Troy’s Possibilities

by Rodney Strong

  She didn’t like that. She made me wait five minutes before responding. Tell me about Cat, she said.

  What about her?

  You said I reminded you of her. So tell me about her.

  I told her all about the Possibility. From answering the door wearing a towel, to standing in the shop doorway while the rain swept the streets clean. I skipped the part about nearly sleeping together; that seemed a little too weird.

  I have a confession to make, she said in response.

  My mouth went dry. Experience has taught me that very little good starts with those words.

  That day I came to the door. I was planning to steal some stuff from you.

  Thankfully we weren’t on video chat so she missed the grin on my face.

  She told me all about the bet with Emily. I debated whether to act outraged or play it cool. I ended up somewhere in the middle.

  The funny thing is I had some pepper spray in my bag, only I didn’t know whether I was going to use it.

  It was just a story, I told her.

  She didn’t respond for so long I thought she’d disconnected. Finally a message popped up – a Skype address, and a day and time, tomorrow night at 8pm. Then she was gone.

  It seemed we were going to do this with baby steps. Fine by me; I had all the lifetimes in the world.

  The one that almost wasn’t

  The middle of the year was performance-review time at work. I’ve had the same boss for three years and the review always took a similar path. You’re doing a good job, let’s think about career progression, where do you want to be in five years? I always have a joyless laugh at the last one.

  This time when I sat down in the room with Adam something felt different. It started out familiar enough – good job, Troy, your colleagues like you, your work is good, blah, blah. Then halfway through the meeting he closed his folder and sat back to look at me. Adam was a bulky Irishman in his forties with a wild ginger beard and a liking for KFC, which he always ate at his desk on Fridays. This was evidenced by the smell in his office, and the grease stains on any paper given to you on a Friday afternoon. He was a good bloke.

  ‘What are you doing here, Troy?’ he asked.

  I looked at him in surprise. ‘Having my review,’ I replied.

  He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Not in this room, you feckin’ idiot. At the bank. What are you doing working here?’

  Confused by the change in direction, I started the stock response of loving the environment, the work, etc.

  He stopped me. ‘You’re good at your job, but your heart’s not in it. Yet you seem to have no ambition to go anywhere else. That’s unusual for someone your age. Most of you pricks come here expecting to have my job in two years. With you I get the impression you’d be equally happy cleaning the office as working in it. What’s that about?’

  ‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’ I retorted.

  ‘Bank policy prevents me from saying yes.’ He shuffled up straighter in his chair. ‘But between us, if I thought it would get you anywhere I’d fire your arse right now.’ His expression softened and he leaned forward. ‘I’ve seen people like you, Troy. Hell, I’ve been you. Addicted to the pay cheque. More interested in what you take home than what you do to get it.’

  ‘Rubbish. I care about the job.’

  He laughed, his beard wobbling in waves. ‘Maybe. But do you care about doing a good job no matter what, or doing this job well?’ He saw my confused expression. ‘There’s a difference between wanting to do good work, and caring about the job. Are you excited to come to work every day? If not, what is it you want to do with your life, Troy?’

  Live without these fucking Possibilities, I thought.

  ‘You must have had something in mind when you left school,’ he pressed.

  My shoulders tightened. He was acting more like my dad than my boss. Then I thought of the canvas sitting in the corner of my room. Of lofty ambitions when paint first touched its surface. A face came unbidden, captured in time, then it swarmed out, to be replaced by Cat. I shook my head to jostle it away.

  Adam mistook the movement. Disappointed, he looked at his hands, picking dead bits of skin from his palms. His voice turned serious. ‘You need to figure it out. Do you know how hard it is waking up one day to find you’re forty years old and you’re trapped in a life you didn’t expect?’

  I had to shake my head – what else could I do?

  He grunted and carried on. ‘I don’t expect to have this conversation again in a year’s time. Meanwhile, procedure dictates I must give you a two-percent pay rise. Congratulations.’ He grinned. ‘Now piss off and do some work.’

