Eternal youth is impossible; even if there were no other obstacle, introspection would make it impossible.
– Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1922

1.
It was during my stale pajama period that I began to develop a real interest in David. He presented himself, and the opportunity to contemplate misery other than my own was a diversion I turned to easily.

That winter, pajamas were the defining feature of my daily existence: one set in burgundy and gray plaid, the other solid navy. Both dated to my conservatory years, boxed and sealed and consigned to my parents’ cellar when I gave up my flat and moved in with Emily. The first time.

My blue period was a version in old flannel. I confess to nostalgic moments when my mother brought me the pajamas. I might even have cried a little, once she’d gone. The pajamas were relics from my youth. Remnants of the early-twenties me who’d received them as Christmas gifts. I made an effort to embrace that memory—the me who was. Or told myself I made the effort. Dreamy despair was much closer, more accessible than whatever long-expired comforts worn fabric could evoke. Not until release from hospital was I able to wear the pants with their proper drawstrings, and so attired, settled into a new phase of life: unemployed adult dependent and shameless connoisseur of flannel anti-fashion.

I’d been home for over a week when David made his appearance. Other relatives and family friends, I knew, had been testing the waters, being politely and consistently deferred by my mother when inquiring as to whether they ought to visit. Some sent flowers, usually bright and overdone bouquets—chrysanthemums, yellow lilies—which spurred me more than once to remark that the senders had been misinformed and were making funerary offerings. Or perhaps florists don’t differentiate, though in this day and age I would expect there to be a standard industry arrangement for each and every occasion. Flower-dot-coms, worldwide with ‘suicide – failed’ as a drop-down menu option. Right below ‘loss of pet – canine,’ ‘malpractice – pending,’ and ‘malpractice – settled.’

Since my parents had mercifully spared me from most of this well-wishing—thinly-disguised pity, really, the greater part of which was no doubt directed at them—I was truly surprised when David turned up. He never came uninvited to our house. There was a semi-annual debate as to whether he’d be asked to family gatherings of any kind, and I hadn’t set eyes upon him in at least a year, probably longer. Not since my month as his unwilling houseguest, anyway. After Emily and I split up. The second time.

David is the younger of my mother’s two siblings. I don’t address him as Uncle. While I was staying at his apartment, he expressly requested I not do so, saying it made him feel old. (At forty-nine, he is just twice my age, which seems to qualify him for an ‘Uncle.’) When we were younger, my sisters and I were made to call him Uncle David, but saw him so infrequently there wasn’t a need to call him anything at all.

Simply put, David is not popular with the family because he Did Something. He may have done many things—whatever the string of transgressions, I haven’t been acquainted with the details. To ask my mother produces an invariable response, one which begins “rather not.” If pressed, she’ll add “chose to go his own way.” Aunt Charlotte won’t go even that far.

It’s often struck me as somewhat peculiar that my uncle and I have had such limited contact, for there are certain significant traits we have in common. One of these is our first names, though my mother long ago explained that I’m named after my grandfather, who was named after his father, and so forth. On her side, we’re descended (windingly) from some minor gentry, and thus my family proudly clings to a quaint, recycled naming scheme. My father’s side not having any such scheme and my uncle yet without children, as firstborn male of my generation, I received the name by a combination of default and maternal insistence. David Jonas Tarrington Bonner. (Tarrington for my great-grandmother.) It’s a lot of syllables. I go by Jonas. Until I got to kindergarten and failed to answer the roll, I don’t think I even realized my legal first name was David.

The other similarity I share with my uncle is considerably stranger: we look a great deal alike. Seeing old photographs of David is unsettling, like seeing a grainy or discolored image of myself at whatever age the shot was snapped. Me in faded colors and outdated clothing—the best possible me, I should say. David was, and still is, a very handsome man, with charm and wit to match. (I have, of course, made jesting comments to my mother, about being a product of incest. She doesn’t find them amusing.) He’s charmed his way into three marriages and witted through the corresponding number of divorces. Despite advancing years, my uncle maintains a fine physique, an equivalent fashion sense, and an impressive head of hair. (A bit gray at the temples now, but all present and accounted for. I’ve always hoped this boded well for the future of my scalp.) If I were the sort who went out socially with the intent of picking up women, David is precisely the man I’d choose as a partner in crime.

The February afternoon that his Mercedes pulled into the drive, I was washing out the coffee pot at the kitchen sink. The car-door shut, its headlamps blinked yellow with the alarm arming itself, and there he was, overcoat flaring with its owner’s purposeful stride along the rear walk. I must have watched the entire course of his arrival, for when he reached the back door, I found myself suddenly up to the wrists in soap-bubbles and answering his knock in foamy cuffs.

David was scuffing his very nice, very black shoes on the mat. I looked at him through the patio door’s glass for probably a heartbeat too long, trying to ready myself for whatever dialogue we were going to have. I didn’t know what I could say to him, really. I thought (emphasis on thought) he’d called me once, in September, when I’d been hospitalized for pneumonia. I was hardly at my most lucid during that week, which helped cause a ‘release’ from my job and further strained relations with Emily. So, received or not, any obligatory get-well call from my uncle didn’t take precedence.

I shrank behind the sunroom door as I opened it, trying not to cringe too visibly at the entering gust of cold air. I needed a bathrobe and slippers. Every committed home-bound dysfunctional needs a bathrobe and slippers, at least to mask the sour odor of stale pajamas when unexpected visitors arrive. I resisted the urge to sniff my shirt-sleeve.

David peeled off his gloves, pinching deftly at leather fingertips as I turned from the door. He wasn’t looking at me when he said, “Hello, Jonas.”

“Hello. My mother’s in the city with Charlotte today.”

“You don’t imagine I came for your mother, do you?” He shrugged out of his overcoat and draped it on the back of a chair at the breakfast-table, revealing a finely-cut dark gray suit beneath. Single-breasted, unbuttoned. Tie shouting Hermès! in subtle variations on charcoal hues, liberally splashed with accents of dusky rose and blue. David—casually elegant as ever, lightly adjusting a sleeve, glancing around the kitchen as if searching for a change which might require remark. Perfect and remote, the kind of unfailingly self-assured perfect that had always made me want to search him for a thread out of place, then pull it until his perfection tore and he unraveled into an ordinary human being. Or else just to spit at him in hopes it would stain.

Whatever mental preparation he’d made for this encounter, I was privileged to watch it abandon him when he looked at me. His face stilled, his brows drew. Eyes swept up and down, finally landing on mine as he said, “You look terrible.”

“Yes,” I agreed. My parents kept insisting I was looking ‘better.’ Any improvement was so minute it certainly escaped me. On the healthiest days of my life, Emily liked to describe my physical appearance as akin to the now-passé heroin chic. (And when a woman is falling out of love, comparatively affectionate jibes such as ‘heroin chic’ begin to metamorphose. To Emily’s credit, she refrained from ‘breathing corpse’ once my pneumonia was diagnosed.) Were this five to eight years earlier, I would’ve been extremely in vogue. Pajamas aside.

“I was just about to make some cof…” I stopped, and David seemed as if he were resisting a smile as I broke off. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you,” he said, as if I should have known. “And yes, I would love some coffee. Half-day at the office and not a drop of caffeine since eight this morning.”

I went back to the sink and retrieved the pot. David was a financial executive. Of what kind, I’d never known, nor did I care. His office was in London, thought he traveled abroad several times a month. It was about an hour’s drive south, to get here from the city. I wondered why he hadn’t run before coming, and figured he assumed I’d decline to see him. He assumed correctly. For the past few days, I’d been working my way through my mother’s BBC Shakespeare collection, and today I didn’t want to see anyone except Henry IV.

“It must be pleasant to be home,” David said. Hands resting comfortably at the seams of his trouser pockets, he drifted to the stove island in the center of the kitchen to peer at a bowl of oranges and tangerines with the deliberate scrutiny of a customs inspector.

“It’s more pleasant than other places.” I heard him start to reply and depressed the button on the noisy grinder anyway. Once the motor quieted, I glanced at him over my shoulder, adding, “It’s strange, though. I haven’t been here beyond a night or two, for years.”

And I didn’t know when I’d be leaving again. Circumstances threw a pall on the basic comfort of childhood home. My parents were very obviously doing their best to be cheerful, but each night we sat down to dinner I felt my despondence creeping outward, coming closer to infecting them. Me, contagion of hopelessness. Even my mother’s relentless optimism could only last so long. Just like David’s while he stood there at the marble countertop, rolling a mandarin orange back and forth from fingers to palm.

“Sorry I’ve been so out of touch,” he said. “Work’s been very busy for me in the last month.”

With the island a buffer between us, I leaned against the sink and crossed my arms. “You’ve never been ‘in touch.’ What’s to be sorry about?”

“Exactly that. Your mother and I keep our distance, but we’re still family and that’s important.” David tipped his hand, rocking the small orange in the cradle of his knuckles, watching it instead of me. His hands were so like mine—long and wonderfully slender, with agile, graceful fingers and prominent joints. I’ve always prized my hands. They were too thin now, weakened since my illness, but still nimbler than most, and doubtlessly of greater value than David’s. He penned numbers and figures and investment proposals; I am a musician. Out of work, as noted, being that it’s not easy to make a wind instrument sing when you haven’t sufficient sustained breath to lend it voice. But I’m no less a musician any more than a professional athlete isn’t an athlete because of a sprain or fracture. Or so I’ve tried to convince myself.

“Well,” I said, fidgeting my fingers into my damp cuffs, “I’ve had no sleepless nights on account of your absence from the family circle. Don’t apologize to me.”

David tossed the piece of fruit from one palm to the other, then replaced it in the bowl and fixed me with a direct gaze. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Since I heard you were in hospital again. Did you know, I had to call your mother for something else entirely, and that’s when she told me? Almost two weeks after the fact.”

I shrugged. “If I’d succeeded, I’m sure you would’ve been invited to the funeral. Since I didn’t, it’s really a non-issue, wouldn’t you say?”

“We haven’t talked in a long time.”

“Did we talk much before and I’ve forgotten?”

“No, and that’s the problem.” He shook his head. “I look at some of how your behavior is affecting your mother, both of your parents, and I see consequences you’re probably not fully aware of. And that’s why I’ve come to speak with you.” Afternoon light seized upon loose strands of his neatly cropped and combed reddish-golden hair, brightening them like tiny incandescent wires. The soft glow touched only one hemisphere of his face, bringing out the sunburst of wrinkles fanning delicately from the corner of his eye, caressing the sharp hollow of his cheek and the slim, strong shape of his jaw. He looked handsome and noble and sincere, almost earnest, and for his overture I gave him a mirthless little smile.

“Oh, no, David. I had consequences in mind when I did what I did.”

