Please

by Peter Wild

  ‘Shaving is really dull,’ he said. ‘It’s so, so dull. At least you get to play with your face–we just have to mow ours.’

  ‘Play with my face?’

  ‘Make-up. Women. You get to apply all those…’ He waved two fingers at himself, indicating, possibly, his lips. ‘Things. I don’t know–colours and so on.’

  ‘And that’s playing with our faces, is it?’

  ‘Yes, of course it is. You’re creating something. It’s like making a work of art–shaving is like stripping wallpaper. Have you ever stripped wallpaper?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Maybe–I can’t remember.’

  ‘Then you’ve never stripped wallpaper. If you had, you’d remember. It’s the most tedious thing that’s ever existed–it’s so boring it actually hurts. I can feel it now: the sound of the scraper on the plaster; the smell of dampened woodchip; the dust in your eyes; the aching of your arm; the sheer, punishing, bloody boredom of it. Nobody should ever waste their time stripping wallpaper.’

  ‘Or shaving?’

  ‘Yeah. Except we have to.’

  ‘Because you’d end up with a beard.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And look like a twat.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  The sky was cold and bad tempered and looked as if it had slept in its mascara. David glanced at it through the window and was saddened by how distant it seemed behind the double glazing.

  ‘And the other thing,’ he continued, ‘is that it bloody well outlives you. Your hair carries on growing after you’re dead. Talk about tenacious. I’m going to show it who’s boss while I’m alive, at least, because I know it’ll get me in the end: beards pursue you into the damn grave.’

  ‘That’s not true, actually.’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘No–it’s a myth. Your hair doesn’t really continue to grow after you die. People thought that it did because your skin shrinks and goes livid; it might look like you’ve got a five o’clock shadow when you shuffled off at midday, but, really, it’s not that your stubble has risen, it’s that your face has fallen.’

  David didn’t reply.

  ‘Also,’ Helen went on, ‘before the courts got so picky about death certificates, they were forever burying people alive–particularly if there was a plague doing the rounds. They didn’t hang about back then. If you had a funny turn and didn’t seem very talkative, you were straight in the ground. They’d dig you up later—’

  ‘Why would they do that?’

  ‘Oh, a bit of body snatching, maybe. Or just for something to do of an evening–there was no televised snooker at that time. Anyway, they’d dig people up and see the body had a little hair growth. And–not nearly as rarely as it’s pleasant to think about–fingernail marks scratched into the inside of the coffin lid too. I’ve read that this might have been the origin of the idea of vampires.’

  ‘God. That’s horrible.’

  ‘More horrible than being dead? Can being alive ever be more horrible than being dead?’

  ‘Being buried alive? Yes. That’s more horrible–don’t you think?’

  Helen picked absently at the adhesive strip on her forearm. ‘Perhaps…But I suppose there’s always the chance of being heard and rescued–if you scream loud enough and long enough. It’s terrifying, but there’s still hope. There’s still a good reason for screaming. Premature burial can’t tear away hope. It’s taken modern advances in diagnostic medicine to do that.’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Anyway, my face hasn’t been a work of art for years. When you have children, you abandon make-up. There isn’t the time any more. At least, you think you have no time, until you realise what having no time really is.’

  David started to reach his hand out to Helen’s…but then faltered and turned the movement into rubbing something that wasn’t there off his knee.

  ‘I saw your children,’ he said.

  Helen nodded, without looking at him.

  David smiled. ‘They look like good kids. I popped my head in, and they were here, so I left again. Was that you mother with them?’

  ‘Yes.’ The reply was stripped. Terse. Unemotional. Emotional.

  ‘I thought so. Your husband…’

  ‘Ex-husband. No, I haven’t seen him. There’s not a single reason I should, or would want to. They were with my mother.’

  ‘Well…Good kids. I thought, anyway.’

