Black Chalk (34 page)

No, I was letting my fears override my reason. She'd realised I had trouble sleeping and now she wanted to help me. And the antiemetic – well, perhaps she had heartburn. There I was making everything out of nothing, forgetting the times she'd spontaneously asked me whether I wanted a massage, the plethora of dishes she'd cooked after a long day waiting at tables just so I could try to integrate another logarithm, the picnic she'd made me three weeks earlier, and the sandwiches she ran home to make so that two of my friends could invite themselves along. I was forgetting the ease behind her smile, the light tingle of her forefinger running back and forth over my wrist, and the way she kissed my neck, with lips, tongue and hot breath, each ingredient added after another week together, until she had me just right. And three herbs; I was remembering her story wrong. It could have just as well been basil or parsley. The drugs were a mere coincidence.

I needed to wash my hands, to douse them in soap, and to rub until I'd erased the last of my fingerprints. The sink wouldn't do: I went into the bathroom and had a shower, turning the tap into the red until it burned my skin. I was big enough to stand it. When I became used to the heat, I turned it hotter still, and then I made it as cold as possible.

The contrast made me groan, and the groan became a shout. And I loved the release, the way it started in my gut, the way I clenched my fists and thrust my chest out, the way its echo broke through the sheets of water. I shouted until I ran out of breath. Then I turned the shower off and, naked, I went to sit in the living room. Water pooled in the sofa's creases.

Someone had to die to make up for her brother's death. That much was clear. Ever since she'd hit her mother, she'd started to repress the violent side of her grief. That was what Amanda had meant. And now that she'd waited so long, now that I'd drawn a target on my neck, she was preparing to execute me. She had a rope around my throat, and she'd pulled her noose tighter with every hour we'd spent together. I'd started to feel it in Wytham Woods, when it was still loose enough that it rested heavy on my shoulders. But a day watching television, and worst of all, the hours she'd spent away from me, when I was nothing but a faceless prisoner, and she'd pulled the rope tighter, inch after inch, until I could feel the imprint of its grooves on my jugular.

I pictured her sitting across from me, my papers strewn all over the table, her vampire novel split open over my notebook earning its first crease, and I understood the expression on her face as she spoke of our final dinner: its length, its paleness, and the extreme stillness of her eyes. A judge handing out her first death sentence, hiding behind a wig and a grave face. And I remembered her standing up, both hands flat on the table, her single nod like a scythe to my heart, and that singular twitch in the corner of her mouth. I couldn't argue with that twitch; it was my crowning proof. As damning as if she'd shed a tear. A dash of pain, compassion, doubt to justify the rest.

But it was only a dash. The part that wanted to see my fingers crisp and drop my champagne flute under Donnington Bridge ruled her. I'd been punched on the back of the head. My brain had squeezed through my eyeballs and splattered on the wall. I started to shiver, but I didn't move. After a long time, I found a blanket, draped it over my shoulders, and lay down on the sofa until night fell and sleep came.

***

I woke up in bed with a vague feeling of guilt and fear, as if I'd set myself an alarm but couldn't remember what I was getting up for, only that I couldn't be late. Wading through my schedule, I asked myself whether it was my turn to prepare the Saturday picnic, and I felt a sharp surge of adrenaline. I swung out of bed, looking for something to do, to act so that I wouldn't think: correct the wobble of the three kitchen chairs, remove the vinegar stain on the coffee table, see whether I could unwarp my front wheel – the bicycle, resting against the lower flat's veranda, the wind brushing its spokes, held a message addressed to me. I went into the garden, unclasped the wheel, and laid it flat on the garden's only patch of grass. When I looked right down the axle, I could see the back of the wheel rise into a crescent. Hammer in hand, I hit it once. The wheel spun, rubber burning my fingers. I turned it back to where it'd been, eyed the flatness of the plane, and hit it harder. The feel of the heavy hammer clanging against the light aluminium frame satisfied me, but I couldn't see whether it was straightening the wheel. I needed a level. There was one in the kitchen under the sink.

