The Bone Clocks

My shirt’s glued to my body by hot and cold sweat. “Then I’ll sit at my table,” I tell him, “and wait for you to decide. Your tormentor didn’t mean to get you banged up for years, he only meant a—a prank, a stupid prank, but it went nightmarishly wrong. What you decide he owes, he’ll pay. All right?” No, dear reader, it’s not all right. Here in my chair I’m disintegrating. Better to close your eyes. Shut out Richard Cheeseman, my books, the view of white woods. One blast to the head. There are worse ways to go. The kettledrumming in my ears muffles whatever Richard Cheeseman is doing, and I barely hear the click of the safety catch, or the footsteps. Curiously, I sense the muzzle of the handgun, an inch from my forehead. RUN! BEG! FIGHT! But like a suffering dog who knows what the vet’s needle is for, I remain inert. Bowel and bladder control stay operative. Small mercies. Final seconds. Final thoughts? Anaпs as a little girl, proudly presenting her handmade book, The Rabbit Family Go on a Picnic. Juno telling me how the coolest boy in her year told her that, to understand him, she had to read a book called Desiccated Embryos. Gabriel in Madrid, growing so fast, so big, smelling of milk, marshy nappies, and talcum powder. A pity I won’t know him, but maybe he’ll find something of me in my best books. Holly, my only friend, really. I’m sorry about the upset my death will cause her. My favorite line from Roth’s The Human Stain:“Nothing lasts, and yet nothing passes, either, and nothing passes just because nothing lasts.” Of how, in a roundabout way, it’s not Richard Cheeseman who’s shooting me no in fact it’s Crispin Hershey’s finger on the trigger as he slips a tiny packet of cocaine into the lining of a suitcase in a hotel room long ago nowI’m shuddering nowI clench my body nowand my eyes are streaming nowI’m sorryI’m sorryand nowhe’s nowme nowI’m nowhim now now now …

… and I’m alone. I’m alive, more to the sodding point.

Open your eyes. Go on, don’t be afraid. Open up.

Same old room. The same, but not. Cheeseman’s gone.

Down the faculty stairs he’s walking, in the wake of Inigo Wilderhoff. Across the lobby, through the big glass doors, along a track, out of my story … Hunkering into his coat as the snowy evening creeps through the trees, Vietcong-like. I scrutinize my hand for no reason I know of, marveling at its fleshy robotronics … Clasp the mug. Let the heat hurt. Raise the mug, bring it to your lips and sip. Tea from Darjeeling … Soily leaf and tannin sun bloom across my tongue. Marvel at my Rosetta Stone mouse mat; at the gray-pink beauty of a thumbnail; at how one’s lungs drink in oxygen … Rattle a fruit Tic-Tac into your palm and pop it in: I know the flavors are synthetic chemicals, but to me it’s a gustatory “Ode to Autumn” by Keats. Nothing attunes you to the beauty of the quotidian like a man who decides not to kill you after all. Scoop up the detritus I knocked to the floor: my pen holder, a plastic spoon, a memory stick, my Lego Man collection. Juno, Anaпs, and I send one another packets as jokey presents. I’m up to five: spaceman, surgeon, Santa, Minotaur—bugger. Who am I missing? I’m on my knees hunting for the fifth among the power cords when my laptop trills.

Sodding hell—I’m supposed to be Skyping Holly …

AOIFE’S STRONG, CLEAR voice comes through the speakers. “Crispin?”

“Hi, Aoife. I can hear you but I can’t see you.”

“You have to click the little green icon, cyberauthor.”

I always get this bit wrong. Aoife appears on my screen in the kitchen at Rye. “Hi. Good to see you. How are things in Blithewood?”

“Great to see you too. Everything here’s winding down for the holidays.” I’m slightly afraid to ask: “So, how’s the patient today?”

“Bit rough, to be honest. It’s getting hard for her to keep food down, and she didn’t sleep so well. Very migrainy. The doctor put her to sleep”—Aoife half grimaces—“could’ve phrased that better—an hour ago, so Mum said to say sorry she’s stood you up today, but—” Someone offscreen speaks to Aoife; she frowns, nods, and mumbles a reply I don’t catch. “Look, Crispin, Dr. Fenby wants a word, so I’ll hand you over to my aunt Sharon, if that’s okay?”

“Sure, Aoife, of course. Off you go, see you soon.”

“Ciao then.” Aoife stands up and leaves the screen, trailing pixels, and Holly’s sister enters from the other side. Sharon’s a stockier, worldlier Holly—the Jane Austen to Holly’s Emily Brontл, though I’ve never told either of them that—but today she just looks knackered. “Hello, Globetrotter. How are things?”

Holly’s the critically ill one but they keep asking me how I am. “Uh, hi, Sharon, yeah, fine. It’s snowing, and—” Richard Cheeseman just dropped by to kill me for letting him rot in a Colombian and British jail for four years, but luckily he changed his mind. “Who’s this new Dr. Fenby Aoife just mentioned? Another consultant?”