Tom asked her to leave the bathroom while he covered himself up, and he briefly wondered how to dissuade her from coming to his house again.
Jeanette had worked for Tom for four years, and she’d developed a crush on him within a week of her joining his company, and of course he knew it. Before Alexandra went missing, Tom was warm and funny. He was the kind of man and boss who didn’t need to feel that he was superior to those working for him. He’d drop a cup of coffee on her desk as he was passing, always remembering how she took it—no milk, one sugar—and every now and then he’d bring her something sweet. It wasn’t just her—he did it for the others too. In fact, when she thought about it, for a man who ran a profitable company he spent a lot of time making coffee. He would listen to her when she spoke, and he’d tell her what a great job she was doing. He wasn’t available back then, he wasn’t even looking for sex. More was the pity, because Jeanette would have done him on the photocopier week one if he’d asked her.
At least that’s what she’d told her pals Lily and Davey in the pub the night before she’d decided to visit him at his home that first time.
“Uncomfortable,” Davey said, “and technically impossible. He’d be the one doing you, and you’d only be leaning on it. But I suppose you could say that you’d invited him to do you over the photocopier.”
“Shut up, Davey!” Lily said.
“I was only saying.”
“Yeah, well, don’t say. Go on, Jeanette, you’d have done him on the photocopier week one ….”
“Well, that was it, really.”
Lily punched Davey in the arm. “You always do that! Interrupt someone when she’s saying something interesting just to say something totally boring, throwing off the person who actually has something to say!” She punched him again.
Davey rubbed his arm and then said something interesting. “Okay then, elephant in the room: he offed his missus.”
Jeanette didn’t believe it possible. “No way.”
“Of course he did. Nobody just disappears.”
“People disappear all the time, faggot!” Lily said.
Jeanette shook her head. “Nothing could make me believe that he did anything to her.”
“Well, my advice to you is to stay away until we know that for sure,” Davey said.
Lily nodded her agreement. “He has a point. Better safe than headless in a suitcase floating down the Dodder.”
Jeanette had no intention of staying away, and even though the sparkle in Tom’s eye had been replaced with a terrible sadness, God help poor Jeanette, she fell deeper in love.
She waited for Tom to emerge from the bathroom, and when he did and he was clean and his house was clean and there was real food cooking in his oven and she was talking about the job interview she’d just had and looking for some music, he felt normal and calm, and it was nice, if only for a while. When he sobered up, she poured some wine, and they sat together and ate. When they’d polished off the bottle and were halfway through the second, and after she’d served a dessert that neither of them ate, she gazed at him across the table and slowly and hesitantly took his hand in hers.
“What more can I do?” she asked. While retaining his hand, she walked around the table and sat on a chair at his side, and now he was facing her with his hand still in hers, and her other hand was sliding up his thigh. His pulse raced, and her heart was racing too, and she asked him again, “What can I do?” and he was staring into her face and eyes, and the kitchen fell away as he reached for the back of her head and pulled her into him, and they kissed.
The next night in the pub she reenacted it for Lily and Davey.
“Jesus, that’s like in a film,” Lily said.
“Exactly like in a film,” Jeanette said. And she believed herself.
Davey was less impressed. “You’re playing with fire.” But he was ignored.
“What happened then?” Lily asked.
Tom had pulled Jeanette onto the floor, and they kissed and her pants were off before she could say, “Take my pants off,” and his were around his ankles and he was on top of her and inside her, and their tops were still on and it was over quickly, which was a good thing because the tiles were freezing. When he was done, she could see his regret and shame, and so she acted fast before he could ask her to leave and file their encounter under “mistake.” They both pulled up their pants. She took two cigarettes out of her bag and lit both of them. She asked him to sit next to her on the floor. He complied out of a combination of guilt and a genuine desire for a cigarette, despite having been off them for five years.
When he was sitting and puffing, she straddled him.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said.
“I doubt it,” Tom had said.
“You’re thinking, ‘Jeanette is a nice girl and I’m grateful for the tumble, which was badly needed, but how the hell do I get her out of here without making her cry?’”
He shook his head, and she smiled. “Something like that,” he admitted.
“I like you,” she said.
“I’m a mess.”
“I know.” She shook her head. “I’m not blind.”
“I’m married.”
“She’s not here.”
“Please go home,” he said, and she knew she’d spoken out of turn.
“Okay.” She nodded. “I’m sorry.” And she was sorry. She was sorry he was so sad, and she was sorry for poor Alexandra, and she was sorry for herself because although she was desperate for him to love her, she knew he never would. I had to try, she thought as she closed the door behind her.
“Jesus, you could have waited,” Davey said the next night.
“He’s right,” Lily agreed.
Jeanette knew she’d blown it, so a phone call from Tom came as a shock. He phoned her from his car on his way back from Jane’s.
“Tom?”
