She found some first. ‘What were you doing,’ she said, ‘skulking in the road like that?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Just thinking.’
‘I thought you were going to go away again.’
‘Would you have liked that better?’
‘Jed.’ The word came out sounding like cream poured over a spoon. That tone of voice, how well he remembered it.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘would you?’
She sighed. ‘Are you going to stand on the doorstep all afternoon,’ she said, ‘or are you going to come in?’
It smelt synthetic in the hall. It was her own smell, she carried it around with her. If you boiled her down, reduced her to her essence, it would smell of air freshener, nail polish, fashion magazines, he was sure of it. He waited for her to close the door, then he followed her down the corridor and into the kitchen. She wore the same kind of clothes she’d always worn: a pink velour sweatsuit and a pair of trainers with plump white tongues. Her dry blonde hair tucked under her jawbone, curled into the nape of her neck.
‘How about some coffee?’ she said. ‘It’s fresh.’
‘Sure. Great.’ He sat on a stool while she poured. He looked around. A lot of red and pink, a lot of stripped pine. The same old bric-à-brac above the sink: a china doll, a dog with one paw raised, a matador. A small colour TV on low volume. The early-evening news.
She placed a cup of coffee in front of him with a waitress smile, then she sat down opposite him, on the other side of the breakfast bar. She held her own cup in both hands, just below her mouth. He could see that she had aged, even through the veil of steam. There were two faces, and one of them had slipped. A curious, smeared look. And nothing left of her eyebrows except two lines sketched in brown pencil.
But she didn’t want him scrutinising her. ‘You look so,’ and she quickly sorted through words, as if they were dresses, and chose one, ‘different.’
‘That’s the idea,’ he said.
She eyed him thoughtfully over the rim of her cup. ‘You should do something about your hair.’
He laughed, slopping his coffee over. ‘I’m not one of your fucking clients, mother.’
She went to the sink and came back with a damp cloth. ‘I’m running the place now, you know,’ she said. ‘It’s going very well.’ She lifted his cup and wiped the base, then she wiped the wood surface underneath.
‘That’s great.’ He couldn’t keep the sneer out of his voice. She was folding the cloth. Once, twice, three times. If she folded it much more, he thought, it might disappear altogether.
‘Did you come here to insult me, Jed?’ she said. ‘Is that why you came? Or was there something you wanted?’
A plane went overhead, almost scraping the tiles off the roof. Cups nodded on their red plastic hooks. When the noise had died away, it seemed as if another layer had been stripped from the silence.
‘You must have a reason,’ she said, ‘after all these years.’
‘It’s nothing to do with all these years,’ he said.
‘You were always so calculating. You never did anything without a reason.’
‘How come I need a reason?’ he said. ‘I’ve been away. I was away for a long time. I couldn’t’ve come to see you even if I’d wanted to.’ He thought of the phone-call he’d made from that booth on the highway. Six years ago. Henry, is that you?
She came and sat down. ‘You got into trouble again, I suppose.’
‘I went and lived in a town called Adam’s Creek,’ he said. ‘The name was a joke. There wasn’t any creek, never had been.’ He turned his cup on its base. ‘There wasn’t even an Adam.’
‘Adam’s Creek?’ she said. ‘I never heard of it.’
‘It’s in the middle of nowhere.’ He told her about the Commercial Hotel and THE WORLD OF 45 FLAVOURS. But he looked at her once and her chin was propped on the flat of her hand as if it was about to be served by a waiter and she was looking out of the window. She wasn’t listening, he could tell, so he just stopped. She looked back at him and sighed, a sigh that didn’t seem to have anything to do with him.
‘I think I’ll go and lie down,’ he said. ‘I’m really tired.’
She took his empty cup, put it in the sink with hers. ‘You can use your old room.’
He stood up, stretched.
‘Do you want me to wake you?’ she said.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to sleep for an hour.’
At the top of the stairs he stood by the window and looked out. This neighbourhood where he’d grown up, it was another world to him now, a world he had to search his blood for. This house was his home, that woman in the kitchen was his mother. He knew it, but it was a long time since he’d felt it. The feeling had gone, only the facts remained.
When he opened the door to his old room he found himself nodding. It was exactly what he might have expected. There were two twin beds. There was a lamp with a white shade. There were small bowls of dried flowers. It was immaculate, anonymous; neutral as a motel room. There was nothing to suggest that he had ever slept there, not a trace of his presence. There wasn’t even the ghost of a radio.
He took his jacket and his sandals off, and lay down on his side with his knees drawn up to his chest. He closed his eyes. Listened to the planes go over. That long slow rumble. His ribs vibrating gently. And he rose up over the rooftops of Sweetwater and beyond Mario’s handkerchief factory, beyond the river, he could see the tall white buildings of the city clustered tight as skittles, he could see Death Row and the slim black shape of the Paradise Corporation, like the shadow of a building, and the factory and the river vanished, and there was golden wood where they had been, a corridor of polished golden wood with gutters on either side, and he looked down at his hand and saw he was holding a huge black ball, and he took three steps forwards and swung his arm and let the ball go, and that long slow rumble in the sky, that was the sound of the ball rolling down the corridor of golden wood, rolling towards the cluster of tall buildings, plane after plane, and always that black ball rolling until at last he saw it slowly smash into the buildings, he saw the buildings stagger, topple over, every one of them, and there was no city any more, there was only a game that he had won, and the planes going over, they were the applause, a standing ovation, and he was turning away from that corridor of golden wood, one hand raised, a kind of hero now.
When he woke, it was almost dark. He could hear music downstairs, dance music. He had no idea where he was. Propped on one elbow, he saw a jacket and a pair of sandals that some stranger must’ve left behind.
And then he remembered; it all came back together slowly, like an explosion played in reverse. That music downstairs, that would be his mother’s radio. She always tuned in to Latin stations at night. She used to cook to the rhythms of the tango and the rumba, she’d snap her fingers, tilt her hips, and he’d be watching, embarrassed, through a jungle of fingers. This was no motel, this was his old bedroom, this was home, and as for that stranger with the jacket and the sandals, that stranger was him.
One of his knees had seized up. He eased both legs on to the floor and sat still. Then he buckled his sandals, wincing as the straps bit into his heels. He limped downstairs and into the kitchen. His mother was perched at the breakfast bar with a drink and a cigarette.
‘What’s that?’ he asked her.
‘Scotch and soda. You want one?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t drink.’
‘Did you sleep well?’
‘I woke up,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t know where I was.’
‘That’s not surprising when you think how long it’s been.’