by Nancy Adams
She had to think about this.
“I don’t know,” she answered after a while. “I don't think so. I imagined beforehand, when everything was really good, that I’d say yes, see it as the inevitable next step, so to speak. But now I think about it—and recall how I felt when he did ask—I think that I would have turned him down even then. As much as I care for him, I don’t feel the same as I do around you, and there’s nothing that either he nor I can do about that.”
“What are you going to do about him?”
“I’m going to be brave, go back to the apartment and tell him straight that there’s no future in us. I owe him honesty and I owe him to not waver on it. I don’t want to feed him false hope and make him think that there still could be a future.”
“What about us?”
Claire smiled at Sam and said, “Well, that’s up to you.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Once Paul had left Annabel’s apartment, he immediately began walking along the street in the rain once again. He also once again opened up a one-way conversation with himself and walked along the sidewalk muttering away, doing his best to keep most of it inside. He was fevered and his thoughts raced along. “Annabel pitied me,” he said out loud, making a woman who’d been walking close by jump as he did. “Her eyes shone of pity. Is that what I am? To be pitied like that. She knows something. She knows that Claire isn’t coming back. They’ve probably talked about it. That’s what all that bull about her getting divorced was all about. She knows that this is the end of us. She looked at me and I bet she nodded to herself when I wasn’t watching. Nodded to herself that she’d been right when she’d imagined me: the boyfriend. She imagined some spineless, weak fool who’d been pulled along by the nose, and when I walked through her door, that’s exactly what she saw: some sap! I bet she’s sitting up there now and imagining that I’m going to do something terrible to myself. Well, maybe—”
He stopped himself. In fact, he stopped all together in the street at the thought. A man who’d been walking close behind him nearly came careering into his back and swore at Paul as he passed. How could I think of that? he asked himself, paying no attention to the annoyance of the passerby.
Paul had a sudden urge to be around people—to be somewhere where there were people and there was life. It was then that he spotted a bar across the street, all lit up with a green neon Grolsch sign and misted windows. As he gazed across at the bar through the rain, several drunk people emerged out of it and he momentarily saw the warm interior of the place as the door swung on its hinges. The drunks stumbled onto the sidewalk, slapping each other’s backs as they went along laughing.
Paul put his head down and marched across the street and into the bar. When he got inside, he instantly felt the warmth that existed in the dimly lit place. Straight ahead was a long bar with one male bartender, a filthy cloth over his shoulder and a friendly look on his face. In a far-off corner, where the lights seemed even dimmer, a man and a woman played pool. Other than that, there were only three other people in there and they were all seated at the bar, two together and one on his own. At the end of the bar, a television set was switched on, and everyone except the pool playing pair sat watching it as they sipped their drinks.
Paul came to the bar and sat down on a stool. The bartender came to him and he ordered a bottle of beer and two shots of whiskey. Soon the drinks arrived and Paul threw the whiskeys down his neck and begun sipping the beer. As he drunk, he was glad that no one approached him for a chat. A common problem with drinking in bars on your own is that you tend to attract other loners in need of the company of strangers. Luckily for Paul, the only other loner at the bar appeared more interested in the TV and paid little attention to Paul.
After a while of sitting, drinking and gazing blankly across the bar, Paul felt warm enough to remove his coat. He finished his beer, ordered another and then watched the television nonchalantly with the others, a warm feeling spreading through his body from the beer, his thoughts becoming more languid from the booze and a tiredness reigning over him as he slumped into the stool and the bar. By the time he was on his third beer, he felt like talking but had no idea how to start up a conversation. The barman, who was also busy watching the television, merely answered any attempts at conversation from Paul with single words, before turning back to the set. This made Paul slightly angry, that he was being dismissed so easily. But he held it in and continued drinking and watching the box.
It wasn’t long before he felt himself swaying on the stool and realized that he was very drunk. His mind floated with thoughts that he couldn’t quite reach out and grab ahold of, so they never fully formed in his head. While he sat there, however, his attention was suddenly taken by something on the television. It was a report about Sam Burgess and his latest T7 exhibition on nano-technology.
