A Rock and a High Place

by Dan Mooney

  “How will you do it?”

  Joel could hardly believe the conversation.

  “I don’t actually know,” he confided guiltily. “Thought about hanging maybe? Feels wrong, though. Maybe I shoot myself?”

  “Hanging? Lord, no. Did you know that you shit yourself when you do that?”

  It was a thoroughly disgusting thought.

  “What I’d really like is to go off the bridge, I think.”

  “Undignified,” Frank told him.

  “What? Why?”

  “Man of your stature? An ignominious end, I think.”

  Joel didn’t know what the word meant, but he knew he didn’t want people to describe his death in long words he didn’t understand the meaning of.

  “I’ll think of something,” he said lamely, still reeling at how surreal the conversation had become.

  “On the other hand…” Frank mused, continuing to undress for bed.

  This would be bad, Joel thought, this is going to be the deflating part of the evening.

  “Go on,” he told Frank.

  “You want to do this right? I mean, really want to?”

  Joel looked across at Frank, lit only by the lamp that was attached over Joel’s bed. In the dim light, his erstwhile morose friend looked energised, excited. He looked how Joel felt.

  “I do, Frank. I really do.”

  “If you’re going to do it, it has to be right.”

  “How do you mean right?”

  “Like, not tacky, or classless. Not something undignified or messy. It has to be great.”

  “What do you mean great?” Joel had no idea where Frank was going with this.

  “Don’t slip off a bridge. It sends the wrong message.”

  “I’m sending a message?” Joel asked.

  “Absolutely, you are,” Frank told him. “You’re making a statement. You’re saying to the world, this is my choice. This is what I want, and I’ll do it because you lot have been trying to tell me what to do for too damn long. Joel Monroe doesn’t take orders from anyone. Joel Monroe will not do what he’s told.”

  There was a passion in the speech, something alive and almost frantic about it.

  “I will not do what I’m told,” he murmured.

  “It has to be profound, theatrical, wonderful, encapsulating. Something that will leave a mark. Something that will make them talk, and keep them talking.”

  Joel had never been a man for the limelight. He was practical, functional, pragmatic, but something about the idea of people talking about his death long after he was gone appealed to some dormant theatrical part of him.

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “Ye Gods, man,” Frank said, aghast. “Will there ever be a more personal decision than this in your whole life?”

  “I mean it’s not that personal. I’ll take suggestions is what I’m saying.”

  “Don’t be daft,” Frank told him crankily. “This has to be you. That’s the whole point. It has to be all you, and only you.”

  “But I really liked the bridge idea…” Joel started.

  “If you’re going to end it, you better make it big. No slipping off bridges. It’s undignified for men of our vintage. Go big or don’t bother,” Frank told him with a note of finality.

  “You’ll help, though, right?” Joel asked, suddenly feeling his isolation all over again. It felt right to tell Frank, somehow it felt as though the man ought to know, that he owed his new friend that. Joel realised with a start that this was the only person for whom this was true. After a paltry two weeks in the man’s company, Frank had already claimed a place that Joel had left unoccupied since his wife died. There was no one else who he would have dreamed of telling. It was a terrifying feeling.

  “Of course I’ll help,” Frank told him loftily. “You haven’t the imagination to pull this off without me. But, like I said, it has to be you.”

  “It has to be me,” Joel confirmed, relieved to have his friend onboard. Relieved to not be on his own.

  He lay back on his bed, satisfied with himself. He would do it. He would make his final statement and exit the world on his terms.

  “Thanks, Frank,” he whispered as his friend climbed into bed.

  “No,” Frank replied. “Thank you.”

  Joel killed the light in the room and closed his eyes. It was soothing to know that he had a plan, soothing to have a purpose again in life. A statement, the only huge and profound statement he was ever likely to make to the world. Then he could go, and be damned with the consequences.

  “Good night,” he whispered to the other bed.

  “Good night, my friend,” the other bed whispered back.

