Wright Left

by Peter Marks

  ________________

  Salvation arrived late. Hours later, half a keg on, Wright was still haunting Nicola and complaining about the standard of female she’d been introducing him to when something suitable suddenly appeared like a divine apparition through the doorway at the far end of the smoke filled room.

  ‘Hey Nik. Do you know her?’ He asked, motioning toward the door.

  ‘Know her. I’ve slept with her.’ This was news to Nathan who’d never suspected Nicola was bent. The information certainly interested Wright though who, like most males, fantasised about women doing it to each other. Nicola noticed the way he was looking at her and patted him on the head.

  ‘Down boy. I should have known you’d jump to the wrong conclusion,’ she frowned, waving to the girl Wright wanted.

  ‘Hi Sis, what’s happening?’ The apparition asked.

  Jesus, I never knew you had a sister, and what a sister Nathan thought silently, reaching in his pocket. Lighting another cigarette, trying to look casually disinterested.

  ‘Stacy, this is Nathan. Nathan’s got the hots for you.’ Nathan almost choked on the cigarette as Nicola’s sister offered a slim hand in warm greeting. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Not for long,’ Nicola giggled while Stacy stared curiously at Wright.

  ‘Nathan? You’re the mad one aren’t you?’ She asked. It was not an auspicious beginning.

  ‘Christ Stacy, that’s subtle. Why don’t you ask him if he’s a criminal, or paedophile or sleeps with inflatable women ...on second thought ignore the last question. Nathan’s got the pump down his pants.’ A comment which catapulted Nicola and Stacy into each other’s arms laughing hysterically and slapping each other on the back as if they’d just heard the world’s all time funniest joke. The world’s all time funniest joke, standing, watching the performance was not so amused.

  ‘Okay you two, enough. I surrender. I realise insanity tends to be hereditary but your family is setting new standards..’ His speech did not have the desired effect.

  The two of them just laughed even louder.

  ________________

  Niceness, not insanity, ran in the family. What could have been a disaster wasn’t for Stacy was as nice as Nicola. Because Wright had never met her before, and they weren’t close friends, she was also more attractive. Once the not ugly sisters had finished laughing at him, Nicola left them alone. And Nathan went to work.

  Following an impressive display of charm and black belt grovelling, Nathan managed to convince her that although he may be mad, he was at least funny ha ha not funny ga ga no matter what Nikkie said.

  ________________

  What was utterly depressing to Nathan was that during the conversation he discovered something unexpected. He was still haunted. Even chatting to someone as interesting, as bright, as inordinately sexy as Stacy, Kelly kept appearing in his mind like some unwelcome guest star so that like an irate usher, he had to keep kicking her off the set when she strolled mid-sentence into his head, threatening to disrupt his performance.

  Nathan wished she’d buggar off and leave him alone (which she’d indeed done).

  Unfortunately, it was becoming clear that Kelly had left a movie of their past together running in a constant spool through the theatre of his mind and he was quite unable to close the curtains of memory or shut the vivid reminiscences projecting through his brain down.

  A terrifying fact was now evident.

  Nathan now realised that he’d been chronically deluded in imagining he could cast off the emotional ties Kelly had almost strangled him with if only he could find someone to supersede her. Nathan had honestly thought that much of his recent sadness was compounded by his being lonely, left single without an other girl to take his mind off Kelly.

  Now, there with Stacy, the horrible truth was revealing itself and all its ghastly ramifications. Now he’d met someone he really liked. But!

  But she wasn’t Kelly and he now knew he was in deeper shit than he’d ever imagined possible.

  ________________

  ‘Nathan?’

  ‘Sorry, I was off with the pixies.’

  ‘There’s a few fairies drinking Chardonnay at the bottom of the garden if you’d prefer getting off with them,’ Stacy giggled, pointing out the gaggle of transsexuals dressed outrageously in garish outfits with overly made-up faces and wearing six inch healed stilettos who were sipping wine from long stemmed glasses on the trestle bridge that spanned the large, exotically stocked fish pond out back.

