I slam my diary shut and jump to my feet. I can’t work like this. I go to the intercom.
What is it? I shout.
Help me, please help me. A woman’s voice.
My anger vanishes. The chill wind of panic blows through me. What’s wrong? I say.
Quickly, please, he’s going to . . . And then a scream.
I’m coming, I say. Just hold on.
I feel frantic. I look at my bare feet, think about shoes, wipe my hands at the hips of my pants.
I run out the front door. A neighbour stands at the entrance to his apartment along the corridor fumbling for keys, patting his pockets. I think about asking for help.
No time to explain. My bare feet slap against the stone as I run down the stairs two and three at a time.
I am running too fast, I might break my neck at this speed.
I slow down. And then I slow down some more.
Halfway down and I stop. I lean against the balustrade, clenching my fists to the rail.
And then something terrible happens . . . I’m so sorry, if only I were all the way fixed, if only my recovery were complete, if I felt stronger then perhaps I could . . . I turn and walk back up the stairs, neighbour still fumbling for keys, swearing now as he pats every pocket again.
I close my door and fall to the floor, breathing heavily. And then a minute later I get to my feet and rush to find the ice-cube tray. I snatch up my evening dose of pills and swallow them desperately. The guilt is awful, the guilt makes me
and now somebody somewhere is tapping and tapping and tapping and
think that the world doesn’t want me to tap tap tap that sound like a bad memory makes me feel so sick and Jesus will you please just let me finish this chap
or knocking perhaps
maybe someone is knocking on my
XVII
XXVII(i) It has been at least a week since I last wrote anything. Ten days perhaps.
It starts with a headache. I wake up with a start as if woken by a great roaring, as if the earth is splintering outside my window. And then I feel the pain in my head, such a sore head that I don’t move from my bed for a day. (Note to self: The pills are part of your routine. The pills are there to take away the pain. More pills, less pain.)
I lie there trying to recall a peculiar dream. Was it the dream that woke me? Not the six of us this time. I am with a woman, somewhere crowded, words tumbling uncontrollably out of my mouth. Emilia or Dee? The woman in my dream seems to be sometimes one and then the other, or at other moments instead of a dream it feels like a memory of sleepwalking – trudging along in a trance to a bar, talking about the Game and drinking whisky, shot after shot. The whole thing starts to take on the feeling of a hologram, fuzzy at its edges and yet somehow real as if I could reach out and touch my memories. I feel sick, lying there in my bed, as if I have been drinking heavily. But I was drinking only in the dream, wasn’t I? And how can a dream cause this physical pain in my head?
Even the next day the pain is still there, lessened but present, and I can’t write. Is the headache a symptom of my writer’s block, or is it the cause? Or has this listless state been induced by a fear of writing the rest of my story?
I could delay the inevitable, put off the decline. My story could linger wistfully on our trip together to London for Mark’s birthday. But what would such a chapter tell you? That we had a wonderful time and everyone was happy. We revelled in our youth and the discovery of a new group of people we thought truly unique.
No, the words will not flow. This is a hitch in my recovery and yet I do my best to fight back. I force myself to answer the call of my sneakers each day. And I travel further than on my earliest walks. I wander as far as Times Square. Bold and brash, dumb and beautiful. I move through Chinatown, fresh with the arcs of live fish and tubs brimful with alien fungi. I make it across to DUMBO via the Manhattan Bridge, walking high above the grey hide of the East River. I stroll Wall Street with its towers leaning in above my head like the trees that line French avenues. I move through the old ironwork and new glass of SoHo. I do the two bays, Kips and Turtle. I round Ground Zero.
And then something happens, a shock to the system. And as you can see, I begin to write again.
This is what happened –
XXVII(ii) I pull on my WALK NOON sneakers at 11.59, leave my apartment and shuffle out onto the street. I have Central Park in mind, an ambitious distance, but I need to shake off this listlessness. And then I notice my breakfasting neighbour coming out of his own front door across the street from me. He looks over at me and waves, just as he does when we see each other on our fire escapes. But neither of us has any breakfast and he pauses hesitantly. (Record this moment, the fighter makes a breakthrough in his training.) I take a deep breath and hold up a finger. My neighbour smiles. A taxi rolls by and I cross the street.
XXVII(iii) I greet him awkwardly but successfully negotiate the exchanging of names. Although please forgive me for having forgotten his name in the unsettling rush of what happened next. My neighbour asks me where I have been for the last three years and I make something up about a sick mother in England. And then my neighbour says to me, Is that where you got married, back in England?
I give him a confused look.
Sorry, he says, just a girlfriend then? It’s just, I never see the two of you together, so I thought to myself, hey, then she must be his wife. My neighbour laughs awkwardly. Sorry, dumb joke, he says.
I have no wife, I say, I’m divorced. No girlfriend either.
My neighbour swallows. Right, right, he says. Of course, just the maid. He slaps his forehead. Hey, maybe you could let me have her number, he says. I guess I’m pretty neat but I could get dirty for a hot maid like that.
He laughs and punches my shoulder playfully. But something about the way I force out a laugh causes him to fall quickly silent.
Are you saying that you’ve seen a woman in my apartment? I ask my neighbour.
The question startles him. Uh, yeah, he says, his yeah like a duh.
I lower my head to think this through as quickly as I can. And then, looking at the smudged words on my sneakers, I say to my neighbour, Do you see her at the same hour each day? Always at noon?
Twelve o’clock? Sure, now you mention it.
I place my hand on my neighbour’s shoulder. He looks down slowly as if there might be a large poisonous spider climbing its way up his body.
I have to go, I say, turning and starting to run.
XXVII(iv) I am quiet with my key and light on tiptoes. Soon I have looked everywhere except for one place.
Something about the sight of the closet makes me feel sick and afraid. What do I keep in this closet?
I beat my fist against its surface. Come out, I say, come out, I know you’re in there. I have a gun, I say, and if you don’t come out I’m going to start shooting.
I wonder if I should get a knife from the kitchen. And then a vague memory washes through me. I own only butter knives.
This is your final warning, I yell.
When was the last time I opened this closet? Perhaps not opening this closet has become part of my routine. But wouldn’t I have left myself something to remind me of this, something that would seem out of place there? Electric cables looped around the brass knob? Something kitchen-related wedged in the crack of the door?