The End Of Mr. Y (24 page)

The tunnel. The road.
Console
.

FOURTEEN

Y
OU NOW HAVE TWENTY-SEVEN CHOICES
.

Why is it different from before? At least I’m in the same place, on the same deserted street, looking at the same signs. All but one of them are still in the language I can’t read. One is now illuminated and readable.
Mouse 1
is what it says. I really must be going mad. But in here, in the Troposphere, going mad doesn’t seem like something that should worry me. Like the fear I had last time – the fear that didn’t feel like fear – the worry is there but it doesn’t feel like anything. There’s no quickened heartbeat; no sweat. I’m watching myself in a film again. I’m playing myself in a video game. So I’ve got twenty-seven choices. I still don’t know what that means. And to be honest, I’d be happy just staying out here on this nowhere road, feeling this blissed-out nothing. Could I be happy not knowing? No. I have to find out how this thing works. What is the Troposphere? The blurred console is like a translucent map over my vision, showing me which places are ‘live’: which places I can enter. At least, that’s what it seemed to mean last time. Last time the closest place I could enter was the apartment now marked with the
Mouse 1
sign. Now one of the shops just a few doors down the street seems to be highlighted. It’s a little music shop with a piano in the window. In my mind I ask the console to close and it flickers out of my sight. Now I can look at the shop properly. There’s the piano: a small black upright thing with sheet music propped up on the holder. I look more closely and see that the title is in German. The sign on the door is also German:
Offen
. I open the door and a small bell tinkles. I expect to see the inside of the shop but, of course, I don’t.

You now have one choice
.

You
… I’m now someone else: someone human and male. I’m sitting in a café, waiting. I don’t need to translate this person’s thoughts: it’s a strange sensation, actually being someone else, but that’s how it now seems. It’s certainly easier than being a mouse, or a cat. I can … I can speak German.

I’m even thinking in German. I know how to read music. I … OK, Ariel, just go with it.

So I’m sitting in a café looking at the dregs in a white cup smeared with old grey cappuccino froth, and I’m pissed off, but that’s nothing new. How could he do this to me again? Again. The word makes me want to weep. I can feel it on my skin, in my cheeks and running down my chest: little bugs of failure crawling on me, and they’re all repeating that word:
again
. He said it would be soon. Now it looks like never. It must be because of something I didn’t say. It must be because of something I didn’t do. The idea that this would have happened anyway is too repellent. It must be this shirt. He said he liked the blue one, so why am I wearing this red piece of crap?

At this point the waitress comes over and, just as Lumas suggested, a faint outline of another shop appears over her body, and I realise I could step into that doorway instead of remaining ‘here’ – whatever, in this context, is ‘here’. Shall I try that? What about when Mr. Y did it and got bounced back onto the Troposphere? I try to call up the console, but it doesn’t come. I’m not trying anything without that to guide me.

I call it again.

It doesn’t come.

At least I spent fifteen more minutes with him. But what’s fifteen more minutes of memories against

a lifetime of being together? The future I should have had. I should have said that to him. I know he wants this as much as I do, but he’s a coward after all. Maybe I should have said that. Robert, you’re a coward. Maybe I’m the coward. I couldn’t say something like that to him. Imagine his face if I said something like that. He’d storm out. He’d say I’d crossed the line. Stupid English expressions. Crossed the line. What line? Where? Oh, yes. The line that you drew between me and everything I want to say and be. The line between ‘normal’ life and the other one, the other choice. You could have crossed that line. You promised to cross that line. You promised me. You promised me. You promised me. And I’ve been so gentle with you over these last few weeks, talking when you needed to talk, kissing away your tears when I actually wanted to be sucking your dick. I’ve done everything you wanted.

I see him walking in an hour ago, already ten minutes late, as if I didn’t have anything else better to do (but I haven’t, Robert: the only thing I want to do is be in love with you).

‘I couldn’t get away,’ he said. ‘The kids were creating.’

Another stupid English word. Creating what? Shit? Works of art? Both?

His kids. They’re across some other line altogether. But I’ve pretended to be interested in them for long enough. All right. Well, I was sort of interested. I imagined weekends with them at some point in the future, when Whatshername had gotten over everything. Trips to the park. Big ice creams. It didn’t exactly compute, but I could have programmed myself to do it. I would have done that for you, Robert.