As I walked up the steps, the seams between the stairs' bricks tried to tell me something, but I couldn't make out the secret locked in their pattern. The kitchen tiles listened to the bricks and waved too. I stopped in the middle of the kitchen, wondering why I'd gone up in the first place. And then, where I'd left them the night before, I saw the two medicine packs on the counter: the green bottle promising sleepless sleep, and the pastel pink bottle that would quieten my body's doubts. The last of the adrenaline stored in my glands came up. Without thinking, I reached for my phone and called Leona. It rang and it rang and it went to voicemail. Standing in the middle of the kitchen, I tried again.

‘Good morning, Nathan,' she said in a sluggish voice.

Surprised, I looked at my watch: it was 8 a.m. She was probably asleep in her room, in Jeffrey's old room.

‘Are you going to work today?' I said.

‘Maybe,' she groaned.

She was still missing work because of me.

‘Only ten days left before your classes start again.'

‘They think I'm sick,' she said.

‘Oh.'

‘I'm not sick.'

‘I don't think you are.'

I grabbed hold of the kitchen counter. I was losing control of the conversation.

‘Mum thinks I'm sick too. But I'm not, alright!'

‘You're not sick. You just needed time,' I said and winced. I couldn't take her side when she'd planned my death. I clenched my fist. I needed certainty, and I needed it now. ‘Listen, I just saw you had some herbs in the fridge…' I trailed off, hoping she'd confess. A word, a sob, she didn't have to say it outright. But all I could make out was her breath, sounding heavier than usual. ‘Thyme, coriander and dill,' I pushed on. ‘What am I meant to do with them?'

‘They bother you?' she barked, the line crackled, and I had my sign. Immediately, I felt my fears confirmed and a need to calm her down.

‘No—' I started. But why should I calm her when I was a finger away from yelling myself? The answer came vividly: she'd cried in my arms while the rain beat relentlessly on the windows, while a turbid smog travelled from my lips to her ears, while every puff had made my lungs and mind swell, and had withered her limbs into her gut.

And with that image, my anger choked on its stillborn carcass. I was guilty and she had a right to be angry. I'd been selfish to unburden myself on her. Now that she was suffering, I had to pay for what I'd done, for the pain I'd caused her.

‘No,' I said, ‘they'll stay fresher if I put them in the bottom drawer. Are they for Friday?'

She stayed quiet.

‘For the soup?' I said.

‘No, for after,' she whispered.

‘The risotto?'

‘No,' she said, her voice seeming as distant as mine, as if a part of us had moved to a different plane, and every word was just another wink to answers we already knew. ‘It's for the surprise.'

I smiled against the receiver.

‘On the river?'

‘Maybe,' she said. ‘It's a surprise.'

‘Go back to sleep,' I said and I hung up.

The medicine bottles stared at me serenely. They were hovering on the white counter like two buoys in a harbour, the green gate freshly painted, the red marker faded to pink with the sun, and I felt myself rush between them, down a sea of white towards a weeping willow. I grabbed the green bottle and studied its Spanish writing – México, D. F. written along the bottom ring. There was a plastic seal along the top ring. If I broke it, I could try a pill and see how I felt, and then I could try two, and then three, until my body became immune. There I'd be under Donnington Bridge, pretending to float dead, but really laughing at the stars.

But if I broke the seals, she would notice. We would have to sit down, look each other in the eye, and talk about it. My hands went damp – I forced myself to consider it: she was blowing cold air on her cup of tea, while mine cooled down on the coffee table. (I had to do something about that vinegar stain.) I looked for the right words, stuttering, humming and hamming, struggling to bring it to the surface, where it would only harden into a shell, when we both knew, when we both knew we knew. No, silence was a better option – that way at least, we could pretend that everything was fine. I placed the two bottles back where I'd found them, in the 1920s French cake tin Leona had bought at La Rochelle – the metal one in shades of brown with the picture of a little girl holding a doll.

