Ghostheart (35 page)

‘And where the hell has this come from?’ she asked. ‘Where the hell has this suddenly come from? We spend two days in Boston together, we’re twenty-four hours apart so you can get some work done …’

Annie stopped mid-flight. She took a step towards David,
and David – for a moment – seemed to press himself further into the couch.

‘You’re married, aren’t you?’ Annie said, her voice cold. ‘You’re fucking married, aren’t you?’

David laughed – a short nervous laugh, the laugh of a cornered man. ‘Married?’ he said. ‘Jesus Christ, no I’m not married.’

Annie took another step forward and put her hands on her hips. ‘So what the fuck is this?’ she said. ‘What in God’s name is this? I thought we had something here, something real for a change … something that might turn out to mean something instead of some shallow two-week affair with about as much substance as –’

Annie threw her hands up in despair.

She wanted to cry.

She wanted to shout and smash things, and she believed – later – that had she been somewhere other than her own apartment she would have done exactly that.

‘You want out, is that it?’ she asked.

David shook his head. ‘It isn’t a matter of choice …’

‘Choice? Not a matter of choice? Oh for fuck’s sake, you people!’

David frowned.

‘Men!’ she said. ‘Spineless, immature fucking teenagers, the lot of you. No more backbone than a fucking … oh, Christ I don’t know what! You come over here, you fuck me, you take everything you want from me, and then when it gets a little too close for comfort, when it starts to look like there might be some possibility of commitment you all run like scared rabbits.’

David started to rise from the couch.

Annie was aware then of how much taller than herself he appeared to be. He seemed coiled, like a spring, like there was a tension inside of him that could explode at any second. Again she felt threatened, intimidated, and the expression in his eyes
was one of emotional deadness, as though he were fighting against something he couldn’t control.

She hesitated for a second, just a second, and then she turned on him, her voice even louder. ‘So what the fuck is it then? You tell me what the fuck it is David Quinn. We need to talk. It’s all moving too fast. You have any kind of idea of how fucking clichéd that is? You asshole … You fucking asshole.’

Annie’s fists were clenched, and even as she started towards him he stepped back, the backs of his legs reached the edge of the couch, and he fell once more into a sitting position.

She was over him then, her face red, her eyes wide, and when she spoke her voice was determined and angry and cold and vicious.

‘Get the fuck out of here,’ she said. ‘You take your sorry pathetic self-absorbed weak-willed spineless excuses and get the fuck out of my apartment, you hear me?’

David hesitated.

‘Now!’ Annie screamed at the top of her voice. ‘Get the fuck out of here now!’

David got up from the couch and walked across the room. He walked slowly, too slowly, and when he reached the door he turned and looked at her.

There was something then, something unspoken that seemed to issue from him. He looked lost for a moment, and then that feeling disappeared like a handful of smoke.
He wants to stay
, she thought.
He wants to say something, to explain what’s happening here. He wants me to understand something but he can’t … can’t or won’t?

She wanted to ask him, wanted to pull him back and make him tell her what was really going on, but once again she sensed the threat that appeared to emanate from him, and in defence of herself, in defence of her pride and her dignity, she canceled out any possibility that there might be anything reasonable about his behavior.

The anger came like a tornado, sudden and unexpected, and
she started across the room towards him, her fists clenched, her eyes wide and desperate.

David made an effort to grab his jacket from the chair behind the door, but Annie was so close behind him, so angry, so violent in her outrage and disgust, that he missed it.

Annie almost pushed him down the stairs when he reached the landing, and though there were a million words in his mouth there was only one that managed to escape.

‘Sorry –’ he started.

Annie had his coat then, and when David was half way down the stairwell she hurled it after him. He tried to catch it, almost lost his footing, but he grabbed the rail, picked his jacket up off the floor, and hurried down the stairs.

Annie rushed back into her apartment, and snatching a vase from the small table just inside she went out again.

She threw the vase with everything she possessed, and even as she heard it shatter into a thousand pieces in the hallway below she also heard the front door slam shut.

Like a gunshot it was, ricocheting up the well, turning the corners as it came, and penetrating her heart right where she stood.

