Wanoah

I felt a small tingle of excite­ment as I walked out of the sta­tion and clambered into the back of a black cab. Was it excite­ment? Or just a touch of nerves? They can feel like the same thing, can’t they? I’m not really sure what I’m anti­cip­at­ing, but this city holds some pretty strong memor­ies for me. It’s dif­fi­cult. I haven’t been back here since…well it’s been a while. It’s like return­ing to the scene of a crime. I’m hoping…I’m hop­ing for what exactly? For it to still be the place that lives and breathes in my mind? For it not to have changed? Or for it to have changed out of all recog­ni­tion? I’m really not sure. Every street is paved with history.

The taxi driver was of the surly, non-talkative type rather than the more tra­di­tional gar­rulous type. It is some­thing of a relief as this allows me to indulge in some quiet nos­tal­gia as I gaze at the pubs we drank in and the res­taur­ants that we ate in. I recall how I left this place, firm in my belief that I’d never return. I’d loved it here. From day one, I’d felt like I’d come home some­how. It had been the strangest sen­sa­tion at first. How can you feel more at home in a place you’ve just moved to? Then I met her and the final piece fell into place. It turned out that I’d been stum­bling through life with essen­tial bits miss­ing and had never real­ised it. I’d loved liv­ing here, and my heart had been filled with love, but in the end I’d had to leave it all behind. I’d come here filled with hope; and I’d left a broken man.

“Six quid mate.” This taxi driver had clearly grasped the finer points of mod­ern man­ners. I paid, neg­lect­ing to tip, and shortly found myself in a gen­eric hotel room. I could have been just about any­where. After hanging up my suit, idly flick­ing through the TV chan­nels to see if there was any free porn on offer (there wasn’t) and spend­ing five minutes won­der­ing if the artist that paints those drab washed-out scenes that adorn every single fuck­ing hotel room in the world gets paid well for his ‘art’ I came to the real­isa­tion that if I spent much longer in here I would prob­ably end up slash­ing my wrists just for some­thing to do.

“The pub it is then,” I said to myself. Out loud. “Jesus Christ, I’m talk­ing to myself,” I added.

I walk slowly to a pub I remembered from before. It had rained for most of the day, but the tor­rent had reduced to a fine drizzle and had finally stopped alto­gether. There was a damp, fresh smell in the air — almost clean; as if Travis Bickle’s rain had indeed come and washed the streets clean. The evid­ence of my eyes con­tra­dicted that idea though. It was get­ting dark and most of the Sunday shop­pers had gone home. It was that empty time, that shift change that every town and city has between the shop­pers and work­ers, and people head­ing out for the even­ing. There is a gap between the shifts that sud­denly exposes the home­less, the all-day drink­ers, and the mad people that are nor­mally lost in the crowds. I quickened my pace; reas­on­ing that it would only be a mat­ter of time before someone asked me for money or tried to start a con­ver­sa­tion about tin foil.

The pub had changed quite fun­da­ment­ally. For a start, the name had changed to The Lemon Tree for no good reason I could see, and its interior had been extens­ively refur­bished. This was a dis­ap­point­ment and a relief at the same time. Dis­ap­point­ment because a place I remembered with some fond­ness had changed out of all recog­ni­tion. Relief because it would be harder for me to wal­low in ancient his­tory. Later, I’d prob­ably feel a little bit­ter about the whole thing. How dare they rewrite my past like this? Bas­tards. Just being here made me feel slightly unreal, some­how: dis­as­so­ci­ated with real­ity, and the memor­ies kept on sur­fa­cing like farts in the bath. Oh well, noth­ing a pint of Guin­ness won’t fix, right? Right.

The pub was almost deser­ted — just one small group of stu­dents in a far corner, per­haps eas­ing them­selves into an even­ing ses­sion while bat­tling the remains of hangovers from the pre­vi­ous night, or lamely attempt­ing an all-day drink­ing binge and not quite man­aging it. Either way, they were pretty quiet, which suited me just fine thank you very much. The abund­ance of space meant I could select my pos­i­tion care­fully, too. It’s very import­ant to get your pos­i­tion­ing just right in these situ­ations. I chose a table that gran­ted easy access to the bar in only a few short paces, allowed a gen­eral view over the whole place for people-watching, and enabled me to see every­one that came in.

