The World House (10 page)

 

Pablo began to climb, yanking himself up the rope with all the speed his aching arms could muster. He could still feel the presence – or presences, it was impossible to tell, so all-invasive was the feeling that he was not alone – but he reasoned that he would be in no position to defend himself while hanging in mid air; his best hope was to reach the solid ground of the stairway and take whatever stand was needed there. The fear felt solid around him, a physical sense of something trying to pull him back down the rope. It took all his concentration to fight it and keep moving. He was not inclined to nerves, and the sensation was so alien that he couldn't help but feel it was an external force, buffeting him like wind or rain at sea. Closing his eyes he pictured his situation as just that, afloat on the Mediterranean during one of her cruel days, wrestling with the rope as the elements tried to grab him for their own.

  He risked a peek upwards to see how far he was from the banister and as he did so something collided with him. He swung to one side, digging his hands and knees into the rope as he arced through the air. This time he had to look but, twisting his head, there was nothing to see but the dark. The force came again, a rock-solid weight that hit him so firmly in the back he had no doubt it must have left a bruise. Still he could see nothing. He tried to keep climbing but the swinging rope made it almost impossible. When the third blow came it was violent enough to leave him swinging by one hand, spiralling out of control, thrashing his legs in an attempt to steady himself. He grabbed hold of the rope again but it was a lost cause. The fourth blow tore it from his grip completely and he fell back into the darkness.

 

 

 

Alan seemed to spend his whole life being hot. Living in Kissimmee, Florida, one accepted the humidity of the state; running between islands of air-conditioning, fighting off the sweaty air with iced drinks and cold showers. Now, sitting in what appeared – but most certainly
couldn't be
– a jungle, he was perspiring again, the sweat running into his eyes, blurring his vision. He would give anything to be able to wipe them. Propped up against the thick bark of a palm tree, his body was not his own. An immovable, overweight lump that had no more responsiveness than most of his lecture students. He had known this would happen – knowing altogether more about the workings of the box than most – but it was still an effort not to panic about it. He tried to distract himself by identifying the plant species around him. Botany wasn't his subject but he had a mind for minutiae and he was faintly pleased with the fern and palm species that his memory kicked up.

 

• • •

 

Making his way off campus, Alan waded through air thick and hot enough to fry pork in. He loosened the collar of his shirt and yanked his tie down a couple of inches. What the hell, he was sure his students had seen worse. Although he was old-school enough to believe a teacher should always be dressed formally, he had no intention of dying over it. He sat on a stone bench, polished smooth by the buttocks of thousands of would-be bus passengers over the years, and watched Kissimmee broil, served alongside the fat yolk of a Florida sun.

  He opened his leather satchel and hunted for the half-sandwich he knew he had left in there. Ham and mustard, sweating as much in its Saran wrap as he did in his cotton shirt and slacks. Nibbling a wilting corner, Alan thought about nothing very much and let the tiny amount of breeze chill his sweating brow. There was nothing quite like the emptiness that ended his days. After hours of questions if he was lucky – barefaced indifference if he was not – it was refreshing to sit in the open air and let the thoughts just fall out of his head.

  The bus appeared and he pulled himself on board. He waved at a small group of his students through the window. They pretended not to have noticed him. He smiled. If being ignored was something that you couldn't bear, you would hardly become a teacher. He jerked in his seat, startled by the sight of a small, blond-haired boy running past him, swinging on one of the support poles and then running back towards him.

"Since when does Tarzan take a bus?" Alan joked.

  The boy stared at him, as if angered by the fact Alan had chosen to speak. "What's Tarzan?"

  Alan chuckled and the boy looked even more disgusted, then resumed running towards the back of the bus. Alan turned around, smiling at the mother, a thin, nervous-looking young woman who was clutching a baby in one arm and the straps of a gurgling toddler in the other.

  "Tires you out, I imagine?" Alan asked.

