Innocent Monsters (15 page)

It should have been, yes, but it wasn’t. He lived, his father, he lived in his head, with him, even though he hadn’t seen him for years, even though he had run away from him, even though he was probably already dead, he still saw him everyday, in his own features, in every old man holding a kid’s hand, in the sun, in the clouds above him, in everything that should have made him forget.

But he was here now, with her, his surrogate sister.
It’s all that should matter.
He lay still beneath her, felt her head pressing on his chest, one of her hands around his neck, the other one on his shoulder. She was so light. So real.

He smiled. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“I’m glad I’m here.” Glad to be with him, with someone so tragically close to her, someone who shared her past and now her present. Glad to be with him, in his house, talking to him, talking about things she had never shared with any man before, with anybody else at all.

She lifted her head from his chest again to look at him and watched him suck on his cigarette. He shifted underneath her trying to straighten up and behind him she noticed another arch, a dark room beyond it.

“I’m sorry, I have to ask. What exactly is so wrong with ordinary doors, William? I don’t really get it.” He laughed, throwing his head backwards. “No, I’m serious. What is it with you and arches?”

“They make me feel safe ‘cause they can’t be locked.”

“For most people that’s a good reason to feel
unsafe
.”

“Yes, well, you must have noticed I am slightly different.” She was staring at him with a strange grin on her lips. He couldn’t tell if she thought he was joking. “You must think I’m mad.” She laughed without speaking a word and he kissed her forehead, then extinguished his cigarette in the glass ashtray on the coffee table. “You hungry yet?”

“Mhm... Changing the subject, are we? Yes, I could eat.”

Jessica moved off him and he stood up heading for the kitchen to inspect the fridge. “It’s gonna have to be either pizza or a takeout. There’s not much else in the fridge.” He shouted towards the sofa.

“Pizza sounds perfect. Any movies on?”

William walked back in the sitting room. “Pizza and a movie. Now there’s something I haven’t done in a long time.”

“Stick with me kid. I’ll show you how to have a good time.”

He grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and switched the television on. “You mind having a look? I’ll organise the pizza. How about a beer?”

She took the remote from him beaming. “This evening just gets better and better.”

“Don’t get too excited. I forgot to mention I have some work to finish, I’m sorry. You don’t mind do you? We’ll eat first.”

“No, I don’t really mind. I would like to see where you work anyway.”

“What do you mean? My office?” A fleeting expression on his face made her wish she’d never said anything, but then he smiled at her briefly before disappearing into the kitchen. “Yeah, well. Let’s eat first.”

They spent the next couple of hours snuggled on the sofa like teenagers on a school night, eating pizza with their hands out of the same plate, watching mindless television instead of the movie they could not find searching the channels. They both felt strangely content, comfortable with the silence between them, grateful of the chance to forget themselves and everything else that existed outside this moment in time. Then William cleared away the plate and the empty beer bottles.

“I wish I could sit here with you all night, believe me.”

“Like I said, don’t worry about it. I don’t mind.”

“You still want to come have a look?”

“If you don’t mind. I’d love that.” Jessica was already switching off the television.

William took her hand and they walked up the stone staircase in the hallway, through the first door on the landing. All Jessica saw at first was a drawing table, a large window and shelves, all filled with books and magazines, and as she followed him in she found a portion of the wall opposite the desk completely covered with photographs, details of a body, arms, hands, eyes, all black and white, all of the same person, the same girl she had seen as a drawing in his bedroom that first day she had been to see his apartment. Her skin looked smooth and pale, her stomach completely flat, her breasts tiny on a skinny chest and a mature, sad look in her eyes. She looked so much like... She so much resembled...

Me... She looks like me...

William lifted his head for a second, casually switching on a large desk lamp. “I always seem to fall for the same kind of women.”

“A girlfriend?” She asked without really wanting to hear the answer.

“Guess you could call her that.” There was something wrong about all those pictures, something Jessica couldn’t put her finger on. It wasn’t just the jealousy she was trying to ignore and it wasn’t how wrong it seemed for him to keep so many pictures of a past girlfriend right across the desk he sat at most days. She turned her back to the wall and tried to concentrate on him, already busy with a pencil on a large piece of paper, on his drawings, on the sketches pinned to the cork board behind him; a pumped up monster with a huge mouth and sharp teeth, scribbles, magazine clippings and photographs, scenery, people, buildings, racing cars and Elysa’s face on the cover of a few comic magazines.