  If nothing else, the meeting had taken my mind off that night for a full twenty minutes. I’m not sure where the rest of the day went, other than disappearing behind a cloud of butterflies. Hell, they felt too big to be butterflies – more like bats flying around my stomach. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t concentrate at work.

  It didn’t help I’d made the mistake of telling Emily and she texted me every hour reminding me how important it was to get Cat back to Wellington. Nothing like a bit of extra pressure. It was crazy – why was I acting like a lovesick teenager?

  I knew the answer, but avoided looking at it directly, not wanting to acknowledge the obvious. Because this time it was real. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did. It was different because it was real, so the stakes were much higher.

  And always there was the nagging thought that maybe this was just me using her to try and help myself.

  I don’t usually watch the news, preferring to get it on demand via the internet, but for some reason I plonked myself in front of the television that night. The lead news item was the disappearance of a girl in her early twenties. She had been hitchhiking home to Wellington and hadn’t arrived. They flashed up a photo of her and for a heart freezing moment I thought it was Cat. Then I studied her more closely and realised she just looked like her. A memory of the man in the white car crept forward in my mind. He might have nothing to do with it, but I called the police anyway. First I blocked my number so there would be no awkward questions, then I gave them a description of him and the licence plate of his car. I found out later he was arrested and charged with the girl’s murder. Part of me felt good, and part of me thought I should have called them sooner.

  At 7.45pm I sat at the dining table, laptop open, Skype window ready. The next fifteen minutes ticked by like they were being held back, something standing behind them tugging on their shirts. Eventually the clock read 8.00pm.

  Nothing.

  Okay, that was fine – it had only just clicked over.

  8.05pm. Still nothing. Sure, no problem – she was obviously running a little late.

  8.10pm. Maybe she was having technology issues.

  8.15pm. I checked the Messenger window for any new posts from her. Nothing.

  8.20pm. Maybe the internet was out.

  And so it went on, every minute accompanied by a reason, an excuse for her, all the time ignoring the most obvious – that she had simply changed her mind. I sat at the table until the clock clicked over to 9pm, then finally accepted that she wasn’t calling. Complete disappointment flooded my body, like my parents had told me Santa and the Tooth Fairy didn’t exist on the same day I found out Batman was only a cartoon.

  Emily walked into the room, saw the look on my face, and walked straight out again. I didn’t want sympathy, didn’t want to be cheered up. I wanted to go to bed, forever.

  Closing down the laptop, I went into the bathroom, and when I was washing my hands I suddenly lacked the courage to look at myself in the mirror. My eyes raised to the glass, instinctively closing upon seeing the broken visage reflected back at them.

  Regretting my decision, I went into my room, carefully closed the door, and collapsed into the middle of my bed. I stared at the ceiling, and tried to pretend that maybe this wasn’t real life. Maybe this was actually a Possibility and I would blink and not have to feel this pain. I
barely knew her; to put so much importance on a single conversation, I was better off not having it.

  I lay fighting with my thoughts for a long time. Sleep refused to come, my brain preferring to analyse, review, check things from a million different angles, over-analysing, inventing, shoving square pegs into round holes.

  I’m not sure if I dozed or not, but the next time I glanced at my watch it was five past ten. Groaning, I rolled over to get more comfortable, then sat bolt upright and launched myself off the bed, stumbling over shoes before ricocheting off the door frame and spilling into the hall. Swearing, I rubbed my arm as I raced into the kitchen and threw myself at the table. Trembling fingers pushed the power button and hovered anxiously while it booted up. After an age the password box appeared, my fingers stumbling over the keys, getting it wrong, once, twice. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to be calm, and this time the password was accepted. The Skype box was open and showed a missed call.

