Light Errant

by Chaz Brenchley

  When justice meets brutality, he was saying, brutality wins. On both sides. And, the sleep of reason breeds monsters, he was saying that too.

  Me, I could say that in Spanish, only that now was not the time.

  “Us neither,” I said instead.

  “Unh?”

  “Well, what can we do about it?”

  Jamie considered that, or seemed to, cocking his head on one side and gazing deep into the soul of his bottle; which he then waggled at me gently, and the stopper rattled against the neck with a quiet chinking doom-laden sound, like Death’s bone bracelets chiming on his bony wrist.

  “Drink?” Jamie suggested.

  “Yeah.”

  We clinked our bottles together, mouth to mouth and base to base and mouth to mouth again in an old, rapid, crafty salute I’d thought I’d long forgotten; and he said, “Here’s to Josie,” and I said, “Yeah,” again though I’d hated her much of my life, thought the world well rid of her now.

  “Is that a private toast,” Janice murmured behind me, “or can anyone join in?”

  Strictly private, actually, but we’d done it now. The world had moved on from there, spinning giddily through dusty space, and who says there’s no such thing as progress? It was an utterly separate event when I turned to her, touched my bottle to hers, didn’t say a word.

  She considered me, or my silence, much as Jamie had considered his bottle. Head askance on a long neck, dark eyes narrowed and thoughtful. Disturbingly close, she was, and disturbingly sober: not even trying to keep pace with the lads here, sipping where we swallowed and listening where we talked.

  Now she said, “Want to tell us about Josie, then?”

  “No,” I said instantly. Why spoil a good drunk? If we were going to be helpless, we might as well be happy with it.

  “She was a cow,” Jamie said. “Ben hated her. Hell, everyone hated her, except me. I loved her.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Once I did.”

  “No, you just shagged her. Not the same thing,” and it wasn’t planned, it wasn’t at all deliberate or intended, but my eyes inevitably drifted to find Laura’s as I said that; and if I meant anything at all I only meant, see how crude I can be when I’m drunk, what a hard shell I’ve grown under my soft exterior, not at all the sweet sad Benedict you remember? But I realised suddenly what it might look like to her, to Jamie, to any or all of them: those words, that movement, disaster.

  I felt myself redden furiously, and only hoped the candlelight would hide it. I tried to look away from all of them at once, not easy in a circle without utterly turning my back; there was up or there was down, and down was a confession of guilt where up would be only a confession of drunkenness, so that’s what I did. I dropped back onto my elbows and lifted my eyes to the ceiling, from whence cometh no help at all, but I could at least find there a blanket of dark to hide my gaze therein.

  Someone’s fingers closed around my wrist. Cool, slender fingers, left wrist: Janice. Okay. Other people’s gestures I could live with. Made them feel good, didn’t hurt me.

  Didn’t help me either, but I was well used to that. Had been, at least, before I left this place, and it wasn’t only muscles that fell into familiar, unthinking habits. Memory is a sticky, sucking thing. Break nostalgia down to its root meanings, and it means the pain of returning. This was it, I guessed: cruelly dead cousins, loyalties twisted beyond bearing, Laura like an open wound and me slipping a dagger in and twisting every now and then, to be sure I was bleeding right.

  Felt like I’d never been away.

  o0o

  Time passed, moods shifted, as they do; we talked about other things. They talked, mostly, while I hovered between self-pity and self-disgust, and tried to drown them both. Not good at doing two things at once, me, I never had been. Stick to drinking, Ben, it’s what you’re best qualified for.

  More time passed. Janice stopped drinking alcohol, moved on to orange juice, and I remember hoping that she wouldn’t drink it all, thinking there would be a need in the morning. Jon put down a half-finished bottle and glug-glugged his own share of juice, straight from the carton. Traitor, I remember thinking, you’re young, what’s the matter with you?

  Too young, was the matter with him; Janice was just too sleepy. To be fair, they did have to share a bed. Hosts with poor endurance, they failed and left us, squabbling vaguely over who got to use the bathroom first.

