Limitless

I staggered over to the couch and lowered myself on to it. It was the middle of the afternoon and I’d just drunk a whole bottle of cough syrup. I laid my head on the armrest and stared up at the ceiling. Over the next half an hour or so, I was aware of various sounds drifting in and out of my consciousness – the door-buzzer, possibly someone banging on the door, voices, the phone ringing, sirens, traffic. But none of it was clear enough, or compelling enough, to rouse me from the torpor I was in, and gradually I sank into the deepest sleep I’d had for weeks.

[ 17 ]

OUT COLD UNTIL FOUR O’CLOCK the next morning, I spent a further two hours struggling to emerge from the other side of this paralysing blanket of drowsiness. Some time after six, aching all over, I dragged myself off the couch and slouched into the bathroom. I had a shower. Then I went into the kitchen and put on a large pot of coffee.

Back in the living-room, smoking a cigarette, I found myself glancing continually over at the ceramic bowl on the shelf above the computer. But I didn’t want to get too close to it, because I knew that if I went on taking MDT, I would just end up having more of these mysterious and increasingly scary blackouts. On the other hand, I didn’t really believe that I’d had anything to do with putting Donatella Alvarez into a coma in the first place. I was prepared to accept that something had happened, and that during these blackouts I continued functioning on one level or another, moving about, doing stuff, but I refused to accept that this extended to me striking someone over the head with a blunt instrument. I’d had a similar thought a few minutes earlier in the bathroom, while I was having my shower. There were still bruises on my body, as well as that small circular mark, fading now, of what had seemed to be a cigarette burn. This was incontrovertible evidence, I’d concluded, of something, but hardly of anything to do with me …

I wandered reluctantly over to the window and looked out. The street was empty. There was no one around – there were no photographers, no reporters. With any luck, I thought, the mystery trader of the tabloids had already become yesterday’s news. Besides, it was Saturday morning and things were bound to be a little quieter.

I sat on the couch again. After a couple of minutes, I got back into the position I’d been in all night, and even started to doze a little. I felt pleasantly drowsy now, and kind of lazy. This was something I hadn’t felt for ages, and although it took me a while, I eventually linked it in with the fact that I hadn’t taken an MDT pill in nearly twenty-four hours, my longest – and only – period of abstinence since the beginning. It had never occurred to me before to just stop, but now I thought – well, why not? It was the weekend, and maybe I deserved a break. I would need to be charged up for the meeting with Carl Van Loon on Monday, but until then there was no reason why I shouldn’t be able to chill out like a regular person.

However, by eleven o’clock I didn’t feel quite so relaxed about things, and as I was getting ready to go out a vague sense of disorientation crept over me. But since I’d never really given myself the chance to let the drug wear off properly, I decided to stick to my plan of temporary abstinence – at least until I’d spoken to Melissa.

Down on Spring Street I left the sunlight behind me and stepped into the dim shadows of the bar where we’d arranged to meet. I looked around. Someone gestured to me from a booth in the corner, a raised hand, and although I couldn’t see the person clearly from where I was standing, I knew that it had to be Melissa. I walked over towards her.

On my way to this place from Tenth Street, I’d felt very weird indeed, as if I had taken something after all and was coming up on it. But I knew it was actually the reverse, that it was more like a curtain being lifted on raw, exposed nerves, on feelings that hadn’t seen the light of day for some time. When I thought about Carl Van Loon, for example, or Lafayette, or Chantal, I was first struck by how unreal they seemed, and then by a kind of retrospective terror at my involvement with them. When I thought about Melissa, I was overwhelmed – blinded by a pixel-storm of memories …

She half got up as I arrived and we kissed awkwardly. She sat back down on her side of the booth. I slid into the opposite side to face her.

My heart was pounding.

I said, ‘How are you doing?’ and it immediately seemed odd to me that I wasn’t commenting on how she looked, because she looked so different.

‘I’m OK.’

Her hair was short and dyed a kind of reddish brown. She was heavier – generally, but especially in the face – and had lines around her eyes. These made her look very tired. I was one to talk, of course, but that didn’t make it any less of a shock.

‘So, Eddie, how are you?’

‘I’m OK,’ I lied, and then added, ‘I suppose.’