Chapter 1
Down, down, down into the***
Darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful,
The tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent,
The witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve.
And I am not resigned.
Edna St Vincent Millay
Everyone has a story to tell. This is mine.
Okay. Let’s stop right there and start again. Before I sat down to write this I promised myself that I would be perfectly honest, and tell it as it happened – no glossed over details, no self-righteous justification, no verbal sleight-of-hand or misdirection. Just the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And yet it appears that I’ve blown it with the very first line. So let’s start again…
It’s not just my story. There were others involved and it’s more their story than it is mine. In fact, were it not for one crazy instant, one moment of madness, then my role in the whole mess would have been that of an observer. The person in the middle around which the events unfolded and the characters played their parts.
Were it not for one moment of madness. Were it not for the gun, and for my finger squeezing back the trigger.
I’d always believed that people with guns had power. It was only when I pointed one at another human being, aimed and fired, that I realized with a shock that it was the other way round. It’s the gun that has the power over the person holding it. A gun can talk, you see. It plays with your mind. It tells you to pull the trigger. It is, after all, a piece of machinery, and machinery is created to be used. Pull the trigger, and everything that you are afraid of, everything that you hate, and everything that is making your life a misery, will cease to exist.
Who could resist an offer like that?
Not me.
I pulled the trigger.
But that’s not where it starts. It starts with a funeral…
***
Dignified.
That’s the first word that springs to mind whenever I cast my thoughts back to that particular day. Claire was dead; we would never see her again, never hear her laugh again, never share another joke, never stay up all night drinking red wine until we were totally plastered. Never sing along together to old Showaddywaddy tracks. And yet everyone standing around the open grave was so dignified. No one shed a tear. Not even Amy, although I could see that she was fighting a brave battle – one that she would lose later on. As for Daryl, his face looked like it was carved out of granite, his jaw set, his eyes staring into some other world where his beautiful wife was still alive and well.
It was the first week of summer, and it was hot. A slight breeze swept around at ankle height, making the grass wave lazily, but doing nothing to dry out the sweat that was seeping slowly out of every pore of my body. The coffin looked somehow unreal as the sun caught its angles – like something out of a dream that’s still there when you wake up, no matter how many times you blink and rub your eyes. I found myself thinking that the weather was all wrong – that the sun should have been extinguished by howling winds and apocalyptic rain. It shouldn’t have been a nice fucking day.
Claire shouldn’t have been dead.
How the hell do you die while walking through the living room of your own home?
I held my breath as the surreal coffin was smoothly lowered into the grave, hoping against hope that no one would have a last minute mental episode and attempt to throw themselves in after the box. A year earlier, when my uncle had died, my aunt had done just that and broken both her legs, which had set my three cousins into a wailing, screeching frenzy. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to go through that again.
Dignified. Nobody moved, nobody even blinked as the coffin settled upon its muddy bed. The only noises were the creaking of the ropes and the subdued muttering of the priest. Then they slid the concrete slab over the yawning hole, and Claire was well and truly gone. Forever.
I started walking towards Daryl as my fellow mourners slowly drifted away to get on with their lives. Some of them patted Daryl awkwardly on the shoulder and looked down sadly at Amy as they left, as if a pat and a look could ever steal away the pain of loss. And yet, as I reached them, I found my hand automatically floating up to my best friend’s shoulder, and giving it an identical pat.
“Hey”, I said, softly.
“Hey Joey”, Daryl replied. A wavering whisper, on the verge of breaking.
Now that I was closer, Daryl’s face no longer looked carved in granite. It looked like crumbling plaster of Paris – deathly white and threatening to fall to pieces any second. His black suit, black and creaseless, seemed to be the only thing holding him together. I had this bizarre image of Daryl loosening his tie and his entire head caving in. His vacant, bloodshot eyes indicated that the hours before the funeral had not been so dignified. His normally sinewy frame looked skeletal, his blond hair faded to the colour of old straw. This was not the same person I had shared a hospital ward, a classroom and half a lifetime with. This was a person I had never seen before.
This was a lost soul.
I found that I couldn’t look at his face for much longer. Not without breaking down myself. Instead, I turned my attention to Amy, who was standing to the left of her father, staring down blankly at her black lace-ups as if they were a portal to another, better world. This I could handle. I’ve always been good with kids.
Amy was nine years old, and the sweetest child that had ever blessed this world with her presence. She had the deepest brown eyes that possessed a wonderfully mature intelligence mixed liberally with a childlike innocence. And she had just lost her mother. I squatted down in front of her, balancing on my toes and resting my arms on my thighs so that I could look into those eyes. My shirt pressed against my back, and the cold sweat sent a shiver running through me, despite the heat of the day.
