After The Fall

by Sarah Goodwin

  Nathan saw what I’d found and tutted. “Trust you to find my goodies.”

  “Well, if you leave it lying around...”

  He shrugged. “It’s my flat isn’t it? And you already know I’m queer, so you must know there’s porn here somewhere. Why pretend?”

  He put the cans of beer on the table, passed me a bag of crisps, and put one of the DVDs into the player.

  We crunched our way through the crisps, swigged beer and watched a man with an important secret about Jesus get chased all over France. I didn’t really get it, but it was entertaining enough.

  “I’ve got the game of that,” Nate said, as the credits rolled.

  “The film?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s play it then.”

  He hooked up his PS2 and I watched him get chased around France for a while, before he ended up in a museum and got stuck on a puzzle. The game was glitching, and it wouldn’t let him put a ring in the hole on a statue.

  “Piece of shit,” Nate grumbled, “I’ve got more, fancy Underworld?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Vampires, werewolves, birds in leather catsuits.” He wriggled his eyebrows at me.

  “Sure.”

  He got it out and we played two player, both as werewolves in the same brown jackets and black jeans. I had trouble at first, just pushing the right buttons without looking down was difficult, but I got the hang of it after a while. I had a shotgun and Nate picked up a gun that shot lightning. We kept getting wiped out by the same vampire ambush, and after a while Nate switched the game off and put the film of Underworld on instead.

  “That’s who we were I reckon,” he said, pointing out two great big brutes in brown sleeveless jackets and jeans.

  “And that’s the woman who kept killing you with that axe.”

  He snorted, pointed at the woman who was currently shooting up the place. “Do you think she’s hot?”

  I shrugged. “Mmm, maybe.”

  “Would you fuck her?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Is there a gun to my head?”

  He cocked his fingers at my temple. “Would you?”

  “I think I’d prefer to die with my virtue intact.”

  He snickered, then turned serious, aiming an imaginary shotgun at my head. “Con, would you, or would you not, fuck that vampire?”

  “No.”

  “I would.”

  “You’re gay.”

  “Sexuality is fluid man,” he said in a shitty fake hippy voice. “Nah, you’re right, but I’d do him,” he said, gesturing at the werewolf currently on screen. “Fucking tight arse on him.”

  I shifted, uncomfortable. Nate saw and chuckled, but he left it alone after that.

  We watched the rest of the film, and then it was time for me to be getting back.

  “Emma’s making tea for five.”

  “Lucky sod,” he said, stretching, “you up for a kick about in the park tomorrow?”

  “Can’t. Work.”

  “Wife and a job, God’s really heaping the blessings on you, isn’t he?” He said, but he was smiling. “OK, give us a call, this is my number.” He scribbled it on a piece of paper.

  “I will.”

  “Good.”

  We stood awkwardly for a moment.

  “You’d best be getting on then,” Nate reminded me.

  I left and walked home, feeling a lot happier than I the last time I’d made the journey. Still, I felt slightly jumpy, like on one of my early days home when I’d had too much coffee.

  When I got in, Emma was wearing her ASDA uniform, and emptying a jar of pasta sauce into a pan. “Just made it then,” she said.

  “Sorry. I went out for a bit, to meet up with some people from the group.”

  Her expression softened, “Did you have fun?”

  “Yeah.”

  She dished up the pasta and sauce, and we sat in the living room, just like we had on the first night.

  “How was work?” I asked.

  “Shit. But OK,” she laughed, “you know what it’s like. I hate it, but the people are alright.”

  I didn’t know, but I nodded anyway.

  We picked at our pasta.

  “Any chance that you’ll come up to bed tonight?” she asked.

  I really, really didn’t want to. It seemed too weird, sharing a bed with a stranger. But I knew I couldn’t stay on the sofa forever.

  “Yeah, I think I’m ready.”

  She smiled, relieved.

