Drop

by Mat Johnson

  Disgusted, I looked up, ready to see the bear open his window with his smiling faux-guilty manner, ready to send those keys flying towards me once more. But instead of fat boy, instead of arrogance, carelessness or pride, what I saw through that window was the clouds above. There was no pane, there was no glass, there was no ceiling or curtains there, only light, space, and a plane drifting slow and deliberate far above. Through David’s window on the second floor I could see the morning sky, a pretty blue thing this day, the color of Captain America’s leotard. Even the sun, a rare guest in this place, shone down through the space after I had been staring for a while. Above that window, the third floor looked like the charred ribs of a whale. Urgent Agency, the place that had been my office, the place I produced, where my computer rested, where there were folders filled with the best work I’d ever done, had been replaced by a bunch of blackened beams, a few patches of ceiling that had forgotten to fall down.

  I knew that he was gone. My brother. I knew that he was the ash around me. That the only place his voice now existed was in my ear and in the heads of others who had heard him. I also knew that whatever I could have done last night to stop this from happening, there was nothing I could do now. There was no machine or service I could think of that could put pieces like this back together for you. But for some reason Chris Jones just kept standing there, looking up to David’s window, the back of his skull fixed to the top of his spine, unable to close his mouth or look down again. David’s false savior, the one who’d failed to rescue him from even this fate, just stood there. Waiting patiently for something to move above him besides the smoke rising lazily from the feast now over.

  Crawl Space

  David’s funeral was a quiet thing, particularly for such a loud man. It was just us standing there on a slope of cemetery land. I thought it would be more – we got the call the day before and I was expecting a crowd – but it was just Margaret and Raz, the former in black, the latter in a purple suit, shirt, and tie. No viewing, no family flown up from the Caribbean, no friends standing as monuments to the lives he had acquired. We were all that was left of him. All that hadn’t been lost or pushed away before now.

  It was still sunny out, kind of hot even, and I stood, uncomfortably, listening to the preacher’s prefab sermon and the silences when he gasped for air. Margaret stood across from me, the coffin separating us, and the only way I could manage that was by staring at her ankles, at the bottom of her dress. Unable to look away but even more incapable of looking up at her. Anger, despair, or a blank stare – it didn’t matter what I saw there because I couldn’t handle any of them, or the emotions they were symptoms of. Fourteen years Margaret took care of the man and he was just fine. One night under Chris’s watch and this is our next meeting place.

  I knew Fionna was somewhere behind me, so when the lift started taking the coffin down, away from me, I reached back for her, one blind hand hoping to grasp another, but I touched nothing. Nobody was touching at all. Us just standing there, a couple of people alone at the same place, the same time. More like people waiting for an elevator than bidding farewell. Margaret was still and straight as the shovel dug into the mound of dirt she stood next to. Getting brave, I looked up at her, to reveal myself in exchange for a glimpse of the face she wore, but there was nothing to look at. She had both hands covering the space from her nose to her mouth, keeping herself from saying something, damning someone. Her eyes looked as dry as oyster crackers, like she couldn’t blink anymore.

  When it was time to drop dirt down the hole, I got in line with the rest. Margaret used the shovel, skimmed a little soil off the top of the pile and let it fall down, and then Fionna did the same, letting the dirt fall as light as hourglass sand. After Raz went, he passed the shovel to me. It was a cold metal thing, its green paint chipping off the handle. I dug it deep in that brown mound, shoved as much blade as the earth would allow, then left it there, instead reaching for the dirt with my hands. The soil was loose, dark, and I got a good sum of it by cupping my palms together. I let it drop in one solid clump. It sounded like a bass kick when it hit the door of David’s new home.

