Chapter 14: Alcoholics & Trembles

6:56 PM



Sometimes my thoughts are so loud that I actually speak. Sometimes my thoughts are so loud that I actually speak. Sometimes my thoughts are so loud that I actually speak. Sometimes my thoughts are so LOUD that I actually speak. Sometimes my thoughts are so loud that I actually...


"What are you thinking?"


My eyes flitted to Nin's face. Her face was open and pure.It made the rest of her seem naked regardless of the make-up that she wore or the layers of clothing obscuring her slight frame. There was something about the way that her small lips jutted forward-- her enquiry made her seem vulnerable.

I returned my gaze to my breakfast plate.

"I hate when people ask me that."

"You ask me that all the time."

"All the time since I've known you-- what, like, a couple days? 'Sides it's 'cos you're a girl. Girls are different. They're always thinking something."

"And boys aren't?"

I paused,"Not really."

She hesitated,"Soooo... what are you thinking, really?"

"That I need a drink."

"It's nine in the morning."

"Hence my use of the word need. To want is to desire. To need is mandatory-- such is the case of a heartbeat. One needs a heartbeat to live. I need a drink to continue on with my meager existence until you deem it necessary that I no longer do so."

"You're giving me a lot of power."

"Well, you asked for it," I placed a hand at my temple as though I felt a terrible ache about to over take me. I lifted my fork and used it to push around the beans on my plate. In the twenty minutes that I had been sat there not a bite had passed my lips but I had managed to rearrange a bit of food.

"Cunt," I mumbled.

"Excuse me?" Nin's voice cracked in confused fury.

I shook my head apologetically.

"Not you. Helena. My FAT AUNTIE WHO IS EAVESDROPPING!" I yelled to draw a reaction from Helena. I watched her over Nin's shoulder.

Helena's back was turned to Nin and I as she stood at the sink washing up but the water was only on to barely a drip. She didn't want to miss a breath that I took in case it might have been something that could have been used against me-- yet, my statement didn't cause her to flinch. Maybe I had been mistaken about what she had heard.

"Huh-- I expected her to hear me. Guess not."

"Lee-- are you feeling okay?" Nin asked.

"Bloody brilliant."

"I mean aside from the death and fainting spells-- aside from that are you, uhhhh... sane?"

"Yes Nin. I am mentally competent," I attempted to keep the condescending inflection out of my tone but only sounded more so in the struggle. She didn't argue with me which really only meant that she didn't believe me just as she knew that I didn't believe myself.

"More coffee, dear?" Helena asked Nin, softly. She appeared at Nin's side holding the coffee press and had I not known Helena as well as I did, I would have believed her to be genuinely sorrowful.

There was an involuntary crease of my brow.

"Please," Nin requested.

"White or black?"

"Just black, thanks."

Helena filled Nin's cup then stepped away from the table as though no exchange had occurred at all.

"What the fuck is going on here?" I muttered.

"Good God, Lee, what is wrong with you?" Nin hissed.

I guffawed, "What's wrong with me? What's wrong with everyone in this house?! Helena is being polite and you're drinking coffee like you belong here. I don't even know where the fuck I am anymore. Excuse me."

I pushed myself from the table and started towards the garage. Helena stepped in front of me.   

"What?" I asked, impatiently. She stared at me from eyes that were like two gray stones, not just in colour alone but because they were cold and hard.

"I don't wish it had been you, Lee."

"What?" I was taken aback.

"What happened to Ian. I don't wish that it was you instead."

"Wh-- why are you telling me this?"

"Because every day for the rest of your life-- you are going to wish that it had been you and you're going to wonder if everyone around you wishes that it had been you instead as well. That's your burden to carry," Helena paused, "And I'll have no part in it."

I closed my eyes to quell my temper.

"Please move out of my way."

I didn't open my eyes until I heard her step aside and could be assured that she was out of my line of vision.


