Wright Left

by Peter Marks

  ‘Do you love this Graham?’

  ‘I know I’m happy. I know I feel secure in a relationship with him and we have fun. Yes, I guess I do love him.’

  The words stabbed Nathan with unspeakable ferocity and he just sat there in stunned shock. Love, what a weird concept. He’d never understand how the women in his life had been able to switch allegiances and affections with such stunning clarity and speed.

  ‘I’m sorry Nathan, truly I am.’

  ‘Then there’s no hope?’

  ‘Nathan, in time maybe. I know I’m a little confused about everything at the moment but I know I can’t come back to you. Maybe someday, but I’m happy now and I just can’t do it. I know you’re hurting but I didn’t think you cared that much..’ Nathan knew he was to blame if she really did think he hadn’t loved her for he’d hardly ever told her. Catch 22.

  ‘Oh God Kelly, of course I loved you! You know me well enough to know that I don’t hang around for any period of time with some-one I don’t love. Yes, I know I didn’t tell you often enough. I know I didn’t tell you how beautiful and fabulous you are. There are so many things I should have done and said but didn’t. Please forgive me..’ his voice trailed off as he tried to contain the flooding emotions. ‘Oh Kel, I know I’ve stuffed up. I’m so sorry..’ His voice was a strained choke by now.

  Kelly sat impassively opposite more confused than ever.

  ‘Nathan, can’t we be friends?’ The death sentence.

  ‘Friends? Friends! How the hell can we be friends when you go off screwing men behind my back, tell me we’re finished when it suits you and not even care what happens to me? You’ve certainly got a peculiar idea of friendship.’

  Kelly knew Nathan had every right to be angry but Graham had just sort of happened because she really didn’t think Nathan cared that much. He was always telling her to be independent, to go out and have fun whenever he had to work nights and he rarely complimented her or made her feel wanted.

  Graham was different, she knew where she stood with him. He complimented her, wouldn’t let her do anything without him, brought her gifts and made her feel loved. It was a pity he had no sense of humour, it was the one thing she’d miss desperately from Nathan.

  Sitting there, seeing him in tears, she felt so awful. She wanted to cradle him in her arms, kiss him and tell him everything was alright but the whole thing would start over and Nathan had simply exhausted her. Sitting there, Kelly realised she hadn’t lost her love for him so much as her reserves of energy and ego. Graham may be boring in comparison but he was comfortable, secure, practical.

  Normal.

  Nathan was pacing the room trying desperately to articulate the rage, the want, the hurt he felt but she seemed impervious to anything he could do or say.

  ‘Why Kelly? What great wrong did I do you to deserve this? I never strayed. I haven’t slept with any-one but you since we met over two years ago and it wasn’t for the lack of offers... I just don’t understand...’

  ________________

  This wasn’t true for Nathan understand all too well. He knew Kelly, just like those before her, had simply run out of puff with him, his weirdling ways and his never failing delusions of grandeur. Nathan felt, and had always felt, that someday he’d be very wealthy and so deserving of the women he’d had as girlfriends over the years. Nathan had made the mistake of not asking them to marry him early in the relationship before any of them realised money was so important to him. And so distant from him.

  Unfortunately, although he’d told all his girlfriends he was going to be rich, they’d spend years with him awaiting his promise to turn to reality before realising they simply couldn’t wait any longer. And left. This was not the girl’s fault, all they’d ever wanted from Nathan was some sort of secure future. All Nathan ever wanted was what the Aga Khan had. Real wealth.

  In fairness to him, it wasn’t money for money’s sake, or wealth for ego that he craved, it was what an overactive bank balance could do.

  His desire for money was complex. He’d seen, and indeed been involved in relationships that had foundered because of financial pressures. Now Nathan wasn’t dumb enough to think financial stability was a cure all but he did know relationships were tough enough already without feuds over money and how to pay the next bill.

  It was also that wealth could buy freedom from the drudgery of life. It could allow one to travel, to try different things, to see and do everything his brain told him should be seen and done in the one lifetime he had at his disposal.

