Furnace (20 page)

The caretaker seemed to ponder for a while, pursing her thin lips.

I’ve been staying with them all week, Laura added when the silence grew too much to bear. I’ve passed by you on the stairs, she added, almost pleading. You remember?

The old woman grunted, then gestured for Laura to follow her back into the building. She disappeared for a while into her own apartment before emerging to show Laura a spare key. One day, one
night, she said, holding up a short, thick forefinger. No more.

Yes, Laura agreed. One night. Thank you.

All right, she said, and gave up the key.

The flat was as the Guardia had left it. The cushions were intact but ripped from their covers and strewn about the floor. The mattresses in both bedrooms were stripped and stood on end, sagging
against the walls. On an impulse she righted the larger, double mattress in their bedroom rather than her own, flung herself down on it and slept dreamlessly through the afternoon.

By early evening the humid morning had given way to cool, driving showers. From the balcony during a break in the rain Laura saw a small stray cat, yellowish and painfully
thin, crouching at the riverside border of the back garden, hunting water voles or frogs, she guessed. In the kitchen she found a tin of sardines lying on the floor where it had been swept from one
of the ransacked cupboards. She emptied the tin onto a plate, forced her feet into Nerea’s abandoned slippers and hobbled down into the wet garden. The cat had a blunt, ugly face, its mouth
extending downwards in open sores at each corner. Its expression reminded her vaguely of the cowardly lion and even its skin was like a costume, sagging loosely off the bones. It was easy to lure.
She scooped it up deftly to her chest, its breathing making a faint rough sound and giving off a whiff of decay. It was shockingly light to lift and hold. Indoors, it sniffed the sardines but would
eat nothing except a few licks of milk from a different saucer.

Just before dark the rain closed in again. She was staring down at the weir pool from the balcony, watching for any sign of life, though nothing in the river was stirring. As the first big drops
fell the cat writhed out of her arms and darted into the flat. Laura watched it flash away, faintly glad to be free of it, then turned back to the river. It was somehow disconcerting to think that
the slow, dark water below had followed her all the way down the valley from Eratzu. The dusty streets, the bridge and the graveyard that had looked so much like a strange village all to itself
seemed to belong to another world altogether now. And the river came from somewhere further back again, she thought, feeling the rain begin to soak her hair and seep through the shoulders of
Mikel’s heavy, musty bathrobe; came from somewhere in the empty Basque hills she’d seen from the road and watched from her camping place while the big red sun fell slowly behind them.
She began to wonder how far, but it was impossible to guess and tiring to think about. And Nerea and Mikel. Who could say if they’d ever come back now? And who knew where anyone ever really
was, anyway? Even when they were right beside you. Even inside you. Even that.

The Wednesday of the funeral I get woken by the doorbell. By the time I reach the door in my pants the doorstep’s empty and all I can see is this big old white van parked
a little way up the street. It looks like a busted up ambulance, but there aren’t any signs. The driver’s knocking at a door on the other side of the road from me. He’s a fat man
without much hair and he doesn’t look too clean. He waits a while at the Protheroes’ door, then pushes a slip of paper through it and moves up one. I look down and sure enough
there’s a yellow leaflet on the mat, blank side up. I close the door softly in case he hears and comes back.

It’s too hot to get dressed so I pull all the curtains shut and go through to the kitchen. Everyone’s already out to work or school, but there’s a note left on the table. Wear
this tie with your blazer, it says, and next to it there’s one of my old man’s black ties rolled up like a party horn. I get myself a glass of milk and take it through to the living
room. I put the TV on and run through the stupid learning programmes like I do when I’m off school sick. I end up watching a guy at a table with a telescope, magnifying glass and microscope
all in a row. He starts talking and touching them.

I go over to the window and put my head between the curtains. The light’s dazzling. I look up the street, squinting, but the van’s long gone. By now it’s about nine.