I continued forward focusing only on the door to the garage. The car was missing meaning that one or both of my parents were gone from the house. I tried to imagine one without the other at a time like this and couldn't so figured them both to be absent. I crossed the room and knelt down before the work bench, ducking below it and knocking on the wall to feel for the loose board. There was a hollow rattle behind my knuckles and I pulled the wood forward to reveal nothing but a hole in the wall. I shouldn't have been surprised that the scotch was gone but I was disappointed by the fact more than even I could fathom. 
I sat down under the bench and brought my knees to my chest, resting my chin atop them.

     
"Ian..." I chewed at my fingernail and spat the remnants from my lips.


My father had seen the body because my brother was no longer my brother-- he was a body. No one had taken my dad into a room and said,

"I need for you to identify your son."

     
They said,

     
"We need for you to identify the body."


...and that's why there was no scotch. The body had done this. The meat. The bloody, puffy, beaten, rotting flesh had done this to me. My brother did not do this to anyone-- only his body and because his breath had forever left from within his ribs and his heart ceased to pulse then it was no longer my brother's body. It was only A body. THE body-- but it was not Ian's body. The body that contained all of the same blood and flesh and DNA as I did had absolutely nothing to do with me because it no longer had anything to do with Ian.

Ian... where was Ian... where was Ian... because the body that had been given to him to use was in a room and our dad had to go in and look at it and claim that it belonged to us but it didn't belong to us because Ian belonged to us and that body was no longer Ian's because Ian had left his body... so where did Ian go when he had left his body? Why wasn't Ian here and why was I here and why was that body enough to keep me from having a drink?

"Ian..." I pulled my mobile from my jeans pocket and scrolled the contacts. I picked out Ian and hit the call button. I heard the ringing in my ear first then, after a moment's delay, I felt his phone vibrate from inside my pocket. I allowed the ringing to continue.

"Wha...uhhh...Hello?" His voice answered.

"Ian?" I asked, startled.

"Hey."

"What? Where the fuck are y--"

"Leave a message."

Then there was a long beep.

His outbound voicemail message. He couldn't tell whether or not the phone was recording and had kept this greeting the same since he got the phone. Of course. Of course.

I dropped my mobile to the concrete. It tumbled from me. I dug my knee caps into my eye sockets. His phone shuddered once. I pulled it free to look at it. The screen flashed.


Missed Call.


My muscles twitched as I hit the crown of my head against the bottom of the work bench. There was a sharp pain first then a hot throbbing sensation. A tin of lacquer thinner toppled over the bench and fell to the ground. The thin metal tore in the middle at the point of impact and clear liquid seeped out from the split. The vapor smelled of a sharp, clean chemical.

I stretched my arm upward and prised the wooden drawer open, fumbling for a cloth with determined fingers.I touched the cloth to the spill and, at first, I did so as though I were trying to convince myself that I was doing this with the good intention of tidying up. I had taken myself out on a first date.


First dates are... well, they are merely the act of pretending to be more interested in the pink between a girl's ears than the pink between her thighs... and I had taken myself out on first dates before. I was no good at the game. I always gave in too quickly to what I had been aiming for and the only regret that I seemed to have about this wasn't that I should've been a better player but that I had regretted attempting to play in the first place.


I brought the cloth to my nose and mouth and inhaled. Instantaneously, there was the fine prick of a million needles from within my slimy lungs. It was near euphoric. I pictured the organs as thick, graying walls of tissue and my head went dizzy. I slumped against the back of the bench.


Nin slid into the garage and closed the door behind her without sound. She was cradling several beers under her arm.


"Still need a drink?" She enquired as though conspiring.

"That doesn't really count as a drink, now does it... but it'll do."

"I stole them from the fridge when your aunt left the kitchen."

"Thatta girl. C'mere."

She made it within a yard of me and hesitated.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

"You ask me that often enough."

"I'm often not sure if you are."

"You are often uncertain..."She shrugged,

"As long as you are still correcting my manner of speaking-- you must be alright," She looked at the lacquer spill at her feet,"What happened here?"