  ‘Yes.’ She gave a small laugh, which segued into a larger cough. David reached across and poured some water into her glass from the bedside jug, but she waved it away. ‘Worth the price of their idiot father, they were,’ she added. ‘Tallulah Bankhead said, “If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.”’ Helen allowed herself another tight, bitter laugh. ‘Though she lived to be sixty-six–so, to my mind, she had a reasonably fair amount of time to enjoy kicking herself.’

  David turned to the sky again. It was still there. Petulantly, like a small child making his presence unavoidably felt by leaning against his mother’s legs while she was trying to get on with her household chores, it flopped on top of the buildings that formed the unevenly serrated skyline of the city. The roofs would decay, and crumble, and be replaced, thought David. They were fixed, but transient; while the sky was ever changing but immortal. It would be there–in human terms–for ever. For ever was a long time. Longer than brick and slate. And much, much longer than him.

  ‘It’s a pity,’ he said, half answering Helen, half answering himself.

  ‘A pity? A pity? I don’t understand you.’ She squinted at him and shook her head. ‘Where’s your sense of justice?’

  ‘That’s not really relevant, is it?’

  ‘Yes it is. What separates us from badgers and mackerel is moral awareness; and that’s really just a fancy way of saying that we instinctively and innately want things to be fair. Nothing is more definitive of what we are than our angry outrage when we encounter unfairness. Well, there are murderers out there–and they’ll still be out there this time next year. Rapists are sitting on sofas right now, planning their summer holidays. Burglars, wife beaters and petty thugs will collect their pensions. Plain old shitty, selfish little creeps are going to be around to see their children grow up. Doesn’t that make you angry? Doesn’t the sheer, fucking unfairness of it twist your insides?’

  ‘You shouldn’t get worked up.’ This time David did take hold of Helen’s hand. ‘It’ll wear you out.’

  ‘I’ve already worn out.’ She tossed him a glance. ‘Ha! I’m funny.’

  She laughed, but also squeezed his fingers so hard that it took a serious effort for him not to wince. He even considered reaching down to the dispenser at his waist and giving himself a quick intravenous burst. But Helen soon noticed that her hand had embarked upon a small mutiny. She inwardly tutted with annoyance: tch–really; her voice, her expressions, her movements…keeping all the bits of herself under control was like juggling chainsaws. Her grip relaxed and, with a few gentle pats on his wrist, withdrew: she’d happily hold hands, but she didn’t want it to seem as though she needed to hold hands.

  ‘Do you know what else is funny?’ she said.

  David leaned back into his chair. ‘What?’

  ‘I still can’t die.’

  David shifted uncomfortably. Helen smiled.

  ‘In my head, that is,’ she added. ‘I think about being dead, and I get angry–furious. It sets me shaking with sheer rage at the sickening injustice of it. But, really, I’m not thinking about being dead: I’m thinking about thinking about being dead.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’ll give you an example.’

  ‘I’m all ears.’

  He wasn’t especially eager to know the details, but he was pleased that Helen wanted to explain them to him. She always livened up when she’d got a new bit of death that she was mulling over. And he sort of understood that; dissecting it put her in the driving seat–in the same way that gallows humour does
: not waving, but drowning while giving the finger. Helen’s preferred way to whistle a happy tune was to whistle through the graveyard. So, he was glad she’d found another point about which to become eagerly fixated. Though he tried to prevent her getting too worked up, he didn’t try to soothe it away completely, even when she got angry about things. She seemed to draw strength from it. Sometimes he thought that it was only dying that was keeping her alive.

  ‘Well, for a start,’ Helen said, ‘I hear my tenses.’

  ‘A man goes to the doctor: he says—’

  ‘Doctor, I keep dreaming I’m a wigwam and a marquee. The doctor replies, “I know what your problem is.”’

  ‘You’re two tents.’

  They both laughed like schoolboys.

  ‘That’s such a crap joke,’ Helen said through crackly giggles.

  ‘I know.’

  They laughed harder.

