Like it Matters

Published in 2016 by Umuzi
an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd
Company Reg No 1953/000441/07
Estuaries No 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, 7441, South Africa
PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa
[email protected]

© 2016 David Cornwell

All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

First edition, first printing 2016

ISBN
978-1-4152-0160-2 (Print)
ISBN
978-1-4152-0922-6 (ePub)
ISBN
978-1-4152-0923-3 (
PDF
)

Cover design and illustrations by Gretchen van der Byl
Text design by Fahiema Hallam
Set in Adobe Jenson Pro

MEETING

BEFORE

THE REST OF APRIL

THE BEST DAY

MAY

JUNE?

ANOTHER GHOST

DRIFTING OUT

THE WORST NIGHT

FALLOUT

CLOCK TICKING

AND BACK AGAIN

BIRTHDAY

MEETING

Remember no matter where you go there you are.

–
CONFUCIUS

It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself

–
EDGAR ALLAN POE
, “
THE BLACK CAT
”

J
A, THERE
’
S LOTS TO TELL
—but it has to start with her …

It was about ten in the morning, and I only know that because I’d got there just when everything was starting up. I was right outside the door and I heard the microphone get switched on, then feed back a little, then someone start mumbling into it—

That’s when I let the feeling that’d been at me all morning just take over and win—

It’s ridiculous you’re here at all, Ed.

You were never actually going in.

I went and sat on a bench on the edge of the netball court outside and I lit what was probably my tenth cigarette of the day already. It burned my throat and made me retch. For a while my eyes watered, and to stop my hands shaking so much I got the pillbox out my pocket and clutched it between my palms.

It doesn’t actually start with her.

It starts with her dad’s van, this big old thing that sounded like a tractor, coming round the corner and driving onto the netball court. This thing with a black grill with two red crosses welded onto it like shields, and one of those massive, wide windshields, with curtains flapping out the windows in the breeze—

It made me feel like I was back at Day One again, worrying the thing wasn’t real, I was making it all up

Panicking, in case it meant I was too late, you know? Maybe I’d fucked my mind up forever already.

But the van came closer and closer, and I blinked and shook my head and it still didn’t go away. It swung out and made a half-circle, and from the side it looked like an old fruit truck or something, with a corrugated cargo box that rattled above the sound of the engine in a whiny, shimmering way. The cab was dull but the box was painted shining silver and blue, with bright white clouds all over it and an arc of rainbow colours going across the top. And then all this stuff written in letters that looked like strings of balloons, Bible stuff like
GOD IS LOVE, JOHN 3:16, JESUS SAID I AM THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE
. At the top of the van, near where the box joined with the cab, there was a little speaker rigged up and I was looking at that when the passenger door opened—

And she climbed out

And the moment sprang its jaws and caught me.

She left the door open and walked away from the van without looking back. It’s so hard to say how she looked. She had hair that made me think of honey, and she wore heavy eyeshadow, and she had a sloping kind of posture that made her look misused and pissed off. She was small and lean and she walked like a boy. When she passed me on her way into the hall she was biting her lip, and I could see her cheeks had dimples and I could tell she probably pouted a lot.

She went straight inside, didn’t turn around at all—

I looked back at the van and that’s when I saw the thing that
really
just locked me in with her. I saw her dad, it must’ve been her dad, leaning over trying to close her door, not being able to reach it, dropping his head and shaking it, then undoing his seat belt and climbing out of his seat and finally getting the door closed, his face looking all angry and hopeless.

And it was like this vision opened up to me

It came all at once and it came so clearly—it was like on really dark, cloudy nights when lightning flashes and just for a second you see everything

And all I could do was smile and say, “Jesus, old dude. Wasn’t she just born to break your heart?”

And I know it’s strange, I know it’s weird, and I know it says something about me that I’m going to have to sort out, but for some reason that’s exactly what did it. It wasn’t just seeing her, it was seeing her like
that
.

A wrecking ball in full swing.

I heard the engine get some petrol and then the van turned and headed back across the netball court. That bright drone from the cargo box stayed in my head long after the van had rounded the corner and disappeared.

