Low Life (26 page)

The other man swung the porcelain jar at him – and this time he knew it was coming because he was swinging it at himself and he dodged to the left and the jar failed to smash into his
face. It had happened before, it had smashed into his face, dozens of times before, hundreds of times, but not this time. This time was different. This time everything was coming to the
surface.

As the memories continued to invade his mind, making him whole, his vision through the other pair of eyes faded – his vision through Simon’s eyes faded, went gray and out of focus
and smeary at the edges. Simon had only been a small part of what he was; the part that couldn’t bear the weight; that’s why he had felt so hollow, so cold, so empty; and that what was
he was again: a small part of him.

And then there was nothing beneath him – nothing but clothes laid out in the shape of a man: white T-shirt, green pajama bottoms, a pair of aviator-type glasses.

He was sitting alone on a cold tile floor.

He was breathing hard.

He sat there for a long time breathing through a pained throat. Eventually his heartbeat slowed to a near-normal rate and he thought he could risk standing. He got to his feet. Black dots swam
before his eyes and he stumbled left, caught himself on a wall, pushed himself into a vertical position again, gained his balance.

He unwrapped the duct tape from his neck and pulled the plastic bag away.

He saw a glass of whiskey sitting on the counter and he drank it down. It burned but it felt good too. It warmed his middle.

He looked to his right and saw the bathtub full of ice. Then he looked at the medicine-cabinet mirror, the reflective film on the other side peeling away like sunburned skin. He looked at
himself in the mirror – his scarred face, his dyed brown hair, his contact lenses, his green tie and scarf and expensive suit. His face was covered in blood. There was a long gash running
across his flesh just above his left eyebrow where the flashlight had smashed into his head again and again. His nose was broken. He turned on the water and washed his face. He dried it with a
towel. Despite having washed his face, blood smeared onto the towel’s fabric. He looked at himself again. There was still blood in his hair, drying it together in clumps. But his face was
clean and nearly blood-free.

There I am, he thought.

He hadn’t become anything – this was what he had always been.

He walked over to Captain Bligh’s, ordered himself two Bounty Burgers, a whiskey, and two beers. He drank the first beer as soon as it arrived.

The place was dark and there was no one in the booth adjacent to his, so there was no one but the waitress to see his bruised and battered face, and he thought it’d been a long time since
she’d last given a shit.

He sat and listened to the newsheads drone on the television above the bar and the chatter of old-timers on padded stools before it.

When his food arrived he ate it noisily, in great bites which he washed down with his second beer. He managed one and a half of the burgers before he was done. He leaned back, grabbed his
whiskey, and downed it.

He slept in the apartment that night, and he slept soundly. There were no dreams. There was only darkness.

The next morning he got up and took a shower and put on a clean T-shirt and a pair of checkered pants. He put on the corduroy coat. He combed his hair. He ate breakfast at the
Denny’s on Wilshire and Vermont, and then got into his Saab and drove toward Pasadena.

Samantha was sitting in the living room drinking coffee when he walked in. She was wearing a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt. Her face had no make-up on it. She looked
beautiful.

‘I came to say goodbye,’ he said.

‘What – what’s happened to you?’

He scratched his cheek.

‘I came to say goodbye,’ he said again. ‘And to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I’ve done.’

He waited for twenty minutes at the police station before he was put into a room with a detective who was wearing snakeskin boots and pinky rings. The detective remembered
him.

It was a great relief to be there. He had so many things to confess.

They put him in a cell. It was a small room with a single cot, a seatless toilet, and a sink. The bars had been painted white, but where hundreds of hands had gripped them the
paint had been worn away, revealing dark metal. There were no windows. He sat silently and read the graffiti on the walls. Everything meant exactly what it appeared to mean.

The lights went out at ten o’clock.

To the darkness he spoke his final confession – his own name – but it only echoed back at him, so he did not speak it again.

Though he could not see it, he knew that outside and over him stretched the vast darkness of the universe. The faint light of distant stars and planets. The thin sliver of the fish-hook
moon.

He closed his eyes.

He wanted to speak God’s name, but did not know what it was.

Also by Ryan David Jahn

Acts of Violence

Thanks to

Will Atkins

Liz Cowen

Gordy Hoffman

Mary Jahn

Andy Pagana

Sophie Portas

Heather Schor

First published 2010 by Macmillan

This electronic edition published 2011 by Macmillan
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-0-230-76539-9 EPUB

Copyright © Ryan David Jahn 2010

The right of Ryan David Jahn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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