“Hi, Daddy.”
Toying with her crucifix necklace.
“They say we’re a match.”
She knew him on the stunned second look, the tray falling from her hands, and when Tina knelt to help, she whispered, That’s my dad!
Oh my God! Tina whispered. He’s leaving! Standing. Sorry! Need any change? You gonna be back tomorrow? Coffee’s on the house.
Tina wouldn’t leave her alone about it. She went home to find the old photo.
She holds up the photo of Mr. Burke, dark-haired and young. There’s one of Mom, too, she says, and shows him the lost photo he hasn’t seen in twenty years. They could be sisters.
(Was it the free coffee or did you come for something else?)
“She left me her diary,” slipping the photos into it. “She only used your first name. Grandma and Grandpa told me you were dead. They didn’t mean badly…”
(My girlfriend. She’s got this guy who won’t talk to her.)
And then it came back to her that she was a practical girl. This was silly having her friend speak in her place. She opened her mouth but before she could get a word out he dropped a ridiculous amount of money on the table and bolted.
She searched for an hour. Still carrying the stupid coffeepot. Went back to work, and then Mohammed, blasting in from his deliveries: Show me that photo! Two cheeseburgers! Couldn’t get his money right!
She got the address. Found the apartment door ajar. Took a breath, steeled herself to dress him down.
Called an ambulance, applied pressure. Practical girl.
“If you’re watching this, I guess something went…” She toys with the crucifix again. Tries to smile.
“I believe God wouldn’t have let me save you before if I wasn’t meant to save you again now. Maybe it’s why he kept me in this town all this time.” No more smile. “I’ve always missed you, Daddy. I love you. I hope you love me too.”
The tape goes to static.
In the manila envelope is the diary, two old photos inside.
He lowers his bedclothes, raises the hospital gown.
Touches the staples.
Wails like a child.
“One last thing and I’ll leave you alone.”
The detective is in a chair by the bed. The bald doctor hovers. Gloom outside the gray hospital blinds.
The old man under the bedclothes doesn’t respond. The detective unfolds two photocopied sheets, reads from the top one.
“Please don’t kill me.”
Waits for a response. Reads from the second page. “If you kill me, I’ll never see another sunrise. I’ll never be kissed by another sweet woman, never drink another fine scotch. If you kill me, I’ll never eat another good steak, never breathe fresh air. If you kill me, I’ll never know my son.”
The detective waits.
The bedclothes stir. “Letter I wrote.” Voice rusty. “Mailed it to myself. When I came here.”
“Why?”
“Stop me from shooting myself.”
“You have a gun?”
“No.”
“You have a son?”
“No.”
The doctor clears his throat. They’ve covered this. The detective ignores him.
“Why did you come here?”
“Just looking for a reason not to die.”
The doctor moves closer. The detective glances at him, nods reluctantly, rises.
Hesitates.
“Did you find one?” he asks.
Gunmetal clouds moving outside the diner window. An unfamiliar redhead floats by with the coffeepot.
Diary in his inside coat pocket, photos clipped inside. Videotape in his outside pocket. Envelope, stamp, sheet of paper on the table.
Takes up his pen. In his draftsman’s hand, he writes:
IF YOU KILL YOURSELF,
YOU KILL THE LAST PIECE OF HER.
In his coat and hat, carrying his small suitcase, Mr. Burke stops at a mailbox. The envelope is addressed to BURKE. He mails it.
Personal Space
by Jerry Sykes
Copyright © 2007 by Jerry Sykes
Jerry Sykes is a two-time winner of the Crime Writers’ Association of Britain’s Short Story Dagger, the most coveted award for short crime fiction in the U.K. Early in 2007 he will be making his debut as a novelist with the book Lose This Skin, to be published by Five Star Press. A true devotee of the genre, Mr. Sykes has also edited a book of crime stories. See Mean Time (Do-Not Press/1999).
As soon as I turned the corner I could see that he was there again, the third time this week. Sitting at the curb in his battered red Sierra, just staring out across the street.
I had first noticed him a couple of months back, flipping between the A-to-Z on his lap and the terrace houses on the far side of the street. He had been around a number of times since then, as much as three or four times a week, but he still seemed to be looking for that elusive something. It was clear that he wanted people to think he was looking for a particular address, referring to the map and then squinting up at signs and numbers, and it might even have worked for that first week or so, but after two months I was sure there was more to it than that.
Give or take a car-length or two, he was often parked in the same place, sometimes with the engine running, sometimes not, just a couple of doors down from the house where I lived alone.
I had never seen him get out of the car and so I had no idea of his potential, but from what I could make out from just walking past, he was in his late thirties with pink jowls that suggested he carried a little too much soft weight and was therefore not too much of a threat. At first I took him to be a sad sack of a man who couldn’t handle a change in his circumstances, his girlfriend ditching him for someone with a bigger wallet or something, but the longer he kept on appearing at the curb, the more it dawned on me that he might be some kind of head case looking to inflict serious retribution. I knew that it could not be me he had in mind because he had seen me often enough and still not made a move, but the more I saw of him the more I began to resent him being there and encroaching on my personal space.
Personal space is a strange concept. Subjective and elastic and the one thing that if it is not quite right can nail me to the ground in righteous anger just as sure as if I had been struck with lightning. I just cannot bear to be in too close contact with someone other than through choice.
I don’t mind pushing onto the tube in rush hour because that’s what it’s like, that’s the space, and it’s not as if there are one or two people down at one end of the carriage while the rest of us inhale each other’s odours at the other end. But if I’m out walking in the park and the sole other person for miles around is close enough for me to be able to hear them breathing, then as far as I’m concerned that’s tantamount to stalking.
Back when I still used to go to the cinema, I would sit and wait until the film had started before I took a final seat, moving as far from the munchers and chatterers as possible. But no matter how careful I was, a few minutes into the film, without fail, a small group of people would enter the cinema with their loud voices and their loud food and sit right in front of me. No wonder I can’t remember the last film I saw at the cinema.
And this kind of behaviour is not just confined to customers, either. In restaurants I often make sure that I am the first person there, taking a table in a far corner where no one can intrude on me. But as soon as someone else appears, each time the waitress will sit them at the table right beside me, ignoring the rest of the clear tables in the place. As if not understanding that having them so close to me and having to listen to their conversation will do nothing but irritate me.