When We Were Alone
by Steve Finbow
The knock on the door comes at just after midnight. Hour of the rat. I hadn’t had chance to dream. Snore still low and soupy. Cars going by the window paint fingerprints on the ceiling. My book rests on my chest, the pillows behind me already ruckled and damp from night sweats. The blankets and the sheets, a maelstrom of cotton dragging me down, spitting me back out again. What is that noise? Knock-knock. Knock-knock. The front door. I reach over and turn on the bedside lamp; look at you, worry you will wake. But no. You sleep on, oblivious to the glow, to the sound of skin and bone on wood and paint, to the world beyond your flickering pink and translucent eyelids. A steady drubbing. I stumble into my underwear, throw on a T-shirt – inside out and back to front – stained with that evening’s dinner. An urgent thrumming. I open the bedroom door, walk along the dark hallway, the dim light from the bedroom slowly extinguished. A rhythmic drumming. The itch and tickle of the wallpaper, its whorls and tides, the thin sediment of paste beneath. And, as I pad along the carpet, memories, pebble round, drop into my thoughts, resounding, recoiling, indistinct. The knock comes again, quieter this time, more resigned. Knock-knock. Knock-knock. My eyes grainy and smarting. Two umbrellas in a stand, one furled and fastened to attention, the other damply lolling. I don’t think to look through the spy-hole. I don’t know why. This is my home, I suppose. Don’t think to ask who it is. It could be anyone. I unlatch the chain, turn the security bolt, open the door to the width of my face, unthinking, blink and say,
Yes?
Hear the switch and tumble of the rain, the passing cars.
Paul? A man’s voice says.
The balustrade like a dental brace. I blink a few more times until the figure in the hall becomes distinct. A shadow of a man in a halo of light.
Can I help you? I say.
He steps forward and I see a man maybe twenty years younger, five inches taller, at least 14lbs lighter, he has more hair than I do, than I ever did.
Paul McGregor? he says.
Yes, I say. What is this?
I am friend of Kate.
I scrunch my eyes shut, realize the massive presence of the missing indefinite article.
Who are you?
I am friend of Kate.
No, I mean. What’s your name?
Fabio.
Oh, Fabio… Yes, Kate’s mentioned something about you. You work with her, right?
I am very close friend. She not tell you?
No… I mean, tell me what?
She say you are sick.
I’m sorry. She said what?
You are very sick.
I open the door further, feeling slightly ridiculous in an inside-out and back-to-front T-shirt not quite covering my red and white striped boxer shorts.
For some reason I say, Would you like to come in?
He nods and steps past me, walks along the hallway to the closed living room door, opens it, turns on the light. I follow, enter as he sits down on a chair. The chair. My chair.
I come to tell you.
Tell me what, I say.
About Kate.
What about Kate? I say.
She finish with me, so I come to tell you is over.
What’s over? I say, a cold stone forming in my gut, my legs running with prickly heat, my scalp itching.
Kate and me is over. She call me and tell me on phone. I want her to tell me here, he says, pointing to his face.
Well, she’s asleep, I say and add, How long has this been going on?
Three month. She say you are sick and have no money and she is bored but then she tell me on phone she no want to see me no more.
I want to say any more but say instead, Oh.
You wake her.
No… No… Er, you have a nerve coming here, I say, the inside of my mouth flaking and peeling.
I love her, he says.
I say, Oh, again, cross to the sideboard and pour myself a glass of vodka.
You wake her, he says standing.
I hold the vodka bottle by the neck, lift its base to a forty-five degree angle.
I think you should leave, I say.
I come here to tell you like man, he says.
And you have told me, I say, and now you can leave. Kate, I say, gesturing my chin towards the bedroom, told you it’s over. Please leave my house before I call the police.
He takes a step towards me. The space shifts and ripples. I lift the vodka bottle and see light pass through it, turning the clear spirit into a million glistening ball bearings. Time stills and thickens. He looks at my hand. The raised veins, the white bishop-heads of my knuckles. He steps back. Turns. Shrugs. Walks along the hallway to the still open front door, pulling me along in his undertow, his energy’s tractor beam. The doorway seems too small for his leaving and I have an urge to rush forward, propel him out of it and over the sixth-floor balcony. Something rises into my throat; swallowing it, I steady myself against the hallway bookshelf, watch as his broad back disappears into the corridor. I follow him as he walks under the impastoed white hell of the moth-smeared lights. Close the door. Look through the spy-hole as his body diminishes in size along with the world.
I stand transfixed, my eye to the plastic and glass circle. After five minutes or so, my heart thumping at every change in the corridor’s shadowing, I turn and walk slowly back to the bedroom.
Sitting up, your glasses perched on the end of your nose – a faint trace of semen smudging the right lens; your full breasts, glistening with his spittle, shining brightly through the white cotton sheet, you say,
Who was that at this time of night?
Do you have something to tell me? I say.
You look at me and I can feel the tickle of his pubic hair on your eyelashes, smell the salt reek of him in your nostrils.
What do you mean? you say.
Do you have something you would like to discuss?
Your mouth makes a perfect circle and I can almost see the words forming, queuing to get out, and then breaking apart into random syllables, reforming but unruly, a car crash of potential fricatives, affricates, and stops. The fullness of him in your mouth. In you.
Finally, you say, I can’t believe he came here.
I sit on the edge of the bed, my back to you, say, Were you sleeping with him?
Yes, you say, but that’s all there was.
He said you said I was sick, that I have no money.
I meant when you were ill a few years ago and we are having money problems.
How old is he?
Twenty-two, you say.
Christ, I say, Christ.
It’s over.
Was that what that talk was about last weekend? Children? Your age?
Yes. You never wanted children and then you said you did, so…
So you stopped fucking a moronic twenty-something.
Yes.
Look, I know this sounds stupid and I know he’s younger and taller and thinner, but I have to ask.
Ask what?
It’s really childish.
Ask what?
Is his cock bigger than mine?
Yes, you say, Oh, yes. Sometimes when he put it in it hurt too much.
I didn’t need to know that, I say, standing, I really didn’t need to know that.
Sorry, you say, I didn’t… You asked…
I pick up my book, carry it under my arm, open the bedroom door, walk slowly along the hallway into the kitchen, pick up my mobile phone. Dial.
After ten rings, she answers, says sleepily, Hello?
It’s me.
Who…?
It’s me. Paul. I… Can I come over? May I…?
Paul… What is it? No, look, sorry.
Something’s happened. I’ll be over in 30 minutes.
No… Look… I’m sorry. I have… Look, someone’s here. I was going to tell you in the week.
Oh, I say… Oh…
Listen, I’ll call you, she says.
I push the red button.
I can hear the cars driving by on the road outside, hear the trees rustle in the rain, see the lubricated length and girth of stretching flesh, yet more flesh expanding, gripping, from pink to red to purple, see the shadow of a cat dink between the dustbins, hear the noise of shattering glass underwater.
January 7th, 2011 at 5:42 am
One of the best I’ve read in a while. I wish I’d written it.
January 18th, 2011 at 4:08 pm
Good short story about a man in existential crisis. Some of the explicit images near the end put me off, but the point was made. Well written and affective.
January 26th, 2011 at 2:48 pm
Fantastic, brooding and bitten by the teeth of genius. Would love to read more!
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