  ‘No thanks. I prefer Pinot noir. And women,’ Nathan smiled, wondering when Kelly would get out of the bed in his head.

  ________________

  Parked outside, the small vehicle’s smoking exhaust adding to the rapid depletion of earth’s ozone umbrella, Nathan turned in the seat next to her to thank her for driving him home.

  ‘Would you like a coffee?’ He asked hopefully, attempting to look seductive.

  ‘No thanks, it’s late. I’m really tired and I have to work tomorrow so I need some beauty sleep.’ (So much for Nathan trying to look seductive).

  ‘I can offer some ugly sleep.’ Nathan assured her truthfully knowing the vision from hell he awoke to every morning. Namely him.

  ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ Stacy declined wisely.

  ‘I promise I’ll only talk to you,’ he said, hoping this would not be true. ‘That should put you to sleep fairly smartly,’ he added, knowing this would be true.

  Stacy concurred. ‘True, but no thanks,’ she grinned, her cheerful face reassuring Nathan that he shouldn’t take her reluctance to spend any further time, or expend any fumbling loin locked energy with him tonight, personally.

  ‘Do you mind if I ring you tomorrow? We can catch that movie if you like.’

  ‘I’d like that.’ Stacy said sweetly.

  Nathan said good-night, climbing from the car searching his pockets for the keys, staggering half inebriated for the front door.

  ‘Nathan...’ Stacy was calling to him. Hoping that maybe she’d had second thoughts, that she was about to offer herself to him, Wright spun immediately about to wander back to the car.

  ‘You’ll need a number if you’re going to ring me.’

  Bummer. Disappointed, Nathan rolled up a sleeve then thrust a naked arm through the passenger side window.

  ‘Here, don’t worry about putting it on paper, carve it instead,’ he said hoping she had a pen and not a literal mind and a three inch flick knife

  ‘You won’t forget and wash it off?’ She asked, writing her name and number in blue biro on the skin pad. Nathan laughed relieved.

  ‘Didn’t Nicola tell you? I don’t wash often. Considering the frequency I shower, this tattoo might still be visible in the year 2010.’

  ________________

  Not bad, it only took him seven and a half minutes to locate the keyhole and get the door open. Nathan threw his keys on the coffin and slumped on the couch. There was a loud scream.

  ‘Get off me you fat turd!’

  Some welcome. Thrusting a hand under the couch cushion, he located the source of the screams. It was Marilyn, looking most annoyed and almost flat for the first time since well prior to puberty

  ‘You almost squashed me, you great pissed turd.’

  ‘Marilyn, language! Is that any way to speak to your maker?’

  ‘God you ain’t.’

  ‘Alive you ain’t so we’re even,’ Nathan mumbled, slumping back on the couch, switching on the television, flicking stations trying to locate something worth watching. It was 3.26am and there wasn’t much on offer.

  ‘How was the party?’

  ‘Good I met this really nice girl...’ Nathan said, casting his shoes off and making himself comfortable.

  ‘NICE!’

  ‘Yes, NICE!’ He emphasised, changing channels. ‘I know it’s a term normally reserved for the overweight daughters of my mother’s girlfriends but, as puerile as it sounds,
she was nice.’

  ‘Jesus, you are depressed,’ Marilyn advised, making herself comfortable on the cushion next to him.

  ‘You ain’t wrong baby. I think this girl’s terrific but I can’t evict Kelly from the hovel in my head. What the fuck do I do?’

  ‘Suicide,’ Marilyn suggested, changing Wright’s channel.

  ‘You don’t have anything less drastic to suggest I suppose?’

  The better looking dummy turned to the actual dummy. ‘Nathan. Realise your life is of no consequence to nobody. Considering your recent dark moods, you’re only chance of being popular again in your entire evolution is when you keel over. Christ Nathan, people care but they don’t want to stay perpetually involved in your misguided martyrdom. Have you any idea how many of your friends you’ve bored into avoidance? Or how long you’ve been in mourning for Kelly who obviously doesn’t give a shit that you’re suffering? Wake up to yourself you pickled half-wit! No-one cares anymore, you’ve exhausted every-one with your constant demanding depression.’