  She gave him a weary nod. "You better believe it. Got some of your own?"

  "No, life never quite worked out that way, I teach… next best thing, I get to send them home at the end of the day."

  She nodded as if he had said something incredibly wise and returned her attention to the baby as it coughed a spittle bubble on to her cheek. Alan left her to it, settling further into his seat and closing his eyes. He was nodding off within five minutes.

  The young mother – having heard Alan request his stop to the driver – tugged cautiously at his shirt cuff to wake him as the bus drew close to his destination. For a few seconds he was disorientated, then he smiled his thanks, got to his feet and stepped out on to the sidewalk, where the hot air beat on him mercilessly. Sighing with the intensity of it, Alan made his slow way along the street, feeling as if he was trying to move through water. Rebecca's office was only a few minutes' walk but the two flights of stairs up from street-level were nearly enough to finish him. He really should take better care of himself, maybe enrol in a gym. He had hit fifty a few months ago and had suffered from frequent bouts of guilt ever since, staring at his belly in the bathroom mirror, running his hands over it and imagining it gone. If he stared at it long enough the depression soon kicked in and with the depression came the food, trying to poke the grey moods down with hunks of cinnamon pastry or barbecue as if they could be swallowed and shat away.

  He entered Rebecca's office and, as usual, was greeted by the sight of himself in the mirrored walls of the reception. It was an unflattering reminder of a sweating man's middle age and guaranteed his selfesteem would be at subterranean levels by the time he made it through to the therapy couch.

  "Hello, Alan," said Stacey, Rebecca's incessantly chirpy receptionist, around the straw of her iced frappuccino. "She won't be a minute, her 4.30's overrunning."

  "No problem," Alan said with a smile, "I'm sure their need's greater than mine."

  Stacey gave him the sort of smile you offered a small child when they'd said something amusingly precocious, and returned to sucking the hell out of her iced coffee.

  Alan sat down on one of the leather sofas, half reached for a magazine and then stopped as he realised there was nothing he wanted to read. He found himself awkwardly balanced between sitting and standing as he scanned the covers, trying to find anything he could bear to be seen flicking through. Everything was a glossy testament to celebrity lifestyle, perfect people pretending perfect lives. He glanced at Stacey but she was engrossed in Facebook on her computer and clearly hadn't the least interest in what he got up to. He dropped back into the sofa and put his hands into his lap. Glancing at his reflection in the mirror he was struck with the unpleasant image of a fat man playing with himself and so shifted his hands to his sides where they looked even more awkward. Who the hell put mirrors in waiting rooms, anyway? What sort of act of cruelty was that? He shifted in the seat, watching his reflection and trying to find a pose that he could live with. He was still trying when Rebecca's door opened and a woman stepped out, pushing her nose into a crumpled tissue as if trying to hide it.

  "We'll get to the bottom of it next week, Sandra," said Rebecca, following her client out. "We've made some wonderful progress, I'm sure you agree?"

  If Sandra did agree she wasn't about to admit it, shuffling straight past Stacey and out the front door. Stacey gave a small shrug and returned to updating her online status, no doubt with some witty variation on "You don't have to be mad to work here…"

  "Hello, Alan," said Rebecca, holding her hand out to him.

  He had never felt so disadvantaged, the sofa having sucked him back into it just as he wanted to leap to his feet. She was wearing her usual outfit: a tight pencil skirt and light cream blouse, half austere, half enticing. He managed to get to his feet but she was forced to step back as his momentum sent him into her personal space.

  "Sorry," he mumbled, taking her hand and then being horribly embarrassed by how clammy it must feel.

  "What for?" Rebecca asked. He wished she could save the awkward questions until they were inside.

  "Nothing," he said, hoping to dismiss it. "Hot, isn't it?"