The television screen became filled with footage of Sam walking across stage, hundreds of flashbulbs going off, and the images seared themselves into Paul’s brain, his hand gripping onto the edge of the bar with fury the whole time. He automatically ordered another two shots of whiskey and slugged them down the moment they arrived, gagging as the fiery spirit hit his empty guts.
“Guy’s a genius,” the man sitting nearest to Paul remarked out loud, the bartender nodding afterwards.
“What do you mean?” Paul asked, facing the man with a wrathful look.
The guy turned on his stool, looked Paul up and down for a second with a frown, and replied, “Isn’t it obvious? Any clown can see that the guy’s an absolute genius. Look at the shit he invents. And them new nano things he says we’re all gonna be using in medicine in twenty years—how does he think of it? The guy’s gotta be a genius.”
“And he gives all that money away,” the bartender added.
“Well, woopty-fucking-doo!” Paul put to him. “The guy’s a fucking fraud.”
“How do you mean?” the bartender asked, sneering at him.
“Ha! Wouldn’t you like to know!?”
“Well, yeah, I would. What makes you—whoever the fuck you are—think that a guy like Sam Burgess is a fraud?”
The guy sitting near Paul turned to the bartender and said, “Sounds like this guy’s just jealous.”
“Fuck you,” Paul spat at him.
“Hey, pal,” the guy said turning his cold eyes onto Paul, “I’ll let the first one go, but another and you’ll be picking your teeth up with broken fingers.”
“Sorry,” Paul let out, raising his hands up into the air and swaying slightly on his stool. “I shouldn't’ve said that. It’s not like me. But I still think Burgess is a fraud. In fact, I know it!”
“How do you know it?” the bartender asked.
Paul sat wobbling for a moment, unsure of what to say next, before he finally said, “That I can’t tell you.”
Both the man on the stool and the bartender let out a big groan.
“So you’re just full of shit then?” the guy sitting nearby stated.
“Yeah, I guess I am. But I still say he’s a huge fraud.”
“Look kid,” the bartender began, “you already look like you’re down on your luck and I don’t like to trample a man when he’s down, so I’ll let most of your bullshit go. But I will tell you this: you see that girl in that picture behind me?”
The bartender pointed to a framed picture behind him among the bottles. It took Paul some time to focus his drunk eyes on it enough to see, but when he did he saw a pretty little girl of about nine or ten sitting in a garden with a small black kitten on her lap, a wide smile on her face.
“Yeah,” Paul acknowledged when he’d focused on it.
“Well, that’s my daughter and without the Burgess fund she wouldn’t have gotten treatment for leukemia, because me and her ma can’t afford the medical insurance. Without that fund she would’ve died in pain, but now every night I get to go home and kiss my little girl goodnight. And all because of that man who you call a fraud. So have a little fucking respect, okay?”
/> Paul smiled witheringly and went to get up, but slipped and fell to the ground. The guy sitting nearby swooped down and helped him up.
Once he was stood, Paul turned to the bartender and said, “I’m sorry,” before turning to the guy who’d helped him up and apologizing to him as well. He then dusted himself down, put his coat back on and wobbled out of the bar and back onto the street.
The rain had stopped but it was dark now and Paul didn’t recognize the street from earlier, the alcohol changing the forms and dimensions of everything as he swayed in the breeze. The cold air appeared to increase the effects of the booze and he began staggering along the sidewalk, finding it difficult to control his numb movements.
Eventually, as though by luck, a cab pulled up to the side of the road and blew its horn. Thankful, Paul got in, gave the driver his address and then slumped into the seat, feeling so heavy that he feared he’d fall through it. A block or two later and he had fallen into a heavy sleep, his snoring getting to the driver after a while and making him turn the radio up to drown it out.