  ‘Crap. Nicola cared, Nicola helped.’

  ‘So she’s a freak. What has every other friend done?’

  ‘Run.’

  ‘So? What’s your conclusion oh ever blue one?’

  ‘Life sucks. Friends desert.’

  This was totally untrue for most of his friends hadn’t deserted him.

  They merely avoided him like the plague.

  ________________

  So Stacy had left him with a list, not her lust. When Nathan finally woke up, he found hieroglyphics for the horny etched in blue biro on an otherwise pale arm. Crawling off the couch, the TV still blaring, he lethargically made it to the kitchen where he poured himself a whisky mixed with coffee, made some toast, brushing several layers of carbon from the burnt bread before sitting in the lounge to eat his idea of a nutritious breakfast.

  There was an unexpected guest there. ‘What are you doing here?’ Nathan asked Adolf who was propped on the cushions next to his breakfast.

  ‘Invading Poland. Vat does it look like?’

  ‘What have you done with Marilyn? When I fell asleep last night she was still watching television, lecturing me.’

  ‘I ate her.’

  Wright grabbed Adolf around his brown, swastika encrusted uniformed black tied neck then threw Herr Adolf on his wire spine back, prying the clipped moustached mouth apart and searching his innards. Empty as Wright’s life.

  ‘Okay, where is she?’

  ‘In ze cupboard vith Herr Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi doing dezpicable tings....’

  ‘You mean the Mahatma?’

  ‘I mean ze randy lettle vun in ze loinclosz und glazzes who iz forever tryingg to revorm me’

  ‘But not Marilyn apparently.’

  Nathan gave up speaking to the equally demented, uncomfortable that the dummy was making more sense than the morning. How had Adolf gotten out of the cupboard? How had Marilyn gotten back in? Is there a God? Why are my socks walking out the door?

  ________________

  It was Saturday morning, late Saturday morning before Nathan had drunk enough, was drunk enough, for his courage to be restored and holding an unsteady arm in front of his face, drinking the last of the Gin, reading the number aloud, he dialled her number.

  ‘Stacy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Nathan.’

  ‘Nathan?’

  ‘Nathan.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t know any Nathan.’ Stacy tried to remember. when she’d last been drunk enough to spend the night with someone whose name she couldn’t remember? Even pissed, it was unusual for her to give her number to a stranger, so who was this person? Something suddenly occurred to her. Fucking Nicola.

  ‘My sister knows a Nathan. He’s quite mad apparently. It’s not you is it?’

  ‘Guilty.’ Stacy’s face contracted to a tight fist, utterly pissed off that her sister seemed to have made good her constant threat. Nicola must have given the madman her number, she’d threatened to do this for years, basically whenever they’d fought but Stacy never thought she’d actually do it. I must have really upset her this time. I wonder what I did?

  ‘Did Nicola give you my number?’

  She didn’t seem thrilled to hear from him. Why? He hadn’t misbehaved or molested her, he knew that. So why this attitude of denial? Was it some game? Or perhaps she’d had second thought’s about going out with him? Strange. Wright had heard of women who gave out false numbers to avoid a second date but he’d never heard of a female freely arming him with her correct phone number then behaving as if they’d never met.

  Which they hadn’t. Or rather Stacy hadn’t.

  ‘Is this some sort of joke?’ Nathan enquired, deciding it must be. Maybe Nicola got at her and told Stacy to give him a hard time?

  ‘I was about to ask you the same question. Come on, Nicola did give you my number didn’t she!’ Stacy was beginning to lose patience.

  ‘You did.’ Nathan was beginning to lose patience.

  ‘And just when did I donate this information to you?’

  Now Nathan was beginning to worry. She didn’t sound like she was joking. She sounded gallingly serious.

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘Last night eh? Well, for your edification I was out at a restaurant with friends and I don’t recall you being at, or even under our table.’

  Suddenly, something occurred to him.

  ‘What day is it?’

