CLEANER II: Chapter Six - Part Seventeen

DAHLIA

Melissa had talked about synchronicity up in my room and, on the back foot as much as I was, it had only bewildered me.

But after she had gone, when I simply couldn’t remain in that filthy room anymore; when I had been driven from the hotel building and found myself very suddenly outside on the street, alone, that concept had come back to me... because there was a taxi there waiting as though it were waiting for me; as though the universe had set it there so that I could leave that place quickly and quietly.

When Melissa had left me upstairs it had been a physical relief tantamount to the release of clenched fingers from my throat but it hadn’t been enough. I couldn’t stay there anymore. I had to get away. Truth be told I wanted to leap from the window and sail up into the sky like a bloated balloon. I wanted the air currents to carry me above the clouds and into the jet stream; away to the far north; to England, to the Vale of Nockton, to my home at Summertop; to the downy covers of my bed.

I left so soon after her I might well have run into her diminishing back going down the stairs, but I didn’t. There was no sign of her and then there was the taxi, waiting empty.

I took it.

Now, bumping along on the narrow, rocky road, I considered what Melissa had said about the coincidence of us meeting on the side of the Banbury Way that night.

Was it true that she had been planning to end her life? Had my appearance prevented that? Or... only deferred it?

Was there some force pushing us together; some fate nudging us to go on with this? I didn’t really believe the old stories about the yellow ghost of Nockton Vale and surely in the tales a magical transformation invariably occurred, but was it possible all this was the coerced scheming of that spirit; all p0loanned out and inevitable, no matter how much either one of us might thing we had free will in the matter?

I lowered my eyes and shook my head, chuckling, despite everything; despite the trauma of the past half hour and the awful conversation I had just come from.

When I’d got in the taxi I’d told him to just drive but I spoke up again now. I didn’t know where I wanted to go. “Could you just pull over here please,” I said.

He struggled to catch my meaning so I rephrased feeling slightly ashamed I wasn’t making the slightest attempt to learn the local language. That time he got it and pulled to the side of the road. He left the engine and the clock running. The shopping area wasn’t far ahead. I considered getting out and going there; buying myself some food. That would sweep away this horrible tension. It would make me feel better.

But that wasn’t who I was supposed to be anymore. If my claim was correct, I was supposed to be Dahlia again now; or be ready to be her.

That was the problem though. I didn’t feel like Dahlia anymore, inside or out.

I knew I didn’t look like her, fat as I was, but my habitual thinking was just so far away from the supermodel mode of thought she was supposed to possess.

“She.” Dahlia.

Even the name seemed like somebody else’s. I couldn’t think of her as being myself anymore. How could I hope to take control of the appetite I’d made myself assume while I’d been abroad? How could I ever go back now?

I did want to eat. And I knew it would make me feel better. But maybe I shouldn’t. Surely I shouldn’t.

I sat there, struggling to decide, feeling hot and stressed, then I grumpily asked him to drop me at the colonnade up ahead where the first of the restaurants were. He did so and I paid him the small fair required.

The first restaurant was pleasant enough, open to the sky out front with plenty of meaty dishes with mouth-watering photos on the menu displays. The place was a little bit trashy but it was cheap enough for the money I had on me so I climbed down the steps and found a table.

The waiter who emerged from the back was pleasant enough and very encouraging but I felt uncomfortable being there. I had made my declaration of intent to end this. What was I doing treading the familiar path to gluttony, satiation and even more weight?

He pegged me as British immediately and exuded a slightly creepy Grecian charm. “Hello, hello, my good lady. What can I get for you today?” He laid out the menu and I looked at it guiltily. “A drink perhaps while you wait?”

I nodded and hesitated, faltering between asking for a Coke (fattening) or a cider (fattening and stress-relieving).

“Please can I have some cider?”

He grinned, nodded eagerly and vanished. I continued to sit there, staring at the colourful food photos inside the menu.

It all looked so delicious and my stomach was rumbling. My mouth was a vacuum nozzle nowadays and my belly: the deep and unending catch-bag.

I had told Melissa I wanted to put a stop to this. This was my chance now to throw some actual activity into that proclamation, but when the waiter returned I pointed awkwardly to the picture of two large lamb cutlets swamped by chips and garnished with salad. I felt like I was shrinking inside myself but he smiled warmly as though he felt I’d made the perfect choice. He exchanged the menu for my cider and slipped away into the back.

I took the drink and raised it to my lips, taking a long draught. It was gloriously cool and refreshing and immediately gave me the dull-edged tingling of promised inebriation.

I sat there, and now that I was still and I had this waiting period, my thoughts fell backward to the incident that I’d just escaped from; the time in my room with Melissa.

I closed my eyes, shaking my head to clear the emotion that came with the memory. It was cringe-worthy; all of it; from start to finish. I hated that it had happened. I hated everything about it. My stress level flickered higher and higher in notches the more I considered it, my pulse rate going with it. But I needed to think this through. I needed to lay it out.

It wasn’t enough just to run away from Melissa and that situation; pretend it hadn’t come to a conclusion. As far as she was concerned it clearly had. The threats she had made had been clear enough, shocking and incongruous to the person I thought she was though they were.

Because this wasn’t over. I couldn’t hide from it. We were going to have to meet again and talk again and then, finally, we would have to come to a conclusion. This new conversation might be days away if I tried to delay it, but surely it couldn’t be staved off forever and for all I knew it might Melissa already somehow know where I was and be bearing inexorably down on me even as I sat.

This might be my only time to think and to find my own mind and I had to use it.

I had to come to my own conclusions while I had the head space to do so.

Hand shaking, I lit up a cigarette, hating myself for doing so but needing it all the same.

Then I took another draught of cider and tried to set it out in my mind; work out the way forward; plan for the inevitable confrontation that had to happen between the two of us... a final confrontation that would... that had to decide everything once and for all.