PART THREE 9 страница

I opened my eyes – and jolted backwards, recoiling in fright from the unexpected aerial view I was now getting of the sidewalk down on Tenth Street, of the trash cans and parked cars and photographers’ heads milling around like bacteria in a lab dish. I pulled myself in from the window ledge, struggling to keep my balance, and slumped down on to the floor. Then, taking deep breaths and rubbing the top of my head – which I had banged against the upper section of the window – I stared over in amazement at where I had been a moment before… and still should have been…

I got up slowly and walked back across the room towards the bookshelves, closely observing each step. I reached out to touch things as I passed them, to reassure myself – the side of the couch, the table, the desk. I looked back at where I had come from, and couldn’t believe it. It didn’t seem real that I had been leaning out of that window, and leaning out so far …

With my heart still thumping, I went into the bathroom. If this thing was going to start up again, and develop, I had to find some way to stop it. I opened the medicine cabinet above the washbasin and quickly searched through all the bottles and packets and sealed containers, the accumulated toiletries, shaving things, soap products, non-prescription painkillers. I found a bottle of cough syrup I’d bought the previous winter but had never used. I scanned the label and saw that it contained codeine. I opened the cap, pausing for a second as I glanced at myself in the mirror, and then started chugging the stuff down. It was horrible, sickly and viscous, and I gagged between swallows, but at least I knew that whatever synaptic short-circuiting in my brain was causing these blackouts, the codeine would slow me down and make me drowsy, and probably sufficiently drowsy to keep me here, passed out on the couch or on the floor – I didn’t mind which, just so long as I wasn’t outside somewhere in the city, out and about and on the loose…

I emptied the bottle of its last drop, put the cap back on and threw it into the little basket beside the toilet. Then I had to steel myself against throwing up. I sat on the edge of the bathtub for a while, clutching the sides of it tightly, and stared at the wall opposite, afraid even to close my eyes.

Over the next five minutes, before the codeine kicked in, there were two more occurrences, both brief as flickers in a slideshow, but no less terrifying for that. From the edge of the bathtub, and with no conscious movement on my part, I found myself standing in the middle of the living-room. I stood there, swaying slightly, trying to act unfazed – as if ignoring what had happened might mean it wouldn’t happen again. Soon after that – click, click – I was half-way down the stairs, sitting on the bottom step of the first landing with my head in my hands. I realized that another trip-switch forward like that and I’d be outside on the street, being mobbed by photographers and reporters – maybe in danger, maybe a danger to others, certainly out of control…

But I could feel the onset now of a heaviness in my limbs and a kind of general spaciness. I stood up, grabbing on to the banisters for support, and turned around. I made my way slowly back up to the third floor. Walking now was like wading through treacle and by the time I got to the door of my apartment, which was wide open, I knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

It then took me a couple of moments, standing in the doorway, to realize that the ringing sound I was hearing wasn’t just in my head. It was the telephone, and before I’d had time to reason that I shouldn’t be answering the telephone, given my present state, I was watching my hand floating down to pick up the receiver and then floating back up again towards my head.

‘Hello. ’

‘Eddie? ’

I paused for a moment, in shock. It was Melissa.

‘Eddie? ’

‘Yeah, it’s me. Sorry. Hi. ’

My voice felt heavy, slack.

‘Eddie, why did you lie to me? ’

‘I didn’t… wh-what are you talking about? ’

‘MDT. Vernon. You know what I’m talking about. ’

‘But-’

‘I’ve just been reading the Post, Eddie. Short-selling stocks? Second-guessing the markets? You? Come on. ’

I didn’t know what to say. Eventually, I came up with, ‘Since when do you read the New York Post? ’

‘These days the Post’s about all I can read. ’

What did that mean?

‘I don’t under-’

‘Look, Eddie, forget the Post, forget the fact that you lied to me. MDT is the problem. Are you still taking it? ’

I didn’t answer. I could barely keep my eyelids open.

‘You’ve got to stop taking it. Jesus. ’

I paused again, but had no clear sense this time of how long the pause went on for.

‘Eddie? Talk to me. ’

‘OK…

Now she paused, and then said, ‘Fine, when? ’

‘You tell me. ’

When I spoke, my tongue felt thick and swollen.

