“You’re
telling me you both had a seizure,” said Clare.
“Yeah,”
replied Mike. “Isn’t that freaky as shit?”
“It’s not
freaky Mike. It’s wrong. There’s something going on here.”
“Like what
did you have in mind?”
Clare
paused, checking round to see who might be listening. Joey was still standing
beside her. Rosalie, Mike’s daughter, was gazing wistfully at the box of toys
in the corner of the waiting room. Again, the rapport between them was a marvel
as, without even looking down – remaining very much in the conversation with
Clare – he somehow knew what she wanted and gently patted her on the back of
the shoulder and said, You can go play if you want honey.”
Joey went
and sat back down.
“When did
you get your seizure?” asked Clare.
“I don’t
know. An hour ago? It was after dark.”
“So it was
after ours.”
“Both of
you. You both had the same thing.” Even though it had happened to him to and he
had been the one to bring it up, Mike was openly sceptical.
“Not just
us,” said Clare. “He denies it but Henry, another lodger of mine... I think the
same thing happened to him.”
“Three of
you? And us.”
Clare
nodded. “All one after another as close as I can tell.”
“And what
caused it? A virus?”
“I don’t
think so.” She stepped closer. “Before it happened... did anything... weird
happen?”
Mike grinned
making a crinkle of skin from his nose to his chin on one side of his mouth.
“Like weird in what way?”
Clare looked
at him straight on and said a single word. The reaction on his face told her
everything she needed to know. “Heat.”
The
realisation and acceptance that something very very strange had happened that
evening touched every part of his face in turn and shifted his entire posture.
He didn’t say anything. Neither of them had to; the old sub-vocal communication
rattling this colossal shift in their perspective better than noise and
flapping lips, incredulity or reasoning. It was a comfort, having someone else
understand what she was realising herself until she reminded herself who this
was and what he had done to her. The realisation of that must have effected a
similar change in her own body language because Mike frowned and said, “What?”
She ignored
the question. Despite any decade-and-a-half old differences of opinion, what
had happened to them required attention in a way that Henry and Joey blatantly
couldn’t provide. “What else? Did you sense anything else that was off?”
“Like what?”
Clare had a
scientific mind; a throwback from her childhood science reading; she had good
instincts for building a logical picture of reasonable and undisputable
evidence. She didn’t want to put words in his mouth by telling him what had
happened to her first. “Anything. Tell me the sequence of events.”
Mike
scratched the crease between his eyebrows with his little finger, crinkling his
forehead as he threw his mind back into his memory: yet another mannerism that
hadn’t changed, as though the past between them had been yesterday. Or now. “We
were driving.”
“Where?”
“Bourne
Avenue. From Bournemouth Square up along the gardens?”
“I know it.”
“It was
dark. I was thinking about some stuff. Er... Rosalie was in the passenger seat.
It got hot. She was shaking suddenly.”
“While you
were driving along?” He nodded. “God.”
“I was
trying to see if she was okay and then it happened to me; almost passed out
behind the wheel.”
“I did pass
out,” said Clare.
“Me too. But
I managed to hit the brakes first.” He looked hard across at his daughter. “Saved
her little ass I guess. And mine.” He watched her playing for a moment. When he
turned back he had clearly lost the flow, his mind away elsewhere. It took him
a moment to click back on. “What about you?”
Clare rubbed
the backs of her arms. “You wouldn’t believe me.” She’d lost the flow herself
for a minute, coming back to the harboured resentment she’d forgotten was still
hiding away inside her memory, making her unwilling to trust again. Truth was,
it scared her how quickly the flow of ideas had come back, the rapport that had
kept them up talking until five or six in the morning night after night in
their earlier years.
She stared
at him levelly, considering how deep she wanted to go with this. “I think it
may have been a ghost. Or something like it. A spirit.”
“You’re
kidding me.”
“No.”
“A ghost?”
“Yeah.”
Tumblers
falling into place: Mike measuring her expression, making the same judgment of
her that she had been making of him. “Okay. Tell me why you think that.”
“I have a
dog. A Doberman. It was him as much as the other thing, but the dog saw it. Or
smelled it, I don’t know. And things moved in my kitchen, as though the
invisible man was doing it: shifting the table, knocking things over. And then
there was the heat of course. The whole kitchen was like a furnace.”
“This was
after it happened?”
“Before.
Henry, the old man who lives upstairs, was in the downstairs toilet. It got him
first. Then it got me; knocked me out.”
“An
invisible spirit that the dog could see.”
“Yeah. It
did Henry and then me and then Joey afterwards I guess; knocked all three of us
out for a few minutes. Then when we woke up it was like we’d been out in the
sun too long.” She showed him her arm: not burned as such but close to it. “You
have the same thing.”
“I do?”
“You and
Rosalie.”
Mike looked
back across at his daughter then checked out the backs of his hands. Then he
looked steadily round the room before returning his gaze to Clare. “We’re the
only ones here with skin like this.” Clare verified it with a look of her own.