  Before God disposed of him.

  ________________

  ‘Nathan, what do you want from me?’ Kelly was now feeling the surge of tears to eyes. ‘I can’t magically feel the way I once did about you. I’m so sorry if this causes you pain. I never meant to harm you but...’

  BUT Nathan thought. BUT what? Don’t past partners understand the hurt or are they just trying to get back at the person they feel has not been the Prince Charming they’d deluded themselves he may have been.

  Kelly was now crying into a lace handkerchief, battling with the fact that Nathan hadn’t done much wrong. It was just that he’d done too little right.

  ________________

  In a small house in StKilda, pacing the confines of a high ceiling room that was filled with bookcases, a bed and some antique furniture left to him by his father, Graham was nervously awaiting Kelly’s return. He kept glancing at the alarm clock by the bed. Would her ex convince her she was wrong? Would he win her back? Did she still love Nathan even though she said she didn’t? He glanced at the clock again. It was two minutes since he’d last looked.

  ________________

  ‘So what does the fabulous Graham do for a job? Steal other people’s property,’ Nathan hissed, his anger beginning to overwhelm his own admitted inadequacies.

  ‘He’s an Accountant,’ Kelly sniffled.

  ‘Oh Christ Kel, have you given up completely? An Accountant! Christ, next it’ll be a mortician or a politician ..the three most boring professions in the entire universe.’

  ‘Nathan don’t. I didn’t come here to argue or fight..’

  ‘Then just piss off will you before I do or say something I’ll regret,’ Nathan said quietly, the truth finally flooding his hammered senses. She wasn’t his. She wasn’t coming back.

  It had been as futile as he’d thought and he was sick of being so Wright all the time.

  ________________

  He was staring out of the window, about to turn toward the clock to check the time again when he saw her car pull up outside. It halted under the lamppost and he watched as the lights of the car dimmed to darkness. He heard the engine cease, saw her step from the suddenly illuminated interior and searched her face for some sign as to what had transpired.

  Fifteen minutes later Graham was with Kelly in their bed. She was in tears when he’d raced downstairs to meet her, obviously upset. But she was obviously still his so he slept the sleep Nathan had once enjoyed. The sleep of the truly content.

  ________________

  Nathan sat on the couch, his head in his hands, his eyes fountains trying to fathom what went wrong. Why hadn’t handled it better? Why he hadn’t dropped to his knees and begged her to come home? Why hadn’t he said all he needed, why hadn’t he said all those things he had rehearsed weeks to tell her?

  But he hadn’t. He’d simply fucked up.

  Chapter Twenty

  WRIGHT OFF

  TIME WAS THE WORST ENEMY. The damn thing crawled, it loitered, it hardly moved although the weeks had done what weeks tend to do. They went. But they passed sickeningly slowly for the heartbroken Wright who was having trouble coping with such a calamity.

  The days had fled, Kelly really had gone. She hadn’t called again, she hadn’t appeared at his door to say she was wrong, that Graham was a shit with a wilted sausage and she wanted Nathan and his wiener back. Nor had she written to ease his hurt, or calm his stomach which
seemed to churn with all the leaden regularity of hyperactive cement mixer. Gone, she hadn’t semaphored, she hadn’t telexed. She’d not sent an offer of conciliation tied about the spindle leg of a Nathan homing carrier pigeon.

  Like a cheap magician, she’d disappeared completely from his life. And he’d wanted her for his wife.

  God, life was such a farce.

  ________________

  Wright was angry. Then frightened. The nights were the worst. He couldn’t sleep and he became more and more terrified of the imminent return to the bad old days when another love, one long before Kelly, had also deserted him.

  He hadn’t coped then, he wasn’t coping now.

  Alone at home, staring from the window, memories of that hideous past came flooding back. Memories of the shrieking madness which had, until Kelly’s entrance into his life, possessed him. And now repossessed him.