  That night, I brushed my teeth, put on a pair of stripy pyjama bottoms, and climbed into bed next to Emma. She was reading a Catherine Cookson, and I faced away from her, and the light from her bedside lamp. Even after she’d turned it off, I still couldn’t sleep.

  Chapter Four

  It wasn’t until the next morning that I found what Nate had put in my coat pocket.

  I was on my way to work, and I fancied a cigarette, so I stopped at the newsagent’s and was fishing around for the change to buy a small pack of Embassy, when my fingers found the smooth plastic of a DVD.

  I didn’t have to take it out, I knew which one it would be. When had he found time to tuck it into my pocket? I didn’t know, but I almost admired his sneakiness.

  With a DVD of gay porn in my pocket, I turned up at the leisure centre, a prison-like building made of grey concrete, rectangular, with tiny windows and big floodlights outside. Someone had knocked the letters off the side, so it now said ‘Swim in poo’ on the side, right under ‘tennis courts’ and above ‘tanning beds’.

  I was wearing the uniform that had been in the wardrobe, grey jogging bottoms, a white t-shirt and a grey hoody with the centre logo on it. A tiny gold chariot.

  I walked into the lobby and the woman on the blue glass reception desk smiled at me. “Hey Connor, back already?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “sorry, who are you?”

  She tipped her head sideways in sympathy. “Janey, sweetheart. You poor thing. It must be so awful for you.”

  I nodded and she cooed sympathetically. “Well, if you need anything, just ask me, alright?”

  Emma had managed to keep my job for me, just. She knew the wife of the manager, and, through a combination of pleas and lies had managed to convince them that I could still do my job. They said I’d have to reapply for my safety certificate, and take another first aid course, but that I could assist while I was waiting. And they’d keep paying me, which was the important thing.

  I walked into the huge room that housed the swimming pool, which was serene and empty.

  “Connor!” a voice echoed from across the water, and I looked up as a sandy haired man in his mid-twenties walked around the side of the pool and came towards me. He was carrying a clipboard, and I instantly mistrusted him. Maybe because of the clipboard, maybe because he’d tucked his polo shirt into his jogging bottoms. Which he seemed to have ironed.

  “Bradley, remember?” He laughed, “no, right. God, this amnesia thing is wild, isn’t it?”

  My mistrust turned into loathing so fast that I must have already hated him. Clearly I was a good judge of people.

  “I’m going to give you a little test to fill out, and then you’re going to be shadowing me today,” Bradley said, like I was twelve. He gave me the clipboard and pointed over to the ranks of benches that were meant for the parents of young swimmers. “Come and find me when you’re done, OK?”

  I sat down and filled out the test. It was piss easy, and all stuff that you’d have to have half your brain hanging out your arse before you’d get it wrong. What is the correct course of action in rescuing a swimmer in distress? A.) Climb into the pool to assist them, B.) Instruct someone already in the pool to help the swimmer, or C.) Reach out to the swimmer from the side of the pool, using a pole if they are too far away.

  Tip – if you picked A or B, you are a dumbass. And you either drowned or got someone else killed.

  I took the test back to Bradley, though I would have dearly loved to avoid him all
day. He put me on duty at the supply cupboard, waiting to hand out water wings, floats and woggles, all covered in teeth marks and sopping with cold, chlorinated water.

  As it was a week day, the pool was quite quiet. A few middle aged swimmers making the most of all the kids being at school for the morning, and then in the afternoon, a coach party of school kids, making the most of the coffin dodgers being at work. I passed out equipment, blew my whistle when two kids ran past me, and generally dossed around the cupboard until Bradley came and told me it was time for my lunch break.

  Emma had made my lunch, a ham sandwich on white bread that was stickily damp, a Kit Kat and an apple. I washed it down with a cup of tea from the centre vending machine and read half a copy of the Mail. Then it was time for the afternoon shift.

  Bradley had me keep an eye on the pool from the tall lifeguard’s chair, while he kept an eye on me. So I sat and kept an eye on the empty pool, and listened to squash balls reverberate from the courts next door.

