The Traveller and Other Stories

by Stuart Neville

How long? The sun had moved below the rooftops, no longer warming his face. An hour? Maybe more. He released the doctor’s wrist.

  Dr. Moran swayed and regained his balance. He blinked down at Albert, his mouth open.

  “I’m sorry,” Albert said, feigning weakness and confusion. “You startled me.”

  “That’s okay,” Dr. Moran said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just about to get into my car when I saw you sitting here. Are you all right? Do you need help?”

  He went to put his hand back on Albert’s shoulder but seemed to think better of it.

  “I’m fine,” Albert said.

  “And Mrs. Ryan? Any change?”

  “No,” he said. “She’s the same.”

  “So what are you doing here?” The doctor sat down beside Albert. “Did you want to see me?”

  Albert pulled back his sleeve, saw his bare wrist. He’d forgotten his watch. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Just gone six,” Dr. Moran said.

  “Stupid old man,” Albert said.

  “What’s wrong, Mr. Ryan? Why did you come here?”

  Albert sighed, leaned forward, and reached inside his overcoat with his right hand. The early evening air chilled his midriff as he pulled the pistol from the holster. It was small enough for his left hand to conceal it from the doctor’s view.

  “Mr. Ryan?”

  He gave the doctor a soft smile. “My wife rambles. I suppose it’s those patches for the pain. What are they, morphine?”

  “Fentanyl,” Dr. Moran said. “Stronger than morphine. I wouldn’t prescribe them if they weren’t necessary. She’s comfortable, isn’t she?”

  “Oh, yes.” Albert nodded. “But it does leave her a little confused. And then she talks. Old memories and such. Sometimes they aren’t her own. She can’t seem to keep them straight, keep her memories and her fantasies apart.”

  “It’s a common side-effect.” The doctor put his hand on Albert’s shoulder. “Is that what’s bothering you?”

  “In a way,” Albert said. “Tell me, do you save many? The people you treat. How many do you save?”

  “Some,” the doctor said. “Not enough.”

  “You’re a good doctor,” Albert said. “You’re a craftsman, like me. Well, like I used to be.”

  “What did you do before you retired?” the doctor asked, leaning back in the seat. “I wondered what Mrs. Ryan meant by the blood on your hands. I couldn’t decide if you were a vet or a butcher.”

  A dry laugh rose up from Albert’s belly. “Neither,” he said.

  “Then what? I wondered if you’d been in medicine, a surgeon maybe, but I don’t think so. You’d know about Fentanyl, for one thing.”

  Albert closed his eyes, committed himself, and opened them again. “You’re a good man. We have much to thank you for, Celia and I. It makes me so sad to do this.”

  “Do what?”

  Albert brought the small pistol up to the doctor’s temple.

  “This,” he said.

  It sounded like a snare drum. Birds scattered.

  The bed was empty save for a pale yellow stain.

  “Celia?” Albert called from the doorway.

  He stepped inside. The dressing table drawers stood open, their contents spilling over the edges. Powder and perfume coated the surface beneath the mirror. Panic flared in Albert’s breast, a wild fluttering thing. He willed it to be calm.

  “Celia?” he called again.

  “In here, Bertie.”

  Her voice came from the en suite bathroom. It was stronger than he’d last heard it, but metallic, like a rusted blade. Albert passed the bed, registered the smell of stale urine, just another odour of the unwell. Steam warmed his face as he looked in.

  Celia leaned against the basin, one hand gripping its edge, a stick figure in her scarlet evening gown. Its straps clung to the bones beneath her tracing-paper skin. He’d forgotten how tall she was.

  She applied lipstick, running the stub across her mouth, and dropped it to clatter in the basin. She pinched a tissue between her lips, leaving a deep red kiss on the white paper. The tissue fell from her fingers and wafted to the tiled floor. It soaked up a brighter red from the small puddle it settled in.

  “Sweetheart, you’re bleeding.”

  “Am I?” She looked down. “Oh.”

  “Where from?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, turning her attention back to the mirror. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Albert noticed the pink blotching on her upper arm.

  “Where’s your patch?” he asked.

  “I took it off when you left,” she said.

  “But the pain,” he said.

  She eyed him over her naked shoulder. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “How do I look?”

  “Beautiful,” Albert said.

  Celia smiled. Lipstick stained her remaining teeth. Love burned in him like an African sun. “Beautiful,” he said again. “What are you doing?”

  She turned back to her reflection. “Getting ready,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “You killed that nice doctor,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I’m a sick woman, and I cost that young man his life. For nothing. Just some words.” Her knees buckled, and she grabbed the basin’s edge. She straightened. “I will die,” she said.

  “Darling, don’t.”

  He took a step towards her, slipped on her blood, steadied himself with a strong hand against the wall.

  “I will die and nothing will stop it,” she said. “I will only get worse. I will ramble more and more. What about the nurses? What about the cleaner? What about dear Finula from downstairs? When she reads to me, what if I say something to her? Will you kill her too?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  “Why?” Celia asked. “What for? What good could it do?”