On the TV the guy and the table have gone. Instead there’s these big rough scale things, like slabs. You can tell it’s through a microscope. There’s no voice, just violin
music. I keep looking and the slabs get smaller and you get to see these tree trunks which you could guess are just hairs. The camera moves through them for a while, like they’re a forest.
Then, which is meant to be a surprise, you see this massive fly. It’s in the middle of a bunch of hairs, stood over them like a dinosaur, except with its sucker going. It’s putting me
off my milk, but I keep watching. Then the view gets bigger again, zooming out, and you get to see the fly sitting on a patch of skin. Then, next thing you know, the skin is part of some
kid’s wrist, who’s sitting in a boat on the sea. It’s a sunny day there, too, wherever that is. Anyway, it carries on and soon you can hardly see him, just the white boat
he’s in, this little dot on the blue sea. Then not even the boat. Then it goes up and you’re in space, looking at the whole ocean he was on, in fact all the earth and everything, and
further out past the moon and other planets and stars. It’s all bullshit, but there I am, still watching.

The guy’s voice comes back and I walk over and switch it off. I feel like I should be thinking about Hooper, seeing as I was meant to be one of his best friends and it’s his funeral
in a few hours. But the trouble with thinking about Hooper is that he stuffed himself with pills, so they cut him open, and whenever I try to think about him that’s all that comes into my
head – Hooper all opened up like a fat white fish, on some cold slab. All his guts out and everything. So for the past few days I’ve stopped thinking about him at all. But Jesus,
I’m thinking, you should think about him now it’s his funeral.

I go through to the kitchen and empty out what’s left of the milk. My school trousers are over the back of the chair like always, but the blazer’s been hung up. I get the trousers
on, then pick up the tie and pocket it. When I find the blazer I nearly pop a ball: my mother’s scrubbed the armpits especially for the funeral and she’s left these big white tidemarks
where she didn’t rinse the soap out properly. It looks like sweat-salt, for Christ’s sake. I go over to the basin and soak the stuff with the dishcloth. The rings darken down okay, but
when I get the blazer on I can feel the cold wet, right up there.

Outside, the light’s so bright it hurts. I walk down to the bus-stop at the bottom of the street. It’s so hot there’s sweat prickling my head just from
walking the twenty yards to the corner. I stand there, sweating and itching. I don’t know when the buses are due, so I just wait and stare up the long empty road, watching all the heat waves
ripple up into the air. I can smell the tarmac getting soft and behind the window I’m standing at a phone starts ringing. A red car turns the corner at the top of the street and rolls down
towards me, shimmering like a mirage.

At first I think it’s slowing just to turn the corner I’m stood at, so I don’t take much notice until it pulls up right in front of me. I recognise the driver but she’s
older than me and I don’t know her name or anything. Anyway, it’s obvious she recognises me. She gives me this big soft smile through the open window. I smile back, but I can tell
it’s all wrong. I can feel it.

You know me? she says, and just then the phone inside the house stops. Her voice comes out slow and goofy, like a little kid’s. It suits the weird smile which keeps coming off and on the
long, white face she’s got, but it doesn’t suit anything else about her. The rest of her is pretty good.

Oh, hi, I say. How’s it going?

She laughs, pleased for some reason and nods while she looks me up and down. I like your long hair.

Oh, I say. Jesus! I’m thinking.

You remember that horse? That horse I used to ride? She nods again, like she’s encouraging me.

Maybe she’s pissed or stoned, I think. But really I know it’s not that. Anyway, I nod back. I saw her plenty of times riding up our street, past our window on the way to the
waste-ground, Sundays and plenty of evenings after school. I’ve never spoken to her but so what, I think, I am now, and I’m thinking that and thinking about her on her big brown horse,
jigging up and down.

The smile keeps coming and going and for what feels like a long time she just sits there, inspecting me. In the end she says: I haven’t seen you around for, oh I don’t know, ages.
It’s funny how the words sound. It’s like her jaw’s had some of its strings cut. Then there’s the smile again, wandering onto her face like it’s separate from the rest
of her. Do you know what happened to me? she says suddenly. As suddenly as she can with her mouth the way it is.

No, I say. What?

She shifts her weight a little in the car seat and leans closer to me. I came off it, she says, and her smile gets fixed for a second.

Oh.

Backwards, she says.

I look up the road.

I really like your hair, she says. Are you waiting for the bus?

