Black Chalk

He wrote the letter hurriedly, offering congratulations to his opponents. He was leaving without any grudges and wished them the best of luck. And when Jolyon finished and read the whole thing over, he started to laugh. He laughed at the silly lines he had strung together from all those silly letters looped into even more ridiculous words. Words like sincerest, wholehearted and aforementioned. The pomposity was hilarious. And then he realised, while reading the letter, that his fingers were playing with something they had idly picked up from the desk, turning the small thing over and over.

Jolyon looked down and there it was, his tooth. He placed it in front of him on the desk. ‘The tooth, the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth,’ thought Jolyon, everything now so amusing. His lucky charm stood there, casually leaning on the tips of three of its roots, and suddenly he began to hear a voice. He could almost see the regimental tie. ‘Have you noticed, old chap, how the dentist always arranges the most painful procedures to take place at two thirty? Ha, tooth hurty, every time.’ Jolyon smiled at this joke – yes, he had noticed the same thing. And then the tooth spoke again, but this time in a deep and serious voice. ‘Remember, old chap,’ it said to Jolyon, ‘you can’t be beaten. There’s nothing they can do to you. Nothing at all.’

Jolyon blinked and looked around the room. He felt disorientated, as if he had just awoken from a dream. He stared hard at the letter as two choices jostled inside him. A minute later, he picked up the letter and started to tear it to pieces.

When he was done he took one of the strips of paper, rolled it into a ball and popped it into his mouth. Jolyon chewed until the ball became a soggy pellet which he manoeuvred with his tongue to plug the gap where his tooth had been. He piled the remaining strips of paper into an ashtray and set them alight.

When the letter was nothing but ashes, Jolyon got up from his desk and moved to the spot on the wall that roared in the night-time. And he started to tap with his head there, gently and rhythmically at first. Then harder and harder and harder. And was it the sound of his head, the beat of a song? Or maybe someone was knocking on . . . Yes, someone was knocking on his door.

Jolyon staggered across the room. He had to lean against the wall to keep himself upright as he opened the door just a crack, just enough to see her standing in his hallway.

LXII(ii) He had not seen Emilia for two months. Not since Dee had come into the room and spoken their names, two loud exclamations. ‘Jolyon! Emilia!’

Dee had run from the room. And Emilia, her eyes brimming with her wounds, would have run from the room too were it not for her leg in its cast.

LXII(iii) His head didn’t hurt. It must have been the new pills. Emilia was flickering in the half-light of the corridor. Jolyon shook his head and managed to steady the picture. ‘Emilia,’ he said, sounding delighted to see her.

Her nostrils were flaring and the track of a single tear marked one of her cheeks.

‘What is it, Emilia, what’s wrong?’

She began to lift her hand, her fist was holding something. When her arm came level with her face, she opened the hand. And out fell a piece of paper.

Jolyon looked down. He saw the no. 10 and the fragment of her name vanishing into a crease. ‘Oh, Emilia, no, no, I . . . I didn’t mean any . . . It was just lashing out, venting, like therapy, you know, I felt awful . . .’

When Emilia turned, Jolyon noticed that the cast was gone from her leg. But just as before, when she left him, she left slowly. The picture was flickering. But his head didn’t hurt him at all.

LXIII

LXIII(i) I write, I drink, I take pills. When I get home from the airport, when I wake up at five the next morning. I write, I drink, I take pills. Rewind and repeat.

So much to tell and so little time.

The intercom buzzes. Chad’s voice.

LXIII(ii) Excuse the mess, I say, turning to lead him from one end of my sty to the other.

Jolyon, maybe you should put on some clothes, Chad says.

I look down. OK, I say. You wait in the living room, Chad. Anything else I should do?

You could offer me a drink.

I have only whisky.

I’ll take a water.

So I dress, I find a glass among the swill of my apartment, I pour water for Chad and then take it, along with the whisky bottle, into the living room.

Chad inspects the filth-encrusted glass, its rim blackened with Magic Marker like the salt on a margarita. He places it on the table and pushes it away.

Have you come here to gloat? I say, indicating the mess all around.

You know that’s not why I’m here, he says.

No, I know why you’re here.