“Wow! You’re more popular than I thought!”

“Elysa is. Not me.”

“You know what I mean. I thought you only did the newspaper strip. You didn’t tell me about this.” She was pointing at the cover of a Japanese comic book, Elysa holding her dog’s leash seductively trough her fingers.

“It’s grown. A lot. Elysa pays for a lot of things.”

Jessica traced her big dark eyes with a fingertip, consciously avoiding turning around. “So what’s the story?”

“She’s twelve years old, she lives on the streets of New York. She has a dog that after an accidental LSD’s dose sometimes has visions of the future, and she’s got special powers, one of which is detecting when people are lying to her.” William spoke without lifting his eyes from the drawing table. “I know, it’s in no way straightforward, but really is just about youth and the struggle of being authentic... If that makes any sense. She was born as a comic strip then people got attached and wanted to see more. I started writing and drawing stories about three years ago. Five of them were only published in Japan, so don’t feel too bad if you never heard about Gospel.”

“So what do you know, you are kind of a writer after all.” Jessica moved closer to him to kiss his neck. “We’ve got a lot more in common than I thought.”

“That’s why I chose you,” he whispered.

She giggled. Didn’t take him seriously.

Jessica followed his pencil moving on the piece of paper trying to ignore the girl staring at her from the wall, but she wondered about her name, about how long they had been together, whether she was really as young as she looked and the reason they had left each other. Why did he still keep her photographs on the wall? And she kept trying to follow his pencil moving on the piece of paper, tried to keep the thoughts at bay.

She would have loved to stay here with him, curled up next to his legs while he worked, but the girl was here too and Jessica found she couldn’t stay. So she stroked William’s face tenderly without saying a word, walked out and returned downstairs before he could ask her to stay a few more minutes.

In the sitting room, Jessica decided to have a look through the bookshelves. There weren’t as many books as there were collections of comics and DVDs, a few VHS tapes, some without a cover or a title, but most of the books he did have she owned herself, perhaps bought them in the same bookshop, on the same day. The Andersen’s hardback she had given him for Christmas sat sandwiched between Vladimir Nabokov’s
Lolita
and Jeffrey Eugenides’s
The Virgin Suicides
. She guessed in William’s world this particular arrangement made perfect sense.

Jessica pulled out one of the comics and went to sit on the floor with her back against the sofa. Unexpectedly, all the writing was in Japanese, all the female characters well endowed with wasp-like waists, shiny hair and gigantic eyes. Was this what oriental men considered perfect, provocative? Was this William’s idea of erotic? His own drawings had much more realistic proportions, much less sexual, innocent but not straightforward.

She looked through the pages in silence for a while, not really intending to take anything in, then closed her eyes for what she meant to be a few minutes, and fell asleep.

The house was still and Jesus was a giant ghost nailed to his cross.

7 January 2001

WHEN JESSICA woke up again she wasn’t by the sofa anymore, but alone on his king- sized bed, still completely dressed under the duvet.

The bedroom was large and gloomy, the windows covered by thick curtains, but she could see the morning sun peeping through the open door. The space was pretty much empty apart from a bulky antique-looking wardrobe, a couple of bedside tables and a large trunk lurking in a corner like a sleeping animal. Several melted candles sat on the mantelpiece of the fireplace at the foot of the bed.

William was downstairs in the kitchen, sliding bread slices in the toaster. The round oak table in the middle of the room was already set for two: two large white cups, two knives, two spoons, two glasses, a jug of orange juice, a pot of coffee, milk, jam, butter and a large bowl of fruit. Wide french doors opened on a sunny but bare balcony. It was a bright morning, the kitchen walls so white it hurt his eyes.

He had just started the toaster when Jessica walked in; even first thing in the morning, unkempt and unwashed, she was beautiful, her eyes bright, a limpid green.

She had been holding onto him all night, clinging to him in her sleep while he stroked her, touched her, and looking at her now, so naturally beautiful, made him feel like taking her back to bed.

“Good morning,” he nodded.

She stood behind him, held her arms around his waist. “I have a vague recollection of being in your arms at some point during the night. Thanks for taking me to bed.” She kissed the nape of his head. “How on earth did you manage to carry me upstairs?”

“I am stronger than you think.”

“Obviously. But you still should have woken me up instead of risking breaking your back.”

“I hate to break this to you, but you’re not as heavy as you think.”