“Hello, sweetheart”, I said gently, “how’s your world?”
Given the circumstances, it should have been the most stupid question ever, but it seemed like the right question to ask.
Slowly, she looked up at me. Eyes bright, pools of tears waiting impatiently to burst forth, she opened her mouth as if to speak.
I gave her a small smile, and waited.
Amy nodded slowly, and then her bottom lip started to quiver, and the tears started to flow silently down her face as, without warning, she launched herself into me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders so violently that I almost toppled over backwards. Shaking like a leaf, she buried her head into my neck and I felt hot tears trickling down my collar. The struggle for self control was lost, and all she needed was comfort. I put one arm around her, and said all the futile things that adults say to little kids at times like these – it’s okay, everything will be okay, wait and see, blah blah blah. It was while I was thus engaged that a shadow fell over me, and I realized that someone else had come to pat the bereaved husband. I looked up.
It was Rachael.
***
There are some things in life that remain tattooed in your memory forever. Small things, like the smell of perfume, or a particular piece of music that remind you vaguely of another time and another place, with a feeling of nostalgia so strong that you can actually feel it tugging at your heartstrings and curving your lips up into a smile. With me and Rachael, it’s marshmallows. Those pink and white marshmallow balls that used to come in a big transparent bag and were called ‘Mallow Softies’, or something stupid like that. I’m not even sure if they make them anymore.
She had a massive bag of these marshmallows the first time I ever saw her. The extra large and extra sweet ones, the eating of which is always closely followed by extreme nausea and sickly stomach cramps. She was only four at the time, and I was five. The day I met her, her family was moving in next door.
New neighbours! To a five-year-old, nothing could have been more exciting. I was hoping against hope that the ‘new people’, as my mother called them, would also have a five-year-old son who would share with me a healthy interest in Batman, Happy Meals and cheap plastic guns. Me and Daryl were getting bored with shooting suckers at each other. We needed a third, preferably someone who didn’t mind being The Penguin or The Riddler while Batman and Robin beat the living daylights out of him.
The ‘new people’ arrived while I was playing out in the front garden. And Rachael jumped out of the back of the car, clutching the big bag of Softy Mallows. Or something stupid like that…
She walked over to where I was peering nosily over the wall, on tiptoe on an upturned flowerpot (I was five and things like minding my own business were still many years in the future), and looked up at me speculatively. I looked back down at her. Neither of us blinked. Finally, she announced, “We live here now” in a tone that suggested that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, so there.
I shrugged and pulled a face which indicated that I couldn’t have cared less if she had been the Pope moving in next door.
She contemplated my blatant lack of reaction for a couple of minutes, during which time my foot slipped off the flowerpot and I scraped my knees down the wall as I hung to the top of it by my armpits. As I scrabbled wildly for a foothold, she said, “I bet I can put more marshmallows in my mouth than you”.
Even at the age of five, I could see the opportunity to eat all the free marshmallows I could handle from a mile away.
“I’m coming to your side”, I said hastily as I fell off the wall.
And that’s how I met Rachael. We emptied the bag of Mallow Whatevers in two minutes flat, we puked our guts up, and became inseparable. Me and Rachael.
There is more to tell, but I’ll get to that when it’s time…
***
So I looked up, and Rachael looked down, a sort of reversal of our original introduction. She smiled. It didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Hullo stranger”. She always said hello like that – with a ‘u’. Hullo.
I grinned, “Hullo to you too”.
She looked at me for a few seconds longer than necessary, as if trying to look beyond my eyes and right into my brain, I knew what that look meant. It translated as ‘where have you been?’ Which meant that she had noticed that I’d been avoiding her lately.
Then she looked away and turned her attention and her sympathy to Daryl, which gave me the opportunity to surreptitiously look around at the few remaining people. Sure enough, ‘Computer’ Colin, scum of the universe, arsehole extraordinaire and Rachael’s latest ‘thing’ was present, engaging another mourner in a one-sided conversation. Probably one that consisted entirely of phrases like ‘downloading’ and ‘www dot’. And I scowled, and found myself thinking that if he would just cease to exist, Rachael and I could carry on with life as we knew it.
***
Okay… it’s time.
Do you have any idea what it feels like to fall in love with your best friend? How sweet and scary and wonderful and lonely and terrifying it is, all at the same time?
I do. I don’t know exactly when it happened, or how, or why. It just did. And I’m the only person who knows it, except for Yvette, but she doesn’t really count because she’s just a dismembered voice. I’ll explain all about Yvette later though. Right here, right now, it’s about me and Rachael.
