Sam Leith - The Coincidence Engine

‘What are you doing there?’

‘I’m coming to see you.’

‘Oh my God!’ She sounded like an actress in a teen movie, he thought, the open vowel on the final word like g aah d. Then she said it again, catching herself – that was one of the things he loved about her – sounding like an actress in a teen movie and making herself therefore sound more like one.

‘Oh my Gaahd!’ she said. She was spontaneous the first time. Her voice sounded now like a smile without the eyes going. It was disconcerting.

‘I thought I’d surprise you,’ he muttered.

Now a peal of laughter, unforced. ‘You have surprised me, crazy English boy. Oh my Lord, that is so romantic. And so -’ her voice got muffled momentarily – ‘sorry – shut up – not you – so…’ She had lost her thread.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘What. I mean, romantic. But stupid. Seriously. What are you doing in Albuquerque?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully. ‘I was going to surprise you, but I got this flight to Atlanta -’

‘Atlanta?’

‘Courier. It was a hub. It was in the right general direction.’

‘Courier?’

‘The flight was really, really cheap. I just needed the onward ticket, and then I missed the connecting flight, so now I’m in a car.’

‘You drove from Atlanta to Albuquerque?’

‘I always wanted to go on a road trip.’

‘You missed the flight is what. This is such a trip. So you coming to San Francisco?’ Her voice sounded suddenly less sure, a little knocked off balance.

‘I had this idea – you ever been to Vegas?’

Carey laughed. ‘You said it like Vegas, without the “Las”. What a player! Soon you’ll be calling San Francisco “Frisco” and we’ll know you’re from out of town.’ Alex felt a little deflated. ‘I’m sorry, baby. You can pronounce Albuquerque Al-ba-kway-kway and you’ll be fine by me. Yeah, I’ve been to Vegas. My folks drove me up there once when I was like thirteen or something to watch them gamble -’ Carey always called her foster-parents her ‘folks’, never her mom and dad – ‘but I haven’t been since. Don’t think I did much gambling.’

‘You want to go? Meet me there?’

‘Hell yee-ah. What made you think of that? Going to get us married in the Elvis chapel?’ She laughed. Alex didn’t. He hadn’t actually thought of the Elvis chapel. Well, actually, he nearly had. Like with the ring, he wasn’t someone who was very good at feeling his way into whether something was so naff it was cool or just naff. And now there was this awkward dead drop in the conversation. She’d been joking and he hadn’t responded with the proper levity and now – oh God – it was like there was this fucking great dead badger sitting between them.

He had to say something. ‘Of course,’ he said, failing to prevent his voice from sounding serious.

In their relationship there was something, he realised, that caused them to strike each other at near right angles. They didn’t quite get each other; from his point of view, it felt like he was always playing catch-up a little. She was hard to read, but he thought that was what made it work. They missed each other that little bit, and then when they caught up they found the misunderstanding funny. He knew he amused her: otherwise she wouldn’t spend all that time giggling at him. And she amused him, he thought – though the more he thought about it the more he realised that probably he loved her more than he found her funny.

There. An unevenness. An unevenness he could live with.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘In the Elvis chapel. Just like Chris Evans and Billie.’

‘Who?’ she said.

‘Doesn’t matter. Just – can you get the weekend off?’

‘Sure. Yeah. I mean. Yeah.’

‘Well, how long will it take you to get there? I don’t – I mean, I think I’m about a day away.’

‘A day? From New Mexico? That’s a long day.’

‘It’s all I’ve been doing for days. Thinking about stuff.’

‘Hold up,’ Carey said. ‘Just moving into the other room. I’m with someone.’

She covered the handset and he couldn’t hear anything for a moment or two, then he heard a door close.

‘Who are you with?’

‘Nobody,’ she said. ‘Just a friend from work. So, Vegas. Let’s do it. I’ve got air miles. I think they’ve got flights for like a hundred bucks. Wow. It’s hard to imagine you in the States. You’re so… British.’

She didn’t sound overexcited. Alex, for an instant, felt that flatness he had felt at the start of his journey. Not lonely, just numb. Why did anybody do anything?

‘So, er…’ He couldn’t think of anything to say.

‘OK, sweetie, let’s talk tomorrow. I’ll see about flights, yeah? Vegas. I like it. Let’s do it. Two day’s time? Where are you staying?’

‘Motels.’

‘Uh-huh. OK.’ She sounded distracted again.

He reached into his pocket for the ring, something concrete. He turned it in his hand, and he felt less alone.

By lunchtime the following day it was fixed. Alex pushed on to Flagstaff, arriving after night fell. He stopped, checked into a motel. The Grand Canyon was near. He imagined its vast absence as he lay on his bed, trying to get to sleep.

On his heels, had he but known it – had they but known it – were Bree and Jones, still heading west, still trusting – as instructed – to luck.

There was little said in the car as they drove. Bree, slightly giddy from not sleeping, was still thinking about what Jones had done, still seeing the surprise on the face of the dead man, still wondering what it would mean to have done the worst thing in the world and not understand what had happened – if, indeed, that was the situation Jones was in. His sunglasses might as well have been armour-plating. There was nothing in there; nothing Bree could understand.

When he was hungry, he would suggest they stopped, and they would eat in silence, standing by the car, Jones looking in whichever direction he happened to be facing; Bree looking in whichever direction Jones wasn’t. After that, again, he just drove, eyes blandly scanning the world.

Bree realised, as the miles rolled past under the blank blue sky, that some part of her hated him not for killing the stranger, but for getting away with it. He had done the worst thing in the world, and nothing had happened to him. He didn’t fear the consequence. He couldn’t feel the loss of another’s life any more than he’d feel the loss of his own.

And was it the worst thing in the world, even? No. The worst thing in the world was what Bree had done. Bree had done that years ago. Bree had lost her baby.

She couldn’t remember much of the sequence of events. By that stage the memory thief had become brazen. Just flashes, disconnected points of pain, smeared routines. Cass getting her own breakfast and going to school – her spoon clanking softly on her bowl, audible through the partition wall in Bree’s dark box of morning pain. Cass, more than once, helping Bree off the couch and into bed. Cass finding bottles and pouring them out, and later, Cass standing barefaced and shaking, chin up, fronting Bree’s rage.

She never hit her. She shook her. Never hit her.

And then Cass’s own anger – ever since Al had gone. There was bed-wetting first, nothing said. And then, after she started her bleed, the focusless rage of a teenager. Bree had done everything she could to direct Cass’s anger at Al. It gave them something to share. It was Al’s fault. Al had gone altogether. How could he do that? How could he abandon his own daughter to… to Bree.

Trouble at school. Bree hadn’t bothered going in to see the head. Bree remembered screaming at the social worker. Marion – pig-faced Marion, with the flakes of dandruff in the dark greasy bit where her hair was parted. Bree hated her whether or not she was doing her job. But the whole machinery went on. Then there were her appearances and non-appearances in court, her desperation, her fantasies, her sloppy embarrassments of love.