How often are we to dieEverybody has regrets.
Before we go quite off this stage?
In every friend we lose a part of ourselves,
And the best part.
Alexander Pope
Even Frank Sinatra had regrets, and no matter that they were too few to mention, he still saw fit to point out the fact. The funny, or perhaps the sad, thing about regrets is that more often than not we are sorry about the things that we didn’t do as opposed to the things we did. ‘If only I had…’ is so much more powerful than ‘What if I hadn’t…’. ‘I wish I hadn’t…’ is nothing compared to the emotional storm that ‘I wonder if I had…’ can create.
We walk around as if we’re going to live forever. If only we could see the future, if only we knew exactly how much time we had left on this planet, we would have no regrets. We would pack each day with all the things we always promised we would do ‘someday’, and save ourselves the despair of looking back when it’s one minute and an eternity too late with hopeless feelings of dreams unaccomplished.
If only we could see the future.
I don’t think that Charlie had any regrets, in the end. Or maybe just too few to mention.
But that comes later.
***
Jerry had woken up this fine morning to find a woodpecker drumming holes into his matchstick furniture. In his quest for food for the baby bird, he had angered Tom, who was now chasing the brave mouse around my TV screen, brandishing an axe and sporting a bump of colossal proportions on his head which he had received minutes before during a series of mishaps involving a stick of dynamite and a piano. The whole adventure was accompanied by the music of a symphony orchestra.
It was ten o’ clock on Sunday morning, and I was killing time. There was a popular cafeteria in Serenity called Soldi’s, and I was meeting Amber there at one o’ clock. Until then, I had nothing much to do and three hours in which to do it.
It occurred to me that I was lonely. Most people woke up on a Sunday morning to a family breakfast followed by a day at the beach. Me, I woke up to Tom and Jerry on the tube. For a brief moment I entertained the idea of getting a pet for company, then watched as Tom annihilated an entire house in the space of a minute and thought better of it.
Daryl had taken Amy to the beach for the day. He had invited me to tag along, but I had declined. I considered phoning Rachael, just for a chat, but then I pictured her spending a lazy morning in bed, probably lying in Colin Dot Com’s arms as he snored away in peaceful oblivion, and decided not to.
I sighed, and contemplated switching off the TV and doing something constructive. Perhaps even having a shower and getting dressed. Or, more importantly, I had some sales reports that needed typing out that I had been putting off for weeks. I had some bills to organize – telephone, water, electricity, TV license and my Internet subscription. And, speaking of the Internet, I hadn’t checked my email account for days.
It was this last thought that finally got me out of the armchair. Clicking off the TV and banishing Tom and Jerry into somebody else’s living room, I headed up to my room and flicked on the computer. The hard drive hummed into action as I sat myself down into the swivel chair in front of the desk and waited for the start-up screen to appear.
It was an old computer – a Pentium II Celeron model which felt like it was running a fever if left on for longer than fifteen minutes at a time. I’d bought it second-hand and it had been immediately rendered redundant when the Pentium III system had appeared on the market the very next day. It was good enough for me though – I wasn’t exactly Bill Gates when it came to computers, and things like RAM, WAV files and gigabytes sounded to me like a futuristic episode of Mission Impossible, and not a reality of daily life. Besides, a computer in every household was screwing up my sales repertoire - why should kids nowadays be interested in a plastic and cardboard version of Captain Badass’ Tower of Doom when they could flick a switch into cyberspace, stride into the actual tower and beat the living crap out of the evil Captain in virtual reality? Why buy make-believe walkie-talkies when the Internet gave you the option of chatting to someone halfway across the planet in real-time? I had wandered into a chat-room once, by mistake, and left with the impression that the majority of the people who visited these sites were sexually frustrated morons with one brain cell whose only purpose in life was to repeat the phrase ‘NE HOT GIRLS WANNA WISPA PRESS 69’ ad nauseum. From that day on, I had only used the computer (Cybersaurus, as Charlie had once laughingly referred to it – he himself being the owner of an ultra-modern laptop) for Word documents and to send email, mainly because it saved the price of a stamp. While most people had the world at their fingertips, I got to mine via my front door.