  I swore again, repeatedly, when suddenly a notification appeared telling me there was an incoming call. A wave of nervous energy swept through me, and I laughed at the sheer craziness of it all. The sound of my own laughter steadied my nerves. I pushed the answer button, and Cat appeared on screen. She looked good, a little tired, her hair brushed but hanging loose, slight dark marks under her eyes, but still good.

  ‘Hey.’ The voice amplified and distorted by computer speakers unmistakably hers.

  ‘Hey, Elissa.’ I’d thought after I told her the story yesterday, about the Cat I knew, she might be offended, so I figured I’d better use her real name. It might have been my imagination, but she seemed vaguely disappointed.

  I said, ‘Thanks for calling,’ then groaned inwardly. What a stupid thing to say – she wasn’t some telemarketer, or someone from the power company sorting out a billing issue.

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to answer,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, sorry about that. A little issue with time difference.’

  ‘Oh,’ she replied absently. She didn’t look comfortable, as if one finger was hovering over the disconnect button.

  ‘How are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Okay, I guess. I’m not doing very well with this running away thing though, am I?’

  ‘I don’t know, you are in a different country,’ I pointed out.

  She glanced around her room. She seemed to be sitting on a bed; behind her the door was closed, a dressing gown hanging on a hook. ‘True, yet here we are talking. I fly thousands of Ks to get away from you, and then call you up. Not very successful.’

  I was stunned. ‘You were trying to get away from me? Why?’

  She stopped fidgeting and looked directly into the camera. ‘Because I like you. Or I think I do, or I want to. It’s complicated.’

  My heart started beating faster. ‘Why is it complicated?’ My voice cracked a little.

  ‘Because you saved me. You were this hero who swooped in and stopped this horrible thing from happening, so I don’t know if I like you because of that, or because I actually like you. And I always thought of myself as a strong person – that I would never need anyone, especially a man, to save me. Which turns out was wrong. And even if I do like you, the thought of being with you, of us being physical – fuck it, of having sex – scares the shit out of me. And I hate that, because the old me, the real me, wasn’t like that. The story you told me about Cat, that would have ended with me taking you home and jumping you. Which now makes me sound like a slut, and I’m really not.’

  ‘Elissa.’

  ‘And then there’s the fact that every time I see you it reminds me of that night.’

  ‘Elissa!’

  ‘And I look at your hand, your poor hand, and I feel guilty that it happened because of me, and so I hugged you, because I wanted all of it to go away, I wanted it to be okay.’

  ‘Elissa!’ I repeated urgently.

  ‘And it was for a second, then you rubbed my back, and the real me, the ghost me, it loved the feeling, but the new me froze.’

  ‘Cat stop!’

  She paused.

  ‘Take a deep breath.’

  She did.

  ‘You can let it out again.’

  It came out ragged, with a little laugh. ‘I’ve had a long time to think about this,’ she said.

  ‘And you’ve got a long time to say it, we’re not on the clock here.’

  She laughed again – not quite natural, but better – then turned serious again. ‘How did you know, Troy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I left your place that night I felt like the real me was slipping away for good. I didn’t think I could recover, so I was going to go home and swallow a bottle of pills. But you signing to me, it got me thinking, and I changed my mind. So how did you know?’

  Because I saw it as a Possibility. ‘I didn’t really. But you had this look on your face as you left. Like you had…’

  ‘Given up,’ she finished.

  Yeah. I didn’t know if I was right, but I thought … just in case.’

  ‘That’s a hell of a just in case.’ Her voice was shaky and she wiped an eye.

  I looked away from the computer, feeling my own tears forming, a lump materialising in my throat. I swallowed a couple of times and blinked rapidly to banish the tears, then looked back at the screen.

  Cat was watching me. ‘Allergies?’ she mocked.

  ‘Dust,’ I quipped back.

  She blew her nose on a tissue. I stole a glance at the bottle of vodka sitting on the bench and resisted an urge to pour myself a drink. Outside the kitchen window a cat yowled in the darkness. I couldn’t make it out until it leapt onto the fence and glanced back, its eyes bright beacons in the night. Then it was gone. I quickly looked back at the laptop, for a moment worried she was gone too.

