Christopher Golden - The Monster’s Corner - Stories Through Inhuman Eyes

And yet … Richard whom she couldn’t seem to make a break from. Richard who, in some indefinable, unhelpful, dire way, she still loved.

They weren’t even supposed to be going out with each other. They were “taking a break” to “recharge batteries” that she believed had long ago cracked and died in the sun. She knew she was going to have to tell him about John, nonetheless, and she knew what the result would be. Richard wouldn’t give her the relief of leaving her. He’d merely chalk up another point on the complex scoreboard they tended, and stay around, filling up the background. Not making her happy, but not going away.

And John? John the quiet Canadian, who’d understood her immediately, who’d got her, reawakening the girl of twenty years ago with one crooked grin? She’d never speak to him again. What would be the point?

It was only an hour and a half after touchdown, but already her notes made no sense. “Be yourself,” they said, “Remember the way you used to be,” and “Listen to the album.” She knew what these feeble homilies meant, and also that they were a waste of paper and ink. When she’d been away, the album had been everything, because it had nailed what she was feeling, liberated a younger self. Along with John, and alcohol — and just an ounce of freedom — it had wrenched open a path back to a teenager who laughed a lot and wore bright 1980s colors and didn’t give a damn what other people thought.

But that teenager was still sitting on the plane, all alone and peering out at the drizzle. That girl thought Miami Vice was cool, had never heard of e-mail or eBay, and bought wine because it was dirt cheap, not because the Sunday Times said it was good.

That girl didn’t have a job she hated and a car to run, friends to tolerate, a life to withstand. That girl was dead, head smeared across the road by the hit-and-run accident of growing up.

She was thirty-eight years old now, for fuck’s sake.

Suddenly Kerry slumped forward in her seat, hitched over by a sob she’d had no idea was coming. She couldn’t live like this anymore, drifting toward death in some endless Plan B. She couldn’t accept this was all there was. She wanted a Blue Adonis of her own, and she wanted to run off down midnight streets, shouting at the sky and frightening passing dogs. She didn’t want to go back to a relationship where there was always something to discuss, something to sort out, something to forget.

She threw her head back and stared at the roof of the carriage, head whirling, thoughts spinning, feeling her heart break and the world finally split.

She switched lines at King’s Cross, on a whim, taking the City branch of the Northern Line before she really knew what she was going to do. Richard, predictable/dependable bastard that he was, took his lunch at 12:30 precisely, returning to the office exactly an hour later. She’d be just in time to catch him going back in. She’d say hi, surprise him. Why, she had no idea. It was something different. It was something she’d never done before. It was something new, and right now she needed the promise of that more than just about anything.

She put the headphones back in and restarted the album at the first track. People in suits stared at her as she bobbed her head to the music. She stuck her tongue out, feeling ridiculous but exhilarated, and wondered whatever had happened to Molly Ringwald. She must presumably be alive, somewhere. No longer a movie star. No longer young. But still, in some diminished sense, Molly Ringwald. Did she get up in the morning and stare in the mirror, wondering what had happened to the other her, the Zeitgeist girl? Was that other Molly still out there somewhere, still bright-eyed, still new, wondering where her world had gone?

Kerry kept turning the music up, and up.

She stepped out into the City with the music still pounding in her ears. It was so loud by now that she couldn’t help tripping along in time to the beat, and even did a clumsy Madonna twirl, oblivious to the weight of her shoulder bag and how ludicrous she must look. Madonna didn’t twirl much anymore, of course: She was a mother now (famously so, controversially so, please-shut-up-about-it-now so). But Madonna had twirled once, and they’d all twirled together, and Kerry still remembered how.

She had a few minutes to spare when she reached the point in the street opposite Richard’s office. She decided to wait until she actually saw him, not declaring her presence ahead of time with a text message, instead hoping against hope that he’d arrive arm in arm with some secretary or up-and-coming foreign-equities specialist, so she could quietly turn away and never speak to him again. While she waited, she stood staring at the oh-so-imposing entrance of his building, across the wide and busy road, wishing someone would have the balls to bomb it, her head still bobbing to the music, wondering why she was really here. She didn’t want to speak to Richard, didn’t want to see him smile. She was tired of making do, of being good, of toeing the company line. She was tired of the fact that he couldn’t understand a single thing that went on in her head. She was just tired.

Full stop.

End of.

Her eardrums were beginning to hurt, too. The music was pushing things out of her brain, last in, first out. She wished she had been carrying drugs, a case full of heroin and dirty needles; she wished she was drunk, sprawled across a hotel room floor, or panting naked on her hands and knees above someone, lowering her open mouth toward his; she wished she didn’t have a career or friends or a home. She wished she had a knife.

Finally she saw him, through the curtain of fast-moving cars and trucks. Dark brown hair falling over the face she knew so well, with the naturalness that only £150 haircuts can maintain, his suit hanging across gym-squared shoulders. He looked hatefully smug. He was in context. Head full of stocks and mezzanine-financed leverage buyouts, a player in a platinum-card jungle.

And … he wasn’t alone.

Kerry stared through the traffic, hardly able to believe her fantasy had come true. Richard wasn’t by himself. He was with a woman. An attractive woman.

They were holding hands.

She blinked, unsure what to do. Shout? Storm across the road? Or just walk quickly away, and send him the mother of all e-mails when she got back home?

Richard and the woman stopped a few yards from the door to his office. They stood close, face-to-face, talking. Kerry quickly fished in her shoulder bag and yanked out her little camera, suddenly knowing what would be even better than a brutal e-mail: taking a picture and sending that instead. No accompanying text, just an image. There had been too much talking over the years, far too many words. There didn’t need to be any more.

She held the camera up and zoomed in. For maximum impact, she wanted the picture to …

Then she froze.

She zoomed in a little further.

The woman Richard was talking to was her.

They were saying:

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” Kerry said, squeezing his hand. “I’ve moved all my stuff in, haven’t I?”

“I know. I know. But …”

“I’m not going to change my mind, Richard. We should have done this years ago.”

“We should. And I’m sorry we didn’t. That was my fault. It’s just … I’m still trying to catch up. Since you decided not to go to the States for that woman’s wedding, everything’s changed. It’s … all different.”

“What kind of different? Bad different?”

Richard smiled, and it was a real one, the smile of a man who had been bored, and who’d been bad, and who’d been kind of an asshole, but who was allowing himself to believe that he could be another way, that something had happened and life didn’t have to be how it had been.