Contemporaneous: Chapter 64

64.

I drink and drink, the waitstaff always approaching me with uncertainty, like one of them wants to tell me this isn’t a bar, but they’re all teenagers – they don’t have the courage to approach some foreboding-looking fifty-year-old who’s drinking peacefully (but, given I’m drinking alone, self-destructively), and tell him he has to leave.

The cook looks like he might, though – he’s about thirty, but a rotund guy, with a big, meaty, crewcut head that’d might’ve just come out of his wood-fire oven. Give him another decade and his bulk will turn to fat. Right now, though, he’s got this affable look about him – maybe it’s cliché, but a lot of fat people have it, although I guess that’s where the cliché of a jolly fat man must come from.

At one stage when he glances at me from the kitchenette like he wants to catch my gaze, I signal one of the waitstaff, and order a pepperoni pizza, which puts an end to unease, or at least quiets it a little more – I’m not just using the place as a bar but for its actual purpose: a restaurant.

I don’t think I’ll eat, but I do, although some part of this is like an automated defense against excess drinking – eat periodically and drink lots of water during big alcohol sessions. Well, I’ve got half that down. And the pizza’s good – a nice thin base, the pepperoni just the littlest bit hot.

By the time the place finally closes, and I’m over one-hundred dollars down (nine beers, apparently, and the pizza), I finally stumble from Ben’s. The beer-fueled bravado fills me, and I think this is going to be okay.

Lurching back to my car, I look to where I thought I saw Dom’s car – there’s something similar there, so I wonder if I mistook that. It’s possible. Well, it seems possible right now. Once I’m sober again, I know the logical part of my mind will reassert that, and I don’t want to face that.

What I should do now is call an Uber, or sit in my car and sleep this off for a while – I probably won’t sleep long enough for the alcohol to leave my system, but at least long enough to regain my equilibrium. Instead I sit behind the wheel, start the car, and drive, now trying to prime my alertness through the inebriation insulation.

On the freeway, I open it up, driving much too fast. I roll down the window to feel the wind of my face. It refreshes me and doubles my false sense of security until I’m sure I’m in control. Traffic’s thin, and I feel invulnerable now.

Taking my turn off, I see the lights are green ahead. I speed up, wanting to catch them, but I’m only about halfway there when they change to amber. The sensible thing here would be to slow down, but I hit my right indicator and speed up, shooting through the lights just as they turn red.

Somebody else has also pre-empted the lights, although all I see is a blur of white. My car’s impacted. The windows around me shatter. The percussion of the collision roars in my ears. The car spins and spins and spins. Another jolt – this one almost shearing through the back of the car. The car rebounds, rocks, then is still.

I sit there, knowing I’ve been hit (or I’ve hit somebody, or we’ve hit one another), and take a moment to register that my airbag didn’t open.

Everything’s still now. The only sound is the indicator, ticking.

I rotate one shoulder, then the other. No pain. Then I take a deep breath. Nothing there either, I unfasten the seatbelt and try the door – it opens just like it would any other time.

Stepping out of the car, I see the car I hit folded around a traffic light like the letter U, the traffic light itself askew, the green light blinking like it’s been knocked senseless but doesn’t want to go out. The roof of the car has almost collapsed. Steam rises from the boot, and something’s hissing – I’m unsure what. The two tyres I can see have blown out.

Turning, I see my car’s not much better – it’s been folded in like an accordion, the only pocket that almost seems to have escaped being the driver’s seat. Everything else is crumpled, every window broken, the front tyre shredded, but the right indicator still blinking.

I cross the intersection to examine the other car, but a flame curls up from under the arch of the rear tyre. Flames appear above the opposite side of the car. Then there’s a whoosh, the flames growing in a spurt, until they appear to be embracing the car.

