The Gift (12 page)

“But she’s hot, if you could just see her,” he slurred.

“Don’t you even think about it,” he said threateningly, his voice low and mean. “I swear to God, if you do anything, I will…”

“You’ll what? Kill me?” More raucous laughter. “Sounds like you’d be cutting off your nose to spite your face, my friend. Well, where the hell am I supposed to go? Tell me that. I can’t go home, I can’t go to work.”

The door to the bedroom opened then and an equally exhausted Ruth appeared.

“I’ll call you back.” He hung up quickly.

“Who was on the phone at this hour?” she asked quietly. She was dressed in her robe, her arms hugging her body protectively. Her eyes were bleary and puffed, her hair pulled back in a ponytail; she looked so fragile, as if a raised voice might blow her over and break her. For the second time that night his heart melted, and he moved toward her, arms open.

“It was just a guy I know,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “He’s out drunk; I wish he’d stop calling. I wish he’d just go away,” he added quietly. He tossed his phone aside into a pile of teddy bears on the floor. “How are you?” He pulled away and examined her face closely. Her head was boiling hot, but she shivered in his arms.

“I’m fine.” She gave him a wobbly smile.

“No, you’re not fine, go back to bed, and I’ll get you
a facecloth. I know where they are now,” he joked, and she smiled lightly. He kissed her affectionately on the forehead. Her eyes closed, and her body relaxed in his arms.

He almost broke their embrace to jump in the air and holler with celebration, because for the first time in a long time he felt her give up the fight with him. For the past six months, whenever he’d held her she had been rigid and taut, as though she was protesting him somehow, refusing to validate his behavior. He reveled in this moment, feeling her relax against him: a silent but huge victory for their marriage.

Among the pile of teddies his phone vibrated again, bouncing around in Paddington Bear’s arms. His screen flashed on again, and he had to look away, not able to stand the thought of himself. Now he could understand how Ruth felt.

“There’s your friend again,” Ruth said, pulling away slightly, allowing him to reach for his phone.

“No, leave him.” He ignored the call, bringing her closer to him again. “Ruth,” he said gently, lifting her chin so she could look at him. “I’m sorry.”

Ruth looked up at him in shock, then examined him carefully for the catch. There had to be a catch. Lou Suffern had said he was sorry.
Sorry
was not a word in his vocabulary.

From the corner of Lou’s eye, the phone kept vibrating, hopping around and falling out of Paddington Bear’s paws and onto Winnie the Pooh’s head, being
passed around from teddy to teddy like a hot potato. Each time the phone stopped, it quickly started again, as if laughing at him, telling him he was weak for uttering those words to Ruth. He fought that side of himself, that drunken, foolish, childish, irrational side of him, and refused to answer the phone, refused to let go of his wife. He swallowed hard.

“I love you, you know.”

It was as though it was the first time she’d ever heard it. It was as though they were back at the very first Christmas they’d spent together, sitting in her parents’ living room in Galway—the cat curled in a ball on its favorite cushion by the fire; the crazy dog a few years too many in this world outside in the backyard, barking at everything that moved and everything that didn’t. Lou had told her then, by the fake white Christmas tree. The gaudy tree would slowly be lit up by tiny green, red, and blue bulbs, and then the lights would slowly fade out before gearing up again. Despite its ugliness, it was relaxing, like a chest heaving slowly up and down. It was the first moment they’d had together all day, the only moments they’d have before he’d have to sleep on the couch and Ruth would disappear to her room. He wasn’t planning on saying it; in fact, he was planning on never saying it, but it had popped out. Then the words were out, and his world had immediately changed. Twenty years later in their daughter’s bedroom, it felt like the same moment all over again, with that same look of pleasure and surprise on Ruth’s face.

