In Too Deep (20 page)

It takes all the effort in the city to hold me from running wild. I lurch like a determined suicide from the precipice of the sidewalk and into the street, lucky I suppose to find myself on a crossing, and let myself be swept along in the fluster of passers-by, my tiny birdsong voice smothered to nothing beneath the commotion of a rushing hour. When the rhythm reveals itself to me I settle for a fast, aimless walk, just drifting, seeking escape, and within ten minutes I am standing on the corner of 42nd and Broadway with my shirt soaked through from both inside and out. The rain matches my mind, at first beating a deluge that clogs the streets and mutilates the drifting crowds, then giving way to a soft fuzz that hardly feels like rain at all, but which, for all its soothing pretence, continues to mercilessly drench. Probably a typical summer's day in New York, I decide, apart from the rain. The sky is a strict snow-cap of unbroken cloud, but the city continues to reach for that, poking and prodding, determined to penetrate. Those towering spires have ambitions of heaven, I suppose. I have a thirst to beat the band now, and my skin prickles with the sweat of my exertions. The first bar I find is dank and foul-smelling, but their sound system is playing early 'seventies Rolling Stones and to my tormented ears Keith Richards' guitar sounds like a dirty, alluring hurricane noise. I order two beers to start with, swallow one in record time while the riffs torch Jagger's sleazy hooting, and rent a seat at the end of the bar, a long way in where the gloom is unremitting and the smoke of illegal things bring dreams and nightmares right to the dusty edge.

‘I'll bet that hit the spot,' the bartender says. He is muscle-bound and completely bald, with a wide face that seems to mock his yellow thumbprint of a moustache. When he opens his mouth to speak, I catch the flash of at least one gold crown, and I try not to stare at the tattoos that mar his huge arms and wrists, cheap homely Indian ink stains that meld one into the other, like plants overgrown, running vines. Greens that are nearly blue and reds faded to pink, painting daggers and snakes and bulging women lying vague and shameful beneath wiry yellow spools of hair.

I nod that it does, all right, nod again when he takes my empties and replaces them. ‘Efficient,' I mumble, almost to myself, and he considers that for a moment, possibly wondering if he should take offence, then he smiles again and busies himself at the door-end of the bar. The weight of my day falls away, and I sit there, my shirtsleeves growing tacky from the counter, and try to relax. Sweat traces a slow drag from the hairline of my neck down inside my collar, and I flex my shoulder blades to create a sort of canyon. The runnels coax and chase, racking me with shivers. It is a little after three o'clock in the afternoon, and the only other customer, an elderly black man, is asleep in the far corner.

After I have sucked down my sixth beer I raise a hand and suggest that it might be better if I make the switch to wine. Red, I guess. Six beers sounds worse than it really is, because they are only bottles and some brand of gassy American lager at that. I could probably drink these all night long without the slightest ill-effect, but even so, wine does feel like the better option. I know my own system.

The bartender nods and stoops to fumble under the counter, and he makes a decent guess at the limits of my price range. A place like this, they are probably not used to catering for connoisseurs. He does something apologetic with his mouth as he pours the glass, and I understand why even before I take my first sip. Still, I've put away worse in my time, so I grin and bear it.

‘Trying to stay sober, huh?' He uses a stained bar towel to polish a convenient beer glass, and it is clear that he is not expecting very much in the way of an answer. I'm not surprised that he seems to understand; bars get filled with a lot of one-way conversations, and spending long days caged behind this counter a man must get to watch a great many acts being played out.

I clear my throat of the bitter wine taste. ‘I need to phone my wife later.'

He thinks about that, still polishing the glass in his big hands, and nods. ‘I once came across a chunk of advice that steered me well. See if it might fit your situation, or just plain ignore it, if you want. Get some eggs inside you, softer the better. If you know what I mean. Been my experience that they'll fix things one way or the other. You know, bring matters to a head.'

The tattoos seem alive on his arms. ‘You ever wrestle?' I ask, for something more to say.

‘Wrestle?
'
He looks at me for a long moment, shows me that gold tooth again. ‘I've done my share, I reckon. Never in no ring, though.'

On the sound system, the Stones have given way to Springsteen, the way everything does, eventually. I drink a second glass of wine and pat the counter, trying to make a rumba out of ‘Independence Day' and whisper-singing ‘Cha, Cha, Cha-cha-cha' instead of the real words. Springsteen sounds as if he is offended by my efforts. ‘This wine is terrible,' I say, after the song has finished, and I hold out the glass for more. ‘I'll be glad when I've had enough.' Something with a big snare drum kicks from the speakers, and the Boss has discovered Rock ‘n' Roll again.

