A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better

by Benjamin Wood

  ‘There’s that word again,’ I said. ‘Trying.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You know that wasn’t on my mind until just now.’

  ‘If you say so, Lish.’

  ‘Well, hey, it has to be a small consideration, doesn’t it?’

  I looked back at her much too coldly. ‘I really wouldn’t let it stop you at this particular moment, no.’

  ‘Huh.’ She sat up, leaned away from me. ‘All right.’

  I went and put our cups into the dishwasher.

  ‘Honestly, Dan, I wasn’t even thinking of it,’ she said.

  ‘Good, then.’ The rinsing of the porridge pan was suddenly my priority.

  And she called to me again over the noise of the taps: ‘But, anyway, so what if it was on my mind? I’m allowed to think about it, aren’t I? Even if you won’t discuss it.’

  ‘Right, like you don’t talk about it every other day.’

  ‘Dan, come on—you won’t even entertain the fucking subject.’

  ‘I’ve been entertaining it a lot more than I used to.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means you should know better. I can do without you piling on the pressure.’

  ‘Oh man, you’re serious. This is actually what you think.’

  I shrugged at her. She shook her head at me. We went on in this mode for some time. I grew more juvenile and intent on causing injury with everything I said, until she was shouting back: ‘You know what, Dan? I’m getting pretty sick of this. Not everything is all about you and your misery, okay? I’m going.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To the studio.’

  ‘What about the park?’

  ‘Forget the park. I’m not spending any more time than I have to with you today.’ And she slammed the door on her way out. I didn’t see her for the rest of the afternoon. My righteous indignation buoyed me—I felt absolutely sure that I was blameless. There was work I needed to get done, so I busied myself with it. Around five, she rang to tell me she’d be staying the night at the studio. She wasn’t trying to punish me, she said, she’d just got ‘elbow-deep into a side project’ with a friend of hers. ‘Just a stupid screen-printing thing I should never have agreed to. Now I really want to get it over with.’ I let these words hang without comment. Our whole exchange was strained and defensive, punctuated by her huffing and my silences.

  I couldn’t be alone in the apartment any longer so I took my laptop out with me and walked down to St Mark’s Place. There is a café bar called Vick’s that has become a regular haunt of mine. By the standards of the East Village, it’s low key and unpretentious, and the food is ordinary. It has a trellised glass frontage like an old shoe shop you might come across in Covent Garden, and I like to go there after office hours sometimes, to sit with my computer and glass of beer while I review my assistants’ spreadsheets and rewrite their clinical prose. That night, I had to finish off a draft of an advisory report I’d been compiling—an overview of recent deal activity from aircraft lessors in Asia, if you want the exciting details. I got so absorbed in the minutiae of my data presentation, and so heedless topping up my beer glass from the pitcher, that I didn’t even notice how full Vick’s had got around me.

  A standing crowd of cocktail drinkers had stolen the whole room. They were staring at the far end of the bar, as though in expectation of a speech. I was penned in to the corner of the place. I could hardly get my chair out. Then a trumpet started blaring in the space behind me. A snare drum shuffled, too. A distorted electric guitar. It was jazz, but not the easy kind—the stuff you need to train yourself to appreciate. The crowd hooted and applauded. I had to boost myself up on my tiptoes to see.

  Right at the back of the bar, a trio had begun a set. The trumpeter, in a long white smock and shades, was developing a theme of screeches. An improvised racket that drew whoops of admiration all around me. I gathered up my laptop and tried to get the waiter’s attention. The trumpet kept on squalling. The waiter was too far away and too distracted. I didn’t want to leave the money on the table, so I had to try and sidle through the jazz lovers to the register where I could pay. ‘Excuse me, sorry, excuse me, sorry, excuse me.’ The brushed thump of the snare began to swell. I was almost at the counter when a guy in a tight denim shirt turned into me with two martini glasses, and I flinched. The drinks careered into the hairdo of the woman next to us. She turned to me, raging, drenched at the neck. I must’ve apologised, but I don’t think she heard me. ‘What the fuck, man?’ she said, as I went past her. The trumpet would not stop its lunatic bleating. ‘Hey, buddy, you owe me two drinks!’ called the man. I apologised again. I just wanted to pay and get out of there. When I got to the counter, I planted two bills under a glass and made sure the barman saw it. Then I felt a prodding in the middle of my back. ‘Hey, asshole, what the fuck, man? At least say sorry to my girl.’ I must’ve nodded. I might’ve mumbled something back to him. I tried to leave without a fuss. The snare drum punched and spat at me. The trumpet was choking and shrill. As I pushed for the exit, my laptop was tugged from my grip. I spun round, and saw the man was waving it above his head, a trophy. He looked at me with tightened eyes and dropped it to the floor. I watched a few smalls chunks of plastic break off as it landed. The trumpet kept on biting me. I bounded forwards. The man took a step back. I grasped his denim collar, shoved him. He skidded and fell down.