‘Tomorrow. In the morning. I don’t know – eleven-thirty, twelve? ’

‘OK. In the city? ’

‘Fine. Where? ’

I suggested a bar on Spring Street.

‘Fine. ’

That was it. Then Melissa said, ‘Eddie, are you OK? You sound strange. I’m worried. ’

I was staring down at a knot in one of the floorboards. I rallied all of my strength and managed, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Melissa. ’

Then, without waiting for an answer, I put the phone down.

I staggered over to the couch and lowered myself on to it. It was the middle of the afternoon and I’d just drunk a whole bottle of cough syrup. I laid my head on the armrest and stared up at the ceiling. Over the next half an hour or so, I was aware of various sounds drifting in and out of my consciousness – the door-buzzer, possibly someone banging on the door, voices, the phone ringing, sirens, traffic. But none of it was clear enough, or compelling enough, to rouse me from the torpor I was in, and gradually I sank into the deepest sleep I’d had for weeks.

OUT COLD UNTIL FOUR O’CLOCK the next morning, I spent a further two hours struggling to emerge from the other side of this paralysing blanket of drowsiness. Some time after six, aching all over, I dragged myself off the couch and slouched into the bathroom. I had a shower. Then I went into the kitchen and put on a large pot of coffee.

Back in the living-room, smoking a cigarette, I found myself glancing continually over at the ceramic bowl on the shelf above the computer. But I didn’t want to get too close to it, because I knew that if I went on taking MDT, I would just end up having more of these mysterious and increasingly scary blackouts. On the other hand, I didn’t really believe that I’d had anything to do with putting Donatella Alvarez into a coma in the first place. I was prepared to accept that something had happened, and that during these blackouts I continued functioning on one level or another, moving about, doing stuff, but I refused to accept that this extended to me striking someone over the head with a blunt instrument. I’d had a similar thought a few minutes earlier in the bathroom, while I was having my shower. There were still bruises on my body, as well as that small circular mark, fading now, of what had seemed to be a cigarette burn. This was incontrovertible evidence, I’d concluded, of something, but hardly of anything to do with me …

I wandered reluctantly over to the window and looked out. The street was empty. There was no one around – there were no photographers, no reporters. With any luck, I thought, the mystery trader of the tabloids had already become yesterday’s news. Besides, it was Saturday morning and things were bound to be a little quieter.

I sat on the couch again. After a couple of minutes, I got back into the position I’d been in all night, and even started to doze a little. I felt pleasantly drowsy now, and kind of lazy. This was something I hadn’t felt for ages, and although it took me a while, I eventually linked it in with the fact that I hadn’t taken an MDT pill in nearly twenty-four hours, my longest – and only – period of abstinence since the beginning. It had never occurred to me before to just stop, but now I thought – well, why not? It was the weekend, and maybe I deserved a break. I would need to be charged up for the meeting with Carl Van Loon on Monday, but until then there was no reason why I shouldn’t be able to chill out like a regular person.

However, by eleven o’clock I didn’t feel quite so relaxed about things, and as I was getting ready to go out a vague sense of disorientation crept over me. But since I’d never really given myself the chance to let the drug wear off properly, I decided to stick to my plan of temporary abstinence – at least until I’d spoken to Melissa.

Down on Spring Street I left the sunlight behind me and stepped into the dim shadows of the bar where we’d arranged to meet. I looked around. Someone gestured to me from a booth in the corner, a raised hand, and although I couldn’t see the person clearly from where I was standing, I knew that it had to be Melissa. I walked over towards her.

On my way to this place from Tenth Street, I’d felt very weird indeed, as if I had taken something after all and was coming up on it. But I knew it was actually the reverse, that it was more like a curtain being lifted on raw, exposed nerves, on feelings that hadn’t seen the light of day for some time. When I thought about Carl Van Loon, for example, or Lafayette, or Chantal, I was first struck by how unreal they seemed, and then by a kind of retrospective terror at my involvement with them. When I thought about Melissa, I was overwhelmed – blinded by a pixel-storm of memories…

She half got up as I arrived and we kissed awkwardly. She sat back down on her side of the booth. I slid into the opposite side to face her.

My heart was pounding.

I said, ‘How are you doing? ’ and it immediately seemed odd to me that I wasn’t commenting on how she looked, because she looked so different.

