Authors: Massimo Russo
He approached Will and saw that he was observing him, but there was none of the curiosity he expected. He liked what he saw in the boy’s eyes and knew he could lose himself in them and leave pain behind.
“Hi.”
With one simple word, Will touched Alex’s heart and it began to beat rapidly, generating feelings he hadn’t known existed.
“What’s your name?”
“My... er... my name is Alex.”
Embarrassment overwhelmed his initial boldness, hindering the natural movements of his body. He looked like a robot whose basic settings hadn’t been keyed in.
“My name’s Will.”
“Hi, Will.”
“Would you like to be my friend?”
“Er, well, I think so.”
“Good. We’re friends then. Do you want a hot chocolate as well?”
“Thank you, Will.”
“When Grandpa comes back, he’ll be pleased to see I’ve got a new friend.”
“I’ve just come from the restroom. Your grandfather told me he wasn’t feeling very well and to take you home right away.”
“Why isn’t he feeling well? Where’s he gone?”
“Home. He didn’t want you to fret, so he asked me to look after his favorite grandson.”
“But why didn’t he come and tell me himself? I could have helped him.”
“A doctor is already taking care of him, but it’s nothing to worry about. Let’s go, I’ll take you home. He’s there waiting for you.”
He saw in Will’s eyes a mixture of hesitation and fear that he hadn’t intended to cause.
“Come on. We’re friends now, right?”
“Yes. But Grandpa told me to wait for him.”
“I tell you what. Let’s go to the restroom and look for him and you’ll see with your own eyes that he’s not there.”
That seemed a more than acceptable compromise to Will.
“OK.”
They walked to the restroom. It was quite big and completely empty.
“See? I was in here with him, and so as not to get you all upset, he left by the back door to go home and wait for the doctor. We’d better make tracks. You don’t want him to start worrying, do you?”
The boy was persuaded. He looked at his new friend again as Alex reached out his hand to dispel the last doubts that troubled the boy’s mind. Finally, Will smiled. He took Alex’s hand and allowed himself to be led into his world.
“OK, Will. Let’s go. We don’t want to keep someone who loves you waiting.”
“When we get home, will you come in and watch television with me?”
Alex’s heart swelled with tenderness at the ingenuity of the question. For a second, he was tempted to change his plans, but he had postponed the appointment with happiness for too long. Now it was almost within his reach, he followed his desires and smothered all the scruples that still tried in vain to stop him.
Chapter 36
Jonathan woke up. He had a ferocious headache. He could hardly remember where he was because of the pain beating at his temples. The dark walls of the room were unfamiliar. He heard voices overlapping each other in the distance. The floor where he lay was cold.
It took a minute for his vision to clear. He couldn’t make anything out around him, but from the unmistakable smell of detergent, he thought he must be in a storeroom. He tried, with difficulty, to stand up. He touched his forehead; he felt blood on his skin and as his memory gradually returned, he realized what had happened: someone had hit him on the head and then shut him up in there. He remembered trying to wipe off the drinks that a waitress had carelessly spilled on his clothes; he remembered looking in the mirror, and then everything had gone black.
He didn’t know how long he had been there. The most likely explanation was that he had been mugged by a thief. He fumbled in his pockets, but his wallet was still there. He took it out and checked the contents; not even a cent was missing. Nor had his watch and a chain he was wearing been stolen. The only thing that had been taken from him was his peace of mind and in exchange he had received a violent blow.
He tried to open the door and escape from this awful experience; Will was probably looking for him. The owners of the bar would be consoling him and reassuring him that all would be well. The door was locked from the outside. Panic began to mock him, making him feel a dread he was hard put to check. He began to hammer on the door, but the answering silence shattered any hope of being heard by anyone on the other side. He wondered where he was, but reason helped to keep him calm: whoever his attacker was, he couldn’t have dragged him out of the bar without being noticed. He had to be in a room inside the bar. He felt for his mobile, hoping that his assailant hadn’t been after that small but ingenious gadget.