“If this was happening all over town then there’d be hundreds of sun-kissed
people in here wanting answers.”
“You’re
right.”
“Shit I’m
not convinced a doctor’s going to be able to tell us anything! I feel perfectly
fine! Do you?”
“Yeah.”
Mike took a
seat a little way from the closest person and Clare joined him. Joey was
engrossed in a comic book. Rosalie was playing with a Barbie motor home.
They both
mulled it over. It came again to Clare how she shouldn’t be sitting this close
to Mike; how she shouldn’t be talking to him; but it was a brief and weak
resistance.
They were
both thinking about the same thing. “The link,” said Mike.
“Why
everyone in my house.”
“And why me
and Rosalie.”
Clare gazed
off for a moment then started rooting through her bag.
“What is
it?”
She took out
her mobile phone, unlocked the touch screen, highlighted a name on her contacts
list and hit the green button.
“Who are you
calling?”
She held up
her hand for quiet.
“Who are you
ringing.”
She pressed
the red button to cancel the call and put the phone away.
“What?”
asked Mike.
“Selina,”
replied Clare. She cut in after Mike opened his mouth to ask a question but
before the sound came out. “She’s my other tenant. I was just thinking... It’s
crazy.”
“You were
wondering if she’d been got too.”
She nodded.
“But she didn’t answer. I guess I’ll check with her later at home.” She looked
at Mike and she saw that he was holding onto something in his mind that he was
reluctant to give up. “What is it?”
“The link,”
he said, “between me and Rosalie and you and your tenants...”
“What is
it?”
He cleared
his throat. “There’s been a lot of shit going on in my life lately. A lot of
bad stuff. I got kicked out of my place this morning.”
Clare bit
back on the urge to say something catty but she sure as hell thought it. She
didn’t know how she’d managed to kid herself that he might have changed. It was
all the same crap as it had always been.
“And now I
have Rosalie to look after.” Pinch in his face again as though there was
something he wasn’t telling her. “And so I started looking up old friends to
see if there was somewhere I could stay. If it had been just me I would have
slept in my van until I could have sorted something out. But I saw you on
Facebook.”
“You were
spying on me?”
“No! I
just... I saw that you were running a boarding house now... and though I didn’t
want to...”
“Oh my God.
You decided to come and ask me if I could put you up.”
He nodded.
“When? When
exactly?”
“Seconds,”
he said. “I mean seconds before Rosalie went into her seizure.”
Another
silent moment of understanding; quiet eyes meeting one another.
Then Clare
picked out a noise outside that wasn’t entirely incongruous with their
surroundings but louder than she would have expected and she started to notice
that there was an increase in the amount of bustle going on in the rooms at the
back where the doctors were: raised voices and movement. The noise outside was
getting louder and louder and Clare realised it was because there was more than
one of them, maybe more than two.
People were
standing up and going to the windows and the door, trying to look out to see
what all the racket was about and Clare found herself doing the same, with Mike
beside her, turning aside only long enough to lift Rosalie back up into his
arms.
Then the
first one pulled up at the front; the first ambulance. Doctors and nurses were
outside, shouting, pointing, racing to open the doors. And a second ambulance
was coming in behind. And there, in the distance, signs of more flashing lights
as a third and maybe a fourth tore down the road toward the hospital.
Did Selena wide up going to the hospital?
ReplyDeleteNo. She's fine... for now.
DeleteI love the part where she is mad at herself for expecting mike to have changed. it seems to me that people don't change...including their hope/expectation that other will have changed.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. You may be right there. But I tend to disagree. I think people do change, perhaps to become more themselves; but qualities observed by others would be different. I find that I've changed a lot over the years in different ways and in different directions.
Delete"We're not sayin' you can change him, 'cause people don't really change. We're only saying that love's a force
That's powerful and strange. People make bad choices if they're mad, or scared, or stressed, but throw a little love their way and you'll bring out their best."
point taken. I didn't mean to come off as cynical as that or imply there's no personal growth. what I meant was the Little (and not so little) things that we wish they wouldn't do whether its leave underwear on the floor or drink too much, but we frequently assume they''ll "grow out of it." the assumption that we will like how that change progresses and it will make them "better"
DeleteYeah. I agree. As the Vampire Lestat said, if you live forever then you have long to turn out better but you also have longer to turn out just as badly as everyone said you would. :)
DeleteHi Emma and John.
ReplyDeleteFirst off absolutely loving the quotes from Disney and Ann Rice, Emma. Well said.
And John, I really agree that we do expect and assume that people will change for the 'better' over time, eventually, if we give them enough patience and love... But in my experience they don't tend to. Rather, it is us that changes our expectations and stops minding about what we can't remedy. That said, people do actually change, drastically and spectacularly sometimes, but only with themselves as the architects.
Back to the story... I am loving the almost subliminal communication between Mike and Rosalie... And of course Mike and Clare. Love your characters Emma they are awesome!
Thank you! That put a smile on my face.
Delete