  Chapter Six

  Frank was writing in a Moleskine notebook as Joel’s eyes opened the following morning. He had an expression of deep concentration. His sleepiness may have been affecting him, but in that moment Joel thought that Frank looked every inch the scholarly theatrical writer, with his knobby old hands sticking out of his overly fancy dressing-gown and poised delicately over his notebook. Not even out of bed and the man already had a scarf fashionably wrapped around him. His eccentricity went all the way down into his bones.

  “What are you writing about?” Joel asked him around a yawn.

  “You,” was the reply.

  “Me? What on earth are you saying about me?”

  “Don’t get a big head or anything, but I want to document you. There’s a play somewhere in this story. Maybe I’ll come out of retirement to perform the Outrageous End of Joel Monroe.”

  “That’s what you’re calling it?”

  “Working title,” Frank told him, scribbling again.

  “And you’ll be playing me?” Joel asked.

  “Who else?”

  “Someone taller, for a start.”

  “Short jokes. I would have thought such things were beneath you. Not to worry, I’ll perform on stilts, and stuff my shirt full of pillows to fill out that fat gut of yours.”

  Joel checked his perfectly normal-sized gut and scoffed. Perhaps he was a little soft around the middle, but “fat gut” seemed a stretch. He opened his mouth to object only to spot the small half smile that was quickly becoming Frank’s trademark. He changed tack instead.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little risky to be writing that stuff down? I don’t want…”

  He looked around conspiratorially before continuing.

  “…I don’t want Nurse Liam to find it. God forbid, he’d bring it straight to you-know-who.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Frank told him dismissively. “It never mentions you. If they ask, I’m writing a play, and no one will be any the wiser.”

  “Don’t let them see it, all the same,” Joel insisted.

  He had a vague sense of what he wanted from the end of his life, and the idea that The Rhino would discover his plan, and worse again, tell his daughter, wasn’t part of how he saw his remaining days panning out.

  “Any further thoughts? Regrets? Change of heart?” Frank asked.

  “None,” Joel told him firmly.

  “Good, good,” Frank replied, though his heart hardly seemed in it.

  “Look, you don’t have to be involved if you don’t want to,” Joel told him, trying to mask his disappointment.

  “Pffft. If I wasn’t you’d probably only botch it, and then I’d end up writing the Outrageous Stupidity of Joel Monroe, and surely everyone in here has seen that one before.”

  Joel pretended to be offended, but only to cover his smile. He had never thought of himself as a quick wit, but neither had he seen himself as some kind of slouch, until he met Frank Adams. Too quick by half.

  “So,” Frank continued, “you’ve had no inspirational ideas?”

  “Nothing, really. I mean, just some ground rules stuff.”

  “Like?”

  “Like I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”

  “You’re going to publicly kill yourself, Joel. I’m afraid not everyone is coming out of this without
an emotional scar or two.”

  “I meant physically. No one gets out of anything without an emotional scar or two. Let them suck it up.”

  “Heartless, but direct,” Frank said, making a note in the journal.

  “Why are you writing that down?”

  “Character notes for when I play you.”

  “I’m not heartless…”

  “Okay, tiny shriveled black heart and direct. Noted. Continue.”

  Joel was nearly sure that Frank wasn’t writing what he was pretending to write, but he craned his neck to get a look anyway. Frank just laughed at him.

  “Well,” Joel said, giving up, “I want it to say something about me and society.”

  “You mean your place in society?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Give me an example.”

  “Maybe in my favourite football jersey, you know? That says that I cared about something, but it wasn’t enough. Is that good?”

  Frank buried his head in his hands.

  “In a football jersey? You think you’re making a profound statement if you kill yourself wearing your football jersey?”

  “Well. Profound for me.”

  “People sleep in those, you know.”

  “So?”

  “So they’ll think you killed yourself in your pajamas, you dolt.”

