The Inside Out Man Read online

  Why not? As I said this, I was strangely aware of a row of mannequins, silver hands on silver hips, like aliens from some foodless planet. I’ve got plumbers and electricians coming to the house before the two of you move in, and I thought we could get away for a bit in the meantime. All three of us. Have some fun, you know?

  For how long?

  A few weeks, maybe. See where things take us.

  The man behind the counter played his best card, opened the cabinet and handed her the bracelet. Then he looked at me. I helped Jolene with the clasp, and told her right away that it looked gorgeous on her. I wanted to show her: spontaneous, exciting—a man who didn’t just talk, but meant what he said and delivered. A man who needed to get away for a bit, take time out. At which point she turned to me, bracelet on wrist, kissed me in front of the clerk, and said, Paris, yes, the most marvellous idea, Bent, let’s do it.

  I wasted no time, and next day our tickets were booked for exactly a week on. I also did a bit of homework on where we’d be going and what we’d be doing. We’d be staying at La Trémoille Hotel the first three nights. I reserved a rental Mercedes and mapped out a route of the city. A wad of brochures offered colourful pictures and information, though nothing in France looked or sounded real to me. Each building was like something out of a fairy tale. There was the walled city of Carcassonne, its witch’s-hat stone turrets pitched as “an unforgettable sight, best beheld at dusk!” A page over, and no less fantastical, was a picture of Mont Saint-Michel, where tides played strange tricks along the shore, making Celts believe that the abbey-island was a sea tomb holding souls of the dead.

  I imagined how Jolene, Edgar, and I would spend our days. We’d walk around and explore, and take pictures of ourselves. We’d waltz in and out of bistros, and bouchons in Lyon, and fumble our way around the strange culinary customs. Four weeks would be enough; I needed to ensure that there’d be time for me to air the house when we got back, toss all the crap, and get things in order. There was a home I needed to get ready, and I didn’t want as much as a whiff of the past to intrude.

  It had to be a clean start for us all.

  48.

  The blue swimming pool was like a portal to another world—an inverted place where the rain falls up and everything happens with good reason. I stepped to the edge of the water, watched a while as the sun danced on its surface.

  Then I held my breath and dived.

  The coldness pierced me. Every one of my internal organs seized. My lungs went stiff. The low groan of water pulsed in my ears as a series of images flashed past: Leonard at the bar, sipping his tea with that perma-grin on his face. The locked wooden door, a shadow flickering—Leonard again, big-bearded by now. Leonard hungry. Leonard angry. His fists red and swollen. Jolene’s party, the writhing contortion. The dog being eaten by worms, not fifty metres to my left …

  I resented my clogged mind, wished I could leave it at the bottom of the pool. I couldn’t afford to haul my baggage along with me. Not any more. I had a real opportunity here, and I needed to put the shit behind me. Otherwise it would all be for nothing. Sooner or later, she’d see right through me, see that closed door in my eyes. Cos that’s the thing; you can hide plenty, but you can’t hide a closed door.

  My arms and legs wading through the blue, I snorted bubbles that rose to the surface before I burst into the light and warmth. The images in my head evaporated in the sun, and for a rare and exquisite moment, I thought and felt nothing.

  And then, the man in the coat.

  He stood staring from the shadow of a nearby tree as if he’d grown from it, freshly sprouted like a tall, toxic mushroom. I’d almost forgotten I’d seen him in the rain some weeks before. I’d either convinced myself he was part of a dream, or he hadn’t ticked quite enough boxes right then to be banked as a full-on memory.

  I blinked twice, like a character in a bad movie.

  Still there. Unmoving. His hands deep in the pockets of his coat, his head tipped low beneath a black fedora.

  Hey! I yelled, snapping out of a trance. Hey, you!

  I swam to the edge of the pool, hauled myself out, yanked a towel off a deckchair, and paced towards him. Above his head hung a crooked branch, like the long hand of a puppeteer suspending him with invisible strings. Finally, as if by the will of that same puppeteer, he turned sideways and vanished behind the house.

  Wait! Wait a minute! Stop!