“Then you just didn’t care that you would devastate your parents and sisters?”

“They’d have gotten past it.”

“You don’t ever get past losing a loved one, Jonas. You just try and cope with it.”

“If you’re here to lecture me,” I said flatly, “on the intrinsically selfish nature of suicide, don’t bother. I’m still visiting my therapist twice weekly and believe me, we’ve been over that. I’m sorry for what trouble I’ve caused my parents, and they know.”

“You can’t make it up to them. I say this as–”

“Either shut up about that, or leave.” I pushed off the counter to swipe mugs down from the cabinet. I didn’t want him to stay for coffee. I just wanted to be alone. Not that I really was angry at his words—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been angry. I didn’t feel anything, these days. I didn’t feel, only knew, and I knew I didn’t want to speak further with him.

David remained silent as I poured coffee. I put the mug in front of him with all the enthusiasm of a waiter greeting a new customer two minutes before the night’s closing. Indicating the sugar bowl and grabbing a squat carton of half-and-half from the fridge, I sent a spoon clattering across the counter and promptly resumed my stance at the sink.

I don’t usually take my coffee black. I just didn’t want to be any nearer to him.

He stirred a dollop of cream with one sugar. The spoon clinked, coffee droplets tapped away and the utensil placed aside. “I know what it’s like,” he said at last. “I’ve been where you are.”

I watched him indifferently over the rim of my cup. When he looked back, I shifted to watching the mound of fruit at his elbow. He was being earnest again. I wondered if I’d ever used that expression.

“I never took it so far—I tried, I planned, I couldn’t—but believe me, I understand. I lost the woman I loved and almost everything else, after that. I know how–”

“And which woman would that be? Wife One, Two, or Three?”

His mouth tightened. “That isn’t what I meant.”

I experienced a moment of incredulity as we locked eyes. “You think…this was about Emily?”

“Are you going to tell me she didn’t have anything to do with it?”

“Of course she…well. She had something to do with…You actually think I’d kill myself over her?” I could see he was somewhat taken aback. So was I, really—and vaguely disgusted he’d come here presuming the chronic disaster of my relationship with Emily was the primary cause of my present state. An ugly, humorless little laugh surprised me by escaping. A laugh mocking my uncle.

His face went stony, hard and unreadable in the gently-filtered rays that peeked between airy-white curtains.

“I don’t believe this. Is this your angle, David? You’ve come to empathize with me because you lost a woman and thought you might commit suicide over it? That, if you’ll pardon the expression, is fucking pathetic.”

His eyes were shuttered, brilliant, a cool and glassy blue as they held mine. “You’re pathetic, Jonas.”

“I know! I tried to circumvent that before it got any worse, but obviously it didn’t work out as intended.” I took a generous sip of coffee and smirked around the bitter warmth in my throat.

“My angle,” David said evenly, “was to come here and ask you to have a long look at the path you’re on, and what it’s doing to your family. My angle is the perspective of someone who did everything wrong, who had a good part in driving your grandparents to an early grave. I can’t stand by while you put your parents through hell. You won’t be able to live with yourself when you realize how you’re making them suffer.”

“I wasn’t able to live with myself as recently as six weeks ago. When you rehearsed what you were going to say here, you missed some context, didn’t you.” The anniversary of my grandparents’ deaths was upcoming. Likely that contributed to whatever festering guilt David was currently in the grip of. They’d both passed away not a year before, and mere days apart. “I’m still not sure I even want to live at all—and believe me, if I decide against it, I won’t fail the next time.”

“Jonas, think of your mother, anyone besides yourself for just a minute, could you please? I saw her this morning. She’s aged ten years in the past few months.”

I bristled. “Oh please. You expect me to believe you’re here out of real concern for my mother? What kind of tripe is that? When the hell do you ever think of her?”

“Your mother made the decision to shut me out of her life—not the other way around.”

“And where did you see her this morning? Did she put you up to this?” That wasn’t like my mother. She’d always been very straightforward with me, and hadn’t said she planned to see David when she left to meet Aunt Charlotte. They didn’t socialize with him, spontaneously or voluntarily.

“No, she didn’t. We had to get together with the attorney to go over some documents about your grandparents’ house.”

“What about the house?” My grandparents’ house was a touchy subject amongst their offspring. Or rather, between David on one side, and my mother and Aunt Charlotte on the other. The house had been bequeathed to the three of them, a charming property tucked away in a picturesque and correspondingly pricey corner of Brompton. While no one advocated an outright sale, David was constantly pushing to have it rented out. My mother and Aunt didn’t like the idea of strangers between its walls, so David volunteered to manage the upkeep and, last I heard, had been staying there for months. There, in the house where he was raised, where the funeral took place last spring. Little wonder he had surplus filial guilt. I simply didn’t want anything to do with it.

“We’re letting it out for the summer. We agreed to reassess the whole thing in the fall.”

“Had your way, then, did you? Does my mother know you came here?”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“Then she won’t know when you leave. Which, incidentally, could be now.”

“Not until you hear me out.”

I heaved a sigh that sent twinges into my lungs. “Look, whatever guilt complex you’ve got–”

“–is the one you’ll have when you decide to grow up and have a care for the damage you’re doing to people who love you.” David had set down his coffee after a single taste. He leveled a finger. I smirked at it and re-folded my arms. “Your mother,” he went on, “could barely speak to me about you without crying. She hasn’t shed a tear in front of me...” He trailed, seeming somehow to look through me, then refocused abruptly. “I’m practically a stranger to her and I can see you’re breaking her heart. Don’t, Jonas. Don’t go on this way.”

“What way?” I demanded. “You think I wanted–”

“I think if you were miserable enough to try ending your life, you could have asked for help before it got that far.”

“Piss off. You don’t know me, and you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“If I didn’t believe that I do, I wouldn’t have come here at all.”

“Then you’re appallingly stupid, or just wrong, plain and simple. Get out.”

David was irritatingly dignified in the face of my insults. It made me feel as if I were some lesser, underdeveloped version of him, a tentative watercolor to his bold oil. Unfit to criticize the genuine article. He just stood there, untouchable and unwavering.

“Give me a chance, Jonas, would you? I understand better than you think. If you’d—”

“A chance to what?” I snapped. “I know I’ve hurt my family awfully, and I’ve said I’m sorry, and it’s none of your damn business in the first place! I’ll give you a chance to tell me something I don’t know. If you can’t, go the hell away and quit wasting my time.”

My time was so precious, after all. Sleeping and brooding make for a demanding schedule.

David pursed his lips briefly, chin thoughtfully low and hands back at his pockets. “I wish I’d realized how bad it was for you.”

“Aunt Charlotte said almost the same thing to me, not too long ago. Call her,” I deadpanned, and he looked up sharply. To see I’d finally stung him just drove me on. “I could really care less about your guilty conscience, whether it’s for me or for my mother or what problems you had with Grandmother and Grandfather. Is there anyone related to you who you don’t have problems with?”

He didn’t reply, shoulders dropped a bit, keeping his gaze at the counter for quite some time. Then, without a word, he walked to the breakfast-table.

I didn’t move, just watched as he gathered his coat and slipped it on. I wasn’t sorry for how I’d spoken to him. He understood less than Dr. Lumen, which wasn’t saying much. To David I was a passing acquaintance, a virtual stranger under the vast umbrella of family ties whose existence obligated acknowledgment only when he had the leisure.

I went to shut the patio door behind him. He paused with a foot still on the kitchen floor, looking out across the sunroom, squinting a bit into the clear winter afternoon.

“You know, if you decide you ever want a few days out of the house, you’re welcome to stay with me any time.”

“Good-bye,” I said.

My mother came home several hours later, during the final act of Henry V. I’d long since retreated to the couch and a heavy throw when she bustled through the living room, arms weighted with boutique shopping bags and smiles ready. She kissed me once on the forehead, and I gave her a dutiful peck on the cheek when she leaned down expectantly. Eyes re-fastened to the screen, I burrowed more deeply into the cushions, tucking the afghan under my chin as she asked how my day had been.

“There is some soul of goodness in things evil,” I replied slowly, Henry’s line from a previous scene surfacing arbitrarily in my mind, “would men observingly distil it out.”

Self-imposed solitary confinement had been my custom for a very long time. When down is not merely down, but positively bottom, people are afraid to reach too far. For fear of stepping wrong, no one wants to overextend themselves, and hands offered after the fact are guilty. They’re linked with minds that turn inside-out, scouring for details, misusing hindsight to assign significance to trivialities. What I said. How I seemed. When had they seen me last before…well. Could they have seen it coming?

I’d gradually drifted from my friends over the course of involvement with Emily. Several of them made contact, once they ‘found out’, but their behavior toward me now was about as like to authentic friendship as strawberry-flavored chewing gum is to fresh strawberry: too bright, too sweet, and with quickly-fading flavor. Everyone avoided the issue, struggling to bury it beneath an avalanche of cordial notes, nervously rambling phone calls, and chatty e-mails ‘to catch up.’ Like my attempted suicide was some unpleasant odor they were too polite to acknowledge. As the weeks wore on, David lingered in my head as the only person willing to confront the stench that lived with me. However faulty his understanding of its sources, and whatever his personal motivations, he hadn’t tried to talk around it.

He didn’t ring or come again to the house. I didn’t mention his visit to either of my parents. My parents didn’t mention the passage of time: four more sessions with Dr. Lumen, and thirteen episodes of I, Claudius (it was that or my mother’s Olivier Collection boxed set). I stayed in and watched the snow melt. That was the same, for me, as Derek Jacobi’s on-screen performance, which I’d once so delighted in. Nothing could rouse any real interest. Pensive, faraway looks masked the dismal void within. I was somehow both numb and raw at once.

Keeping busy in the day-to-day, I vacuumed carpets and meticulously polished silverware, imagining what tales of dinner-party gossip the latter would tell if it could, what momentous family events it witnessed while lying on the tablecloth. My mother’s house-plants acquired names, and I don’t think she was sure whether to be pleased or very concerned at the care I lavished upon them. To my Jessica, a pink-leafed caladium, I would murmur of incomparable beauty, hoping to distract her while draining her roots and checking them carefully for hints of decay. The little gold-dust plant was Ariel; I had to seek my mother’s advice on how to coax its tiny yellow flowers into smiles. And some evenings, if I watched for long enough, I thought I could see the leaves on Daniel, the prayer plant, making their evening fold toward one another. Millimeter by millimeter, they’d bend gradually inward, fishbone-patterned reddish veins stealing delicate motion from the waning twilight.

Day in and out, sleepless and solitary, talking with silverware and plants. I was becoming strange. Though, being conscious of it, I wasn’t worried. It couldn’t be irreversible, and I’d never before had a yen to chat with forks or cultivate relationships with potted friends.