The alarm-clock wakes me hard from a kind of nightmare, one of those dreams that feels not just real but important. A little past four a.m. and a siren is going off, vicious pulsing as incessant as any spinning drill. I sit up and gulp small, risky swallows of air. My tongue has turned to sawdust in my mouth, and the eggs feel like the world's biggest mistake. I try to calculate the time in Tokyo but I've never been much good at figuring out things like time zones. It's not that I can't do it, because the complications are hardly worth talking about, really, just a simple matter of arithmetic, but my problem – I suppose it is fair enough to say one of my many problems – is patience. Even at four in the morning, with not a lot else going on. As soon as my mind starts to ache with the effort, I stop, brace myself and roll from the bed. The aggression of my movement is too much, though, and there is a moment when the darkness deepens and I feel that stifling sweep of blood rushing through me, but just when I am sure that I'll pass out, the air relaxes again. I make it to the bathroom, urinate slowly with one hand bracing my weary body against the cold tiles of the wall, and then I wash my face. The water isn't much, but it helps a little.

To make a call from the room phone costs twice the price of using the telephone in the lobby, and that can amount to quite a bill when the call has to go all the way to Japan. But what convinces me to pay the extra is the thought of falling sixteen floors in a second and a half, penned into that faux-mahogany panelled coffin of an elevator. My stomach can barely manage air just now; the lift would be a torture too far. With what I would be capable of doing, they'd probably never get the smell completely out. I find the piece of paper with the number, safe and sound in the breast pocket of yesterday's shirt, then pick up the receiver and spend a few minutes trying to punch in the several hundred digits required to weave a beeline through the mess of Japanese area codes. For a long time there is nothing but the heavy sigh of the line, but I don't panic, because it is always this way. And eventually, the ringing sound does come, a little click and then the tinny bell sound that once heard can never really leave your head. I resist the urge to count the rings, resist even trying to think of what I am going to say when Jen finally picks up. Knowing my luck she'll be in the shower or something, and I will be bothering her yet again. But I am too tired, really, to care. And too upset; my dream nags at me, the strands of it that have refused to be blown away by consciousness fluttering their tangled tails in the very periphery of my vision. When I close my eyes, awful leftover images explode in my mind, so I can't even enjoy the succour of a moment's rest.

There is no answer. At first, I can't quite accept that, but after a while my arm grows tired of holding the receiver, so I give up. She's probably still at the college, or out to dinner. If afternoon here was the middle of the night there then this ungodly hour know must be, well, some time during the Japanese day. None of that bears thinking too deeply about. I replace the receiver, wondering if I will be charged for the effort if not for the call, and trying not to wonder if Alsop might be in a room somewhere right now, smiling his baby-teeth smile at my wife.

‘All right,' I say, in a voice that is hushed out of consideration for the hour but is still audible. ‘Let's take a look at this dream, then.' Talking to myself is the sort of habit that only feels odd to me whenever there is somebody there to overhear my words. Jen says that it is a matter of ego rather than insanity, that I simply enjoy the sound of my own voice, but there are times when I catch her looking at me in a funny way, her little nose wrinkled up in irritated folds, and I know that she is wondering if I am doing it just to annoy her. There are some things that should never be said aloud, and a lot of what goes around in my brain, my own particular pearls of wisdom that lie gleaming among the grit of greater general babble, is more often than not unrepeatable.

Naked except for a pair of boxer shorts, I throw myself down on the bed and indulge myself in a groan of pain. Movement has become my enemy, but there is frustration in holding still. Guilt has always been an integral part of my hangovers, even back when I was single and there was no one to harass me for reckless behaviour. Just my way, probably inextricably linked with a religious upbringing. As a child I believed in everything: Jesus, witches, ghosts, aliens, the Loch Ness Monster. I never doubted that the world was full of magic, demons, miracles and happiness, and growing up really hasn't done an awful lot to narrow my open mind. Guilt has always been a precious commodity, something to be feared and yet treasured. Jenny, who believes in nothing at all but compound chemical numbers and the formulae of the universe, has done her best to knock sense into me, and we've reached a sort of compromise; I let her believe she's been successful, and she accepts that I'm a lost cause to logic. It has always been my experience that there is really nothing quite like a spot of self-flagellation to ease the worst of a hangover's burden. ‘Right,' I say again, ‘the dream.
'
The words hurt, almost as much as the images that come charging into my head, trampling out a joyful dance-step at regaining their rightful place.

