What You Make It: Selected Short Stories. Michael Marshall Smith

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       HELL HATH ENLARGED HERSELF

      I always assumed I was going to get old. That there would come a time when just getting dressed left me breathless, and I would count a day without a nap as a victory; when I would go into a barber's and some young girl would lift up the remaining grey stragglers on my pate and look dubious if I asked her for anything more than a trim. I would have tried to be charming, and she would have thought to herself how game the old bird was, while cutting off rather less than I'd asked her to. I thought all that was going to come, some day, and in a perverse sort of way I had even looked forward to it. A diminuendo, an ellipsis to some other place.

      But now I know it will not happen, that I will remain unresolved, like some fugue which didn't work out. Or perhaps more like a voice in an unfinished symphony, because I won't be the only one.

      I regret that. I'm going to miss having been old.

      I left the facility at 6.30 yesterday evening, on the dot, as had been my practice. I took care to do everything as I always had, carefully collating my notes, tidying my desk, and leaving upon it a list of things to do the next day. I hung my white coat on the back of my office door as always, and said goodbye to Johnny on the gate with a wink. For six months we have been engaged in a game which involves making some joint statement on the weather every time I enter or leave the facility, without either of us recoursing to speech. Yesterday, Johnny raised his eyebrows at the dark and heavy clouds overhead, and rolled his eyes – a standard gambit. I turned one corner of my mouth down and shrugged with the other shoulder, a more adventurous riposte, in recognition of the fact that this was the last time the game would ever be played. For a moment I wanted to do more, to say something, reach out and shake his hand; but that would have been too obvious a goodbye. Perhaps no one would have stopped me anyway, as it has become abundantly clear that I am as powerless as everyone else – but I didn't want to take the risk.

      Then I found my car among the diminishing number which still park there, and left the compound for good.

      The worst part, for me, is that I knew Philip Ely, and understand how it all started. I was sent to work at the facility because I am partly to blame for what has happened. The original work was done together, but I was the one who had always given credence to the paranormal. Philip had never paid much heed to such things, not until they became an obsession. There may have been some chance remark of mine which made him open to the idea. Just having known me for so long may have been enough. If it was, then I'm sorry. There's not a great deal more I can say.

      Philip and I met at the age of six, our fathers having taken up new positions at the same college – the University of Florida, in Gainesville. My father was in the Geography Faculty, his in Sociology, but at that time – the late ’80s – the departments were drawing closer together and the two men became friends. Our families mingled closely, in shared holidays on the coast and countless back-yard barbecues, and Philip and I grew up more like brothers than friends. We read the same clever books and hacked the same stupid computers, and even ended up losing our virginity on the same evening. One spring when we were both sixteen I borrowed my mother's car and the two of us loaded it up with books and a laptop and headed off to Sarasota in search of sun and beer. We found both, in quantity, and also two young English girls on holiday. We spent a week in courting spirals of increasing tightness, playing pool and talking fizzy nonsense over cheap and exotic pizzas, and on the last night two couples walked up the beach in different directions.

      Her name was Karen, and for a while I thought I was in love. I wrote a letter to her twice a week, and to this day she's probably received more mail from me than everyone else put together. Each morning I went running down to the mailbox, and ten years later the sight of an English postage stamp could still bring a faint rush of blood to my ears. But we were too far apart, and too young. Maybe she had to wait a day too long for a letter once, or perhaps it was me who without realizing it came back empty-handed from the mailbox one too many times. Either way the letters started to slacken in frequency after six months and then, without either of us ever saying anything, they simply stopped altogether.

      A little while later I was with Philip in a bar and, in between shots, he looked up at me.

      ‘You ever hear from Karen any more?’ he asked.

      I shook my head, only at that moment realizing that it had finally died. ‘Not in a while.’

      He nodded, and then took his shot, and missed, and as I lined up for the black I thought that he'd probably been through a similar thing. For the first time in our lives we'd lost something. It didn't break our hearts. It had only lasted a week, after all, and we were old enough to know that the world was full of girls, and that if we didn't hurry we'd hardly have got through any of them before it was time to get married.

      But does anyone ever replace that first person? That first kiss, first fierce hug hidden in dunes and darkness? Sometimes, I guess. I kept the letters from Karen for twenty years. Never read them, just kept them. Last week I threw them all away.

      What I'm saying is this. I knew Philip for a long, long time, and I understood what we were trying to do. He was just trying to salve his own pain, and I was trying to help him.

      What happened wasn't our fault.

      I spent the evening driving slowly down 75, letting the freeway take me down towards the Gulf coast of the panhandle. There were a few patches of rain, but for the most part the clouds just scudded overhead, running to some other place. I didn't see many other cars. Either people have given up fleeing, or all those capable of it have already fled. I got off just after Jocca, and headed down minor roads, trying to cut round Tampa and St Petersburg. I managed it, but it wasn't easy, and I ended up getting lost more than a few times. I would have brought a map but I thought I could remember the way. I couldn't. It had been too long.

      We'd heard on the radio in the afternoon that things weren't going so hot around Tampa. It was the last thing we heard, just before the signal cut out. The six of us remaining in the facility just sat around for a while, as if we believed the radio would come back on again real soon now. When it didn't, we got up one by one and drifted back to work.

      As I passed the city I could see it burning in the distance, and I was glad I had gone the back way, no matter how long it took. If you've seen what it's like when a large number of people go together, you'll understand what I mean.

      Eventually I found 301 and headed down towards 41, and the old Coast Road.

      Summer of 2005. For Philip and I it was time to make a decision. There was no question but that we would go to college – both our families were book-bashers from way back. The money was already in place, some from our parents but most from holiday jobs we'd played at. The question was what we were going to study.

      I thought long and hard, but in the end still couldn't come to a decision. I postponed for a year, and decided to take off round the world. My parents shrugged, said ‘Okay, keep in touch, try not to get killed, and stop by your Aunt Kate's in Sydney.’ They were that kind of people. СКАЧАТЬ