In Which a Man Falls from a Ladder as Geoff and Wakes Up as Tim

You're halfway up the ladder when your foot slips and you have to
clutch the rung above to stop yourself from falling. The paint can
wobbles in your free hand. Suddenly it seems a long way to the top of
the mural. You stare into the painted brickwork directly in front of
you. The second half of the ladder should be no harder than the first.
It's higher, granted, but the physics ought to be the same. Don't look
down, you tell yourself, and the shame of resorting to such a clich? is
enough to prang you onward and upward.

Your knees are trembling. The weight of the paint can is seductive, and
for a moment you consider yielding and allowing it to peel you from the
ladder like chewing gum. You raise your foot, and the black paint slops
and gleams like treacle. The big blue eye of Jesus is the same size as
your head. You can smell orange rind. You feel the faint urge to
urinate and the tips of your ears begin to tingle. The mural, the
ladder and the paint darken and fade like the picture on an old
television when the cathode-ray tube blows. Your hands relax and you
fall back. Everything is dead, grey and empty. A dead set.

* * *

I lie with my upper half slightly elevated. Both my arms are in casts.
I wear a neck brace (white plastic, not foam) and my ribs ache. The
room's nice. I must have gone private. My stomach feels peculiar,
swollen yet hollow, like a cellar flooded with turbid ditchwater then
pumped dry by firemen.

'It took eight hours to pump all the water out,' she says. 'The smell
was atrocious. Like fish heads and shit.'

'I see,' I say. She's talking about our cellar, not my stomach. She
says we chose these kinds of little dramas when we built our house on a
flood plain. Apparently the rain has been Biblical. 'What did? Brendan
make of it all?' She's mentioned Brendan twice. First, she said Brendan
sends his love, he misses you. Second, she said Brendan is sleeping at
Deborah's tonight. I infer, therefore, that I know him.

She rolls her eyes. 'What do you think? He's ecstatic. I haven't seen
him this excited since the time you broke wind and frightened off
Mopsy.' So, I'm audaciously flatulent and I have a? what? Cat? Dog? She
lays her hand on top of the blanket and gently slides it upwards
towards my inner thigh. A smile plays about the corners of her mouth as
she watches her fingers advance, spider-like, then she takes her hand
away and the smile vanishes. She looks at me. 'How have you been?' Her
face is asymmetrical. There is a large brown mole beneath her left
nostril, and the whites of her eyes aren't white, they're yellow. I
think she must be a smoker because I can smell it on the fake fur of
her fake fur coat.

'Funny,' I say. 'A little kooky. I think they put my brain back in
wrong.'

She frowns. It doesn't do her any favours. 'I've brought you a book of
crossword puzzles. You need to start doing at least two a day. They're
like rehabilitation exercises for the mind.'

'Uh? that might be tricky.' I wriggle the pink tips of my fingers
poking from the ends of my casts. She has already put the book down on
my beside table, with a blue biro on top.

'Well, you'll have to find a solution. I'm sure Michelle will help
you.'

There follows a thirty-seven second gap in the conversation where she
stares into the unhasped maw of her handbag and I entertain a sudden
craving for bananas. I'm sure I could manage several. She sighs loudly
and the bananas disappear in a puff of yellow smoke.

'So, the house is all right now?' I say.

'It's dry, if that's what you mean.' It's not until she says this that
I realise I don't know what I meant. I don't think I've said anything
throughout the whole conversation that was intended to mean something.
We could have been speaking in duck for all I care.

'How's? Mopsy?'

She narrows her eyes. 'What?'

'Is she?' Having committed myself on sex - Mopsy can only be female - I
waver momentarily, inaudibly. '?you know, with all the hoopla and the
commotion. Is she okay?'

Her stare hardens. 'That's not funny.'

'Oh.'

'Geoff?' I see saltwater trembling in her tear ducts and all at once
she's rounding on me. 'Why are you being so weird? Half the time you're
all glassy eyed like you're not even interested. It's really tough at
home trying to cope on my own, and, and? Look, you're doing it
again!'

'Sorry,' I say. I was thinking about Mopsy. 'I was thinking about
Mopsy.' She glares at me, breathing heavily. Somehow, she's managed to
suck the tears back into her head. 'What's wrong?'

'Shut up.'

'What happened to Mopsy?' I actually want to know. 'Seriously,' I add,
furrowing my brow.

'Mopsy died six months ago,' she says, 'you absolute shit.'

'Right,' I say. I close my left eye and peer at her. She sniffs
reproachfully. 'Who are you, by the way?' She turns away, snaps shut
her handbag, gets to her feet. I watch, sans depth perception, this
strange plain woman as she fastens her coat, flattens down the billows
with peremptory palms. I realise that the 'by the way' part might have
come across as flippant. 'I'm sorry,' I say. 'I didn't mean to come
across as flippant.' She pretends not to hear, but I notice her pace
slows as she dons leather gloves. 'But? I'd like an answer.'