I close my eyes and at first there is only darkness and the pounding of my hangover, but then, gradually, the pieces of my nightmare pile together and fall back into place. I see, or feel, that I am myself, but the other me, the one in the street with the well-groomed moustache and the fine grey pinstriped suit. I find myself in a plush living room, some palatial place with chandeliers and tumbling water features, and am sitting comfortably slumped on a settee that is all cream-coloured leather, hand-carved oak and scrolled armrests. The very height of style. On the floor at my feet, my mermaid lies sprawled and smiling, propped up on her elbows. Her bedraggled hair gleams the yellow of sunsets and fool's gold, her flesh has the washed-out, ever so slightly translucent cleanliness of skimmed milk, and the clamshells cling tenuously in place as a vague and demure gesture against her heaving breasts. There is rock music churning out, the Stones again and then Creedence, and my mermaid flaps her tail happily to the beat and sways her shoulders in a most alluring way. I feel content, as if I have finally made it home after a very long and arduous day. When I reach out, my mermaid takes my hand. Her touch jolts me with life and lust, the pruned skin of her fingertips icy cold. I seem to know and accept that she is Elisabeth, but somehow the Elisabeth that I had always wanted, back when we were together, my vaunted rendition of her that would happily have dragged away and buried all her faults so that what remained behind was perfect. I keep my eyes closed, trying to preserve this vision for as long as I possibly can, but as soon as I begin to think it starts to fray. The fine details are the first to go, the oily rainbow-flecks of her scaly tail, the absolutely perfect smoothness of her shoulder when cupped by my palm, the expensive watch on my wrist and the silken feel of monogrammed socks on my feet, and as I claw in desperation to hold them just a moment longer the entire fantasy unravels hard and fast. Not understanding at all what could qualify this dream in any possible way as a nightmare, I sit up in the bed to find that a few hours have somehow gone, that it is already morning, half-past six. I really feel as if I am a stranger in my own body. Ridiculous, of course, but it is how I feel, awed as I am by the idea of where I have just been.

My hangover has eased a little, though it is nowhere near gone. Dawn has well and truly broken across Manhattan, yesterday's white light replaced by sharp lemon daggers of sunshine that jab through the latticed window to spill in shreds across the floor and onto one low corner of the bed. I know what sort of face waits in the bathroom mirror, that early-thirties face, wind-burnt along the cheeks, creased around the eyes from too long spent outdoors, made old from wind, sun and rain, and too long smelling, and smelling of, the earth. I will be bearded again, my rough-and-tumble mask, the curly black tufts corkscrewing out of my face, granting me a full, wise, harried look that I don't quite deserve. The spools of white will still stain my chin, not even grey but wiry white, random in their placing but favouring one side, my left, turning things a little too askew, prying me just enough out of synch to disturb the general order of things. That is my face, I have lived with it and put up with it through a lot of situations. So why, now, should there be a glimmer of doubt?

I try to tell myself to relax, that the dream is just a side effect of yesterday's adventures coupled with too much beer. With me, even a bottle can be too much. At home, at least I can drink pints, and stout has some weight to it, a particular bulk that can never get too flighty. But here, everything has to be bottles, and fizzy beer has long been an enemy of mine, every bubble a potential nightmare. Yesterday's clothes lie scrawled across the floor, discarded at a run, and coins that have spilled from the pockets glitter like flares, those that catch the sun face on. When the cobwebs threaten to gather again I force myself into action, leaping from the bed and stepping into the shower to try blasting myself back to life. My temples throb with the pulse of some life-or-death chase, and the water chugs and coughs through pipes somewhere deep in the wall, then pummels me with violent, freezing spurts, and I hunch my body in small defence and scream as my suffering finds an entirely new edge. My immediate impulse is to leap away, but I have always been a stubborn old mule where my own pain and repressions are concerned, so I bear the brunt of the spray for as long as I possibly can, taking my punishment, accepting my medicine, and in some small sick way secretly glad of this agony. Then I spent ten minutes or so curled up on the bathroom floor weeping with relief into half a dozen fluffy white hotel towels.