‘I’m OK. ’

Her hair was short and dyed a kind of reddish brown. She was heavier – generally, but especially in the face – and had lines around her eyes. These made her look very tired. I was one to talk, of course, but that didn’t make it any less of a shock.

‘So, Eddie, how are you? ’

‘I’m OK, ’ I lied, and then added, ‘I suppose. ’

Melissa was drinking a beer and had a cigarette on the go. The place was almost empty. There was an old man reading a newspaper at a table near the door and there were two young guys on stools at the bar. I caught the eye of the barman and pointed at Melissa’s beer. He nodded back at me. The normality of this little routine belied how strange and unsettled I was feeling. A few weeks earlier I’d been sitting opposite Vernon in a booth of a cocktail lounge on Sixth Avenue. Now, thanks to some unaccountable dream-logic, I was sitting in a booth opposite Melissa in this place.

‘You look good, ’ she said. Then, holding up an admonitory finger, she added, ‘And don’t tell me I look good, because I know I don’t. ’

It occurred to me that despite the changes – the weight, the lines, the weariness – nothing could eradicate the fact that Melissa was still beautiful. But after what she’d said I couldn’t think of any way to tell her this without sounding patronizing. What I said was, ‘I’ve lost quite a bit of weight recently. ’

Looking me straight in the eyes, she replied, ‘Well, MDT will certainly do that to you. ’

‘Yeah, I suppose it will. ’

In as quiet and circumspect a voice as I could muster, I then asked, ‘So, what do you know about all of this? ’

‘Well, ’ she said, taking a deep breath, ‘here’s the bottom line, Eddie. MDT is lethal, or can be, and if it doesn’t kill you, it’ll do serious damage to your brain, and I’m talking about permanently. ’ She then pointed to her own head with the index finger of her right hand, and said, ‘It fucked my brain up – which I’ll go into later – but the point I want to make now is, I was one of the lucky ones. ’

I swallowed.

The barman appeared with a tray. He placed a glass of beer down in front of me and exchanged the ashtray on the table with a clean one. When he’d gone, Melissa continued. ‘I only took nine or ten hits, but there was one guy who took a lot more than that, over a period of weeks, and I know he died. Another unfortunate shmoe ended up as a vegetable. His mother had to sponge him down every day and feed him with a spoon. ’

My stomach was jumping now, and a mild headache had started up.

‘When was this? ’

‘About four years ago. ’ She paused. ‘Vernon didn’t tell you any of this stuff? ’ I shook my head. She seemed surprised. Then, as though great physical effort were required for what she was doing, she took a deep breath. ‘OK, ’ she went on, ‘so about four years ago Vernon was hanging out with a client of his who worked at some pharmaceutical plant and had access that he shouldn’t have had to a whole range of new drugs. One of them in particular, which didn’t have a name yet and hadn’t been tested, was supposed to be… amazing. So, in order to test it, because of course they were too goddamned shrewd to test it themselves, Vernon and this guy started getting people – their friends basically – to take it. ’

‘Even you? ’

‘Vernon didn’t want me to take it at first, but he talked it up so much that I insisted. You know what I was like, curious to a fault. ’

‘It wasn’t a fault. ’

‘Anyway, a few of us found ourselves in on this – I don’t know – let’s call it an informal trial period. ’ She paused and took a sip from her beer. ‘So what do you want, I took it and it was amazing. ’ She paused again, and looked at me for confirmation. ‘I mean, you’ve taken it, you know what I’m talking about, right? ’

I nodded.

‘Well. I did it a few more times and then I got scared. ’

‘Why? ’

‘Why? Because… I wasn’t stupid. I knew no one could maintain that level of mental activity for very long and survive. It was nonsense. Let me give you an example, one day I read Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe … superstring theory, yeah? I read it in forty-five minutes, and understood it. ’ She took a last drag from her cigarette. ‘Don’t ask me about it now, though. ’ She stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray. ‘Then I had this thing I was supposed to be working on at the time, a series of articles about self-organizing adaptive systems – the research that’s been done into them, their wider applicability, whatever. My work-rate increased ten -fold overnight, I’m not kidding you. My boss at Iroquois magazine thought I was pitching for his job as Features Editor. So I guess I just chickened out. I panicked. I couldn’t handle it. I stopped taking it. ’

She shrugged her shoulders a couple of times.

