The Killing Hour

I’m looking at a man who has been both beaten up and beaten, but suddenly it doesn’t seem to worry me. It’s as if somewhere deep inside I’ve just pulled a giant lever, not so much an on/off switch as a one-armed-bandit and five bars with the word ‘hate’ have all landed in a row. I hate that I can never be the same Charlie I was a week ago, and that saddens and scares me. I hate Cyris, and I wonder what I’m capable of doing about that. Murder? I close my eyes and pull the giant lever inside my mind. Bells and whistles and alarms all start going off inside of me. Yeah, murder is now within my capabilities. I sense other things are within my ability now too but I’m too scared to keep pulling on that lever to find out.

The beaten man stares back at me and what seems like pity fills his eyes. The man looks like he isn’t sure what I’m going to do. He looks concerned for me as though he’s worried I might start screaming and take my rage out on the world. Am I insane for not going to the police? Do I not go to the police because I genuinely fear their involvement will jeopardise Jo’s life? Do I not go because I want to kill Cyris? Or do I not go because I was responsible for Kathy and Luciana dying? Could be any of those, could be all of them. Could be that the last policeman I dealt with tried to kill me. Could just be that my reflection is looking at somebody who really doesn’t know.

The man in the mirror offers no answers but he looks ready to start laying blame. I get dressed and for the next hour I wander aimlessly through my house, opening up the rooms and staring out windows as if all the answers lie outside in the fresh air and warm sun. Ideas of what to do next start firing at me from dark corners of my mind but they all seem to lead nowhere. I keep following them, though, in the hope that one seems less insane than any of the others. I can’t just hang around and wait. I hate waiting. Each minute that goes by is a minute Jo has to spend with Cyris. Each minute that goes by is another one in which she could be dying.

The obvious thing happens and I start thinking of things I should have thought of last night. The trek to the cabin after our swim. The chances of coming out of that alive had been so remote I had been ready to curl up and die. We survived and we had hibernated inside the cabin until we thawed out but we had waited too long. How could I have been so foolish to believe we were safe? How? Maybe I was too cold or maybe I was just too damn stupid.

I move into the room Cyris trashed. Beneath my computer desk is a small set of drawers, three in total, all still intact. The bottom is a filing drawer. I pull it open and start flicking through the partitions. It takes some time to find the one for my bank. They’re all out of order. Cyris has gone through them as I figured he had: this is where he got the idea of the forty thousand dollars from.

The whole concept of a revolving mortgage is simple. It’s basically an overdraft where you can draw out the money you’ve paid in. I’ve paid forty thousand dollars off my mortgage and that’s how much I can now access. I push the statements aside. It doesn’t matter how much money I have. Money can’t buy you happiness. It can’t buy life. And no amount will stop me from killing the son of a bitch.

I go back to my bedroom and sit on the edge of the bed. It is after three o’clock and the sun has peaked in the sky and is starting its long, slow spiral down towards a new day on the other side of the world. Ideally I’d like to be there to see it, there with Jo.

Okay, Action Man, it’s time to act.

I find my wallet and everything inside it is wet. I take out my credit cards and my driver’s licence. I use a tea-towel to dry them, then leave them on the bench in the sun. I go into the bathroom and do what I can to turn the broken Charlie Feldman into one who will fit back into society. I smile a pained smile then add some cologne and some hair gel. I load my wallet back up and head outside.

The day is even better now that I’m out in it. I think that Landry probably would have liked it. I wonder what he’d be doing right now if he weren’t dead, and then I feel a pang of guilt thinking about his last act, which was to save us. It’s possible he wasn’t such a bad guy. Possible under other circumstances I might have liked him. And probable he’d still be alive if I’d taken care of Cyris on Monday morning. Landry would have liked today. I’m sure of it. The bright sun, the warm wind, the essence of calm. Barely any traces of cloud adorn the sky. Long twin white lines float a few kilometres high above me from a fast-moving jet. It’s a great day, the type you always want to wake up to. At least it would be if I’d stabbed Cyris in the heart and not the stomach.