A few afternoons in the cellar were spent rifling through my belongings, packed and shipped from London. Emily hadn’t missed a beat in absolving her surroundings of me—boxes postmarked January the third reached my parents’ house before I did. She’d returned most of the classics we used to read to each other. Dante and Austen, Sartre, the Brontës, Camus, Flaubert, Milton, Dickens. Beloved works of literature, stories and characters I’d lived in, worlds I’d visited and re-visited thousands of times over. I would’ve filled my listless hours with the magic in their pages, but I didn’t feel anything for them. Not even dislike.

Really, I’d been trying not to think about Emily. Unable to vilify and heap on her even the portion of blame she deserved, I didn’t know how to think of her—whether she was the saint and me the devil, or vice-versa. Her life, my life, our life, whatever it was, she’d grabbed the starring role and held it for almost two years. There was before her, and now. The only way I could measure the me who existed before her was holding him up to the now. And that was disheartening, to put it mildly.

Departing for the New Year’s party I declined to attend with her, Emily bade me farewell by saying, “You are such an asshole.” I don’t remember exactly what I’d said or done to prompt that, but I couldn’t disagree. I’m not sure when the transition from ‘difficult’ to ‘asshole’ was completed. I suspect it was right around the time I developed bronchitis and recognized that, at least with respect to me, Emily had no desire to take on the former part of ‘in sickness and in health.’

Yes, until that time, I was deluded enough to think she may have been The One.

I started out doing everything I could to keep my illness from being a nuisance, spending nights on the living room futon so I wouldn’t wake her with coughing fits, keeping myself and the entire flat meticulously clean, doing laundry with an obsessive frequency. When her sympathy (there never were any thanks for my consideration) expired, I ceased all efforts to accommodate her and made no apology. I had no will to recover, and no real understanding of what damage was being done to my body. What I wanted was some consolation. Emily lost interest in that after a couple of weeks. The evening she actually saw blood hacked through a handful of tissues, she insisted on taking me to hospital, where they wouldn’t let me leave. I wasn’t to find out until much later the row that exploded between Emily and my mother when my parents arrived in London and were given the physician’s full report. Emily blasted me with that once I’d come back to our apartment, and in my absence, she’d also realized she was happier living without me.

We were over, then. I suppose we were over well before I got sick, though she was able to admit it aloud, and I wasn’t. There remained but to wait out the lease. I didn’t ask where she would spend the night, not even the first day I woke to find her gone. That put an end to my visions of reconciliation. I couldn’t allow myself to care, and slipped into a sort of emotional catatonia, letting days smear into months.

Jobless, friendless, and loveless. The end.

My death was intended to be clean and simple—and poignant, heartbreaking with decisive finality, like a Victorian romance. As it happened, Mme. Bovary’s demise was probably tidier. I didn’t plan very well, and suppose I should be sorry Emily had to deal with the whole mess. But I couldn’t help thinking I was somehow serving her with a grim, smug sort of justice, and hoped it would bring her nightmares. I hoped the scene would loom in her mind’s eye each night she entered the space we shared, each time she entertained guests—male visitors especially—in that living room where I meant to draw my last breath. I wanted to scar her psyche, force her to struggle and question her part in it. And for wanting that so badly, I hated myself all the more.

She informed me, during her single appearance at hospital in January, that what I’d done traumatized her so awfully she’d started seeing a psychiatrist. I almost passed out from laughing. She looked at me very seriously, said, “You are one selfish, demented bastard, Jonas,” and then she left.

That would be the last occasion on which we spoke. And—I think it’s safe to say—the last occasion on which we will ever speak. I can’t think too badly of her, for that final remark. Emily always did call things just as she saw them.

I finished with Claudius at about one in the morning on a Friday. A Friday or a Wednesday. My appointments with Dr. Lumen were Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I’d seen him that afternoon. Between doctor and dinner were Romans. Between dinner and the sleep which wouldn’t come were more Romans. They’d ceased to really occupy my mind somewhere about the time of Claudius’ marriage to Messalina. (I can’t stand Messalina. When I first read Graves’ books I used to wish the scheming slut would have burned in one of those wicker cages the Celts employed during Caesar’s time.) The house plants were sleeping. I couldn’t, and wandered into the kitchen for a sandwich, tasting a lot of unwelcome retrospection with the turkey and swiss.

Staring at the night through the window at the breakfast-table, I focused past my ghostly reflection on the glass, methodically chewing and swallowing. I wasn’t really hungry. Just awake. My mouth and eyes were restless, every sense keen with insomnia’s edge.

The relentless glare of exterior floodlights fingered the backyard’s near parts with shadows, murky patches of cold and wet everywhere on the stone-pathed terrace and modest garden. Darker where the lawn sloped gently toward its bordering trees, grayer in the spots where the summer furniture ought to be. A wind I could see but not hear was rattling the latch on the pastel-painted swinging gate my sisters and I used to designate as goal when we played ball or ran races. The shrubs that flanked the walk were dusted with snow, the dark jade of their leaves clearly in evidence. More the leaf and less the snow. When I first got back here, my mother’s beloved greenery was imprisoned in ice, rows and boxes of whitish twists and lumps. Now the flowerbeds sported thin, brownish weeds, wilted stalks poking through deflated piles of last month’s frozen flakes.

Eight weeks had passed since New Year’s. Eight more, and those flowerbeds would be bursting with color. I wondered whether I’d be sitting exactly where I was, still in old pajamas, still gazing through the pane. I knew I could be. Easily.

I got up and tossed the half-eaten sandwich into the trash, wanting to draw the curtains, to forget the outdoors and take refuge in bed. But I was lethargic, empty, not sleepy. So I just stood beside the stove-island, looking at the steady flicker of hob pilot-lights. Tinges of blue capered along the peaks of my knuckles. I took time to observe how illuminating the microwave’s clock was. It winked along the bell of a glass in the sink, spread across countertops and floor. Dull-greenish continents crawling near-translucent on a two-dimensional ocean of white tile.

I’d like to say it was a random splotch of shadow that caused me to think of the hat. Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t—I’ve certainly never claimed much control over my subconscious—but while I went on standing there, a murky image began to form upon the surface of a cupboard. A Rorschach dribbled onto the deplorably blank canvas of my mind: an antique bowler, a simple shape, swimming out from behind my eyes and pasting itself there, so vaguely, gloom on woodwork.

David’s hat. It was sprinkled through the decades of old photo albums my grandmother loved to show when my sisters and I were young. Pictures of her, smile promising fond laughter, hair pale blond instead of gray, and arm about the waist of her son as he grinned from under a jauntily-angled brim.

That hat, my grandmother had chuckled, turning page after worn page of twenty-something David and the bowler.

That ridiculous hat, my mother said sourly, explaining that for many years, David and the old hat were absolutely inseparable. It’d belonged originally to Grandfather. David had pilfered it from the attic and made it a part of his daily wardrobe. Just another one of his follies.

I didn’t tell my mother I liked the bowler. It was a sophisticated anachronism. I liked a man who would wear such a hat because he wanted to, because he knew it suited him, independent of fashion trends and fads.

The shadowy mirage melted away with a few blinks. I wondered what had happened to that hat.

The microwave clock read 1:19. On socked feet, I padded into the hall just past the kitchen, seeking the phone directories my mother stored in a small cabinet there. Taking up the most current, I thumbed through the newsprint-thin pages with unsteady hands. Finding what I wanted and committing the number to memory, I replaced the book in its drawer and crept upstairs to my bedroom.

Once there, I had to sit down for a few minutes, listening to the dense silence of the darkened house around me, and wondering. Wondering if I still had the nerve to do something impulsive—the nerve to get dressed and walk out into the world of my own free will. My thoughts were tripping over one another, almost trampling the phone number I’d read moments before. A surge of fear supplied the necessary nerve. It was fear that I wouldn’t be moved to act, again, for a long time. (Lack of sleep may have been greatly responsible for animating me, but I was uncertain enough without thinking too much on that possibility.)

I exchanged warm flannel for cold denim, tugged on a thick gray tee-shirt and a dark green cotton sweater. My clothes still sagged. I felt like a stranger in the once-favorite jeans and lovingly scuffed pair of Docs. The mirror showed a sallow, waxy-complexioned and gaunt-cheeked creature with sleepless rings beneath too-bright eyes. A few days’ worth of beard scruff. (Well, perhaps a week’s worth, really.) Appallingly overgrown yellow hair. The hair was a shock. Usually I kept it very short. Now it was very large. I stared at my reflection, pawing ineffectually at the bedraggled thatch, unable to remember when last I’d had a haircut. Or washed with shampoo. I pulled a lock of hair toward my nose and inhaled. That was a mistake.

Downstairs, I bundled up completely: scarf, long winter coat, wool cap to hide the nightmarish hair. (When had it gotten so big, and how had I not noticed?) I scribbled a note to my parents and made a quiet phone call in my father’s study. From his desk I borrowed a fistful of cash. A substantial fistful, but only enough to get me where I needed to go.

And I left, quietly locking up the house as if I jaunted out like this, all the time, passing into the cold, damp night like rolling from one dream into another. I knew I was being compulsive and irrational. The prospect of going anywhere besides Dr. Lumen’s office was intimidating, nearly to the verge of inciting panic, but outside, the air was different, calming, and the panic became a surge of anticipation. Misty breezes whispered with promises of a pre-dawn shower, and I breathed deeply, ducking between the bare-branched trees along the street, walking quickly into the road.

I felt reckless and inspired, deliciously unbalanced. Almost giddy with motion. When I reached the top of the street and met the cab I’d called from the house, I was whimsically tempted to verify aloud the suspicion in the driver’s furtive, rearview glances at me.

Yes, I told him silently, your fare tonight is a certified lunatic. If you can’t enjoy it, at least be glad I’m not of the homicidal variety.

After a few minutes he asked, “Where was it you wanted? In Brompton?”

“Yes—on Clabon Mews,” I said. “But if you’d let me off right before at–”

“Just tell me when we get near there.”

“Thanks.” I slouched back into the seat, hoping the cost of the ride would be as it’d been given to me on the phone. I didn’t have more money than that.

Rain started about twenty minutes later. By the time we passed city limits, London was being soundly drenched. Water coursed steadily over the taxi’s windows, blurry with flashes of streetlights and occasional oncoming headlamps. I was grateful at being spared a clear view. I wasn’t ready to really see it all again, not alone and at this hour. Safe within the insulated metal bubble of the cab, I listened to the rhythm of the wipers, eyes closed as we approached Chelsea Bridge.

I opened my eyes again to the tall red-brick façades looming around Cadogen Gardens. I’d wanted to arrive quietly, on foot, but hadn’t brought an umbrella. Irrationality only goes so far when the memory of pneumonia is fresh. I asked the driver to stop at the near corner of my destination street, paid the fare, and stepped out into the rain.