Soci­able people usu­ally opt to sit at the bar and engage the bar staff and oth­ers in con­ver­sa­tion. Unso­ci­able people, or people that have the small-talk abil­ity of a slug, choose to pre­tend that they are just wait­ing for someone and abso­lutely not lonely in any way. That was the pos­i­tion that I adop­ted. People com­ing in would look at me and think, ‘Oh, he’s just wait­ing for his mates to turn up. They must be a bit late. Or maybe he’s just a bit early.’ More likely that they didn’t think any­thing at all if they did even notice me. What good is a bit of para­noia if you’re going to get all rational and reas­on­able, though? No one poin­ted and laughed at me, any­way, which is nice.

The first pint went down pretty damn quick. Quicker than I inten­ded. In my defence, I was feel­ing a bit self-conscious. This was a stu­dent pub. A city pub. It’s not the sort of place where the loc­als just pop in for a swift pint or two and chat with whoever’s in. It’s not a place to sit and drink alone. People drif­ted in — couples out for a pre-dinner drink, another group of sub­dued stu­dents — art stu­dents I decide — but I was the only per­son sat at a table by them­selves. One of the alleged art stu­dents had a hideous, nasal laugh. My psychic gift kicked in and I saw a glor­i­ous McDonald’s career in his future. Or maybe IT. In my future, I pre­dicted a second pint of Guin­ness, and hey, guess what? My pre­dic­tion came true.

It was after nine o’clock and it had become busier. Now there were only one or two spare tables, and people were start­ing to clut­ter up the bar, so I was quietly pleased with my choice: in the way you are pleased when you have noth­ing bet­ter to think about and no one to talk to. I kept expect­ing someone I know to walk in and had to keep remind­ing myself that every­one that I used to know here is long gone now. We all moved away in the end. I was four pints to the good; the sens­ible thing to do would have been to go back to the hotel, watch some dull Sunday night TV and get a good night’s sleep. I mulled over this idea, try­ing to work out if I was any­where near feel­ing tired enough to go to bed.

Then she walked in and my train of thought hit the buffers.

I gaped at her, then remembered to close my mouth as she looked in my dir­ec­tion, briefly mak­ing eye con­tact before look­ing away. It wasn’t her, but…but…Jesus H mother­fuck­ing Christ, for a second it was her. I real­ised that I’d stopped breath­ing and focused on that for a moment. Breathe out. Breathe in. Can you for­get how to breathe? Fuck.

I get my shit together, and with nor­mal breath­ing ser­vices resumed and a heart rate now dip­ping a little under 200 BPM, I ven­ture a quick glance at her again. She was at the bar, chat­ting eas­ily with the bar­man. I check her out. She’s slim, but not skinny, dark hair almost to her shoulders and bobbed, and she still has that tight arse that I remem­ber. Damn. Except she doesn’t because it wasn’t the same per­son, and shit, this is con­fus­ing. Did she have a sis­ter? One that she never told me about? I closed my eyes for a second, try­ing to get a grip. I open them–

And she’s right there in front of me. What the?

She’s say­ing some­thing, “…here?”

“Sorry, what?” I manage.

“Is any­one sit­ting here?” She asks, indic­at­ing the chair oppos­ite me and smil­ing. Oh Christ, the smile. It’s not the same, but still. Christ.

I look around stu­pidly, not­ing that the pub is pretty full now and there is nowhere else to sit. “Umm…sure. Help your­self.” I try a smile, but I think I prob­ably miss and hit grim­ace instead.

She sits. She glances around, absently run­ning a fin­ger down the side of her glass. What’s she drink­ing? Is that whisky? She looks back at me, and notices that I’m star­ing at her. She raises an eye­brow, “Are you OK?”

“Ah-” I can feel my cheeks burn­ing, “Sorry. It’s…It’s just that you remind me of someone. A bit.”

“Right.” An eye­brow arches.

“No, really. From years ago. I-it’s weird. Uncanny.”

“OK,” she says, still smil­ing. I can’t fig­ure out whether the smile is out­right con­temp­tu­ous or just amused.

That should have been that. Beers had been drunk, though, and I felt a need to make amends for mak­ing a bit of a twat of myself. I needed to some­how have some­thing like a nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion. I needed to prove that I wasn’t a drool­ing idiot des­pite the evid­ence to the con­trary. I need to do some­thing and I need to do it soon. I open my mouth and these words come out: “So, do you come here often, then?” And I thus con­firmed my status as drool­ing idiot. Way to fuck­ing go.