  ‘OK, OK–seriously…’ Helen determinedly calmed herself. ‘Look, the very worst thing is that I think about my children. I think about how I’ll miss them. Did you hear it? I won’t miss them–I’ll be dead. But it’s ‘I will miss them’. Not a loss I’m feeling now, but a loss I imagine myself feeling, when I won’t actually be feeling anything at all. I won’t be at all. It’s as though I’ll be there, looking at myself not being there, and feeling the pain of my absent self. It’s a mess. How can I have such a muddled, convoluted, nonsensical picture in my head? The answer is because my head simply can’t assimilate being dead. Even though I know it; even though the miserable, cruel, imminent certainty of it fills my thoughts every moment, my head’s still unable to grasp the reality properly.’

  ‘You can’t accept it. That’s completely understandable.’

  ‘No, no. I can accept it: but I can’t imagine it. It’s like accepting that time is relative. You go, “Well, OK. Einstein’s proved it is, apparently, so I’m sure it’s right. He wouldn’t have said it simply for a gag–he was German.” But you can’t imagine it as a reality you’re sitting in. You can only see it in the abstract.’

  ‘Right. I get what you mean now.’

  ‘And I bet you’re the same.’ She turned her eyes away from him and peered up at her drip; the saggy plastic bag hung limply from its shiny stand like a sad balloon two days after the party was over. ‘Every day, I wonder whether you won’t come to see me. You won’t come, because you’ll have…’–she tried not to pause, but the pause was too heavy for her to move it out of the way without an effort–‘gone.’

  Once again, David remained silent.

  Helen continued. ‘Even though I know that I’m likely to go first.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘Oh, please. I’ll go first.’

  ‘You won’t.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘You have a very unattractive competitive streak in you, you know.’

  ‘But–as you’ve thrown yourself so predictably into my trap–that’s my point. I’m sure that when you think about us you don’t think that you might not be here tomorrow; you think that you’ll come and I won’t be here.’

  ‘I do not,’ replied David chidingly. He was unable to hold her eyes, however, because it was true. Each day, as he shuffled in to see her, he had to struggle against the image of arriving to find an empty bed.

  ‘You’re such a liar.’ Helen grinned. ‘But such a rubbish liar. I wish I’d known that there were men who were so utterly rubbish at lying before I married Dan. It’s like those women who get divorced and suddenly realise that sex can be great, it was simply that their husbands were useless and they’d assumed it was normal.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have lied to you anyway. If…’

  ‘Ifs and buts. We’ll never know.’

  ‘I know I could have made you happy.’

  ‘You have made me happy.’

  ‘You’ve made me happy too. And sadder. It’s so…’ He tried to find a better word, but there wasn’t one. ‘So sad that we found each other, but found each other here.’

  ‘Pff–you think it was an accident? I’m a divorced woman with two young children. It’s a nightmare getting that second date–you’ve no idea. To be honest, I’m only dying as a way to meet men.’

  ‘Hussy.’

  ‘I’d show you, but our tubes would get all knotted. It’d take two orderlies the rest of the day to untangle us from coitus.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t like to brag, but pretty much every woman who’s had sex with me has wanted to ring for a nurse at some point.’

  ‘Enough, enough. Don’t dangle temptation, David.’

  ‘You started it.’

  ‘Yes–sorry. It’s always like that. Put me on a morphine drip and I’m anybody’s.’

  She grinned, but it made David consider, not for the first time, how much of what he felt–what they both felt–was down to a combination of extreme circumstances and medical-strength narcotics. Would he have fallen for her, and (even more of an issue) would she have fallen for him, if the situation had been different? If they’d simply struck up a conversation after reaching for the same tangerine in Safeway, would it have led to this? Was it real? It had all happened so fast–and wasn’t that a giveaway? Limited time, limited choice and unlimited methadone: was that it? Would it have happened if they were two people with their whole lives ahead of them?

