Altered States (18 page)

That night I realised.

It was his idea to meet, not hers, and nothing happened. In fact she told him where to go, and it wasn’t anywhere pleasant, like Santa Barbara. He hadn’t treated her well and she was sensible enough to know that she wouldn’t be better off with him. But I didn’t want to be someone that she was ‘better off being with’. I sensed her feelings for him, her passion. Passion that only seems to arise for people that treat you like shit. I have experience of this. It’s odd; I can’t explain it.

There’s always been this distance between me and others. My all-too-intimate knowledge tainting my view of their personas, sullying what might otherwise be such a pleasant sight – before even the first handshake is unclenched. The human mind is a beautiful and amazing thing. In much the same way that childbirth is. It’s all about choosing the bits you see. The product. The rosy-cheeked mother, the miraculous bundle of life, the proud father. With the mind it’s the same. Avoid the seedy, distasteful parts and what you see is quite respectable. A person, with flaws, sure, but generally wholesome. But it’s such a narrow view, like reading the authorised biography of a two-bit sports personality, one of many twee books lined up in a yuletide bookshop display, spouting amusing anecdotes of an inoffensive life. Trust me, it’s not the whole story, it never is.

I see the books too but I get to see all the pages that never reach print, the ones you’ll never read. That’s why I prefer to leave the books on the coffee table and go about my own business instead. That’s why I turn away, especially from those closest to me, the people I love, the people I want to like.

All my life I’ve been standing in the middle of this frozen lake, even those closest to me reaching out from a faraway shore. At least since meeting Gemma there had been one person standing with me. Somehow she had instinctively known the path to take to find her way to my place on the ice. I had allowed her to edge tentatively towards me, and then one day I turned around and she was standing right there beside me, hand in mine and prepared to face the world with me together.

That was how I’d hoped it could stay, but deep down I was far too well acquainted with my foibles to believe that it would, and on that night of Gemma’s clandestine meeting, I was proved right. Things changed. Every moment that passed thereafter I found myself pushing her away. Sliding her across that ice. Looking on helplessly until she was a mere silhouette against the backdrop of my life; standing there, shivering on the bank with everyone else I had ever loved. Between us stretched an expanse of thin ice that every morsel of communication had to journey across. In the end the journey grew too tough.

I knew what I had to do. I gathered the few things of mine that I didn’t want to leave behind and went. I wanted to explain, but I didn’t – I couldn’t.

The alley was narrow, the buildings either side towered above. Steam snaked out of grates in the road. It was quiet as it always was in the city after dark. Gemma had followed me down to the street. I didn’t know if she just wanted to make it harder for me as I left. As we stood in the night air we held each other tightly. I felt her fingers dig into my flesh and smelt the familiar aroma of her hair as her head nestled under my chin. I loosened my grip but her grasp only tightened. I knew she would never end this embrace. I pushed her away gently. Her eyes were filled with dew.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said and I took a pace backwards. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Her eyes screamed after me and I felt my heart tighten, but I had no choice. I turned and I walked away and with every step I felt those eyes burning into my back. I swallowed hard, breathed deep and kept walking without looking back, every step heavier than the one before.

I made it around the corner before the tears began to flow.

I never did look back. I’ve been walking ever since.

Questions

Silence

From that moment to this there have been no events in my life that I feel worthy of narration. The same cannot be said of Gemma. Her years were far from uneventful – though not in a good way.

Some time after I left, there was another man, of course. I don’t know the details. I wouldn’t want to. But I know that it didn’t last. And I know that Gemma had a daughter by him.

I didn’t find out this detail until a year ago. Or to put it another way: I didn’t find out this detail until it was too late. Until Gemma had lost her second child. After six years this time, rather than six minutes. Not that that matters. Not that it makes a difference. Having only lived through one of these losses I can’t begin to speculate which is worse. But I know this: neither six minutes nor six years constitute a life. Only a tragedy.

I know I bear no direct responsibility for these events. But at the same time my decision to leave was the butterfly flapping its wings. If I hadn’t left, things would have played out differently. At the very least, I would have still been there for her.

For these reasons, and many others, which can remain unspoken, my thoughts tend to spend a lot of time wallowing in the past these days. Understandably, I feel.

But for once, right now, my thoughts were not sojourning in history. They were standing right here beside me at the bar in BlueJay.

I was supposed to be here to meet Burch’s contact, but I had been rendered somewhat distracted. A few moments ago a woman entered my sphere of awareness in much the way that a brick might enter a sphere of custard – with great consequence.

I had been observing a couple of guys nearby – one of whom I recognised as a local baseball player – when a manager-type-person brought over and introduced a woman to them. And since that moment my thoughts were no longer my own to command. It wasn’t her striking Latin features or her attractive wine-coloured frock. It was something else entirely.

And maybe now I can explain.

When it comes to leaking one’s thoughts through actions and expressions, some people are ‘noisier’ than others. Some are faint and have to be scrutinised for some time before anything concrete can be gleaned, whilst others are so loud that it takes no effort at all. And between these extremes there is a whole continuum of people, along which anyone can be placed. At least, so I thought. Until now. Until seeing this woman. Because ... she didn’t fall on this scale.

She was ... silent.

Totally silent.

I couldn’t explain how that could be. There is a hard-wired physiological connection between one’s unconscious thoughts and their body – particularly the face. And whatever overt picture is intentionally painted – false or otherwise – the truth is always there, in the detail.

