Black Chalk (19 page)

Chad felt guilty for making the association with a piece of meat. Dee was obviously no piece of meat. Dee was funny, wild, smart as anything. But still, her breasts looked spectacular. Better than Emilia’s even.

But Dee lived in a different world to Chad and he had no chance with Dee. Had she ever been normal, once upon a time? Normal as he was normal? Perhaps one day she had flicked a switch, consciously decided to change. Maybe the transformation took place while moving from one foster family to the next. A long journey, a car window and beyond the beads and runlets of rain the bleak hills of another failed life. Grey scene behind, fresh start ahead.

Now Mitzy on the other hand, Mitzy with whom Chad lived in the house of Americans, she did at least come from the same world as him. And yes, Mitzy had recently been showing signs of interest. Despite Chad’s inexperience he wasn’t dumb enough to miss every sign. And the more he ignored her the harder she tried, as if he had stumbled by chance on the perfect tactic. Maybe Mitzy wasn’t so bad. Pretty cute to be honest. And who else did he know?

Chad tuned in again to Jack. His story was nearing its end and now even Mark was laughing along. ‘I wasn’t worried so much that Dorian might punch me,’ he said. ‘I thought he was going to burst into tears because he couldn’t take losing, it would have been terrible.’

‘And he takes it all so seriously,’ said Jack. ‘His little notes and his strategies. I felt like saying to him, Door, you do know they can train a fucking pigeon to recognise the correct button in return for a little scrap of seed. Anyone could be good at this game if they wanted to. But they don’t. You understand? Nobody cares.’

Jolyon was lying on his bed smoking down most of a joint that had not made its way far around the room. Feebly he puffed out the smoke in little florets and let his spare arm dangle down to the bed skirt. While he lay there, Jolyon’s fingers moved rapidly back and forth as if performing a series of intricate sleights of hand.

‘Jolyon,’ said Mark, ‘come on, let’s have some of that joint before you finish the whole thing.’

Jolyon said nothing. The fingers paused and then flurried again.

‘Joe?’ Mark clapped his hands. ‘Hey, come on, Joe.’

Jolyon sat up, the action twitchy and sudden as if he were waking from a nightmare. ‘What did you call me?’ he said.

‘I just asked you for some of that smoke before it’s done.’

‘I said, what the fuck did you call me?’

‘Jolyon, forget it. You have the rest. It doesn’t matter that much.’

‘Did I hear you call me Joe?’ Jolyon’s anger pulsed and flooded the room like black paint swirling in a water jar.

‘Whatever, Jolyon,’ said Mark.

‘No no no, Mark. Did you or did you not call me Joe? You see, I say you did. Now you have to decide whether or not you want to dispute that fact.’

Mark blinked and shrugged while Jolyon stared hard at him. ‘Sure,’ said Mark. ‘Maybe I did.’

‘Then what I want to know,
Marcus
, is who the fuck is Joe? Who the fuck ever said you could call me Joe? Did I tell you to call me Joe? Did you ask for permission to call me Joe? Joe who? Joe what? I don’t even know who the fuck this Joe’s supposed to be.’

‘Fine, Jolyon, I get it, all right.’ Mark lifted his hands and then let them fall limp to the floor.

Jolyon looked hard toward Mark but did not see him. Jolyon saw darkness, the long tunnel of his fury and its daylight end no larger than a coin. ‘What matters here,’ he said, ‘is that if anyone ever could call me Joe, it certainly wouldn’t be you, Mark. Have you got that? Understand?’

‘Just chill out, Jolyon.’

‘What the fuck do you mean chill out? What, chill like you, Marcus? You mean I should spend every waking hour acting like I have some form of muscle-wasting disease just so everyone will imagine how little I must work, and therefore how clever I must be? Or maybe I should try and change the rules of an entire fucking game because I’m not feeling up to the effort it demands. Is that your idea of chill, Marcus, your best version of cool?’

‘No,’ said Mark. ‘Just take it down a notch, Jolyon. I didn’t mean anything.’

‘Because you know what, Marcus, just closing your eyes every five minutes doesn’t make you cool. Acting like a zombie half the time isn’t so exquisitely nonchalant. And sleeping sixteen hours at a stretch doesn’t make you ever so chill. It just makes you lazy. You’re a lazy fucking cunt, Mark. That’s all you are.’