  His resolve was broken, his soul sickening from too many long and desperate nights and Nathan N. A. Wright knew one thing with imperious, immutable certainty.

  Nathan N. A. Wright knew he was in trouble.

  ‘You’re in trouble Gnat,’ he observed to the mirrored insect alter ego staring blandly back at him. Casually picking up a can of Deodorant from the dresser, he blasted a floating mosquito from the precincts of a vault bedroom.

  The insect died a quick but perfumed death.

  Standing half naked in a pair of tattered shorts, he wandered amongst laundry that clung to the carpet like peeling skin and considered transforming himself from human to insect, considering it would be easier to escape his current predicament on six legs, two wings rather than the genetic two he currently possessed.

  But sighting the curled remains of the deodorant dead mossie, he decided not.

  ________________

  Nathan referred to himself as Gnat whenever he was truly pissed off with himself or the world. At this moment, Wright now, Nathan was none too impressed with either.

  His habit of shortening his name was a direct contradiction of standard practice. When he was content, rare as that was, his usual procedure was to condense a person’s full and proper name down to a monosyllabic grunt.

  It went like this: When he was pleased with people Kelly became Kel, Colin - Col, Martin - Mart, Jenny - The Devil, Fionna - Fi, Nicola - Nikkie and Ceil - Ceil (mainly because Wright had never discovered a lazier way of saying it).

  Conversely, when he was shitted off with any off them Kel became Kelly, Col was Colin, Mart slipped back to Martin et al.

  But Ceil remained Ceil, impervious to change.

  ________________

  With the afternoon sun streaming brightly through a web encrusted window, drinking straight from a fast emptying bottle of 70% proof rum, Nathan was tired and disconsolate and in mortal fear for his future.

  Standing before the mirror, talking to himself, making little sense, he knew that if life refused to love him, and his love continued to refuse him, he was as good as dead.

  From prior, perilous experience Nathan knew that should Kelly not return soon, or worse never, he was in for a protracted bout of majestic insanity.

  It had happened before and it was happening again.

  Scratching a five day unshaven chin, Wright decided that if the rum didn’t improve things in the next five minutes he’d go hunting for a new drug - then a new home in some ancient asylum where he could park his tattered remains and chronic despair.

  Wright drank to exorcise the sadness but it only seemed to exercise it. It was all too frightening, all too familiar and so sickeningly reminiscent of his old self, the self pre Kelly, the Nathan of four years ago.

  The abomination had arisen and was again incarnate. Nathan was sliding down the chute of the suicidal.

  ‘Well Gnat, you’ve done it again. Brilliant! You stupid bastard, you never learn do you? Women are poison and you’ll never discover an antidote you snivelling, dim witted, cretinous turd..,’ he abused, arms flailing, two beady eyes firmly set on the demented creature in the mirror before him busily involved in St. Vitus’ Dance .

  ‘Yep, you’re a real gem...a solid gold fuckwit. Christ, if god made you in its image then this world is in real trouble.’ The mirror was hanging about waiting for something more attractive to show its face. Unfortunately it got Wright instead as he continued trying to talk himself into a better mood. Or immediate suicide.

  But his abuse was useless. He felt useless. He felt unloved, and tired, and beyond repair and knew with great certainty that if Kelly didn’t return to love him, if he couldn’t patch the cracks which had appeared in his life since she’d left, he’d be back at the shrinks - back on his back, back on the brink. Back on Serepax and the 30mgm coma of a tangerine tango.

  Bonjour booze, hello lunacy, farewell kidney’s.

  ________________

  Nathan was miserable. Nathan was divorced and didn’t like the decree. He heard a gentle thump, thump on the front door, Kelly, at last, he thought optimistically, speeding downstairs, his strangled heart sinking when he opened the door.

  Mormons. He was in no mood for their religion so he told them to fuck off, suggesting God lived next door so they should try there, slamming the door in their devout faces.