The car growled away behind me and I started forward, squinting through the downpour at the house. My last visit here, nearly a year before, had been occasioned by my grandparents’ funeral. Rain and darkness were pushing a sickly, ashen tone on the house’s pale-yellow painted bricks. Dirty little waterfalls dribbled from the neglected flowerboxes along the front picture window, streaking their flat white faces with grime. I stopped at the front door, gloved hands in pockets, chill rain dripping into my collar while I peered up through the balcony’s curving rails of black wrought-iron, hoping against hope to catch even a glimmer of light within. There was none. Even the lamp above the door was out.

I let my finger hold a good ten seconds on the bell, absently contemplating the brass-scaled doorknocker fish below the house number. My sister Sarah had given the fish to our grandparents a few years ago, when they had the house’s exterior repainted. Grandfather put it up without comment, but it really was an ugly doorknocker. Ill-proportioned, like a catfish missing its whiskers. Bulbous fishy eyes ogled me sideways. I ogled back and rang the bell again.

As I started to shiver, it occurred that there might be no one at the house.

The fish mocked me silently. I grabbed its head and banged it against the door.

The overhead light flashed on.

When the door opened, David stood on the threshold in spectacles, bare feet, and crisp, royal-blue pajama pants. He clutched a robe over his chest, lips moving without sound. His eyes, though, were not so confused as the rest of his face seemed determined to suggest—they quickly went narrow, and he stepped back, impatiently gesturing me in.

He spoke facing the door as he shut and bolted it. “I did say anytime.”

My hat came off with a spray of rainwater. “Didn’t think I’d take you up on that, did you?”

David belted his robe and turned to look at me. The tiniest of quirks took the corner of his mouth—not quite a smirk or a smile, neither unfriendly nor reassuring. “Before I saw you the other week, I’d actually been staying at my place.” He shrugged once. “Since you didn’t know that, I thought I’d better spend some time here.” Crossing the foyer for the staircase, he paused and stifled a yawn. “I made up the bed in your mother’s old room. I hope that’s all right with you. Now, it’s past two-thirty in the morning, and I have work this morning. Hang up your coat already and c’mon upstairs.”

2.
CALL YOUR MOTHER.

I found the note taped eye-level on the wall directly behind the toilet. Scrawled at its bottom was another number: OFFICE.

“’Morning, Mum.” It was after two p.m.

“Are you all right?” She’d answered midway into the first ring. “You scared me half to death! Half to death! What on earth are you doing over there?”

“I’m fine. Sorry for scaring you half to death.” My entire body was weak with the delight of sleep, somehow leaden and revitalized at once. I was lying on the upstairs hall rug with the phone dragged down beside me. Every muscle felt as if it might creak aloud as I stretched languorously.

“Jonas?”

“I’m here.”

“What are you doing?”

“Lying on the carpet. Stretching. I just woke up.”

“Doing in London, Jonas. What. Are. You. Doing?”

“I. Have. Been. Sleeping. Sleep-ing.” I rolled onto my side, letting eyelids descend to half-mast and receiver rest against my jaw. “In your old room, no less. Would you believe I just slept for nine or ten hours?” Nine or ten hours. Deep, wonderful, dreamless. Yesterday that was inconceivable. “I haven’t had more than three or four in a night, for weeks.”

“I’d like it if you were home by the time your father’s back from work.” My mother was using her anxious-yet-determined-to-remain-maternally-calm-and-assertive tone.

“I’m going to stay here for a while.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Well, that much I figured, but Mum—I’m sleeping. Do I need to remind you I’ve hardly slept a whole night through since I came home? How am I supposed to get balanced again if I can’t even sleep like a normal person?”

“Jonas, please.” She sighed. “Don’t be difficult.”

“Difficult how? And what day is it?”

“Friday. Do you want me to drive–”

“No no. Listen. I’ll stay for the weekend and come back sometime on Monday.”

“You’ll do nothing of the kind. Did David put this into your head?”

“No, I haven’t even talked to him today.”

She sighed again, and I could imagine her throwing a hand up and out, her usual gesture of helpless frustration. “He called this morning and wasn’t making any sense at all. Not that he often does. I swear, between you and him the irresponsibility quotient is absolutely mind-boggling. I don’t want you staying there.”

I was staying. I was sleeping.

“Jonas? Are you listening to me?”

“Of course I am. It’s nothing personal, I promise. Please. Give me a few nights and with any luck my sleep schedule will be readjusted.”

“Your next appointment–”

“–is on Tuesday at three. I know. I’ll be there.”

“I don’t understand why you can’t sleep at home.” She sounded hurt.

“Maybe I can. Eventually. But not right now.”

“Did you talk with David before you went there?” Strong suspicion.

“No. When do I ever talk with him?” Inciting my mother’s wrath against David was no way to begin a weekend in his company. “I’ll ring you back straight away after dinner tonight?”

“Jonas, I really, really wish you wouldn’t.”

“Ring back?”

“Jonas.”

“Sorry. All right. Bye, Mum. Love you, talk with you later.” I made a kissing noise at the mouthpiece and flopped a hand in the general direction of the hang-up button. Sitting up to grab David’s note down from the hall table gave me a tremendous head rush, and I had to lie flat for a few more minutes before I felt clear enough to make the call. With my face along the rug’s edge, I could smell the age of the wood flooring beneath it.

A female voice answered the line. Mr. Ross’ office. “Who’s calling, please?”

“His nephew Jonas.”

“Ah!” Her manner relaxed about fifty percent in that single breath. “Hello there—yes, he’s been expecting your call, but I’m afraid he’s in a conference at the moment.”

“Would you give him a message, then?” I asked, tacking on a belated, “Please.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“I’m going to be out for a while this afternoon, so I’ll–” I paused, uncertain when David’s workday ended. “Sorry…when does he usually finish for the day?”

“Let me see…” She trailed into an appointment-book-consulting mm-m. “His last meeting’s at five.”

“Okay…would you let him know I’ll ring just before then so we can meet up? I can’t say quite where I’ll be, at that point, but I will be back in touch.”

That wasn’t true—I did have a general idea of where I would be, and probably having increased my credit card debt by several hundred pounds, if I was successful. If I was highly successful, it could be well over a thousand.

I needed clothes and a haircut. Nice clothes. A shopping spree could, I reasoned, be viewed as a necessary component of recovery. My parents had contributed generously toward reducing my credit balance to a manageable level, but I thought I had a good chance at convincing them such expenditures as I anticipated for today were not so careless as they might initially seem. In fact, my looks hadn’t been something I could stand to even to consider, since being released from hospital, and it seemed that having any degree of motivation to improve my appearance had to be a positive step.

I went to the shower, and finding it lacking in both soap and shampoo, put on a towel and headed for David’s room. The first floor of the house had two baths and three bedrooms, plus a fourth which my mother still referred to as the playroom. Since I’d known it, it’d been more of a TV lounge and repository for excess books and furniture. The staircase was at the rear of the house, connecting to a central hall—my mother’s and Charlotte’s bedrooms on one side, David’s and the playroom on the other, baths in between each pair of rooms. My grandparents’ bed- and bathroom were located on the ground floor.

David had resumed residence in his boyhood room, a sunny space occupying the southwest corner of the house. French doors opened out onto the front balcony, and with curtains drawn over their panes, the bedroom had a dim, deserted air, a Spartan chamber of plainly made-up double bed and a couple of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The antique writing desk showed definite evidence that the room was lived-in; placed nearest to the balcony doors, its two tiers were cluttered with loose papers and file-folders, a notebook computer, and a stack-in-progress of take-away paper coffee cups. Two CDs: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Carmina Burana, the 1975 recording with André Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. My Orchestra. There was also a thick-bottomed glass ashtray, dirtied with a few crumpled cigarette ends. I peered at it, not recalling having seen David smoke, before.

I grabbed the bottle of shampoo from his bathroom, borrowed the can of shaving cream from the counter, and rummaged in cabinets under the sink until, almost miraculously, they yielded a still-packaged soap and unused disposable razor. Closing the bathroom door behind me, a flicker of motion caught my eye, and I nearly startled to see a pair of feline eyes gleaming in the darkness beneath the bed. A white-tipped tail twitched by the cat’s forepaws as it watched me detachedly.

I’d forgotten about the cats. David had two, a sleek tortoise-shell and a fluffy orange-marmalade. I couldn’t remember their names, but they’d been around his flat in Chiswick when I stayed there for a few weeks last autumn. They weren’t friendly. Then, I hadn’t been especially friendly toward them, either. Who ever knew, with cats.

Daylight hadn’t done much for drying up the previous night’s rainstorm, and I set out for the Sloane Square tube knowing I’d be frozen by the time I reached the station. David had thoughtfully left a twenty-pound note on the foyer table for me. With what intention, precisely, I wasn’t sure, but not being likely to see much cash in the immediate future, I thought it wise to forgo a taxi and take the underground. I was definitely second-guessing that decision with each gust of wind against my cheeks, and particularly when a passing car splattered road-puddle along the bottom of my coat. It was less than a half-mile between my grandparents’ house and the station, a pleasant walk during all other seasons, but in this one, made bearable by the quickest step and longest stride possible.

Despite the benefits of sleep, I didn’t seem to be moving very quickly, and it was while making the transfer from Circle to Central that I realized I was extremely hungry. There was a dull, aching coldness weighting my limbs and my stomach honestly felt as if it were attempting to wrap itself around and gnaw on my spine. Eating hadn’t occurred to me before I left, but it was already three, and dinner couldn’t be more than a few hours off. Drowsing on the next train, I nonetheless found myself daydreaming of the cranberry fairy cakes I’d spied boxed on the kitchen counter at the house. I’m not even so terribly fond of fairy cakes. They didn’t strike me as something David would eat regularly. I tried to think back to being at his flat and what food items he did usually keep, though had come up with only a hazy recollection of stacks upon stacks of frozen chicken-breasts when the train’s merry monotone voice announced arrival at Bond Street.

I suppose I could’ve been more reasonable about this shopping excursion and gone to Selfridges, or even saved myself the cross-line journey and visited Harrods, but the former option seemed like settling and the latter constantly reminded me too much of an airport. Actually, both places did. It was merely the difference between an airport serving the standard array of major commercial airlines, plus business-class accommodations for the financially fortunate, and an airport offering nothing but specially chartered or Concorde flights. I wanted self-contained stores, not covered hangars and sprawling food courts. I wanted to be on the street.

I should’ve been two months’ deceased. Since I wasn’t, I’d decided to observe that reality by shopping at Emporio Armani. If my first choice somehow failed me, I knew Versace and Calvin Klein were on the same block of New Bond. With my worn Levi’s and drooping sweater I figured I could pass for one of the casually unkempt wealthy. It had worked in the past.