She laughs, though, and says, “Not often, no. Only when I’m meet­ing someone.”

“Right,” I try to think of some­thing to say, “Who are you meet­ing?” To the point, I guess.

“I don’t know yet. Maybe you?” she says, lock­ing her eyes on mine. The eyes are just as I remem­ber them. Black, glit­ter­ing pools you could drown in.

I am rendered entirely speech­less for what feels like sev­eral seconds and I prob­ably go into car­diac arrest, “Ohh­h­hkay,” I man­age suavely. I’m all about the suave. Oh yeah.

“I’m Rachel,” she says calmly.

“Michael.” Less calmly. A lot less calmly.

“Not Mike?”

“No, I’m pre­ten­tious like that.”

“Well, nice to meet you Michael,” She drains her glass in one.

“Can I get you another one?” I very much need another drink myself. Right now.

“Why not?”

“OK, cool. What’re you drink­ing, then?”

“High­land Park. Double.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“And they sell that here?”

She waves her glass at me and smiles, “Yes.”

I head to the bar and wait to be served. What the fuck is hap­pen­ing here? I sum­mar­ise. A girl that looks just like my ex has sat at my table. Then I acci­dent­ally use the world’s worst chat up line and it some­how works? I’m strug­gling to get a handle on the even­ing. It’s all too strange. I catch the barman’s eye, “High­land Park, double, and a…actually make that two.”

Armed with whisky, I manœuvre back to my table, and amaz­ingly, Rachel is still there. I feel a mix­ture of relief and fear. It’s a con­flict of emo­tions that doesn’t look likely to abate any time soon.

“To be hon­est with you, I don’t think I’ve come across many girls that drink single malts.”

“Do you think your gender has a mono­poly on decent whisky then?”

“Uh, no. Not at all. It’s just-”

“Yes, I know.”

“Right.”

“So then Michael, what brings you here?”

“I’m here for a course.”

“What kind of course?”

“Uh, ser­vice delivery.”

“Sounds dull.”

“Yes. It does. I’d prefer not to go, but you know how it is.”

“No not really,” she leans for­ward, “So does this mean you’re going to go to bed at some sens­ibly early time?”

“Well that was the plan.”

“I have a bet­ter idea.”

“Really?”

“Fuck yeah. Let’s get twatted!”

“I-I can’t,” I say, self-loathing welling up inside, “I’d really like to, believe me…” Oh shit, what am I say­ing? “I just have to-”

“Oh come on, Michael. You aren’t going to dis­ap­point me are you?” There’s an edge to her voice. I mean, she sounds kind of play­ful, but there’s some­thing under­neath it. Steel. She’s used to get­ting her own way.

I drain my glass and breathe out hard through pursed lips. Wrong-footed, I’m tee­ter­ing on a cliff edge here, and I already know that I’m going to fall. I always have fallen. I’ve never mastered the word ‘no.’

“Well?” Rachel says, standing.

“Fuck it. OK.”

“Excel­lent.” She smiles widely, and I can feel myself falling -

- Back­wards on to the bed with a groan. Sit­ting up that quickly had been an error. I’m not a morn­ing per­son. I have lost count of the times when I have woken up at two in the after­noon, glanced at the alarm clock and groaned as the sick­en­ing sen­sa­tion of dra­matic late­ness rises from my stom­ach. Today is no excep­tion and I’m prob­ably in trouble this time. You see, I’m sup­posed to be some­where. And it’s quite important.

“Shit!” I say to the hotel room, “Shit, shit, shit!” Also: “Fuck!”

It’s a five day course, and I have already effect­ively missed the first day of it. All I had to do was to turn up at nine O’ clock and I fucked it up. How hard can it be? I sit up, pull a cigar­ette from the packet on the bed­side table and light it, grim­acing at the nasty ‘first cigar­ette of the day and I haven’t brushed my teeth yet’ taste. It’s time to con­sider options. Well, there aren’t any. I’m shaf­ted. I have fucked things up com­pletely. Also, I feel like shit.

I feel naus­eous as I stub out the cigar­ette. What am I going to do? I can’t admit that I over­slept by five hours and missed most of the first day. It’s just not some­thing you can say to someone. Least of all your boss. I can’t turn up at the class now because that would be just too embar­rass­ing. So what am I going to do? I’m going to lie. Won’t that make a change?