“Oh, Lou,” she said softly, closing her eyes and savoring the moment. Then suddenly her eyes flicked open, a flash of alarm in them that scared Lou to death about what she was about to say. What did she know? His past behavior came gushing back at him as he panicked. He thought of the other part of him, out there and drunk, possibly destroying this new relationship with his wife, destroying the repairs they had just achieved. He had a vision of the two Lous: one building a brick wall, the other moving behind him with a sledgehammer and knocking down everything as soon as it was built. In reality, that’s what Lou had been doing all along. Building his family up with one hand, while the other shattered everything he’d strived so hard to create.

Ruth quickly let go of him and rushed away into Lucy’s bathroom, where he heard the toilet seat go up and the contents of her insides empty into the bowl. Hating anyone being with her during moments like this, Ruth, ever the multitasker, managed, in mid-vomit, to lift her foot to kick the bathroom door closed.

Lou sighed and collapsed to the floor on the pile of teddies. He picked up the phone that had begun to vibrate yet again.

“What now?” he said in a dull voice, expecting to hear his own drunken voice on the other end. But he didn’t.

B
ULLSHIT,” THE
T
URKEY
B
OY SAID
as Raphie paused for breath.

Raphie didn’t say anything; instead, he chose to wait for something more constructive to come out of the boy’s mouth.

“Total bullshit,” he said again.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Raphie said, standing up from the table and gathering the mug, Styrofoam cup, and candy wrappers from the chocolates he’d managed to munch through while he was telling his story. “I’ll leave you alone in peace now to wait for your mother.”

“No, wait!” Turkey Boy spoke up.

Raphie continued walking to the door.

“You can’t just end the story there,” the boy said incredulously. “You can’t leave me hanging.”

“Ah, well, that’s what you get for being unappreciative,” Raphie said with a shrug, “and for throwing turkeys through windows.” He left the interrogation room.

Jessica was in the station’s tiny kitchen, having another coffee. Her eyes were red, and the bags under them had darkened.

“Coffee break already?” He pretended not to notice her withering appearance.

“You’ve been in there for ages.” She blew on her coffee and sipped, not moving the mug from her lips as she spoke, eyes looking away in the distance.

“It’s a long story. Your face okay?”

She gave a single nod, the closest she’d ever get to commenting on the cuts and scrapes across her skin. She changed the subject. “So how far did you get in the story?”

“Lou Suffern’s first pill.”

“What did he say?”

“I do believe ‘Bullshit’ was the expression he used, which was then closely followed by ‘Total bullshit.’”

Jessica smiled lightly. “You got further than I thought. You should show him the tapes of that night. They just came in from the audiovisual conference call. They show a guy who looks exactly like Lou walking out of the boardroom, while at the same time another guy, who also looks exactly like Lou, is sitting at the conference table. Still no sight or word from Gabe though.”

“It could be Gabe in the conference call video.” Raphie thought hard. “He and Lou look very alike.”

“That would be much easier to believe but…”

“You don’t believe it?”

“You don’t believe the cloning version?”

“I’m telling it, aren’t I?”

Jessica lowered the mug slowly from her lips, and those intense, secretive eyes stared deep into his. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Raphie ignored her and instead poured himself another coffee, adding two sugars, which Jessica—sensing his mood—did not protest. Then he filled a Styrofoam cup with water and shuffled off down the corridor again.

“Where are you going?” she called after him.

“To finish the story,” he grumbled. “And yes, that still doesn’t answer your question.”

W
AKEY WAKEY
,”
A SINGSONG VOICE
penetrated Lou’s drunken dreams, where everything was being rerun a hundred times over: mopping Lucy’s brow; plugging Bud’s pacifier back into his mouth; holding Lucy’s hair back as she threw up; hugging Ruth close, her body relaxing against his; then back to Lucy’s heated brow again; Bud spitting out his pacifier; Ruth’s smile when he’d told her he loved her.

He smelled fresh coffee under his nose. Finally opening his eyes, he jumped back at the sight that greeted him, bumping his already throbbing head against a concrete wall.

Lou took a moment to adjust to his surroundings. Some of the visions that greeted his newly opened eyes in the morning were less comforting than others. Rather than the mug of coffee that at that moment was thrust mere inches from his nose, he was more accustomed to the sound of a toilet flush occasionally as his wake-up call. Often the wait for the mystery toilet flusher to exit
the bathroom and show her face was a long and unnerving one, and, on a few occasions, Lou had taken it upon himself to disappear from the bed, and the building, before the mystery woman had the opportunity to show her face.