When they reached the address, the driver woke him up and it took all of Paul’s concentration and skill to pay the guy and then stumble up to his apartment. When he reached it and fell inside the front door, he lay on the ground for a moment before bursting into tears. He was so terribly lonesome then. So terribly in need of her.
But she would never be coming back and he was destined to lie there alone forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jules shuddered as he, Juliette, David and Gwen’s two boys walked along the hospital corridor on their way to visit Gwen. Jules always hated the smell of hospitals. It always conjured up bad memories of all the other times he’d been to a hospital. His mother’s death, Danny and so many others over the years. There was an ominous feel to that scent whenever he smelled it.
When they reached the room, Juliette held it open and ushered the two sons in first. Both of them were holding bunches of flowers to give to their momma and paused on the threshold, nervous to see her.
“Go on, boys,” Juliette insisted.
Randy, the older boy, placed his arm around his brother and coaxed him in. Once they were inside, Gwen sat up in bed and the boys paused in the middle of the room as they saw their battered momma for the first time. The whole of her face was unrecognizable. Both eyes were great bubbles of purple flesh with slits in the center where her eyes were hidden. A bandage covered over her cheeks and nose, the latter in some kind of splint having been reconstructed, plastic straws holding her nostrils open. Shocks of her once-beautiful blonde hair hung out of a bandage wrapped around her head and there was very little of Gwen to see. When Juliette had seen her for the first time only days before, she had gone back to Jules and told him that it looked as though Gwen had been in a car accident.
Seeing the looks of horror on her boys’ faces, Gwen fell into tears.
“Come on boys,” she sobbed, holding her arms out to them. “It’s still me.”
There was something odd to them about her voice. It sounded like their momma, but she had a lisp. They both looked at one another and then, without saying a word, dived forward into Gwen’s arms, crushing the flowers between them and her. Gwen held them tight against her bosom, kissing each of them on the crown, pressing her face into their little heads.
Having watched from the open doorway, Jules, Juliette and David entered the room and closed the door behind them. As they came in, Gwen looked up from the boys and smiled at her guests as they took seats by the bed.
When Gwen let go of the boys, they stood up and she resettled herself back into the bed. Looking down, the boys noticed the crushed flowers in their hands and instinctively offered them to Gwen, thrusting them toward her.
“We got ya flowers, Ma,” Casper, the youngest said.
“They’re beautiful, boys,” she said as she took them.
For a moment she sat there holding the flowers with a crooked smile, the two boys still ogling her, unable to take their eyes off of her battered face. Tears slowly dropped from her eyes and she began to sob once more.
“You come sit down here, boys,” Juliette said, offering them a seat beside David.
They turned to her and she smiled benevolently.
“Come sit here and give Mommy some space, okay?” she continued softly.
They did as she said and sat on a chair next to David.
“I’m sorry,” Gwen wept, taking a tissue from the side and wiping her bruised eyes.
“You have nothing to be sorry about, my love,” Juliette said to her. “Absolutely nothing.”
Jules gently cleared his throat, before saying, “You want me to take the boys out for a moment? Give you a little space for a while.”
“That would be nice,” Gwen said.
“Okay, boys,” Jules said as he stood up, “let’s go explore the hospital, okay?”
“I saw a playground next to the car park,” Randy informed him.
“Well, that’ll be the first place we’ll explore then.”
The boys smiled, including David.
“Okay, go kiss your ma and we’ll see her again soon.”
Randy and Casper went over to their mom and she embraced them once more. After that, Jules and the boys left.
Once they were alone, Juliette pulled her chair up closer to Gwen’s bedside. She immediately offered the poor woman her hand and when Gwen took it, she enveloped in both of her own.
The two sat momentarily gazing into one another’s eyes, until Juliette said, “You’re looking much better.”
Gwen grinned and let out a half laugh.
“I don’t think so. And neither did ma boys.”
“No. The swelling’s gone down since the other day I came. It’s getting better.”
“They say that it’ll be a week before the swelling in ma cheeks and gums goes down enough so they can get an impression for a denture. Until then all I get to eat is soup and ice cream.”