I grab my phone. It’s off. Explains why I didn’t wake up, then: I nor­mally use my phone’s alarm to wake me up. I switch it on and I have 3 missed calls. There’s voice­mail from my boss. I suck in a ragged breath and I make the call.

“Yeah, it’s me. Michael.”

“No, I’m OK. Well, no. Not OK really. Sick. Food pois­on­ing, I think.”

“Chicken, I think.”

“Nah, I don’t think I can face trav­el­ling. Just going to wait things out.”

“Yeah. Will do. Cheers.”

I hang up. I’m shak­ing. I fall back onto the bed and assess the situ­ation. I am hun­gover to bug­gery, to use the tech­nical term. My head is throb­bing, my mouth feels like someone crapped in it and my neck is stiff. I must have slept in some crazy-ass pos­i­tion. I need flu­ids. Water to start, then see if my digest­ive sys­tem can tol­er­ate some cof­fee too. First, though, I need to do some more lay­ing down. I do that.

I wake up a bit later and I spend a few minutes look­ing at my sur­round­ings, unwill­ing to move. You’ve prob­ably been here. The same hotel rooms exist in every city in every coun­try around the world. There is a con­spir­acy of hotel rooms. You walk in through the door and ahead of you is the bed, to your right is a ward­robe with those annoy­ing hangars that you can’t steal and the bath­room. The bed­side table always has a Gideon Bible in the top drawer (I always seem to end read­ing Rev­el­a­tions when I can’t sleep — like that will help.) The TV always has the prom­ise of the full panoply of satel­lite chan­nels but only deliv­ers a few of them, and the porn is never free if it exists at all. Tea and cof­fee mak­ing facil­it­ies always con­sist of a tiny travel kettle that takes about fif­teen minutes to boil enough water for one cup of cof­fee. I mean, shit, who has just one cup of cof­fee any­way? The day can­not start until at least two cups of very strong black cof­fee have been con­sumed. There’s a law about it.

I sum­mon up the strength to get up, neck some tap water and get busy with the cof­fee. While I’m wait­ing for the kettle to boil I light a cigar­ette that I don’t really want, but it’s neces­sary to fill the time with some sort of activ­ity. Finally, with a cof­fee in hand and another cigar­ette on the go, I huddle up under the duvet and try to piece together events of the night before.

I remem­ber Rachel, who looked like her but wasn’t. How she had some­how bundled me off into the night with her. We had drunk whisky and talked. Des­pite the awk­ward start and her sur­pris­ing force­ful­ness, the con­ver­sa­tion had begun to flow eas­ily. We had had fun, I think. I remem­ber laughter, any­way. It was like I had always known her. Then it had star­ted to get a bit hazy. I recall a club — mem­bers only. There may have been some dan­cing. A kiss? Then…nothing. What had happened? How had I got back here? Where was Rachel? Who was she? Lots of unanswered ques­tions for a sore head to cope with. I sigh and lie down on my side for a bit.

It’s dark again and I’m awake. The hangover has receded and now I’m hungry. Raven­ous. I need bacon and maybe beef too. I need starch. Pos­sibly alco­hol. I shower quickly, put the suit on and head out into the night.

Out­side, it’s a replay of the pre­vi­ous even­ing. The wind has got up, bit­ingly cold, and a few late work­ers scurry home­wards, their heads bowed. I was going to find a decent res­taur­ant — the company’s pay­ing after all — but I’m too hungry to dick around and the bright lights of McDonald’s draw me in like a moth to a flame. No bacon, but some­thing resem­bling beef will have to do. I order up a Big Mac and a double cheese­bur­ger and scoff them down. It’s a joy­less meal, more cardboard-tasting then ever, but at least my belly feels full after­wards. Even so, I’m left with a resid­ual gnaw­ing sen­sa­tion in my belly. Like there’s still a gap to be filled. I try smoking, but the sen­sa­tion remains. I decide to go and have a drink to see if that will do the trick.

I wind up in the Lemon Tree like I was guided in on auto­matic pilot. Maybe I’m hop­ing Rachel will show up, but how likely is that? I sit at the same table as last night, sip­ping on Guin­ness. Per­haps, later, I will have some whisky.