I couldn’t tell her. Twenty-two years I’d known her. I knew her better than she knew herself. Over the years we had watched a million films together, slurped a million milkshakes, shared a million secrets. We had shot tequila, stayed up all night, danced in the rain, started smoking, gagged and turned green, quit smoking only to start again. She’d cried on my shoulder over a cheating boyfriend. She’d driven me home when I’d got drunk. And during all this, I’d fallen in love with her.
My best friend.
Sometimes I wanted to tell her. I had, on a silver screen in my head, acted out a million and one scenes. Rachael crying over the loss of yet another boyfriend, when I burst into the room with a rose in my mouth and the words of poets tripping off my tongue, looking extremely handsome and debonair. Rachael flying into my arms… oh Joey, it was always you, no one else mattered… kiss kiss etc etc.
Only sometimes the images went blurry, a sticky fingerprint on the lens of my mind, and the picture clouded, and Rachael laughed her lovely laugh and said ‘don’t be silly, Joey – you’re my best friend’.
And our friendship would slowly but surely sink until there was nothing left but a cold and empty ocean of rejection.
I couldn’t let that happen.
So I sat to one side, nodding and smiling like a ventriloquists’ dummy, performing my best friend routine while Rachael worked her way over the years through a succession of boyfriends. Most of them were seven day wonders who went as quickly as they had come, and that was okay. But then came Colin…
***
“Hi Joey. Hi, Daryl. Hello there, Amy baby”.
Amy baby! For crying out loud…
To Amy’s credit, she didn’t even look up at Colin. She just went on crying into my neck. My shirt front was damp and warm with her tears. I gently prised her arms from around my neck and straightened up. My back was beginning to ache, but more importantly, I didn’t want Colin towering over me. He was a whole head taller than me as it was. And twice as wide. Not with fat, but muscle. He looked a bit like a bear in a suit.
“We’re really sorry about Claire”, he told Daryl, and he sounded sincere enough. Good acting, thought the insanely-jealous part of my brain. Stop being an idiot, responded the more sensible, less lovesick part, he’s not a monster. You haven’t even given him a chance.
Which was true, I suppose. I hated him because I felt that he had taken Rachael away from me, had spoiled any chance that I might have had with her. But I really didn’t know him at all. He might be a really nice guy.
But I doubted it.
But he might have been.
***
When Rachael hadn’t dumped Colin after the first fortnight, I considered it a mere oversight on her part. After a month had passed, and Colin had still not been given his marching orders, I began to show a modicum of interest, trying to suss out what quality he could possibly possess that would make Rachael want to hold on to him for so long. Whatever it was, I couldn’t find it. Colin lived in a world of his own – a world made of keyboards and memory chips, ALU’s and data. It was all he ever talked about. The conclusion I reached, after a couple of brain-draining monologues, was that Colin was so incredibly boring that he made the South American sloth look like the ultimate in mind-blowing excitement. I also hated the way he spoke about ‘mobos’ and automatically assumed that I had the slightest idea as to what they actually were.
When six months had come and gone, and Colin hadn’t, I couldn’t take it anymore. As far as I was concerned, six months is where a passing fancy becomes ‘a relationship’, and the thought of Rachael having one of those with Mr Insipid was more than my little bleeding heart could handle. I started avoiding Rachael as much as politely possible and took to moping around the house, drowning in self-pity, listening to Smokie on my stereo and consoling myself with noble thoughts like well, as long as she’s content, I’m happy for her.
And my little bleeding heart bled a little more every day.
***
“We’re both going to miss her very much”, said Colin sadly. “I know that I didn’t know her for that long, but I liked her immediately. I’m just glad I got to meet her before she passed away”.
Yeah yeah. What do you mean, you’re going to miss her? You didn’t know her, you big bastard.
Daryl managed to produce a smile and held out his hand, which Colin immediately grasped in both of his and shook firmly.
Then Rachael and Daryl looked at each other, and they moved forwards as one. As they hugged each other, drawing comfort from one another, I saw a tear running down Rachael’s cheek. I selfishly wished that it was me she was hugging tightly like that.
When they parted, both pairs of eyes were bright. Then they smiled at each other warmly, and I knew that this too would pass and everything would be alright.
You see, you big bastard, we don’t need pretty words and speeches. We don’t need to say a word.
Then how come Rachael hasn’t realized that you’re in love with her? came a good impression of Colin’s sneering voice in my head.