“That’s not so bad, love.”
“Yeah, I guess not. They say that I’ve gotta have another operation to put a plate in the side of ma face where ma cheekbone has been fractured. So I guess…”
Gwen trailed off and tears flooded her eyes.
“Oh, love,” Juliette said softly. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t wanna.”
“But I should. It’s good to talk about it. Over the years I’ve lost count of how many bruises, cuts and injuries I’ve hidden from the world. But this time there ain’t no hiding it, Juliette. This time he’s left a mark that’ll never fade.”
“And for that he’ll be locked in cage where he deserves to be.”
“The cops came around this morning. They told me that he’d admitted everything.”
“Yeah, they came to take a statement from me and Jules the day before last. They said he’d pleaded guilty.”
“The cops told me that because he was still under license from the last time, he’ll get at least six years.”
“That’s more than enough time for you to get things in order, Gwen. You do whatever you feel you need to do. And remember whatever it is that you need, you only have to ask me and Jules. Whatever it is, if we can provide it for you and your boys, we will.”
Gwen gave a withered smile and fell back into tears. Leaning forward, Juliette took her in her arms and the two held each other tight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Claire stood at the glass facade of the Cliff Face gazing out at the rain that lashed down on the valley below. Behind her stood Sam, his hands tenderly upon her hips, his head nestled into her long neckline.
“You were right,” she said, “the rain does look beautiful here.”
He smiled and kissed her neck gently. In his arms, she melted slightly and he held her firmly by the waist. As he softly laid his lips upon the skin of her neck, she closed her eyes and groaned slightly, raising her hand to the back of his head and roughly taking ahold of his hair. Just as their passions were about to explode,
Sam stopped himself. They’d made a pact to each other: that until they’d broken things off with their respective partners, they wouldn’t step over the final line and make love. They’d already been deceitful beyond measure, but making love felt like an act of duplicity too far.
Stepping back from Claire, her eyes slowly opening as he moved away, Sam checked himself, pushing back against the internal urge that told him to take her in his arms and carnally devour her.
“Dinner should be ready in a moment,” he said as she turned around. “The gratin is almost cooked, so I’ll prepare the steaks. Medium rare isn’t it?”
“You still remember from the last time I was here?”
“Photographic memory,” he said tapping his head.
He left to the kitchen and she was all alone at the huge wall of glass, the rain cascading down it in a sheet, blurring the image of the countryside that spread out below. It was only their first meeting since Brighton Beach. A week later, Claire had called and told him that she had the weekend free and he had suggested flying out to Colorado. Feeling a little trepidatious about meeting up in a place that meant so much to her, she had considered turning it down. But in the end she had acquiesced. And now here she was.
When they had first arrived in the helicopter, she had felt very nervous as they’d walked along the stone pathway that led to the house. Then, when she saw the building as they approached, her heart had dropped and she’d had a flashback to the first time she’d seen the magnificent house that had been built into the precipice of a cliff. He had held her hand then, just as he did now, and a bright light had transferred between them. As she’d experienced her moment of deja vu, Claire had stopped still on the path and Sam had asked her what was up. She’d merely smiled in reply and continued walking.
Since they’d entered the house, so much of the past had come flooding back to Claire and it felt like a reconciliation was occurring between that time and now. Unlike then, when she had felt the impossibility of the situation, now she felt there was nothing stopping her. Not even her guilt for Paul, which was sadly fading further with each new thought of Sam. She felt such optimism. She would face the world whatever came her way, just so she could be by his side. They had talked by phone every single day and night since their liaison on the beach. They had talked of the future. Of their future. She would continue her residency at Faith and he would move permanently to New York. He was sure that he could easily move Jess to the Big Apple and Maud had family there, so that wouldn’t be an issue. His company was in good hands in the boardroom with Calloway running the show, so he could lay back a bit now. He’d still tour with the T7s, but that was only four times a year and he could bring all his research to Manhattan. Everything appeared set.