After a while, a thought occurs to me and I quickly go through the con­tacts on my phone. I con­firm that I have made a school­boy error: no phone num­ber. That’s rule num­ber one, isn’t it? Always get a num­ber? Could be, though, that it’s for the best. Would it be unhealthy in some way to hook up with a girl that looked so like an ex-girlfriend that you con­fused the two in your head? I think it would. I think it’s maybe a bit fucked up. Then, I have a couple more pints, and I get to think­ing about just how damn gor­geous she is and was, and how good it was. Even though I can’t remem­ber much, I know it was good. I sigh dejec­tedly and -

- I head to the bar. She glances in my dir­ec­tion and we make eye con­tact. Her eyes are burn­ing, glit­ter­ing hot coals. Burn­ing right the fuck through me. She breaks eye con­tact and I can breathe again. “High­land Park. Double,” I say, “Wait! Make that two,” and I try to ignore the rush­ing noise in my ears as I —

- Fall. Some­times you fall. Hard and fast.

I remem­ber the day it happened. It was a day much like today had been. Win­tery, gloomy. We had taken refuge in a pub not so far from here. We talked and we drank and we talked some more. She went to the bar. I watched her buy­ing drinks: a per­fectly mundane thing of no con­sequence, and as I watched her hand over the cash and turn back to me, I felt this surge in the pit of my stom­ach. It was like stand­ing in an elev­ator and the brakes fail­ing: a sud­den lurch as the car drops. I real­ised some­thing. I real­ised a whole load of somethings. I real­ised that I never wanted this day to end and that I wanted it to always be like this. Just us.

“Look. There’s some­thing I need to tell you.”

“Ooh! Sounds ser­i­ous!” She said, playful.

“Well, I sup­pose it is, yeah.”

There was a silence. We looked at each other. Sus­tained eye con­tact. Oh God, I was lost. So damn lost.

“Come on then, what is it, Michael?” she said, break­ing the silence. There was a note of worry in her voice.

“It’s — it’s like this. I’ve been thinking…for a while now. And, oh shit. Look, I think I love you,” I hold my breathe, wait­ing for a response and -

- She says, “Michael. Come on, let’s go.”

“Sorry. Miles away.”

“Stay with me.”

“Always.”

“Care­ful,” says Rachel, “Always is a long time.”

“Could be as long as forever,” I say, grin­ning stupidly.

“Be care­ful. That’s all I’m say­ing,” she says, ser­i­ous now. A small crease appears between her eye­brows and it’s an expres­sion I remem­ber. An expres­sion I remem­ber loving.

“Hey now, I was only jok­ing around.”

“I know, but-”

“But what?”

“Doesn’t mat­ter. Let’s go.”

“Wait. Hold up,” there’s some­thing going on here and I seem to miss­ing it. I grab her hand and pull her towards me. I hold her close and she looks up at me, almost vul­ner­able. “Look, I like you. Is all.”

“I like you too, but…But I can’t explain just yet. Let’s just hit a club and dance like mani­acs, k?”

“Sure,” I don’t press it. I’ve only just met her, have to keep remind­ing myself of that, and it’s no time for any­thing less than cool.

There’s a low thud of bur­ied bass kicks in the rain-soaked alley. It’s oppress­ively dark down here. The boun­cer nods at us both and we pass in inside. Rachel grabs my hand and leads me through the club and into the warm embrace of the music.

Boom boom boom boom

My eyes snap open.

Boom boom boom boom

“Yeah?”

“House­keep­ing,” comes a muffled voice.

“Shit,” I groan. Did I for­get the ‘Do Not Dis­turb’ sign?

I’m spread-eagled on the bed. Fully clothed. The cur­tains aren’t prop­erly closed and the cold day­light that streams in is pun­ish­ingly bright. I groan and roll over.

“We come back. Yes?” Says the maid. I can’t work out her nationality.

“Yeah. Prob­ably best,” I manage.

I fall out of bed and close the damn cur­tains. Sooth­ing dark­ness is bet­ter. My head is pound­ing. I feel naus­eous. I col­lapse on the bed. “Rachel?”

No answer.

I check my phone. It’s off. I switch it on. No missed calls. I check my con­tacts. No Rachel. “Fuuuuuck!” I throw the phone feebly at the wall. It doesn’t get that far and skit­ters across the car­pet. I shower and -

- Oh God, the hun­ger! “Three Big Macs, please.”