  Jamie and I shared a grin, affectionately mocking, but we didn’t have long to enjoy it. As if that first retreat was a signal, Laura gave us no more than ten minutes, no more time than it needed for two people to swap use of a bathroom and be done with it. Then she collected toothbrushes from Jamie’s pocket and Jamie from the armchair, and took him away to share toothpaste and toilet and bed. My bed, I thought vaguely, trying to summon up some level of resentment, or else to see potent symbolism in it.

  And failed, and popped another bottle open in lieu. In lieu of what? Work it backwards: symbols, resentment, company. Cousin Josie. A plan to avenge her, any plan for tomorrow, any plan for the rest of my life...

  o0o

  I could, I suppose, have gone to bed. To sofa, rather. There was a sheet, there was a sleeping-bag though it was surely too warm a night to need it, there were cushions; and I had in fact slept on the sofa before, when I lived here and we had guests. Not a problem.

  Except that sleeping, just the idea of sleeping was a serious problem. I couldn’t get my head around it. I lay down somewhat, stretched out for comfort’s sake—but no, no way was I going to sleep.

  My books were in the panniers of my bike, and my pocket chess-set also, but I didn’t want to be banging about out there, fumbling with keys in the dark. The only books I could see in this flat were legal texts, no fun at all; I didn’t dare switch on the telly or the radio for fear of waking sleepers, damaging their luck.

  Once again, then, it came down to this: that there was nothing to do but drink. Well, there at least I was qualified. I could certainly get my head around that.

  I fetched all the remaining bottles from the fridge, not to have to thump to and fro all night disturbing people; I lined them up conveniently to hand, along the unravelling fringe of the sofa’s shabby cover; I pursed my lips around chill green glass, and tilted.

  If this was a wake, I thought, it was not for Cousin Josie. For the new me, perhaps: for the confident, cured young man I’d thought I was bringing back from the continent. All laid out on the sofa here, dead to everything except the world.

  Except the world, except my world. The world sucks, I thought, and grinned savagely in the flickering light. There ain’t no such thing as gravity, the earth sucks; and what went around came around, including me. I’d been sucked in a vicious, vicious circle, and here I was, right back where I’d started: weak and ineffectual, bereft, and drinking because I could think of no better thing to do.

  o0o

  At some point during that long procession of liquid down my throat, I started to worry about Fizzy. Malfeasance, and there was a right lawyerly name to give a cat. But I’d let him out, perhaps in defiance of house law, I hadn’t checked; and if he’d been let in again I hadn’t noticed, I certainly hadn’t seen him in the flat.

  Perhaps he was out there now, sitting on the doorstep or the windowsill, piteously wailing, hopelessly waiting...

  I gave my worry a drink to settle it, but it didn’t go away. Gave it a bottle, two bottles, and it only got sharper.

  Somewhere during the second of those bottles the last candle burned out and left me in the dark, but my worry didn’t leave me. Teeth and claws, my worry had, and it scratched and bit at me so that I couldn’t be comfortable, I had to go see.

  Not such a bad thing anyway, I thought. I could stand in the doorway, get some air, look at the street and the stars...

  Poor thinking, that was. Moving was a big mistake. I jerked myself upright, and the room span around me; I stood up and was already swaying before I took a step, my stomach
lurched inside me and an acid burning rose in my throat.

  I staggered and caught myself against the wall, and even that seemed to lurch and fall away from me. Now there was an urgency stronger than all my worry: front door or bathroom, either one but quickly. Front door was closer and I could find it more easily, moving flat-handed along those untrustworthy walls with my jaw clenched and all my skin sweating and my feet stumbling on the treacherous, tripping carpet.

  Door: found it with my eyes, then with my hands. Yale lock: turned it, pulled. Fresh air, cool breeze: unlocked my mouth and breathed in, good and deep.

  That was the big mistake, the coup de grâce; or else it was the signal my desperate body had been waiting for, safe now, relax, let go...

  Let go I did, violently, spectacularly. All that had gone down came up again, dinner and drinking both; I doubled over and spewed heroically, couldn’t even make it to the gutter. My eyes blurred, my body spasmed, a foul stream gushed from my mouth and pooled below the doorstep where I stood.

  Gush drained to dribble, I dribbled and spat against the vile taste, the bile taste that cloyed in my skinned mouth. And had to sit down and did, on the low wall that was handy there; and hunched over with my hands in my sweat-sodden hair, still retching empty, and groaning wretchedly between the retches.