I turn back to her and take a good look. One of her eyes, the left one, is sort of milky looking. Apart from the milkiness, they’re green. I notice her hair too. It’s bunched up in
little heaps over her ears and forehead, short and coppery. It’s the same colour Hooper’s was, which feels worrying for some reason, even in that sunlight. But she’s got this nice
little chin, under those wriggly lips.

It’s pretty late. It might not come, I say.

She nods back, really slowly. Do you speak French? she asks.

I must look blank, because she goes straight into counting up to ten in French, like it’s an explanation.

Cool, I say. It isn’t what I’m thinking.

See? I can remember all my French.
Quel age est il
? That means how old are you.

I could laugh, but all of a sudden I feel like I might get somewhere if I keep playing along. Sixteen, I lie, and get a big smile of my own on.

Well, I’m twenty-one. In my body, she says carefully, lifting the finger from her lap and pointing it at her throat. But not in here, she says, and brings her finger carefully up to her
temple.

I take a good look at her twenty-one year old body. She’s wearing a little T-shirt and tight, faded green leggings. There are a couple of small holes in them, on the insides of her thighs,
where they must rub. I can see pink shapes showing through the holes. I picture her on the horse, bouncing up and down, with her legs apart. The holes would get bigger, with all the bouncing, I
think.

That old doctor, he says it might take years and years to get back to being twenty-one. She plucks around at her hair a bit. I can see down the sleeve of her T-shirt when she does it: white
cotton bra with tiny blue flowers. It’s nice to look at. Clean and cool. She smiles wide. Well, that’s what he says, she insists, as if I’d disagreed with her. I don’t know,
she says. I couldn’t remember a thing. That doctor. She makes a wet noise, like the start of a cough.

Everything seems fine to me. You seem fine, I lie.

Three months I was in a coma for, she says. She lifts up three fingers, then drops them dead onto the wheel. Didn’t you hear about me? she asks. She sounds surprised.

No, I say.

She nods, and I reckon it’s about time I took a rest from staring at those holes, in case she notices. I start wondering if anyone realises she’s out in a car, driving. I wonder if
she does this most days.

I look up the road. There’s a kid on a racing bike coming down the street. I know him, though he doesn’t notice us and just zips past. I wonder for a second why he isn’t in
school. Then the white van from earlier comes down the street and pulls into the kerb a little way above my door. The same guy gets out, this time without leaflets, and starts knocking his way
along the road again. Just like earlier nobody answers and soon he’s worked his way to my door. I get a funny feeling watching him knock at the house, like the door’s going to open,
even though there’s no-one home.

I couldn’t remember a
thing.
Except my French, she says, shaking her head, wondering.

I look back down into the car, at her legs again, I’ll admit. Then I shift closer and move a hand up to the roof of the car. It’s hot as a radiator. I know it’s a bad idea,
with her eyes and brain the way they are, but I can’t help thinking about getting my hand off that hot roof and right in there – getting some finger into those holes.

Then I think about Hooper and feel bad. In fact, I start thinking about that slab again. I even take a good look at him, on the actual slab, in my mind. But there I am, leaning against the car
door, randy beyond. I go to open my mouth, but before I can speak she reaches up and takes hold of my hand and pulls it in through the window and I think Jesus, she’s reading my mind, but she
guides it up, not down, up to the back of her head. It feels cool after the hot roof.

Feel, she says.

The smile’s flickering again now, like a lightbulb going wrong. I touch around where she’s put my hand, and under all the crispy hair there’s this patch of skin or bone or
something, all dry and cratered, roughed up into big crusty ridges. Christ. I nearly gag it feels so bad. It’s like a piece of the moon.

That doctor says, one knock there and I’m a gonner, she tells me dreamily.

I don’t know what to say again so I just nod, kind of stuck there.

My horse, he had to go, she says. Then she sighs. She moves her head under my fingers, like a cat rubs against your leg.

All I can do is follow those green eyes she’s got, watch them moving with her head as it nods and rolls. One clear, one milky, like something got into the water there. For some reason I
leave my hand on the mess at the back of her head, but in the end she reaches behind her and takes hold, lifts it back out the window. I let it hang, the nerves in my fingertips still feeling
everything, and then suddenly I get a picture of the fly I saw on TV, crawling on the kid’s wrist, and I’m scratching to kill the creeping in the hairs. Then I see the bus come down the
street.