The New Neighbors

by Simon Lelic

  And that’s when it came to me. The memory of that little package I’d tucked away in one of my old handbags. Fuck Jack, fuck being used, fuck fucking sobriety. After resisting for so long, the alternative was suddenly way more appealing.

  —

  WHEN JACK GOT home I was sitting on my yoga mat. Still in my slightly damp pajamas. My hair a frizzy disaster probably, from all that steam. Toothpaste drool like a slug trail down my front. My anger hadn’t diminished. Instead, thanks to the half a gram or so of slightly urine-tinged coke I’d consumed (in my more discerning days I would have had words to say to Howard but I wasn’t presently in any mood to be fussy) it had become more focused. Honed, like that kitchen knife we were only vaguely aware then had gone missing. I had no idea what the time was. Too early for Jack to be home on any normal day but as this wasn’t turning out to be a normal day I wasn’t all that surprised to hear him come back. I’d go as far as to say I’d been expecting him.

  “Syd? Are you at home? Why’s all your stuff here?” Jack’s voice calling from the hallway.

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t move.

  “Syd?”

  I heard him head into the kitchen. After he failed to find me there, he came back along the hallway and took the stairs two at a time. I felt a surge of revulsion as he drew near.

  “Syd? Are you in there?”

  After the pounding of his feet, his voice outside the door was oddly hushed. I guessed he must have assumed that as I wasn’t at work, I must have been ill.

  His smile when he saw me sitting there was half frown.

  “Syd? What are you doing in here? Are you OK? Listen, I . . . Something’s happened. At work.” He gave me a look then. I could see the guilt but it was masked behind regret.

  I tossed him my phone. Threw it at him, really. He was so surprised he only just caught it. And I think that’s when he noticed the little makeup mirror beside me. The dusting of powder, the rolled-up banknote. The state of me, basically. The fire in my broad black eyes.

  I stood and pushed past him. By the time Jack reacted, I was already halfway down the stairs.

  “Syd?” He sounded incredulous. “Syd, what the . . .”

  I heard him trailing after me. I went straight from the bottom of the staircase into the living room and couldn’t resist slamming the door.

  I was by the window when I heard it open again behind me.

  “Wanker,” I spat, spinning, and Jack recoiled as though I’d slapped him. “You lying, arrogant wanker!”

  “What the hell, Syd? What have I done?”

  He was still holding my phone. The screen, I noticed, was blank.

  “Look at the picture, Jack. Look at the picture and then you tell me.”

  “What picture?” Jack stared dumbly at my iPhone. He hit the home button and swiped the screen with his finger. “It’s locked,” he said, looking up.

  “For fuck’s sake.” I marched across and snatched it from him. I swiped, jabbed in my code. Got it wrong, jabbed again. Harder this time, slower. The picture appeared and I held it two inches from Jack’s nose. He recoiled as though I’d meant to hit him, then gradually his eyes began to focus. His face became a portrait of confusion, so perfect it must have been practiced.

  “Amira?” he said.

  I barked out a laugh. “Amira. How exotic.” I sniffed, wiped my nostrils with a knuckle.

  Jack had somehow taken hold of the phone. He was studying the picture, pinching and zooming, and the movement of his fingers looked to me like a caress. I flung out a hand and knocked the phone from his grip. It hit the granite surround of the fireplace, and the screen—finally—shattered.

  “Jesus, Syd!” Jack was left holding thin air. He was looking at me now as though I were as cracked as my iPhone.

  “Get out, Jack. Get the fuck out of this house.”

  “Syd. Seriously. I don’t know what you think that picture shows, but I promise you it’s completely—”

  “Get out! Get out or I swear to God I’ll throw you out!”

  Which sounded so ridiculous I’m surprised Jack managed not to laugh.

  “She’s just a tenant! Someone who came to me for help. Although she didn’t, her sister did. This thing at work I was trying to tell you about, it—”

  “I don’t want to hear it, Jack! I don’t want to hear about your little harem. Although, actually, I’m curious. Was the sister not young enough for you? Is that why you ended up with her?” I flicked my chin toward the carcass of my phone.

  “Ended up with? I wasn’t sleeping with her, Syd! I wasn’t sleeping with anyone! I was just . . .” Jack paused all of a sudden and whatever had come into his head caused it to tilt. “Where did you get it anyway? That picture. Did you . . .” He straightened, as though sensing he had cause to be affronted. “Have you been following me?”

  “What? No, I haven’t been fucking following you!”

  “So where did you get it?”

  “It doesn’t matter how I got it. All that matters is what it shows. Don’t tell me you’re denying that’s you.”

  “Why would I deny it? It’s a picture of me standing in the street!”

  “It’s more than that and you know it!”

  Jack exhaled. “Where did you get it, Syd?” he repeated. “If you’re going to accuse me of something, at least tell me where you’re getting your evidence. Or are you too coked up right now to remember?”

  “Fuck you. Someone sent it to me. OK? It was on my e-mail when I woke up.”

  “Who?”

  “What?”

  “Who sent it to you?”