  Disappointed and delirious with grief, he trudged into the kitchen and made a rum laced coffee, pissed off that they’d discovered his latest hide out. Paranoia expanding, he presumed his mother had donated his address and made a mental note to have her shot come the revolution.

  Kelly had disappeared from his days and now he had nothing. Or so he felt, feeling truly lost and very sorry for himself. He couldn’t have her, couldn’t forget her. He was getting old, getting no-where, was just another of the men on pause.

  Back in the bedroom, angry as all hell, he decided to write about the cause of his angst.

  ‘Kelly is a kunt,’ he scrawled in large shaky script across the mirror using the lipstick Kelly had left behind those many weeks ago; lipstick he’d brought with him during the move, the only truly personal reminder of when he’d last seen her - last slept with her. Last slept with any-one. He was suffering enforced celibacy and his dick didn’t like it.

  He swore he hated her and called her a kunt to prove it.

  ________________

  It certainly proved one thing. It proved he was pissed and in dire need of a dictionary. As the weeks passed, he’d notice that the only cunt he could lay his hands on was indeed between the pages of a dictionary. Sure as hell none appeared where they really belonged.

  Between the sheets of his bed.

  ________________

  Nathan collapsed. Tears leaking from red eyes, he dove into the doona, covering his face with his hands and curling into the foetal position. He was exhausted. His brain was a carnival, a freak show of wild thoughts and side show recriminations. Overly optimistic, he’d spent the last few weeks preparing responses to Kelly should she give him another chance. (Fat chance). Responses like a shaft of steel inserted through her splendid jugular, or a sharp stake through her ice heart, or a hand gun greeting of chill farewell and silver bullets.

  Alone in his room he rehearsed speeches like: ‘Do you think you can repair the damage by saying you’re sorry,’ or ‘You really don’t image I’ll have you back after what you’ve done.’ He played the scene over and over again, preparing what to do when she begged forgiveness, what to say when she shed tears of remorse. That she would never apologise, would never reappear, never entered his head. He didn’t want reality to enter there so he locked it shut.

  Closed the gutter gates to listen to the predator voices filling his bent brain.

  ________________

  Another week passed and Kelly and Graham were obviously doing fine because she still hadn’t tried to reach Nathan again. The kettle sung shrilly from the kitchen downstairs but he let it exhaust itself and stuck his thumb in his mouth trying to discover a way of feeling better that didn’t cause him to be hungover.


  The thumb was soothing but hardly an answer so he uncurled himself and poured another drink, one part whisky, two parts gin, three parts brain damage. He tossed it back in one gulp with a dull click as his throat accepted the challenge. His stomach wasn’t so obliging and he gagged momentarily as the inner walls wailed. The booze blew his brain and he felt better. Then felt worse. Then felt better. The waves crashed over him. Nathan crashed out.

  ________________

  Saturday and nothing had changed. He was talking to himself again.

  ‘You never learn do you, you stupid bastard! You did it again. I warned you!’ He said feeling down, wanting to feel some female up, two slug eyes fixed firmly on the pallid countenance peering back at him from the mirror where his best friend lived.

  Wright had made friends with himself and himself was as mad as he was so Wright tried to talk some sense into himself. Himself wasn’t interested. It was useless. If things remained as they were, if he couldn’t fight off the gloom that enveloped him like a cocooned larvae he’d surely have to die.

  Stepping back, he tripped on a shoe and parachuted to earth, landing softly on the mattress laundry. He didn’t get up. There wasn’t much point, he just lay there for an hour until the phone rang and gave him a reason to rise.

  ________________

  ‘Who?’ Nathan doodled on the pad by the phone while Nicola told him.

  ‘Your nemesis.’

  ‘Sorry, that job’s already taken,’ Wright advised, wondering what Kelly was up. Up to her throat with Grahams hot dog he didn’t doubt. ‘There is a vacancy in my bed however.’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting’.

  ‘Don’t be vertical, come try the Nathan Wright Horizontal Diet.’

  ‘What, one look at you nude and I’d be off food for a week.....’