‘And? ’

‘And – eh – I started getting sick, after a few weeks, headaches, nausea. Talk about panic. I went back to Vernon to see if I maybe shouldn’t take another hit, or half a hit, see if that would make any difference. But that was when he told me about this other guy who’d just died. ’

‘How had he died? ’

‘Rapid two-day deterioration – headaches, dizziness, loss of motor skills, blackouts. Boom. He was dead. ’

‘How much had he taken? ’

‘One hit every day for about a month. ’

I swallowed again and closed my eyes for a second.

‘How much have you been taking, Eddie? ’

She was looking directly at me now, with those remarkable deep brown eyes. She was biting on her lower lip.

‘I’ve been taking a lot. ’ I clicked my tongue. ‘More than that guy. ’

‘Jesus. ’

There was a long pause.

‘So you must still have a supply, then, ’ she said eventually.

‘Not exactly, I’ve got some left, a stash, but… I got it from Vernon. He supplied it to me and now he’s gone. I don’t know anyone else. ’

She looked at me, slightly puzzled. Then she said, ‘That guy I told you about died because they didn’t know what they were doing, they had no idea about dosage or strength, or anything – and as well, people reacted to it differently. But it didn’t take them long to work all of that stuff out. ’ She paused, took in another deep breath, and continued. ‘Vernon was making a lot of money dealing MDT, and I haven’t heard of anyone else dying since the early days, so presumably whatever he gave you or told you was right for you. I mean, the dosage was worked out, right? You do know what you’re doing? ’

‘Hmm. ’

Did I tell her at this point that Vernon had only given me a sampler, and that he hadn’t had a chance to tell me anything?

What I said was, ‘So what happened with you, Melissa? ’

She lit up another cigarette and seemed to be considering for a moment whether or not she was going to let me sidetrack her.

I took a cigarette, too.

Then she began. ‘Well, naturally after me getting sick and that guy dying I didn’t go near it again, I didn’t touch it. But I was really scared. I mean I was married and had two small kids. ’ When she said this, she almost flinched, as though reacting to a threatened slap in the face – as though she felt that articulating this level of irresponsibility should instantly have provoked a violent reaction from someone. After a moment, she went on. ‘Anyway, it never seemed to get much worse than bad headaches and occasional nausea. But over a period of months I noticed a pattern. I couldn’t concentrate on anything for longer than ten minutes at a stretch without getting a migraine. I missed deadlines. I became sluggish, lazy. I put on weight. ’ She pulled contemptuously at her sweater. ‘My memory was shot to bits. That series of articles? Forget it – the whole thing just disintegrated. Iroquois magazine let me go. The marriage fell apart. Sex? Get out of here. ’ She leant back and shook her head. ‘That was four years ago and I haven’t been the same since. ’

‘And now? ’

‘Now I live in Mahopac and waitress four nights a week at a place called Cicero’s. Now I can’t read any more – I mean, what, the fucking New York Post? ’

I felt as though sulphuric acid were being secreted into the pit of my stomach.

‘I can’t deal with stressful or emotional situations any more, Eddie. I’m wired up now because I’m seeing you, but after this meeting I’m going to have a headache for three days. Believe me, I’m going to pay dearly for this. ’

She half stood up and eased her way out of the booth.

‘And I’ve got to pee. Which is another thing. ’ She stood there, looking down at me, one hand scratching the back of her head. ‘But Jesus, you don’t need to know about that, right? ’

Waving an arm dismissively, Melissa walked off towards the bathroom.

I gazed out across the bar now, reeling from what she’d told me, barely able to comprehend it. First of all, it seemed incredible to me that we were actually in the same place together, sharing a drink, talking – and that right now she was over there in the bathroom, in jeans and a baggy sweater, peeing. Because any time I’d thought of her over the past ten years, the person I’d automatically visualized had been the thin shiny Melissa of circa 1988, the one with long black hair and prominent cheekbones, the Melissa I’d seen hike up her skirt a thousand times and pee and continue talking about whatever she’d been talking about. But the Melissa of those days, apparently, had unravelled in time and space and was a ghost now. I was never going to see her again, never going to bump into her in the street. She’d been supplanted by the Melissa I hadn’t kept up with, the one who’d gotten married again and had kids, who’d worked for Iroquois magazine, the one who’d allowed her teeming, tumultuous brain to be damaged, and permanently so, by some untried, untested and previously unknown pharmaceutical product…