And then she collapsed. Fell to her knees, her hands white-knuckling as she gripped the stair-rail for support, and then she was sobbing, and it seemed everything that she’d ever suffered – every hurt, every betrayal, every loss, every weakness – came rushing out of her chest like a tidal wave.

Eventually, after how long she didn’t know and didn’t care, she dragged herself back into the apartment and closed the door behind her.

For a while she knelt on the floor with her head on the edge of the couch. And then she walked through to the kitchen, fetched a bottle of Sullivan’s Crown Royal that she’d secreted beneath the sink, and without a glass, without even so much as a coffee cup, she started drinking.

Straight from the bottle.

Straight from the bottle all the way to her soul.

At first there was the smell. It was not a bad smell, it did not actually assault the nostrils but it was strong. It seemed to be a combination of many smells, each with its own identity, and had there been some possibility of savoring each aroma independently she perhaps would have been successful in identifying each and every one.

But, as it was, they were all folded together in one package, and after a while she became aware that the package contained sounds as well, and a sense of motion perhaps, and then there were voices – non-specific and vague, words that she did not understand, did not care to understand, and also there was a bright light, and the light seemed to be strong enough to pierce her eyelids and illuminate her thoughts.

And the first thought was
Where am I?

And the second thought was
Oh God
…
oh God
…
David
…

And with that she kind of gave up, and let herself fall back into something vaguely resembling freedom, and though that freedom was accompanied by pain and deep waves of nausea that threatened to engulf her body, she believed that this was a better freedom than awareness.

And so she let it take her, and take her it did – willingly, easily – and for a while she was aware of nothing at all.

Perhaps it was better that way.

And then the sounds came back, and she perceived movement beside her, and when she struggled to open her eyes she was blinded by something bright and white and invasive.

‘Move it,’ someone said, and the brightness was gone.

She tried to open her eyes again, one at a time seemed sensible, and when her vision began to focus she saw a man seated beside her, a man in a white coat, and her first thought was how handsome he was.

‘Hi,’ he said, and his voice seemed understanding and sensitive. But that was only a front. Annie knew that.

‘I’m Doctor Jim.’

‘That’s your surname … Jim?’ she asked, and her voice was fuzzy and slurred.

Doctor Jim smiled and shook his head. ‘No, that’s my first name. Parrish is my surname.’

‘And you call yourself Doctor Jim? Where the fuck am I, the children’s ward?’

Doctor Jim laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re in St Luke’s Hospital Emergency Room near Amsterdam Avenue. Your friend brought you here …’

‘Friend? Which friend?’ Annie asked. She tried to lift her head. A thunderous pain lanced through the side of her face.

‘Aah Jesus Christ, what the hell is that?’

Jim touched her shoulder and eased her down again. ‘You had a fall,’ he said. ‘I think perhaps you went busy with a bottle of something, and your friend found you collapsed in your kitchen. Seems you fell and hit your head on the side of the sink.’

‘Which friend?’ Annie asked.

Jim shook his head. ‘I don’t know, some guy.’

‘How old?’

Jim shrugged. ‘Fifty, fifty-five maybe … looks like he hasn’t slept for three weeks.’

‘Jack,’ Annie said. ‘Jack Sullivan. Thank fuck for that.’

‘Does the bad language go with the drinking, or did the drinking come first?’ Jim asked.

Annie started to smile but her head hurt too much. ‘Well, you know what they say. If you don’t say fuck every once in a while you might not get some.’

Jim Parrish nodded understandingly. ‘You make a habit of this drinking and falling over stuff?’

Annie closed her eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I got dumped by the asshole of the millennium.’

‘So you figured if you drank enough he might come back?’

‘You’re a smartmouth asshole too,’ she said. ‘Go away and let me sleep.’

‘That I can do,’ Jim said. He stood up. ‘You sleep for a while and I’ll check on you in a couple of hours. We X-rayed your head and you haven’t broken anything, but sure as hell you’re going to have one helluva headache for a few days.’

‘Thanks very much Doctor Jim,’ Annie said.

‘I’ll be back,’ he said. ‘I’ll come see how you’re doing in a couple of hours.’

But Annie O’Neill didn’t hear him. Sleep was there like the down-curve of a rollercoaster, and she was all paid-up on the ticket.