  As I sprinted, my foot caught the edge of the poolside paving, splitting the skin. The pain hit me, shooting up my leg. My knee gave in and I careened into the outside wall of the house. Blood gushed from my foot, and I hobbled to the corner of the house, hoping to catch at least one last glimpse of the man. But the man in the coat was gone, slipped off somewhere else, to another nook, another shadow, out of sight.

  Blood swirled down the bathtub drain. I applied antiseptic ointment, bandaged my foot, popped two pills for the pain, read the insert, and popped another for good measure. Peering out the bathroom window, I thought I’d catch him somewhere. But nothing. Just trees. Hedges. Lawn.

  Letting the guy have the run of the estate wasn’t going to work. I needed to know who he was, what he wanted, or, at the very least, where he came from. I threw on a t-shirt and trainers, went downstairs, and, in spite of my foot, marched across the front garden, all the way to the boundary.

  The estate was bigger than I’d imagined, and its wide circumference took me in and out of so many bushy nooks that the house soon fell out of view. I reached a stream that gurgled through the rotted stem of a tree that had fallen some years before. I crossed a stretch of wild orange and white flowers where a preoccupied swarm of bees hovered and buzzed. Finally, at the furthest end, I found myself in a wooded section on a slope, blanketed in brown leaves. Untended. Forgotten.

  The world went dim and grey. Black and fraying trunks of trees shot skywards in all directions while black and fraying birds circled above them, guarding nests that looked like battered wicker baskets. It was another world and another time: the backwoods of Salem, maybe, where conniving Abigail and unsuspecting Tituba may have danced with the devil.

  I stopped. Spun round.

  I’d been walking for a while, and now I was lost. Every tree looked the same as its neighbour, either dead or dying. All I could do was continue, which I did for another ten or fifteen minutes before reaching a wire fence. The edge of the estate. I continued along the fence, but nary a sign of anyone anywhere.

  Who was that man at the pool? At the window, in the rain? Did he know about Leonard and me? Was he part of a greater con? Hell, maybe he was directly in touch with Leonard. I hadn’t even looked inside that room—Leonard might have everything he needed in there. A radio. A telephone. A wall of TV monitors, like segments of a fly’s eye, each unique angle capturing my every move. And Jolene? What about her? What if I just came out with it and asked, would it turn out she knew the man in the coat? How well did I really know Jolene—

  Oh, my God, what are you doing?

  A woman’s voice, sudden and clear enough to make me yank my head around. I stumbled and gripped the fence. My eyes spun in their sockets, so that I saw every fine detail in the bark of every tree. Every twiggy shadow, each matted lump of leaves.

  I waited for someone to introduce herself, or for a gust of wind to emulate a voice, but nothing came. I persuaded myself it was nothing but the wind, brushed the whole thing off, and walked on, despite my aching foot.

  I soon realised I was closer to the house than I’d thought. I’d circled the estate and landed alongside the large lake Leonard had shown me. I trudged up the slope, the pain sharpening with every step. All around me, as I looked at the world, the worst of it seemed to seep from its pores. The green, sun-loved lawn rolling out before me looked artificial. The white clouds in the sky were like puffed-up cowards. Their shadows moving across the ground seemed desperate, in a race to be more than merely shadows. And in the distance, between the shadows and the clouds, there was the house—a huge prehi
storic animal, its many rectangular eyes watching, without apparent care.

  49.

  An alternative dream-induced reality: I hadn’t met Leonard at the bar. I hadn’t gone up to the house at all. I was still sitting at the piano at Ten To Twelve, playing on autopilot as the improbable scenario of being called out to the countryside played out in my head. I could see Coby at the bar, smiling back at me. I could smell the stale smoke on the walls. The oil-soaked baskets of deep-fried snacks. A dozen cheap perfumes at war with one other.

  This, I knew, was all real. The rest was bullshit.