  When I turned around, Margaret was already driving away from me. The red Fiat popped into gear and ran: no limousines had been hired, no expense wasted on mortal formalities. So that was it? A life was over? Apparently, because Fi was already halfway down the hill towards our rented car. Moving lightly, her arms swaying, staring at her feet so as not to sprain an ankle on the slope. I followed her. My hands were still heavy with earth so I wiped them together till they were just covered in dust like brown sugar, the tiny specks glittering back at me. A finger in my mouth, tiny particles of soil found a stream in my saliva, a delta in my throat. I sucked on the rest of my fingers as well, then along the callused lines of my palm, leaving my hand slick and glowing with spit’s hunger. Before me, fifty yards at most, Fionna had already reached the car. She sat in the driver’s seat, starting the engine and putting a cassette into the player.

  This was not over, this death ritual. There would be more. Tonight I would buy some hooch, some good shit, too, American (David would like that), and I would come back and pour it on the grave. A whole jug that I could pour down and know that it would reach the wood around him, maybe even seep through. I would buy one for myself, then bring a box—

  ‘Fi, where the hell are we? This isn’t Brixton.’

  ‘Well, no. I was thinking we could drive by Ikea, pick up that wardrobe we’ve been looking at, the green one.’

  ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s just we’ve already rented the car, haven’t we? And look, we’re already here.’ Fionna cut off two lanes of oncoming traffic and found a parking space before they stopped honking. ‘Come on! It will cheer you up! You need a new lamp, too,’ she said, opening the door. I didn’t even unbuckle my seatbelt. The tears were finally coming: long awaited, much anticipated friends. It was good sitting with them.

  I was so weak. After that first realization at David’s door, I had found myself back at my own. Nearly an hour after I had done the opposite, I was sliding back in next to Fionna, trying once more not to awake her. There I remained for the rest day and most of the next one. Feigning sleep when Fionna came in the room and refusing to turn on the radio or television, I successfully escaped reality up until Margaret called and confirmed my description. When the phone rang so late that night I knew who it must be, and when I saw Fionna’s face as she took in this dreaded information, I watched as she realized that this was no simple flu I’d been stricken with.

  In the days after the funeral I made up for my original cowardice with a full-fledged inquiry. Keeping my alarm set for eight as it has always been, I used my new abundance of time to get up, go down to the newsagents on Brixton High Street and buy a complete and heavy set of the dailies. Now, at my kitchen table, underneath the banging of Fi’s aerobics upstairs, I hunted through the obituaries to see what had been mentioned of the one I had disappointed. But I was too late. After a week of scouring The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Sun, even The Sport, I found nothing. Finally, I admitted my latest round of failure and harassed Fi into calling Margaret’s answerphone to ask which publication and date I should request a back issue for. A week later I received an envelope in the mail with no return address. Inside was a crisply folded clipping I knew must have been cut by the blessed widow.

  The obit was insulting. From the paper stock it was hard to tell, but I think it was from the Voice, which should have known better. A brief record no longer than my thumb that basically mentioned David’s two decades of work at the Patterson Group, that he was a resident of South London, and that he left a wife, Margaret Crombie, behind. The last line was ‘The pinuncle of his career was the founding of Brixton-based Urgent Agency, co-chaired by the immensely talented American creative director Christopher Jones.’ Pinuncle. Did the copy editor bother even reading the paragraph, or did he just assume that respect for the dead does not
include proper spelling? Or were they just too fucking stupid to know that a life like this should not be reduced to this burp. The last line I declared aloud, apparently screaming, because immediately a response came back to me.

  ‘What the hell are you yelling about? Will you shut up? Will you shut up?’ Fionna running down the stairs, waving the sound away with her hands.

  ‘Look at this shit!’ I said, tossing the article at Fionna. She wasn’t ready; she slapped it to the floor.

  ‘Don’t throw things at me! What is wrong with you? Why are you being such an ass? Why, Chris? Why?’

  Enter standard apologies here and continue with ‘This thing, it says nothing. Nothing. Like he was some John Doe who faded in the night. It’s not an article, it’s a damn list.’

  ‘Well, considering, do you really want them to say more?’

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Continue with apologies, even more. That seemed to be half my verbal weight these days.

  ‘I mean, come on, Chris. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about this. I mean, she leaves and then … poof.’ The last sound comes complete with fully complementary visual effects: eyes bug, hands go from balls to wide receivers.