Moving down toward the corner of Brook with my primary target in sight, my eye caught on a vertical sign jutting on the wall between a women’s shoe store and a leather goods shop. Sea-green lettering declared: Salon YeF. A square placard fixed to the sign’s base announced introductory-priced services for first-time clients. I paused on the sidewalk, looking up at a hairstylist’s chair, the centerpiece of a large first-floor picture-window. Then I went in through the door sandwiched between the two retail shops and ascended the narrow stair.

The Salon YeF was a long, hot room with shiny hardwood floors, the atmosphere thickened by a blend of conversation, blow-dryers, and upbeat music. A receptionist sat at the center of a triangular black faux-marble desk, a very pretty un-natural redhead with a coy and ready smile. She offered cheerful greetings as I set my elbows on the countertop and bluntly told her I’d never been to this place before, but needed a haircut. Very badly.

She appraised the evidence (most of which was smothered beneath my black wool cap) then regarded the computer screen before her and began rapidly clicking a mouse. Clearly this was a crisis situation. A slender brunette in stiletto heels sauntered over and leaned a hip against the counter to my left, flipping continuously through a sheaf of rectangular papers.

“We don’t…We close at five and unfortunately everyone’s schedule is full up.” The receptionist’s coffee-colored lips made a pouty frown as she looked from the screen to me. “If you like I can book you for Tuesday? If afternoons and evenings are better, we’re open until eight on Thursday.”

I shook my head tiredly. “No, that’s all right. I was just walking past and thought I’d stop in and check.” I didn’t necessarily need designer hair to complement my intended clothing purchases, though it would have been a satisfying match.

“Fabian,” intoned the stilettoed brunette, without lifting her eyes from the pages in hand.

The receptionist held up a finger and swiveled her chair briskly toward the other woman. “Are you sure he’s coming?”

“He was in last night,” the brunette replied, sounding awfully bored. “And the one before that, I think. For a couple of hours.” She glanced over at me with similarly bored eyes. “You should come back after six.”

“Yes, you should,” the redhead agreed, smiling double-dimpled again. “About half-past?”

“Half-six?” I repeated dumbly.

She clicked the mouse twice more. “Yes—we’ll actually be closed, but Fabian ought to be in for a bit. He’s absolutely marvelous. He’s been away and isn’t on the regular schedule yet—you probably wouldn’t even be able to get a booking with him otherwise. He’s one of the owners.” She winked lightly. “We are having this special for new clients, so it’ll be the usual price, even with Fabian.” Her smile went coy again as she passed me a leaflet of prices and services. “Six-thirty, then? Could I have your name?”

Four figures and close to two hours later, I sank weak-kneed into a seat at a coffee-shop table. Clustered round my chair in boxes and bags and bagged boxes were the prisoners taken: one black leather jacket with snap-banded collar, two button-down shirts, one pair of casual black trousers and another of jeans, plus a belt to complement the jacket and all other elements involved. The Emporio salesmen had been greatly accommodating, though after heaping their staggering sum upon my credit card, I for some reason felt compelled to visit Calvin Klein, and left with a new set of pajamas (blue and gray flannel) and several sets of boxer-briefs (black with two pair of red for variety).

Mission accomplished. I was exhausted, and instead of the revitalization I’d hoped for, the cappuccino served only to make me distressingly shaky. I zoned out for a little while, watching the cool winter twilight descend in the forms of glowing headlamps and increasing haste in the gaits of passers-by. To my substantial relief, I discovered the coffee shop had a pay-phone at its rear. My knees were quivering as I meandered slowly toward it and dropped heavily onto the stool there to call David.

“Where are you?” was his salutation.

“Mayfair. I’ve been shopping for a while.”

“Shopping?” David’s blink was audible. “I thought you…okay, never mind that for now. My late meeting is running behind—I might not be finished here until after six. Do you want to meet back at the house or somewhere for dinner? Or…you could come here and wait ’till I’m finished, then dinner?”

I wanted to meet absolutely nowhere which required my lugging shopping bags and walking the uphill (slight incline though it was, uphill all the same) to the tube, navigating crowds, trouping up and down stairs and escalators.

“I’m getting a hair cut,” I told him, “at six-thirty. I don’t think it’ll take long. This place on New Bond, right before the corner of Brook. Salon Y-E-F, on the first floor. Would you come and get me once you’re through?”

“Surely,” he replied. “Yeah…that should work out fine. I’ll be there when I’m done, then.” He paused, and the connection went heavy with the pressure of words held back.

I got the impression he was going to have a lot to say over dinner, and suddenly didn’t want to deal with it. I felt like sleeping again, but the caffeine had me in its jittering clutches.

David said, “So, all right. I’ll see you in a bit,” and hung up.

I drank two glasses of water at the coffee shop and pushed out into the evening, the contents of my shopping bags already losing their luster. At least the clothes would have longer life than a hair cut. Or one would hope.

Returning to Salon YeF, I found lights out and reception desk missing its perky redhead. Deserted by its bustle and regular staff, the place had been repossessed by sound and darkness. A techno-funk rhythm with ferocious backbeat was surging from speakers at every angle, drenching the entire length of the room in sound.

I leaned against the counter, somewhat dazed and not knowing at all how to proceed.

The apparent master of this bass-heavy gloom then appeared from a back room, brandishing a remote-control. The music dipped to a tolerable level. He waved me immediately to the coatroom and into a workstation chair, where he introduced himself as Fabian, swept the cap off my head, and promptly demanded when last my hair had received any professional attention.

“September.” The answer may have been August, or even July, but I thought I must have got a cut sometime before the pneumonia.

“My internal calendar,” he declared, “is charted in six-to-eight week cycles and split between two clienteles on either side of the Channel. With a minor three-to-four week subdivision when I have to take a moment and consider what the hell my own hair is doing. So you say, September was your last cut, and I think, damn! I’ve had at least five styles since then and booked months into the summer season with my Paris clients.” He grinned. “Now…what would you like me to do with…this?”

I confronted the mirror as bravely as I could. “I like to wear it short. Very short all over–” And was suddenly made a mute captive as his silver-ringed fingers twisted into the mop of my hair.

“And when do you like to do that? Six months ago?”

“Well…I suppose so. Maybe.”

“Hair tells me no lies.” He pinched a lock in each thumb and forefinger, pulling it straight down against my temples. “How short is very short all over?”

“About…an inch…or an inch and a half?” I hazarded.

“What if I said I wanted to leave it longer in the front and on top?”

“I’d say go ahead, because if it doesn’t suit me, you can always cut more.”

His eyes turned sharply to the image of mine in the glass, focusing there with such fierce concentration that I lowered my gaze. Then he released my hair and pivoted neatly on one heel, grooving in time with the music’s hammering pulse as he strode away.

“Sold. To the sink, young Jonas!”

I confess I was a little afraid of him. He was very bright, and extraordinarily detailed, one of those people so vivid in both appearance and mannerism that you simply can’t have a good look at them without indulging the blatant stare required to take it all in. You don’t, though, not when they can see, because you know that they know they’re making you want to stare.

But back in the chair before the mirror, I gave in to the stare. He was quite tall, rangy and snake-hipped in lowslung black leather pants. The royal blue tee-shirt lacquered to his torso left little to the imagination, announcing enviably sculpted pectorals, banding smartly right above the chiseled contours of biceps. Had he told me he worked nights at this salon in order to train eight daily hours as a triathlete, it wouldn’t have surprised me. Cheese could have been grated on this man’s abdomen. And he was absolutely pale. Absolutely. Long, angularly-graven features and shockingly white-white skin. Shaven platinum-blond hair, artfully chopped and tousled, and deep, languid brown eyes that shone startlingly dark beneath brows and lashes colored like soft winter sunlight.

I felt uncomfortably bland sharing a mirror with his image.

He whisked the towel from my head and onto the workstation counter. “So how did you find the Salon YeF?” He pronounced it why-euh-eff.

“I just happened upon it…what does ‘y-e-f’ stand for?”

“Yvès et Fabian. Our Paris salon came first. We opened this one about three years ago.” The comb came out, raking smoothly from my forehead. “So you live here in the city?”

“Yes and no. I’m sort of in-between places.”

“I am constantly in-between places. Two seasons, then my partner and I swap salons. Lift your chin…a bit…”

He trailed, the comb coming to a slow stop near my crown. When it didn’t move further, I risked a glance upward. His hand was hovering motionless at the back of my head, and his eyes were resting very intently upon my reflection.

We looked at each other in the glass for a long, strange moment.

“You…” His voice faded into a short, uneasy chuckle. “I’ll be damned. Damned indeed. This really is…it’s uncanny.” He shook his head once, eyes dropping as he recommenced combing, then suddenly stopped and looked into the mirror again. “I’m sorry—since you walked in you’ve been reminding me of…this one bloke I used to know. You look just like him. I mean…just. And seeing your whole face, straight on…damn.” He went on staring at me with the curious half-smile of someone basking in a wonderful and unexpected insight. “Positively un-canny.”

“I look a lot like my mother and uncle.” I tried not to shrug, wishing he’d get on with it. A peek at the wall clock told me it was twenty minutes to seven.

“Then your mother, uncle, and you look astonishingly…Y’know, I never would’ve believed everyone does have a twin in this world…Completely bizarre.” He cracked another grin. His teeth were white, too. “I wish I could explain it better…but…well…” Fabian started to shake his head a second time, but checked that visibly and reached round my elbow to the counter. Scissors glinted, vanishing behind my skull. “Bring your chin down…just like that…thanks. So, all right.” He took a deep breath and resumed his work. “Let’s have standard stylist-to-new-client chit-chat, ’cause this is making me freak out more than I ought to admit, being that I’m now cutting your hair. As we speak. Yes. Okay. Tell me what you do, young Jonas.”

“I’m a musician.” The ‘young Jonas’ I couldn’t quite understand—he didn’t look so much older than me. But I didn’t have the energy to care.

“Re-ally. I dabble in music, myself. You go to many clubs around here?”

“No,” I said to my chest. I don’t go to clubs at all. “I’m on sort of an extended leave. Right now.”

“From music?”

“From the Symphony Orchestra.”

“Do my ears detect…the capital S, capital O?”

“They do, yes.”

“Oh. Well.” He laughed softly.

“I needed some time off. I had pneumonia.”

“Sorry to hear it. I’d imagine that could be problematic.”

“Extremely.” I hesitated, then: “Are you still…freaking out?”

“Extremely,” he echoed neutrally. The scissors, nonetheless, were snipping with rapid-fire certainty.

“May I ask you something?”

“Questions are never a bother. I reserve the right to keep answers optional.”