Then Rachael turned and she did hug me. As she did so, she leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “call me. I miss having you around, pal”. I nodded and kissed the solitary tear off her cheek. It was salty. I realized at that moment exactly how badly I had missed her too. I didn’t want to let go of her. Ever.
Colin cleared his throat.
“Shall we go, Raych?” His eyes danced impatiently from left to right, then back again. He smiled apologetically at me. “You know how it is – busy busy busy!”
“Uh-huh”, I answered shortly, reluctantly letting go of Rachael. I even hated the way he said her name – Raych. As if he couldn’t be bothered to finish the word.
He doesn’t like me.
Huh? The thought came out of nowhere, an alien voice in my head.
And I looked at Colin, and for the first time ever my eyes met his, and I knew that the alien was telling the truth. Colin didn’t like me at all. His lips were smiling and his voice sounded friendly enough, but the look in his eyes was cold and calculating, as if sizing me up. It was an animal look – the unblinking gaze of a snake just before it strikes. It lasted for a sliver of a second, and then it was gone and his eyes were off surveying the landscape again in quick jerky movements, but that spilt second was enough to convince me that Colin had another side to him, one which was neither dull nor boring, but quite possibly…
… dangerous, supplied the alien voice.
Yeah, that’s the word I was looking for.
Dangerous.
Okay. Let’s stop right there and start again. Before I sat down to write this I promised myself that I would be perfectly honest, and tell it as it happened – no glossed over details, no self-righteous justification, no verbal sleight-of-hand or misdirection. Just the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And yet it appears that I’ve blown it with the very first line. So let’s start again…
It’s not just my story. There were others involved and it’s more their story than it is mine. In fact, were it not for one crazy instant, one moment of madness, then my role in the whole mess would have been that of an observer. The person in the middle around which the events unfolded and the characters played their parts.
Were it not for one moment of madness. Were it not for the gun, and for my finger squeezing back the trigger.
I’d always believed that people with guns had power. It was only when I pointed one at another human being, aimed and fired, that I realized with a shock that it was the other way round. It’s the gun that has the power over the person holding it. A gun can talk, you see. It plays with your mind. It tells you to pull the trigger. It is, after all, a piece of machinery, and machinery is created to be used. Pull the trigger, and everything that you are afraid of, everything that you hate, and everything that is making your life a misery, will cease to exist.
Who could resist an offer like that?
Not me.
I pulled the trigger.
But that’s not where it starts. It starts with a funeral…
***
Dignified.
That’s the first word that springs to mind whenever I cast my thoughts back to that particular day. Claire was dead; we would never see her again, never hear her laugh again, never share another joke, never stay up all night drinking red wine until we were totally plastered. Never sing along together to old Showaddywaddy tracks. And yet everyone standing around the open grave was so dignified. No one shed a tear. Not even Amy, although I could see that she was fighting a brave battle – one that she would lose later on. As for Daryl, his face looked like it was carved out of granite, his jaw set, his eyes staring into some other world where his beautiful wife was still alive and well.
It was the first week of summer, and it was hot. A slight breeze swept around at ankle height, making the grass wave lazily, but doing nothing to dry out the sweat that was seeping slowly out of every pore of my body. The coffin looked somehow unreal as the sun caught its angles – like something out of a dream that’s still there when you wake up, no matter how many times you blink and rub your eyes. I found myself thinking that the weather was all wrong – that the sun should have been extinguished by howling winds and apocalyptic rain. It shouldn’t have been a nice fucking day.
Claire shouldn’t have been dead.
How the hell do you die while walking through the living room of your own home?
I held my breath as the surreal coffin was smoothly lowered into the grave, hoping against hope that no one would have a last minute mental episode and attempt to throw themselves in after the box. A year earlier, when my uncle had died, my aunt had done just that and broken both her legs, which had set my three cousins into a wailing, screeching frenzy. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to go through that again.
Dignified. Nobody moved, nobody even blinked as the coffin settled upon its muddy bed. The only noises were the creaking of the ropes and the subdued muttering of the priest. Then they slid the concrete slab over the yawning hole, and Claire was well and truly gone. Forever.
I started walking towards Daryl as my fellow mourners slowly drifted away to get on with their lives. Some of them patted Daryl awkwardly on the shoulder and looked down sadly at Amy as they left, as if a pat and a look could ever steal away the pain of loss. And yet, as I reached them, I found my hand automatically floating up to my best friend’s shoulder, and giving it an identical pat.
“Hey”, I said, softly.
“Hey Joey”, Daryl replied. A wavering whisper, on the verge of breaking.