The start-up screen finally popped up – a garishly coloured picture of a cartoon bunny straining under the weight of a huge chocolate egg. I had downloaded the theme last Easter and never gotten around to changing it. A few more wheezes from the hard drive and various icons began to appear. I double-clicked on my Internet connection shortcut and listened as the modem screeched, chattered and boing-boinged to itself. Then I logged on to my email account.
Forty-three messages.
I deleted the junk mail – promises of instant wealth; a university diploma; Madame Nora offering to tell my fortune; a product that would guarantee me bringing any woman to orgasm every time; a new car; a free mobile phone; and a multitude of other stuff that I didn’t want, need, or couldn’t afford.
Six messages remaining.
I frowned to myself as I clicked open the first message – a polite notice from my email provider saying that my inbox was full and could I please remove some of the unwanted mail. I complied, and deleted the message, smiling at the irony of it all. In my mind, a metaphorical penny was teetering on the edge of a cliff, waiting to drop…
Five messages.
I clicked open another message – a forward from someone or the other, which turned out to be a joke that I had first heard about eight years earlier, and hadn’t found funny even then.
Four messages.
What had I been thinking about? A half-formed thought was struggling its way to the forefront of my brain, waving for attention. The penny wobbled precariously.
A message from an old acquaintance… long time no hear, how ru, etc etc.
Three messages.
Was it anything to do with the Easter bunny? Last Easter? Didn’t think so.
The next message was a picture from the summer before; me and Charlie and the camera’s owner (couldn’t remember his name) at The Eye In The Sky, directing peace signs and huge grins towards the lens.
Two…
Something to do with Charlie? Probably. He was on my mind a lot lately. The penny took a deep breath…
One…
Forward this email to ten people in the next ten minutes and a cheque for $142,000 will fall into your lap. This is not a hoax! What have you got to lose? My friend, who is a top attorney, claims that…
Charlie.
Lap.
Top.
The penny dropped, sending the sands of time shooting backwards seven years up the hourglass…
***
Charlie snapped the display case closed, and that was when I realised that I had been holding my breath. I think that was the first time I had ever seen a real gun before.
“Wow”, I said, eventually. I think that that was also the first time that I had ever said ‘wow’ out loud and meant it.
“Yeah”, said Charlie, and I couldn’t help noticing the bitterness with which he said that one word. “Impressive, isn’t it? The German 8mm PPK with deluxe nickel finish and composite checkered grips. Or, as I like to call it… the Birthday Gun”.
“Is it real?” I asked. I half wanted him to open the case again so that I could grab the gun and sneak around the house in a fantasy world, crouching behind door-frames and bursting into rooms doing a James Bond style gun ballet and screaming things like “Everybody freeze!”
Charlie nodded. “Most of my dad’s collection was. He had about fifty-six in all. A couple of replicas, but mostly real. I sold them all, except for these three”. He gestured over to the other two boxes. I had completely forgotten about them.
“How come?”
Charlie shrugged. “What do I need fifty-six guns for?”
“No, I mean, how come you kept these three?”
He sighed, and took a deep breath. “Like I said… unsentimental value. My dad paid more attention to his precious gun collection than he ever did to me and my mother. This one…” he patted the box on his lap as he spoke, “… he bought on my thirteenth birthday. I waited up for him to come home. When he finally showed up and came through the door with a huge smile on his face and this box in his hands, I was so excited that I rushed up to him and grabbed the box. I thought it was my birthday present, you know? What it was, though, was a slap around the head and a snappy ‘Be careful, you stupid little prick!’ before he disappeared into his study”. Charlie laughed, but it sounded more like a bark than anything else. He turned his head away then, quickly, but not quickly enough. I looked down at my feet uncomfortably and said nothing, because there was nothing to say. It occurred to me that although Charlie hadn’t brought many possessions with him, he had walked in through the door with enough emotional baggage to fill all the storage space I had.
“Turned out that he had completely forgotten that it was my birthday”, Charlie continued in a low voice, so low that I wasn’t quite sure whether he was talking to me or to himself. “The next day I came home from school to find a birthday card on my pillow. It had ‘Sorry it’s late!’ printed on the front, and thirty pounds in the envelope. “To Charlie, love Dad”. It wasn’t even his handwriting, it was his fucking secretary’s”.