  I went to rescue my computer from under the legs of a table, crawled on my haunches to retrieve it. But before I could get up again, the man stepped in. He swung his knee into my face and I slumped back to the parquet. The sharpness of the pain inside my cheek was so familiar. It reached my brain. I listened to it. It told me I should hurry up and go. I managed to stand, my mouth seeping blood. I wiped it with my wrist. I didn’t react—not yet. My father would’ve broken him without a moment’s hesitation, but I just nodded at the man, apologising: ‘I’m going. I’m sorry. I’m going.’ He dropped his fists, back-pedalling, proud. The crowd was eyeing me. The trumpeter was waiting with his horn held to his chest. The drummer was standing on his stool with his two brushes. ‘Okay, let him through, come on, let him through. Get this guy out of here.’ A path to the door opened up for me. I staggered out onto the pavement.

  I should’ve gone to hospital, but I trudged for home. The city felt unusually calm. My pulse was throbbing in my jaw. I reached an intersection, waited for the bleary lights to change and let me cross. A gleaming SUV slowed down in front of me, wanting to turn right. Its passenger peered through the open window, saying: ‘Try the ER, pal. You look like shit.’ He laughed so brazenly as the car moved off that people waiting near me on the sidewalk joined in, too. The humiliation of it burned in me. I thought of my computer, abandoned to the floor of Vick’s, the hours of work I hadn’t backed up, all my private photographs and videos and documents.

  When I got back to the bar, there were too many people blocking the entrance, and I couldn’t see him through the windows. Bodies huddled, swaying to the music, baying for drinks. The blood was sliding down my chin. I decided it was best to wait for him to leave. All I wanted was my laptop. I sat in the doorway of the building adjacent, a dingy nail salon with a pigeon-soiled awning, pink graffiti on the glass. My eye was closing up already. I leaned back in the alcove and watched as people came and went from the bar: my anger festered there. The traffic on First Avenue kept on hustling through the dark. The jazz ensemble was a muffled din beneath the engine noise. It must have been at least an hour and a half I sat there. My lips had almost fused together by the time he emerged.

  He came out with his denim shirt rumpled and sweaty, his red-headed girlfriend linked to his arm. They were laughing and shouting to someone inside: I caught the tails of a joke. ‘Take it easy, buddy!’ he called, stepping backwards. ‘See you Tuesday, Freddie!’ someone called out at him. ‘Hey, I told you, he ain’t gonna be there!’ his girlfriend called in, giggling. And as they walked off together, rounding the corner of St Mark’s, I saw he had
my laptop clutched under his arm. What kind of person beats a man and takes his property as the spoils? What kind of person lets him? It rattled me, incensed me. I ran after them.

  They were stumbling down the rule-straight block as if it were crooked, both of them giddy on cocktails, drunk on each other. Her hand was in the back pocket of his chinos. I slowed down, kept my distance, unsure what to do. My face was agony. They passed restaurants and tattoo parlours and the kosher market. I trailed behind them, onto Avenue A, tracked them all the way over the next two cross-streets, heading north, until they dipped under a scaffold on East 12th, where the giant footings of a condo site were swathed in plywood boards and membrane. A dismal line of strip lights in the temporary walkway. Hard to see in from street-level. No one coming up ahead. I checked behind. Not a soul. I upped my pace. They were only a few metres from me. I could see the edge of the computer bobbing in the crook of his left arm, goading me.