The table in front of me is a little piece of art in itself. What would you call it?
After a Small Treachery
. I like that.
The Dregs of Betrayal
. Two cups, two saucers, one man. You’d look at this and you’d know that two people were here a while ago, but one has gone. One has a meeting, an arrangement, a life. The other is me and I have nothing in the world apart from this coffee cup.

Perhaps you even saw him leave, the one with the thinning hair and the black jeans. An hour ago he was walking in and there was nothing on this table apart from the red-and-white checked plastic tablecloth, a laminated menu and a pepper pot (but no salt). He made his excuse and sat down, and I could see him shaking.

‘Coffee?’ I said. And I wanted to slap him, this shaking mess. I wanted to tell him to be a man. If I wanted to fuck girls for the rest of my life I wouldn’t be doing this, would I?

A waitress came. They all speak French here, or at least they affect convincing French accents, so he said ‘Café au lait’ in a stupid English-French accent, and then added, ‘Merci.’

What an idiot. And now? Now I want to piss on his face. I want to drown him in my shit. I want to take pictures of him drowning in my shit and send them to his girlfriend. I want to write a concerto all about him drowning in my shit and play it at his funeral, and out of a permanent speaker system at his grave, so all his relatives will have to listen to it for ever.

But I was still hopeful when he looked at me across the table.

‘How have you been?’ he asked me, as if I had cancer.

(You’re the cancer, Robert, you miserable little tumour. You’ve given me cancer of the heart.)

‘How do you expect?’ I said.

I think what I meant to say was: ‘Fine. Great. My life is full of pink balloons.’ Well, that’s more attractive, isn’t it?

He lit a cigarette with shaking hands. I taught him to smoke, of course. I taught him to smoke, and I taught him how to drink, and I taught him how to fuck me. I showed him what I’d suspected: that two men are more powerful than the cancelled-out yin-yang of cock-and-cunt. We discovered it together: the beauty of the male body. Don’t you remember, Robert? I even bought you a reproduction of Donatello’s
David
when I could hardly afford food. In return you bought me a bust of Alexander the Great.

And you said you’d move in with me.

Sitting at the table just over an hour ago, he didn’t look like someone who was about to leave his family and move in with me. On the other hand – I suppose he would be upset if he had just left his girlfriend (they’re not married, despite the two kids). Maybe that’s it, I thought. Maybe he’s upset because he’s told her and he’s going to have to come back to my flat tonight and I’ll give him vodka for the shock and suck his cock so hard that he’ll never leave me again. I just wanted the chance to convince him it should be me. I see Robert as a fish with the hook still in his mouth. If she tugs it, he goes back: I know that for sure now.

Robert’s sitting there with the cigarette, frozen in time. My mind won’t play this memory like a film: it pulls me around like an Alsatian, making me go here and there … And now I’m thinking I should write a guidebook for others in my situation. Or … Yes. A website. I could send her the link, just so she knows.

Howtotakeitupthearse.com

Probably exists. And that’s not what I want, anyway. Robertisabastard.com

Not general enough. Whenstraightmenpromisetogogayandthendonot.com

He sipped his coffee. I was facing the door; I’d placed myself there like a little welcome mat (another fucking stupid English invention) waiting for him to wipe his feet on me. So he sat there sipping his coffee, looking beyond me to the wall, covered in postcards from Paris, and I just watched people leave like bacteria looking for a new host to infect. No one new comes in at this time of day; it’s as though the place has taken an antibiotic.

‘Are you OK?’ Robert asked me.

‘I’m confused.’

Last night he was due to come over to my flat to celebrate the beginning of our new life together. I’d finished my relationship with Catherine, and all that remained was for him to leave his girlfriend. He didn’t come. Instead he phoned me at midnight and in a stupid whisper said that everything was too complicated and that he’d meet me here tomorrow. I said I’d bought flowers. He said he had to go. I suggested coming to my place rather than here – after all, this place is virtually next door to my flat. He said it wasn’t a good idea.

So there we both were. And I knew he hadn’t done it.

‘You haven’t told her,’ I said.