Sighing deeply, he lifted the case off his lap and placed it carefully on the other two. There was a long silence, and I was just wondering whether or not it was appropriate to leave the room and leave him to his own devices when he looked up at me. His eyes were sparkling, but the hurt look that I had glimpsed in them a minute ago had faded, as if some demon had been exorcised.
Then he simply said, “Um… thanks for listening”.
“No problem”, I replied, and in that moment the tension seemed to dissolve out of the room. The brief silence that followed was companionable as opposed to uncomfortable. Violins to fiddles.
Charlie reached over and dragged the black carrying case that he had taken out of the cardboard carton over to him.
“Now this”, he said with a smile, “is my pride and joy”. He grinned, and added, “and you’ll be glad to know that there is no emotional tale of woe attached to it”.
I must’ve looked relieved because he chuckled before unzipping the bag and pulling out the sleekest laptop that I had ever seen – not that I had seen all that many. It looked as if it had been designed by a superior race in the year 3000, and then transported back in time to the here and now. It looked as if it could go even faster than the Porsche parked outside. It made my own Cybersaurus look like a cave drawing.
Charlie patted the computer lovingly.
“Don’t know where I’d be without this. I’ve got my whole life in here. Diary, scheduler, organizer, contacts…” He then reeled off a whole lot of technical details that I couldn’t make head or tail of, but it was that one sentence that returned to nudge my memory seven years later…
… I’ve got my whole life in here…
***
I stared blankly at the computer screen, my mind elsewhere. Had Charlie’s computer been there two days ago when Daryl and I had been searching his room? I couldn’t remember seeing it, but then again we had stopped looking as soon as we had found Charlie’s old address book with Amber’s phone number in it. There was a possibility that he had left the computer behind. In which case I could have a poke around and see how up-to-date Charlie had kept his life.
Leaving Cybersaurus switched on, I made my way to Charlie’s bedroom. Daryl and I had left the balcony doors open, and the curtains waved a gentle hello as I walked in.
In all the best shows, once the hero has had the brainwave that will solve everything and save millions of lives, everything that follows is relatively simple. If B.A. Barracus needs an old ‘Best Of David Essex’ LP in order to add the vital finishing touches to the armoured tank that he’s building, then Hannibal Smith will inevitably find one lying in the corner of an old abandoned military warehouse. Having had what I thought was a relatively good idea myself, I half expected the laptop to fall into my open arms from the heavens - with a chorus of ‘Halleluiah’ – as soon as I walked in through the door. Unfortunately, a quick glance around the room revealed that the laptop was nowhere to be seen. Apparently, real life had never watched ‘The A-Team’.
Determinedly, I marched over to the nearest cupboard and yanked open the doors. Charlie’s assorted bit and pieces stared back at me indifferently… a wooden pig that he had brought back from a holiday in Amsterdam, a couple of hardback books, a pile of CDs, a Sony Discman attached to a pair of computer speakers, three packets of Golden Virginia tobacco, a yo-yo, a pack of cards, at least a dozen packs of Rizla skins… no laptop. This was obviously the cupboard that should’ve been marked ‘Miscellaneous Crap’. I picked a CD at random, slipped it into the player, pressed ‘play’ and resumed my search.
With Men Without Hats’ ‘Safety Dance’ serving as a soundtrack to my hunt, I moved on to the next cupboard, then the wardrobe, then the top of the wardrobe. Nothing. Getting increasingly frustrated, I pulled open the first drawer in a chest of three, which would have produced excellent results had I been searching for Charlie’s boxer shorts and socks, but proved useless in the quest for the laptop. The other two drawers were equally disappointing.
Completely disheartened, I stood in the middle of the room and spun around in a complete circle, just in case I had missed the black carrying case the first time round. No such luck.
The green address book was on the bed where we had left it, still open on ‘A’, Amber’s name the first on the list. Underneath, in pencil, was ‘Amy’s birthday’, followed by the date, and under that was ‘Alan – mechanic’ and a telephone number. The rest of the page was blank.
