The Year's Best SF 09 # 1991

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  There were no students in the tropical house today. I drank my coffee in the tea room down by the bandstand alone.

  Still not feeling up to risking myself and the Porsche, I took a bus into the centre of town. I still had some change in my pockets, but it was running down. I knew I had a card in my wallet, next to the last five pound note, that would get me money from one of the many cash machines. But, for all my research and revision, I had no idea what my PIN number was.

  I made the mistake of sitting on the top deck of the bus, and the ragged movements and the unaccustomed cigarette fumes left me feeling a little sick by the time it finally jerked to a halt outside C&As.

  The shops were a revelation. I would have loved to have taken some of this stuff back to the present with me. Condoms (and who could ever forget AIDS? Well, I had, for one). Organic vegetables. Newspapers with real news in them. Compact discs. Posters like wallpaper with the name of the artist printed at the bottom in huge type. Mrs. Thatcher mugs! I guess I just gawked. The store detectives watched me carefully as I picked up this and prodded that. It was just like a museum. They were the museum keepers, and didn’t even know it!

  The evening rush hour caught me unawares. Everybody was grim, moving all at once. I had to queue in the yellow streetlight to get a place on the bus, and then had to stand most of the way to my stop. It was cold as I walked the last half mile, and I was pondering whether I should give my central heating a call—before I remembered. The house was warm anyway, the timer set thoughtfully to come on in the evening.

  I took a bath, feeling a little guilty about how much I’d unthinkingly enjoyed my Marnie-less tour of the local sights. But, by seven, I was waiting, anxiously clean and freshly clothed, not so much watching the TV as playing with the remote control.

  Slices of the Channel Four News. Some quiz programme. An old Doris Day film. Top of the Pops. Top of the Pops was the most diverting (did Michael Jackson ever look that young?) but none of them held my attention for long. Soon, Marnie would be here. I planned on going out for a meal, maybe that Indian place just along the road, something ordinary and nostalgic, a place where we could sit in peaceful, candlelit anonymity and talk longingly. And then we’d walk back, hugging each other close against the cold, our frosty breath entwined in the streetlight, back to my house, to my bed.

  Eight o’clock came and went. Marnie was always late, of course. I fixed myself a shot of Famous Grouse at half past, and then another at five to nine. All the usual questions and accusations were starting a headache hammer inside my head. I wandered around the house, looking at the wallpaper I’d chosen, the furniture and the things I hadn’t seen in thirty years. Now, if I’d only kept that big plastic Foster’s Lager ashtray that Marnie had smuggled out of the local wine bar under her coat and used to roll her joints. Somewhere along the years, it had departed from my life; exactly the sort of bric-a-brac that grew in value because no one thought anything of it at the time. There were a distressingly large number of things like that around the house. I’d been sitting on a gold mine, and I’d never realized it. And where the goddamned hell was she anyway?

  Where was Marnie? At any moment since we’d become lovers, and even for some time before, that question was always somewhere in my thoughts. Another half hour, another whisky. I stood at the window and watched the empty pavement. I sat down and tried the TV again. I lay on the bed. I got up. I put the record player on. Old music for these old times. But the question followed me about, tapping at my shoulder, clutching at my elbow, whispering in my ear. What is she doing? She was with someone else, that was what. She’d never been faithful, not truly, not faithful, that was what.

  I’d seen her walking the campus with another man the morning after the very first night we’d made love. I was still glowing. I sidled behind a tree. I watched them cross the wide and milling spaces. At the steps in front of the library she put her arms around him and laughed and gave him a quick kiss. She said he was just a student, when I quizzed her in the corridor as she came out from pottery, clay on her apron and hands and arms like the evidence of a crime, just someone she liked who had said something funny. Just another student. Snob that I was, that hurt more than anything. He was three years younger than her, for crissake! And when I followed him into the cafeteria for lunch, I saw that he had greasy hair and a fair sprinkling of zits.

  Ten o’clock. She wasn’t coming. No one, absolutely no one, let me down like this! And this wasn’t the first time, either, oh no, she let me down all the time! No more whisky, I decided, having suddenly drunk myself up to some sort of calm plateau. Tonight might be a dead loss but there would be plenty of other times. Yes, plenty.

  I pulled on a coat and went for a walk. I hadn’t walked so much in one day for a long time. It was quiet now, the cars passed by in separate flashes of light. The big petrol station by the traffic lights glowed like a Spielberg spaceship. I headed down past the hospital towards Marnie’s place. It was pure masochism, I knew I wouldn’t find her there.

  Architecturally, the big old houses on Westborne Road were similar to those of the sales directors and wine importers who lived around me, but here, a little further out of town, there were dirty net curtains at the windows and bedsit rows of bell buttons beside the doors.