I held on to that resigned decisiveness while I took a shower. When I turned the tap off, I realised I'd left the door open and steamed up the whole flat. I'd be dead in a week; a little moisture on the walls didn't matter. But I was still annoyed. My mind was pacing, racing, and my eyes followed, jumping all over the room, fastening on every vivid detail. The full-length mirror on the bathroom wall cleared with a fresh draught, and I could see myself. There was a furrow across my brow. My mind latched on. Such a unique expression: four half-moons spreading from the corner of my eyes, with a single white unbroken line spanning from one temple to the other – no one else's brow creased in just that pattern. The beauty of the expression, so true to everything I was, moved me. And soon my forehead would be as smooth as a sheet of wax. I'd spent three years at the Chamonix gym working on my triceps until I could see them sharpening the back of my arms, and there they were, poking through freckles and moles, bulging when I flexed them. In a week, they'd be bark starting their slow wither. Not even a week: five days. Five short days, and September would be almost over, and Leona would be getting ready for her second year of university.

It wasn't possible. The world couldn't go on without me, that bee buzzing over my face included. If I weren't there to see them fly, bees wouldn't bother. They'd die with me gracefully, like a pharaoh's retinue, shutting their eyes when I shut mine.

I needed to move. Naked, I ran down the stairs, skipped the little gate into the garden, and lay on the grass. The grass would die because it only existed for me, just like that wall and the people looking at me behind the curtains of that window. I laughed. They didn't know it, but they were about to die. Enjoy the view while you can. Those triceps, the rebellious tuft of hair on my chest, and my cock, enjoy them. That cock, which had led me like a ship's rudder, that cock which had hosed piss over Europe's highest mountains, into the Pacific's warmest currents, that cock which had shot sperm on a redhead's thigh and smeared it down to her knee, as if it were my brush and her thigh my canvas – Fuck! – that cock would remain forever placid, and shrink until it was as long as the tip of my little finger. The man behind the curtains showed his face and knocked loudly on the window, but I didn't care about him. I wanted to hit a fast bowler back over his head, and to stay in that moment when only I knew the ball was going for six. I wanted to put on a pair of 188s, climb over a ridge, and plunge over unbroken snow. The ground to slip rugged under my skis, a tree rushing to embrace me, and with my strongest push, to graze past it, laugh, and charge a bigger trunk.

I jumped up, standing tall with my arms on my hips and my chest ready to flatten anyone who dared challenge me, and I stared down everything around me. That measly tree, nothing more than a bush stretching a foot higher than it should; that concrete slab, dark with cancerous cracks, crumbling with next year's rains; and the paint peeling off the gate, three blue leaves hanging from another blister.

Fuck them all.

I would never meet another girl. A blonde with cropped hair, a ring in her nose, who could tickle me wild with the stud in her tongue. A scowling brunette, who'd hold out a soft hand just when I thought I'd screwed it up. I wouldn't hear a new voice quietening to a whisper and pulling me in as surely as if there were a cord fastened to my heart. Stealing glances, delighting in the impossible, and yearning for flesh, flesh and more flesh (round, smooth and firm), I wanted it all and I could have none.

My shoulders slumped and I sat back down, folding my legs so the neighbours wouldn't see my shrinking cock. There might be more muscles hiding my body, more hair covering my arse, but I was still the boy who'd feasted on Eric's madness and backtracked come payday. The same killer who'd spurted bullets at Leona. I could fight it all night but the facts were there: one, I was guilty, two, I deserved to die. It was time for the blindfold.

I surrendered. My mind was the centre of a storm, and images, ideas, memories all flapped with the winds. Time passed. I did things, time did things to me – I can't remember. And the bike was fixed, I was dressed, I was cycling in the middle of the road, and I was avoided by cars, taxis, and buses full of men in football shirts and tracksuits. By a grandmother who kept on sounding her horn, wanting to claim the centre of the road back for her kind, who pulled up next to me when she finally overtook me, asked me whether I was crazy, and who drove off when I gave her the finger.

The September sun had finally vanquished all of the summer's clouds. I squinted to see through the asphalt's glare, and recognised a ditch on the side of the road. There used to be flowers pinned to a telephone pole by this ditch – because an eighteen-year-old boy had killed himself driving too fast, my mother had told me – but the telephone pole was gone, and with it the flowers. And there, it felt closer in a car, was a turn I'd taken thousands of times, with a harvested field waving yellows and greens.