He sighed with relief when he found it in his jacket pocket and immediately dialed 911. Never had he wanted to hear a siren so much as he did then, since it would mean help was on the way, but the noise he heard wasn’t the one he had hoped for. An ugly premonition crossed his mind, but he didn’t want to believe it was possible. He looked at the display again; no signal was available to make calls.
“Damn!”
The room had to be in the basement for there to be no mobile connection. Panic began to cloud his judgement despite the faint light that entered through the cracks around the door. His heart started to race, hoping for the comfort that could only be found in a way out that was, at that moment, in short supply. He grabbed the handle again, but however much he pushed and pulled, the door wouldn’t budge. He thought that the bastard who had shut him in had doubtless jammed the door with a stick or a chair.
“Help! Help! Can anybody hear me? I’m in here!”
He heaved so hard that he heard the hinges creak, but they didn’t give way. Using the display on his phone, he aimed light at his prison and hoped against hope he wouldn’t be trapped for too long. He sucked in deep breaths in an attempt to stay calm. He glimpsed some tins and brooms; nothing that was of any help. Then he heard noises nearby: a door banging, footsteps, water running and the heavy sigh of someone looking for a bit of privacy. He began banging violently on the door again.
“Help! I’m in here. Help me!”
“Who’s in there?”
“Help! Someone’s locked me in here!”
“Hang on! I’ll open the door.”
The man took hold of the handle and pulled, but without the right tools it would have taken the strength of ten men.
“I can’t get it open.”
“Please! Get me out of here!”
“I’ll go and get help. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”
Jonathan heard footsteps receding. He was alone again with his fears. The thought of Will kept him from collapsing, overcome by the stress the situation was forcing him to cope with. A few minutes later, he heard the man’s voice talking to the person he had called to help him open the door. He knocked before speaking.
“Hello in there! Everything’s all right. I’m Mark, the owner of the bar. We’re going to try and get you out.”
“Please hurry. My grandson will be looking for me and he’ll be scared out of his wits.”
He heard the sound of tools striking the door and at last light flooded the storeroom. Jonathan rushed out.
“Thank you. Thanks a million.”
He dashed down the corridor and into the room where he had left Will. Their table was occupied, but not by Will. Sitting there were two girls chatting like close friends. Fear was in his voice; his heart was forcing his brain into overdrive.
“Where’s Will?”
The two girls shot him an inquiring look, alarmed by his vehemence.
“Sorry?”
“A boy was sitting here. Where did he go?”
“We haven’t seen any boy. We’ve been sitting here for more than half an hour.”
“Half an hour! Oh God!”
“Are you all right, sir? You’re bleeding!”
“I left my grandson sitting here while I went to clean up in the restroom and someone hit me and shut me up in a storeroom!”
“Please, try to calm down.”
Jonathan’s voice was loud enough to carry to the people close by and they were listening to the conversation, curious about the stir. The old man addressed the same waitress whose clumsiness had forced him to leave the table.
“Listen, miss! My grandson was with me. You remember him, don’t you? Where did he go?”
“Yes, of course I remember him. He left a while ago.”
“Left? Where did he go?”
“He went with a man he’d been talking to.”
“Which man? Where did they go?”
His shouts filled the room, and people stopped chatting and started a whispering that rustled around the bar.
“Please calm down. We try not to interfere in other people’s business. It didn’t occur to us to wonder why a man and a boy left together. Anyhow, they seemed acquainted.”
“That’s impossible! Who was that man? My Will doesn’t know anybody! Nobody I tell you!”
Hysteria was making him lose his mind. He was on the point of leaving to look for a clue to lead him to his grandson.
“I know him.”
Jonathan stopped in his tracks and turned to face the man who had freed him.
“You know him? Who is he? Tell me!”
“He’s a regular customer. A bit of a weird fellow, a loner but peaceful enough, except for his hatred of gays. He sat at the boy’s table and it really looked as if they knew each other. They went to the restroom for a minute and then they left the bar. Your grandson went willingly and they were holding hands so no one thought anything of it.”
“No! Will! Where does this man live? Please tell me!”