He did come back, two or three hours later, and though she could see no windows Annie knew it was evening.

‘How goes it?’ he asked her.

‘As can be expected,’ she said. ‘When you drink enough to fall over you kind of expect to feel like this.’

Annie hoisted herself up on the pillows. Her head hurt, but it was easing.

‘Your friend is still here,’ Jim Parrish told her. ‘He’s waited the whole time. I told him he should go home and sleep but he wouldn’t have any of it. Is he sick too?’

Annie frowned. ‘Why d’you ask?’

‘He looks like he has a fever, his hands shake a lot.’

‘He quit drinking,’ Annie said. ‘He’s having a rough time of it.’

Jim Parrish nodded understandingly. ‘As you will, if you don’t take your most recent experience as a lesson.’

‘We can do without the puritan lectures, okay?’

Parrish nodded. ‘Okay.’

Annie frowned. ‘What day is it?’

‘Sunday,’ he said. ‘You’ve been here the best part of twenty-four hours.’

‘Oh Christ,’ she said.

Jim Parrish sat on the edge of the bed. ‘He tells me you own a bookstore.’

Annie started to nod, and when she felt the pain she stopped. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I own a bookstore.’

‘I majored in Lit.,’ Parrish said. ‘First and foremost I’m a bookworm.’

‘So what’s with the white coat and stethoscope … or do they just call you in when literary people overdose on Crown Royal?’

‘No, I’m a real doctor,’ he said. ‘Figured I had to do something to pay the bills. I’m not sure what the going rate on sitting around reading books is, but I guess it ain’t great.’

‘The rate for selling them isn’t so good either. If I had to pay rent on the store I’d go under in a week.’

‘You want to see your friend?’ Parrish asked.

‘Sure thing,’ she said. ‘My port in a storm.’

‘Hell you look awful,’ was Annie’s greeting for Jack Sullivan, and perhaps because he didn’t reply, perhaps for some other unspoken reason, there was a moment’s silence between them. And in that moment it came back – the reason she was there in the first place, that if it hadn’t been for David she would never have gotten drunk, never have fallen down, and Sullivan would not now be visiting her in St Luke’s.

The tears came without effort, and they were slow and lazy and fat, and even as she felt Sullivan’s arms around her there was nothing she could do to temper the tidal wave of heartache that came rushing to take her.

‘Fucking asshole,’ she kept saying through the sobs and hitches. ‘Fucking asshole Jack … just the lousiest good-for-nothing asshole you could ever imagine. Christ Jack, how did I ever get taken for such a fool?’

Sullivan tried to say something – something consoling, words that showed he understood, that he empathized, but
Jack Sullivan had never been a man to translate the sounds of the heart into words, and whatever he tried to say just seemed to make things worse.

‘I mean, you meet someone, they seem alright, like a regular human being … Goddamnit Jack, do I have schmuck loser tattooed on my face or what?’

No
, he was saying.
No, you don’t Annie
, but she wasn’t listening, she was merely monologuing her thoughts out into the room.

‘What the hell d’you have to do Jack … what the hell does it take to find someone with anything more on their mind than how they can get you into bed? And once they’ve done that they just want out. It’s always the fucking same … always the fucking same.’

And Jack just held her, and after a while she did nothing but cry soundlessly, and he could feel her breath stuttering in her chest, the way she pressed her face against him and didn’t want to let go.

So he didn’t let her go. He stayed there, and would have stayed there all night, but the duty nurse came back and gave Annie painkillers, painkillers Sullivan himself could have used, and within minutes she seemed to close up inside herself and disappear.

Her last thought, neither fully formed nor vocalized, a thought she would have difficulty even remembering, was for the book she had lent David Quinn. She had given him
Breathing Space
and he had stolen that as well as her heart.

Jack Sullivan left Annie O’Neill sleeping and went down the block to eat, his face unshaven, his tongue like the bottom of a birdcage, his hands shaking and his head swollen with tension. This was not an easy trip, this wagon ride to sobriety, but he’d made a deal, made a promise, and hell, no-one could ever tell Jack Sullivan he wasn’t good to his word.