  Instead she was staring at me. ‘Am I interrupting something?’ she asked sarcastically.

  ‘The local nightlife,’ I replied. We sat in silence for a moment, neither of us totally sure which way to take the conversation. ‘So how’s Australia?’ I finally asked.

  ‘It’s okay. I miss my friends, and my family. I’m pretty sure Steven is going to fuck up his relationship with Jessica without me there to keep him from being too much of a man.’

  ‘If he does I can always slap him around for you.’

  ‘Could you? That would be awesome,’ she replied with a cheeky grin.

  More silence. This wasn’t going to plan.

  ‘Troy, can I ask you a question? I always wondered this, but never had a chance to ask. That day on the beach – why were you building the moon out of sand? Emily told me you’re not the artistic type.’

  So I told her the story again. When I finished she was frowning. ‘I still don’t get how that translates into you spending all day on something that’s going to be gone as soon as the tide comes in.’

  I shrugged. ‘I was killing time.’

  She looked down, her hair falling across her face, shielding her from the world. She whispered something. I didn’t catch it, and asked her to repeat it. She lifted her head and the expression on her face was soul-destroying. ‘I said I sympathise with the moon.’

  No, that can’t be right – she’s supposed to be the sun, the brightness. I was the moon, the shattered, the disillusioned. You can’t have two moons – it would rip the world apart.

  ‘Elissa,’ I began.

  ‘Call me Cat,’ she interrupted.

  ‘Are you sure? Why?’

  ‘Because I like the sound of the other woman. It’s comforting I was like that once,’ she replied wistfully.

  ‘You could be like that again, Cat.’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘That old me is a ghost now. You can’t bring back the dead.’

  It pierced my heart, the way she said it, with finality, with acceptance. ‘Maybe it’s not dead,’ I urged. ‘Maybe you’re having an out-of-body experience.’

  ‘What, like astral projection?’ she asked.

  ‘Exactly. R
ight now you’re looking down on yourself, separate but attached. You just need to find a way to get back into your body.’

  ‘How?’ She seemed curious, which I took as a sign of encouragement.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘But we can figure it out.

  ‘We? Since when has there been a we?’

  ‘What sort of knight in shining armour would I be if I rode out of town after rescuing the damsel from the dragon?’

  ‘Damsel?’ she noted with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘Too sexist?’ I asked.

  ‘Too old. What are you – like three hundred and fifty years old?’

  ‘It feels like it sometimes,’ I shot back.

  ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t help me. I’d hate for you to break a hip.’

  ‘Harsh, but since you’re the same age as me we can break a hip together.’

  ‘I bet you say that to all the girls,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, sure, it’s a great chat-up line. Works well in the retirement villages.’ We both burst out laughing, I threw a guilty look at the door, aware of the time. ‘So how about it?’

  She looked down at her hands again. ‘It’s funny. I always considered myself to be a strong person, but with everything that’s happened … maybe I was fooling myself.’

  I shook my head. ‘You’re forgetting that you were doing pretty well defending yourself. If I hadn’t interrupted you, you’d probably still be kicking the crap out of him.’ I could sense her scepticism through the computer, but I pressed on. ‘You’re like this because you are strong. The stronger the substance the more pieces it shatters into.’

  ‘The bigger they are…’

  ‘Exactly,’ I told her.

  I could tell she was mulling the thought over. Eventually she looked at me. ‘Why? Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Because I like you too, and it’s not because of what happened, it’s just because.’

  She chewed on her nail, then realised what she was doing and dropped her hand back into her lap.

  ‘What do you say?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘Same time tomorrow night. Don’t be late.’ Then she disconnected the call, leaving behind a blank screen and a heart full of hope. I had the best sleep I’d had in a long time.