Mat Johnson - Drop

In front of the brasserie, there was no red Fiat to be seen, a quick glance inside revealed that Margaret was not yet present, even in that backroom where he used to sit and rant at me. Nothing back there but an old drunk laid out with his body on one chair and his feet on another, hat pulled over his sleeping face and trench pulled around him as if it were raining in here, too. I grabbed the remote control sitting on the table before moving far enough away to avoid conversation. After the barmaid took my order I clicked on the set hanging high in the corner.

That stink, that smell of whatever gelatin forms in carpets fed a daily diet of spilled beer, just like the one that used to ooze out of Café Society, back on Chelten, around the way. Like it all poured from one linked source. Like there was a certain amount you could drink, a certain darkness of shadow that you could pass through and end up at any other stank joint in the world. On the television, every unrecognized advertisement confirmed how long I‘d been gone, and I studied them for whatever new trends had manifested, planning on doing the same thing that night in my rented room, preparing myself for the first interview tomorrow. I would get the job, I knew this. My portfolio was strong, and so it seemed was their interest, just in writing me a continent away. Still, there was the question of money, and more important, what position would they throw my way?

On the TV, a fifteen-second spot for Golden Crowns pulled my attention. Someone had pitched the idea of actually making a tiara compiled of cereal kernels, and that mess of a concept had made it all the way through production and onto the screen. An airbrushed, latex-coated crown sparkled thanks to video illustration; obviously brand recognition seemed more important to them now than making the product look edible. You need me, I nearly said aloud. I was just getting a flash of their rented ex-sports figure’s smile when the box turned off suddenly. Snap, then dark, dead, and powerless. The remote, by my side just a moment before, had disappeared. I was looking underneath the table to find where when I saw the movement behind me. Not Margaret coming in the door, but the drunken corpse rising. Bent over in my chair, I could see his shoes and pant legs through my own, no doubt walking over in my direction to start a long and laborious conversation, one that he repeated on the hour with whoever sat in the room. This was England, homeland of social discomfort, so to avoid my own I pretended to finish tying my shoes, all the while fixing my sights on the bathroom I would soon be darting to. From there, after an appropriate pause, I would shoot back through, grab my pint and bag without stopping and take a seat at the bar, close to the exit door. When I heard him clearing his throat of whatever bacteria made its home there, my calves tensed, and I was almost up, when the sound of that voice hit me and I couldn’t even manage standing any more.

‘I told you you could get here without me.’

Ever feel you’re falling, right there while you’re sitting down? Like that sleep thing, when you jump awake, kick out your legs to fight the gravity you imagine. But you’re not asleep, so there is no other consciousness to skip to, no place of escape, and the only thing that rises is the bile that climbs up your esophagus. That was my moment, right there, sunk back into the chair. The rest of the actions or opinions about this unreality that would appear later, in weeks and eventually years to follow, they would all be born of this grid, this measure of time that I was even sectioning off as it happened. So by the time I turned around and saw David, my David, no longer dead and standing there, that 210 reality had already made its initial impact, had already passed on and left me with its complications as proof of its arrival. Standing there. Not a ghost because spirits don’t smell like that, sweating alcohol and sucking Trebor’s Extra Strong Mints on the side of their mouths. Ghosts don’t get fatter with time, definitely not by a good two stone, or lose battles with male-pattern baldness so that they had less hair than when living. And most definitely, they sure didn’t smile like that either. There is no gloating in the hereafter, that I was sure of. Not in heaven and definitely not in hell.

‘You fucking bastard’ was all I could offer, and even that little more than a whisper. Of all the thoughts causing traffic in my cortex, that was just the one that got through. David stared at me, watching the realization drip in as the blood in my face dripped out. Drop drop. After the block of time that it took for him to realize that I would definitely not be the one to do the talking, David, ever living, laid the pint in his hand on the table next to him and took a seat once more. Oh, this was his holiday. You could tell he hadn‘t had a day this good in a while.

‘Nice one, right?’ He laughs my way. ‘You don’t get a surprise like that every day, do you? That was too lovely! Too good! Originally, I’d had a mind to meet you in your hotel room. Had it all planned, see? You’d come in and I’d be laid right out there on the bleeding bed, all casual like! Brilliant, it would have been!’ David yells, punching the air, nodding at me as if I‘m in on this joke too, his arrogance waking me from my confusion. ‘But then, when you finally called Margaret and said meet you here, I was just so excited. I mean, it was as if we were working together again. Just perfect! I’ve been here for three hours!

‘Oh, come on, please. You flatter me. I’m not a complete fool. You must have had your suspicions. Really, I don’t believe you. Of course, I ran into your Fionna at Marks and Spencer two months past — I swear the little flit shat herself right there in the beverage aisle!’ David laughed, biting his bottom lip, scrunching his nose and nodding each drop of truth in it back at me. My head throbbed with each motion. Even my eyes hurt; the room seemed unbearablly bright to me.

‘Which are the lies,’ I managed, forcing my breathing back under control to do so. Meaning: which parts of my past were constructed just for your deception, which monuments were real, and which made of putty and clay.

‘Oh really, it’s not all that, is it? After I nearly burned the house down on meself, it just offered a chance, didn’t it? So I bribed the missus to go along with the …’ He paused, enjoying himself. ‘Appearances.’

‘With what, my apartment?’ I snapped. I wasn’t even sure yet if I should be angry, but it was a good emotion and I was going with it.

‘No. A guaranteed complete stay at a rehab clinic in Richmond. Lovely place. Enjoyed it even more the second time I checked in, three months later,’ David said, toasting me, up in the air then into the mouth with a good gulp of the black stuff. The bastard is alive, and sitting right there across from me. What’s more, David has always been alive. The only person that fact is new to is me. ‘The flat was just to get you moving. For chrissakes man, I thought you’d never leave. Started worrying I might have to torch that bastard too. Margaret’s there now still; she just had her number forwarded from the flat she was letting. She lets me visit, on weekends sometimes. Mornings.’

‘Urgent?’ I asked, almost fearing the answer.

‘Still earning, mate. Still earning,’ David said proudly. ‘Bloody well insured, it was, wasn’t it?’ He winked at me over the lip of his glass ever so quickly. ‘Did you like the obituary? Had to pull in a favor from a bloke who works the press for the Journal . Between that, the funeral, and keeping the mouth shut on bloody Raz, cost me a good bit of dosh in the end. But oh, the look of it.’ With all the things I wanted to cry or scream at him, all I could do was nod back in disbelief. Head wagging. A matching sway for every thought that occurred to me. So many sentences, only the word ‘why’ linking them together. So that‘s the word I put to him. Not a plea or a demand, just one strong syllable for him to take from me, shape it like a ‘U’ and fill it up before giving it back. David stared at me through the distortion of the glass he was swallowing from. He looked like I’d just asked him the most obvious question in the world.