  “Just . . .” I shook my head. “I don’t know. It was just some random AOL address. Letters and numbers. No name.”

  Jack stooped to pick up my phone, tried to get it working again. It bit him.

  “Ow. Shit.” He sucked at his finger, bloodied by the shattered glass.

  I sniffed out a smile. “Serves you right. I hope you get fucking gangrene.”

  Jack ignored me and tried again with the phone. “It’s buggered. You’ve completely buggered it.” He was staring at it, fiddling with the power switch. “Not that it matters. I know exactly who sent it to you. Although I’m surprised he bothered to do it anonymously. I’d have thought he would have wanted to claim credit.”

  “What are you talking about? Who are you talking about?”

  “Bloody Bart, that’s who.”

  “Bart? Why would Bart—”

  “Because he wants to get into your knickers, that’s why! He wants my job, too. My promotion. He wants to screw me, to give himself a chance of screwing you.”

  Now I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “That’s ridiculous. Bart doesn’t want to screw me. He’s your friend, Jack—remember?”

  “That’s what I thought, too. Until he got me fired.”

  “Fired? You’ve been fired?”

  “Fired. Suspended. Same difference.”

  I pressed my palms to my temples. That focus I’d been cultivating had started to dissipate. What I wanted was another line of coke. Not wanted. Needed.

  “Anyway, I should have known you’d defend him.”

  I looked up. “What?”

  “Bart. I should have known you’d defend him.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “What do you think it means?”

  I gaped. “You’re the one who’s been sleeping around, Jack! Don’t try and turn this around on me!”

  “I’m not turning anything around. I’m stating the facts, that’s all.”

  “Jesus, Jack. And I thought I was messed up. Your parents have made you so insecure you can’t even trust your best friend. Your girlfriend.”

  Jack recoiled. He seemed to flounder briefly but then recovered himself. He met my eye. “Yeah, well,” he said. “It cou
ld be worse. At least I’m not a bloody drug addict.”

  I don’t know what it was that finally tipped me over the edge. That Jack had struck so close to the mark, probably. That little raw bit deep inside that when someone touches it causes us to kick out purely as a reflex. And that’s exactly what I did. I flew at him with everything flailing, so that he had no choice but to reverse into the hall. In the end he managed to catch hold of my arms but not before one of my fists cuffed his cheek.

  “Bloody hell, Syd!”

  I wriggled and twisted myself free. Jack held out a palm like he was trying to stop traffic. With his other hand he was dabbing at the spot beneath his eye where I’d punched him, checking for some evidence I’d drawn blood.

  “You hit me!”

  “Good! I was trying to!”

  Jack looked again at the tips of his fingers, determined to produce something that would show how much he was hurt.

  “Get out, Jack.” I was breathing heavily, exhaling my words. “Just fucking go.”

  I think Jack briefly considered putting up a fight. He would have won if he had, because I’d expended all the energy I had left. After all that coke it was time for the comedown, which for me always feels like I’ve been drained by a Dementor. Usually the only thing that cures it is another big fat line but all I wanted to do this time was curl up beneath my duvet in a ball.

  Jack turned and snatched up his keys. The bowl we keep them in tipped from the sideboard but he didn’t pause long enough to right it. He slammed the door so hard it rebounded and as I sank to the floor I watched him storm into the street. And that was the moment it first struck me, the worry that’s been gnawing at me ever since. Jack said before that it feels like he’s losing me but the danger is we’re losing each other. And I realize that’s part of this—that it’s the point of this whole sordid game—but even so I’m worried I don’t know how to stop it. That’s what scares me the most, Jack. That maybe now there’s no way to stop it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  JACK

  WE’RE GOING TO the police. OK, Syd? We’re going to take what we’ve written and we’re going to explain, to tell them everything we know. It’s what we said we would do at the beginning if it ever came down to it, and I don’t see how we’ve been left with any other choice. Besides, it’s clear to me now. It’s obvious, the way it was obvious to you right at the start.

  First, though, we have to finish what we’ve begun. It won’t take long. We’re almost there. The only part left to tell is the bit we’ve both been dreading. The part that makes me sound guilty and Syd, in her words, like she’s going insane. Which I admit isn’t all that far from what I thought at the beginning of this, too. I figured Syd was just reacting to what had happened to Elsie. That she was putting two and two together and coming up with one: one cause, one threat, one absurd rationalization. I couldn’t see how such disparate elements could fit together. I didn’t want to see it. It was easier—less frightening—to view what was happening as a run of bad luck. But imagine, I don’t know, that your vision gets blurry. That you’re getting headaches. That sometimes when you cough, you cough up blood. Perhaps you’ll be able to fool yourself that everything’s fine, that none of the symptoms are related, but to an onlooker the reality will seem self-evident. That there’s something darker at work. Something deadly. Something, to stop it from killing you, that sooner or later you’re going to have to face.

