Ready or Not

by Thomas, Rachel

  Two

  On the other side of town, Michael Morris’ only friend followed him home from the restaurant where they had just shared dinner. He cruised steadily behind Michael’s blue family estate car in his own run-of-the-mill Ford, blending into the background amongst the other Tuesday evening commuters, one bead on the necklace of headlights moving through the town’s streets. As he drove he listened to Radio 4. He couldn’t muster the energy to hum along with familiar tunes, but made mumbled, disagreeable comments about the babbling excuses of a top politician who fumbled his way through a news interview regarding the expenses claim’s scandal.

  He gripped the steering wheel and pushed a hand through his dishevelled blond hair. He glared at the restaurant receipt that sat on the dashboard and felt a sickness in his stomach and anger in his chest that made him lean forward and tighten his grasp on the wheel. He reached over and flicked the receipt to the floor. A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead and he wound down the window slightly to let in a rush of cold evening air. He pushed his head back against the driver’s seat, trying to still the feeling of overpowering irritability that was making his whole body itch. It had been a bad day. But it was about to get better.

  He turned left and continued to follow Michael; trailing behind him into a 1980s housing estate where each house was a mirror image of its neighbour. Red brick houses, driveway large enough for two cars; lawns square, their borders lined with all the creative flair of an obsessive-compulsive horticulturist. He pitied Michael his routine; the one thing most people spend their lives searching for then resenting as soon as they achieved it. He hoped that by the time he turned forty, there would be something more in his life than the monotonous bricks and concrete of suburbia.

  Pulling up outside a standard semi-detached house he waited as Michael manoeuvred onto his driveway and turned off his engine. His children would be inside the house, no doubt, watching TV in the living room or completing their homework at the dining table as their mother, a short, plump woman with shoulder length, coarse copper hair like rusting wire, prepared dinner in time for Michael’s arrival home. He pictured Michael’s daughter – a pretty, intelligent girl of nine – practising her flute playing upstairs in her bedroom, and his son – an athletic, skinny boy aged twelve – kicking a football against the back wall, barely seeing each strike in the early darkness of the winter evening. Poor kids.

  He wondered what his own children were doing now. Perhaps his daughter was reading; she always seemed to have her head stuck in a book, so absorbed with some character or narrative that the most he or anyone else would get from her in terms of conversation would be a mumbled response as she continued to read, lost within the pages of a tatty paperback she had borrowed from the school library or her mother’s bookshelves.

  His son would probably be listening to music, more than likely on the MP3 player his mother had bought for him. His son loved anything with a frantic, ear shattering beat and lyrics that were either inaudible or too explicit to repeat. Anything, in fact, his father would disapprove of. It was probably time it was replaced with a new one. Maybe he would get him an Ipod for his birthday.

  Michael Morris hummed along to the radio, unable to remember the words to the song. It had been a good day. Better than good. Pleasant. Was pleasant better than good? He wasn’t sure, but whatever; he was happy, and happiness was a rare experience that felt to him like putting on a flamboyant outfit that one would ever normally wear, even if it was only in the privacy of one’s own home. He knew he would never have the confidence or the opportunity to actually air this new image in public, but this, for the moment at least, didn’t seem to matter.

  During dinner that evening Michael had talked and Adam had listened. Listening had become a full time occupation for Adam and – as with the others – he had discovered that the more he listened, the less he needed to hear. Eventually Michael’s mouth had been moving but Adam was no longer listening. The words became silent; unheard through the plans that were formulating between Adam’s deafened ears. Adam could predict what Michael was going to say before the words left his mouth. He had heard and seen enough.

  They had eaten an early dinner at what loosely passed for an Italian restaurant. Michael had left work early so that he wouldn’t be home too late and would therefore avoid having to explain to his wife where he had been. Where would he start? If Michael wasn’t in the house he was at work; if he wasn’t at work, he was at home. It would have been far too complicated to try to explain to his wife that suddenly, after twenty years of marriage in which he’d had no friends other than his wife and spent all his time outside work with his family, he had gained a social life that involved dinners in Italian restaurants.

