Ryan Jahn - Low Life

There was only one way to find out.

‘Samantha.’

She rolled over in her sleep, mumbling something under her breath.

He reached out and ran fingers through her hair.

‘Samantha.’

She brushed his hand away.

‘Not right now, Jeremy,’ she said, still asleep. But a moment later her eyes opened. ‘Jeremy?’

She sat up and there was something like fear on her face, her eyes wide and blue and beautiful, and her mouth was hanging open, and she crawled backwards, away from him, until she bumped up against the dark wood headboard.

‘Jeremy?’

‘Hi.’

‘Where – where have you been?’

‘I – I don’t know.’

‘You don’t – did you have another?’ She pinched her eyes closed and rubbed at them, still mostly asleep, apparently incapable of grasping completely what was happening when only a moment earlier she had been dreaming impossible dreams. She opened her eyes again. ‘Did you have another – spell?’

‘I guess I must have.’

Had Shackleford had blackouts as well? Simon’s had been less and less frequent (six months ago he was having them often, but now they almost never came), but just a couple of days before all this started – before Shackleford broke into his apartment – he’d found himself in the adult book store and didn’t know how he’d gotten there, couldn’t remember it at all. He was wearing only one shoe. When he got back to his apartment, he’d found the other shoe sitting on his coffee table. What did it mean that—

Suddenly Samantha was crying. At first Simon didn’t know what was happening – she simply looked down at her lap, and a moment later her body began to shake and hair that had been tucked behind her small but jutting ears – flopped out like loose shutters – fell into her face and small sobs escaped her – and even after he did know what was happening he didn’t know what to do. He simply sat and stared at her as she shook and looked down at her own lap.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘I’m back. It’s me – Jeremy.’

She looked up at him with her red-rimmed eyes and wiped at her cheeks and her nose with the back of her hand. She tucked loose strands of hair back behind her ears. Her eyes were alive with emotion and beautiful for it. But as she searched his face, something behind them changed somehow. Something entered her eyes that Simon didn’t like at all.

‘You’re not – who are you?’

Simon swallowed. His face got hot with blood but he tried not to show it, tried only to give Samantha a deadpan while he thought of what to say next. Like stealing a kite, half the trick was not to give yourself away.

‘Who am I?’ he said with absolutely false humor. ‘Jeremy.’ He said this in the same tone he’d use to explain to someone that the sky was blue: it was so obvious it didn’t deserve mentioning.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

She shook her head.

The way a man held his shoulders, the way his mouth looked when he was relaxed, how often he blinked while lying or telling the truth, where he rested his hands – in his pockets or on his lap or pressed against his hips – the way he scratched his face, whether he crossed his legs at the ankles or knees or not at all when sitting down: a man was more than his appearance. He should have known he could never get away with this. He had known, hadn’t he?

He licked his lips.

He had to make her believe. She hadn’t seen him for weeks. Her memories of him weren’t fresh. He could make her believe. He had to.

‘Why?’ he said, then cleared his throat and swallowed. His tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth. ‘Why would you say that?’ He smiled. ‘Who else would I be, sugar bear?’

She returned his smile then, only hers was real. Had he stumbled upon a correct phrase when he called her sugar bear? He thought he must have. He swallowed and then smiled again. This time his was real too.

There’s my sugar bear,’ he said.

She reached out and touched the scar curving down his face from cheekbone to chinbone. She traced the pad of a finger across it.

‘What happened?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your face.’

‘Accident,’ he said, guessing. ‘You remember.’

She shook her head.

‘I remember twenty-five thousand dollars in surgeries to have it removed,’ she said. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

‘I don’t…’

He shook his head.

‘Goddamn it,’ she said.

She appeared to be on the verge of tears again, but then she looked away, blinked several times, and swallowed. It passed. She had the weary and ragged look of a woman who had suffered her husband’s insanity for a long time. Simon hadn’t seen it on her before, but he saw it now. The tired eyes, the set jaw.

He’d been insane. She had loved Jeremy Shackleford, but he had been mad. Maybe that was all there was to Shackleford wanting him dead. Maybe Shackleford had seen him on the street and their similar appearance had been enough to send him over the edge. It could be that simple, couldn’t it?

There was no rule that said things had to be complex. Didn’t Occam’s razor even state the opposite, that the simplest answer was usually the correct one – that you should cut away all that was superfluous?

But was that an answer? Simon wasn’t sure.

‘Why are you wearing your old glasses?’ Samantha said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

She grabbed his face in both her hands and looked at him and said ‘Goddamn it’ again, and then she pulled his face to hers and kissed his hair and his cheeks and his chin and his mouth and his neck.

‘Goddamn it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘You’re always sorry.’

‘I’m sorry for that, too.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you into a bath. You smell like you haven’t had one in weeks.’

Simon stood barefoot on the cold tile floor. The bathtub was running hot water, and Samantha had put soap into it, so there was now a mountain of foam just beneath the faucet – a reverse volcano into which water was rushing. Steam rose off the liquid’s surface.

‘Do you remember anything?’

Simon shook his head. He thought it was best if he remembered nothing. If he had nothing to say he was less likely to say the wrong thing, to give himself away.

Samantha pulled his corduroy coat off and hung it on a brass hook poking from the door, and then unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off him.

‘I thought you donated all these clothes to Good Will.’

‘I – I boxed them up, but I never drove them over.’

Samantha unbuttoned his pants and shoved them down his legs. They piled at his feet and he stepped out of them. He had hairy white legs covered in skin like a plucked chicken, thin hair except at the knees, which his pants had rubbed bare, and thin calves lined with blue veins.

‘Get in the tub,’ she said. ‘I’ll scrub you down.’

He walked to the bathtub and stepped his right foot into the water. At first he couldn’t tell whether it was hot or cold – the shock had confused his body – but after a moment his nerves were reoriented, and he yanked his scalded foot back out, sucking in air through his teeth.

‘Don’t be a baby. Get in.’

Simon tried a second time, going easily, first one foot and then the other. He stood still a moment, letting his body adjust, and then lowered himself in slowly, hands gripping either side of the tub. He was all right until his scrotum touched the water, and then he stood up again, or tried, but couldn’t manage it before Samantha pushed him back down. His skin turned pink.

He kept waiting for Samantha to see some scar or birthmark on his body that Jeremy didn’t have, or to notice the absence of a scar or birthmark, but neither of those things happened.