On this particular morning after Lou Suffern had been doubled up for the very first time, he was faced with a new scenario: a man of similar age was offering him a mug of coffee with a satisfied look on his face. This was certainly a new one for the books. Thankfully, the young man was Gabe, and Lou found, with much relief, that they were both fully dressed. With a throbbing head and the foul stench of something rotting in his mouth, he took in his surroundings.

He was on the ground. That he could tell by his proximity to the concrete and the long distance to the open paneled ceiling with its wires dripping down. The floor was hard despite the sleeping bag beneath him. He had a crick in his neck from the position to which his head had been rather unfortunately lodged. Above him, metal shelves towered to the ceiling: hard, gray, cold, and depressing, they stood like the cranes that littered Dublin’s skyline, metal invaders umpiring a developing city. To the left, the new addition of a shadeless lamp was the guilty party behind the unforgiving bright white light that wasn’t so much thrown around the room as it was aimed at Lou’s head, like a pistol in a steady hand. What was glaringly obvious was that he was in Gabe’s room in the basement. Gabe now stood over him. The sight was
familiar, a mirror image of only a week ago, when Lou had stopped on the street to offer Gabe a coffee. Only this time the image was as distorted and disturbing as a mirror at a carnival, because when Lou assessed the situation, it was he who was down here, and Gabe who was up there.

“Thanks.” He took the mug from Gabe, wrapping his cold hands around the porcelain. He shivered. “It’s freezing in here.” His first words were a croak, and as he sat up he felt the weight of the world crashing down on his head, another hangover for the second morning running.

“Yeah, someone promised to bring me an electric heater, but I’m still waiting.” Gabe grinned. “Don’t worry, I hear blue lips are in this season.”

“Oh, sorry, I’ll get Alison right on that,” Lou mumbled, and sipped the black coffee. He had taken his initial wakening moment to figure out where he was. His first sip of caffeine alerted him to another problem.

“What the hell am I doing here?” he asked. He sat up properly, attentive now, and studied himself for clues. He was dressed in yesterday’s suit, a crumpled, rumpled mess with some questionable, though mostly self-explanatory, stains on his shirt, tie, and jacket. “What the hell is that smell?”

“I think it’s you,” Gabe said. “I found you around the back of the building last night throwing up into a trash bin.”

“Oh God,” Lou whispered, covering his face with his hands. Then he looked up, confused. “But last night I
was home. Ruth and Lucy; they were sick. And as soon as they fell asleep, Bud woke up.” He rubbed his face tiredly. “Did I just dream that?”

“Nope,” Gabe replied chirpily, pouring hot water into his one mug of instant coffee. “You did that, too. You were very busy last night, don’t you remember?”

It took a moment for last night’s events to register with Lou, but the onslaught of memories of the previous night—the pill, the doubling up—came rushing back to his mind.

“That girl I met.” He aborted the sentence, both wanting to know the answer and not wanting to know at the same time. A part of him was sure of his innocence, while the other part of him wanted to take himself outside and beat himself up for possibly jeopardizing his marriage again. His body broke out into a cold sweat, which added a new scent to the mix.

Gabe let him stew for a while as he blew on his coffee and took tiny sips.

“Was I alone when you found me last night?” A loaded question.

“Indeed you were, very alone. Though not lonely. You were quite content to keep yourself company, mumbling about some girl,” Gabe teased him. “Seemed as though you’d lost her and couldn’t remember where you’d put her. You didn’t find her at the bottom of the bin. Though perhaps if we cleared away the layer of vomit you deposited, your cardboard cutout woman may have been revealed.”

“What did I say? I mean, don’t tell me exactly, just tell me if I said anything about—you know. Shit, if I’ve done something, Ruth will kill me.” Tears sprang into his eyes. “I’m the biggest fucking asshole.” He kicked away the blanket on top of him in frustration.