Suddenly curious, I sat up and, picking up the book, flicked forward to the Bs. A blank page. The Cs were also devoid of any names or addresses. Daryl and Claire were listed collectively under D; E was empty. I leafed through the whole book… my name under J, Rachael under R. Someone called ‘Spook’ under S, ‘Tony’s’ under T, and that was about it. On the very last page, under the heading of ‘notes’, was a weird list of numbers and odd words – ‘Vid 0528’, ‘Templar’, ‘Spook’ again, V7834’, ‘HBB 803’, ‘tupperc@elemail.com’… this last one was Charlie’s email address, and I knew that HBB 803 was the Porsche’s registration number, so I assumed that the others were a collection of those names and numbers that tend to accumulate throughout adulthood… PINs and membership card numbers. Feeling ridiculously like Hercule Poirot, I deduced that 0528 was Charlie’s video rental membership number. 7834 was possibly a Visa PIN.
Sighing again, I tossed the book aside, where it bounced off the pillow and onto the floor.
And I absolutely one hundred percent knew what was going to happen next…
I would lean down to pick up the book and, in doing so, inadvertently glance under the bed. And there, in true Hollywood style, would be the laptop, just waiting to be found.
Because I hadn’t looked under the bed, had I?
It had to be there.
Otherwise, there was no justice in the world.
I leapt off the bed like a lemming and landed on my knees, cracking the left one with a painful thud. Ignoring my complaining kneecap I crouched down and peered under the valance.
There, in the gloomy dwellings of imaginary sotto-letto monsters, was a rectangular box. I grinned.
And another.
And another. The grin faded.
Charlie’s guns.
There was no justice in the world.
Rubbing my knee, I struggled to my feet and, dejectedly limping over to the CD player, cut Men Without Hats off in mid-boogie.
Back in my room, I sat at my desk and stared unseeingly at Cybersaurus’ screen, where the Easter Bunny screensaver was lobbing chocolate eggs in my general direction with electronic chortles of almost lunatic enjoyment. I nudged the computer mouse, and the bunny vanished, to be replaced by my email inbox. I directed the cursor towards the sign-out button, clicked and logged off. The sign-in screen came up. I pointed the arrow at the ‘close’ button, then hesitated, my finger hovering over the mouse.
Not really thinking, I clicked in the box labeled ‘User Name’ instead and typed ‘Templar’. In the password box, I typed ‘spook’. And pressed ‘log-in’.
It was a Hollywood moment. With a crescendo of trumpets and a drum-roll, Charlie’s inbox leapt up onto the screen.
There were no messages, which, if nothing else, confirmed that Charlie was still alive and checking his mail. I clicked on ‘Show Folders’ and, after a reluctant wheeze from the hard-drive, a margin with a list of folders appeared on the left of the screen. I leaned forward and opened the ‘Sent Messages’ folder, my eyes practically drilling holes into the monitor.
Empty.
I clicked on ‘Trash’.
A list of unopened junk mail popped up. Nothing useful here, unless Charlie had wanted to buy a Super-Ab-Maximiser at half the usual retail price.
Feeling part hacker and part interfering old busy-body who steamed open other people’s correspondence before it even hit the mat on the other side of the door, I clicked on ‘Archived Mail’. Five messages scrolled down. The first, dated two months earlier, was titled ‘FWD: Bluemoon’ from someone called Teenie. I opened the file, and after a short wait was rewarded with a short cartoon of Count Dracula mooning me while a handful of bats flew around singing Blue Moon in high-pitched squeaks. Closing the file, I returned to the main page and quickly glanced down the list.
A couple more forwards from Teenie, no doubt every bit as entertaining as the Bluemoon file.
A virus warning from someone called Tigerfeet, entitled ‘This is NOT a joke’ and dated a couple of weeks later.
The final message was from someone called Hippo and was called ‘RE: Query’. What struck me, however, was the date.
The third of May.
That was the day Charlie had left. The day he had stuck his note to my kettle and disappeared.
I clicked on the file. The hard drive whirred and hummed. Then it made an all too familiar sound, rather like a robot clearing its throat. I ground my teeth in frustration and slammed a fist into the side of the monitor. I knew what that sound meant. Muttering and swearing under my breath, I sat back and waited for the inevitable window to pop up.
Connection terminated. Would you like to reconnect?
And then, downstairs, somebody rang the doorbell.
