Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

I realise in that moment that there is more to life than writing.

“Yes,” I say, “That was real.”

He drops me off outside my house and tosses me the house keys. It’s strange to be back. To be in such a familiar place, feeling so different. So altered. On the outside, everything looks almost the way I left it. The window has been replaced, the front wall bright with a fresh coat of paint. Again I am surprised that the roof is not missing, the walls are not knocked down. But inside: inside it has been Francinarised. I stand open-armed, breathing in the smell of furniture polish and bleach. There is a visitor on the couch, someone who took the liberty of moving in while I was away. Munchkin looks at me, bored, stretches, and goes back to sleep. I walk through to the kitchen. The place is spotless and shiny. The huge refrigerator is well-stocked and restored to its previous magnificence. There is a flower garland on the kitchen table, and a note written in Francina’s spidery scrawl. “Bless You, Mister Harris.”

I put the garland around my neck and glide through to my den. Everything is in its place. I take a new Moleskine off the bookshelf, sit down, and uncap my pen. I open the book up on the first blank page and I start writing.

And then of course there could be a fourth ending. A real ending. How wonderful it would have been, how neat, if Eve were miraculously alive again and she loved me – enough to wreck my life, teach me meaning. To have the troops rallying around me, to have been willing to turn my life upside-down, like a game, like a too-clever film. In fact, I may well have seen the device used in a movie a long time ago, and it resurfaced while I was having my ‘episode’. It’s an ending only a smug writer could come up with. Too-tidy, contrived. Desperate: down to the repainted front wall, the cat, the flower garland. It would have been good for the old Slade, the pre-fucked, pre-confession, pre-jail Slade, but it won’t do for me now. I feel different, turned inside out. A neat ending will no longer do.

“Can I get more paper?” I ask the guard. I have used up the SAP issue notepad they gave me earlier – hours (days?) ago. Once he snorts and obliges I take a breath and begin again. The real ending isn’t as pretty and it’s the last thing I will ever write.

Ihear the ghost’s high heels clacking towards me and I don’t look up until they stop outside my cell. I look up just enough to see a beautiful pair of shoes. Denise. The guard makes a show of taking out the keys and opening the heavy metal door. She strides in, bloodlipsticksmile.

“I thought you were a ghost,” I say, putting down my pen. “I thought you didn’t exist, that I had made you up.”

She runs a slow finger through my hair.

“You did make me up,” she says, “in a way.”

I shake my head. I want to dash my head against the bed frame, crack my skull, let the demons out.

“I strangled you. You stopped breathing.”

“No, I didn’t stop breathing. It was a game we played. Don’t you remember that?”

“I remember trying to make you stop talking, squeezing too hard.”

“If that were true,” she says, “I wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Are you here?” I ask.

“What do you think?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure.”

“That’s good enough, for now.”

We sit and look at each other for a long while.

“You still don’t recognise me, do you?” she smiles.

I rub my eyes, stare at her. I see a flashing of faces. A dark corner. A kitchen knife. She takes off her black wig and shakes out her red hair. Peels off her eyelashes.

The world cracks open. “It can’t be,” I say with my heart beating out of my chest.

She wipes off her red lipstick, leaving a messy, stained mouth. Blood-grin.

“Oh, it is. Have I changed that much? Or it is because you hardly ever actually looked at me when we were dating? All I’ve had done is a nose job.”

She pauses a while, her cheeks colour. “And my lips. I had my lips done. And my boobs. But that’s all. You still could have recognised me, for God’s sake.”

My cheek and mouth muscles go slack. The temperature in the room drops.

“It can’t be,” I say. “You were supposed to be the red herring.”

Her blue irises flare.

“Fuck you,” she says. No one can quite deliver that line like PsychoSally.

I look at the concrete floor, trying to piece the last few days together. Another pair of shoes arrives: tan loafers, wet grass.

“Hey buddy,” says Frank. Kicked-puppy eyes.

“You got to Frank,” I say.

“I didn’t get to Frank, I’ve always had Frank. That stupid soccer club of yours was my ticket in.” She rests a hand on her hip. “You weren’t at all suspicious? He’s no soccer player. He’s built like a prop for God’s sake. I had to pay him double when he actually had to play.”

Frank dumb-shrugs.

“And if that didn’t tip you off, you should have been suspicious when someone actually made friends with you. I mean, it’s a pretty rare occurrence, taking your personality into account.”

“Well I actually…” begins Frank, before he is shoved by PsychoSally.

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” she snaps, trying to blink away her irritation. “None of it matters anymore. You’re going to get what you deserve and I am going to watch it happen.”

I look at her, with her dark wig in her hand and coloured contact lenses, her blonde eyelashes, cracked tattoo, fading spray-tan, and I try to see Denise, but she is gone. The venom in Sally’s face has wiped out any trace of the woman I have been living with. There is cold water where my organs used to be.

“What did you do?” I ask.

“Nothing you didn’t think of. When you told Frank your plan to murder Eve I couldn’t believe my luck. You handed me the blueprint to your undoing. All I had to do was follow the plan. I admired your boldness. I would never have done it if it weren’t for your… writing project.”

“You killed Eve? Dumped her body?”

Sally laughs. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m a lady,” she slaps Frank on the shoulder, “I paid this schmuck to do it.”

“You’re a hit man?” I ask Frank.

“Well, I prefer…”

“Shut up Frank!” she shrills.

“So you murder Eve to frame me. What about all the orchestrated details? Why would you do that? The actor at the funeral? The dodgy lawyer?”

“None of that was staged. That actor is some kind of schizo. Or crackhead. He pretends to be a new character every time I see him. Some kind of avante-garde acting experiment. He used to work for Eve’s film studio. What can I say? That woman surrounded herself with fuck-ups. The lawyer was genuine, though. Hence the dodginess.”

“Sub-Nigel?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

I dream of ripping open my shirt to reveal a wire over my nipple, or pressing ‘stop’ on the recorder I had been secretly stashing under my pillow, but I have neither.

“The look on your face,” Sally says leaning over to kiss me, “has made it all worthwhile.” Her lips are as cold as I remember.

“Come,” she barks as Frank and he follows on an invisible leash. As they get to the door of the cell Sello appears.

“Mrs Ellis,” he says. Sally stiffens. Sello grabs her wrists and motions at Madinga to handcuff Frank. “You have just given us… everything… we were waiting for.”

I jump up.

Sally starts swearing, calling him a cocksucker over and over again, struggling with her new metal bracelets. Frank doesn’t look surprised at all.