  ‘David was a fucking slob! Everybody knows that! The man was a pig. And all those books – he might as well have filled the house with kindling. “He fell asleep smoking,” that’s what Margaret told you, right? That’s what you said Margaret said. He was drunk. You have no idea how the man could drink. The only reason you’re saying this shit is because she left him the day before. And that’s stupid. If it had happened two weeks earlier, you’d be blaming it on the smoke detectors.’

  ‘If this had happened two weeks earlier, David would have just killed Margaret too, in addition to himself, the house, and Urgent.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have happened two weeks earlier because someone would have been there who could protect him.’ Someone who could handle the job.

  ‘Chris, why don’t you get out the house?’

  ‘What? I get out the house. I go for walks.’

  ‘Twenty minutes in the morning. Maybe fifteen minutes to pick up some take-away at night. Why don’t you just give us a break.’

  ‘He didn’t kill himself.’

  ‘Just get out the house.’

  ‘I’m going to call the paper. Fuck that, I’m going to go down there and get the little shit that wrote it! Fucking disrespect!’

  Fionna walked out to the hall and into the bedroom, where she closed the door. After a few seconds I could hear her music coming through, the same song she did her routine to for hours every afternoon, the same thudding vibrations as she practiced her moves on the wood floor.

  There was a bottle of vodka in the kitchen cabinet over the washer-dryer, a gift he’d given me that I’d never touched before. Loudly opening then shutting the front door, I took off my shoes and slipped back to the small closet underneath my stairs. Moving the vacuum cleaner, there was enough room to sit down and a bucket to pee in. Upstairs, for hours afterwards, Fionna walked around, watched TV, made numerous phone calls, danced some more. That night, when she was in the shower, I climbed out with the bottle drained, grabbed a box of cookies, then crept into the bedroom and closed the door.

  Left

  My cover letters went out to every contact I could remember, everyone I had been introduced to or whose name bounced off David’s lips for one reason or another. Each letter said basically the same thing: ‘I have been employed by David Crombie as a senior creative partner for the former Urgent Agency and I’m looking to continue my experience as an advertising creative. David often spoke highly of your work, citing both its intelligence and creative power, and I would consider it a great privilege to be able to assist in furthering your vision in the future.’ Afterwards, when the phone did ring it was for Fi. If I got a call, it was just an assistant calling to say ‘no openings at the moment’ and ‘we’ll keep your résumé on file’ before hanging up and leaving me holding a dead phone. Every morning Fionna told me to call them, talk to someone and try and get an interview, and some mornings that seemed almost possible, that I could just pick up the phone and do that. But at the end of each day I found that I didn’t, because without David, what was I? Just some newbie with a couple of lucky months on his résumé, an outcast from a third-rate town across the sea. Certainly nothing to pause from a busy workday to talk about.

  At least Fionna, after a dry stretch that had lasted as long as I knew her, finally got a job. The unexpected pregnancy of Topsy in the West End’s musical revival of Uncle Tom’s Cabin meant that the company was desperate for a dancer who was both small and black enough for the role. Fionna now had a gig six days of the week, including matinees on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, sucking up cash every time she put a toe on the stage. It was a sign. Everything was going to be all right now. After Fi came back from the audition, after they called and left their news on the machine, we danced across the living room like it was Juneteenth, shucking and jiving around the kitchen table as if legal tender was raining on us. The part wouldn’t start for another month and a half, when the now-Topsy went into her second trimester, so Fi had time to practice the role before taking it over. It was work, something I hadn’t seen Fi get much of, something I wasn’t getting at all.

  So to celebrate we were going to eat food, restaurant food, where we would sit dressed fancy as heavy plates were laid before us. ‘This will make you better,’ Fionna told me. Since it was decided that true celebration means having someone else at the table, she invited one of her oldest friends to join us. Devina, whose wedding I’d attended a few months before, was the friend Fi had finished her A-levels with, the friend Fi called when she had good news. Her husband was a rich thug, but Devina seemed cool. It was Fi’s day; I didn’t care as long as there was something to eat.