“Are you calling me skinny?”

He turned around, kissed her. “I wouldn’t dare. You’re perfect. Now sit down.”

William took the plate of toast to the table. “You must have been really tired to fall asleep on the floor like that. Either that or you don’t find those comics as interesting as I do.”

“I was just tired. But I do struggle with the comics. Please don’t be offended, but I can’t really see the pleasure in collecting them.”

“They don’t all look the same, and I don’t collect them anymore. I used them for inspiration when I started, to get a feel for what I liked, what my style was going to be. They are quite valuable now, believe it or not.”

“I’m sure. There must be a whole sub-culture out there which I don’t know about.”

He spooned some jam on one of the toasts and held the jar out to her. “You have no idea. I believe it’s becoming the fastest growing section of Japanese’ publishing industry.”

“You are a small drop in a vast ocean.”

“A bit like yourself.”

She smiled and nodded pouring herself some coffee, looked at him over the rim of her cup with a green sparkle in her eyes, that glimmer of hopefulness that set her apart from Helena because he had never been able to see it in his sister’s gaze. No hope.

“Did you finish work?”

“Actually, no I didn’t. I was up there for about an hour, then I started feeling guilty and I decided to come back here and have a drink with you, and I found you sleeping on the floor. I went back up after I took you to bed, but I’ll have to work on it another couple of hours. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Is it for the paper?”

He shook his head with his mouth full. “The book that I told you about, the one the Jefferson Company is publishing. They want me to draw a new cartoon for the cover.”

She had forgotten all about the book, about the connection between him and the company which Roger Wither had basically denied.

“The Jefferson Company... Of course. I forgot about that. I still can’t believe Roger doesn’t remember about you.”

William flapped a hand in the air. “You know how it is...
You think I remember every single jerk I talk to every fuckin’ day?
” He barked in his best New York accent.

He did know him. They both laughed.

“Yeah, but you’re not just some jerk he spoke to.”

“No. That I’m not.” He shrugged. “Should I feel hurt? Truth is, I couldn’t care less.

He doesn’t remember my name, what can I tell you? Good job the man’s got a secretary.”

“Imagine doing that for a living! Can I see it when it’s finished? The book?”

“Are you kidding? I’ll give you a copy.”

Jessica contemplated the views from the balcony, the luscious trees and the suggestion of houses through the leaves and beyond them the spread of the city roofs. It was a place from where to look out onto the world without being seen, a place to hide in trying to be discovered.

“Well...” She started after sipping some coffee. “How about we have breakfast, then I leave you to finish things off. I could go out and buy something to eat and cook some lunch here... If that’s ok with you.” William froze, stared at her holding a piece of toast mid air. “What do you say?”

...Cook some lunch here...
It sounded good. It was enough to made him feel normal. “I’d love that,” he mumbled. “I’d really love that.”

He smiled, but his smile turned quickly distant, merely polite and for a while he kept his eyes on the toast on his plate, as if he couldn’t bear looking at anything else.

“There’s something I want to tell you, Jessy.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t usually like to have people around me, I guess you noticed. I’m a loner, I like being by myself, but... I like having you around. It’s important to me... It’s been a while since I felt anything for anybody.” Ten, eleven years? A very long time. So long he wasn’t sure he could feel anything at all but pain, and loneliness. “What you told me yesterday, how you don’t feel, but you feel with me? Well... You make me feel.”

Jessica closed her eyes. She didn’t speak, just held her hand on top of his on the table and he knew she understood what he was trying to tell her. It was enough.

His hand was warm as usual and she looked down at it smiling. Thin white scars were scattered along his forearm.

Careful. He should be more careful.

JESSICA DECIDED to walk to the nearest food store, wherever it turned out to be. William had offered to go with her later in the afternoon, but she had refused. She needed to at least try to get rid of her bad mood. On her own.

The bright state of mind she had woken up with had vanished the moment she’d watched him walk up the stairs to his office. The thought of him sitting down with
her
, with those pictures of
her
, it winded her like a blow, yet speaking to him about it seemed impossible.

She kept going back to the expression on his face the night before, when she’d asked him to show her his office. She could see now she’d forced him to decide whether to show her the pictures or not, whether to share that part of his life with her or keep it a secret. And he had decided to let her in, but at the same time he had not given away any details. Yes, there was always a chance she was reading too much into the portraits, but the thought did not help her mood. So she kept walking, kept trying to change it.