi. Mike pushes his way in next to me and shouts all manner of instructions to the driver.
We manage to start moving just as one of the guards bangs on the side of the car. It’s enough to distract the driver and make him slow down, and he puts his window down and starts shouting. I keep a hold on the handle as the guard starts grabbing it from the outside, now shouting back at the driver. It’s Mike who intervenes, waving a wad of notes in the driver’s face, telling him not to ask questions, but just to drive and take his reward. For a moment I don’t think he is going to accept it but it seems that the offer is too good to turn down, as he hits the accelerator and we speed off. At the best of times I wonder how well bribery works, and in these worst of times I wonder when it doesn’t.
Mike throws the notes into the passenger seat and shouts to the driver not to stop until we get to the hotel. He nods and starts speaking in an odd mixture of Italian and broken English, telling us not to worry and that no questions will be asked by him. Mike eventually nods and turns to me, sweat dripping down his face as he shakes his head. ‘That’s fine with me, because I will be asking all the questions from now on.’
*****
Mike stares at me as I lie on the sunbed. He hasn’t said a lot since I told him, just the odd question to confirm the darkest fears I think he already had. I didn’t hold back, telling him everything, right from the start, a whole decade ago. I laid myself bare for him to see, to understand and hopefully accept what I can only now explain. My feelings of despair and – ultimately – defeat have been years in the making and Mike has been around for all of them. He already asked me if it was him, if he had caused all of this. It took me a while to reassure him that he wasn’t the issue and that having a friend like him has probably kept me alive for longer. He didn’t like that and told me to stop talking about death in this way as though it was some sort of transaction.
‘The Police won’t attend, not without any crime being committed, which technically he hasn’t done yet,’ Mike says, perched on the edge of his sunbed.
I barely move, not able to find the energy to give him some panicked response. ‘Did you tell them about the contract, about what I agreed to?’
I see his frown reappear, which happens whenever I go near the subject that has been hidden in the depths of my tortured mind for so long, and which is now out in the open and on show for him to see. ‘No, I didn’t mention that. I figured it wouldn’t help our case, as they are barely interested at the moment. The guy in charge spoke English as well as I speak Italian, but I manag
ed to get some information out of him. He said a lot of police have been dispatched to Pisa and other places along the coast, but he wouldn’t tell me why.’
I nod back, not knowing what I should do with this new information. I know it’s probably relevant but I don’t know how. I lie still for a moment as I try to think things through, to sort things out in my cluttered brain. The problem is that I’m trying to sort through years of fogged thinking – decades of haze – just to find where the real problems are lurking. ‘Are you sure it’s not a crime? Didn’t he try to abduct me?’
Mike shakes his head and I know that his patience with all of this is running out. I think he was okay when he got me out of the hospital, even though he must have known more than he’s letting on – the doctors must have told him what I had been trying to do. He clearly knows as much as I know, but it probably seems even worse when the graphic details of my failure are detailed by an experienced medical mind. ‘You signed a contract, so I think you’d find it difficult to argue that it was kidnap. He was technically coming to do the job you paid him for or – more accurately – to finish the job you couldn’t do yourself.’
I lean forward a little, knowing that this is an argument I will never win, one that will never be over. ‘I changed my mind,’ I say, for what I think is the hundredth time.
Mike stands up and paces around, his tall frame temporarily putting me in the shade whenever he passes by. I want to ask him to move, to tell him that I haven’t felt the sun beating down on my pale skin for such a long time and that I’m finally enjoying one of our trips to the pool. For years I hid in the shade, only tolerating the outdoor bit of the holiday for Mike’s sake. I would always look around at all the tourists spending hours baking in the sun, as though the whole planet was one big revolving oven, turning them around until they were a distracted shade of golden brown. I didn’t see the point and I never wanted to be one of those people, because I was always convinced that it would be me who died from the consequences – and it would be truly ironic for the pale guy running from one patch of shade to the next for days on end to get skin cancer.
He stands over me again; his face has changed back to how it looked in that taxi. ‘You should have talked to me, Adam. You should have come to see me a long time ago and I could have helped, or at least I could have got you some help. Instead you bottled all this up until you actually thought this Vance guy was an option.’ He keeps staring at me, his body shaking, waiting for me to explain something I don’t think I will ever be able to.
‘What if he gets in here?’ I ask, looking around at the high walls and locked gates.
‘Are you listening to anything I say?’ Mike shouts, attracting attention from our fellow guests. There are a few other sun bathers, but far fewer than there would normally be at this time of year. The pool area always used to be packed, and I would always get annoyed at how close the sunbeds were to each other, even a whisper could be overheard three beds down. But on this holiday things were very different.
I nod as I sit up, tucking my legs under my body. I’m on the one bit of the bed which still has a glimmer of sunlight on it, and I’m staring up at Mike. I look up his body, past his shorts and up to his chest; I have to squint through my sunglasses to be able to see him properly. He’s still wearing a T-shirt despite the heat, a clear signal that he hasn’t found settling into an afternoon of sunbathing as easy as I have. I look up at his face. His eyes are hidden by his black shades but I can still see lines of anguish painted across his skin.