I wolf the bur­gers down. I feel bloated but unsat­is­fied. Sick, yet hungry. I’m con­sumed with a naus­eous long­ing and I need -

- “Rachel?”

“What do you want?” The girl that looks noth­ing like Rachel shrugs off my hand angrily.

“Sorry, thought you were someone else.”

I can’t find her. I went to the Lemon Tree. She never showed. Why the fuck didn’t I get her phone num­ber? What was I -

- She had been my best friend. She had been The One. For four intense years, we were insep­ar­able, spend­ing almost 24 hours a day together. I loved her more than I could have ever thought pos­sible. I would just have to look at her and my heart would go into defib­ril­la­tion, it was so full of love.

I won’t pre­tend that things were per­fect: I’m not that naïve. Over­all, though, I think we were poor, but happy. It was a struggle pay­ing all the bills — we were both heav­ily in debt after uni­ver­sity, we were a little behind on the rent and neither of us were earn­ing very much at that time, but the future looked bright. OK, we didn’t go out as much as we used to, and friends were neg­lected, but I was happy just so long as I was with her. I just couldn’t spend enough time with her. It was some­thing spe­cial alright: no secrets, com­plete trust, great sex, the whole deal. That’s what I thought at any rate. Maybe I was blinded by the arc-light glare of my love, maybe her still waters ran deeper than I ever could have guessed and I never knew her as well as I thought I did, maybe I was just plain wrong about everything. One even­ing, over din­ner — tagliatelle car­bon­ara — she quietly said, “I’m going to Australia.”

I thought it was a joke, but she had booked her flight a month before­hand. As it turned out, she had a trust fund that I’d never known about. A trust fund, for fuck’s sake! Fait accom­pli and I never saw it com­ing. Never had a clue that any­thing was wrong. The next day she left, paus­ing only to rip my still beat­ing heart out of my chest and grind it under her heel.

Later, much later, when the worst of the hatred had faded, she had tried to explain: “I just got so scared of it all; scared of forever.”

“Well, I was scared too.” I had been scared as well. Except I didn’t fuck off to other side of the world. No, I just drank hard -

- I drink hard. Retrace steps. I need to find her. Finally, I find the alley­way where the club was. I pick my way through the the lit­ter and the puddles, unsteady on my feet and unsteady in my mind. It’s the same boun­cer as last night. Or was it the night before? I’m los­ing track. I nod at him and move towards the door.

The boun­cer puts an arm out, block­ing my way for­ward, “Sorry Sir, it’s mem­bers only.”

“What?”

“Mem­bers only.”

“But I was here last night!”

“Mem­bers. Only.” He didn’t so much speak as growl.

“Don’t you remem­ber me? I was here with Rachel?”

“No. Good­night, Sir.”

“Oh come on, for fuck’s sake!”

He stares me down, his face illu­min­ated by a single lamp above the door. It’s not a pretty face, and it looks worse when the anger starts to twist it up like that, “Good night.”

I leave, stum­bling over a soggy card­board box, and–

- I fall into the street. Time slows as the taxi slews towards me, smoke bil­low­ing from its locked front wheels. The world spir­als and I see the wide eyes of the driver as I smash my head into the wind­screen. As I roll off the bon­net and onto the ground, audio catches up with video and I hear the sound of squeal­ing tyres. I lay, broken, on the wet ground and people gather round. Wor­ried faces peer down at me and -

- I see her, well not her but someone else. “Hey,” I say, try­ing to sound supremely relaxed and maybe just about hit­ting it.

“Er…hi?” She looks across at me and I look straight into her eyes. Blue. Nice. I see her pupils widen, her mouth open slightly. She wasn’t my type at all, truth be told. The hun­ger inside, though. It needed sat­is­fy­ing. I’d tried food, I’d tried cigar­ettes, I’d tried alco­hol, and noth­ing was quite hit­ting the spot. I needed some­thing; Rachel ideally, but she wasn’t here. I’m not even sure if this is it, but I have to try. Cross it off the list.

She shakes her head and her brow fur­rows, “Sorry, it’s just…” she trails off.

“Just what?” I ask, try­ing on a smile.

“Oh…well, you just reminded me of…someone…And oh God! That sounds like some ter­rible chat up line, doesn’t it?”

I laugh, “Yeah, it does a bit, but I’m okay with that. I’m Michael by the way.”

“Susan.”