Gabe’s smile faded, respecting this side of Lou. “You didn’t do anything with her.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

Lou studied him then, warily, curiously, but also with trust. Gabe seemed to be his everything right then: the only person who understood his situation, yet the one who had put him in this situation in the first place. A dangerous relationship.

“Gabe, we really have to talk about these pills. I don’t want them anymore.” He took them out of his pocket. “I mean, last night was a revelation, it really was, in so many ways.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly, remembering the sound of his drunken voice at the end of the phone. “I mean, are there two of me now?”

“No, you’re back to one again,” Gabe explained. “Fig roll?”

“But Ruth.” Lou ignored him. “She’ll wake up, and I’ll be gone. She’ll be worried. Did I just vanish?”

“She’ll wake up, and you’ll already be off to work, just like always.”

Lou absorbed that information and calmed a little. “But it’s not right; it doesn’t make sense. We really need to discuss where you got these pills from.”

“You’re right, we do,” Gabe said seriously, taking the container from Lou and stuffing them into his pocket. “But not yet. It’s not time yet.”

“What do you mean, not yet? What are you waiting for?”

“I mean it’s almost eight thirty, and you’ve got a meeting to get to before Alfred sweeps in and steals the limelight. Again.”

At that, Lou placed his coffee carelessly on a shelf and jumped to his feet, instantly forgetting his serious concerns about the peculiar pills and failing to question how on earth Gabe knew about his eight thirty meeting.

“You can’t go in looking like that.” Gabe laughed, looking up and down at Lou’s filthy rumpled suit. “And you smell of vomit. And cat urine. Believe me, I know, I’ve a fine nose for it by now.”

“I’ll be okay.” Lou looked at his watch while taking off his suit jacket at the same time. “I’ll grab a quick shower in my office and change into my spare suit.”

“You can’t. I’m wearing it, remember?”

Lou looked down at Gabe then, and remembered how he’d provided him with his spare clothes on that first day. He’d bet Alison didn’t yet know to replace the clothes.

“Shit! Shit, shit, shit!” Lou paced the small room, biting his manicured fingernails, pulling and spitting, pulling and spitting.

“Don’t worry, my maid will see to those,” Gabe said
with amusement, watching as the chewed bits of nail fell to the cemented floor.

Lou ignored him, pacing some more. “Shops don’t open till nine. Where the hell can I get a suit?”

“Never fear, I think I have something here in my walk-in wardrobe,” Gabe said, disappearing down the first aisle and reappearing with his new suit draped in plastic. “Like I said, you never know when a new suit will come in handy. And it’s your size, fancy that. It’s almost like it was made for you.” He winked. “May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of your soul,” he said, handing the suit over.

“Eh, yeah, sure. Thanks,” Lou said uncertainly, quickly taking it from Gabe’s outstretched hands.

In the empty staff elevator, Lou looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was unrecognizable from the man who’d woken up on the floor half an hour earlier. The suit that Gabe had given him, despite being from an unknown designer, was surprisingly a perfect fit. The blue of the shirt and tie against the navy jacket and trousers made Lou’s eyes pop, innocent and cherub-like.

Things were looking very good for Lou Suffern so far that day. He was back to his groomed, handsome best, his shoes polished to perfection by Gabe. The swing was back in his step, his left hand casually placed in his pocket, his right arm swinging loosely by his side and available to answer the phone and/or shake a hand at every possible moment. He was the man of the moment.
And after a phone call home, he was also father of the year, according to Lucy.

While he whistled down the halls on the fourteenth floor, Melissa, Mr. Patterson’s assistant, chased after him.

“Lou!” she called.

He stopped, swiveled around. “Melissa. Good morning.”

“Mr. Patterson wants a brief word with you before the meeting.”

Lou froze. “About what?”

“If I was a mind reader, Lou, I would not have gone on that date last night, and I most certainly would not have gone in for that nightcap. Now, quick.” She turned on her very high, red-soled heels and ran back down the hall.