I don’t manage to answer before he walks away, shaking his head. He turns back and stares at me for a moment, before taking a step back towards me. ‘The hotel has increased security, at my request, and we have moved rooms, which was my idea. They have hidden our details in the safe and kept our original room, which I’m still paying for, empty. I think you’ll agree I have done my bit.’
‘Where are you going then?’ I ask, already missing him, already feeling vulnerable. I know that if I don’t have Mike then I only have myself, and I know how quickly I will revert back to the helpless shadow that I allowed myself to become.
He doesn’t answer and disappears into the main hotel. The waiter who has been keeping an eye on me nods at him and then turns his attention back my way. I lie down again and start to get comfortable, wondering if I should apply more lotion. We’ve only got Mike’s bottle of Factor 15, when 30 would normally be a minimum for me, but he probably packed so hastily that he didn’t think about that. I look back towards the hotel, knowing how many other things he did think about, all because of me. I know that I don’t deserve someone like Mike but I desperately need him. I stare at the waiter, who is standing to attention in his tight white shirt and black waistcoat. I want to shout over to him that he should focus all his energy on my friend, and that he should be the one to watch, because I can’t lose him and if it comes to it I know I want to go first. It’s a selfish thought, but I’ve always been like that, never wanting to be the one left behind, never the one left to suffer.
*****
I feel someone touching my leg, which jolts me back to life. I scream as I awaken, my mind telling me that it’s Vance who has finally caught up with me. I look around and realise that I’m still in the hotel grounds; the water from the fountains is still trickling into the pool and the birds are still chirping high up in the trees. I quickly catch sight of Mike and feel thankful he is still here. I have no idea how long I slept, but judging by how low the sun is sitting in the sky, it must have been a couple of hours.
‘It’s nice that one of us got to relax,’ he says. ‘It’s just a shame it’s never me.’
I shuffle around until I find my T-shirt. It feels chilly now the sun has gone down. I think I felt the heat fading even while I was asleep, but I didn’t wake up – my mind needed time to process everything that has happened. I look at Mike again; he is sitting down next to me, a flustered, almost scared look on his face. This new mask doesn’t suit him; it’s not something I want to see. He’s my rock and I need him to stay that way, for both of our sakes.
‘They have closed all the airports,’ he says, starting to pack up his things around him. I watch as he puts sun lotion, sunglasses and earphones into his neat travel case. Everything has changed so quickly today. I wanted us to spend this afternoon together, doing what he likes most after a day of sightseeing.
‘Did you use any of them?’ I ask, looking at his things as he packs them up, wondering if maybe he came back to lay next to me for a while. Maybe we both spent the long afternoon sleeping, enjoying being in the same place at the same time for the first time in a long while.
He sets his case down and takes a deep breath. ‘Do you understand anything that I’m telling you? I just told you that the airports are closed, and I don’t just mean the one in Florence, or even Rome. I am saying all the airports in Italy, Spain and the UK – have been closed, which means there are no flights out of here and no way home.’
I stare back at him, wondering how things have managed to get even worse, especially since I have only been gone for an hour or two. I look over to see that the waiter has gone as well. He’s been replaced by the pool attendant, who is tidying up the few used sunbeds, glancing over at us occasionally, his job no doubt easier this summer than any previously. I see that everyone else is gone and so I look up to the balconies, to the rooms of the richer people who get a premium pool view. Normally I would expect to see many people retiring to their rooms to enjoy the sun going down, but this evening I don’t see anyone. I shake my head, realising how everything has changed. From the other times we have stayed here, I know that this should be about the time the chef moves to the outside BBQ area and starts to prepare the evening meal. I look over at the equipment, which is all covered by green plastic sheets, not likely to come out tonight or any time soon. I finally look back at Mike, who has clearly been watching everything I have been doing.
‘Don’t you have anything to say? Perhaps something that would h
elp right now?’
‘I thought you said we would be okay?’
He buries his head in his hands as he lets out this long moan. When he finally looks up I see how red his eyes are, how exhausted I have made him become. ‘Fucking hell, Adam, don’t pin all this shit on me. How was I supposed to guess what would happen? And besides, we came here because of you, because of what you did and because I thought you needed a break.’ He stands up and walks away, still shouting and still blaming me for what has happened.
I feel conflicted: I know that a lot of this is my fault but I somehow still feel that all these bigger things happening around us cannot be of my doing. ‘I don’t know what’s real anymore!’ I shout back as I start to follow him, desperate not to be left alone. He keeps walking away as I run after him, my desperation pushing me forward and forcing me to latch onto him. ‘I know that I’ve done wrong but everything is changing so much. I can’t figure out any of this in my mind and I don’t know what’s happening. You have to help me, Mike, because no one else can.’
He finally stops and turns, shaking his head. ‘Maybe I can help you and maybe I can't, but I’ve done enough and the truth is that I don’t know who you are anymore or what I can do to bring you back.’ He comes closer to me, close enough that he only needs to whisper. ‘You made your choices and you kept making them for a long time, so perhaps the universe is granting you your wish now. I tried to help, but clearly I have failed, so perhaps this is the time for us to go our separate ways.’