Some sense of preservation kicks in, so I limp around to the other side of the car. The windshield’s shattered, and the car’s cabin has compacted. The driver is … was somebody in his twenties, his bloodied face jutting over the steering wheel, but his torso flipped, like he’d done an about face and the steering wheel had pinned his head from doing the same. The guy in the passenger seat is worse; some fragment of the windshield has severed his neck, his head resting perpendicular on his shoulder, his arm torn clear from his shoulder.

I’ve killed these people, and the only recourse now is to reset – to abrogate myself of the responsibility. But there’s no way to take my life here, unless I wait until another car comes through – then I can throw myself in front of it. There’s no guarantee that’ll kill me, though. And there’s every chance as they near, they’ll see the wreckage and slow down. Now the only recourse is to get out of here. If I’m caught here, I’ll be arrested, and then maybe be restricted from taking my own life.

It should be a forty-five-minute walk, but I manage it in half an hour, each step propelling me with urgency, while I also fear that when I arrive home, the cops will be there – they would’ve found my car, run the license plates, and tracked it back to me.

And my heart thuds like it’s seized up when I see a car in my drive, but it’s not the cops but Autumn. I can even see her sitting in the driver’s seat; her face is lit, so she must be checking her phone or something.

I check the time on my phone – just approaching 9.30. She’s never visited this late. I should bide my time, wait until she leaves, and she will have to leave – Dennis is at home, waiting. But there’s also the chance the cops will arrive.

If I can’t make it back inside, I think of the alternatives for taking my life – climbing somewhere high and jumping. That’d work best. But Luca told me I couldn’t do it the same way twice. Would that sort of death be the same as my first, when the train hit me? They’re both impact deaths. Fuck. Why is dying so difficult?

Then my phone rings – Autumn. The ring tone is so strident that Autumn’s head cocks back, and then she opens her door to get out, spotting me.

I walk on, the decision made. Now I have to adapt. I just need to get inside my place, and then see Autumn out as quickly as possible – I’ll tell her I’ll explain everything tomorrow, only there won’t be a tomorrow, because I’ll have reset. Then I can work out what comes next – or what should, although I’ve fucked it up every way possible.

“Hey,” I say.

‘Hey,” she says. “Where’ve you been?”

“Had dinner with friends.” I reach my front door.

“You’re feeling better, then?”

“I just needed to get out for a bit.” I pat myself down for my keys. “I still don’t feel right.”

“Where’s your car?”

“What?” I can’t find my keys at all.

“Where’s your car?”

“My what?” I ask, but only to stall, because I see the smashed corpse of my car in my mind, and in that smashed corpse, I see the keys still dangling from my ignition.

“Your car.”

“I left it at a friends,” I say. “Because I was drinking – I gave you a spare key once, didn’t I?”

I know I did – before Lana. It was prudent. Not that I’d tell Lana that. She’d twist it into some insecurity, probably imagining Autumn will let herself in one night, and slip into my bed, or some other crazy paranoid shit like that.

“In my bag,” Autumn says, already heading back to her car. “Did you forget them?”

“I must’ve.”

Autumn grabs her handbag out of her car, then rifles through one of the inside pockets, quickly extracting the spare. She tries to hand it to me but my right hand’s shaking. I close my hand into a fist and try to steady it. Uh uh. Still shaking. She surveys me, picking up there must be so much wrong, but not commenting about it.

Sidestepping me, she slips the key into my front door, unlocks and opens it, then feels for the light switch. She does everything adeptly, because she used to visit a lot when our friendship was closer – before the dark times. Before Lana.

I follow her in, close the door, and am unsure what to do next. Usually, I’d offer her something to drink – a cup of tea, maybe. And I feel like one because there’s this miserable, unsatisfiable cold that seeps into my skin. This must be shock. I’ve felt it before. But I don’t think it’s the accident.

At least not killing two people.

I can reset that. I have that power. But I’m only going to return into this clusterfuck, this world where my choices don’t change anything. I can fix death here. I just can’t fix anything else.

“What’s wrong?” Autumn asks.

I sit on my couch and look at my hands, seeing them tremble in my lap.

“I can’t fix this,” I say.

“Fix what?”