  A plate of garlic bread had lay cooling between them on the table next to a bottle of cheap white wine. Michael had developed a taste for alcohol in the months since he had first met Adam. Drink made the situation easier for him and clouded his feelings so that, for a small time at least, he was able to pretend they weren’t there. He was just an average man enjoying a drink with a friend. It was simple. Entirely plausible.

  The bottle was almost finished. Michael, not usually a big drinker, slurred his words slightly; his cheeks glowing with the warmth of the wine and the excessive heat in the restaurant. The heating system was turned up far too high despite the time of year.

  Drinking and driving, he caught himself thinking: what had happened to him? He’d have a few glasses of water and a brisk walk around the town before heading home; hopefully the wine would wear off by then and Diane wouldn’t notice that he had been drinking. He would go straight upstairs to the bathroom when he got in and brush his teeth. It would never occur to his wife that he may have been drinking because the idea itself was alien.

  Adam scanned the restaurant. In the far corner of the dining area a row of tables pushed together and adorned with helium balloons and party poppers was surrounded by a large family who had already entertained their fellow diners with an impromptu version of ‘Happy Birthday’ for the teenage girl Adam presumed to be the daughter and granddaughter of the group.

  Another family on a much smaller scale were busily working their way through three large pizzas, the father relegated to the role of cutter and slice distributor. The rest of his family greedily grabbed the hot slices and Adam thought the man should perhaps put some onto his own plate before there was nothing left for him to eat.

  Beside the two family groups the remainder of the few diners were couples: a middle aged couple who barely spoke to one another while they ate; a couple in their twenties, both smartly dressed and in the middle of a quiet argument; an older couple engrossed in conversation. A boy and girl who both looked to be no older than their late teens sat at a table parallel to Adam and Michael’s, both leaning to the centre of the table, talking in whispers over their desserts. Beneath the table, the boy’s trainers moved up and down the girl’s bare legs.

  ‘Don’t you like yours?’ Michael asked, nodding at Adam’s untouched bowl of pesto and chicken penne.

  Adam lifted his fork and prodded at the pasta. ‘Bit tasteless, to be honest,’ he said. The opposite was true. The food left a bitter taste in the back of his mouth and his stomach churned. He wanted to hurl the plate of food at the next available passing person.

  Michael looked for the waiter. ‘If you want,’ he said, turning back to Adam, ‘I’ll ask them to change it for you.’

  Adam couldn’t for a moment imagine Michael making a complaint here or anywhere else. The man was too timid, too apologetic, to speak up against anything. Michael didn’t complain: he accepted. His whole lifestyle was something he hadn’t chosen; it was something Michael had learned to endure and had eventually come to accept. Adam had learned all this and more during the months since their first meeting. Christ, the man had hardly been able to wait before off-loading his life bloody history; as if Adam had been the first human contact Michael had had in years. It was almost as though Michael had been waiting
for someone to relieve all the burdens of his life onto, and Adam was that person.

  ‘Honestly, it’s OK,’ Adam said, sharply. He put a hand out in front of him, urging Michael to stop his fussing. Michael stopped and looked down at his own food. Adam pushed his plate to one side. ‘Not as hungry as I thought I was anyway,’ he said quietly.

  Michael pushed his own bowl of food towards Adam. ‘Want to try mine?’ he asked.

  Adam shook his head, reached for his wine and took a long gulp before getting up and making his way to the toilets.

  He held his hands under the blast of cold water from the tap and allowed the coolness of it to chill his veins. He looked into the mirror and held his own stare, perhaps looking for something that wasn’t there. He pushed his blond hair from his eyes, twirled a strand of it between his fingers and roughly snapped the hair off. In his hand, it already looked as though it didn’t belong to him. Tomorrow morning, as celebration of tonight’s deed, he would dye it dark.