I wasn’t sure what to do.

The obvious thing was to hang out on the bench and then go up to her when she came out of the meeting. But I hadn’t shaved for a while, and I wasn’t wearing great clothes and I was still a bit twitchy—and I worried if I just walked up to her she’d think I was going to try sell her something.

Or beg.

In the end I figured that, inside, it was probably past the part where people have to introduce themselves and the part where everyone holds hands and says a prayer. They were probably reading from the pamphlets, or maybe it was already time to check in with your sponsor. I knew I could get through it if I had to. It just depended on whether I could get a seat with a view of her.

I got up and walked back to the hall.

The sun was out above the trees and the morning had a strange feel of being between seasons. I got distracted for a while by my shadow, seeing how long it fell, and how it had that weak, indefinite quality where it shaded the wall.

How perfect,
I thought
.

It’s the first day of autumn.

I went up to the door and for a while I just stood there, picking at the peeling varnish and trying to talk myself into being decisive. I was about to reach for one of the big brass doorknobs—

But then it started turning by itself

And I had to step back as the door swung open towards me. She didn’t even look up, she just kept her head ducked and started walking away, her shadow following her along the wall.

It was one of those moments where it felt like I was being tested, like I had to call up something that normally hides so well inside me I forget it’s even there—

And I’m so used to faltering at times like that—

And I couldn’t believe it myself when I called to her, “He’s been gone for a while now already. You wasted like twenty minutes in there.”

And how cool was she, she didn’t even turn around.

She stopped walking, just for a bit, and sort of over her shoulder she said, “You can follow me if you like.”

She kept on walking and I hurried to catch up.

But when I was there, walking next to her, I was so scared of saying something stupid that I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t even look at her.

We walked in silence till we got to the road and then she stopped, and turned, and looked at me.

She said, “What’s that?”

I followed her eyes down to my hand. I saw I was fiddling with the pillbox again.

In the little canister, which for about a week I’d been carrying around like a dark talisman, were fourteen sleeping pills I got by stopping in at all the trauma centres in Muizenberg and Steenberg and Retreat and pretending I had
PTSD
. “Oh, nothing,” I said. “Really nothing.”

“Is that a tattoo?”

“Ja. I’ve just got the one,” I said.

We both looked at my arm. I’d been on something when I got it done—it’s small and it’s just writing, this pale blue ink that says
My mind’s such a sweet thing
.

“I thought it was a song lyric,” I said. “But I actually heard it wrong. Whatever. I don’t even see the thing anymore.”

She laughed and then asked me, “Do you have a car?”

“No, I don’t anymore. But I can drive.”

“Ja, me too.”

I smiled at her and said, “But you’ve got a pretty sweet ride at the moment though, hey?”

And at first she just crossed her arms and stared at me, but then she smiled.

She was much prettier than I’d first thought. Her eyes were the magic part. Slow-moving and bright, crystal green with black rims around the irises—sleepy, flickering, spellbinding eyes.

“What’s the story with that thing?”

“The god van? You must be new here.”

“Did I really see a speaker on the top?”

She nodded.

“What’s it for?”

“You don’t want to know,” she said.

“No, I seriously do.”

“Well. Sometimes on the weekends he makes me drive, and then he sits in the passenger seat and kind of … preaches. Just reads Bible verses over and over again. And always just the scary stuff.”

“Jesus.”

“Better than it used to be,” she said. “Before I could drive, I had to read. Like when I was ten or whatever. And then I stopped when I was fifteen. I remember that.”

“But that’s pretty cool, though?” I said. “I mean, if it turns out there
is
a god or whatever, maybe you’ve still got some points saved up.”

She didn’t smile. Her eyes drifted off, and then she just sighed and said, “No. It doesn’t work if your heart’s not in it. They say that’s the whole thing.” She started crossing the street, and after that it was like a shadow had passed over us. Almost like the air had changed, it’d turned all murky and heavy—and while we walked, both of us saying nothing, looking at our feet, I started to feel desperate and I got that sense again, like there was a clock ticking and I needed to
do
something, quickly.