  How could I have been such an idiot, to think some rich guy had come up with a plan to make me his au pair? On stage now, starkly aware of this revealed reality, I caught sight of Jolene at the back, by the bar. She waved, and gave me a worn-out smile. My heart flooded with love, as well as pity. She’d been my wife for years now. Edgar, our son, was at home. And I no longer lived in some shitty flat in the Crack Radisson—hadn’t for years. I now lived in the suburbs. We had a three-bedroomed cottage. A double garage. A coffee machine we fed with pods. A big flat-screen TV. We had insurance. We paid our bills. We went to gym twice a week. We were doing okay, if not a bit bored by the general repetition. We were secretly disappointed by one or two compromises and missed opportunities … And as for Coby, leaning on the bar and watching me—well, Coby was just some bargirl I’d been dreaming of sleeping with for months now. Last thing I wanted was to wake up next to her in the morning (I loved my wife, I loved my son), but I did want to screw her just once, and hard, to slay the fantasy for good, mostly just to get on with my life—

  I woke up with a gasp.

  In Leonard’s bedroom, in Leonard’s house.

  The phone was ringing.

  The dream images withdrew into their mental hiding spaces as the morning sun filtered in through the curtains. My mouth was dry, my sheets soaked with sweat, and the phone was still ringing—bleating, really, like a scared, injured animal. I picked it up.

  Lord of leisure!

  I sat up in bed, cleared my lungs with a cough. Took a few seconds before allowing the world into my unready consciousness. Somehow, I could still feel the pressure of the piano keys on the tips of my fingers. I turned my hand into an upside-down claw to inspect them. There were still purplish splotches under my nails. This time, the harder I pushed down, the more my fingers hurt. But how? From playing too much piano in a goddamned dream?

  I asked Jolene where she was.

  You just gonna let a lady wait outside all morning, or are you actually gonna invite her in?

  Phone in hand, I scrambled out of bed and hobbled to the window, where I slid back a curtain with a bruised finger, and blinked in the bright daylight. Nothing out of the ordinary. No black hole in the sky or car-swallowing crack in the earth. My eyes adjusted and the world took shape, line by line and colour by colour. If Jolene really was out there, I still couldn’t make her out.

  Hey, Liberace. You there? Her voice floated up from the direction of the distant gate.

  My mind scrambled for a quick solution: I couldn’t let her stay out there, but no persuasive story was presenting itself. If I let her in … well, there was Leonard. He might start his shit. Banging. Kicking. Yelling. Unwillingly, I buzzed the gate open and went to the bathroom. I splashed cold water on my face, dabbed it with a towel. Then I stepped into Leonard’s wardrobe where I pulled on a yellow Polo golf shirt and a pair of cargoes. I ran a matte pomade through my hair, combed it, sprayed cologne across my chest, and returned to the window.

  There she was—a small piece of the outside world—entering. Her white VW came into view, bouncing along the gravel road towards the house. I whipped away from the window and walked briskly to Leonard’s door. Crouching down on my hands and knees, I peered through the slot but all I saw was a patch of green wall. I considered speaking out, warning him to keep his trap shut (or else, or fuckin’ else, you hear me?)—but decided it was better that he didn’t know she was there at all.

  Pray that the devil sides with the damned.

  I hurried away, went downstairs, swung the door open. Jolene was already on the porch, wearing big brown sunglasses and an ink-blue dress. Her smile suggested she’d already got at least six important things done that day. Her lips brushed my cheek and she sashayed in, teasing me again for having left her waiting out there so long. I stuck my head out the door, scanning the garden for my man in the hat and coat. I checked every tree trunk and shadow as if each were a potential conspirator.

  … did you hear me?

  I whipped around. Sorry?

  I was saying … this house—her voice rose, then it dropped—just when I thought I’d seen the last of it, here I am again. It’s as if the house always finds a way to bring me back, to keep me here forever. Like one of its ghosts.

  I feigned a smile. The house has ghosts?

  Of course it does. She took off her sunglasses and said, You’re one of ’em.

  I closed the door behind me, and focused on my guest. My mind did a quick lap around the dream of Jolene at the bar: my feelings after all those years of marriage, in love with her but looking for something else, something more. She hadn’t looked quite as fresh in that dream as she did now, and I wondered whether the discontented dream-me might have tired her out, given her a few sags and lines, dimmed the glow of her smile.

  After a second or two, I said, So, what’s news?

  I was in the area and thought I’d stop by, she explained. Or maybe I just needed to get another look at this place, y’know, to see how it makes me feel now. Cocking an eyebrow, she said, You just got up, didn’t you? You know it’s almost midday, right? Rough night? You haven’t started throwing any of those famous parties, have you?

