I wobble into the bathroom and lean my forehead against the wall in front of the urinal. I unzip, and I look down, and there it is. That mythical instrument of life and death and first-date back-seat fucking. It hangs limp, useless now, silently judging me for all the ways I’ve misused it over the years. I think of my wife and her new lover, slapping their cold bodies together like poultry in a packing plant. I think of the anonymous blurs in my past life, probably all dead or Dead by now. Then I think of Julie curled next to me in that king-sized bed. I think of her body in that comically mismatched underwear, her breath against my eyes as I study every line in her face, wondering what mysteries lie in the glowing nuclei of her each and every cell.
There in the bathroom, surrounded by the stench of piss and shit, I wonder: Is it too late for me? Can I somehow snatch another chance from the skymouth’s grinding teeth? I want a new past, new memories, a new first-handshake with love. I want to start over, in every possible way.
When I come out of the bathroom the floor is spinning. Voices are muffled. Julie and Nora are deep in conversation, leaning close and laughing. A man in his early thirties approaches the bar and makes some kind of leering comment to Julie. Nora glares at him and says something that looks sarcastic, and Julie shoos him away. The man shrugs and retreats to the pool table where his friend is waiting. Julie calls out something insulting and the friend laughs, but the man just grins coldly and calls back a retort. Julie looks frozen for a moment, then she and Nora turn their backs to the pool table and Nora starts whispering in Julie’s ear.
‘What’s… wrong?’ I ask, approaching the bar. I can sense both men at the pool table watching me.
‘Nothing,’ Julie says, but she sounds shaken. ‘It’s fine.’
‘R, could you give us a quick minute?’ Nora asks.
I look back and forth between them. They wait. I turn and walk out of the bar, feeling too many things at once. On the patio I slump against the railing, the streets a dizzying seven floors down. Most of the city’s lights are out, but the street lamps flicker and pulse like bioluminescence. Julie’s mini-cassette recorder is an insistent weight in my shirt pocket. I pull it out and stare at it. I know I shouldn’t but I’m… I feel like I just need—
Closing my eyes, swaying gently with one arm on the railing, I rewind the tape for a moment and press play.
‘—really that crazy? Just because he’s… whatever he is? I mean, isn’t “zombie” just a silly name we—’
I press rewind again and it occurs to me that the gap between the beginning of this entry and the end of the previous one comprises the entire time I’ve known Julie. Every meaningful moment of my life fits inside a few seconds of tape hiss.
I press stop, then play.
‘—thinks no one knows but everyone knows, they’re just afraid to do anything. He’s getting worse, too. He said he loved me tonight. Actually said those words. Said I was beautiful and I was everything he loved about Mom and if anything ever happened to me he’d lose his mind. And I know he meant it, I know all of that’s really there inside him … but the fact that he had to be raging shitfaced drunk to let any of it out … it just made the whole thing seem sick. I fucking hated it.’
There is a long pause on the tape. I glance over my shoulder at the bar door, feeling ashamed but desperate. I know these are confidences I should have to earn through months of slow intimacy, but I can’t help myself. I just want to listen to her.
‘I’ve thought about making a report,’ she continues. ‘March into the community centre and make Rosy go arrest him. I mean, I’m all for drinking, I love it, but with Dad it’s… different. It’s not a celebration for him, it seems like it’s painful and scary, like he’s numbing himself for some horrible medieval surgery. And yeah … I know why, and it’s not like I haven’t done worse stuff for the same reasons, but it’s just … it’s so …’ Her voice wavers and breaks off, and she sniffles hard like a self-rebuke. ‘God ,’ she whispers. ‘Shit.’
Several seconds of tape hiss. I listen closer. Then the door flies open and I whirl around, tossing the recorder out into the dark. But it’s not Julie. It’s the two men from the pool table. They stumble out the door, jostling each other and laughing through the sides of their mouths as they light up cigarettes.
‘Hey,’ the one who was talking to Julie calls to me, and he and his friend start ambling in my direction. He’s tall, good-looking, his muscular arms sleeved in tattoos: snakes and skeletons and the logos of extinct rock bands. ‘What’s up, man? You Nora’s new guy?’
I hesitate, then shrug. They both laugh like I’ve made a dirty joke.
‘Yeah, who ever knows with that chick, right?’ He punches his friend in the chest while continuing to saunter towards me. ‘So you know Julie, man? You Julie’s friend?’
I nod.
‘Known her long?’
I shrug, but I feel a coil inside me tensing.
He stops a few feet away from me and leans against the wall, taking a slow drag on his cigarette. ‘That one used to be pretty wild, too, a few years back. I was her firearms teacher.’
I need to leave. I need to turn around right now and leave.
‘She got all pure after she started dating that Kelvin kid, but man, for a year or so she was ripe fruit.’ His exhalations form a haze of smoke that stings my dry eyes. ‘A hundred bucks won’t even buy a pack of cigarettes any more, but it sure went a long way with that bitch.’
I lunge forward and crack his head into the wall. It’s easy, I just palm his face and thrust forward, punching the wall with the back of his skull. I don’t know if I’ve killed him and I don’t care. When his friend tries to grab me I do the exact same to him, two big dents in the Orchard’s aluminium siding. Both men slump to the ground. I wobble my way down the stairs and out onto the catwalk. Some kids leaning on the support cables smoking joints stare at me as I shove past them. Excuse me , I try to say, but I can’t seem to find the syllables. I slide down the four apartment floors and lurch out onto Fairy Street or Tinkerbell Street or whatever the fuck it’s called. I just need to get away from all these people for a minute, collect my thoughts. I’m so hungry. God, I’m starving.
After a few minutes of wandering, I’m completely lost and disorientated. A light rain is falling and I’m alone on some dark narrow street. The asphalt glitters black and wet under the crooked street lamps. Up ahead, two guards converse in a rain-flecked cone of light, grunting to each other with the affected toughness of scared boys straining to be men.
‘… out in Corridor 2 all last week, pouring foundations. We’re less than a mile away from Goldman Dome but we’ve barely got a fuckin’ crew any more. Grigio keeps pulling guys off Construction and dumping ’em into Security.’
‘What about the Goldman crew? How’s their end coming?’
‘Goldman is shit. They’re barely out their front door. I’ve been hearing the merger’s in bad shape anyway, thanks to Grigio’s bad diplomacy. Starting to wonder if he even wants the mergers any more, the way he handled Corridor 1. Wouldn’t surprise me if he arranged the collapse himself.’
‘You know that’s bullshit. Don’t be spreading that story around.’
‘Yeah, well, either way, Construction’s gone to shit since Kelvin got squished. We’re just digging holes and filling ’em in.’
‘I’d still rather be out building something than playing rent-a-cop in here all night. You get any action out there?’
‘Just a couple of Fleshies wandering out of the woods. Pop, pop, game over.’
‘No Boneys?’