"Nothing."

She sat beside me beneath the bench and positioned the beers between us. I took a beer and popped the cap with my lighter. I passed it to Nin then opened one for myself. Her eyes fell on the wet cloth at my hip.

"Trying to clean up?"

I took a sip of the beer without saying a word. I studied her bare knees as they poked out from beneath the hem of her gray wool skirt.


First dates... what a fucking waste.


Despite being high, I couldn't stop myself from thinking about Sylvie and I was only thinking about Sylvie because I was thinking about Sylvie thinking about Ian. Sylvie held me because she had wanted Ian. I hadn't held any one in the hopes that they would be someone else but only held onto an individual because they were a body to hold on to. I rarely thought enough of them to care about who they were. I wondered if other girls had pretended that I was someone who I was not. I wondered if other girls pretended that other men were me. That was a nice thought to have even if it was a fleeting thought.

     
I noticed a small faded scar on Nin's left knee. I touched my finger to it. She didn't pull back.


"How'd you get this?"

She looked at the mark as though she were bored by it.

"I was mugged by a little person. He only wanted what I had from the shins down."

"Must've been nice shoes."

"They were," She paused, "I got it playing kick ball when I was a kid."

"Go on."

"What?"

"There's a story behind it."

"I'm sure there is but it isn't a very interesting one."

"I don't care whether or not it's interesting. You wouldn't believe how incredibly slow time seems to be going at the moment."

She sighed at what she considered to be a tedious task.

"My family had moved to a new town and it was my first day at a different school. It was my turn to kick the ball, I did so, started to run to my base, tripped and skinned my knee on a sharp rock. Now I have a scar."

"How old were you?"

"Eight."

"Did you get stitches?"

She chuckled, "No, but I always felt like I probably needed them."

"Did you make many friends?"

"Not really. A lot of the kids hated me."

"Why?"

She shrugged, "I don't know. I wasn't normal. My family wasn't normal and I only really cared about music. I was obsessed with The Beatles. Everyone else liked whatever was cool on the radio."

"Do you regret that?"

"No."

"What do you regret?"

"That, at twenty, I've already started to ruin my credit even though it was the only useful advice that my mother has ever given me. That I grew up to be such a disappointment. That I have feelings. God, I hate feelings," She took a swig of beer, "Feelings are what started this mess in the first place. I'm just-- a total and complete fuck up."

     
Hearing her say this made me realize just how little I knew of her. I couldn't contest this. I didn't have a leg to stand on and for all I really did know she could easily have been a total and complete fuck up.


I chugged what was left in my bottle and opened another.


"What about your family? Do they know where you are?"

"They have an idea. They know that I'm in England. They think that I'm coming home at the end of the month."

"And what do they think was your purpose for coming here?"

"They just think that I was having a hard time and wanted to get away for awhile. See the world. Go to some music festivals. Get drunk in a country that would legally permit it. I sold my car and all my records. My books and some of my nicer clothes. Everything that didn't have monetary value got packed into boxes and stored in the guest room of my grandparents house. I gave up the room that I was renting and quit my job. I wasn't planning on...," She glanced over at me, 
"I wasn't planning. My only plan was getting to England. I just thought that if I could get here then I would be fine but then I got here and I wasn't fine. I was still me. I couldn't really eat and I couldn't really sleep and I couldn't stop thinking. Before I left home I kept thinking, 'If I stay here-- I'm going to kill myself. I need to get out of here.' Then I got to London and I felt the exact same."

"You came here to save your own life," I realized, aloud. This resonated with me and I thought myself close to understanding the whys of Nin.

"Yeah. I tried to, at least. I just couldn't," She rolled a bottle cap over and over again in the palm of her hand. The ridges left imprints upon her skin.

"It's not too late, you know? You're still alive. Why don't you just stay here in England? You don't have anything to go back to, right? The last thing in the world you want is to have to go back."

"I'm not going back, Lee. I might have a return ticket but I was never going to go back."

"Then stay."