“Your…hair.” I wasn’t sure how to phrase this. “It’s bleached?”

“You’re blond enough already,” he said, giving a decisive snip, snipsnipsnip. “I can tell your hair’s never been chemically modified, and my professional ethics dictate I must advise remaining with natural color.” His fingers raked across the back of my head. “Unless…if you were interested in some strawberry low-lights…some, sparse…hm.”

“No, no—I don’t want my hair dyed.”

“Good.”

“I just wanted to know how you–”

“I don’t bleach,” he replied, matter-of-fact. “My parents come from Norway.”

“Oh.” I knew nothing about Norway save that it was cold and somewhere to the northeast.

“I moved from there when I was a boy. I don’t remember it much.” He stepped round to the side of the stylist’s chair, tilting my head a few degrees away from him. Comb and snipsnip snip. “When does your ‘extended leave’ come to an end?”

“Whenever I’m sufficiently recovered.” A painless lie. It might even have been partial truth. I didn’t yet know if I’d been written off entirely. They could still express interest in having me back.

The snipping stopped as Fabian glanced up into the mirror, then over his shoulder. I followed that look to see David’s overcoat swishing through the salon door, and said, “That’s my uncle to pick me up. Are we getting close to finished?”

Fabian arched a brow at me in the glass. “Patience, young Jonas. This is the artist’s studio, and you brought me a lot of hair.” He waved David into an adjacent empty chair, raising his voice over the music. “Take a seat, Uncle. We shouldn’t be too much longer.” He reached to the counter, wiping the scissors with a cloth.

“Good evening.” David nodded to the stylist’s half-turned back and sank into the indicated chair. His eyes wandered briefly about the salon as he tugged at his coat where its fabric had drawn tight across his knees. “I was thinking we could get a quick bite somewhere close to home once we leave here—I realized I haven’t been to the grocery store since I came to the house. Cooking there would make for an eclectic meal, to say the least.” He slipped off his glasses, folding them crisply into a soft leather case. “You must be starved. How’d you fare with the shopping?”

“Oh…well,” I said, grateful that the incriminating bags were in the salon’s coatroom.

David smiled tiredly, shoes feeling around until they found rest upon a rung at the chair’s base. His shoulders slid downward as he relaxed into the slick cushions. “Long day. The good kind. I’ve just been going nonstop. Thank Heaven for weekends.”

“Yeah.” It seemed like the thing to say.

“I spoke with your mother this morning.” David swiveled the chair from side to side. “And this afternoon. She–”

“Could we talk about that over dinner?” Careless as my uncle evidently was of a third party in the room, I didn’t much care to have a stranger privy to talk on more private subjects.

“What?” David cupped one hand to his ear and gestured vaguely with the other. “I’m sorry, I didn’t–”

I raised my voice. “I said, could we–”

Then, in the sudden beat or two of silence between CD tracks, a metallic chime rang out harshly, the clattering ping of scissors making contact with floor. My words fumbled and broke on the unanticipated quiet. Fervently hoping that Fabian hadn’t made some irremediable error, I flashed a look up into the mirror. The hairstylist’s gaunt profile was absolutely still, as if in a single, startled moment, he’d been converted from vibrant reflection to life-size photograph. His eyes were frozen on David.

I forced a polite smile as the next track gushed forth. “I told you I looked a lot like my uncle.”

“Right.” Fabian ducked smoothly, and straightened with the scissors, discarding them for a fresh pair. Those he took swiftly to their duty, his tone going oddly brusque. “Yes, I should say you do. Tip your head, like this—okay, that’s enough. Thank you.”

Minutes crept along on the face of my wristwatch. Four. Seven. Ten. Not another spoken syllable wrinkled the flow of the CD in progress. Fabian’s ‘chit-chat’ had thoroughly evaporated, and gradually I began to sense a peculiar friction crackling in the music-busy silence around me. There was tension living in the fluid accuracy of the stylist’s hands.

Fabian traded scissors for dryer.

I turned my eyes toward the glass above the next counter. David was sitting rigidly, his gaze inscrutably fixed on Fabian, narrow and somehow guarded. He barely blinked.

At last, the dryer was shut off, returned to its counter slot and exchanged for electric clippers. I lost sight of David for having to lower my chin for what felt like the hundredth time. When finished with the clippers, Fabian replaced those decisively and assumed a crossed-arm stance alongside my chair. The artist was clearly prepared to receive the patron’s compliments.

It was, indisputably, the boldest hair I’d ever worn. Pale-golden strands of varied lengths dusted my forehead, longish and carefree, struggling to tickle the rise of one cheekbone. I touched the shortish pieces on the back of my skull and nodded, if tentatively, to its architect.

“It’s…ah…well, different, than how I usually–”

“If you don’t like it, I’ll cut it back. The way you were talking about, originally.”

“No, no. It’s…I’ll just have to get used to it, is what I meant. I do…like it. Yes.”

Fabian moved to unfasten the smock. “It really does compliment your features.”

“I don’t know.” David had come to his feet. “It’s a bit...sloppy, wouldn’t you say?”

“What it is,” Fabian said, “is confident.” The smock was dashed away with a matador’s snappy flourish.

I had to agree with both. The image I saw wasn’t me. It was a self-assured man, one who knew reckless luck, and sometimes arrogance. Who knew he could have his way with a well-aimed smile. He wasn’t anyone I’d ever encountered in the mirror, before. But I didn’t mind borrowing his look. Or at least trying it on for a while.

“Are you sure?” David took a pace backward, studying me, his lips tight against a frown. “You won’t have it shorter?”

Fabian crumpled the smock into the seat I’d just vacated. He brushed his hands together and folded his arms again, regarding David. “Come on now, Uncle.” Acid leaked into his speech, a sort of stabbing indigestion of the voice. “Don’t tell me you never had a haircut like that.”

I was genuinely taken aback by the undertone of malice. The answering anger flaring in David’s eyes bewildered me, and for one impossibly protracted moment, I got the distinct impression he would have loved nothing more dearly than to take the balled fist from his coat-pocket and smash the flat, unfriendly smile that had edged onto Fabian’s mouth.

Instead, my uncle coolly re-wound his scarf and walked unhurriedly toward the reception desk. “Are you about ready, Jonas?”

“I just have to get my things.” I went after him, fishing the wallet from my jeans.

Waiting for the credit card machine’s authorization, I realized that my uncle and the hairstylist were each attempting to stare the other down. Stationary yet circling. It was positively surreal, not unlike the wordless aggression of two cinema cowboys who make eye contact in a raucous saloon—sworn enemies, poker-faced, never blinking as they maneuver through the oblivious crowd to meet on the street beyond for their fatal shoot-out.

The movie score in my head swelled, then died as the credit machine beeped and spit a receipt. I signed it with near-illegible haste, half surprised the charge had been approved at all.

“Until the next, then, young Jonas.” Fabian consulted a laminated calendar on the countertop as he slowly separated backing copy from receipt. “Five weeks is April sixth. I’ll expect you.” He slid the receipt across to me on the press of one forefinger. With it came a business card, which he tapped once, adding, “Make an appointment.”

“Thanks,” I said, if tersely, wanting only to put distance between my uncle and the object of his inexplicable hostility. David was already stepping for the door, car keys clinking into leather-clad palm.

Out on the sidewalk, I couldn’t help glancing to the salon’s window as we went past. Fabian’s figure was somewhat indistinct behind the glass, a hazy specter framed by a rain-dotted pane. He had an arm folded across his waist, the opposite elbow propped upon it, and as I looked up, the fingers of one long, white hand waggled in a lazy wave. Then before my eyes, he faded. I blinked. But he had melted into shadow. Just that hand remained.

3.

“Emporio Armani? Armani?” David was standing behind his car, looking at the shopping bags in my grasp as if they’d come from an alien solar system instead of the next block. Not interested in an explanation—or unable to tolerate one—he just shook his head and opened the boot, then went round to the driver’s side, got in, and started the engine.

I stowed my purchases and headed for the passenger seat, folding the salon receipt around the business card and adding both to my wallet’s new accumulation of sales slips. I wasn’t about to consider the disaster of personal economics they described. Not today, and not tomorrow. But David wasn’t so inclined to let impetuous designer excesses lie.

“Have you lost your mind entirely?” he demanded, pulling off the curb even as I shut the door. “How much did you spend?”

I attempted a tally, and gave up. “Enough to indicate I’ve lost my mind entirely. Or at least lost hope of maintaining a good credit rating.”

“Have you got any money at all?”

“Well, I still have thirteen or fourteen pounds from the twenty you left this morning.” I toyed with the wool hat in my lap for a few moments before pulling it on. “Thank you for that, by the way.”

“You haven’t got any money. No savings? Nothing?”

“Not really.”

He shot me a distinctly no-nonsense sort of look.

I yanked the cap down on my forehead. “No. I don’t, okay?”

David snorted lightly and turned a corner. “Your mother rang—for the third time this afternoon—to say she’d spoken with your physician, who sent your prescription to a pharmacy near my office. I went and got the stuff after work. I didn’t realize you were on medication, Jonas.”

I slouched wearily into the comfortable weight of my overcoat. “Why would you? And what difference does it make?” Truth be told, the fact that I’d forgotten the antidepressants at my parents’ house did occur at some point after showering that afternoon. Pill-popping before tooth-brushing had become a habit in the past six weeks. But I wasn’t feeling better or worse for lacking my daily dose, as far as I could tell.

“Your physician seems to think it’s important that you continue to take it.”

“I’m not disputing that. I just didn’t think to bring it. Thanks for picking it up.” I let my head loll against the window as the Mercedes glided into the evening traffic on Piccadilly. The Ritz’s sign blurred past in a dazzle of white-gold curves. “So how do you know that hairstylist?”

“I don’t,” he said flatly.

“David, I’m mentally ill, not stupid. He obviously knew you.”

“Perhaps he did.” Tone clipped, David’s gaze remained on the road while we came to idle at a traffic light. “And perhaps he didn’t. He reminded me of a person I used to be acquainted with.”

“That’s what he said about you.” My head seemed heavy on my neck. The cappuccino had worn off without warning, in that abrupt way particular to espresso drinks.

“It’s not something I want to get into, Jonas. I’d just rather you didn’t go back there.” Strangely, he sounded as weary as I felt, then reluctant as he asked, “You didn’t happen to get his name?”

“Fabian.” I sighed at the process of getting hand around coat to dig wallet from jeans-pocket. Taking out the business card, I angled it to catch the light rolling across the windscreen. Very clear black print on pale sea-green. “Fabian Jachs,” I read. “Salon YeF.” At the bottom were two sets of phone numbers, London on the left, Paris on the right, and an e-mail address for ‘inquiries’. I glanced obliquely at David. “So?”