  He decided it was irrelevant. After all, their whole lives were ahead of them–it was just that they didn’t stretch very far ahead of them. What you feel is what you feel; it’s its own measure–you don’t arrive at it after adding up the As, Bs and Cs like a questionnaire in a women’s magazine. And what was the downside to accepting their feelings? One thing was certain: they weren’t going to live to regret it.

  Happy with his reasoning, he welcomed in the sadness once more.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Helen, snapping her fingers at him.

  ‘Stop it?’

  ‘You’re drifting again. You can be turned on or pissed off, but I won’t stand for any “sorrowful introspection” nonsense.’

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘You can. Do it for my sake–do it for our sake. We’ll be a couple, visibly, if we both go spitting and scratching into that good night.’ She took his hand in both of hers. ‘Promise me something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Promise me that, with your last ounce of strength…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’ll punch a consultant in the neck.’

  David smiled and shook his head. ‘You really are…’

  Helen raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  ‘Beyond hope,’ said David. He pulled up his arm and kissed the back of her hand.

  Helen reached out to him and touched his cheek. ‘Awww–you say the sweetest things. There’s nothing so irresistible as a man who makes you feel like you work on two levels.’ She ran a fingertip across his lips. ‘I bet my knees would go all wobbly, if I had any sensation below my waist.’ She grinned again. ‘A woman wakes up in hospital. She says, “Doctor! I can’t feel my legs!”’

  ‘The doctor says, “Yes. We had to cut off your arms.”’

  They both crumbled into another fit of giggles–worse than the last one. It went on and on; each time they thought it had run its course they set each other off again with a look, until, gradually, it ebbed into a silence that was almost like an afterglow. Finally, David spoke again.

  ‘I ought to get back.’

  ‘I know…’ Helen clicked her teeth. ‘If you go missing for too long they’ll probably give your place to someone else. Shortage of resources. There’s a great queue of people who simply can’t die until there’s a bed free.’

  David struggled to his feet. He hated leaving. On top of the terribleness of not being with her, added even to the nauseous knowledge that she might be gone the next time he returned, was the fact that each journey was more difficult than the last. He dreaded the appearance of a moment when–for all the power of his desire to see her–his traitorous body would refuse to carry him through
the antiseptic corridors to her bedside.

  ‘I’ll come back–as soon as I can,’ he said; insistently, so his limbs would hear and be committed.

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  ‘But, if you can’t—’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘But if you can’t, it’ll only be a detail. We aren’t these failing organs and collapsing cells, David. I’ve learned, now, not to mistake intimacy for holding hands together as we walk in the summer rain, or wandering around IKEA picking out bedding–all arm in arm and our pockets stuffed with a thieving excess of tiny pencils. If I never touched you again, you’d still be with me. You’d be with me here.’ She placed her hand on herself.

  ‘Your crotch?’ David asked, peering.

  ‘Yeah.’ She pulled a face at him. ‘What? You’d prefer me to point to my heart? It’s just a muscle. I’ve got better places to keep you than that. Do you want to be lodged in my aorta?’ she asked derisively.

  ‘No. Your crotch is good. I can live in your crotch–no problem.’

  ‘You will. Live.’

  ‘Until the next time, at least,’ he said.

  He stood for a moment, looking down at her, and shook his head. ‘I feel lucky.’

  ‘Me too.’ She smiled.

  He turned and began to walk away. Without looking back he said, ‘See you soon.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, closing her eyes. ‘I can see you now.’

  Death of a Disco Dancer

  Nick Stone

  Morrissey didn’t like discos much. In ‘How Soon Is Now?’, he goes to one, can’t pull and goes home and cries and wants to die. In ‘Panic’, he wants to hang the DJ who responds to the apocalypse raging outside by playing inane, irrelevant pop. And here, he watches some wannabe John Travolta get killed in a nightclub and looks away.

  Miami, 1981

  ‘Gennelmen,’ Major Hartman addressed Detective Sergeant Al Rodgers and Detective Larry Edwards with a broad grin. ‘You’re gonna be movie stars.’