  Curling his mouth into a smile, Adam congratulated himself on how well he had done so far in restraining himself. He didn’t consider himself homophobic, but when Michael’s attentions had focused themselves upon him it was all he could do to keep his cool. Michael was forcing himself to remain in denial, but it wasn’t working and they both knew what was happening.

  Adam raised a wet hand to his hair and pushed an unruly lock behind his ear. He needed a haircut as well, he told himself. His acting skills had surpassed him this time, he thought: even he hadn’t thought himself capable of this. Hadn’t he responded in kind when he’d caught Michael looking at him last week over a lunchtime drink with a look that could only have said one thing? Wasn’t he setting the pace now, though it sickened him to do so?

  He gripped the sides of the sink and lowered his head. Breathing deeply through his mouth, he thought of Michael’s wife: the poor, sad, greying woman with the middle aged spread and the hollow look of defeat. Adam clenched a fist at his side and raised it to his head, grinding a knuckle angrily against his temple.

  Diane must know, Adam thought. He pictured the woman as he had seen her in the photograph Michael had shown him: the holiday snapshot of a pitiful woman who smiled half-heartedly from the sun lounger where she lay spread and dejected like a sunburnt walrus. Even then, when showing Adam a photograph of his wife, Michael had looked apologetic. He hadn’t been apologising for her; he’d been apologising for himself.

  Michael had fallen in love with Adam. It had happened gradually over the past few months, in stages and moments that Adam could pinpoint exactly and had known would happen – moments that Adam had himself orchestrated and encouraged – and he had watched Michael in the middle of it: vulnerable, confused; repulsive. The man made Adam’s skin crawl.

  He had imagined evenings in the Morris household. He had pictured Michael getting into bed beside his wife; plaid pyjamas and a brief, detached embrace that would be followed by an even briefer, more greatly removed bout of love making when it was required to maintain the façade of their relationship. Or perhaps they were beyond that. Perhaps there was no physical contact at all; separate beds, maybe. Separate rooms. He imagined that they lived as an elderly couple, though both Michael and his wife were still only in their early forties.

  Didn’t any woman deserve better than a man who didn’t and couldn’t love her? The poor cow needed a break.

  Back in the restaurant, Michael had looked concerned.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he asked, leaning forward and placing a hand on the table between them.

  ‘Fine,’ Adam replied, smiling his thin smile and swallowing back the feeling of repulsion that once again crept over him as he looked at Michael’s pathetic face. He looked at Michael’s hand on the table, his wedding band glinting beneath the low lighting of the restaurant, and grimaced.

  ‘What about you?’

  Michael returned the smile and swallowed another mouthful of pasta. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Far too much food though.’ He patted his stomach and Adam felt a surge of heat and anger shoot upwards through his body.

  ‘Not really what I meant,’ Adam said precisely.

  Michael shifted nervously in his seat and glanced at his watch. ‘I should be going soon,’ he said, his voice tainted with regret. ‘I told Diane we wouldn’t be long. Look…when you meet her, you won’t tell her we came here, will you? It’ll seem…’

  He drifted off and didn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘I won’t say a word,’ Adam reassured him.

  He wouldn’t have to. By the time Diane next saw her husband, there would be nothing either of them could say.

  Michael pulled onto his driveway, got out of his car, took a few steps then returned to retrieve something he had forgotten from the front passenger seat, before making his way to the boot. Even here, on his own driveway, he walked with the air of someone defeated: shoulders hunched, head lowered; defeated by life; an apology for his own existence. Falling in love hadn’t been quite enough to yank him from the despair and monotony of his sad, sorry life.

  The street was quiet. It was dark outside the small pools of light thrown off by the streetlights. Adam left his own car without making a sound. He held the door as it fell back into place, allowing it to click, not quite fully shut, and quickly made his way along the pavement to the driveway. Michael was leaning into the boot, fumbling and rummaging amongst piles of folders and papers. He had mentioned several times that his job involved far too much paperwork.

  Michael turned as he sensed movement behind him.