'I'm your bloody wife, Geoff!' She's looking at me over her shoulder.
The zip on her left glove isn't done up. 'Not that you treat me like
it.'

'Oh? who was that earlier, then?'

'Who?'

'The one with the?' Instinctively, I want to resort to mime, but my
arms are set in position, so I just go silent for a couple of seconds.
'Like the chestnut bangs and the pert, uh? svelte, you know?'

'Svelte?'

'You know?' My mind, frail after a lifetime of relying on hand
gestures, refuses to produce a synonym. 'Svelte. With the
underbite.'

'That's Michelle,' says my wife, 'your secretary.'

'Oh! Is that why she left me a mobile phone?' She said my old one broke
when I fell on it. 'She said my old one-'

'I don't have time for this.'

'I thought you said Brendan was staying at Deborah's.'

'I have to go.' She walks to the door, stops. 'Call me when you're not
in this stupid mood.' She leaves before I can ask her what her phone
number is, because I don't think I'll have it in my new phone. There's
not much to induce me to ever call her, except she might explain why
she keeps calling me Geoff.

* * *

I sit sucking chocolates while the doctor asks me questions. Some of my
teeth are missing. Annoying. Still, even hard centres give in
eventually. The chocs are from Jay and Liz. Jay and Liz?

'What's your most recent memory?' the doctor says. He's fat and I like
him.

'Besides being here?'

He nods ponderously. 'Besides being here.'

'I was at a party,' I say. 'There were fairy lights on the walls and
lots of people drinking gin and Chablis. Not together.'

'Okay,' says the doctor. 'What else?'

'Oh? red wine mostly. South African Pinotage.'

'I'm sorry?' Doc looks perplexed.

'Pinotage. From the Cape region.'

'I don't understand.' Fortunate for him I know my wines.

'It's a grape they produced by cross-breeding Pinot Noir with Cinsault.
A bit second division... but perfectly quaffable if you just want to
get pissed.'

'Why are you telling me this?'

'You asked what else people were drinking.'

'No?' The doctor makes a muffled choking noise into his fist, as if a
piece of Dover Sole has gone down the wrong way. I realise he is
chuckling. 'I meant what else can you remember?'

'Oh. I spoke to someone I know who's like a friend of a friend called
Suzanne. She works at the art college. She had like this split dress,
you know, with like the gold spangles and whatnot. I remember thinking?
I remember observing that she had nice breasts.'

'And where did you go after the party?' I see the doctor isn't taking
notes.

'Oh, uhh? sketchiness.'

'Can you remember anything?'

'I spoke to this guy called Stuart? I don't know if that was before or
after Suzanne. He was skinny and I think I scared him a bit. I was
pretty drunk.' I shuffle my legs beneath the blanket.

'That was at the party?'

'Yeah.'

'Anything after that?'

'Uhh? I was in a taxi at some point. I can remember these like pink
streetlights going past.' Trying to think back is making me feel a
little groggy.

'Okay,' says the doctor. His voice is deep and calming. I feel better
when he talks. 'Where did the taxi take you?'

I'd shrug but I know how much it hurts. 'Home, I guess. Maybe.'

'And nothing after that?'

'No,' I say. 'I woke up and a nurse was stroking me.' The doctor raises
his eyebrows.

'You don't recall falling off the ladder, then?' he asks.

'No,' I say.

'Or any of the events leading up to your falling off the ladder?'

'No,' I say.

'Any reason why you might have been up there?'

'That woman? Michelle? She said I had a tin of paint.'

'Does that have any particular associations, bring back any memories,
images, smells?'

'No,' I say. 'Out of interest?'

'Yes?'

'Why does everybody keep calling me Geoff?'

The doctor frowns, unfrowns, frowns again. 'That's not your
name?'

'No.'

'Okay?' I can see by the way his face is changing that I've thrown him.
'What? should I call you, then?'

'I'm Tim. Pleased to meet you. I'd shake your hand, but?' We both
glance at my casts and the doctor grins nervously.

'Your wife says?'

'She's not my wife.'

'You don't think?'

'I mean, we have the whole doctor-patient confidentiality going on,
right?' I watch him expectantly.

'That's right,' he says.

'So anything I say is strictly? private.'

'Of course.' He glances at the notes in his hand. 'The name Geoff
Huxtable? it doesn't mean anything to you, then?'

'No. Should it?'

'It's the name on all your identification. That's how they were able to
contact your? err, Mrs Huxtable.'

'Right.' When I exhale I feel a twinge in my back. 'How long 'til I can
leave, do you reckon?'

'Well?' He straightens up in his chair. 'Obviously as soon as we've
made sure you're okay we'll look to getting you home. With head
injuries you always have to be extra cautious? and as we've
established, you're experiencing some amnesia, which we'd want to just
follow up on.' He squints at me, and the laminated surface of his ID
badge catches the light. 'You don't seem particularly? distressed by
the situation. It must be very confusing for you.'

