The Third Person (3 page)

That’s how it usually is, anyway.

But sometimes, on-line lovers will actually meet.

Kareem had taken a break, presumably to clean up. He’d fucked Amy hard, before turning her over and – eventually – coming in her backside, with her neck locked in the crook of his elbow, half-choking her. His mother would no doubt have been proud.

I took down the dregs of my beer and immediately wanted another one, but knew it would ruin me. I wanted ten three-minute rounds on the punchbag before turning in that night, and so a second beer would just have to wait. I played absently with the neck of the bottle, waiting for Kareem to return to the keyboard.

After a couple of minutes:

Conversation was usually thin on the ground before we cybered, but he tended to be far more prolific afterwards. It was as though he’d released the tension and could relate to me as a human being again. I suppose that made sense. Talking to me beforehand would have killed his fantasy dead, whereas now he could light up a cigarette and kick back a little.

A little disappointment for him, there. I could almost smell the palpably wounded male pride in the next message, which arrived on-screen quickly.

I guess no man likes to leave his woman unsatisfied. Kareem was probably worried that his dream girl was about to bale on him, and I figured he’d do just about anything to stop that from happening.

A few quick messages, punctuated by the [RETURN] key.

I was surprised by how excited I felt. There was a fluttering in my guts: the thrill of the hunt. Anything could happen in the next few minutes, and it would all be played out in a handful of sentences dropped onto a screen: black on white in neat, meaningful little scars.

Be right back
.

Amy17 was going away to think about something. I leaned forwards in my chair again, bringing my face closer to the screen. Watched the blank space for a second or two, and then turned my attention towards the last frowning emoticon that Kareem had left me.

I zoomed in on that simple, unhappy face until it seemed to fill my head from one side to the other. So simple and straightforward: just a couple of lines, really. But the human expression is universal. We see the frowning, unhappy face, and we feel sad for it. Or at least, we’re meant to.

Something that Kareem had said to me on the first night we met.

Lots of Amys hang out in here

That had been the wrong thing to say. I would learn, from subtle enquiry, that Kareem and I lived quite near to each other, and that was one coincidence too many. From that point, it would always have come to this. It had just taken a little bit of time to soften him up along the way.

I started typing, before I lost my nerve. I didn’t look up the whole time.

And then I paused, just for a second, and glanced up at what I’d written. That pause seemed like it had the potential to last a while. But there was no time for doubting. I’d made up my mind about what I was going to do days ago. Without this, it had all been worthless.

So I finished up quickly.

As soon as I’d pressed [RETURN] on the last message, I closed the private window and disconnected from the internet. My desktop appeared; the conversation vanished. Of course, the words would still appear on Kareem’s monitor, wherever he was, but now there would be a footnote running underneath them in red:

(Amy17 has logged off system
)

‘Jason, it’s me. Charlie. I was just calling to find out how you are. I mean, I know that you’re not great, but . . . you know. Williams is going spare about you not turning in this week.’

I picked up the phone and checked that Charlie had been the last caller; she had. I hit redial and waited, turning gently on the spot to wring some of the stiffness from my lower
back. As it rang at her end, I wandered through to the kitchen, selected a pint glass from the cabinet and took it over to the sink.

Click

‘Hello?’

‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘it’s me. Jason.’

‘Oh hiya.’ She sounded pleased that I’d called. Maybe a little surprised, too. ‘I’m glad you rang back. We’ve been worried about you.’

I held the receiver between my head and shoulder and poured water into the pint glass.

‘I’m okay. Just finding things . . . hard-going. You know?’

‘Yeah. Well, you know – not really. But I guess I can imagine what you must be going through. I wish I could help, or do something.’ She paused. ‘I mean, you’re in trouble here.’

‘I figured.’

‘Not that it matters.’

‘Not much,’ I said. ‘No.’

‘I guess you’ve got other things on your mind at the moment.’

Hearing her voice, it was like Charlie was in the room with me; I recognised her slight accent. I mean, it was
her
. But at the same time, it wasn’t – couldn’t be – because it wasn’t as though she was shouting down a tube and I was hearing her. The sound wasn’t her at all. It was Charlie mediated. A load of electrical signals transformed into pitch and tone and volume.