  ‘Adam!’ he said with surprise. He smiled and then his face dropped; he cast a furtive glance at the house and his expression turned to one of panic. ‘What are you…?’

  He stopped as he noticed the hammer gripped in his friend’s right fist.

  The impact was sudden and precise and Michael’s skull shattered like a spoon-tapped egg.

  Three

  Tonight the bar was quiet, save for Pontypridd’s answer to Posh and Becks circa 1999, sitting in the far corner, engrossed in conversation. They were dressed in his and hers skin-tight leather trousers that belonged to a decade they were probably too young to remember. The girl wore her hair piled high on her head like a straw nest and when she turned Kate could see that the right hand side of her head was shaved. They looked absurd but probably considered themselves on trend, Kate thought, remembering a phrase she’d seen in a women’s magazine she’d recently flicked through in the dentist’s waiting room. Kate wondered if she had ever looked so ridiculous and decided not. She hoped tight leather trousers weren’t making a comeback.

  Kate went to the bar and ordered a small glass of white wine. She took her drink to a seat near the window, trying not to stare at the girl, who threw her head back animatedly and laughed raucously, as though the young man sitting beside her, hair so perfectly sculpted it looked as though it had been frozen in place, had just told the world’s funniest joke.

  Kate didn’t have much time for public displays of affection. People’s private lives should be just that and why anyone would want to draw attention to themselves for simply being part of a couple was beyond her comprehension. She tried to remember what a private life looked or smelled like. It was hard trying to recollect something that had once existed somewhere in the ether of a muddled and distant past, but was now just a wispy memory. What did a private life taste of? Something between cold stale toast and cigarette breath, she decided.

  Another thing she couldn’t abide was women who laughed at jokes that weren’t funny – as Posh was now doing, creating her own personal stage in the corner of the pub, hoping all eyes were on her - and batted their heavy, mascara thickened eyelashes like those dolls that had always disturbed her as a child.

  She remembered her father coming home from work one day with a porcelain doll given as a gift to her by a workmate’s wife. It was a weighty, solid doll, with wide blue eyes and an alabaster complexion and sharp little teeth. She wore an Elizabethan style wedding dress –
ivory lace with long, draping sleeves – and tiny silk slippers. When Kate tilted it back its large, oval eyelids snapped shut. Asleep, awake: dead, alive. The memory of it still gave her the creeps.

  It was ten past seven. As usual, Kate was ahead of herself and had arrived at the pub early. She never allowed herself to be late. Punctuality, she believed, was the first step to success. What success it had brought her so far she had yet to find out, but she was certain the theory would pay off one day. She hoped that Chris wouldn’t be much longer. She didn’t want to be out late: she had a date with her bed for an early night and a much needed sleep.

  The girl leaned in closer to the boy, placing long, slender fingers on his knee. She rested her head on his shoulder and whispered something probably suggestive in his ear. The boy smiled knowingly and ran a hand up her thigh. Kate guessed that the drink in the girl’s other hand wasn’t her first; she squirmed on her seat and laughed a little too loudly, drawing admonitory glances from the barman that, even if she saw them, simply passed her by. Love drunk, perhaps, Kate thought. She couldn’t remember how that tasted either. Probably Martini with two cherries and a slice of something bitter that left a nasty aftertaste.

  Kate looked away, annoyed with her fascination with the couple. You’re getting old, Kate Kelly, she told herself: old and miserable. Bitter. Jealous, in fact.

  Her ex, Stuart, had phoned her on Saturday for the first time since they broke up. Now, three months after leaving the flat she had once called theirs rather than hers, he suddenly ‘needed’ his records back: the pile of scratched, useless LPs he had left in the corner of their (her) bedroom gathering dust. Kate couldn’t imagine what use they would be to him – he had never listened to them in the two years they had been together; in fact, he didn’t even own a record player to play the things on – but suddenly they were ‘sentimental’ and he wanted them back, sooner rather than later. Perhaps he would try to impress Louise (if that was her name) with his eclectic musical taste.