  According to Emma I’d been doing this job for over a year. I was surprised. Two more days and I’d probably be dead of boredom.

  By five o’clock I was desperate to get out into the fresh air, and the minute I set foot outside of the centre I lit one of my cigarettes and strode away into the semi-darkness. Five more days and I’d have a day off.

  I was walking home when my phone started to ring, when I pulled it out of my pocket the display said C. I pushed the button to answer and said, “Hello?”

  They didn’t say anything.

  “Hello? Connor speaking.”

  Still nothing, but I could hear them breathing.

  “Look, I’ve had a long day of watching kids piss in chlorinated water, so if you want to stop fucking about-”

  The line went dead.

  I stuffed the phone back into my pocket, pissed off with an edge of unease. It was only as I reached my street that I thought to connect the email I’d sent to Coop to the mysterious C on my phone.

  I took the mobile out and scrolled through my contacts. Was C really the Coop from my email account? I pushed ‘call’ and waited, but the phone beeped loudly and the automated message came on, telling me that the number was blocking me.

  When I got in, Emma was just putting slices of pizza onto plates.

  “How was work?” she asked.

  “Boring, I don’t know how I stood it.” I leant against the door and watched her pour glasses of 7up.

  “You never thought it was boring before.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe I was used to it.”

  She handed me my plate and sniffed, scrunching her nose up. “Have you been smoking?”

  “Yeah.”

  She gave me a strange look. “You don’t smoke.”

  “Someone at the meeting gave me some, I think I’m developing a taste for it.”

  The strange look didn’t disappear, but Emma didn’t ask me anymore about it. We went into the living room and ate our pizza. Then I turned on the TV and flipped through the channels until I found the same procedural cop show that had been on at Nate’s. I watched it, and the next episode, and the next, until it was time to go to bed.

  As I brushed my teeth I had the horrible realisation that this was my life. Nothing interesting was going to happen, I wasn’t waiting for some big event. This was it. Until I died, I’d get up, go to work, come home, eat ready-made Italian food, watch TV and then go to bed with a woman who I didn’t talk to.

  The next day, as if the world was trying to disprove my doom prophet theory, I ran into Nate on my way to work.

  “Con! How’s the job?” he beamed. He was wearing a black t-shirt with a white skull and crossed crutches on it.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “What’d you expect, it’s work.” He took out a tin to roll a cigarette and I offered him one of the Embassys from my pack. “Fancy. Looks like I’ve given you my bad habit.” His eyes gleamed as he lit up, and he exhaled, watching me. “Got anything on tonight?”

  “Dinner with Emma.”

  “Feel like coming over? I’ve got Underworld 2 on disk.”

  I teetered on the edge of indecision, but it wasn’t a tough call to make.

  “Sure.”

  “Cool, come round mine after work then.”

  He walked with me a little way along the high street, and it was only then that I remembered the DVD. It was still in the pocket of my jacket, albeit not the one I was wearing.

  “Why’d you put that porn in my pocket?”

  He grinned, Richard Hammond hair flopping into his eyes. “Did you watch it yet?”

  “No, but I’ll bring it back for you.”

  “Nah, hang onto it.”

  “I’m not going to watch it.”

  He raised his eyebrow. “Yeah you will.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a curious man.”

  I frowned and Nate looked with interest at the window of a charity shop.

  “What makes you think I’d want to watch it?” I asked.

  “It’s porn. You’re a man. Therefore Socrates is mortal.”

  That confused me even more. “What?”

  “It’s one of those things, parts a and b are true, so part c must also be. Socrates is a man, all men are mortal. So, Socrates is mortal.”

  “Where’d you pick that up?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes I watch Open University.” He stuck his hands into his pockets. “I’ll see you later then?”

  I nodded, and watched as he disappeared, crossed the road and ducked into the charity shop.

