Remember Why You Fear Me (20 page)

“Okay.” David sipped at it. It was too hoppy for his taste. He hadn’t had beer in years. He and Janet had never bothered with pubs, their perfect evening would be a bottle of nice wine in front of the telly.

“Good. Well, there’s more where that came from. I owe you. I don’t drink much either. Just so you know. I mean, under the circumstances. Inappropriate. But we couldn’t just sit in the pub together without a pint. That’d be gay.”

David supposed that it would.

“How are you feeling? How are you holding up?” The man looked him directly in the face, and it was the first time he had. David tried to frame the usual bland reply, but the man continued. “Bet you get a lot of that. I do. Gets pretty annoying, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” said David.

“They should mind their own fucking business.”

“Yes,” said David, with feeling. “They should.”

“God knows how I feel,” said the man. “I keep crying. In front of strangers. I mean, it’s bad enough Tracey’s dead. But knowing she took someone with her, that’s what makes it hard. You’re lucky. You’ve no idea how lucky. I mean, not that lucky, of course, sorry.”

“Well, no,” said David.

“D’you bury or cremate her?”

“Oh,” said David. “Cremate.”

“Tracey didn’t want to go with cremate,” said the man. “She didn’t like getting burned. And besides, she’d say, what if they found a cure? Afterwards we could just dig her up. Couldn’t be brought back if she were just ashes. Mind you, I don’t suppose they’ll ever find a cure for car crashes, but you know, it’s what she wanted.”

“I never knew what Janet really wanted,” said David.

“She drank a lot, Mr Reynolds. I won’t tell a lie. I used to ask her to stop. And over the years, I just gave up. And I think, if I hadn’t, maybe she’d be alive today. Maybe you’d still have your Janet. Maybe she wouldn’t have suffered.”

“They say that she died instantly, she wouldn’t have felt a thing.”

“Yeah, they always say that. But how do they know, eh? I mean, when Janet’s head smashed through that sheet of glass. At forty miles an hour. And, what, her skull got pulped. How could they know?”

“Well,” said David. “I ought to be going.”

“Let me get you another pint.”

“I haven’t finished this one.”

“Tracey didn’t drink in the beginning,” said the man. “So I wonder. Did I drive her to it? Was it something about me? Because I loved her, you know, I really did. But maybe my love wasn’t enough? Or too much? I drove her to suicide, because that’s what it was, wasn’t it? It’s my fault. And murder, I killed your wife, it was down to me.”

“Not murder,” said David. “If anything, manslaughter.”

“Yeah,” said the man, “I manslaughtered Janet. I’m sorry.” He took a long pull at his beer, and David thought this pause in the conversation might give him a second chance to flee, but no, too late, he was off again. “I’m a bad man. I think I was better with Tracey, you know, in spite of everything, we were a
unit
. Do you know what I mean? Together, we made
sense
.”

“I do know what you mean,” said David.

“And now I’ve lost her. And I’ve lost myself too, because she was the best part of me. I don’t have any friends. Can you forgive me?”

“I forgive you,” said David.

“Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?”

“I do forgive you,” said David.

“I won’t ask you to be a friend. I don’t deserve your friendship. Just your forgiveness.”

“I do, I forgive you,” said David.

“Thank you,” said the man. “Thank you. I feel. Whew. I feel at peace.” He smiled, stuck out his hand. It was big and meaty, at odds with how small his body was. David took it. “I’m Alex,” said the man.

“David,” said David.

“I know.”

The numbness kept returning to his lips, and David didn’t know what he should do about that. He’d wake in the morning and feel them with his fingers and they didn’t seem to belong to him; he had to smack them together for a couple of minutes just to get some life back into them. When he ate his breakfast cereal the spoon would feel strange in his mouth, the flakes would feel strange, the strangeness made him a bit nauseous. One breakfast they felt so thick and swollen it was as if he’d been anaesthetized at a dentist’s. It made him drool. He’d bite his tongue.

