My Little Blue Dress (23 page)

Hayley is nodding in sympathy and this makes Bruno crazy. Because this . . . guy, this . . . stranger Mark Clark is brazenly holding the one conversation with Hayley Iskender that he himself, Bruno Maddox, would like to have more than anything else in the world, the one where he tells her about
his
own experience of dying older females and the strain of it all . . .

 

“And . . .” Bruno squeezed his eyes shut even tighter. “For some reason I started freaking out again and so I just gave them their drinks and walked off . . .”

 

“Just going to check out the art” he says and veers away without stopping. The white volcanic walls of Magma are hung with photographs of men's washrooms, cut up and spliced back together to make geometric patterns with the tiling . . . but Bruno cannot focus. He feels terrible. And eventually he has no excuse not to rejoin his companions.

 

“. . . and then eventually I went back . . .”

 

Hayley asks him if he is feeling okay. He says he is. Clark asks him about the art. Bruno describes it as “fine.”

 

“. . . and everything was fine but then . . .” The young man breathed deeply. Then Clark started
talking
funny.”

“Eet iz good to be out in zociety . . .” the small hairy man is saying in a bad French accent. It is as if he is mocking the whole scene, trying to distance himself and Hayley and Bruno from it “experiencing ze festive and cultural amuzements about ze town. Ze artverks zey are very exqueezite.”

Bruno starts to crumble. “Excuse me?”

“Ze use of color.”

“The use of color. Yes, what about it?”

“Eet is exqueezite.”

Bruno has no choice but to stare at him.

Why is Clark doing this? What is his agenda? Why is he trying to cut Bruno off from his world, his happiness . . .

 

“. . . and then I just sort of snapped, started giving Clark a hard time . . .”

 

Yes
.

I see him, looming above the smaller man and saying, “Look, do you know anyone here, Clark? I mean are these really your people? Are you sure you're not slightly out of your depth?”

And Bruno's limbs get in on the act. Without being asked, they are grabbing the lapel of Mark Clark's leather jacket and fingering it. “Oh these really are excellent threads. So hard to find a good pair of proper farm trousers and a decent graph-paper shirt. Did you make a conscious decision not to dress up at all?”

“. . . and he left . . .”

 

Clark didn't answer. Just immediately said, “Nice to meet you,” to Hayley and departed.

 

“. . . Hayley was slightly upset . . .”

 

Yes, I see her
.

I see her face go hard and curious, an oft-used psychic shark cage has enveloped her. “What happened there?”

The young man shrugs, suddenly lovable and at a loss, “I don't know. That was weird.” He looks at her sideways, tries to join her in her shark cage.

Hayley steps back, just enough to deny him entry, studies him afresh. “Is something wrong?”

He looks away, sips his Scotch, philosophical. She is seeing his noble profile, a captain going down with his ship. “I don't know. Sometimes I find these social situations difficult. Trying to balance the needs of different . . . groups.”

“What groups? There were three of us.”

“Yeah no I know. But that guy Theo Bakula's going to be here any second and you know he's a big newspaper nightlife guy. I was genuinely worried Clark might feel out of his depth. I guess I didn't handle it properly.”

“You grabbed him.”

“Look, Hayley . . .” he turns and lets her see the trauma
in his face for the first time. “Can we talk about something else? I'm feeling weird.”

Hayley blinks. “No,” she hands him her beer, “I'm leaving. Leaving you here with your group.”

“Er . . . okay. Can I come with you?”

She studies his face one last time as if considering his proposition, though most likely she is considering something else. “No,” she doesn't sound angry, but then she turns . . .

 

“. . . and then she sort of left as well . . .”

 

Yes
.

Off she goes, slouching quickly away through the colorful crowd of revelers, pale ponytail swinging like a metronome, narrow shoulders barely rippling the woolen whimsy of her cardigan . . .

 

“. . . I waited around for a while . . .”

 

Yes
.

I see him waiting around, alone on a stool in the Krakatoa Lounge, a quiet whisky, no sign of Theo Bakula . . .

 

“. . . and then I came home.” Bruno's horrible eyes snapped open. “I didn't sleep well at
all
last night,” he croaked. “I just . . . I just think the strain of all this is beginning to tell on me. The last few weeks I really started thinking that maybe
all this was manageable but . . . yesterday when you coughed up blood . . . it just all sort of came crashing down again and I'm not sure I can cope anymore. I'm exhausted.”

I was exhausted too, I realized. The boy's entire narrative couldn't have lasted more than fifteen seconds but the intensity of my visions had dragged me through the whole grueling evening. Suddenly I could barely keep my eyes open.

“It's time to
do
something about all this,” he continued. “This is an untenable situation.”

I know,
I pulsed.
You should kill me
.

Bruno stiffly unfolded his limbs and stood up. “I don't know why I'm talking to you,” he muttered. “I have to call Hayley.”

Tell her about me
, I pulsed.
You know her. She'll be in here before either of us can say Jack Robinson, taking stock of the situation, inventorying my possessions, supervising the ambulance men as they cart me off . . .

I closed my eyes, exhausted.

“Hi, Simon, can I speak to Hayley? Thanks.” I heard Bruno shift his weight from foot to foot. “Hey.”

“. . .”

“I'm okay. Look I'm calling to say sorry for last night. Yesterday was not an easy day for me.”