"And do what? How? I have no money. No visa. No job. No place to stay..."

"Those are excuses. We can find a way for you to stay. You can live at my flat."

"Where?! With you? You don't even have furniture. Are we going to share the mattress on the floor?" She scoffed.

"I'm not there ninety percent of the time, anyhow. It would be like having a place of your own, which is probably more than you had in America... and we'll go to IKEA or wherever it is that people go to get furniture. We'll get bunk beds."

"Uh-huh," She nodded in a cynical way, "So we're going to get bunk beds and you're going to support me financially while also harboring me as an illegal immigrant in your studio apartment? Meaning that we'll both live with the constant anxiety of one day getting caught... resulting in definite deportation for one of us and possible jail time for the other."

"I wouldn't mind being deported but you would probably dislike jail."

"Okay, you're drunk," She took the beer from my hands and set it down on the other side of her.

"You do realize that I can open another one-- and that I will."

She returned the opened beer to me.

"Ta," I tilted it toward her before I drank from it.

"Living like Anne Frank isn't worth the risk."

"Oh look how severe! You will not be living like a thirteen-year-old Holocaust victim-- though you act as dramatic as one."

"I'm not sure which part of what you just said to find more offensive."

"I could marry you?" I knew the reasons that I was saying it but the words still made my mouth dry.

"...and I think that was it..." her skin drained of all pigment.

"C'mon, you know what I meant. It wouldn't be like a marriage."

"You're right. It wouldn't be."

"It would keep you in the country."

"Don't do this," She shook her head, "Please. Not with me..."

"Why? What's the problem?"

"Lee, you may well be the best person that I have ever met and that said-- you will be the best person that I will ever come to know in my life-- but you don't know me..."

"I know you're an awful mess."

"And, even, still, it doesn't make my life worth living to tie myself to a stranger all for the sake of citizenship in a country to which I wasn't born just so I can be the same fucked up person here that I was at home. You don't understand. I'm broken."

I rolled my eyes, "No one is 'broken', Nin."

"I am," her voice was small.

"It's my life, too."

"Then why give it to me? I still don't understand this. Why agree to die with me? Why offer to marry me to keep me alive? These are the problems of a sick person and you have assumed ALL of them when you have problems of your own-- and before you try to tell me, once again, that you have no problems-- would you please take a fucking look at yourself?"

She reached out and held my face with gentle hands. She tilted my head back so that my eyes were aimed at the wood bottom of the work bench above me. I saw stars. A vast sky of them against the splintering boards. It was a lingering side effect of inhaling the lacquer thinner.

"We're getting drunk beneath a table in your parents garage on a weekday morning," She guided my attention to the spill on the floor, "And I'm pretty sure that you were huffing when I walked in," She released me from her hold, "You're an after-school special."

I felt bold and weary in the same moment. I leaned over the beer bottles and rested my face on Nin's shoulder. The tip of my nose pressed against the smooth skin of her neck. Her dark hair tangled with my own. She didn't recoil.

I pretended that she was dead. I wished that we both were dead but I had never felt more alive than I did just then-- and I hated it. I absolutely loathed and detested the way that our lives persisted because I could feel it. I was acutely aware of it and I was numbed by it. A heartbeat, a breath and an infinite number of thoughts that attached themselves to each one of those inactions.

     
"A few years ago, I read this hippy book about how the spirits of those who have passed sometimes try to communicate with people through their dreams. Do you think that's true?"

"I don't know what I believe," Nin answered, "Do you want to believe that it's true?"

I adjusted my head so that my face was forward and the top of my skull was where my nose had once been. I stared at the shelves to the right of the garage door. They were filled with boxes of old holiday decorations and untreasured family artifacts. Photographs that had every intention of being framed but would never get around to it.

"I...," I inhaled. I felt the vein at the front of my forehead swell and throb. I squeezed the fabric at the bottom of Nin's skirt into a ball in my fist,


"Nevermind. It's not important. It was a stupid question from the start."

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