Mark stood slowly. The transition seemed to take an enormous quantity of energy and up on his feet he looked lost.

‘That’s right, Marcus,’ said Jolyon, ‘you can fuck off now.’ He gestured at the door as he bridled on the bed. ‘And the rest of you can fuck off as well.’ Jolyon stabbed the joint into an ashtray. ‘I never get this place to myself. Can I never get even one single moment to myself?’

They all began to rise. Jack nearly said something but thought better of it and left the room behind Mark. They trooped off in a line, single file, and with Chad at the rear. Emilia peeled away and moved cautiously toward the bed on which Jolyon had spread himself.

Chad hesitated at the edge of the room.

‘It’s fine, Chad,’ said Emilia, ‘I can handle this one.’

Chad smiled, stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.

*   *   *

XXXVII(i)
   If I was unduly harsh on Mark then perhaps it was because his laziness extended to the observance of rules. He was a sloppy believer in right and wrong. And why did it fall to me to enforce the rules? The others wanted the rules enforced but they all kept quiet, waiting for someone else to speak first.

I used to see the same sort of behaviour all the time before I shut myself away – on buses, in bars, on the street. A man, for example, shouting at a woman. The woman cowering, shrinking back from the fist being formed. And twenty or thirty bystanders shrinking back as well, looking to each other, hoping someone else would step in and do the right thing.

And that person always used to be me. Once upon a time. But the Game snatched away several parts of me. Perhaps life would have done so in any case but the Game got there first. And Chad got there first. And Death got there first.

*   *   *

XXXVII(ii)
   This morning my neighbour failed to look up even once from his crossword. My ex-wife is married to a tax attorney named Trip. Every time I pass a bum on the street he flashes me a don’t-come-hither look.

I have no other choice. There is something I must do. I can’t make it alone.

My evening routine steels me for the task ahead. I fill the whisky glass to the line in black Magic Marker, a third full. Two pink pills, two yellow, two blue. And then I leave my apartment as darkness is falling, my sternest test thus far, the East Village like a carnival parade every night.

I reach Avenue A where life throngs the streets, crowds buzzing between one drink and the next. Lines of girls move arm in arm like crabs, I have to step aside as they scuttle and slide up the sidewalk. Doorways disgorge their crowds like cats gagging fur balls. On the hood of a car there crouches a man in surf shorts bellowing, using his hands like a bullhorn. Paaaar-taaaay, he yells.

I try to recall what day of the week this is. Yes, a Monday, I seem to remember.

Baby steps.

*   *   *

XXXVII(iii)
   ACE bar sucks me into its blackness.

Whisky, I say, when eventually I squeeze through the crowd. The waitress narrows her eyes almost imperceptibly. No, I say, scratch that. Make it a beer, a Brooklyn.

Two fans spin beneath the pressed tin ceiling but don’t disperse the heat. The damp crowd quenches its thirst greedily. I notice there are fewer women than men, younger also. They wear early tans and tissuey dresses that hang from thin straps. My eyes settle on them one by one. But I don’t recognise a single face.

I miss the intimacy of women. I miss their warmth, their snakes of orchard scents.

The noise rises and falls. The pitch and roll of the place makes me feel seasick and I hold on tight to the edge of the bar.

The barmaid brings my beer and I have to shout to make myself heard. And a Scotch as well, I say. The cheapest, no ice.

*   *   *

XXXVII(iv)
   After an hour I drink a fourth or fifth whisky, a fourth or fifth beer, and I warm to the world. I look at the crowd and take to the rhythm of its chatter, like listening to crickets while the campfire crackles. And then through the crowd’s chinks I notice red numbers spinning on an LED. I stand taller at the bar. One of the displays spins zeros while a second rises, 50, 70, 170. I see a head bobbing up and down. Sometimes there follows the sound of cheers, sometimes groans. I sway from side to side and peer through the crowd. And then I see the source of everyone’s amusement. A skee-ball alley. Two skee-ball alleys and only one of them occupied.

I think of my training, of shadow boxing, sparring. Yes, if I don’t get back into the ring before Chad arrives, what hope do I have of beating him? I must keep climbing, keep on running those steps.

I down my whisky, stand up and push my way through the crowd. The man at the skee-ball alley throws his last ball. He has scored 480 points. His friends pat him on the back in an appreciative way.

