HE
KNEW she wasn’t Chinese, he knew she wasn’t Spanish, he knew she wasn’t Korean.
He knew she wasn’t black, and therefore not African, Indian nor Hispanic. She
wasn’t tall, she wasn’t short, she wasn’t fat, she wasn’t thin. She didn’t have
an eye-patch, she didn’t have an S-shaped scar on her cheek, she didn’t have a
nose piercing in the shape of a sickle. She had not uttered a word.
If
he closed his eyes, he could picture everything within the cab, from the
leather headrests to the alloy door handles, but when he turned his head to
where she sat, the visual fabric diffused into a black hole. On occasion he would
see an empty seat beside him.
He
had looked at her; he remembered doing so. He had looked upon her when he truly
believed she would be the last person he would ever look upon again.
Leon
would remember her. He remembered everybody. Vince had never considered this an
estimable quality. Vince didn’t have to remember. Many so-called virtues
irritated him: faith, honesty, empathy, modesty, punctuality, reliability,
consistency. Yes, people with such fibre were needed for his business and the
world in general. Success cornered him into being a hypocrite. But Leon offered
Vince the sort of banter that took the tedium from the cloying silkiness of his
life.
Vince
hoped she was ugly, sow-faced, saggy-breasted and weak-chinned. But the police
had shots of her leaving the Nexus beside him. He could barely stand to look.
He could barely stand to hear her name. Nancy Hutchens. She wasn’t ugly. And
Vince had been right; she had been none of the above. She had a heart-shaped
face, brown hair and brown eyes. She wore a cocktail dress, a tiara of some kind
and lots of eyeliner. She would probably not be so pretty the next morning.
The
photograph had not jolted his memory. He still could not imagine her on the
seat beside him in the limo. He would not have made the connection even by the
sight of her face.
The
police told him that the woman claimed she had left the limo prior to the
crash. Was this true?
Vince
hesitated at this revelation. She probably feared exposure or of getting sued.
He would rather not speculate but was grateful her wishes accorded with his.
Vince decided to confirm this fact. The police had then showed him a photo of
some peacock called Cora. Vince would rather it was nobody. A woman who didn’t
exist, like the one Leon had picked up at the restaurant after dropping off
Nancy and which Vince could not give a description to. A fictional woman. Vince
had told the police he couldn’t confirm.
But
the truth remained that a non-fictional woman had punctured a hole in his
throat from where she had pushed her breaths into his lungs. Why did his life
have to be saved in such a repugnant way? Anything else would have been
preferable: the hurling of rope over a cliff face; the pressure of a tourniquet
over a gushing artery.
But
the pain of mangled legs was nothing next to the torture of suffocation. A cold
sweat would occasionally descend upon him at the thought of it. Vince had initially
thought he had sustained a throat injury before realising Dennis’s recreational
sweet had taken a trip of its own. This eucalyptus delicacy comprised onion-like
layers beginning with a mellow opium-based narcotic to get him in the mood. Amphetamine
next, for a little euphoria in the small hours, concluding with a coke hit. Suck,
don’t bite, Dennis had instructed. To elucidate his point, he had molded the sweets
into little penises. Suck it, he had said; suck it slow and you will never want
the night to end. The shape happened to form the ideal cork for any throat.
Vince
had awoken in the hospital bed on account of her. Sunlit squares on the ceiling
had fuzzed into focus on account of her. He was still Vince who could speak, think
and remember his own name on account of her. He should be grateful. He tried,
God how he tried. Thank you. He had
uttered the words once to himself in the bathroom. The vocalization spurred a
tingling in his larynx and briefly suspended his swallowing reflex.
He
had encountered her at his final breath in a deep, dark ditch where he believed
daylight would never find him again.
Thank you.
He
had clawed at her dress, his vision speckling over and his chest lurching
violently, uselessly.
Thank you.
He
had finally blacked out at the point at which his fist had stiffened over the
hem of her dress.
Thank you.
Vince
had not experienced a blinding white light at the end of a tunnel. He did not
feel born again. He did not discover a new Vince that looked upon the world
with fresh eyes and heightened clarity. If anything, he had become more of a
creep.
He
would rather have died in the crash like Randy Savage or Marc Bolan. Death by
crash had a certain poetry. A survivor sweating and swearing on a calf-stretcher
was simply distasteful and undignified.
If
she should seek him out, and he hoped she would not, Vince would compensate her.
Yes, compensate her in an orderly, proper and business-like fashion. He would
then hope to never see her again.