  ‘Hey!’ I called, rushing at him. ‘It’s Freddie, right?’ And as he turned, bewildered, I reached out and put my hand around his throat so cleanly it immobilised him. I could feel the stubbled curve of it bracing my palm, all its resistance and its give. He dropped the computer and I heard it strike the concrete. I pushed him back against the boards and glowered at him. His girlfriend yelped, pounded my back. This didn’t stop me. ‘Get off him, asshole! Get the fuck off him! I’m calling the cops!’ What stopped me was the quality of the fear deep-rooted in his eyes—he recognised me from the bar, of course; he understood what I was there for, acknowledged what he’d done to me; but something more than that, I think. He must’ve seen I had the capability to keep on squeezing if I wanted to.

  I leaned right into his face. ‘I’m taking my fucking computer back,’ I said. ‘Got it?’

  He slow-blinked at me.

  ‘You do not want to make this difficult, Freddie. Take my word for it.’

  He spluttered.

  I squeezed. ‘Do we understand each other?’

  ‘Yeah, man. Let him go. He gets it,’ said his girlfriend. ‘Jesus. What the fuck is wrong with you?’ She stooped to gather my laptop. ‘Take it, take it. Let him go.’ So I did.

  My hands were trembling all the way to my apartment. For a while, I stood at the bathroom mirror, washing the blood from my mouth, padding it with cotton balls and antiseptic. I gulped two Ambien to dull the pain. The right side of my face was plum-red and distended, the eye socket bloated shut. I didn’t recognise myself. I ditched my bloody clothes in the hamper and walked out to the hallway, where I’d left the laptop sitting by the doormat. Under the kitchen lights, I studied the damage—the casing was badly dinted and the speakers were shattered, but it still booted up. It went about restoring all the windows that were open when its power dropped out. I plugged it in while it purred through its operations and made myself a cup of tea with two capfuls of brandy. When I checked the screen again, the Google Street View image of a loft in Midtown had resurfaced in the web browser. I gazed at it for a long moment without thinking anything, but the pain was still needling me. The pills wouldn’t grip. I moved the cursor to the search bar, moved it away, moved it back again. I put my fingers to the keyboard. The carriageways were opening in my head. The child lock was on. ‘It isn’t far.’

  ‘Stay on this road, we’ll reach a junction.’

  ‘If there’s anything the matter with that boy, I swear to god, Fran, I’ll—’

  ‘What? What are you going to do to me? I’m interested to know.’

  ‘I’ll make you suffer.’

  ‘Hard to imagine that right now, Kath, I’ve got to say.’

  ‘Where the fuck are you taking me?’

  ‘You know exactly where we’re going.’

  ‘Just promise me he’s going to be there. Promise me.’

  ‘I thought my promises weren’t worth anything. Have you changed your mind about that?’

  ‘Just tell me he’s all right.’

  ‘You’ll find out, won’t you? It’s only up the road.’

  ‘He’ll be frightened on his own.’

  ‘Who said he’s on his own?’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Did I? Huh, that’s funny.’

  ‘Just please—promise me.’

  ‘Okay. I promise. There. You trust me now?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Didn’t think so. What’s the point in talking, anyway? Drive the car.’

  ‘I fucking hate you, Fran.’

  ‘That’s hardly a surprise. I’ve got a shotgun pointed at you.’

  ‘You never used to be this way.’

  ‘Yeah, well, maybe I got tired of the old me.’

  ‘You don’t have to do this. Whatever you’re planning.’

  ‘Go left at the church, when we get there. You’ll recognise it.’

  ‘Is that where he is?’

  ‘You’ll see. Oi—leave that window up.’

  ‘I just wanted some air.’

  ‘You’re about to get plenty, believe me.’

