Limitless

By mid-evening, I was quite detached from everything and whenever I heard a reference to the story, my impulse was to say enough, already, as though they were talking about a new mini-series on a cable channel, something adapted from an over-hyped magic-realist pot-boiler … The Dreadful Ordeal of Donatella Alvarez …

A little after 8.30, I called Carl Van Loon at his apartment on Park Avenue.

Although the disbelief, terror, etc. of earlier had been uppermost in my mind for a good deal of the afternoon, another part of me had been riddled with anxiety of a different kind – anxiety about having blown my chances with Van Loon, about the extent to which this glitch, this operational malfunction, was going to interfere with my plans for the future.

As a result – and waiting for Van Loon to come to the phone – I was quite nervous.

‘Eddie?’

I cleared my throat. ‘Mr Van Loon.’

‘Eddie, I don’t understand. What happened?’

‘I got sick,’ I said – the excuse coming to me automatically – ‘there was nothing I could do about it. I had to leave like that. I’m sorry.’

‘You got sick? What are you, in first grade? You rush off without saying a word? You don’t come back? I’m left there looking like a jerk, making excuses to Hank fucking Atwood?’

‘I have a condition, a stomach condition.’

‘Then you don’t even bother to call?’

‘I needed to see a doctor, Carl. In a hurry.’

Van Loon was silent for a moment.

Then he sighed. ‘Well … how are you now?’

‘I’m fine. It’s taken care of.’

He sighed again. ‘Are you … what? … I don’t know … are you getting proper treatment for this thing? You want the names of some top consultants? I can …’

‘I’m fine. Look, it was a once off. It’s not going to happen again.’ I paused for a moment. ‘How did the meeting go?’

This time Van Loon paused. I was out on a limb now.

‘Well it was a little awkward, Eddie,’ he said eventually, ‘I’m not going to lie to you. I wished you’d been there.’

‘Did he seem convinced?’

‘In outline, yeah. He says he feels it’s something he can bring to the table, but you and me are going to have to sit down with him and go over the numbers.’

‘Great. Sure. Of course. Whenever.’

‘Hank’s gone to the coast, but he’ll be back in town on … Tuesday I think, yeah, so why don’t you come into the office some time on Monday and we can set something up.’

‘Great – and listen, Carl, I’m sorry again, I really am.’

‘You sure you don’t want to see my doctor? He’s—’

‘No, but thanks for the offer.’

‘Think about it.’

‘OK. I’ll see you on Monday.’

I remained standing by the phone for a couple of minutes after the call to Van Loon, staring down at an open page of my address book.

I had a nervous, jumpy feeling in my stomach.

Then I picked the phone up and dialled Melissa’s number. As I waited for her to answer I could have been back in Vernon’s apartment – up on the seventeenth floor, still at the beginning of all of this, still in those last shining moments before I recorded a message on her answering machine and then went rooting around in her brother’s bedroom …

‘Hello.’

‘Melissa?’

‘Eddie. Hi.’

‘I got your message.’

‘Yeah. Look … erm …’ – I got the impression that she was composing herself – ‘ … what I said on the message, that just occurred to me today. I don’t know. My brother was an asshole. He’d been dealing this weird designer thing for quite a while. And it occurred to me about you. So I started worrying.’

If Melissa had been drinking earlier on in the day, she seemed subdued now, hungover maybe.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, Melissa,’ I said, having decided on the spot that this was what I was going to do. ‘Vernon didn’t give me anything. I’d met him the day before he … er … the day before it happened. And we just talked about stuff … nothing in particular.’

She sighed, ‘OK.’

‘But thanks for your concern.’ I paused for a moment. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’

Awkward, awkward, awkward.

Then she said, ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine. Keeping busy.’

‘What have you been up to?’

This was the conversation we would be having in these circumstances – here it was – the inevitable conversation we would be having in these circumstances …

‘I’ve been working for the last few years as a copywriter.’ I paused. ‘For Kerr & Dexter. The publishers.’

It was the truth, technically, but that’s all it was.

‘Yeah? That’s great.’

It didn’t feel great, though – or like the truth, my days as a copywriter for Kerr & Dexter suddenly seeming distant, unreal, fictional.

I didn’t want to be on the phone to Melissa any more. Since we’d renewed our acquaintance – however fleetingly – I felt that I had already entered into a consistent pattern of lying to her. Going on with the conversation could only make that worse.

I said, ‘Look, I wanted to call you back and clear that up … but … I’m going to get off the phone now.’

‘OK.’

‘It’s not that—’

‘Eddie?’

‘Yes?’

‘This isn’t easy for me either.’

‘Sure.’

There wasn’t anything else I could think of to say.

‘Goodbye then.’

‘Bye.’