Before long, tears were gathering behind my eyes and I could feel a rawness in my throat. Then my hands started shaking. What was happening to me? It’d only been something like twenty-four hours since I’d taken my last dose of MDT and already it seemed that small cracks were appearing on the hard chemical shell that had formed around me in recent weeks. Seeping through these cracks, in turn, were some strong emotions, and I wasn’t sure how well I was going to be able to handle them. I pictured myself crying, sobbing, crawling across the floor, climbing up the walls, all of which seemed to make perfect sense for a while, as though it would be an exquisite relief. But then in the next moment Melissa was on her way back from the bathroom and I had to make some kind of an effort to pull myself together.

She sat down opposite me again and said, ‘You OK? ’

I nodded, ‘I’m fine. ’

‘You don’t look fine? ’

‘It’s just… I’m happy to see you again, Melissa, I really am. But I feel so bad about… you know… I mean, I can’t believe that you’ve…’

The tears I’d been trying to hold back came into my eyes at this point. I clenched my fists and stared down at the table. ‘Sorry, ’ I said, after a moment, and then smiled – but the expression on my face was probably so demented that it didn’t come across as a smile. I said ‘sorry’ again and as I wiped my eyes with one hand, I ground the knuckles of the other one into the surface of the wooden bench I was sitting on.

Without looking directly at her, I could tell that Melissa was now engaged in a damage limitation exercise of her own, one which involved taking deep breaths and whispering the word shit to herself every couple of seconds.

‘Look, Eddie, ’ she said eventually, ‘this isn’t about me anymore, or about us – it’s about you. ’

That statement had a steadying effect on me and I tried to focus on the implications of it for a moment.

She went on, ‘The reason I called you was because I thought… I don’t know, I thought if you were doing MDT, or had done it, that you should at least know what had happened to me. But I’d no idea you were so…’ she shook her head, ‘… involved. And then when I read that thing in the Post …’

I looked down into my glass of beer. I hadn’t touched it and didn’t think I was going to.

‘I mean, day-trading? Short-selling biotech stocks? I just couldn’t believe it. You must be doing a lot of MDT. ’

I nodded, in tacit agreement.

‘But what happens when your supply runs out, Eddie? That’s when the real trouble’s going to start. ’

Almost thinking aloud, I said, ‘Maybe I could stop taking it now. Or I could try weaning myself off it. ’ I paused briefly to consider these options, but then said, ‘Of course there’s no guarantee that by doing either of those things I’d be doing the right thing, right? ’

‘No, ’ she said, looking quite pale and tired all of a sudden, ‘but I wouldn’t just stop. Not outright. That’s what I did. You see, it’s about dosage – how much you take, when you take it. That’s what they worked out after I started getting sick, and after that other guy died. ’

‘So I should cut down? I should cut back? ’

‘I don’t know. I think so. Jesus, I can’t believe that Vernon didn’t tell you about any of this stuff. ’

I could see that she was puzzled. My story – or what she knew of it so far – obviously made very little sense.

‘Melissa, Vernon never told me anything. ’

As I said this, I realized that for my story to make sense – without being the full truth – I was going to have to lie to her, and in a fairly elaborate way. Certain obvious and very awkward questions naturally posed themselves at this point, and I was dreading her asking them – questions such as: How many times had I actually seen Vernon? How had I come to have such a large supply of MDT? Why hadn’t I bothered to find out more about it? But to my surprise, Melissa didn’t put any of these questions to me, or any others for that matter, and we both fell silent for a while.

I studied her face as she lit up another cigarette. I would have expected the Melissa I’d known ten years before to pursue me on every point here, to seek clarification, to have me piece it all together for her. But the woman sitting opposite me now had clearly run out of that kind of steam. I could see that she was curious, and wanted to know why I wasn’t being straight with her, but on another level it was also plain that she didn’t have the time or energy for this sort of thing any more. Vernon was dead. She’d said her piece to me about MDT. She was undeniably concerned about my predicament. But what else could she do or say? She had two kids at home and a life to cope with that was radically different from anything she might ever have envisaged for herself, or felt entitled to. She was tired.

I was on my own.