He was still shaking. ‘I did tell her,’ he said. ‘I did it last night.’ ‘Oh, my God,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know. Sorry. Shit. Are you all right?’

I leaned across the table to touch his arm. Obviously he was now forgiven. He had done it. He had told her. Well, that was what I’d wanted. Actually it was what we’d both wanted. But where did he go last night? Just as I started wondering about that, he moved his arm away from my hand. ‘Don’t.’

‘Robert?’

‘I told her. I told her I was leaving her.’

‘But that’s good, isn’t it? Unless… Well, obviously you will be upset, but I can help you with that. It’s all going to be all right now.’

‘I’m so sorry, Wolfgang. I’ve changed my mind.’ Microwave my fucking soul, why don’t you?

‘I told her. I said, “I’m leaving you,” and she said, “No you’re not.” Just like that. She knew something had been going on. She’s not stupid. We’re … Oh, God, I don’t even know where I am, I’m so tired.’

‘We’re what?’ I said. ‘What were you going to say just then? “We’re…”’ ‘We’re going to have another go.’

This idiot makes a relationship sound like a children’s spinning top. Oh, I’m just going to have another go! But I didn’t say anything, and so he just went on and on talking about how he thought he was gay, perhaps, or at least bisexual, but now he wasn’t sure. He said he thought he was probably bisexual, but that really meant that he could stay with his girlfriend and, after all, they did have two kids and she was right when she said that he should think of them rather than just following his cock.

Console! Console? Console?

Shit. I’ve got to get out of here. I had no idea that this is Wolf’s mind, although I suppose I could have read the fucking clues. Oh, God. Oh, God. I can’t believe I’m intruding on his life like this. I shouldn’t know any of this. I had no idea. Oh, Wolf… I’m so sorry. Where’s the waitress gone now? I can’t look around, unfortunately: all I can see is what Wolf sees, and he’s just looking at the table.

No doors. No milky images.

Console?

But it doesn’t come. I’m stuck.

Now he’s getting up to leave the café. But he’s still not looking at anyone.

And I recognise the way he feels. It would be what, seventeen years ago now… Christ, that makes me feel old. I was in love, totally, innocently in love, for the first and only time, with a guy who was doing a degree in town when I was doing my GCSEs. He had dark shoulder-length hair and drove a little blue Mini. Just seeing it parked in the university car park would give me a little buzzing thrill, like touching the heart of the fake guy (or the guy-shaped hole) in that Operation game. Then he dumped me because I was too young, and I spent a year or so semi-stalking him (including once leaving an amusingly shaped cactus on his front doorstep) before I decided to just give up on love altogether.

Wolf’s not doing any stalking, though. Wolf’s going to get drunk. We’re going to get drunk …

I’m going to get drunk.

It has started to snow. The bacteria-people on the pavement crush the flakes into instant slurry; it’s exactly the consistency of the lemon-ice drinks Heike’s mother used to make for us when we came back in the afternoons in our Pioneer uniforms. But the stuff on the pavement is dirty and brown.

And that’s it: life expressed in one moment. You start with pure crushed-ice lemon drink and you end up with a shitty mess. This is what you become. And I know where I’m going now, so I walk through the brown sludge on autopilot, not crying. I’m not crying yet.

But it will be OK. If you drink enough bourbon, your humanity starts to melt away. By three o’clock this morning, I won’t care. Perhaps in an hour I’ll be anaesthetised enough to stop thinking about when I am going to cry. There’s an icy wind along with the weak snow, but I can’t be bothered to do up the buttons on my coat. I think I left my scarf behind at the café. Good. Maybe I’ll freeze to death. Picture me frozen to death in the park, broken-hearted on a bench. Robert will read about it in the local paper and … Here’s a sadder picture. I die as before on a park bench, etc., and the fucker doesn’t even read about me. I could die and no one would notice. My neighbour Ariel might notice after a few days. Catherine won’t care now, though. She didn’t say anything after I ended our relationship. She didn’t even cry. She didn’t tell me I’d made a mistake. She didn’t implore me to stop thinking about men. This almost makes me go straight to the park and undo all the buttons on my hateful red shirt, but, despite what I tell everyone, I’m no suicide.