It was an artificial voice. Made-up. Created.

But then we never really do hear people do we? We experience the vibration of air molecules in a certain way, and come to associate that with the individual people around us. It struck me that – in a weird way – I’d never actually heard Charlie at all, just the effect that she’d had on the world.

Other things on your mind
.

‘Yeah,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘A thousand things.’

‘Is there anything I can do? Anything at all? I’d like to help.’

I sighed. Opened my eyes.

Don’t do this
.

But I’d thought it through before this, and I was pretty sure that it would be okay. No – strike that. I was just plain sure.

‘You want to go for a drink tomorrow?’ I asked. It came out a bit too quickly, as well, but I figured she’d take that as my reluctance to ask her for help. Male pride. Whatever. ‘I mean, I’d like that. It’d be nice. We could talk.’

‘Sure.’ She sounded pleased. ‘Where would you like to go?’

‘Um.’ I pretended to think about it. ‘What about the Bridge? You know – the one on the ring road?’

Charlie lived on the other side of Swaine Woods. A patch of houses just across from Lacey Beck, in fact.

I closed my eyes; forced myself to carry on with the conversation.

Really
sure.

It
will
be okay.

‘Sounds good,’ she said. ‘It’s nice in there.’

‘Yes. It is.’

‘So, what time?’

‘About half-past four?’ I suggested. ‘How about that?’

‘Still sounds good.’

‘Well okay, then. It’s . . . well, it’s not a date.’

‘No.’

I’d meant it as a joke, but realised – as she replied – that I’d said entirely the wrong thing. That used to happen with Amy all the time, before she disappeared. We’d both be happy, having a lovely conversation and the sun would be out, and then one wrong word from me would turn the whole day on its head. Make the sky go dark; make us both not know where
to look, or what to say. It was good to know that I hadn’t lost the knack.

‘Okay,’ I said softly. ‘Well, I’ll see you there.’

‘Yeah. Thanks for ringing.’

‘Take care,’ I said, and pressed [CANCEL] on the call.

The kitchen was suddenly very quiet. The enormity of what I’d just done was hanging in the air; I could just make out the shape of it, and saw enough to know that it was wrong.

The year before, when I was still hung up on material things and the idea of being part of something that mattered, I would have stood and agonised about my actions. I would have fought with my conscience over it. But that was all past now. I’d learnt the best way to deal with these things. A two sentence thought which was hard to face but seemed increasingly easy to take to heart.

It’s done now, and you can’t change it. So deal with the consequences
.

And what I’d found was: that thought is like a box. That’s how I imagined it, anyway: a black box up in the loft. Whenever you’re facing anything you want to save until later, or don’t really want to face at all, you open the box and drop whatever it is inside. And so that’s what I did. I put my conflicting emotions about what I’d done that evening in the black box, allowed the lid to seal itself, and forgot all about them.

And then I went upstairs to exercise.

My punchbag was the shape of a man’s upper torso, minus the arms: a strange, jet-black sculpture, resting on a strong, metallic pivot in the same way that a work of art might rest on a plinth in a museum. There, however, the similarity ended. It had square indentations for eyes and mouth, a rough block of a nose, and not so much a neck as a curve from non-existent ears to rounded shoulders. From certain angles it looked
angry; from others, the expression seemed more pained. When I’d first bought it, Amy had referred to it as The Scream.

While I talked to Kareem earlier, I’d also been downloading a six-minute dance track from Liberty, and I put it on now, looping the play function and knocking the volume up to three below maximum. One less sense to worry about while I trained. In fact, it was so loud that, when I started work on the bag, I couldn’t even hear the punches land. I like my music that loud; I like to feel the cobwebs being blown out of my head.

My routine was pretty standard. One hundred jabs with each arm. One hundred jab-crosses, leading with each arm. By that point, my shoulders would be trembling. One hundred hooks, alternating body and head shots, generally at random. And then a combination: jab, jab, hook; jab, jab, cross. Whatever, really. I’d throw in a few kicks for good measure, but only when I could get away with it realistically, and maybe even add in elbows, knees and – rarely – a headbutt or two. Twenty minutes later, I’d be warmed up – ready for the main event.