A Traitor to Memory

“Good. So hear the ending, okay? We need some oscar, we need it today, and if that's a problem, then you best speak up.”


TongueMan looked from one man to the other and saw the future unrolling before him like an endless carpet with a repetitive design. He would sell up again, move house again, establish himself, change his job if necessary … and they would still find him. And when they found him, they would trot out the same manoeuvre they'd used with so much success for so many years. This was the way it was going to be. They believed he owed them. And they never forgot.

“What do you need?” he asked them wearily.

Robbie named his price. Brent blinked and grinned.

TongueMan fetched his chequebook and scrawled the amount. Then he saw them out the way they had come: through the dining room door and into the back garden. He watched till they ducked beneath the bare branches of the plane trees at the edge of the park. Then he went to the phone.

When he had Jake Azoff on the line, he took a breath that felt like a stab in the heart. “Rob and Brent found me,” he informed his solicitor. “Tell the police I'll talk.”





GIDEON





10 September





I don't understand why you won't prescribe something for me. You're a medical doctor, aren't you? Or will the act of writing out a prescription for migraines reveal you as a charlatan? And please don't produce that tedious commentary about psychotropic medication again. We're not talking about antidepressants, Dr. Rose. About antipsychotics, tranquillisers, sedatives, or amphetamines. We are talking about a simple pain killer. Because what I have in my head is simple pain.

Libby's trying to help. She was here earlier and she found me where I'd been all morning: in my bedroom with the curtains drawn and a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream tucked into the crook of my arm like a Paddington bear. She sat on the edge of the bed and loosened my grip on the bottle, saying, “If you're planning on getting blitzed on this, you'll be hurling chunks in an hour.”





I groaned. Her style of language, so bizarre and so graphic, was the last thing I needed to hear. I said, “My head.”





She said, “The pits. But booze's going to make it worse. Let's see if I can help.”





She put her hands on my head. The tips of her fingers, resting lightly on my temples, were cool and they traced small circles, small fresh circles that diminished the pounding in my veins. I felt my body relax beneath her touch, and it seemed to me that I could easily fall asleep with her sitting there so quietly.

She moved and lay next to me and placed her hand on my cheek. The same gentle touch of the same cool flesh. She said, “You're burning.”





I murmured, “It's the headache.”





She turned her hand so my cheek felt the backs of her fingers, then. Cool, they were so wonderfully cool.

I said, “Feels good. Thanks, Libby.” I took her hand, kissed her fingers, and placed them back against my cheek.

She said, “Gideon …?”





I said, “Hmm?”





“Oh, never mind.” And then when I did just that, she sighed and went on. “D'you ever think about … us? I mean, like, where we're headed and all?”





I made no reply. It seems to me that it always comes down to this with women. That plural pronoun and the quest for validation: thinking about us confirms that there is an us in the first place.

She said, “D'you realise how much time we've spent together?”





“A great deal of time.”





“Jeez, we've even, like, slept together.”





Women, I have also noted, have a marvelous command of the obvious.

“So d'you think we should go on? D'you think we're ready for the next level in all this? I mean, I've got to say I feel totally ready. Really ready for what comes next. What about you?” And as she spoke, she lifted her leg to rest her thigh against mine, crossed my chest with her arm, and tilted her hips—just the ghost of a tilt, this was—to press her pubis against me.

And suddenly I am back with Beth, back at that point in a relationship when something more is supposed to happen between the man and the woman and when nothing does. At least, not for me. With Beth the next level was permanent commitment. We were lovers, after all, and had been lovers for eleven months.