Now that I was closer, Daryl’s face no longer looked carved in granite. It looked like crumbling plaster of Paris – deathly white and threatening to fall to pieces any second. His black suit, black and creaseless, seemed to be the only thing holding him together. I had this bizarre image of Daryl loosening his tie and his entire head caving in. His vacant, bloodshot eyes indicated that the hours before the funeral had not been so dignified. His normally sinewy frame looked skeletal, his blond hair faded to the colour of old straw. This was not the same person I had shared a hospital ward, a classroom and half a lifetime with. This was a person I had never seen before.
This was a lost soul.
I found that I couldn’t look at his face for much longer. Not without breaking down myself. Instead, I turned my attention to Amy, who was standing to the left of her father, staring down blankly at her black lace-ups as if they were a portal to another, better world. This I could handle. I’ve always been good with kids.
Amy was nine years old, and the sweetest child that had ever blessed this world with her presence. She had the deepest brown eyes that possessed a wonderfully mature intelligence mixed liberally with a childlike innocence. And she had just lost her mother. I squatted down in front of her, balancing on my toes and resting my arms on my thighs so that I could look into those eyes. My shirt pressed against my back, and the cold sweat sent a shiver running through me, despite the heat of the day.
“Hello, sweetheart”, I said gently, “how’s your world?”
Given the circumstances, it should have been the most stupid question ever, but it seemed like the right question to ask.
Slowly, she looked up at me. Eyes bright, pools of tears waiting impatiently to burst forth, she opened her mouth as if to speak.
I gave her a small smile, and waited.
Amy nodded slowly, and then her bottom lip started to quiver, and the tears started to flow silently down her face as, without warning, she launched herself into me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders so violently that I almost toppled over backwards. Shaking like a leaf, she buried her head into my neck and I felt hot tears trickling down my collar. The struggle for self control was lost, and all she needed was comfort. I put one arm around her, and said all the futile things that adults say to little kids at times like these – it’s okay, everything will be okay, wait and see, blah blah blah. It was while I was thus engaged that a shadow fell over me, and I realized that someone else had come to pat the bereaved husband. I looked up.
It was Rachael.
***
There are some things in life that remain tattooed in your memory forever. Small things, like the smell of perfume, or a particular piece of music that remind you vaguely of another time and another place, with a feeling of nostalgia so strong that you can actually feel it tugging at your heartstrings and curving your lips up into a smile. With me and Rachael, it’s marshmallows. Those pink and white marshmallow balls that used to come in a big transparent bag and were called ‘Mallow Softies’, or something stupid like that. I’m not even sure if they make them anymore.
She had a massive bag of these marshmallows the first time I ever saw her. The extra large and extra sweet ones, the eating of which is always closely followed by extreme nausea and sickly stomach cramps. She was only four at the time, and I was five. The day I met her, her family was moving in next door.
New neighbours! To a five-year-old, nothing could have been more exciting. I was hoping against hope that the ‘new people’, as my mother called them, would also have a five-year-old son who would share with me a healthy interest in Batman, Happy Meals and cheap plastic guns. Me and Daryl were getting bored with shooting suckers at each other. We needed a third, preferably someone who didn’t mind being The Penguin or The Riddler while Batman and Robin beat the living daylights out of him.
The ‘new people’ arrived while I was playing out in the front garden. And Rachael jumped out of the back of the car, clutching the big bag of Softy Mallows. Or something stupid like that…
She walked over to where I was peering nosily over the wall, on tiptoe on an upturned flowerpot (I was five and things like minding my own business were still many years in the future), and looked up at me speculatively. I looked back down at her. Neither of us blinked. Finally, she announced, “We live here now” in a tone that suggested that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, so there.
I shrugged and pulled a face which indicated that I couldn’t have cared less if she had been the Pope moving in next door.
She contemplated my blatant lack of reaction for a couple of minutes, during which time my foot slipped off the flowerpot and I scraped my knees down the wall as I hung to the top of it by my armpits. As I scrabbled wildly for a foothold, she said, “I bet I can put more marshmallows in my mouth than you”.
Even at the age of five, I could see the opportunity to eat all the free marshmallows I could handle from a mile away.
“I’m coming to your side”, I said hastily as I fell off the wall.
And that’s how I met Rachael. We emptied the bag of Mallow Whatevers in two minutes flat, we puked our guts up, and became inseparable. Me and Rachael.
There is more to tell, but I’ll get to that when it’s time…
***
So I looked up, and Rachael looked down, a sort of reversal of our original introduction. She smiled. It didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Hullo stranger”. She always said hello like that – with a ‘u’. Hullo.