  And then there were fingers other than mine in my hair. My head startled upward and my eyes found Janice standing beside me, shadowed face framed by tousled hair, legs bare to the breeze, a short gown belted tight between face and legs.

  “You okay, Ben?” she asked, her voice hoarse with broken sleep; and then she chuckled at the absurdity, and answered for me. “No, you’re not okay, are you?”

  “Sorry,” I said awkwardly, painfully, sorry for many things tonight. “I’ll be fine...”

  Sure I would. In a year or two, maybe a decade or two: when the stench of my puking and the embarrassment of drinking myself sick in someone else’s home had faded at least a little from my memory, when dead cousins were history, when Laura’s and Jamie’s child was out in the world and growing, maybe full-grown and gone from them and from me also...

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “Now,” dismissing all of that, dragging me back to the immediate, where I was sitting with the rising stink all about me, dribble on my chin and nothing fixed or fated, “are you okay to stand up?”

  “In a bit.” Her hand moved down to my neck and I liked that, I leaned against it like a cat, and remembered. “I was, I was looking for Fizzy, I thought maybe he was shut out and wanted in...”

  She laughed. “You won’t find Fizzy. He’s off doing big butch cat things, he won’t be home till breakfast now. Don’t worry about him, we always leave a window open.”

  All right, I wouldn’t worry about Fizzy. No teeth, no claws: only my own humiliation to shred me now.

  “And you’re not to worry about this, either.”

  “Mind-reader.”

  Again the laughter, and, “You’re an open book, Benjamin.”

  “Benedict.”

  “Benedict. Right. But honestly, everybody barfs sometime; and at least you made it to the door. I’ve cleaned it up off carpets before now, and washed people’s jeans for them, everything. Had to put a boy in a shower once. With all his clothes on, it was the less disgusting option.”

  “I’ll clean this up,” I said. “Got a bucket?”

  “In the morning. Now, are you ready to move?”

  “Sure,” I said, not sure at all. “Where are we going?”

  “Bathroom.”

  “Shower?”

  “If you want. I was thinking you might like to clean your teeth, but...”

  But a shower sounded great; but there was no shower, so why was she offering one? Never had been, at least. The landlord could have put one in since I left, but herds of flying pigs were more likely. Besides, I’d have noticed, wouldn’t I? When I’d had a piss, earlier? I thought back. Not easy, but I did it. No, no proper shower: only a flexible hosepipe in the bath, tap attachments and a shower head. And the plumbing made a hell of a din, I remembered, and people were sleeping.

  “Teeth’ll be fine. Sounds good...” My tongue indeed was checking out my teeth, acid-etched and slimy. Brushing was suddenly mandatory.

  She slipped a hand under my arm, and helped me up. Funny thing about puking, it always clears your head. I was glad of her support, but only because I was weak and shaky, not because I was reeling drunk still.

  Into the flat, close the door, crab along the passage not wide enough for two abreast. I had a quick flashback to last night, when I was doing the same thing with Jon to hold me up. Another day, another trouble, another helping hand. At least I hadn’t much aggravated yesterday’s damage; my ribs were sore once more after all that heaving, but no worse than that.

  Halfway there and my stomach turned again, threatening disaster.

  “All right?”

  “Yeah,” swallowing hard against a rush of sour saliva. “Maybe. Don’t stop...”

  Hurry, I was really saying. We hurried, and we made it, though barely; I shoved her away at the door, fell to my knees before the loo, felt my innards twist and my throat fill, saw a thin brown spatter on the white porcelain.

  And felt her arm around my shoulders, her hand on my head again. “It’s all right, Ben. Take your time.”

  Well, I wasn’t planning to move. I hugged that bowl, my eyes watered, somehow I managed a choking laugh. “This is not,” I gasped, “how it’s supposed to be. You get this close to Macallans, it’s supposed to be you that’s sick...”

  “You don’t make me feel sick,” she said. “Just sort of tingly, when I touch you. I like it.”