  “To protect you,” he said. He moved closer. “I only had one talent in life. God help me if I can’t use it to protect you.” He went to put his hands on her shoulders, but she pushed the gown’s straps aside, let the dress fall to her waist.

  “Look,” she said.

  “Darling, don’t,” he said.

  “Look.” Her reflection stared hard at him. “Look at me.”

  Albert looked. He studied the greys and purples of her skin, the places where his hands had once found ripe flesh, the sad remains of the breasts that had caused him to gasp when she first revealed them to him three decades ago.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “You’re protecting a skeleton,” she said. A tear escaped her. “I’m dead and rotting. I should be in the ground already, not lingering here.”

  Albert put his hands on her waist. Her hipbones felt like shards of porcelain beneath the fabric of her dress. He kissed her neck and raised the dress back up, slipping the straps over her brittle shoulders.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  Celia watched the reflections of his hands. “Oh Bertie, the things you’ve done with those,” she said. “We’ll go to hell, you know.”

  He slipped his arms around her, his nose and mouth pressed to the nape of her neck. He smelt her sweetness through the decay, still there, underlying the rot.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “I’ll go to hell,” she said. “I will burn forever and nothing can save me. Not even you.”

  His tears slicked her loose skin. “Don’t,” he said.

  “But did God give you that talent?” she asked. “I used to wonder about that. It used to keep me awake at night. If God gave you that talent, that craft, how can he damn you for using it? I used to tell myself the people you killed must have deserved it. They had to, or you wouldn’t have done it. They were criminals. They were murderers and thi
eves, and they deserved to die, so you used the talent God gave you. And so we wouldn’t go to hell.”

  Albert raised his eyes from her neck, met hers in the mirror. “Come back to bed, love.”

  “No.” She smiled and tilted her head. “Not now that I’m all gussied up.”

  She winced at the pain the movement had caused her, and Albert gripped her shoulders to steady her.

  “Your God-given talent,” she said. “That was how I lived with it. But that poor doctor was good. He didn’t deserve to die, but you used your talent on him. So now I know I was wrong all those years. It doesn’t matter where your talent came from. We’re damned, and that’s all there is.”

  “Don’t talk this way,” Albert said. “Please.”

  “I won’t have anyone else die because of my blathering.” She stared hard at him, her eyes clearer than they’d been for a year. “Do you hear me, Bertie? Not a single person. So I have one thing to ask of you.”

  “What?”

  She reached up to lace her fingers with his. “Such beautiful hands; such a terrible craft.”

  She turned in his arms, using his thick body for support. Her cheek met his. She ran her fingers along his jowls. “Such a saggy face,” she said.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  Celia pressed her lips to his. He tasted her lipstick and remembered every kiss they’d shared, from every darkened corner to every sun-washed beach. Her lips moved across his face, gathering the tears from his cheeks as if they were salted jewels.

  “Such a saggy face,” she said. She smiled and rested her forehead against his.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  She kissed him again, hard and final. “You know,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I won’t,” he said.

  She reached for his hands, brought them to her throat. “You will, Bertie,” she said.

  Her life pulsed against his thumbs.

  “No,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s your talent. I trust you to do it well.”

  Warmth lurked in the hollows beneath her chin.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Yes, you can,” she said. “You’re a craftsman. You can do—”

  She went light and loose as a bag of twigs.

  He kissed her once.

  “I’ll see you there,” he said.

  The Last Dance

  Treanor’s Bar never tried too hard to be an Irish pub. Maybe that’s why on a busy night you could find more Irish people there than any bar in the city. I don’t mean white guys trying to adopt some kind of ethnicity to ease their Caucasian guilt, but real honest-to-God children of Eire.

  Plenty of bars gave you the shamrock treatment, Guinness on tap and fiddles on the walls, but Treanor’s was the real thing. It seethed with that self-righteous jingoism and sense of injustice that only comes from Ireland.

  Do I sound bitter? Well, I have good reason to be. That’s why I got out, got away, across the ocean from Belfast to Boston. I couldn’t stand the hate anymore. But still, at least once a week, I felt drawn to this sorry excuse for a bar.

  This one night, the place was empty save for an old duffer counting change on a tabletop, Mickey the barman, and one stranger who occupied a stool two seats down from my favourite spot. The stale smell of old beer filled my head. Mickey raised an eyebrow and grunted as I limped towards the bar. The weather had turned cold and damp, and my left knee didn’t like it one bit.

  I loosened the collar of my work shirt. The ID laminate clipped to the pocket proudly told the world I had achieved the office of Warehouse Manager. I wasn’t quite a regular at Treanor’s, not a part of the furniture, but Mickey didn’t have to ask what I wanted. A pint of Smithwick’s was ready for hoisting to my lips before my ass was even settled on the stool. I grimaced at the creaking in my knee.

  “Quiet tonight,” I said.

  “Yep,” said Mickey.

  And that was the sum total of our conversation most nights. Tonight was different, though. Mickey leaned forward as he pretended to wipe down the bar. Mickey never wiped down the bar. The beer stains on there were older than my car, and it’s a long time since that peace of shit was new.

  Mickey inclined his head towards the stranger. “See that guy?” he whispered.