  Joel recoiled. He definitely didn’t want people to think he killed himself in his pajamas. He wore the pajamas too much. He wore them about the common room sometimes. They were starting to weigh on him, as if somehow they were linked to his increasing isolation and loneliness. No, he definitely didn’t want to go in his pajamas.

  “Maybe a smart suit then. Like a very nifty one you’d see a movie star in.”

  “No one says nifty anymore.”

  “I do.”

  “You don’t count.”

  “That’s the problem, I think,” Joel surmised.

  “The suit thing isn’t a statement, it’s just saving the undertaker the job of picking out your clothes.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he told Frank.

  “Do.”

  Joel pondered profundity for a few moments until his thoughts were scattered by the arrival of Nurse Liam.

  “Morning, gents,” he told them as he brought tea and pills. “What are we discussing this morning?”

  Joel began to panic. What if he’d heard? What if he knew?

  “I’m writing a play,” Frank told him, cool as you like.

  How readily and easily he lied. Joel would have been falling over his words, Frank sold them as genuine.

  “Oh, interesting. Coming out of retirement, are you?” He was behaving very calmly for someone who might have just overheard two old men plan a suicide.

  “Considering it only,” Frank told him with an easy smile.

  It was the first easy words that Frank had given Liam. Joel marveled at him. He was either lying with his whole body, lying with his demeanour and his attitude, or the spell that Nurse Liam held over him was somehow broken. He watched Frank carefully, studying his face and his hands as he and Nurse Liam spoke to one another. Searching for a clue.

  “What’s the play about?” Liam asked as he placed the pills and tea and milk on the bedside table.

  “It’s about a cranky old bastard that no one likes,” Frank told him. He didn’t look at Liam as he spoke, but seemed to address a spot somewhere just over the tall nurse’s head. That, of course, answered Joel’s question. Frank could lie readily, but there was a tell. Small, not immediately noticeable, but there it was. His face gave away no other feelings regarding Nurse Liam, no hint of what emotional baggage he was carrying.

  “Where on earth do you get your inspiration?” Liam asked sarcastically, his eyes flickering toward Joel.

  “I’m sitting right here, you pair of insensitive asses,” Joel barked, more to play his part than with any real malice.

  “Oh, he’s inspirational all right,” Frank told Liam with a broad wink.

  The wink also gave him away. Too broad, too performative, too de Selby, not enough Adams. His mannerisms, his body language, everything spoke of an easy comfort with the nurse that Joel now recognised as false. He admired the ability in his friend to simply turn it on and off at will, but felt a twang of pity for him too. How would anyone ever know him? How would anyone ever know who Frank Adams was? It was no wonder he was so alone.

  “Looking forward to the visit today, Joel?” Liam asked.

  “Visit?” he asked, confused.

  “Yeah. It’s Sunday. Doesn’t your daughter and grandkids come on Sundays?”

  He had forgotten about that. He was so excited about getting on with the process of dying that he had completely lost track of what day of the week it was.

  “One grandchild,” he corrected Liam sourly.

  “I thought you had two? A boy and a girl?”

  “Only one comes. They take turns. Why should both of them have to suffer?”

  He knew he shouldn’t blame them. He was hardly sterling company at the best of times, but he remembered holding them as small children, long before they had become the adults they were today. He remembered them loving him, playing in the small garden. He remembered their young laughs. How he had walked them through their small neighbourhood, showing them off, delighted to be a grandfather, hoping to bump into Mr. McCarthy down the street so he could see how bright and clever they were.

  What they had become was sullen and unresponsive. He supposed he should shoulder some of the blame for that one. He had withdrawn from them even as they had from him. He had done nothing to bridge the growing gap between them. He had Lucey do that for him. Joel ignored the look of pity on both Liam’s and Frank’s faces. For a moment he considered having another fight about pills, just to get rid of the pity faces, but he decided against it. He had bigger fish to fry now, and a purpose, and the fight just seemed like a waste of energy anyway.

  “Well…” Liam said awkwardly. “If you need me, you know where I’ll be.”