  ‘International day of the demented apparently.’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘Friday.’

  ‘Not Saturday?’

  ‘Not Saturday.’ Stacy was perplexed by the man’s confusion. Her sister had been right, this guy really was crazy. ‘If I gave you my phone last night, when did I give it to you?’ She enquired, determined to expose such a blatant lie.

  ‘At the party in Hawthorn.’

  ‘I told you, I was out with friends last night. Quit while you’re behind, the least you could have done is invented a less ridiculous scenario.’

  ‘We met at Angela’s party in Hawthorn.’

  ‘I am going to party in Hawthorn ... and it is Angela’s but that’s tonight so your story is somewhat premature. Ring me tomorrow when I’ve had a chance to find a friendly time warp or trip over the Tardus and speak with Dr. Who who’ll undoubtedly verify your story....’

  ‘Friday night?’ Wright interrupted, the bulb in his brain beginning to flicker.

  ‘Today is Friday so it follows that tonight is Friday night. Are you on drugs or just trying to annoy me? I repeat, last night I was out at Mietta’s with friends.’

  ‘Thursday night?’

  ‘You’re a genius,’ she sneered.

  There were only two explanations. Either she was crazy or he was. Wright, unfortunately, knew if he had any money on it, his bet was on the latter.

  ‘You’re sure today isn’t Saturday?’ Wright asked quietly.

  ‘I told you it’s Friday so please let me get on with my work.’ Stacy sighed, thinking some joke Nicola, I’m going to kill you when I get hold of you grinding the paper knife in her hand into the wooden desk.

  She worked as a fashion editor for a fashion magazine and was pouring over some transparencies of hunky men in skimpy costumes that had arrived yesterday (i.e. Thursday) from the New York office and the last thing she needed was the distraction of some maniac interrupting her ogling.

  Suddenly, a dim bulb radiated in the even dimmer recesses of the Wright mind and he realised there were two solutions to this confusion.

  And one way to the settle it.

  Lying unread on the bench in front of him, still bound by the elastic band they’d been delivered in, the day’s papers may confirm or deny all. Cutting the bonds with the bread knife, Wright checked the date on the masthead of all three papers. Oh God, he gasped, she was telling the truth. It WAS Friday. So the chemical crisis had returned. It was a Serepax Tango
, it WAS a Doubleday.

  So the crazy vagabond had returned to warp reality and stop clocks, he frowned. Basically, at home alone, the days had no names and no relevance so he’d forgotten all about the odd occurrence.

  ‘Tell Nicola that I’m going to kill her when I get hold of her. I’ve got work to do so please go away. I’ve got better things to do than amuse my sister,’ Stacy said sternly, hanging up.

  Wright slumped to the floor. He’d finally found someone and now that someone thought he really was crazy.

  It was time to get depressed again.

  ________________

  Wright spent the next hour confirming the obvious.

  ‘Simon, what day is it?’

  ‘Shit, it speaks!’

  ‘Shut it Simon. Now what day is it?’

  ‘Wednesday, what the fuck do you think....’

  ________________

  ‘Mum, what day is it?’

  ‘Mother’s Day.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  ‘Well it must be some special day, otherwise you wouldn’t have rung. You never ring your poor old mum these days ...unless you want something.’

  ‘Christ mum, I saw you yesterday..’

  ‘The day before, which is why I know you want something. Now what do you want?’

  ‘I want to be normal.’

  ‘I’m your mother Nathan, not a miracle worker.’

  ________________

  ‘Fionna, what day is it?’

  ‘Nathan, you’re speaking again!’

  ‘No I’m not. I’m a recorded voice. Now what day is it?’

  ‘Beep...beep...I’m sorry, Fionna is not at home. If you’d like to leave your name and number after the tone I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve dealt with one Nathan N. Wright...’

  Smartarse. Christ why can’t any of my simple friends give me a simple answer to a simple question.

  ________________

  ‘Alan, what day is it?’

  ‘Why?’ Suspicious buggar.

  ‘Alan, what day is it?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Today, you motherfucker!’