I grinned, “Hullo to you too”.
She looked at me for a few seconds longer than necessary, as if trying to look beyond my eyes and right into my brain, I knew what that look meant. It translated as ‘where have you been?’ Which meant that she had noticed that I’d been avoiding her lately.
Then she looked away and turned her attention and her sympathy to Daryl, which gave me the opportunity to surreptitiously look around at the few remaining people. Sure enough, ‘Computer’ Colin, scum of the universe, arsehole extraordinaire and Rachael’s latest ‘thing’ was present, engaging another mourner in a one-sided conversation. Probably one that consisted entirely of phrases like ‘downloading’ and ‘www dot’. And I scowled, and found myself thinking that if he would just cease to exist, Rachael and I could carry on with life as we knew it.
***
Okay… it’s time.
Do you have any idea what it feels like to fall in love with your best friend? How sweet and scary and wonderful and lonely and terrifying it is, all at the same time?
I do. I don’t know exactly when it happened, or how, or why. It just did. And I’m the only person who knows it, except for Yvette, but she doesn’t really count because she’s just a dismembered voice. I’ll explain all about Yvette later though. Right here, right now, it’s about me and Rachael.
I couldn’t tell her. Twenty-two years I’d known her. I knew her better than she knew herself. Over the years we had watched a million films together, slurped a million milkshakes, shared a million secrets. We had shot tequila, stayed up all night, danced in the rain, started smoking, gagged and turned green, quit smoking only to start again. She’d cried on my shoulder over a cheating boyfriend. She’d driven me home when I’d got drunk. And during all this, I’d fallen in love with her.
My best friend.
Sometimes I wanted to tell her. I had, on a silver screen in my head, acted out a million and one scenes. Rachael crying over the loss of yet another boyfriend, when I burst into the room with a rose in my mouth and the words of poets tripping off my tongue, looking extremely handsome and debonair. Rachael flying into my arms… oh Joey, it was always you, no one else mattered… kiss kiss etc etc.
Only sometimes the images went blurry, a sticky fingerprint on the lens of my mind, and the picture clouded, and Rachael laughed her lovely laugh and said ‘don’t be silly, Joey – you’re my best friend’.
And our friendship would slowly but surely sink until there was nothing left but a cold and empty ocean of rejection.
I couldn’t let that happen.
So I sat to one side, nodding and smiling like a ventriloquists’ dummy, performing my best friend routine while Rachael worked her way over the years through a succession of boyfriends. Most of them were seven day wonders who went as quickly as they had come, and that was okay. But then came Colin…
***
“Hi Joey. Hi, Daryl. Hello there, Amy baby”.
Amy baby! For crying out loud…
To Amy’s credit, she didn’t even look up at Colin. She just went on crying into my neck. My shirt front was damp and warm with her tears. I gently prised her arms from around my neck and straightened up. My back was beginning to ache, but more importantly, I didn’t want Colin towering over me. He was a whole head taller than me as it was. And twice as wide. Not with fat, but muscle. He looked a bit like a bear in a suit.
“We’re really sorry about Claire”, he told Daryl, and he sounded sincere enough. Good acting, thought the insanely-jealous part of my brain. Stop being an idiot, responded the more sensible, less lovesick part, he’s not a monster. You haven’t even given him a chance.
Which was true, I suppose. I hated him because I felt that he had taken Rachael away from me, had spoiled any chance that I might have had with her. But I really didn’t know him at all. He might be a really nice guy.
But I doubted it.
But he might have been.
***
When Rachael hadn’t dumped Colin after the first fortnight, I considered it a mere oversight on her part. After a month had passed, and Colin had still not been given his marching orders, I began to show a modicum of interest, trying to suss out what quality he could possibly possess that would make Rachael want to hold on to him for so long. Whatever it was, I couldn’t find it. Colin lived in a world of his own – a world made of keyboards and memory chips, ALU’s and data. It was all he ever talked about. The conclusion I reached, after a couple of brain-draining monologues, was that Colin was so incredibly boring that he made the South American sloth look like the ultimate in mind-blowing excitement. I also hated the way he spoke about ‘mobos’ and automatically assumed that I had the slightest idea as to what they actually were.
When six months had come and gone, and Colin hadn’t, I couldn’t take it anymore. As far as I was concerned, six months is where a passing fancy becomes ‘a relationship’, and the thought of Rachael having one of those with Mr Insipid was more than my little bleeding heart could handle. I started avoiding Rachael as much as politely possible and took to moping around the house, drowning in self-pity, listening to Smokie on my stereo and consoling myself with noble thoughts like well, as long as she’s content, I’m happy for her.
