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The trembling continues, as the door begins to close. I stick my leg forward slowly, watching as the steel instantly stops on my foot. Where are my heels? Faith's shoes? Gone. Probably scattered around in his apartment. My eyes look upwards, searching the ceiling for him. There’s nothing there to find. I’m alone. Thrown out, as if immaterial.
The thought makes me lift myself slowly, pulling the coat onto my bare skin and my bag towards me, before I eventually find my way back to the door of my apartment. It’s as empty as I feel when I enter it. Desolate. I glance around at the debris I left here, trying to work out what just happened both back then at the beginning and now after this. Nothing makes sense again. It did before. My plan of action should have worked, but now it’s all confused and jumbled again.
My hand taps the side of my head, the heels of my hands finding my eyes to try and rub some sense back into it. No sense. Messy. Alcohol? I walk lethargically to the wine rack and pick up the first bottle I find, drinking from the rim the moment I’m able to, and then place it on the counter top. No. I’m not having that. That was a lie again. Truth.
What is it?
I pick up the bottle again and look around me, ignoring the mess and rubbish so I can retreat into myself. I’m not done here. I have questions. I shrug out of the coat and toss it absently, as uncaring for it as he was for me, and then reach for my cell.
Three rings and he answers.
“He threw me out,” I snap.
“I told you he would.”
“He doesn’t mean it. It’s not real.”
He chuckles and shuts a door in the background. “Is anything?”
“Malachi.”
“Hannah.”
“Stop being an asshole. I need …” What do I need? Another drink. I pick up the bottle and glug, trying to ease the pain that’s now beginning to form in my shoulder. “Answers.”
“And I told you, you wouldn’t get them like that.”
I snarl at that and drink some more, body falling onto the couch and my hand reaching into my bag for my magical pills stash. He said I shouldn’t take any away from his place. Said I wasn’t allowed to use them out here in the world. Screw that. Faith didn’t. I sink two colours, enjoying the swallow and hoping it might get rid of what just happened.
“Why don’t you just tell me what his problem is?”
“It’s not my story to tell. And he’s my friend. You’ve always known that.” Quiet.
Frustrating.
I end the call and tap the side of the bottle, trying to find my rhythm. Maybe I should just let it all go, move on and forget. I can still feel him, though. I need to understand that problem, find solutions to it. Me. Maybe I’m the problem. I snort and drink again, eyes hardening as I look at a painting Rick bought leant up against the wall. Why is that still here?
My legs crawl me to it, gaze searching the hazy summer scene. He liked summer. Bright light and beaches. My engagement ring was like that – bright and glittery. Where is that? And my wedding band. Gone. Left it somewhere. Put them down, having ripped them off my finger. Doesn’t matter. Nothing’s bright where he is now. It’s dark and dead, soil covering the coffin he’s in.
Gravestones. I need them.
Scrambling up, I walk to the bedroom, pull on some clothes, and leave, a new bottle of wine in my hand. Maybe this will help. I’ll remember then. Get some hardening up going on. I am more than this, than him.
The elevator ride passes in a blur, the sidewalks outside just as much. I wait by the kerbside, watching as the bellboy hails a cab for me, and then slip into the dark confines of the interior. Better. Darker. My eyes flit around, waiting for the colours to flash and the calm to come flood me so I’m ready for Rick the prick and everything I need to say to him.
I don’t even know why I had him buried here. Why did I do that? I should have taken him home, put him in the space near his mother and father. New York is nothing to us. A wasteland of people and avenues, all of them barely bystanders in my life. Although – I drink some more and watch as roads pass me by, sinking another pill for good measure – he doesn’t deserve any thought from me, let alone care. Maybe Deborah the slut will be able to go grieve over him now, comfort herself with his decomposing body.
“Pricks, most of us are.”
Hmm.
The sight of the gates looming up on me a while later, of the wrought iron intricacy, makes me think of castles and rooms of opulence, of a life outside of this. Colours begin swirling behind them. All the colours of the rainbow. Can’t be real. It’s night-time. Dark out here. Like it was at Malachi’s home. Not the home here in Manhattan, the home there in the mountains. Tucked away. Hidden from the world and prying eyes. I was settled there, content to dwell in opulence, and now I’ve come back to find out the truths of a man who discards me like dirt.
My chin lifts, grabbed dollars thrown at the driver, and I step out into the night air. Cold. I shiver again, as the cab pulls off, remembering wind across my skin, snow under my feet. Maybe that’s where my life is now. I could go back, live there and enjoy the emptiness of nothing, evolve some more. Malachi said I could. Offered that. I don’t know why, but he did.
He’s my friend now.
The thought makes me stall at the gates, unsure why I’m even here. What am I going to do? Cry on a grave? Shout at it? Lay down on it and try to understand where I’m at in my life because of the place Rick’s left me in? A sigh falls from me and I look up into the stars, watching them twinkle and trying to glow above me behind the clouds and breaking storm. Not clear. No connection or focus point. Not like at the castle. No sense here. No calm or enjoyment. No freedom either. I’m strangled here. Locked tight and unable to breathe properly.