David didn’t want to go to a doctor, and nearly cancelled the appoint-ment at the last minute. The doctor didn’t even want to examine the lips, which was annoying. Was David diabetic? David said that he wasn’t. Had he an allergy to shellfish? David assured the doctor he’d been nowhere near a shellfish. Sometimes numb lips, the doctor said, were the first symptoms of migraine headaches, had he had any migraines? No. “Hmm,” said the doctor. Then he asked the clincher. He asked if there’d been any trauma in his life recently, any reason he might feel depressed. David admitted his wife had just been killed. “Aha!” said the doctor, and he actually looked pleased. He told David that numb lips were a classic form of stress, of panic attack, of something psychosomatic—he had really nothing to worry about, it’d all come out in the wash when he cheered up. David asked if from now on every single little ailment he ever felt was in some way going to be related to the death of his wife, and the doctor just sort of blinked. “Watch and see if it spreads to other parts of your face,” the doctor said. “If it does, I’ll put you down for a CAT scan.”

One night the numbness of his lips woke David up. He’d been woken by pain before—never by the opposite of it, by pure lack of sensation. He lay there. He ran his tongue over the lips and felt nothing. Smacked them together, nothing.

But no, not nothing.

He felt himself lean forward, just a little—he twitched the lips, he puckered. And there it was. Right next to them. And it was soft and yielding. It was fleshy. It was another pair of lips.

At this he started; he jolted forward in alarm, and thought suddenly that by doing so he’d headbang whoever was kissing him, and he cried out in expectation of the pain. But there wasn’t any, and there was no head to collide with—and his own head kept on rocketing forward at great speed and there was nothing there to stop it, until his own spine yanked it back like a seatbelt—and he was breathing fast, panicked—and he slowed that breath down, swallowed, lay his head back upon the pillow. Relaxed. Relaxed. . . . Twitched those lips forward again.

He was kissed for his effort.

It was very gentle, very sweet, and there was just the faint taste of lipstick.

“Janet?” he whispered, and wished he hadn’t, because he’d chased her away, the spell was broken.

He spent the next hour or so trying to chase those lips, puckering out at the darkened room to no avail. He must have fallen asleep at some point.

The next morning his lips were numb again, but this time he didn’t much try to get the feeling back. So he’d drool during breakfast, so what? And during the day he’d keep prodding at the lips, pressing down on them with his fingers hard—staring at them in the mirror and flexing them slowly. He’d close his eyes and make little moues towards a lover who wasn’t there.

He went to bed early that night. “Janet,” he said to the darkness. He didn’t know how to summon her. He didn’t know how to let her know he was ready.

Beneath the sheets his hands balled up into tight fists of frustration.

He dozed, slept in fits and starts. And she came to him at last; he woke and she was
there
, he could feel her, her breath against his mouth, she was so very very close—and he wasn’t going to say a word, he’d learned his lesson, he wasn’t going to move a muscle. Or not just any muscle, he’d choose the muscle carefully—and he pressed his lips forward. Pressed them on to hers. And he couldn’t be sure at first, but there, there was that taste of lipstick, a little bit of something sweet and slippery—and Janet had never been much of one for make-up, but he was glad of it now, just so he could taste something and be sure he wasn’t pretending.

He extended his tongue—very slowly, carefully. And it went into a place that was warmer and wetter. Pushed it out as far as it would go—it quivered in the hot breath of his dead lover.

She stayed all night. Sometimes he’d sleep, just for a while—and he’d wake with a start, with the certainty that she’d have crept away, that he’d have lost her once more. But she was always there, that softness, that tickle close to his skin, that body heat, those lips, those lips.

The next morning he found the numbness had spread. It was no longer just his lips, the chin had no feeling, his cheeks felt odd and tingling. He called the doctor for an appointment. This time he
did
cancel at the last minute.

Because he realized she didn’t come to him at all—no—she never left—she was always there, she was always just a few delicate millimetres away from his face. He could smell her, and taste, and touch, and
feel
, God, and all it required was concentration and just a little bit of forward momentum. And he went to bed with her. He’d cuddle the pillow and pretend his arms were around her body, and he’d make love to her, and he’d make love to himself.

It took three days of this sort of thing before he began to think that this might be unhealthy. And he determined he had to get out of the house, interact with the living again. Alex had left four messages on the answering machine, asking him to call. So he did.

“I’m glad you came,” said Alex. “I wasn’t sure you would. But this means that we’re friends now, right? We’re proper friends.”