Melissa looked up at me. ‘I’m sorry, Eddie. ’

‘One question, ’ I said, ‘that client of Vernon’s you mentioned? The one who worked for the pharmaceutical plant? I suppose I should be talking to him? That would make sense, wouldn’t it? ’ But I immediately saw from the expression on her face that she wasn’t going to be able to help me out.

‘I only met him once, Eddie – four years ago. I don’t remember his name. Tom something – or Todd. That’s the best I can do. I’m really sorry. ’

I began to feel panicky now.

‘What about the police investigation? ’ I said, ‘No one ever got back in touch with me after that first day. Did they get in touch with you? I mean – did they find out who killed Vernon, and why? ’

‘No, but they knew he’d been a coke-dealer at one point, so I guess they’re working on the assumption that it was… a coke thing. ’

I paused here, a little thrown by the phrase, ‘a coke thing’. After a moment of reflection, and with the merest hint of sarcasm in my voice, I repeated it, ‘a coke thing’. This was a phrase Melissa had once used to describe our marriage. She picked up on the reference immediately and seemed to deflate even further.

‘That still rankles, does it? ’

‘Not really, but… it wasn’t a coke thing-’

‘I know that. Me making the comment was. ’

I could have said a hundred different things in response to that, but all I could come up with was, ‘It was a strange time. ’

‘That’s true. ’

‘Whenever I look back on it now – I don’t know – it feels…’

‘What? ’

‘It’s futile thinking about it, but there’s so much of it that I would do differently. ’

The obvious follow-up question – like what? – hung in the air between us for a moment or two. Then Melissa said, ‘So would I. ’

She was visibly drained now, and my headache was getting worse, so I decided it was time to extricate us both from the embarrassment and pain of a fraught conversation we’d wandered into carelessly, and which, if we didn’t watch it, could lead us into messy and very complicated territory.

Bracing myself, I then asked her to tell me something about her children. It transpired that she had two daughters, Ally, eight, and Jane, six. They were great, she said, I’d love them – quick-witted, strong-willed tyrants who didn’t miss a trick.

That was it, I thought, enough – I had to get out of there.

We spent a few more minutes chatting and then we brought it to a close. I promised Melissa that I’d keep in touch, that I’d let her know how I was getting on and that maybe I’d even come up someday to see her and the girls in Mahopac. She wrote down her address on a piece of paper, which I looked at and put into the pocket of my shirt.

Seeming to draw on some final reserve of energy, Melissa then held my gaze and said, ‘Eddie, what are you going to do about this? ’

I told her I wasn’t sure, but that I’d be OK, that I had quite a few MDT pills left and consequently had plenty of room to manoeuvre. I would cut down gradually and see how that worked out. I’d be fine. Since I hadn’t mentioned anything to her about the blackouts, however, this felt like a lie. But I didn’t think that under the circumstances Melissa would notice.

She nodded. Maybe she had noticed – but again, even if she had, what could she do?

Outside on Spring Street we said goodbye and embraced. Melissa got a taxi to Grand Central Station and I walked back to Tenth Street.

THE FIRST THING I DID when I got into the apartment was take a couple of Extra-Strength Excedrin tablets for my headache. Then I lay on the couch and stared up at the ceiling, hoping that the pain – which was concentrated behind my eyes and had got steadily worse on the walk home from Spring Street – would subside quickly and then fade away altogether. I didn’t often get headaches, so I wasn’t sure if this one had come about as a result of my conversation with Melissa, or if it was a symptom of my sudden withdrawal from MDT. Either way – and both explanations seemed plausible at the time – I found it extremely unsettling.

In addition to this, the cracks that had been appearing and multiplying since morning were now being prised apart even wider, and left exposed, like open wounds. Again and again, I went over Melissa’s story, my thoughts vacillating between horror at what had happened to her and fear about what might be happening to me. I was haunted by the notion of how easily and irreversibly a careless decision, a mood, a whim, can change the direction of a person’s life. I thought about Donatella Alvarez and found it harder than before to simply dismiss the idea that I’d been in any way responsible for what had happened to her – for the easy, irreversible way her life had changed. I thought about my time with Melissa, and worried, agonized, about those things I might have done differently.

⇐ Предыдущая 9 10 11 12 131415 16 17 18 Следующая ⇒