And my little bleeding heart bled a little more every day.
***
“We’re both going to miss her very much”, said Colin sadly. “I know that I didn’t know her for that long, but I liked her immediately. I’m just glad I got to meet her before she passed away”.
Yeah yeah. What do you mean, you’re going to miss her? You didn’t know her, you big bastard.
Daryl managed to produce a smile and held out his hand, which Colin immediately grasped in both of his and shook firmly.
Then Rachael and Daryl looked at each other, and they moved forwards as one. As they hugged each other, drawing comfort from one another, I saw a tear running down Rachael’s cheek. I selfishly wished that it was me she was hugging tightly like that.
When they parted, both pairs of eyes were bright. Then they smiled at each other warmly, and I knew that this too would pass and everything would be alright.
You see, you big bastard, we don’t need pretty words and speeches. We don’t need to say a word.
Then how come Rachael hasn’t realized that you’re in love with her? came a good impression of Colin’s sneering voice in my head.
Then Rachael turned and she did hug me. As she did so, she leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “call me. I miss having you around, pal”. I nodded and kissed the solitary tear off her cheek. It was salty. I realized at that moment exactly how badly I had missed her too. I didn’t want to let go of her. Ever.
Colin cleared his throat.
“Shall we go, Raych?” His eyes danced impatiently from left to right, then back again. He smiled apologetically at me. “You know how it is – busy busy busy!”
“Uh-huh”, I answered shortly, reluctantly letting go of Rachael. I even hated the way he said her name – Raych. As if he couldn’t be bothered to finish the word.
He doesn’t like me.
Huh? The thought came out of nowhere, an alien voice in my head.
And I looked at Colin, and for the first time ever my eyes met his, and I knew that the alien was telling the truth. Colin didn’t like me at all. His lips were smiling and his voice sounded friendly enough, but the look in his eyes was cold and calculating, as if sizing me up. It was an animal look – the unblinking gaze of a snake just before it strikes. It lasted for a sliver of a second, and then it was gone and his eyes were off surveying the landscape again in quick jerky movements, but that spilt second was enough to convince me that Colin had another side to him, one which was neither dull nor boring, but quite possibly…
… dangerous, supplied the alien voice.
Yeah, that’s the word I was looking for.
Dangerous.
Forward to Chapter One | Part Two
2 comments:
"That’s the first word that springs to mind whenever I cast my thoughts back to that particular day."
What particular day? I think you've already played enough with the reader about what you'll tell them when. This is suppose to be the begining of the real story, so using 'particular day' is a very general description for the first sentence.
"It was the first week of summer, and it was hot. A slight breeze swept around at ankle height, making the grass wave lazily, but doing nothing to dry out the sweat that was seeping slowly out of every pore of my body."
If you take out the phrase 'it was hot' you have a great instance of showing the reader it was hot. If you leave it in you have a tell and then a show.
"Then they slid the concrete slab over the yawning hole, and Claire was well and truly gone. Forever."
This is just conjecture on my part, because I'm commenting without having read past part 1, but my guess is Claire will still play a large part in the forward action of the story. Since it's written as a retrospective, I think the narrator has enough distance to realize that Claire's body, her physical being was gone forever, but something else about her stayed around forever. If he thinks like this, that sentence can take on a completely different form.
"And yet, as I reached them, I found my hand automatically floating up to my best friend’s shoulder, and giving it an identical pat."
Good moment to capture.
"She walked over to where I was peering nosily over the wall, on tiptoe on an upturned flowerpot (I was five and things like minding my own business were still many years in the future), and looked up at me speculatively."
I think the parenthetical aside is unnecessary. Anything a 5 year old does doesn't need explaining.
"So I looked up, and Rachael looked down, a sort of reversal of our original introduction. She smiled. It didn’t quite reach her eyes."
If it's done well, which I think it is, the reader will be able to see this parallel without drawing attention to it.
"Okay… it’s time."
3 paragraphs later??? If it's coming this quickly I don't see the benefit of distraction the reader with that small cliffhanger earlier.
"I couldn’t tell her. Twenty-two years I’d known her. I knew her better than she knew herself. Over the years we had watched a million films together, slurped a million milkshakes, shared a million secrets. We had shot tequila, stayed up all night, danced in the rain, started smoking, gagged and turned green, quit smoking only to start again. She’d cried on my shoulder over a cheating boyfriend. She’d driven me home when I’d got drunk. And during all this, I’d fallen in love with her."