  Yeah, right. The girls’ delight, we Macallan boys. Individually, at least. “Even with the two of us?” I asked her. “Me and Jamie, together?” I hadn’t been thinking, all evening; but it was a blessing now to have a puzzle to focus on. More than one of us in a room, traditionally that was hard for ordinary mortals to bear.

  “We talked about that, while you were out. Laura reckons that the two of you cancel each other out. Yin and yang, you fit together. Matter and antimatter.”

  That made sense, I supposed. Except, “You put matter and antimatter together, you’re supposed to get an explosion.”

  “Something else, then. Things that neutralise each other. Teeth?”

  “Teeth.”

  The washbasin wobbled when I leaned on it, but it always had. I cleaned my teeth, she stayed to watch; but the running tap was causing me other problems.

  “Um, would you mind...? I need a wazz.”

  She chuckled, and left me delicately alone. I drained my bladder, flushed the toilet, caught sudden sight of my reflection in the mirror and was puzzling distractedly over the lack of bruises on my face when she opened the door and distracted me altogether.

  “I’ve decided, you’re not fit to be left tonight. We’re rearranging.”

  What did that mean? That meant that Jon came shuffling down the passage in sleeping-shorts, glancing in to give me a wicked smile as he passed. It meant that Janice tucked her shoulder under mine and took me to her bedroom, to her bed. It meant that I was not offered any choice in the matter, nor given a chance to argue.

  It meant also that she helped me get undressed, and offered me no sleeping-shorts nor any other nod towards modesty; and that once I was in and under the sheet she walked around to the other side and slipped her robe off before she turned the light out, just to keep us equal.

  The bed creaked and dipped a little, as she joined me. She slid across to lie cosily, contentedly against me, so close her head shared my pillow though she had one of her own; and she said, “So does you being hung up over Laura mean you don’t sleep with other girls, Ben? Benedict?”

  After a silence, her hand touched my chest, light-fingered and dangerous. “Okay, two alternatives. You can pass out on me, if you like; or you can talk to me. You can’t just lie there and stew, that’s not an option.”

  “Who
told you I was, was hung up over Laura?”

  “You all did, all three of you. I said, I can read you like a book.”

  Oh, fuck...

  I said nothing; she said, “Does it, though?”

  “No. It doesn’t...” At least it didn’t, hundreds of miles from here. Left to myself, I’d have made no moves on anyone in this town; not now, emphatically, not tonight.

  But I hadn’t been left to myself, she wouldn’t have it so. “Don’t feel threatened,” she said, nestling, shifting an arm across my chest and touching my cheek with her fingers. “No means no, in this bed. But just think, I’ve been two nights now in here with a boy who doesn’t love me for my body. Jon doesn’t even have to say no, it’s not a question. Have you got any idea how frustrating that is? And now there’s you, and I know you have your priorities the right way round, and that’s only going to make it worse if you just lie there and snore for what’s left of the night...”

  I’m no fool, I can spot a serious invitation wrapped up in facetiousness. I wasn’t prepared to play, though, not on that level; so, “That’s it, is it? You just want me to, what, service your needs? Like some fucking stud bull?”

  I felt her chuckle, felt her suppress it sternly; heard not a trace of it in her voice as she said, “No, that’s not it. Not just it. It’s a good sleepy-time remedy for you, too. Better than lying there stewing, with a snoring girl on your shoulder. Besides, it’s a good offer, and they’re never that common. No one really gets enough. Why waste the chance?”

  Janice: I’ve just puked my guts up, I must still be dizzy-drunk even if I don’t feel it, it’s only twenty-four hours since I was beaten up by my dad even if I have recovered bloody quick, I’ve seen another of my cousins butchered this afternoon, I’ve just found out today that I’m still obsessed with the girl who’s pregnant by my blood-brother; do you really think this is the ideal time to make a pass at me?

  It was like a message in my head, I wanted to send it Western Union. But she was lying half on top of me, her breath moist on my neck and her skin sticky-warm on this hot night, and all the scents and touches of her were unexpected but for sure very much better than the couch and the bottles and the long long night; and everything in the message might be true but it seemed to me suddenly that it didn’t after all necessarily demand the answer no. Maybe this was a perfect time, maybe I could lose it all for an hour. And then for a few hours more, sleeping as she’d said the sleep of the damned lucky...