I approach him and tap his shoulder. You want a game? I say, yelling to make myself heard.

*   *   *

XXXVII(v)
   And it is here that my memory of the night ends. I know only that I woke up alone and in my own bed, my head being hammered from inside to out.

Hangovers lend to me the most acute sense of my atomic structure. I feel the spaces in me, the lack of matter. I am particles and I hum, my whole body set in a gentle vibrato.

I lie in bed too long, until there remains barely enough time to complete my morning routine before noon arrives. I drink two of the day’s three allocated glasses of water and take almost my entire allotment of pills. I pull on my sneakers.

*   *   *

XXXVII(vi)
   Oh, Jolyon. I’m so wholeheartedly happy you came. You came back to find me. And you didn’t see me but that doesn’t matter. You were there, you made the effort, and that means something special to me.

You seemed to be having such a ball last night. You were rather the spectacle before the doorman threw you out. Up there on the pool table, calling out my name and declaring your everlasting love. It quite made a girl blush.

The declarations of love I will take (again) as drunken hyperbole. And although I see you have forgotten the pool table incident, I hope sincerely you still remember who I am. This cannot have slipped your mind a second time. To forget once may be regarded as a misfortune; to forget twice looks like carelessness!

Can we start all over again, Jolyon? I would love for our friendship to flourish afresh. Let us begin again as friends and take it from there. Hooray in anticipation of YES.

But first, however, I do have one teeny-weeny thing to ask of you. Just a few itsy-bitsy rules, no more mad rushing in. If you want me to finish your story there are just a few things I would ask of you. To read about what we did is already enough of a discomfiting experience. And some bare bones of structure might be good for us. Every friendship requires a structure, don’t you think? Even if most of the rules remain forever unseen.

So here are my rules.

(Is RULES a silly word? Perhaps, yes. OK, let’s call it a framework then. Yes, FRAMEWORK sounds so much nicer, something to which our fresh shoots might be able to cling.)

(i) Jolyon will leave his apartment at 12 noon every day.

(ii) Jolyon will not then return until 2 p.m. or later.

(iii) Jolyon will ensure that the blind over the apartment’s kitchen window is lowered before he leaves.

(iv) All clocks in the apartment will always tell the time accurately.

(v) The fridge will at all times remain reasonably stocked with French mineral water and Dr Pepper soda.

(vi) Jolyon will knock and then wait 30 seconds before entering his apartment at or after 2 p.m.

(vii) The temperature in the apartment will be no greater than 75° Fahrenheit at or soon after 12 noon. (You have an air conditioner, Jolyon. USE it, please!)

OK, I must scurry now, Jolyon. If you believe, as you appear to, that I will never return then you may come home any minute. And we cannot meet again so soon. Reading your story is stirring up so many unpleasant memories, things I have tried to forget. But how could we ever forget what we did? So if you must confess – and you must, I can see that now – then confess for us all. We were all to blame for what happened.

In time, Jolyon. Please give me just a little more time. There are things I need to come to terms with on my own. Let us restore our trust, our friendship.

And then we can meet again, soon, cross my heart.

*   *   *

XXXVIII(i)
   When Jolyon arrived in the bar, hand in hand with Emilia, the others were at their favourite table in the corner. Dee and Jack and Mark had been explaining bitterly to Chad for the last hour why the Tories were worse than Republicans and Thatcher more evil than Reagan. They seemed to believe it their duty to educate him on such matters.

Jolyon looked fresh and unaffected. He undraped himself from Emilia and offered to buy the next round of drinks, asking each of them what they wanted, his finger settling on Mark last of all. ‘And how about you then,’ he said, ‘you lazy fucking cunt?’

There was an elongated silence. Mark peered up at Jolyon. And then Mark laughed hard and everybody laughed and everything was absolutely fine between everyone.

*   *   *

XXXVIII(ii)
   But Mark still owed the Game another consequence. At Emilia’s suggestion, they agreed the details could wait. There were five days until the next round of the Game. Mark could pick out his next consequence then, before resumption of play.

Five days later and they started at four, a grey rain descending beyond the windows of Jolyon’s room. There seemed recently to have been some shift within Game Soc. Tallest and Shortest divided the observance of most of the consequences between the two of them, Middle now came to most of the rounds.