“. . .”

I felt him glance over at me. “Um . . .”

Tell
her
, I pulsed him as hard as I could.
I'm serious. Tell her about me, Bruno.

Now.

Do it.

End this
.

“Well . . . nothing specific. Just a difficult day. Look, that's not important. What are you doing right now?”

“. . .”

“Are you sure?” Limply his hand raked his hair. “You don't want to quickly get together?”

“. . .”

“Okay. I'll call you tomorrow.”

He hung up. I opened my eyes. Bruno was
glaring
at me.

Back to Plan A!
I pulsed, seizing the moment.
C'mon! Kill me! I just cost you your girlfriend. Get steamed. Just push me off the bed! If the fall doesn't kill me then just leave me on the floor to starve. Tell the police you came back and found me dead! Do it!

He didn't though.

My only punishment for once again destroying my life was to be sent to bed without any dinner, or lunch for that matter.

Which is where I am now, tired and depressed.

Because you want to know the worst thing of all? The worst thing of all is that my lungs are
fine
. Not only have I not coughed up even a
speck
of blood since the afternoon before Magma but my breath has lost its usual rasp. I guess the material I coughed up must have been the obstruction that was causing the rasp, and now I don't have it anymore. I was dying just long enough to provoke Bruno's relapse, and then I stopped.

It strikes me as the sort of thing the devil might do.

July 5th—Monday

Hayley was, or claimed to be, too busy to speak to Bruno when he called her mid-morning but she rang back just
before lunch and agreed to meet him this evening, and he's out there right now, intending to spend the night.
*

Around threeish he called Mark Clark, whom he would have to see anyway this evening at work, and apologized. He blamed his meltdown at Magma on “family troubles” and Clark, as far as I could tell, forgave him swiftly and without reservation, which puzzled me initially until it came back to me that Mark Clark was raised in Kansas City, Missouri, part of the great American countryside. As I know from my childhood, people in rural areas grab each other by the lapels about five times a day. Country folk are quick to ire, but just as quick to forgive. It's a different code out there.

Anyway, so where do we stand? How is Bruno? Is he still insane? Did the thing at Magma provoke a full relapse to the agonies of last month or was it just a temporary thing?

All good questions, reader.

The truth, as always, is quite complicated I reckon.

July 6th—Tuesday

I mean he's definitely going through some weird stuff mentally, for which I am obviously to blame.

“Good morning” were Bruno's first words this morning, and I was instantly privy to a picture . . .

. . . of Hayley having not quite forgiven Bruno, of there being a certain downcast quality of her eyes when they're
together, which suggests to the boy that she has not forgotten what happened at Magma, but has instead filed the information away for future use . . .

Actually look, a quick word on these pictures I've been seeing when Bruno talks.

I think they're just my imagination.

I mean of course they are.

Telepathy and clairvoyance aren't real. They're fake.

I think I've just been imagining I know what's happening in Bruno's life because my own is so drab and impoverished. I'm sure it's something an enormous number of old women do. From here on in if I see any more silly pictures I'm just going to keep them to myself, stick to the facts.

And this evening's fact is that Hayley has to work again and, in a coincidence, that guy Theo Bakula called up and Bruno went to meet him this evening instead, returning here to sleep around midnight. I promise.

July 7th—Wednesday

“So I've got a scheme,” said Bruno this morning as I ate my cereal. He was standing between me and the window, his silhouette swaying restlessly in the morning glare. “Last night I went to meet that guy Theo Bakula. He was seeing some friends in a bar uptown. Fancy place. All his friends were sort of prominent media people. There was some eighteen-year-old guy who's just made a film about cripples. A guy who writes a column for
Rogue
magazine. Some actress. And that guy Gordon Gundersson, you know him?”

Yes. Gordon Gundersson's a book author who has his own television commercial. I see it all the time. Gundersson is young and well built with longish sandy hair and he sits at a wooden table on a little swivel stool against a white background poking at a portable computer. “I don't know how this [bleep]ing thing works” is I think what he mutters, then he types a few words with two index fingers, grimaces, types a little more, then more . . . then
more
. And before you can say Jack Robinson the guy is typing
unbelievably
fast, really working himself into a lather until he jabs the return key with a flourish, swiveling to the camera and saying, “But it knows how I work.”
*

“Anyway,” Bruno swallowed and started idly pushing me back and forth like you do a baby in a pram, “they all had quite a lot of money . . .” he broke off and regarded me, wondering if I was taking any of this in, “. . . and none of them work in an office. They all work from home. And what I was thinking was that maybe if I started doing something
similar
, doing journalism or something, bring in a few hundred extra dollars a month . . . maybe things would get easier around here. I mean we could get an air conditioner,” he gestured at the window, “and I could install some railings to maybe help you get about the place on your own if I'm not here . . . .” he blinked thoughtfully down at my legs, “or even get you an electric wheelchair, even a
nurse
 . . . if I made enough money.”

My lips moved and no sound came out.

“Anyway, that's my scheme,” he said, turning to leave. “I'm going to try to make some more money. And if it doesn't work out then I'm probably going to have to do something else.” He was out of sight now, through the door, and added as an afterthought: “Because I can't keep living like this.”

Fair enough,
I pulsed as from next door came the sound of the 'phone being raised, the beep of dialing.