  —

  IT WAS BARELY lunchtime when I got to the Evening Star. I mentioned before that I’m not much of a drinker, but this was one of those occasions when the pub seemed about the only appropriate place for me to go. Syd and I had been to our new local once before, but only for form’s sake. You know, to say we had. But even though it looks OK from the outside, the Evening Star wasn’t the kind of place I’d normally have been in any hurry to visit again. It wasn’t rough or anything, not that I witnessed, just a bit depressing. It was just your typical south London boozer. The type of establishment where if you were to ask to see the wine list, you’d be offered a choice of either red or white. There was no music, no Sky Sports, not a gourmet burger in sight. Before the smoking ban the air inside would have been more carbon monoxide than oxygen, and since then the odors that had previously been masked had taken over: urine and bleach blocks in the area closest to the toilets, soggy bar towels and stale lager everywhere else.

  “Can I help you?”

  The bartender, a man with faded green tattoos on his forearms, whose age might have been anything between forty and sixty, was looking at me as though he suspected I’d wandered in lost. It wasn’t quite An American Werewolf in London, but for a moment I was transported from SW17 all the way to the Yorkshire moors.

  “Pint of Foster’s, please,” I said. “No, wait,” I amended. “Jack Daniel’s and Coke. A double.”

  The barman hesitated slightly before picking up a glass, as though he was still weighing up whether to serve me. He pumped two shots of Bell’s from the dispenser without checking whether I was happy with the substitution and then turned to face me once again.

  “Ice?” he said, and I shook my head. He filled the glass partway, so that my drink was half whisky, half sugary brown water. “There’s a ten-pound minimum,” he said, when I presented my credit card.

  “Keep it,” I answered. “I’m going to want more than one.”

  I carried my glass to a table beside the dusty, unused fireplace and settled on the least-stained chair. Other than a guy seated at the bar with his dog lying at his feet, there were only three other patrons in a room that was maybe a third of the area of our ground floor: two blokes seated together by the window, nursing the final inches of their pints, and another loner at the table nearest the door. He was doing a crossword, from the look of things. Heads had turned when I’d come in, but once I’d settled it was only that dog under the bar stool that continued to stare. I tipped my glass to it, then drained half my drink in one swallow.

  What a day. I mean, seriously—what an utterly crappy day.

  First work, then Syd. And caught in between, Sabeen and her entire family. I still couldn’t get my head around everything that had happened, how it had happened, when the morning had started out like any other. It was that photo that was foremost in my mind, the one showing me and Amira. Syd had only let me see it for a moment, but there was no denying that it hadn’t looked good. I recalled Ali’s teasing, the way I’d tried covering my embarrassment with a joke, but no one was laughing now. Least of all Syd. Although how Syd could think I would cheat on her—with a seventeen-year-old, for heaven’s sake!—was beyond me. And based on a photograph, which in Syd’s eyes had been enough to dispel any reasonable doubt. I’d been accused, convicted and sentenced before I’d even known I was on trial.

  And Bart. My so-called friend. It was what he’d done that stunned me above all. As well as telling our boss about how I’d helped Sabeen, he’d e-mailed that photo to Syd. More than that, he’d spied on me, picked his moment, taken that photo and then made sure Syd saw it, all while hiding behind his bullshit, made-up e-mail address and his phony friendship with me. I couldn’t believe I’d trusted him, even further with some things than I’d trusted Syd. It made me worry, briefly, about what else he might have up his sleeve—what other secrets of mine he planned to share. But it occurred to me fairly quickly that it hardly mattered. He’d lost me my job, sabotaged my relationship with my girlfriend. Things were already about as bad as they could get.

  I’d had four double whisky and Cokes by the time he walked in. Elsie’s father. My favorite neighborhood nutcase. He spotted me immediately and paused for half a step, but when he noted the bartender watching him, he headed directly to the bar.

  I must have been more drunk than I realized, because I sniggered. Aloud.

  Elsie’s father dropped his chin toward his shoulder. “Is something funny?”

  Which struck me as funny
in itself. I mean, how clichéd could you get? He might as well have accused me of spilling the pint the barman had just placed in front of him.

  I managed this time to keep my amusement to myself. “Just the day I’m having,” I said.

  Elsie’s father continued to stare, then after a second or two turned toward his drink.

  I should have left then. I’d finished what was left of my whisky and Coke, and I wasn’t particularly taken with the prospect of approaching the bar to order another. But as I was contemplating my next move, it occurred to me that I would need to go up to the bar anyway to settle my tab. And if I was going to do that, I might as well get another drink. Because I didn’t want to leave yet. And I certainly didn’t want Elsie’s father to believe I was only going because of him. So screw it, I thought. Screw him, screw Bart, screw everyone. If I wanted another drink, I’d bloody well order one. I’d had enough of pandering to what people thought. Of modifying my behavior to please others, only to have them stab me in the back.

  I carried my empties to the bar with me.

  “Settle up?” the barman said.

  I shook my head. “Same again.”

  The barman glanced at Elsie’s father, then took one of my dirty glasses and reached toward the optics.

  “You sure you haven’t had enough?” said a voice from the bar stool beside me. “What did you do, hit your head throwing up in the toilet?”