Black Chalk

XXXV(ii) There now reside in my apartment two items I do not necessarily remember being here before. On the kitchen counter sits a beer coaster printed with a large and intricate B like a sailor’s knot. It is a white B set on a green disc. Brooklyn Brewery, the coaster reads at its edges. I also find, inside a cup on the same counter, a book of matches bearing the name of a bar – ACE bar – a place I have seen on my walks, several blocks from here. About a third of the matches poke out from the matchbook, curled and burned. Years ago, when I was a smoker, I never tore the paper matches from their books. I bent them out against the strike strip and flicked them with my thumb to light them. To extinguish the flame I always gave the matchbook an insouciant wave, leaving the match in place. I used to have such an easy manner, a certain cool lack of urgency.

But as far as I remember it has been maybe a decade since I last smoked a cigarette.

I picture the bar, its three neon letters red and glowing in the night. ACE. Fate plays mischievous games – it had to be that playing card! I imagine myself standing out front and lighting a cigarette for someone else.

But for whom?

Nothing comes to me. The entire set-up feels false in my mind. Right now, life feels like one long series of stabs in the dark. And I am locked inside a room that I never saw lit from the start.

This entire search is futile. One simple truth.

I don’t remember her.

XXXV(iii) It is nearly noon. Soon I will put on my shoes and leave, will keep my fingers crossed as I make my way around the block.

If my visitor comes back, I ask of her only one thing. Please forgive me.

Please. This here and now is not the whole man. Give me just a few weeks.

XXXV(iv)

She didn’t come.

I can hardly bear to type another word. She didn’t come. Of course she didn’t come.

XXXVI

XXXVI(i) The Churchill Arms felt sleepy after lunch, its air draped across the lounge bar. Mark lit a cigarette and soon his smoke filled the wall of sunlight dividing the space from corner to corner. The quiz machine flickered festively across from them.

Dorian, a fellow freshman, played the Churchill Arms quiz machine several times a day. Whenever it was ready to be milked, as Dorian described it. Ready to be milked meant the machine was full of tourist money and therefore the questions were easier and you had to answer fewer of them to win the grand prize. Twenty pounds.

Dorian made notes of the questions he answered incorrectly and went to the library most evenings to research. He kept a red folder full of information and spent an hour each day memorising new facts. Jolyon had told all of this to Chad some months ago and Chad held on to everything Jolyon told him. This had been Chad’s idea.

When Dorian entered the pub he moved purposefully toward the machine but glanced around long enough for Jolyon to catch his attention and beckon him over. If you looked closely at Dorian you could see the haemorrhoidal outline of the pound coins bunching in his front trouser pocket.

Jolyon greeted him and they shook hands. Dorian nodded hello to the others, Chad and Mark and Jack.

‘How much are you taking from it these days?’ said Jolyon.

‘Single digits on bad days. Twenty, sometimes thirty, when the going’s good.’

Jolyon smiled approvingly and Dorian shifted to and fro on his feet, not nervous but itching to be some place else.

‘Mind if we join you?’ said Jolyon.

‘Erm . . .’ said Dorian. He couldn’t say no to Jolyon, not many people could. At best he could indicate his reluctance, shifting his weight back and forth, hoping for release. ‘Well, I suppose . . .’ His jiggling increased.

‘Just say no if it’s a problem.’

‘No, no, it’s not that.’

‘Great,’ said Jolyon. ‘Look, we’ll stick to one simple rule. None of us will say anything unless we’re one hundred per cent sure of the answer.’

They huddled around the machine and Dorian fetched a coin from his pocket. When the coin dropped, the machine’s lights flashed faster and Dorian pointed at a trail of colours that appeared on the screen. ‘That’s good,’ he said, ‘that’s really good.’ He gazed into the glass, lost and happy. ‘You have been fed, my beauty,’ he said, ‘time to be milked.’

By dint of both his knowledge and his daily research, Dorian’s playing of the machine impressed them all. On history, the subject he was studying at Pitt, he was always quick to hit the correct answer. And whenever instantly certain he would hammer the button with his fist like a mallet. He hesitated sometimes but only to look to the ceiling and call on his memory, to rifle fast through its index cards. He even knew the answers to questions he referred to as deliberate trip-ups, questions with obscure statistical answers. The number of UK convictions for bestiality in 1987. The average annual precipitation on Blackpool beach. The number of golf balls on the moon.