OK. Some great interaction between Joey and Rachel, but as a reader I'm hoping I'll get to see some of these nights later on rather than just hear the summary.
Overall I think the writing is great. Very tight, efficient, comprehensive. Not many parts at all that I had to read over to make sure I knew what you were saying. I think the granite face of Daryl is a great description.
What I noticed the most was the little things you give the reader, but never really give them. I'll tell you more about Rachael later'..'I'll explain about Yvette later'..'It doesn't start here' This is just my opinion, but I think it might be too much. As a reader it's intriguing, but distracting enough that it gets annoying. I can trust that I'll hear everything I need to hear at some point. If I don't? Then I don't read your next story. As a writer, it sets up certain expectations that you better meet or the reader will be upset. It almost seems like a planning tool that you used during the rough drafting process just to remind yourself that you dropped a new name and you better return to it eventually.
On the other hand, I have only read this first part up to this point. My opinion on this issue could very well change eventually. Holden Caulfield was annoying as hell during the first couple of chapters, but by the middle of the book you didn't care how much he talked because you loved him.
So for now, just think about which hints you really want to tell the reader and which ones are overkill. I'll continue to give my opinion on this issue as I read further, which I will be doing soon.
Lastly, Joey and Rachel. Are you familiar with the TV show friends? If so, do you want this comparision drawn?
WOJO
I wrote you this long and I thought very insightful comment on your first chapter but foolishly clicked the publish button without first copying my tome. Blogger has been having some glitches in the middle of the night here and it got me. All my effort vaporized before me and nothing I tried would get it back. Grrr. I won't try to recreate what I said though. I'll just give you the highlights so to speak.
I decided to read what there is of your book so far once more just for enjoyment this time. I thought maybe it would help me be patient about the next chapter. LOL Anyway, I was struck by something as I was reading it again that I was surprised I hadn't noticed the first time or when I was reading your short stories. Then I got down to Wojo's remarks and was surprised again because he mentioned Holden Caulfield.
I hadn't been thinking of Catcher in the Rye but I was thinking of Salinger. I don't mean that you're copying Salinger but it struck how your story telling reminds me of a more accessible, and I hate to say it, less pretentious version of Salinger. (I hate to admit that one of my all time favorite fiction writers is pretentious but I know that he is. LOL) I think some of this may be in the tone for sure, some is in the character of Joey perhaps, but mostly, I think it's in the realism.
Salinger had a great gift for writing his dialog, describing his settings, and developing his characters so his readers got sucked into their world. Holden is very genuine, at least to me he is. He seems like kids I knew when I was his age and kids I have known since then. I believed him. And Salinger always has at least one character to really love (the sister in the case of Catcher) and I think it's probably Amy in the case of Fiddles.
The reader should like Salinger's main character too but they always have these endearing and some not so endearing flaws. Just as Holden has flaws that Wojo alluded to but as he says, you end up loving him if you get past those flaws. The story draws you past them. Just as your story telling draws me past some of Joey's flaws. And because he's trying so hard to be earnest and honest, he's got me, right from the start. It's refreshing to find a human who always tells the truth, even if he isn't real. :)
I should also tell you that you should take the fact that I'm favorably comparing you to Salinger as a very large compliment. It is. Trust me. After Twain, he may be my favorite fiction writer. He's near the top anyway.
Oh, I wasn't thinking of Catcher as I said before, I was thinking more of Franny and Zooey. Your plot is nothing like that one, but the style reminds me a bit of that one. There is something cinematic about both of them. I could see this book being turned into a screenplay with very little effort. That would be the main reason that I didn't have problems with the items that Wojo mentions.
"That’s the first word that springs to mind whenever I cast my thoughts back to that particular day."
That sentence is perfect in my opinion. It works because he's already told us the story begins with a funeral. It seems plain the day of the funeral is the day he's referring to and the fact that he uses the word, "dignified", confirms that. Just worked for me. Also, it's how Joey talks. He's very consistent about it.
Obviously, I'm still loving this story. Maybe more so now that I'm reading it for fun. The only other thing I can remember from the first comments was a recommendation that you rent a copy of "His Girl Friday". The 1930s version with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. There's a key scene in which Rosalind Russell is interviewing a guy who's facing execution and basically putting words into his mouth in an effort to save him from the gallows. She's talking about "production for use" in relation to the fact he used a gun to shoot a policeman. Well, you'll have to see it. If you like Hollywood screwball comedies, you'll love this one. I think it's probably the best of the bunch actually. Thanks for letting me post your story here, Weather. I'm assuming you'll be posting the next installment yourself soon. Don't worry about the linking thing, I'll take care of that.
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