Lou composed himself, cleared his throat, and went over to rap on Mr. Patterson’s office door.

“Lou.” Mr. Patterson looked up from his papers. “I know we have a meeting in a few minutes, but I wanted to have a word before we go in. I just got off the phone with Anthea.”

Cliff’s wife. “Yes.” Lou’s heart thudded in his chest.

“Unfortunately, he won’t be coming back.”

Lou fought the urge to yelp in celebration.

“Oh. I see.”

“So we’ve some decisions to make around here,” Mr. Patterson said; then he looked over Lou’s shoulder and nodded at Melissa standing in the doorway. “I’ve got
a quick call to make, Lou. I hope you don’t mind, but you’ll be at the party tomorrow night; we can talk more then.”

“Absolutely. I’ll be here.”

Lou was happy. So happy, in fact, that he started whistling and didn’t stop even when he reached his office, where Alison delivered the news that his sister was on the line. He happily picked up the phone and propped himself on the corner of Alison’s desk.

“Marcia, good morning,” he said cheerily.

“Well, you’re in a good mood today. I know you’re busy, Lou, so I won’t keep you. I just wanted to let you know that we all got Dad’s birthday invitations. They were…very nice…very sophisticated…not what I would have chosen but…anyway, I’ve had a few people on the phone to say they haven’t received theirs yet.”

“Oh, they must have gotten lost in the mail,” Lou said, “we’ll send theirs again.”

“But it’s tomorrow, Lou.”

“What?” He frowned and squinted his eyes to concentrate on the calendar on Alison’s desk.

“Yes, his birthday’s tomorrow,” she said, sounding slightly panicked. “They won’t get the invites if you send them out now. I just wanted to make sure that it would be okay for everyone just to turn up without an invite. It’s only a family party, anyway. We could have a guest list or something.”

“Tomorrow,” Lou’s mind was working overtime. He knew he had double-booked tomorrow night, but now
the office party wasn’t just a party. It was a meeting with Mr. Patterson. “Things have changed, Marcia. Tomorrow is my office party, and I really have to—”

“You missed dinner the other night, Lou. Daddy was hurt enough at that. If you miss his seventieth…” She went silent.

“Okay, fine.” He rubbed his eyes, feeling his adrenaline shoot up again. “I’ll be there.”

“Yes, you will. I might just bring a few things to—”

“It’s all under control,” he said, interrupting her firmly.

“What have you got planned, Lou?” Marcia asked nervously.

“What have I got planned?” Lou faked a laugh. “Oh, well, come on, Marcia, we want it to be a surprise for everyone.”

“Do you know what’s happening?”

“Do I know what’s happening? Are you worried about my organizational skills?”

“I’m worried that you’ve repeated every single one of my questions just to give yourself more time to think,” she said.

“Of course I know what’s going on; you think I’d just leave it up to Alison to do alone?” He winked at Alison, who looked horrified. “She’s never even met Dad,” he said, speaking Marcia’s insecurities aloud.

“Exactly, Lou. This Alison seems like a nice girl, but she doesn’t really know Dad. I’ve been calling her to help, but she hasn’t been very forthcoming. I just want Dad to have the time of his life.”

“He will, Marcia; he will.” Lou’s stomach turned uneasily. “We’ll all have fun, I promise.”

H
E HANDED THE PHONE BACK
to Alison, his smile gone. “It’s all under control, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“The party,” he said firmly. “My dad’s party.”

“Lou, I’ve been trying to ask you questions about it all we—”

“Is it all under control? Because if it’s not, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“Absolutely.” Alison smiled nervously. “The place you picked is very, erm, cool, shall we say, and they have their own events-management team. I told you about this already,” she said quickly, “a few times this week. I’d also left some food and music options on your desk, but when you didn’t choose any, I had to decide then myse—”

“Okay, Alison, a note for the future: when I ask if it’s all under control, I only want a yes or a no,” he said firmly. “I don’t have time for questions and memos, really; all I need to know is if you can do it or not. If you can’t, then that’s fine, but I need to know. Okay?”