“So what?” A shrug carried in his voice. “I never knew his name—the person he reminded me of, that is. Again, probably that fellow isn’t–”

“You were acquainted,” I broke in with amused disbelief, “and you didn’t have his name?”

“No.”

David accelerated, fairly flying past Green Park. The exterior wall blurred with our speed and the rain which was again drizzling the gray night with glimmery flecks of refracted street-light. Watching the park wall threatened a wave of vertigo. I elbowed off the passenger door to sit straight. Fitting the business card back into my wallet, I noticed a streak of handwriting on its reverse: a phone number. I hadn’t seen Fabian penning anything on the card before he gave it to me. Then, I’d been preoccupied with David’s attitude.

I shoved the wallet back into my jeans, seatbelt and layers of coat making that a lengthy process. I wanted to press David past his cagey answers, though didn’t think I could—not without any finesse or real persistence—until I had some food.

“Oh,” I said, my brain still sifting through the meager personal details Fabian had offered.

“Yes?” David looked over, briefly. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m tired and hungry. I haven’t had this much excitement in months, you know.” I covered a yawn with my fist. “What I was going to say was, he told me that he’s from Norway. Fabian. Or his parents came over from there, anyway. Was the–”

“Jonas,” David cut in, harshly enough to stop me short. “I said, this isn’t something I want to get into. Please.” Staring once more through the windscreen, he sent us cruising down the gradual slope of Brompton Road and on through Knightsbridge. His hands had gone very tight on the wheel. I could only imagine that a result of wishing they’d have been allowed to go ahead and bash Fabian in the mouth when they had the opportunity.

Ensconced a bit later at a pub on Dreyer Street with a corner table and a pint of brown ale, I found my eyes dreamily tracing the pseudo-arabesque on the frosted glass panel behind my uncle’s head. He’d been going on for some five minutes about a client or he was going to have to visit in Brussels next week. It was a matter of rock, some proposal about the variety and quality of stone for a construction site whose funding was being managed by his firm. I think he realized I wasn’t exactly following, for he eventually refrained from further details and got up to acquire a couple of menus from the bar.

I almost wondered why he’d chosen this pub—the Moore Arms was directly behind my grandparents’ house, a fixture for as long as I could remember—but had to figure he simply preferred to avoid a chance encounter with whoever might be there. The Moore was a favorite of Grandfather’s. If its rustically gloomy interior wasn’t playing host to three or four oldsters who’d known David as a lad, odds were there’d be at least one aged gent sipping scotch, ready to share his rambling stories and phlegmy chuckles with us. My grandparents had lived in this neighborhood, in the same house, for a good six decades. Even the locals of David’s age would probably have something interesting to say about them—they were an extremely social and well-liked pair right up until my grandfather took sick.

The pub around us was unremarkable and teeming with unfamiliar, uninterested faces, not to mention a generous fog of cigarette smoke. It made my throat twitch. I hadn’t been so sensitive to tobacco smoke before the pneumonia. Now, I often found it close to unbearable. Fortunately our table was one nearest the building’s side door. Fresh air had to come in, occasionally—or so I was determined to assure myself.

David resumed his seat and passed me a menu. He unfolded his own menu, glanced from it to me, and then pointedly at my glass of beer. “I seem to recall your mother telling me you aren’t supposed to be drinking while you’re on this medication.”

I mimicked his look at the ale which was a good third disappeared, and said, “I’m not drinking. I’m having a drink.” Ill-advised, perhaps. It was contributing substantially to my already light head. But I hadn’t been to a pub in at least six months, and damned if I wasn’t going to get a beer.

David either accepted this logic as sound, or too ridiculous to merit pursuit. He merely took a sip of his house Merlot and commenced perusing the menu. I did the same—at first seeing letters rather than words, just blinking a little.

“You and I,” he began, conversationally, “both know that you’re an adult. If while you’re here, you’re going to act like a child who requires constant supervision…”

I focused on the menu’s bold, blocky print, making phrases take shape. Sandwiches. Egg mayonnaise with cress. Prawn with lemon mayonnaise. Honey-roast ham with mustard.

“…put you in a car back to your parents’ as soon as we leave this…”

Jacket potatoes with choice of filling. Chunky coleslaw. Tuna mayonnaise. Cheddar cheese and crispy bacon. My question was, would the bacon be legitimately crispy? Doubtful, at best.

“…won’t stand by watching while you try to hurt yourself, but I certainly won’t be made to cater to you, Jonas. You can either behave like a responsible…”

Sausage and mash. Fish and chips. Beef and ale pie. Ah—all-hours breakfast! Double sausage, double bacon, double egg. Excellent.

“…wish the circumstances could’ve been different, though I am glad we’ll have some time togeth–”

“I think I’m going to have breakfast,” I announced. “Have you decided?”

David slapped the menu down. “Did you hear a word I just said?”

I looked at him impassively. “Yes, and at the moment I’m dead starving. Do you know what you want?”

I’m not too sure how I managed to make it to the bar to place our order, and back again, without tipping over. Heel-toe. I was starting to feel distinctly unsteady. David had a glower waiting upon my return.

“Let’s get some things straight, shall we?” He planted his elbows on the table and clasped his hands. Solemn countenance. “You intend to spend the weekend with me?”

“Well, yes. Though I didn’t think to bring any extra clothes—fortunately I bought some very nice undershorts this afternoon.”

“I could care less about your very nice undershorts.”

“Okay.” He was so serious, and oddly, I wanted to laugh.

“We have the next three days together, and I refuse to be held accountable for you. If you can’t function, if you require coddling and supervision, go back to your mother. She doesn’t trust me, anyhow.”

“If I’m an imposition, you shouldn’t have said ‘any time.’”

“It isn’t like that…” David’s jaw went taut. He loosened it with a generous draught of merlot, looking away into the noisy clutter of tables and bodies. “You’re welcome to stay however long you want. I don’t mind, and there’s certainly no shortage of space.”

I had a deep draught from my pint. I’d nearly forgotten how pleasant brown ale could be. “I don’t suppose,” I said, replacing the glass carefully on the table, “you’d be amenable to letting me stay on…for a week. Or longer?”

He reflected on that for a beat or two, then shook his head. “You’re under a doctor’s care, Jonas. You can’t travel an hour each way, twice a week.”

“And why not?”

“Why would you want to stay? I don’t understand.”

“I slept for over nine hours, at that house,” I said simply. “Which I have not yet done, at my parents’.” There was more to it. I just wasn’t certain how to articulate it, or if I wanted to.

“And what do you plan to do while you’re not sleeping?”

“I don’t know. Pester you to entertain me?”

The quirk of David’s lips was wry and fleeting. “I’m not that entertaining, nor, frankly, do I aspire to such a role. I also don’t understand why you would want to spend a week—or however long—in my company. You’ve never shown interest in having anything to do with me.”

I was struggling to keep a silly smile from emerging. No answer for that one.

“You weren’t such an ideal houseguest, you know. I was very glad when you left.”

This I waved off, though not without a prickle of guilt. “I’d been thrown out on my ass by the girl I thought I wanted to marry, Grandfather was just getting sick, and I had nowhere to go but to the home of an uncle my mother has always painted as the least desirable person on earth. She told me to speak to you as little as possible, but believe me, I needed no encouragement. I didn’t want to speak to anyone.”

“You accomplished that well. Believe me—had you slacked off one week on the groceries or cleaning to earn your keep, I would’ve been the next to throw you out on your ass.” David smirked and tipped the Merlot lightly. “What I mean is, when one has a houseguest, a relative especially, one does expect at least some effort on the guest’s part at being congenial. Evidently your mother didn’t care to teach you that, at least where I’m concerned.”

Again, I had no answer. In the past two hours, we’d traded almost as many words as during my entire period at his flat. I’d spent nearly a month in the second bedroom there, and offered absolutely nothing but shopping and laundry services to compensate him. And dinner, once in a while. Though my conversation was at all times markedly lacking, I am a decent cook. Until now I hadn’t realized my brooding silences and closed-door seclusion actually bothered him.

“Getting back to the subject at hand,” David went on, “you’re perfectly welcome to stay on at the house, but I don’t think it’s practical, except on a weekend. You’d have to travel–”

“It’s only an hour each way,” I said quickly, “and it’s not as if I have a hoard of other things to be doing.”

David shook his head, looking sadly exasperated. The pub’s cloudy-bulbed illumination brought out the silver threading his short, neatly-trimmed sideburns, licked at those darker red accents splashing throughout the predominantly deep-blond locks. Strawberry low-lights. I ruffled a hand through my own hair, trying to get a few of the longish pieces behind each ear. Most rebelled, slanting shinily across my eyes.

“Are you,” David asked, “or are you not, completely broke?”

“The second.” I swallowed beer. “Didn’t I say that in the car? Is it truly necessary to keep–”

“Yes,” he interrupted curtly. Solemn countenance, the sequel. “Yes. Because if you came with some idea of staying on here, with me, you can’t expect financial issues to simply go unsaid. You can’t expect that I’ll house and feed you, on top of paying your transportation and whatever other expenses, without so much as inquiring as to whether I’m willing–”

“You,” I said, evenly as I could, “offered your help.” Ale sloshed up toward the mouth of the pint as I set it hard back to the table. “You offered yourself. You sought me out.”

David remained quiet, watching my face carefully. His fingers curled about the wineglass’ stem.

I was uncertain of going further. It pained me even to think of outright begging his charity, and I couldn’t, not in that moment. The thoughts were whipping themselves together into a weight, sinking onto my chest. Squeezing at my lungs, making my heart beat a little faster.

“Do you,” I demanded finally, “feel sorry for me? Do you?”

“I feel sorry,” he answered readily, “that I have never known you. I would like to. And I feel sorry, as I said at your parents’ house, that it almost happened I’d never have the chance to. I honestly believe, if it’d been otherwise, perhaps you might not have been driven to…such desperate ends. Perhaps you could have turned to me.”

“Think quite a lot of yourself, I see.”

“What I think is that you’re very good at persuading the world you don’t.”