“Nice to meet you, Susan.” I’m feel­ing quite relaxed des­pite the con­stant gnaw­ing ache in my stom­ach. I feel lub­ric­ated. Like I have drunk the optimal amount of alco­hol to per­form nor­mally. Of course, this could just be alcohol-induced overconfidence.

We talk, Susan and me. Or rather she talks, and I ask her lots of ques­tions. Alco­hol is drunk, time passes quickly, and after a while there is The Look. I move in for the kill. Later, she has doubts about com­ing back to my hotel room, but finds her­self eas­ily per­suaded in the end.

“I don’t usu­ally do this,” she says.

“Me neither,”I lie. We stumble into my room, and I kiss her, hard. She falls back onto the bed -

- And I sit up, gasp­ing for breath. I am soaked in sweat. I look around wildly, try­ing to work out where I am. Turn­ing on the bed­side light, it takes a few seconds to estab­lish that it’s my hotel room and that it’s even­ing again. I grab a cigar­ette, light it and inhale hard, then sit back as my head spins. I note that my sheets are rucked up into a small pile at the foot of the bed and that duvet has migrated across the room. The mat­tress is damp, and wor­ry­ingly, there’s what looks like dried blood on one of the pil­lows. I check my nose for signs of a nosebleed. Noth­ing. Did I have a fight? What -

- I walk down the street eas­ily. The wind is blow­ing hard again, and the work­ers are hur­ry­ing with bowed heads and hud­dling inside winter coats at bus stops. I’m just wear­ing my suit jacket, but I find myself untroubled by the cold. I still have a stom­ach ache, but the sick­ness has passed. Maybe I’d had a bug or some­thing and was get­ting bet­ter? Had I given it to Rachel? Was that why she didn’t appear last night? Or was it just that I was an idiot that failed to do any­thing right? If I see her again -

- I get straight to the point, “Look, I should get your phone num­ber or something.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

“What? How can you not have a phone?”

“Easy.”

“Well, how can I get in touch with you?”

“You know.”

“I-what? I don’t understand.”

“It takes a while.”

“What does?”

“I think you know.”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck is going on, quite hon­estly. Every day I wake up and I don’t know where I am. I’m not even sure who I am half the time. And I can’t remem­ber things…There’s gaps. I don’t know what’s hap­pen­ing to me.”

“Patience, Michael. Just take your time.”

“Take my time? I don’t know how much time I have. I don’t know what day it is for fuck’s sake!”

“It’s Thursday.”

“Thur-”

- I stalk the street in the gath­er­ing gloom. A raggedy old man wear­ing three coats and car­ry­ing all his pos­ses­sions in a worn Tesco’s bag wanders in my gen­eral dir­ec­tion. He waves his free arm around and mut­ters unin­tel­li­gibly to him­self: lost in his own troubled world. I can relate, but I adjust my course to give him a wide berth. As we pass, his head jerks towards me and he makes eye con­tact and sud­denly there’s a clar­ity there. He bel­lows, “You are not one of us!”

I stop in my tracks and gape at him, but he hur­ries off at a fast pace, wav­ing his arms around again. I feel sick, weak. I head for a bus shel­ter and col­lapse onto a small plastic seat and —

- I wake up, my chest heav­ing, and wild-eyed panic grow­ing inside. I check the time. Six o’clock. I light a cigar­ette and sit back, calmer now.

Rachel comes out of the bath­room. I eye her naked body and feel the first stir­rings of a gnaw­ing desire.

“I think we missed check out time,” Rachel says brightly.

“Yeah. By about seven hours.”

“Well, we’ll pay an extra night and head out anyway.”

“Okay.”

“How do you feel?”

“Bet­ter. I think. Disjointed.”

“You get used to it.”

“Why me, Rachel?”

“I don’t know. I liked the look of you?”

“Liked the look of me?”

“Yeah. You look just like someone I used to know.”

“Funny.”

“It’s true. I’ll tell you what else is true, too.”

“What?”

“I knew as soon as I saw you. I sensed it.”

“Sensed what? Knew what?”

“The long­ing.”

“What?”

“I think you were always one of us, Michael. You just needed to wake up.”

She jumps on the bed and I wrap my arms around her. I close my eyes, and absently stroke her hair. Noth­ing makes much sense, but it doesn’t really mat­ter. It’s been a few years, but at last I feel like I’m home.