***
I stomped down the stairs like an angry three-year-old, pausing on the bottom step to readjust my dressing-gown. As I passed the mirror in the hall I made a feeble attempt to pat down my hair, which looked like the offspring of a hedgehog and Bozo the clown, into something which looked less like the offspring of a hedgehog and Bozo the clown. The doorbell rang again.
“Okay okay, I’m coming”, I muttered, and opened the front door.
It was Mrs Moore. I didn’t recognise her at first, because she appeared to be smiling, which was something that I had never seen her do, or thought her capable of. I blinked in the sunlight. It was definitely her – hair pulled back in a bun so tight that it could deflect bullets, and wearing a long black dress so perfectly ironed that it would have cracked rather than creased. I would have been less surprised had it been the Beatles, complete with Yoko Ono and a yellow submarine.
“Um… hi?” I said eventually, unable to keep the nonplussed tone out of my voice.
“Good morning, Joseph!” she sang cheerfully. She looked me up and down, and her smile was replaced with a look of concern. “Oh dear. Are you ill?” she asked sympathetically.
I pulled my dressing gown tighter around me.
“Er… no no. I had a late night and a lazy morning, that’s all”, I mumbled. “Er… would you like to come in?”
“Oh no, dear. Gavin is waiting in the car…” She gestured over her shoulder, and I noticed Mr Moore double-parked across the street in their midnight blue Renault. He was leaning out of the window, wearing a white shirt and a black tie, and he waved brightly as I looked. Feeling slightly dazed, I waved back feebly.
“So we’re just here to collect Amy”, Mrs Moore finished.
“Uh… collect Amy?”
The smile was back in full force, only now my eyes had adjusted to the bright sunlight and I realised that it was about as real as a jester’s greasepaint mask.
“You see, we’re going out for Sunday lunch, and we thought it might be nice for Amy to spend some time with her grandparents. We realise that it’s been less than a month since Claire… passed on…” Her eyes clouded over then, and she lowered her head. But not before I had caught a glimpse of, not sorrow, but anger… an anger so intense that I had to make a conscious effort not to step back into the house and slam the door in her face. Then she looked up again, and the mask of sweetness was back on, like a glass of orange squash hiding a deadly dose of cyanide.
“… but life must go on”, she continued, “and it’s unhealthy for the girl to stay in moping all day while her father is at work”. She looked at me expectantly.
I retrieved my cigarettes from my dressing-gown pocket and lit one slowly, trying to buy time until I could think of exactly what to say.
“Mrs Moore…” I started, but she interrupted me before I could say anymore.
“Don’t worry, Joseph. We phoned Daryl at the restaurant and he said it was perfectly alright. We’ll drop her home later”.
“Mrs Moore”, I repeated slowly, “Amy isn’t here today”.
The smile evaporated. There was a few moments’ silence, during which her eyes bore through me like a Black and Decker special.
“I don’t believe you”, she said eventually. “We know damn well that you baby-sit Amy on Sundays while her father is at work”. She spat the word ‘father’ out as if it were a rotten oyster.
I took a deep breath.
“Mrs Moore, Daryl hasn’t been to work since the funeral. He was given three weeks’ bereavement leave. So you couldn’t have phoned him at the restaurant”. You lying bitch, I added mentally.
She scowled at me, the cyanide coming to the surface. Then she suddenly leaned forward, and for one awful moment I thought she was going to raise her red-painted fingernails and rake them down my face in a frenzy of raw fury. Instead, she spat in my ear, “It’s past eleven o’ clock, you fucking little shit! Go and get dressed!”
I blinked in shock as she turned on her heel and headed towards the car, practically vibrating with rage. Mr Moore – Gavin – saw her approaching and opened the car door, as if to get out. Mrs Moore raised a hand, and he froze, one foot in, one foot out.
“Mrs Moore?” I called out weakly.
She stopped, and turned slowly to glare at me.
I swallowed.
“It wasn’t Daryl that killed Claire”, I said softly.
She glowered at me for what seemed like an eternity, then suddenly whirled around and stormed towards her husband like Beelzebub in a black dress.
I stared at her receding back for a second, then stepped back into the house, gently closing the door behind me.
Forward to Chapter Five | Part Two
1 comment:
…been wanting to get to this for awhile – &%#@ it, now I’m hooked.
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