  He patted Frank on the arm companionably, and Joel saw the other man’s jaw tighten. His hands twitch slightly. Another tiny glimpse under the mask.

  “Do you think he heard?” Joel asked after Liam had left.

  “No. He’d be doing something about it if he did, but we’ll have to be careful. No more talking about it here.”

  “Where then?”

  “I don’t know. The pub, I suppose. Somewhere in the city, away from here.”

  “In the city? Are you mad? I can’t leave this place.”

  “Why not?” Frank asked incredulously.

  The absurdity of what Joel was about to say struck him before he said it. The unfairness, the childishness, the wrongness of it. He said it anyway:

  “I’m not allowed.”

  Frank gaped at him.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” Joel snapped. “I had a fainting spell once.”

  He looked down at his lap, embarrassed. It wasn’t a full lie. He had collapsed. Not fainted. And the collapse had been brought on by a TIA. The transient ischemic attack was the reason he wasn’t allowed out. A warning sign, the doctors said, that he could have a stroke. It had been dubbed enough to get him locked up here. A TIA was almost always a precursor to a larger stroke. Hence the pills. The never-ending stream of damn pills.

  “Eva decided that I wasn’t to be let out without supervision,” he almost whispered in mortification.

  Frank gaped even harder.

  Joel tried to remember that he had some dignity left and looked up from his lap, rather than staring at it like some scolded child. It was ridiculous, and he knew it was.

  “Well,” Frank said finally, “fuck that.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Fuck that. Out of the question. We’re leaving here. Today.”

  “And how do you think we’ll manage that exactly?”

  “When your daughter gets here. Eva? Is it? When she gets here we’ll get her to tell them that you’r
e allowed to leave whenever you want, and if she doesn’t, we walk out the damn gate like everyone else does. We’re grown men, dammit. We’ll do as we please.”

  The thought sent a little thrill of excitement through Joel that stayed with him all day. He dressed early in anticipation and began watching the long curving driveway for her car. Deciding it appeared unseemly, he shifted his focus to the Sunday football. His team won, and he felt excited for the first time in a long time for the arrival of his daughter.

  When she finally arrived, she came wearing her Sunday best and her most forced smile. She wore that for him, not a nasty thing of faked camaraderie, but a brave face for the maelstrom she expected whenever she encountered her belligerent father. She planted a kiss on Joel’s cheek. Her daughter, Lily, did the same, before she picked her mobile phone from her pocket and buried her consciousness in it.

  “How are you, Dad?” Eva asked, fussing with the lapel of his jacket.

  She was still so little to him, his imposing figure still towered over her. Her short cut blond hair had been hastily tidied, her makeup hastily applied, and yet she still looked lovely. Motherhood had always agreed with her. She was slim, like her mother, with the same green eyes and a touch of something earthy about her. She had inherited few, if any, of her father’s physical features, perhaps a bit of him in her cheeks and strong jawline, but had most certainly learned her stubbornness from him.

  A willful child in her youth, she had often been in trouble, and every time that Joel was called to discipline her, it would come with a warning from Lucey. “Don’t be too hard on her. She gets it from you.”

  Joel smiled at the memory. She was tough. Eva had raised the two children on her own, with minimal help after her waste-of-space of a husband had left them for a younger woman, who promptly left him for a younger man. Joel had been tremendously proud when Eva had sent him packing after he had tried to come crawling back, but the strength to stand on her own had come at a price. For several years she had no love life, no social life, no outlet until her children had turned into adults. When the recession bit, she had been left with almost nothing and, in her stubbornness, had refused to ask for help. By the time she had run out of options, she was so far in over her head that selling Joel’s family home was the only way to get her out. Joel had never wanted for much, but he had never been a tremendously wealthy man either. It was a fair trade-off—their old family home for their daughter and grandkids. And truth be told he had once enjoyed living in Hilltop. He didn’t regret it until she trapped him here.