Darren Shan: Hell's Horizon

I switched off and went to the bathroom. Drank some water, dug out a good book, switched on my reading lamp and sat down for a couple of hours of glamorous molls and steel-eyed heroes.

Early afternoon, I rang Ellen.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Just checking if tonight’s still on.” We’d made arrangements to go for dinner together. The Golden Moon — I’d blow most of the week’s wages there, but Ellen was worth it.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” she snapped.

“You’ve been busy lately. I thought you might want to beg off.”

“I have been busy but I’m no slave. I’ll make it. Meet you there at nine?”

“Nine,” I agreed and she hung up.

I called Nic next. She’d wanted to come on the fishing trip. Got in a huff when I told her it was guys only. I wanted to make things right but there was no answer. I let it ring till her voice mail cut in, then severed the connection — I hate leaving messages.

I took the trout out of the fridge, stared at it and sighed. It seemed a waste of time, going to all the effort of cleaning and cooking a pissant fish like this. But I didn’t want to throw it away — I wasn’t raised to dump good food. So I set to work.

As I was cutting off its head, I realized there was something in the trout’s mouth. Prying its jaws apart, I discovered a black ball. I dug it out, wiped it clean and held it up to the light. It was a pure black marble, with two golden worm-like squiggles down the sides. Puzzled — how had the trout taken the bait when its mouth was stuffed? — I laid it on a shelf over the bread bin and got on with the cooking.

A few hours later, in the smart-casual clothes I kept at the back of my tiny wardrobe for special occasions, I hailed a cab and went to meet Ellen, my recently decreed ex-wife.

The fog had started to clear, sooner than expected, so the cab made good time and I arrived early. I waited for Ellen in the lobby of the Golden Moon, which was a favorite restaurant of ours. The prices had escalated sharply since our courting days, but little else had changed. It was one of the few physical links we had to our happier past.

Ellen arrived promptly at nine, looking her elegant best. She kissed my cheeks and gave me a hug. The eyes of the other men in the lobby were tinged with green. That was the great thing about dining with her in places like this — I might be shabby as a sheep in the run-up to shearing, but I still had the most beautiful woman in the city clinging to my arm.

“You could have worn a suit,” she said critically as she let go of me.

“If I wore a suit, next thing I’d have to start shaving regularly, washing daily and changing my underwear once a week.”

“Horror of horrors.” She smiled, straightening my tie. “Did I buy you that shirt?”

“Probably.” It was a dark purple satin number. Of course she’d bought it — I despised the damn thing and wouldn’t have worn it otherwise.

“Suits you,” she murmured, then we headed up. A curt waiter directed us to our table. We ordered before sitting, without looking at the menu. In the old days there’d have been two or three bottles of wine to accompany the meal, but tonight we shared a bottle of mineral water instead.

“Any luck with the fishing?” she asked.

“Don’t ask,” I groaned.

We discussed work — mostly Ellen’s, since she never enjoyed hearing about the Troops — and old friends. Not a word about my alcoholic past or all the times I’d let her down. Ellen wasn’t bitter or vindictive that way.

It was my fault the marriage didn’t work. I was an asshole. Got too involved with work. Spent endless nights out drinking with the boys. Slept around. Treated Ellen like a cheap accessory. She didn’t need that shit. She was a beautiful, intelligent, career-minded woman who could have had her pick of men. She chose me when I was young and passionate, prepared to listen to what she was saying and be there for her. When I hit the bottle and acted like a prick, she dumped me, the way any sane woman would.

The food arrived and we tucked in. We’d always shared a healthy appetite, so neither of us said much till the plates had been cleared.

I glanced around the restaurant, noting how few of my own race were present. The city opens its doors to people of all colors and creeds, but if you don’t think there’s a wide dividing line between whites and blacks, you’re living in a dream world. In the Golden Moon — a place of money and style — I stood out like a drag queen in a church choir.

“What’s the special occasion?” Ellen asked, burping lightly.

“Nothing. Just fancied a night out with the woman of my dreams.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Jeery,” she snorted. “I know how that mind of yours works — you don’t do nothing without a reason.” The double negative was an old joke between us. “Last time you invited me out on a date was the day our divorce went through. Need money? Representation?” She worked for a law firm, one of the best in the city.

“You know I wouldn’t come to you for that,” I said, upset that she’d think such a thing.

“I was joking,” she said, covering my big black knuckles with her small white fingers. “Don’t go getting precious on me, Al.”

I smiled, turned my hands around and tickled her palms the way she liked. “Know what day it is?”

“Monday.”

“Six months since the divorce was finalized.”

She frowned and calculated. “That was a Friday, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but the date’s the same.”

She shrugged. “If you say so. That makes this… what… a semi-anniversary?”

“Yeah. I tried not to dwell on it, but the date got stuck in my mind and I felt we should commemorate it.”

“You’re a strange guy, Jeery.”

“Only figured that out now?”

“This isn’t a ploy to win your way back into my good books, is it?” she asked suspiciously.

“You mean get you drunk, harp on about the good old days and hope it leads to your place and a roll in the hay?” She nodded. “Absolutely.” I raised my glass of mineral water and clinked it against hers. “Drink up — a couple more of these and we’ll be flying.”

“To flying,” she smirked.

We lingered over dessert, reviewing the past six months. We’d been separated nearly two years by the time of the divorce, so it wasn’t as if we were raw from the rift. I’d straightened myself out and Ellen had forgiven me long before one of her colleagues drew the final legal line between us.

“Find a woman yet?” Ellen asked as the meal drew to a close.

“No one could replace you,” I said, giving her the doe-eyed treatment. She tossed her napkin at me.

“Seriously.”

I thought of Nic and smiled. “I’ve been getting some action. Nothing meaningful. You?”

She sighed. “The only men who chase me these days are married, middle-aged lawyers who think I’m easy because I’m a divorcée. It’s becoming a struggle just to get laid.”

The waiter brought the bill and I settled up, trying not to stare at the figure at the bottom. Ellen offered to go halves but I waved her money away. I hadn’t treated her much the last few years of our marriage. I owed her a meal or two.

“Where are you off to now?” she asked.

“Back to the apartment.”

“Ali still working downstairs?” I nodded. “Tell him I’ll be by one of these days for a bagel.” As newlyweds we’d lived in the apartment block that I’d returned to following the dissolution of our marriage. We’d shared some good times there, poor as we’d been.

“I’ll pay for the cab,” Ellen said as one pulled up in answer to her hail.

“That’s OK,” I told her. “I’m walking.”