A room feels different when there is a dead person in it. It feels like a place you don’t belong. Like you’re witnessing something you have no right to. It becomes a shameful place.
I’m sitting on the bed. It is a high bed. Why do old people always have such high beds? Is it the bed that’s high or do they just double up the mattresses? I had to look over my shoulder and do a little backwards hop to get up here. My feet don’t even touch the floor.
It’s not my bed. It belongs to Doris. She is the dead person in the room. She is sitting in the chair by the window. In my head she’s always been Flo, and I’ve always called her Flo. She thinks that it’s quite common to give some people names that aren’t their own, names that feel like they fit better. She thinks it’s because we knew them by that name in another life. It makes sense. If you believe in reincarnation. I’ve not decided on that yet.
I can’t tell you how old Flo is. She is of an age to have a high bed. Haha. And her eyes weep from the outer corners, not the inner ones. I think that’s a sign of advancing years, too. There isn’t anyone else here. It’s just us. Does she count? She’s been dead for hours. I said hello when I came in, boiled the kettle for some tea and came and sat down on the chair beside her. The large bay windows look out over the street onto the ocean. When it’s windy, as it is today, we sit and watch the breeze blowing the tops off the waves breaking shallow on the beach. Far out on the horizon it looks like it might be raining. There are great, grey clouds tumbling over each other. If I could walk on water, as once I thought I could, I wonder if I could walk out to them or if they’d remain as far away as they are now.
I stare at the back of Flo’s head, the top half of it sticking out above the high-backed chair. Her hair is thin. I can see right through it to her scalp, where there is a wart, bright pink against the pale, almost fluorescent white of her skin. The wart is all bunched at the top, like it’s being drawn down a hole in the middle. I think irreverently of a baboon’s arse. I get a sudden urge to walk up behind her and squeeze it. The idea repulses me. My dog had warts. Whatever came out of them stained his fur the colour of a muddy puddle and when I patted him I was always careful to steer clear. Sometimes I misjudged it and my fingers would bump over one of these growths. I’d have to rub him vigorously somewhere else then. Somewhere where he was smooth. He’d think it was love. But really I was wiping my hands on him.
I hop off the bed and resume the chair opposite hers. Her eyes are open and they reflect in bulbous miniature the scene beyond the window. I lean in closer. I’m looking to see if I can spot seagulls in reverse. I can’t. Only three tankers that seem to be hovering in space.
‘What should I do now?’ I ask.
She always has good advice to give. She told me once to save all my positive energy for the people closest to me, not to waste it on the rest. It seems simple, but it carries a lot of weight when you think about it longer.
‘Flo? Should I call someone? Your son?’
I pick up the phone and dial. I listen to it ringing on the other end. I’m just about to hang up when someone answers. It’s a girl. She sounds young. She asks if she can help me. I don’t answer at first and she asks again. Eventually I say, ‘Can I place an order for delivery, please?’
It’s evening now and I am back in my own flat. I am in my own chair. It is night and the tankers are orange lights twinkling out of the blackness. The empty pizza box is on the carpet next to the empty dog’s bed. No one can see me here, my hands limp in my lap, a smear of barbeque sauce down my shirt. I’ll wear this shirt tomorrow. And the day after that. Who can stop me? No one can. That’s who. I look again at the lights of the tankers. I hear the wind drumming the pane. The seas will be high and stormy out there but the lights don’t seem to move. I stare at them until they blur then double.
I am thinking of someone else now, as I always do at this time of night. A dozen images, two dozen, arrive at once. I am not sure if they are the moments themselves or the pictures I took of them. And then that last image. She is nine years old. She is watching from her window – was it her? – as I duck into the car.
I blink and the lights of the tankers come back into focus. I look over at my bed. It seems so far way. I sink a little deeper into the cushions. She will be a teenager now. I don’t believe it. At some undefined point I will fall asleep in this chair. When I wake up it will be 1,847 days since I last saw her. They are both gone from me.