He’d bought them both a glass of house red. “Because I could tell you weren’t really enjoying the beer, I’m not entirely insensitive!” The pub was quiet; nothing but Alex’s voice and the occasional burp from the fruit machine. Alex wasn’t dressed in uniform now, and he’d lost any authority it might have given him; he just looked like a small sad man with a paunch.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“I’m doing okay. I think I’m doing better,” said David. “I think I’m adjusting.”

“Adjusting. Yeah. Good for you. Yeah, we should all be adjusting, yeah.”

Alex finished his drink. David offered to buy him another. There was still time for one more round before they had to get to the cinema.

“No, no,” said Alex. “I’m not letting you put your hand in your pocket. All the drinks are on me. I owe you, remember?”

David hadn’t been out to see a movie in years. The last time had been with Janet in Marbella. It had been a fantastic holiday, they’d laughed so much. And the weather had been mostly glorious. But the sudden downpour had taken them by surprise, and they had taken refuge in the cinema. They arrived in the middle of an action movie in which Bruce Willis killed lots of people, his wisecracks were dubbed into Spanish. They could just about follow the plot, it wasn’t too difficult, and David would whisper to Janet his own suggestions for what an English translation of the dialogue might be, and sometimes they were very funny, and even when they weren’t Janet would laugh.

Alex insisted on paying for the tickets. It was for some romcom, David hadn’t thought it’d be to Alex’s taste. Alex said, “Do you want some popcorn?”, and David didn’t. “You’ve got to have popcorn!” said Alex, “my treat!” and bought David a big tub overflowing with the stuff. David picked at it through the trailers, but it didn’t taste of anything. “You probably need more salt,” said Alan, “here, we’ll swap.” He gave David his popcorn. But it didn’t make any difference, David still couldn’t taste a thing.

The movie had lots of jokes, but they weren’t necessarily very good jokes. Alex would lean across to David and tell him his own punchlines. He’d lean in very close, and David could smell the hot breath on his face—but for all that, he still wouldn’t whisper quietly enough. People kept on glaring at Alex and shushing him. He ignored them.

After the movie Alex suggested they should go off for another drink; David said he was tired; Alex wouldn’t hear of it.

The pub was much busier now, and Alex had to shout for David to hear him over the noise. Alex brought to the table an entire bottle of wine, and poured glasses for himself and his friend. It wasn’t an especially nice wine, normally it’d have been too acidic for David, he preferred something smooth. But he drank it anyway, and he could barely taste it.

“That stuff you were saying,” shouted Alex, “about adjusting. Yeah. I can see the value in it. Because, what do they say? Because life goes on. They do say that, don’t they?”

“Cheers,” said David.

“It’s funny how things work out,” shouted Alex. “Because we wouldn’t even be friends. If our wives hadn’t killed each other. But you’re a great friend. I think you’re the best friend I’ve ever had!”

“Thanks,” said David.

“It wasn’t such a tragedy. If it brought us together.”

“No.”

“And with no blame on either side! And why should there be? Just a, just an accident of circumstance. My wife killed your wife. But then again, your wife killed my wife, didn’t she?”

“Wait a moment,” said David.

“I’m just saying. There had to be a car for Tracey to hit. And your wife was the one driving it. And yeah, my wife is a little more to blame than your wife. I don’t dispute that. But accident of circumstance, yeah? That day, my wife was the one who happened to be drunk driving. The next day, it might have been
yours
drunk driving. Let’s not get too fussed about blame.”

“My wife didn’t ever go drunk driving,” said David.

“No, I know, hey, I’m just saying. What I’m saying is, we’re the same. Right? Right!” He clinked his glass against David’s, frowned. “No need to get nasty about it.”

“Sorry.”

“Is this seat taken?” said one girl, and “is it taken?” said her prettier friend. “Do you mind if we join you?” The pub was heaving now, there were no spare tables.

“No, that’s fine,” said David.

“Fine,” said Alex.

The girls’ presence seemed to throw Alex off his stride; they chattered together for a minute or so, and then he said, “We went to the cinema.”

“Oh . . . yes?” ventured a girl.

“We saw this movie. It wasn’t very good.”

“It was all right,” said David.

“Oh, you say it’s all right now, but you were sighing and humphing all the way through it,” said Alex.