“Good news,” he said. “I have a lead on Alexandra. It’s not much, but it’s something.”
“Oh that’s great,” she said, brightening. “I hope it works out.” She meant it.
“Look, I wanted to apologize for that night,” he said. “I should never have done that.”
Jeanette thought about how kind he was to call. After all, she had preyed on him—he had been vulnerable, lost, and drunk, and she’d seduced him. God, I love you. “It wasn’t you, it was me,” she said, “and I appreciate you apologizing, but you’ve nothing to apologize for.”
“I wasn’t that drunk.”
Jeanette’s heart leaped a little.
“Could we be friends?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, “I’d love that.”
“Would you like to come over tonight?”
“I’d love to.”
When she put the phone down, she jumped around the place, because even if Tom genuinely thought that he was looking for a friend, he wasn’t, and he might be naïve enough to think the night would end with a kiss on the cheek, but she wasn’t.
I need to shave. Whoohooooooooo!
Jeanette arrived soaked to the skin. It had been raining on and off since six o’clock, and she had left her second umbrella in a month on the bus. Tom opened the door, smiling. She shook herself off in the hall before noticing that he was wearing an apron.
“What’s going on?” she asked, following him into the kitchen.
“I cooked.” He grabbed a pot holder and a large fork, opened the oven door, and turned a roasting leg of lamb.
“I can see that,” she said, sitting at his counter while he opened some wine. She poured it into two glasses and handed him one.
He clinked his glass against hers. “I’m going to find her,” he said.
“Alexandra?”
“No—Amelia Earhart,” he said, and he grinned the way he used to grin before he lost his wife.
She wondered who Amelia Earhart was while he tended to the vegetables.
Jeanette drank until her wineglass was empty, then held out the glass for some more. Tom topp
ed it off.
“I’ve met these women,” he said, “and they’re amazing, they’re helping me. I don’t even know them.”
“That’s weird. Why?”
“Jane was Alexandra’s best friend years ago when they were kids, and her sister, Elle, is an artist and she’s going to do an exhibition. She’s painting the faces of missing people. She’s already painted Alexandra and it’s really beautiful. And Leslie, she’s set up an incredible website, and they’ve got Jack Lukeman on board and now this lead in London—”
“Jack Lukeman the singer? What is he? A part-time private eye?” She was being sarcastic, and although Tom noticed, he didn’t care.
“No, he’s going to sing at the exhibition. Jane says it will increase media interest.”
“Well, it sounds like you’ve got a lot of new friends, so why did you call me?”
“I missed you.”
He wasn’t lying. He had become very fond of Jeanette during the four years they had worked together, and if he was really honest with himself he missed the attention she gave him. He missed feeling like a man, a sexual being, and even though he promised himself that he would never allow what had happened before to happen again, it was nice to be around someone who was attracted to him. Tom missed many things about his wife, and one of the things he missed most was being wanted.
“I missed you too,” she said, and in her head she was singing, “Here comes the bride, all dressed in white ….”
Later, after they’d indulged in passionate sex, the kind of sex that Jeanette had always suspected Tom was capable of, they lay there in silence and darkness just breathing.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“It’s blissfully quiet in here,” he said, pointing to his head.
She smiled at him and leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You’re welcome,” she said.
She went into the bathroom to take a shower, and he reminisced about the last time he had lain in bed and listened to the shower running; his wife had been singing “I Can’t Stand the Rain” and attempting a very bad impression of Tina Turner. Tom closed his eyes, just as he had done when he was having sex, and for the second time that night he pretended the woman who had been in his bed and was now in his shower was his wife, and for the first time in thirty weeks and one day, Tom slept peacefully.
6
“Little Man”
Take the world off your shoulders,
little man, little man, little man.
Jack L, Universe
February 2008
Elle had been lying in bed for twenty days. Ten days after New Year’s Eve she had taken a taxi to a hotel in Kildare. When she arrived, someone took her bag out of the car as she paid the fare. She signed her name on the form the receptionist handed her, took her key, and followed the man with her bag up to the third floor and into her room. She tipped him, and he left. She undressed, put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, and got into bed with the curtains drawn, and the only time she had gotten out of bed in those twenty days was to pee, apart from the times the maids came in. They knocked every second or third day, and she’d get out of her bed and sit on the toilet while they cleaned the room, and when they were finished she’d get back into bed while they cleaned the bathroom. Some days she ate something small, and some days she didn’t eat at all. The television remained off, and days and nights blended into one. Some days she was numb and without any kind of coherent thought; other days her mind raced so much that her head hurt and she felt the need to put pressure on her ears. Her phone remained off. There were days she cried rivers; other days she simply breathed in and out, in and out, in and out, each breath becoming more and more laborious until every cell in her body hurt, so that even lifting her arm became almost impossible.