  I tried hard not to look to my right where the stranger sat staring at a shot of whiskey and a pint of Guinness.

  Mickey rested his chin on his hand, obscuring his mouth as if the stranger might be a deaf lip reader. I should point out that Mickey isn’t the brightest. Between you and me, he knows just enough not to eat himself.

  “That guy’s been here a half hour,” he said.

  I shrugged. “And?”

  “And he hasn’t had a sip. He just sits staring at those glasses like they’re gonna start doing tricks or something.”

  By now, the old duffer had finished tallying his wealth and he approached the bar. “I’m a little short, Mickey. Can you stand me the twenty cents?”

  His accent, or what was left of it, sounded like Cork to me. I’d seen him here before, always alone. He probably came to America expecting to make his fortune. The sight of him terrified me. Not because he was a scary guy, you understand, but because he looked like my future. I shuddered and put my glass down.

  Mickey sighed, pulled a glass from under the bar, and brought it to the tap. “You’re always a little short, Frankie. Drink this one up and go home.”

  Frankie smiled and reached for the glass full of froth. “Thanks, Mickey. You’re a good lad.”

  He gave the stranger a sideways glance and shuffled back to his table. If the stranger noticed, he didn’t let on. He just sat there, staring at his drinks, his shoulders rising and falling with his breathing.

  The patchy overhead lighting cast this man in glints and shadows, picking out the ridges and valleys of his face, making it look like a skeleton mask. His hands were spread flat on the bar, as if supplicating themselves to the drink, and their lines gave away his age. Mid-forties, I’d say, about my age, maybe a year or two older.

  Mickey leaned back in to me. “What’ll I do?” he asked.

  “He’s paid for them, hasn’t he?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then what the fuck do you care? He can piss in them if he wants.”

  Mickey’s face creased. “But he’s giving me the creeps. He’s not right. Look at him. Does he look right to you?”

  “No,” I said, “but neither do most of your regulars.”

  “I’m gonna ask him what’s wrong.” Mickey didn’t go anywhere. “Will I ask him? I’ll ask him. Should I ask him?”

  “Jesus, Mickey, if it’ll calm you down, go and ask him.”

  Mickey looked to the stranger, then back to me, then back to the stranger again. He straightened and moved along the bar.

  “You all right, there?”

  The stranger didn’t respond.

  “Mister? Are you all right?”

  “Mmm?” The stranger looked up.

  “Is something wrong with the drinks?”

  “No,” said the stranger.

  “You haven’t touched them.”

  “I don’t drink anymore.” The stranger’s eyes moved back to the glasses in front of him. His accent, hard and angular, made me study him a little closer. He was West Belfast, like me. My own accent had been buried beneath almost two decades of Boston living, but his was fresh.

  A furrow appeared in Mickey’s brow and his tongue peeked out from between his teeth like he was figuring out his taxes in his head. “Then why’d you buy ’em?”

  “Because I could. Because I can drink them if I want,” said the stranger. “But I don’t want to. I don’t need to.”

  “I’ll have them when you’re done, then,” I said. I am not a proud man.
<
br />   The stranger turned towards my voice, the light shifting on his face. The skeleton mask slipped away and I saw him fully for the first time. He said something, but I didn’t hear. My heart was thundering so loud it drowned everything else out. I had to fight to control my bladder. My left leg, my bad leg, throbbed with memory.

  Sweet Jesus, I knew his face. Some nights, when sleep shunned me, there was nothing in the world but his face. Other nights, when sleep was more forgiving, it was his face that dragged me back to waking.

  The stranger’s lips moved some more, and now Mickey stared at me. Mickey said something too, but it sounded like blood rushing in my ears.

  “I know you,” I said.

  Mickey looked back to the stranger, whose face had slackened.

  “You’re Gerry Fegan,” I said.

  “No,” he said. He turned back to his drinks. “You’ve got me mixed up.”

  His fingertip traced a line through the beaded condensation on the glass of stout.

  “You’re Gerry Fegan from Belfast.” I lowered myself from the stool and limped the few steps to where he sat. I pointed to my left kneecap. “You’re Gerry Fegan and you did this to me.”

  He kept his eyes forward. “You’ve got me wrong.”

  Mickey’s mouth hung open as he watched.

  I grabbed Fegan’s shoulder and he winced. “Look at me, you piece of shit. You smashed my kneecap. You and Eddie Coyle. You would’ve done the other one only the cops came.”

  Fegan turned his face to me. It was cut from flint. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re thinking of someone else.”

  I moved tight to him, his shoulder pressing on my chest. “Do you remember me?”

  “No. I don’t know you.”

  “I’m Sean Duffy. You and Eddie Coyle dragged me into an alley behind McKenna’s Bar on the Springfield Road because I bought the wrong girl a drink. Remember?”

  “You’ve got the wrong fella.”

  “She was Michael McKenna’s fiancée, but I didn’t know that. We had a dance, that’s all.” I looked down at my leg as the pain flared in my knee, a keepsake from the bad times. “The last dance I ever had. McKenna found out about it and he had you and Coyle do me over. Do you remember, Gerry?”