“That makes no sense.” The feeble retort was out before I could stop it. He had me, but I couldn’t let him hold me there. “You want to know me? Now? I’m a bloody ruin, David, okay? Know that. You’re familiar with the old saying, ‘half the man I used to be’? I’m more like ten percent the man I used to be, and the sum of that man’s worth was his talent: he was a damn fine oboist. But he wasn’t a nice fellow, not easygoing or a hit at parties, not particularly fun or funn-y, and neither am I. His good points died when this surviving ten percent talking to you now ought to have gone along with. What he left behind is me, the nasty chaff, all the unpleasant parts that could’ve been cancelled out forever, undiscovered, if I’d succeeded. What I did wasn’t a cry for help or attention. It was an attempt at a mercy killing, because I found the chaff couldn’t be separated, and it was taking over, eating up everything decent. I wouldn’t want to know me, not then, and especially not now. You expect me to believe you do? I’m a rotten bastard, nearly twenty-five years in the making, getting worse by the second, and I couldn’t stop that progression any other way, do you understand? I’m bitter and resentful and vengeful and I can’t go back, can’t have my friends or life or love, back how they were before this…personality cancer. Chemical imbalance? Balancing it pharmaceutically isn’t a cure, won’t give me what I had, not just like that. What’s been cut away to save the rest hasn’t left behind anything worthwhile. I can’t stand myself and right now…” I trailed irritably, twisting sideways in the awkwardly arm-less wooden chair, wedging an elbow on the planked tabletop. “Right now, I can’t stand you for reminding me.”

The bartender was wavering nearby, our dinner plates in hand. Her gaze shifted apologetically when we both looked at her.

“Put the damn things down already.” I shaded my eyes with one hand, feeling shaky. Unhappy and unhinged, as if by opening my mouth I’d foolishly ripped off a newly-formed scab and made it into a bleeding mess, the promise of an uglier scar.

When the bartender had retreated, David said slowly, “A woman once told me that a fair measure of how a man would truly treat her could be read in how courteously he dealt with bartenders and waiters.”

“I believe it was established I’m an asshole well before she came over here.”

Evidently unfazed, David replied calmly, utensils clinking out of their paper-napkin roll. “No, you established that. I don’t buy it, though I suppose it’s the easiest identity to take on. Anyone can be an asshole.”

His composure was supremely galling. “Only a select few of us do it professionally.”

“I don’t think you know who the hell you are.” He sliced butter into his potato.

“That isn’t a who. It’s a what. Spare me the self-discovery. I ran off that road already.” I picked up my head. The ale had gone straight to it. The pub’s interior was feverishly, greasily overheated, smoke scratching more insistently at my throat. “And who the hell are you? Why should we even be sitting together? You said you thought you understood. Now you’re saying you don’t think I know who I am—when, I’ll repeat, I certainly do—how could it be that you understand? What bullshit was that?”

“Jonas.” David pushed the second plate closer to me. “Put this in your mouth. You’re starting to sound like an idiot.”

I stabbed a shriveled piece of bacon with my fork. “You made me look like an idiot at that salon. Calling me sloppy. I’m not a ten-year-old. I’ll get my hair cut any way I damn well please. And you didn’t need to fetch my prescription. I could have done that myself. You don’t want to be my caretaker, then don’t gripe about it while acting like you are.”

David drained the wineglass, eyes very blue and sharp as they regarded me over the rim. Those eyes were so striking, their color so sure, so unwavering it couldn’t be dampened even by the poor lighting. I had such sudden hate for him, this well-dressed, imperturbable man across the table. This stranger who knew at once too much and nothing at all. I wanted to see him fallible, to know that there was a me, in him, hiding somewhere. That he’d broken, had lived through despair as he claimed. I couldn’t see any cracks. When he’d extended a hand to me, it was in earnest. I knew that. But I snapped, and he’d since put on a glove. I wanted to bite the fingers through it and taste the blood he seemed to be so certain we shared. Because I wanted to be certain, too.

“Will you…” I hesitated as the bartender reappeared with a basket of brown bread. When she’d gone, I looked to find David’s attention upon his dinner, and inhaled deeply before going on. “Would you…would it be too much to ask that you put me up at Grandmother and Grandfather’s house…for a while? I could clean and…do the shopping…” I faltered as he didn’t respond, didn’t glance up, just continued patiently working at the steaming pie before him. “I know how to cook. I’m not bad. I’ll…wash your car? Take care of the laun–”

“On two conditions.”

“You didn’t mention conditions, before.”

“You hadn’t asked yet.”

“Then what?” I hadn’t a clue what he could possibly want from me. I had nothing to give.

“Your oboe.” His gaze lifted, pinning mine.

My drippy second forkful of egg and sausage halted en route. “What about it?”

“I won’t have you just lying around all day. You need to start playing again.”

The fork clanged back to the plate, splattering my hand. “I can’t.”

David shrugged and lowered his gaze again.

“Fine.” I attempted to imitate his shrug and had to steady my forearms on the table’s edge. “When you come home from work and find I’ve collapsed a lung, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“The second condition is that you don’t see your ex-girlfriend while you’re here.”

I choked down the last of the ale. “Have no fear. She, also, would rather I were dead.”

“Condition two, sub clause,” he added, pointing his knife at my plate, “is that you eat. Healthily and often. Your mother was very concerned about that. Maybe if you manage to put on some weight I’ll introduce you to my gym. It’s a good outlet.”

I let my head rest against the wall and laughed faintly, distantly observing the sticky dots of brownish oil over my fingers and knuckles. “You...belong to a gym?”

“You don’t suppose I keep my girlish figure by eating stuff like this, do you?”

“Well…I hadn’t…thought about it.”

“Jonas, I don’t want to make this impossible for you, force you to ask me for things and whatnot. I do want to help and I understand how it can be to think that no one…”

I blinked owlishly at him without straightening my head.

“…came to me just before I’d reached the lowest low in my life, and did her best to make me see it was possible to go back, that it wasn’t too late to change directions—that I didn’t have to break your grandparents’ hearts and aliena…”

The eggs on my plate had begun to ripple. Unidentifiable textured flecks were swimming in the puddles of bacon runoff.

“…wouldn’t listen to her because I felt she didn’t know at all, didn’t know me anymore, or what I was going through. Nobody…”

Belly-dancing mash. Piss-yellow butter melting lumpily in its valleys.

“…had to learn for myself. I want that to benefit you, so you don’t have to go that far. So you don’t try what you tried, again, and no longer have the…”

My eyelids were giving me trouble. I rubbed them with my thumb, pushing thoughts around a fat and clumsy tongue. It wouldn’t cooperate.

“Jonas?”

I just smiled vaguely. “David?”

“Are you all right?”

“Oh yes.” I had a dim sensation of something jolting my elbow and hip.

David’s face closed in on mine. Even in those murky waters I could see his eyes. His hands were strong. The soft curtains of warm darkness shuddered and surged, then finally sighed, feathering into a solid shadow. Blotting it all out. And I took my bow, slipping gratefully under.

“–he’s fine. Sleeping. Yes. No, on the sofa in the living room. I’m in the study. I know what—why—just a damn second—just a—hey! I’ll lower my voice if you’ll lis—hey. Hey. Hey! All right. I’m not his babyminder, Margot. I don’t know what he had during the—I was at the office, I didn’t…He got a beer! What do you expect me to do, shake my finger and slap him on the wrist? I intend to—of course I—I’ll stuff a whole damn chicken down his throat as soon as he’s awake. Is that what you want to hear?”

Breathing into a clean cotton throw, I listened to the nearing sounds of David’s voice and agitated footfalls. Around me, the den was very black, lamps dark, blinds tightly fastened against the city night. My insides weren’t so content, but my outside was quite comfortable. Feeling almost insubstantial, I shifted a little on the wonderfully thick, pliant cushions. Happy nothing.

Light trickled over the threshold as the door sneaked open a crack. The far end of the sofa materialized. My boots’ toes made two roundish tents under a pastel-colored blanket. I had feet.

“Yes. I’m going right now. I’m–” David’s silhouette, portable phone sprouting from one ear. “He’s resting. First thing in the morning. Margot…You have my word. I will. Okay. Good ni—yes, I said I will. Take care of yourself, please. My regards to Paul. Yes. Good night.”

I pulled the coverlet over my face and shut my eyes. Shoes scuffed and the door closed. David halted beside the couch, and I could hear the fabric of his trousers sighing along with their wearer.

“You’re going home tomorrow.”

Pretending to be asleep, it seemed, would not improve the situation. I yanked the blanket back. David was standing quite still, outlined by the hall-light that was glowing past the door, a faceless shadow looking down on me. Wanting to sit up, but knowing better than to try, I peered into the dark overhead and cleared the rasp from my throat.

“I…would rather not.” It’s hard to be assertive in such a position.

“Give me a single good reason why I ought to care half a damn what you’d ‘rather not.’” His voice was soft and level, but the anger carried very plainly.

“They’ll take me back to hospital.”

“That may be the best thing for you.”

For the immediacy of that response, I didn’t doubt my mother must have said something about it while they were on the phone. An exhausted sort of panic knotted my stomach, and I felt like crying, but sobs required more energy than I could summon. So I just lay there, not as numb as I wanted to be, groping for any remotely convincing argument which might persuade David to let me stay.

“It’s not the best thing,” was all I was able to come up with. “It’s not.”

“I don’t want to discuss this.”

“Why are you all pissy at me?”

“Because,” he retorted, “you might have stayed here, and it might have been good for you, except you decided to spend the day behaving like a bloody fool! You scared me, and you terrified your mother—never mind the ten minutes she spent bawling me out, as if this were all my doing. Did you not eat today, at all?”

“I didn’t think about it.”

“If you can’t take even that much responsibility for yourself, you can’t be at this house.”

“David, I can’t go back to hospital. It’s not the best thing. Really it’s not.”

“I…” He hesitated. “I don’t…necessarily think it is…myself. But you can’t be here if I have to worry all the time whether or not you’re going to hurt yourself. I can’t do it.”

“Oh, I see, yes. As long as I’m far enough away that you won’t feel responsible?”

“I can’t help you when you won’t let me. It’s not my place to talk you into living. You either want to heal, or you don’t.”

“Of course I…” The truth he wanted was stuck on my vocal cords. “I’m here, aren’t I.”

“Why the hell are you here?” Such quiet frustration. A tonal tearing at one’s own hair.

“You asked me to give you a chance. I’m asking only for the same thing.”

“Jonas.” He groaned it, turning from the sofa with arms rising and folding behind his head, fingers making loose fists. “Damn you. I want to believe you.”

Everything suddenly tilted dangerously. I clamped a hand along the sofa-cushions, forcing my eyes open against the encroaching dizziness, and between gritted teeth, the right words came. “I want to believe you, too, David. That’s why I’m here.”

He gave no reply.

Silence ticked onward as I took measured breaths, fighting the easy path into unconsciousness.

“David?”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want to go home tomorrow.”

He sighed loudly. “Jonas…I don’t know if I can let you stay. I just don’t know.”

“I came because I was hoping you were telling the truth, that you might understand. I wanted to talk, and I wanted you to talk to me. But you can’t if I go to hospital again, and I can’t…” I pushed one leg over the couch’s edge. My shoe clunked limply to the rug, tangled in blanket. “…unless I eat something…so if you’ll help me as far as the kitchen…we can go from there.”