  I could recall nothing of the previous night, incapable of dredging up anything apart from that peculiar dream. But real-world time was a mess. Spilling over and running into itself …

  … what day was this?

  Jolene turned, scrutinised me from top to bottom, as if I were a large map and she was struggling to find her way. Then she said, God. The way you wear this house. You look like him. You smell like him. Your hair. Even the way you’re standing there. She came up close and threw her arms around my neck. But you’re not him, are you?

  No, of course not.

  You’re just the guy who waters the plants.

  Twice a week.

  You’re the reliable one, she said. A good guy. You want the same things I want. And then more urgently, You’re safe.

  I couldn’t respond to her words, not in any honest and constructive way. They seemed mechanical, rehearsed. As if they’d been said before, used up somewhere else, on someone else. I didn’t like it. But I told myself to not make a big deal of it.

  I booked our tickets, I said.

  Tickets?

  For our trip.

  Right. The trip. Her arms dropped to her sides.

  Next week Tuesday. The three of us. You, me, and Edgar. Paris …

  A pause. Why?

  Why what?

  She sighed. Why are you doing all this?

  What d’you mean?

  The tickets. The house. It’s too much, Bent.

  We deserve it.

  Do we?

  Yes, we do. I felt myself hang there, in mid-air, right in front of her. And then I dropped. C’mon. How about a drink?

  I needed a moment to myself, to process this clumsy two-minute interaction. Her body language. Her intonation. The way she’d withdrawn her hands from my neck. By now I’d met a couple of versions of Jolene, including Glamorous Host, Dedicated Mom, and Pillow-Talk Philosopher, but this one was new to me—and the least likeable. She was putting on a show, an uninspired repetition of the first night I’d met her—before the park, before the boat, before the bed—back when we were still relative strangers. Right now, she was no longer excited about the trip. But why, all of a sudden? Was it something I’d said or done? Hadn’t said? Hadn’t done?

  I to
ld her to sit outside while I went downstairs to mix us a couple of morning cocktails. I pointed towards the back door. She said she knew the way. Of course she did. She had a kind of oh-yes-this-old-thing-again attitude, and it got my gut in a green knot. I tried not to let the obvious reason for her familiarity bug me; Leonard was a fading footnote, and this was the beginning of our new life. No more jealousy. No more judgement, I told myself. Jolene and I were starting anew, untouched, unspoilt. If I couldn’t wrap my head around that, what hope could we possibly have for a future together?

  Drinks in hand, I stepped onto the patio. The sun struck out, blinding me. My pupils shrank, I blinked, but Jolene wasn’t there. I re-entered through the French doors, my eyes adjusting again to the dark. I sailed through some rooms, the drinks sweating cold against my palms—

  Above me, a creak.

  A second creak.

  A low thud. Another. And a third.

  Footsteps. A door opening.

  Jolene was on the floor above, somewhere along the only damned corridor I couldn’t afford for her to be. I placed the drinks on a nearby writing desk, approached the staircase, rested an elbow on the handrail, and stared upwards—at nothing.

  Jolene?

  No response.

  I climbed the stairs. Each step was its own treacherous mountain. Even the air seemed to thin, the higher I climbed. If she was up there, Leonard would almost certainly hear her. Smell her. Call out to her. At first she’d get a fright, but then she’d recognise his voice and begin to question him—what was he doing in there? She’d try to open the door, but Leonard would explain it was no good, that the door had been locked (perhaps leaving out his own role in this). He’d say he was on the verge of death, that I was to blame, and that—before doing anything else—she should grab the nearest pot plant and smash it on my skull—

  Sorry for disappearing on you. Jolene’s head popped out over the railing above. Any response I might have offered was stuck in my throat. I could barely muster a smile. Convinced she’d let Leonard out, I told myself her playfulness was a ruse. Any second now, he’d appear behind her, shaking his skeletal skull, cracked lips smirking, rubbing his hands together like a cartoon villain hatching a plan, and glaring at me with murderous, sunken eyes. (I’m just … so disappointed, Bent. So, so disappointed. Me and Jolene both. Maybe somebody needs to be given some alone-time in a room for a year to think about what he’s done, hmm?)