“Unfortunately, I have no idea. He comes in here almost every day but doesn’t say much.”
“He’s the one who hit me! Then he kidnapped Will! Oh Will! Damn him! Damn him! It’s all my fault!”
Jonathan lurched out of the bar without waiting for a reply. His heart was pounding like crazy. He was so afraid that his legs were trembling. He looked around for a ray of sunshine that would light the darkness enveloping his mind. The crowd of pedestrians milling on the sidewalk blocked his view. For a second, he feared his heart would stop and that cardiac arrest would relieve him of a pain that was too agonizing to bear. He could feel his strength draining away. His phone ringing gave him the energy to hang on for a moment before he lost consciousness once again.
Chapter 37
There are things that defy explanation. There are subjects that can’t be tackled without prior preparation, and challenges that can’t be won without the necessary willpower. Most of the time, the mind is incapable of comprehending situations, and takes refuge behind questions that are always too difficult to answer, but too important to conceal behind a memory.
Norman searched for a logical explanation to what his eyes were showing him, spying on the mirror image that had been well known to him until a few hours ago. He could no longer hear anything, not the noises of an echoless room, not even the voices that were always in his head so that he wouldn’t be alone. He didn’t feel the fatigue brought on by all the searching and encounters of a day that had begun like so many others, that had continued with a strange premonition and whose ending was yet to be written. What he was looking at wasn’t much help. All the knowledge he had gained was useless at that moment, and so was his sense of logic, usually so open to plausible solutions and never restricted by preconceived ideas and prejudice. The only thing he could feel was his heart throbbing, transforming his attempt to reason into a big question mark, which grew larger with every beat, almost as if to challenge the intelligence of a human being who was too ambitious to back-track but still bound by a worldly understanding of things. He felt no emotion. For a long moment, he was alone amidst everything else: there was no air, or light, or body. There was no color, no time, no space. There was only the essence of himself; a conscious being facing a mirage. In one fell swoop, memory, logic and knowledge had been wiped out. Everything seemed scattered on an ocean that was too vast to cross. He was even unable to recognize reality, if reality truly exists in illusion.
He approached the mirror without noticing the steps that urged his legs forward, almost as if apologizing for making the movement. The man opposite him stared back; the tired eyes and bearded face gave him a haggard and unhappy air. His thin body clearly showed how he had lived his life in pursuit of a dream that was too great to attain. He was drawing closer too and had no intention of making a sound. They both looked frightened. Norman stopped, making the stranger stop too. He raised his hand in greeting, and received in return a gesture that was identical but reversed. He tried to conceal himself in curiosity, but again the man in the mirror responded. He moved closer still, until he was a few inches from an answer he would have preferred to reject. Now he was certain. He thought for a moment that incredulity would still refute reason, and he realized how hard it would be to swallow the truth. In front of him was his future, in the image of his older self. His eyes, forehead and cheeks were scored with wrinkles that imprisoned every trace left by time, as if imprinting its unmistakable passage.
They continued to stare at each other. Both were now certain. Norman was looking at his aged self in the mirror. Many things had seemed ridiculous in his life and especially that day, but this took the biscuit. He wondered what it meant, as if there were a logical explanation. He marveled that he could still believe he would find logic, somewhere in this absurd state of affairs, that would explain everything. He concentrated, but nothing could distract him from what his eyes were telling him: he was old. The image was at least thirty years older than he was now. Or rather, than he thought he was.
He tried to erase the unpleasant sensation that was trying to convince him that the truth had caught up with him despite his many futile attempts to dodge it. He fingered the beard, something he had never grown, and felt clearly the furrows lining his face. He thought he was going crazy and that he would die from one minute to the next, but what most amazed him was the calmness that kept a check on his maddened state of mind. The look in those eyes was dull, as his had never been, and he didn’t recognize it. He averted his gaze from the mirror to his hands in an effort to find some kind of answer in the real world, not the imaginary one that a reflection creates by trickery. He clearly saw the liver spots on his skin, a sure sign that a life was moving towards a pre-ordained end.