  Hers was the top window, set in a gable, with a wind-chime owl hanging from the casement in perpetual silence. I crunched up the worn tarmac drive, where a Morris Minor was parked beside a wheelless Triumph Herald up on bricks, and tried the buzzer anyway. A typed strip beside it had the name of the previous occupant, one R. Singh. Marnie never got around to changing anything. There was no reply. The shape of the stairs in the low-wattage light of the hall loomed through the coloured door-glass. I could smell cat’s piss. A record player boomed faintly, deep inside. A man was laughing.

  I stopped at the Ivy Bush on the way back, just in time for another drink. There was a traditional jazz band playing in the back room, but I stayed out of the noise in the flock wallpaper lounge. The publican recognized me and said hello. I nodded back, but his face was one that I had completely forgotten. Although I didn’t feel particularly drunk, I had to fight back a strong urge to sit down on the spare chair facing those two elderly ladies and tell them that I’d come all the way from the future just for love. But common sense prevailed. Apart from anything else, they were probably quite used to those sort of conversations in this particular pub.

  I got back to the house at about midnight, drank some more whisky, debating for a while the merits of taking it straight from the bottle, but deciding to keep with etiquette and use a tumbler, pulled off a representative assortment of clothes and flopped on the bed. The room spun a little, but not as much as I’d hoped. This young body could sure hold its drink.

  Then the doorbell rang.

  “You’ve got one sock off,” Marnie said as she swaggered in.

  “You mean I’ve got one sock on.”

  She threw her coat over the stair rail. It slid to the floor. She’d been drinking too. She had a blue dress on underneath, one that showed her figure.

  “What happened?” I asked, following her into the lounge.

  She flopped down on the sofa, kicked off her shoes, put her feet up. “I tried to ring.” She gazed at her toes.

  “Sure. What time?”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  We were sparring, trying to find out who was more pissed. The things one does for love.

  “I’d like a drink,” she said.

  “You’ve had enough.”

  “Look, Daniel,” she said, switching off the booze in her brain just as she’d switched it on. “I’m sorry.”

  I poured us each a glass. She ignored it for a moment then took it and drank it with both hands.

  “What time did you ring?”

  “Is this a quiz? Do I get a prize?” She smiled. “Men look funny in shirts and underpants … and one sock. Put something on, Dan—or take something off.”

  “I’ve been waiting fo
r you all night. What happened?”

  “I rang you at ten. You weren’t in then, were you? I tried earlier, but the box was vandalized and it stank. I’m truly sorry. It was my fault.”

  I sat down on the sofa by her feet. “Who were you with?”

  So she began to tell me about the Visconti film she’d been to see at the arts centre that turned out to be a two part epic and how someone had given her a lift to the bus stop but then their car had broken down. I was angry-drunk, sure that reason and right were on my side, but there was an element of bitter comedy to this. I knew the story already. It was like watching an old series on TV and discovering that you’re familiar with every twist and turn, that your brain had retained those meaningless facts for so many years. Why, I wondered, gazing at the lovely and abstract curves of Marnie’s thighs where the dress had ridden up, hadn’t I realized that this would be tonight? Her story stumbled on, an absurd, convoluted epic involving a pub and a wine bar and meeting up with a few more friends and the simple fact that she’d forgotten.

  “Nothing’s ever your fault,” I said. “Nothing ever was.”

  Her eyes widened a little. “You almost sound like you mean that.”

  I wondered if I did. I finished my whisky and put it down. I waited for the room to settle. The dress had gone up and she’d made no effort to cover herself. Playing the whore, getting at me that way. It made me angry all over again to realize just how easily it worked.

  I took hold of her feet and massaged them, greedy for the feel of her flesh under the nylon.

  “Do you forgive?” she asked, not wanting to be forgiven.

  “Yes,” I said, not meaning it, simply watching her body. Nothing had changed. We were back in the same old ways. The same tracks. The same dead end sidings. The past and the present had joined and now her skirt now her skirt rode higher and my hands touched the tension in her calves and thighs rode higher and my hands touched the tension in her calves and thighs and up towards what was promised underneath, widening and sweeten-and up towards what was promised underneath, widening and sweetening and sharpening to the place where everything was Marnie. ing and sharpening to the place where everything was Marnie.

  * * *

  We showered separately afterwards to wash away some of the drink, and our guilt at using each other so easily. Nothing had changed. Sex with someone you can hardly talk to afterwards has to be a bad idea. So this was what I’d come all this way for. My Marnie. My love. She pulled back the shower curtains and stepped through the moist heat. There were droplets on her shoulders and face. Nothing had changed. Her hair was dark and smooth and wet, like a swimmer’s.

  We lay in the same bed through the grey night. Marnie breathed soft and heavy beside me. Sometimes, I remembered, I could talk to her when she was like this, find all the right words. But even that was gone. Nothing had changed, the only difference was that everything I did now reeked of falsity. I was a voyeur, staring out at my own life through keyhole eyes.