  "I'm sure it is," she half-agreed, though in that non-committal "that's your opinion and it's not my place to disagree" way that therapists did so well. "I'm lucky enough to have been in the aircon all day." Alan nearly started talking about the campus air-con – a devilish contraption of pipes and vents that spat staleness sporadically into the lecture halls – but stopped himself just in time, having realised it was the most boring subject known to man. Instead he nodded and tried to stop smiling. He couldn't. "Well," she said, "let's get settled."

  She led him into her office and he took his seat in the patient's armchair, a soft entrapment of furnishing that seemed designed to limit movement. She sat opposite him, crossing her legs, and he tried not to stare at the inch of thigh she offered. Were all patients so attracted to their therapist? He found himself spending more time trying to perceive her bra through the cotton of her blouse, or imagining how the lining of that skirt might slide up and down her thighs as she shifted in her seat, than he did actually thinking about her questions.

  It was with something approaching horror that he realised he was developing an erection.

  "So, how've you been?" she asked.

  "Fine, great really, nothing major." He tried to shift in his seat to cover his arousal.

  "Dreams?"

  "Oh, you know, the usual." The more he tried to will his erection away, the more the bastard stiffened.

  "Talk me through them."

  "Do I have to?"

  "I think it would be helpful."

  Alan crossed his legs, hoping it would help. "It really is the same old stuff, me before the accident, being… well, not being nice. I really would rather not go into it."

  "And the box?"

  "The box is just a hobby. You said hobbies were good."

  "They are, but obsessions are bad."

  "I wouldn't say I was obsessed," Alan leaned forward defensively and Rebecca raised an eyebrow. For a moment he thought she was looking at his trousers (the thought of which made the problem more profound), then he realised she was sceptical about the box. In which she was quite right, of course.

  "You read about a 'magic box' in a junk conspiracy magazine" she said, "and then dedicate all your spare time to finding it. That's obsessional."

  "It's curiosity."

"It's displacement."

  This actually threw Alan, giving him enough change of focus for his erection to dwindle of its own accord. "Displacement?"

  "You're missing twenty-odd years of your life – the memories of them anyway – but you don't want them back, you'd rather focus your attentions on a mythical object, something to distract you from the important business of recovering your lost memory."

  "Nobody but you even thinks it's lost."

  "It is rather unprecedented…"

  "Yeah, well, I manage without it. The box is far more interesting."

  "The mythical box."

  "Aren't you a bit confrontational for a therapist?"

  "It's my style."

  Alan didn't know what to say. Everything about his "accident" (as it had been so carelessly labelled) bored him. It was baggage he had carried for thirty years; it had almost become comfortable, for Christ's sake. He only kept coming to these sessions because he liked seeing Rebecca.

  "Why do you come to my sessions?" she asked, her timing making him think she was far better at reading his thoughts than he gave her credit for. "I know it's part of your agreement with the college but still, it's not just that, is it?"

  "They like to know they're not employing a madman, for sure." She stared at him, refusing to fill the silence until he answered the question. "No, it's not just that. I don't like the gap, the mystery, the dreams, all of it. If I could make it go away I would. At the same time, though, I am used to it, like to think I get on fine despite it, and there's a big part of me that thinks I'd be better off just, well, forgetting about it. The box helps me do that."

  "See, displacement."

  Alan sighed; he couldn't argue it. "Strike one to you."

  He gave up for the rest of the session, alternating between recounting his thoughts and dreams in mind-numbing detail and fantasising about what a woman like that would never dream of doing with a guy like him. He also thought about the box, that impossible box…

  At the end of the session he dutifully booked another – and Rebecca must know what her bending over the desk to check her appointment book did to him, she
must
– and headed back out into the heat to wait for his bus.

 

By the time he climbed up the steps of his wooden porch, his clothes were sticking to him and there was no other thought in his head but the glass of iced tea he planned on drinking the minute he got through the door.

  Inside, he threw his briefcase on to the table beside the phone, hit the flashing message button of his answering machine and headed to the kitchen to slake his thirst.