But with her, there was no detail.

And what did this mean? It meant that where everyone around her was transparent to me, she was ... opaque. And as much as it piqued my curiosity, it also freaked me out, because I’d never met anyone like this before. Ever.

It’s hard to convey the intensity and the bizarreness of the discovery. To me it just didn’t fit into any current frame of understanding. She may just as well have been levitating.

Of course, being faced with such a novel scenario I did exactly what any normal, decent person would do. I stared at her blatantly for much longer than was polite. After a time I grew aware of my social transgression and embarked on a noble campaign to point my eyes elsewhere.

The baseballer’s original companion had left since he would have been the third who made it a crowd. I watched the sportsman for a few moments as he made his best plays. He was the yang to her yin. Where she was an enigma he was an open book. Anyone in the bar could have had him all figured out in a matter of minutes. In short: he was a cock.

It was clear he fancied the mystery woman, but he fancied getting her upstairs rather more than he fancied planning a family or even a romantic meal. Suddenly my instincts were to protect this woman rather than move on. But that was madness. I didn’t even know her. In fact, she was the first person in my life who I knew nothing about. For all I knew she could be more depraved than any of the recalcitrant degenerates I’d had the misfortune to deal with over the last decade.

Besides, she was in the company of a good-looking, wealthy and successful sports star. She wouldn’t give the prospect of talking to a lonely fool like me a second consideration.

I hovered in some kind of out-of-kilter stupor for a while. Then, as if to remind me of what I was really here to do, there was a buzz-buzzing in my pocket. A short buzz. A new text message. It was Burch’s phone. I ignored it.

I had to step back for a moment. My mind was in fragments in a way I was entirely unused to. And I had the unnerving sensation that this was another of those butterfly effect moments. That my life could go either way based on how I decided to play this one out. It seemed I was standing at a juncture. Not a crossroads, just a single point on a very long road. And I could go one way or the other. Forward or back.

Not that I felt this mystery woman would figure significantly in my future, but she represented something entirely new to my plane of existence. From her I could learn something – about myself and other people. Something I didn’t already know. Maybe something significant. And that felt like a positive step forward.

But that was not my intended mission here. I was here to find out the truth about what had happened to Gemma and Pearle. To discover why a man was framed for the murder of a girl who supposedly died of natural causes. In short, I was here to further dwell in the past; to feebly attempt to exorcise a demon that may never wish to be slain.

So what was it to be? Future or past? Forward or back?

I did not hesitate in doing what I always do in such times of indecision. I procrastinated vigorously until there was no longer a decision to be made.

The couple stood to leave – all laughs and flattery. And when they did ... I bit down and watched them go.

I regrouped for a moment, took some deep breaths and recalibrated my mind. Fantasies had to be put to one side. I had to get back into the real world, back into the now.

When normality finally returned I fished Burch’s phone from my pocket and read the message. All it said was, ‘Table 41’. Clever, I thought. Not even a regular punter could actually locate a specific table without stumbling from one to the next peering at the brass plaque on each. Or alternatively asking a member of staff, from which would ensue much turning and pointing. Either way, it gave him a chance to witness my approach, to clock me before I clocked him.

The man Burch was here to meet clearly wanted to see him coming. I, on the other hand, didn’t want him to see me coming, because I was not Burch, and I wasn’t clear whether or not the two had previously been acquainted.

So, I had to get clever too. I motioned to a nearby member of the bar staff. When she approached, I leaned in.

‘Don’t look,’ I said in a mock-hushed voice, ‘but it’s my friend’s birthday, over on table forty-one. Would you be so kind as to deliver a special bottle of champagne to his table.’ I gave her a theatrical wink and handed over much more cash than was necessary. It always felt like you should stuff it down their tops in this place.

‘Certainly sir,’ she said obligingly, as if I had, and flashed me a well-glossed smile.

BlueJay is the kind of establishment that looks after its wealthy clients. It’s the kind of place that considers itself as actually having clients – as opposed to just customers or piss-heads like most drinking houses.

Four minutes later, there was a small commotion over at the back of the room as two waitresses burst into a suitably high-profile and embarrassing rendition of Happy Birthday, with a cork-popping finale and a round of applause from nearby drinkers. There were three guys at the table who all looked a little confused but played along with it rather than create an even bigger scene.

I took my cue to approach the table; and did so with the mock wobble of a beer-laden man, before plonking myself down at their table.

‘I didn’t know it was your birthday,’ I said in over-familiar tones. A carefully chosen opener that could just as well come from a long-time acquaintance as a random, slightly-tipsy stranger from a neighbouring table.

I faltered momentarily – on the inside only of course. I should have anticipated that these guys would not be using their real monikers in business dealings. I couldn’t be sure but I had to work on the assumption that Bigby and Burch were one and the same.

Chinny was dubbed so either because he had none or many of the said body part, depending on your definition. He was large and balding, and wore a shiny grey suit and a shirt that looked uncomfortably tight around the collar. Between his fingers he rolled a fat smouldering cigar.

Lips was a stocky guy with a skull that looked built to withstand most assaults from fists, bats and small incendiary devices. I didn’t wish to speculate as to the origins of his handle. I also didn’t want to ever find myself on his bad side, but I feared a full circumnavigation would turn up sides of no other kind.

Nino was less chunky, more weasely and greasy-haired and who looked the type to be terminally twitchy.