  Work was just as boring as it had been the previous day. Bradley followed me around, being upbeat and bossy. Janey cooed at me and kept bringing me cups of tea (which was actually quite nice of her, though I could have done without the heaping helpings of pity that accompanied them). The children were loud, the air was stifling and everything was wet. I was quickly coming to realise that no matter how long I worked there, I would never like my job.

  On my lunch break I sat alone in the area known as the café, four vending machines and a couple of aluminium tables on a swatch of carpet. There were old newspapers, and I read a few stories in them before I couldn’t be bothered to focus anymore. Emma had packed me a lunch, the same as the previous day’s.

  Bradley came out and waved at me, making motions about coming over. I scalded the inside of my mouth by knocking back my coffee. But it was worth it to be going as he sat down.

  What was the matter with me? I wondered as I went to the employee toilet and took care of the necessary. Had I always hated people this much? Or was it because of the accident? I didn’t hate Nathan, and Gregory was OK, he didn’t piss me off anyway. So what was so bad about everyone at the leisure centre?

  I washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror tile screwed to the wall. I didn’t look happy, and there were frown lines forming on my face, threads of grey appearing in my dark blonde hair. Had I wanted to work here? Or was it just a job I’d taken to make ends meet, and keep us in pasta and electricity?

  I ran a hand through my hair, making it more untidy that it was usually, sticking up all over like a rumpled bed. There was too much to think about, it was wearing on me. The phone call the previous day had unsettled me a lot, and I hadn’t been able to stop trying to work out who I was, and what kind of life it was that I’d been leading.

  I rang Emma from the front desk phone and left her a message on the home phone. I told her I was meeting a friend after work, and that she shouldn’t wait for me before having dinner. I’d be back late.

  After work I walked back into town and off towards Nate’s flat. On the way I cut through several unfamiliar streets, even shabbier that the one I lived on. Their front gardens were scattered with rubbish from torn bin liners, and gulls rooted in the grass for bits of food. The houses were painted badly in odd colours, blue and yellow, green and terracotta. Their windows were dead eyes.

  A big ‘To Let’ sign was stuck in a plant pot full of dead flow
ers, and I looked up at the building. A squat, flat roofed chalet with a sliding door porch and a broken window. Three black bags were piled up outside the front door, and several soggy cardboard boxes had been left by the front gate. A bit of paper taped to one said ‘Free to a good home’.

  I wondered if someone had been evicted, or died. That was the only reason I could think of why the landlord would pile their stuff up on the drive, leaving it for anyone to take. Too lazy to take it to a charity shop or a tip, clearly.

  I was moving towards the boxes before I had time to think what I was doing. It was a good opportunity after all, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and all that. I looked at the topmost layer of stuff that was sticking out of the saggy, crinkled cardboard boxes. There were CDs, lots of CDs, DVD cases, magazines, bundles of clothing. I leant forwards and pulled some of the stuff aside, more of the same underneath.

  I looked up the street, no one was around. I didn’t really think I was doing anything wrong, but all the same I didn’t want to be spotted. Squatting, I took a proper look at the DVDs. Of course I hadn’t heard of any of them, but I thought some of them looked good. I still had the Aldi bag that I’d taken my lunch to work in, so I picked out a few handfuls of the most likely looking DVDs, some of which were in plastic envelopes rather than boxes. At the bottom of the box were some cheap looking cases, and they had printed sleeves like the one I’d found under Nate’s ashtray. Porn DVDs, and gay porn at that.

  I paused for a moment, then scooped up a few of those as well, plus a few of the blank boxes underneath them that were probably the same kind of thing. Nate might want them after all, and he’d been pretty generous with me lately.

  As for the CDs, I took whichever ones caught my eye, and in the end I picked up the box of clothes too. Once I’d checked to make sure there wasn’t anything in there that some poor sod had died in.

  With the bag balanced on the box, I made my way quickly towards Nate’s. When I got there, I had to kick the door to let him know I was there. My hands were too full to knock.