Under a Watchful Eye(101)

I imagine out there on my front doorstep, his annoyance became anger – Does he no longer care about his future?

He’d have heard a bolt slide through a lock, a chain removed from a latch. Then the door widened to reveal my face. A visage that was hard to identify.

‘Seb . . .’ Giles didn’t know what else to say to me.

How long had it been since I’d washed my hair? And in all the years he’d known me, I’d never worn a beard. Beards were certainly fashionable, though mine suggested anything but the hipster. My get-up that day was hobo.

Though my hair had always been flecked with salt and pepper, it was now the colour of dirty snow, oily and matched by the ragged beard. My appearance was worsened by the jogging bottoms and the stained shirt that I wore beneath the bathrobe. Giles almost suppressed his distaste at the spectacle of my face, and how my features had been narrowed by weight loss, lined with anxiety and harrowed by misery. All compounded by sleeplessness. And Jesus Christ, the teeth! He must have noticed my mouth. A mist of halitosis would have clung to the threshold. When was the last time that I had seen a dentist? Within the tangled moustache and beard, my lips had begun to appear too dark. I’d seen them in the windows of the Tor, as the sun faded outside. Giles would have glimpsed the wet, yellow ivory in my poorly maintained mouth.

Yellow Teeth.

He just stared, aghast at the transformation of his once neat, unflashy, shy client, whom he considered a friend.

‘Giles. It’s been a while. You look well.’

‘It has been.’ Giles couldn’t bring himself to return the compliment.

‘Won’t you please come in?’ I turned away from the door.

I’ve seen enough, must have come to the tip of his tongue, though Giles would never be so rude, unless he was talking to an editor.

He followed me up the stairs and into the living room on the second floor.

‘A drink?’ I mumbled, without even looking at Giles, but I wafted one hand towards the uncapped bottle of bourbon on the coffee table.

‘No, thanks.’ It was only noon.

Giles also restrained himself from asking for the balcony doors to be opened, but I saw him look at them. The room reeked of fried food, my sweat, expensive perfumes, and what suggested an unemptied kitchen bin.

He took a seat on the side of the couch not filled with laundry that was either waiting to go into the washing machine or had come out and been forgotten about. How did I know? It wasn’t my laundry.

Giles peered around the room and at the soiled plates amongst dirty coffee cups and magazines. My bookshelves were all but empty. My framed pictures of the original cover artwork and the movie posters had been removed. ‘Your pictures?’

‘Gone,’ I said, as I eased myself into a seat opposite the couch. The only light in the room was thin and murky, and was cast from the table lamp beside the bookcases. ‘Sold,’ I said, and I looked at the walls as if trying to recall the pictures.

‘Sold? Why?’ Giles knew that I couldn’t be short of money. I’d always been careful with money – a little tight, if Giles were honest – and even after his fifteen per cent and the tax deductions by HMRC, I could not have been left wanting after the advance of Yellow Teeth. The advance had already been earned out by foreign rights sales.

I could only shrug. ‘This place too. It’ll go next . . .’ And then I stopped myself and glanced at the door. As if on cue, a toilet flushed downstairs, followed by a door opening and closing.

I had company.

Right then, Giles noticed that several items of discarded clothing didn’t belong to me, a large brassiere and a pair of opaque, patterned tights.

He looked to me for some direction, some explanation, but none was forthcoming. I continued to stare at the diningroom door in anticipation of one who would soon step through it. ‘They’ll be here soon,’ I said, and my bearded mouth settled into a sneer. ‘They want to be present.’

‘Who?’ Giles asked.

I never answered him.

‘Seb. Are you . . . I mean, are you all right?’

‘Do I look it?’ My bloodshot eyes had filmed and glistened with tears. ‘Seeing you, my old friend, just brings it back.’

‘What?’

‘How it was. Before.’

‘I don’t follow. Before what, Seb?’

And then Giles’s attention was drawn towards the door, and to the arched entrance of the kitchen beyond the dining room. Giles even started at the sight of the two women who had appeared, as if from thin air, and who now stood within the two entrances.

The woman with the long hair, dyed a vivid magenta, seemed barely able to contain her excitement, though what she was so ecstatic about escaped Giles. The second woman, with the short blonde hair, smiled at him, but not in any way that could be described as warm. Her expression was close to provocation, as if she had just caught us talking behind her back.

Giles stood up. ‘Hello.’

He looked to me to prompt a round of introductions. But I continued to gaze, morosely, at the ceiling.

The woman with the short hair came into the room and sat on the arm of my chair and Giles must have noticed how I withdrew from her presence as she sat down. She wore a black dress complemented by bright costume jewellery. Expensive glasses framed her carefully painted eyes.

The second woman came out of the kitchen, but sat at a distance and at the dining table. She drew out a chair carefully as if she had entered a crowded room while a speech was in progress. She was wearing one of those gossamer, hippy-chic dresses and high-heeled shoes.