In Too Deep (21 page)

The dream has gathered and decoded my visions. I can feel its weight against me, an insistent, determined pressing. Using New York, with its teeming streets and bedecked lobbies, as His weapon of choice, God – or whoever it is that gazes down on me and pulls my strings – seems to have taken pity on me and offered me a glimpse of the life I might have lived. In many ways a mirror image of my own life, this alternate existence is full of style and affluence, and has me, or some element of me, partnered with a companion who smiles and frolics at my feet and swims in my direction, who flops and flaps to my will and who hums along to the tunes I call. It appears to be a life in which I can sit back and relax, bask in a sense of calm that I hardly recognise because I have never even come close to knowing. The fact that my mermaid is Elisabeth instead of Jenny seems significant too, especially since the truth of the matter is that Elisabeth's manner and nature was never close to serene or pandering, at least not when we were together. Maybe something would have changed, maybe I needed to get wealthy or grow myself a handlebar moustache. Maybe I needed to take her fishing, once in a while.

I hardly ever speak about our time together; in fact, it is a subject only ever broached now when Jen finds herself in a particularly nasty mood and is tweaking for a row. She'll start pushing and I'll hold out for as long as I can, and then I'll crumble like a cookie in a fist. I've always been tender where pain is concerned. It has been eight years and counting since Elisabeth sent me spinning off out into the big bad world, but even though I managed to find my feet before they were swept out from under me again, the wound of that rejection is still raw. I wonder sometimes if I am just unlucky, if I might have caught some sort of infection of the heart. But I can swear the two eyes out of my head that the old saying about time being a great healer is one almighty suitcase full of shit. Eight years and counting can attest to that hard-earned deduction. I could mention the exact length of time, down to the months and the days too, but that would make me sound pathetic, and I hate sounding that way, even if it is sometimes true. I pick myself up from the bathroom floor, return to my room and begin to dress, very slowly. Running away from dreams, just dismissing them as the ravings of an overactive mind, is all well and good, but what if, sometimes, they are sufficiently forceful that their essence filters through into reality? I vaguely recall reading something along those lines, some book about Native American shamans, I think. And who knows, maybe there is some grain of sense in that. I don't know a great deal about the workings of spiritual things, but then I don't know how airplanes fly, either. Science is as big a mystery to me as God, and some of those white-haired suggestions can be even more difficult to accept. Elisabeth hovers all around me, but as a smiling face framed in long tangles of yellow hair, not at all as I remember her. I can't help but wonder if I have taken a wrong turn, deviated from the path that had been carefully laid out for me.

It is almost seven, and I am more than a little surprised to find that I have worked up an appetite. Waffles, I think, with blueberries, strawberries and maple syrup. Bacon on the side, and lashings of strong hot coffee. The scrap of paper with the telephone number is lying on my pillow, a little rumpled. I pick it up and smooth its creases, then on impulse dial the number again. I'm not expecting much, not thinking about what I'm doing, even. But the line opens midway through the second ring.

‘Sean?'

‘Hi, Jen.'

She laughs. Actual laughter, a sound that has always made everything seem a little better. It has the same effect now. ‘Eight o'clock,' she says.

‘What?'

‘I told you to call at eight, and here you are, right on time.'

‘I'm not disturbing you, am I? I mean, you're not sleeping or showering or anything?'

More laughter, as if I have just said something clever instead of stupid. I listen to her cool breathing, not really sure what to say. ‘I'm sorry about last night,' I mumble, ‘if it was last night.'

‘Are you still worried about that business with your double? Because I'm sorry, Sean. I was half asleep when you called and not thinking straight. What I told you was wrong. There's no one like you in the whole world. You need to remember that. And remember that anyone who might look even vaguely like you is really just a pale imitation. You are the real thing.'

I'm not sure if she is making good-natured fun of me or if she is really trying to be affectionate, but I am surprised by the realisation that it makes no difference either way.

‘No,' I tell her, truthfully. ‘I'm not bothered by that anymore. I was for a while but I think I've worked it out.'

We talked for a while about small things, how we were getting along in our respective corners of the world, and as usual let the bigger concerns take care of themselves. While I was dreaming, it seems that she has been having a particularly good day, enjoying a successful morning lecture and, later, a nice early dinner with some of her colleagues on the Hokkaido University faculty. The venerable Professor Alsop was, most unfortunately, unable to join them, having come down with an ugly case of food poisoning. ‘Bad sushi,' she explains, and goes into detail about the seaweed reacting to the fish. I help myself to the tastier morsels and let the rest drift by. Hokkaido's pretty girls can unlock their doors again, at least until the medication works its magic. When Jen asks about my work I tell her that things are going well, on the whole, that the loose ends seem to be tying themselves up without any great difficulties. Touch wood. I have the thought that marriage should come equipped with an easy-to-use pocket-sized handbook. There are certain pat phrases that can always be relied upon when answering a spouse's casual questions.