The manager knocked on her door after she’d refused the maids access for the sixth day in a row. He waited for a response but was met with silence, and so he knocked again but either she was ignoring him or she was sleeping, so he knocked louder a third time and in her head and for the second time she screamed at him to go away. As the general manager didn’t read minds, he made the decision to enter the room. He was accompanied by one of the receptionists to ensure that there was no misunderstanding as to the intention of his visit. He entered slowly with the girl following. Elle was lying on her side. He called out to her. She remained still. The girl seemed to be of a nervous disposition, so the general manager smiled at her to assure her everything was fine. He walked around the side of the bed, and Elle’s eyes were open and staring. She was pale and, because the blankets were tucked under her neck, it was unclear whether or not she was breathing. The girl mistook her for a corpse and screamed. Elle moved her eyes to focus on the screaming girl, whose nervous disposition had been long ago blamed on her twin brother, who had often chased her while pretending to be a zombie. Seeing the corpse’s eyes move sent her over the deep end, and so she screamed again loudly and ran out of the room and down the hall and stairs and out the front door of the hotel, leaving the general manager alone and decidedly uncomfortable. Thanks for nothing, Sheena.
“Are you all right, Miss Moore?” he asked.
“How many times have I told you to leave me alone today?”
“None.”
“Are you deaf?”
“I’m not deaf.”
“I just told you to leave me alone at least twice if not three times.”
The general manager decided not to argue. “Is there someone I can call?”
Elle slowly raised herself up in the bed; the blanket dropped, revealing her naked breasts. The general manager turned red and looked away.
“If I wanted you to call someone I would have asked you to call someone,” she said, letting the blanket rest at her waist.
The general manager turned from red to a funny purple color. He covered his eyes because he could still see her in the mirror and she knew he could still see her because she was watching him through that same mirror.
“Do you like what you see?” she asked.
“Sorry?” he said in a voice that had gone up one octave.
“My tits,” she said. “Do you like them?”
The general manager did like them. She had a lovely rounded, pert, full pair of tits, but there was no way in the world he was going to say that, and he wasn’t going to tell her he didn’t like them either, so instead he did what any man in his right mind would do: he ignored the question.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said, “but we need to know that you are okay.”
“Now you know.”
“If there’s anything we can do for you …”
“You can go away.”
He nodded and left the room.
She lay back down, tucking the blanket up around her chin, and lay perfectly still in absolute darkness.
When capable of coherent thought, Elle reminisced about all the things about Vincent she had loved. His face: she had fallen in love with his face the first time she saw him across a crowded bar. It was a strong and pretty face, and he had an old man’s eyes—deep, dark, chocolate eyes nestled behind lush eyelashes so thick and long that any woman or drag act would sell themselves for them. His curly brown hair: she loved that it was always messy and sexy and soft and loved putting her hands through it, playing with it. She loved his height: he was taller than her but not too tall, and they could always kiss comfortably even on the rare occasion she wore flats. She loved his hands: soft and manicured and always perfectly clean. She loved the things he did with his hands and how those hands made her feel. His laugh: when he laughed his eyes leaked water and he threw back his head and slapped his thigh, and it was a throaty and giddy giggly laugh that encouraged her to join in. His mind: she missed him reading passages out of newspapers and books to her, she missed watching him read his books and the way he screwed up his face when fully concentrating and bit at his thumb before turning the page. Vincent was never without a book, and all his jackets had pockets big enough to hold a
t least one. She missed the poetry that loving him had brought into her life. She missed the fights where they’d scream and roar at each other, where she’d smash a plate and he’d stamp his foot and punch the wall. She missed making up, ripping at each other’s clothes and the heat between them and the way he often bit her lip and the feel of him inside her, his rhythm and the way he looked at her afterward when they lay still and sticky. She missed herself: the silly, giddy part of her that she shared only with him.
He had tried to end it in China, and deep down she had known that he loved what she represented rather than who she was. He was an out-of-work model studying design at night, and she was a successful artist, and with success came a lifestyle he had become accustomed to and, in a small town like Dublin, Elle was a big fish, ensuring minor celebrity status and entrance to every VIP room in the city. Vincent loved the champagne lifestyle, not Elle. He had never loved Elle, as the note said. He had wanted her, she had always been certain of that, he most definitely had needed her as she had paid for his lifestyle for years, but he was never going to love her no matter what she did to keep him. China had been a reprieve, and ever since she’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Elle’s love had died, and it was all she could do to keep breathing.
The hairdresser put her hands through Leslie’s short crop, and when Leslie confirmed that she had cut her own hair for quite a few years, the hairdresser admitted that the thought had certainly crossed her mind and then called over a fellow professional so that they could confer on what was the best course of action to minimize the damage Leslie had done.
“God almighty, did you use a bowl?” the other woman said.
“No.”
“Well, you may as well have. I’ve seen Trappist monks with better hair.”
“What’s your name?” Leslie asked.
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