  Fi said, ‘Meet me at seven-fifteen at Kentish Town tube station. I’m going to come straight from rehearsal; the reservation is for half-past seven. And bring a bottle of wine, a red. Or a Champagne, if you can get it cold.’

  I couldn’t get it cold: I couldn’t even get my ass there before seven-fifty. I overslept and then a bomb threat at Kings Cross meant that I didn’t even make it past Holborn Station, and then I was stuck in the back of an underachieving black cab, staring at the meter, trying to make sure it didn’t go past the amount I had on me.

  When Fi saw me walking down the block towards her she turned around and scissored those little legs in the other direction. Jogging, leather soles down wet cobblestones, I caught up to her.

  ‘You didn’t even bring the wine!’ Fi said.

  ‘I got stuck. A bomb threat, y’know? Blame the IRA.’ No laugh. There was an off-licence a street ahead. Fionna turned and started walking to it.

  ‘Babe, I blew my cash on the cab to get here. You got any money on you?’

  ‘No. I asked today; my first check is next week.’ There was a cashpoint across the road, so I skipped through traffic to get in the queue. By the time it was my turn, Fi was saying, ‘We’ll tell them I was held up at the theater. We’ll tell them rehearsal went long, that I had no control.’

  I put my card in, as always. Tapped my code into its screen, trying to shield the keyboard with my body as my finger poked around. I selected the amount: enough to buy a wine so good that Fionna and Devina and her hubby would forgive all tardiness, enough to pay for the whole dinner if necessary, enough to put us in a taxi home after the meal was done. I was expecting that cash, too, that thank-God flutter of the machine counting my dough before it coughed it up, pushing those multicolored pound notes my way. That’s what this world had given me time and again when I put my plastic into the insert-here hole. So when, instead of the familiar cash delivery, the machine sent an error beep screeching out into the street, it was immediately clear something was wrong. Fi jumped like a deer after the hunter’s first shot. Insufficient Funds. Startled, I looked back to the screen, at the out-of-place, out-of-land Philly message staring back
at me. Lighting the whole street blue in the glow of its letters.

  ‘Oh shit, we’re broke.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s it. We don’t have any money.’

  ‘What are you talking about,’ Fi asked, pushing into my side to read the electric declaration.

  ‘I don’t have any more money. Game over.’

  ‘What are you saying, you don’t have any more money. Wasn’t there money in there?’

  ‘There was. I think we used it.’

  ‘How can that be, Chris?’ Fi asked, looking at it again. ‘Don’t you check? Don’t you know what you have?’

  ‘I didn’t think of it. David always just filled it up. There was so much in there.’

  ‘Then how are we going to get the wine?’ Fionna asked, annoyed.

  What we had: four pound seventy, counted out in loose, lint-laden coins pulled from the bottom of her pocketbook. Not enough for Fi to go alone, lie about my absence, order a salad, and go home, but enough for two tube rides back to Brixton.

  We stood on the platform in silence, me following her to the far end, staring at the tracks until the train arrived. The car was crowded. The only reason Fionna stayed next to me was that there was nowhere else to sit down.

  When we got home, I went to the study and Fionna went upstairs to the living room. Better to be in different rooms than in the same room not talking. That night, I could hear her making calls, watching TV, banging on the floor as she practiced for her role. I sat at my drafting table, head resting on its cool white angle, trying to think my way around my obstacles. My visa would be running out soon, and technically it was only valid if I was working for Urgent, so I had to get something going on. I needed to call up our old clients, get replacement samples for my book. At least Fi got a job; money would be coming from somewhere. After a particularly heavy thump from above, the bulb broke. An electric pop gave sudden movement to the room, leaving me in the darkness, listening to the wind swim over the treetops in Brockwell. Feeling my feet get cold, I thought, Someday, if I get up, if I ever find the energy or motivation to, I’m going to turn the heat on.