Finally, the time comes to hang up. We agree that I should try to call again at around the same time tomorrow. She'll have put away another day, and I'll be waking up to mine. I almost add something affectionate to my goodbye, but words of love take a lot of practice in order to make them sound casual, and I don't want to compromise the aftertaste of a nice conversation, so I hold back. The phone-line clicks shut and I replace the receiver in its cradle. I can picture her in my mind, alone in her room with the television on for company, but with the sound turned all the way down, maybe shucking from her sweater and kicking off her shoes so that she can stretch out on the bed for a little while. She's tired, of course; I know from her time at home that university days can be interminable. Maybe she'll read for a while, but nothing too taxing. She has an odd penchant for old westerns, Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey, that sort of thing. Not the most feminine of subject matter, but each to their own, I suppose. There's nothing like a good plot, she says. And meanwhile, here on the other side of the globe, my own day is just about to begin. I stand by the window for a moment as I slip on my suit jacket. The street below is already busy, the clamour of people and the lines of yellow taxi cabs traipsing their way along east to west, west to east. There seems something tidal about it all.

I step out of the elevator into a lobby that feels sur-prisingly quiet. The sharpness of the light makes everything feel different, the sun this hotel's most welcome guest. My gaze is drawn, inevitably, to the mermaid, and wisps of the dream rise again in my mind. This time though, maybe because of the sunshine or maybe because of the conversation I've just had with Jenny, I see something that I had somehow missed before. Not all revelations come armed with bolts of lightning. In my dream I am smiling, relaxed in my fine suit and on my expensive settee. My mermaid, Elisabeth, is smiling too, and it really is a picture-perfect scene, very nearly idyllic. I suppose what I am seeing is a state of contentment, yet it does seem strained, not quite natural. I realise that my other self, and the life I might have lived, looks sugar-coated but tastes ever so slightly bitter. Well groomed, basking in the glow of a life that meets my every expectation, I feel a little like I imagine a king must feel. But even kings need to fill their voids, and sometimes happiness just isn't enough. That existence is what it is, dreamlike, and dreams make up only a small corner of our lives. We need them, but we need more than them.

With Jen I have found contentment, stumbled over it without even realising, and I understand, possibly for the very first time in my life, that this is something of true worth. Other words are far more descriptive, like ‘love' and ‘happiness', but I believe that they are also generally ill-used. ‘Contentment' has a far greater resonance. I know that my world is a long, long way down the ladder from anyone's idea of perfect. Our home is nice enough but nothing to write novels about, and we have enough money to get by, more than enough really, though we're not rich by any stretch of even the most febrile of imaginations. The truth is that we're doing okay. Jen can be a real cat sometimes, but there are times when her nice side shines through and those moments are almost worth the price of admission. Artists will wait a long time just to capture the perfect sunset, because good things can be fleeting, but they go quite a distance towards outweighing the negatives. Well-trimmed moustaches, fine suits of clothes and beautiful mermaid wives might seem like dreams come true, but those things are high maintenance. Mermaids won't remain pretty for very long if they lie around all day, sunbathing with the fish. Beards save a lot of time and trouble, you really can't beat a pair of old jeans for comfort, and the pleasures of the making up is very nearly worth the cost of all the infernal bickering. It's only right that Jen is the way she is, one day biting chunks out my cowering carcass, the next devouring me with kisses. That yin and yang business is everywhere, keeping the balance. Happiness, the truly delirious sort, remains the goal for almost everyone, but there is a high price to pay for that. The better option, I think, might be to expend our energies in trying to avoid the other extreme. Contentment lies sprawled across that middle ground and, when we get right down to it, that in-between stretch is really not such a bad place in which to dwell.

‘Heavy Seas' first appeared in the
Evening Echo
, on 10 May 2008.

‘The Inner Light' first appeared in the
Evening Echo
, on 30 August 2008.

‘A World of Dark-Haired Beauties' first appeared in
Audience
Vol. 3, No. 2, September 2008.

‘The Black And Tan' first appeared in the
Cork Holly Bough
, Christmas 2008.

‘The Christmas Letter' first appeared in the
Evening Echo
, on 6 December 2008.

‘This Bird Has Flown' first appeared in
Read This
! Winter 2008.

‘On The Beach' first appeared in the
Hayden's Ferry Review
, Fall/Winter 2008.

‘Syzygy' received an Honourable Mention in the 2008 Glimmer Train Open Fiction Contest, and first appeared in
Cezanne's Carrot
, Spring Equinox 2009, winning the Editor's Choice Award.

An early version of ‘Secrets' – then entitled, ‘A Fine Romance' – first appeared in
Underground Voices
, February 2009.