Autumn sits next to me, warm and earthy. This was something she use to do – before Lana. I feel that familiarity. Like coming home after a long trip, and knowing that everything’s where it belongs, and it’s no longer a case of improvising each day. That’s stupid, but there’s a security in that, too.

“My life,” I say.

I don’t go into details. She’s heard this before. She’s heard this too many times before, this inexorable, self-flagellating whining where I doubted myself, doubted everything I was involved in, questioned even the things that others would’ve been happy with – like Gainsboro. But even in thinking that, part of me rebels: why should I be happy?

Or why should I settle?

And that dissatisfaction tracks back further, sinewing into a time of mental health issues that were so restrictive that I became atychiphobic, a fear of failure, of doing things, and even in thinking all this, I can’t get straight in my head whether there’s truth behind any of this, or I’ve lost myself in some tangling of irrationale [sic] so long ago.

Autumn curls her arm around me. She doesn’t say anything, and I remember through some veil of time, before things got so Lana’ed … and then I think that’s too specious a way to qualify it. It’s not Lana, or just Lana. It’s just been everything for so long now that’s simmered into this anger that obscures the past, and a time that things were good and hopeful.

And this was part of it – this connection to Autumn, and this relationship where she steadfastly remained by my side through all my rants and frustrations and everything else that’s gone on, never asking for anything in return but this friendship.

“It’s all right, she says.

She makes me believe it, too, so I think this is manageable. I just need to find the way. It’s just not this, not what I’ve been doing. That much is evident simply through the proof that I’m here as a result of the choices I’ve made. But there needs to be another way – the right way.

I turn to thank Autumn, and see how close her face is to mine. Her eyes are unblinking. I see something there, or am reminded of something – that deeper connection that’s eroded, that I’ve eroded, and I feel there is something right in this, although it can’t be.

She leans into me.

I lean into her.

Headlights flash in my window. I think it could be the neighbour across the street – their daughter’s always coming home late, and backing into their drive so their headlights flash into my window. But these lights are still on. And I hear two doors open and close.

“Hang on,” I say.

Rising from the couch, I dart over to the window and peek out – a police car that’s pulled in behind Autumn’s. They’ve left their headlights on, so the two cops approaching the door are hazy shadows that promise menace and punishment.

I might’ve been able to bluff I wasn’t home if not for Autumn’s car sitting there. That’s still a possibility, maybe – they don’t know how many cars park here. But then I have to bluff Autumn as to why I’m not going to answer—

The bell rings.

“Who is it?” Autumn says.

Now I don’t know whether to ask her to be quiet so we can pretend we’re not here. What would the cops do? Would they keep—

The bell rings again. Then I hear the screen door open. Voices. I can’t make out exactly what they say, but it’s something like, “… tryvadoor”, and when I see the doorknob turning, my brain parses it with clarity: “Try the door.” They’re coming in.

I didn’t lock the door. I didn’t lock the fucking door!

Now I have to think of an irrefutable way to reset:

 

• pills: take too long, and I’ve done it before
• stab myself (I cringe at the thought): feels painful, and there’s every chance if I don’t do it right they could save me
• get the cops to shoot me: I read about this once – “suicide by cop”, where people will bait the cop to shoot them, but then I worry that it won’t be counted as suicide, and I’ll just be dead, and with me, the two people I killed
• electrocution …

 

I hurry into the kitchenette and grab the toaster.

“Hello?” – One of the cops as he turns the doorknob, and the front door starts opening.

“What’s going on?” Autumn says.

But there’s no time to explain, so I dart through my little hallway, slip into the bathroom, and plug the toaster into a power point. The tub’s inviting – a nice warm bath would do wonders. But I don’t have time to fill the fucking thing, so I open the shower door, and flick the faucets on until they’re streaming with water.

I can hear the cops have entered, and Autumn’s asking them what’s going on.

I lift the toaster high so I can pass it to myself over the shower wall.

Then step into the stream of water, not even sure if this will—