  And I could press return at any time, clear the screen to end this absurd role-playing game. The thought was a bitter comfort, with Marnie so real and so distant beside me, and yet somehow it drew me into sleep, through the walls and into the sky and deep inside Marnie’s eyes, where there was only the sparky darkness of electricity, circuitry, and machine power.

  I awoke. The greyness was growing stronger with the winter dawn. My Marnie. The perfect, anonymous curves of wrist and back and cheekbone. The composure of sleep. I touched her skin gently, lovingly, and it rippled and broke. She rolled over and muttered something and stumbled out of bed to go to the loo.

  The clock said seven thirty. I wanted to make love to her again, not really for the sex, but just to convince myself that she was real. But when she came back she began to collect her scattered clothes.

  “God, I hate wearing yesterday’s knickers.”

  “You should bring some of your stuff around here,” I said, crossing my hands behind my head, “We could even try living together,” pleased with myself at how easily I’d managed to slip that one through.

  She gave me a be-serious look and pulled her slip on over her head. “Let’s have breakfast. I could fix something.”

  “Something nice…?”

  “Goes without saying.” She picked up her dress and gave it a shake. “I’m the perfect housewife.”

  Irritatingly fully dressed, she wafted out of the bedroom. I sat up and put my feet on the carpeted floor. I supposed the morning had to begin some time.

  We faced each other across toast and boiled eggs at the breakfast table.

  “What about living together?” I asked her again.

  She looked wonderfully pretty with no make-up and her hair a mess. I wondered why women had never grasped the fact that men actually preferred them this way, without the paint and plastic.

  She thwacked the top off her egg. “What about it?”

  “Come on, Marnie.” I tackled my own egg, tapping it gently around the sides. “I thought you were always saying you wanted to try anything new.”

  “Living together isn’t new, Dan. We’d row too much. Look at us now. It’s great when it’s great, but it’s like being on a roller coaster. And that wouldn’t last for long.”

  “That’s exactly my point,” I said, keeping my voice smoothly reasonable and staring back at the watery ruin inside my egg. Marnie was a useless cook. “Things would get better.”

  “Dan, they would just get the same. You know that.”

  It was hard to stay in love with her for long when she was like this. Mulishly refusing to listen. Her sweet disorder was just an irritant. She was wearing that blue dress of the night before, that smelt of cigarettes and the places she’d been to and the people she’d been with. There was even a red wine stain just above her left breast. It was too easy to imagine some oaf mopping it for her.

  “And exactly who were you with last night?”

  “We’ve been through all that.” She pushed away her plate and went in search of cigarettes. I followed her as she dug into her handbag and under cushions.

  “You shouldn’t smoke anyway,” I said. “Look at you, you’re a bloody addict.”

  “One more word,” she said, “and I’m leaving. I don’t need this first thing in the morning. I mean, come on, do you?”

  But she didn’t find her cigarettes, and I did say several more words. This was an easy row by our standards, kid’s stuff. Marnie told me to go to hell and a few more places besides, and she used the F-word, which I never liked, especially from a woman. Then she grabbed up her coat and handbag and stormed out, banging the front door so hard that it bounced open again, letting in the cold of the morning. I had to go down the hall and shut it myself.

  I poured out some more coffee in the kitchen, ignoring the yellow-eyed stare of the eggs. Until this moment, my body had somehow disregarded its shortage of sleep and excess of alcohol, but something had jogged its memory and now it was making up for lost time. I took the cup through to the lounge and dropped down into a chair, leaving the curtains closed. Marnie’s cigarettes peeked out from underneath the dishevelled sofa. I stared at them. What was it about being in love with her? I was acting like a robot, as though I had no free will.

  Something would have to change. The thought kept recurring over the next two days as Marnie and I avoided each other, just as we had done before, just as we always did, playing the game of pride, pretending that an acknowledgement of the fact that we needed each other would be a sign of weakness. Something would have to change. Everything was just the same. A petite Taiwanese student had a nosebleed in one of my classes. I got a letter from my parents telling me that old Uncle Derek was in a bad way from a stroke. I broke one of my heavy Waterford whisky glasses and cut my finger when I was washing up. The passage of these days, it seemed, had been pegged out by accidents and misfortunes.

  But life had its compensations. I spent a lovely lecture-free Friday morning taking the Porsche up and down the close and along
the local roads, just to get the feel of it again. As with everything else, it was really just a matter of letting my subconscious take over. The Porsche obeyed my commands promptly and politely, its great engine purring like an eager-to-please cat. Inside there was still that beautiful smell you got from cars in those days. The whole feel of it was nice, precise. For the first time since I’d returned, I felt as though I was really in command. Around lunchtime, I went for a longer drive, risking the traffic and finding that, with the Porsche, I had nothing to fear. We all used to take driving for granted, but in the right car it could be a real pleasure: the Porsche was the right car.