  You will grow up in an age when it is possible to revisit the forsaken spaces of your life at the touch of a screen. I have never been to Audlem, but I have seen it more than any other place on Earth. I can only view it in the daylight. The route I take to find it is the same as theirs: it starts on the M6, the southbound section of the Sandbach Services, leaves the motorway to join the A500, the A531, the B5071, the A529. An ashy covering of clouds hangs static in the sky until I reach the junction in the village square. Then something odd occurs. I click the cross on the road—it’s always there in the same place, under the rear bumper of the Morris Minor van that’s always turning left, beside the cast iron streetlamp with its jubilee display of Union Flags always flapping northwards on the breeze, next to the Parish Church of St James the Great where a white-haired man is always lurking on the kerb in baggy slacks, and two cyclists in luminous jackets are forever sheltering at the bus stop as though rain is imminent. And when I click it, by some miracle, the sky goes blue, the sun comes out, the people change. The images are clearly from a different time, the paintwork of the cottage window frames becomes a fraction darker, the shadows expand on the concrete. In this one stretch of Google Maps there is a glitch, a lag, a tract of scenery that hasn’t been updated in five years: here, it’s June 2011, and a short-haired lady strides off with her crumpled umbrella on the drying pavement, the cyclists have disappeared, relieved by an old couple on a bench, their faces pixelated like two criminals on the news—he is always gazing at the rooftops, she is permanently rummaging inside her handbag (for gum, I like to think, or cigarettes). On the corner, by the turn for Vicarage Lane, the vacant shop with the net curtains is for sale; but click a little further along Stafford Street and that same shop has wooden Venetians and a glossy pastel-green facade. Rotate the view, it’s August 2016 again and the streets stand empty, the bus shelter has nobody to serve. Where did they go? What became of them?

  This is the only Audlem I can bear to know. A scanned-in village where everything that is about to happen never comes to pass.

  Head down Vicarage Lane, just like my mother had to do at gunpoint in the dark, and you will see a family is coming up the slope: the parents are wheeling a buggy, carrying their two young daughters in matching green coats. Their faces are blurred out, of course, but they exude a happiness that you can see without zooming in. Who are these people? Don’t they know what went on further down this track? I always get the urge to stop and tell them, but they vanish as I approach.

  Down I go, as ever, past the gardens with the trampolines, the allotments and the potting sheds, those three white sheets hung up on the line, the gate with its KEEP CLEAR sign, the disused business premises, the van from the telephone company parked up outside, and the man in overalls nattering into his mobile. Here, it’s March 2009—all the trees are bare, the ground is damp. In the paddock where they died, there are no gravestones. Just a horsebox and trailer shrouded in tarpaulins. An outhouse. Trampled grass. So still. There’s a s
mall blue hatchback waiting on the muddy apron of the road, the same place he made my mother ditch the Volvo—there is no plaque for her there, no bouquet of flowers tucked into the railing slats. But if you rotate the picture you can see a faceless woman driving past the nursing home’s brick gateposts in a silver Volkswagen convertible, a small dog in the passenger seat. They are captives in the frame, going somewhere, going nowhere. I’ve been staring at them, on and off, for years. They are never getting out of Audlem, but all I have to do is close the window, keep on going.

  I’ve been trying to show Alisha that I’m worth the drain upon her energy, that I can find a lasting happiness with her. The state she found me in that afternoon at the apartment—bloody-mouthed and tranquillised upon the kitchen counter—saddened her more than it frightened her, as though she’d already resigned herself to situations like it when she married me. She propped me up and put my shoes on, held me upright in the elevator, persuaded me into a cab, and went with me to Bellevue Hospital, ignoring all my protests. She listened to me slur an explanation for my injuries to the doctor, then sat with me in the bright halls of Radiology, asking no questions except if I needed any water from the cooler, if I was comfortable, until the doctor called us in again. There was no fracture in my cheekbone, just a lot of bruising to the facial tissue, enough to keep me out the office for a week. I was shaky and headsore and my teeth felt loose, but I was capable of walking home. Coming out the carousel doors, she held my arm and said, ‘I don’t care how long it takes, Dan, or how many bar fights you get into in the meantime, but we are going to get you off those pills, you understand me? I’m not letting you destroy yourself like this.’ And I told her I would stop, but I’m still taking them. She watches as I sink the tablets before bed each night and makes her disapproval clear to me by morning. I’ll spare you my excuses and just say: I’m working on it.