Again, I want to shrug but refrain. 'It's not the first time I've woken
up on a hospital bed with no idea of how I got there.'

'This has happened to you before?'

'Yeah,' I say. 'I earn a lot of my living schmoozing in bars. One
Saturday night I went out with a group of guys in Dublin? We had a few
drinks, one thing led to another?'

'And?' He leans forward, hooked.

'I woke up on Brighton beach with no shoes. An old lady at one of the B
&;amp; Bs took me in and made me breakfast. I saw the paper and
nearly had a heart attack. It was Tuesday.'

'Aha. Quite a bender, then.'

'Must've been,' I say, 'but I made several grand out of it.'

* * *

The doctor talks to me a while longer and we go through some tests
where I have to remember words on cards. There's nearly nine months
unaccounted for since my last memory and coming round here. From what
my wife said, we're pretty rich, but I don't know if it's her money or
mine. While the nurse feeds me mash and peas, I decide to start
sleeping with Michelle as soon as I'm out of my casts. Something in her
eyes told me I probably have already.

My job - the one I used to do, as Tim, back in London - mostly involved
getting conference organisers pissed and coaxing money out of them. I
worked for a catering firm that specialised in corporate events. For my
part, I had to pick likely candidates at parties, suggest meeting up
for a lunch time drink, wait until they got a bit soused then drag them
over the road to the office to sign all the paperwork. I got a salary
plus eight percent commission. I'm an oily bastard so I was raking it
in.

And then, you know, once you're part of the scene you start to work out
how to make different people spill their guts and sometimes, if you're
real crafty like, you pretend to spill yours. Being an interesting
mystery is key. If you say stuff calculated to light the bulb of
curiosity inside your mark's head, they'll keep talking to you despite
themselves, even if at first they don't like you. People who blurt out
their whole CV - I earn this much, I like this, I hate that, yak yak
yak - they're the ones everyone swerves to avoid, and they're the ones
easiest to dupe.

If you ask a person the right questions and listen to how they reply,
you can usually figure out their biggest need and then use it to lead
them around like a bull with a ring through its nose. Once you know how
to elicit someone's needs and intimate the ways that you can fulfil
those needs, you can make pretty much anyone do exactly what you want
them to do. The ironic thing is, most people who figure this out end up
miserable, because they never think to look at their own biggest need,
which becomes finding someone they can't control, someone who sees
through them and loves them anyway. Otherwise ice-cool ladykillers end
up compulsively shipwrecking themselves on the rocks of some Plain
Jane's indifference, convinced that this girl's affection above all
others might mean something, and if she finally relents, they can't
have her for much the same reasons Groucho Marx refused to join a club
that would have him as a member. As the cold morning light strikes her
body, you realise she's just as gullible as the rest of them, and you
hate her for being such a disappointment. Guys like that are easy to
manipulate. They think they know it all. Say you hate women and you've
got a friend for life.

I don't need much anymore. When all the noise of I want this, I want
that dies down, life turns out to be interesting enough just as it is.
Things like the way food tastes and the colours of the room and the
changes in a person's face when they're trying to tell you a lie can be
fascinating if you know how to pay attention.

I sit and grin and watch the world go by like a wide-eyed kid at a
firework display.

* * *

There's a knock at the door and the nurse pokes her head into the
room.
'Mr Huxtable. Your sister's here to see you.' A woman in a lemon
crop-top with blond hair in bunches enters with her hands full of
chrysanthemums. The door closes behind her. She walks to the side of
the bed, puts the flowers down on a chair. The mattress creaks as she
sits by my head. She rolls up her top, lifts one of her gibbous breasts
out of a white bra and leaning forward pushes it into my face. I feel
her fingers raking through my hair and as the sound of her breathing
gets louder I manage to open my mouth and start flicking the nipple
with the end of my tongue. I feel her tug at the covers and then her
hand moves to my crotch.

'Oh Tim,' she moans. I stop suckling and turn my head away.

'Wait, wait,' I say, squinting beneath a faceful of bosom. 'Stop.' At
last she sits back, the pink tip of her one exposed breast glistening
with saliva. Her eyelashes are heavily mascara-ed and she smells of
vanilla.

'What's the matter?' she asks, her bottom lip protruding in the
beginnings of a pout.

'I thought my name was Geoff,' I say. 'And you're not my sister. Not
that? Me and her don't?' I let out a sigh. 'Not since we were
little.'

She cocks her head quizzically, like a big dumb puppy. 'Are you okay?
Fish-flaps said it was a head injury.'

'Fish-flaps?'

'Christine.'

'Christine?'

'Your Christine.' She shakes her head and tuts. 'God Almighty, have you
just woken up or something?'

'I'm suffering from amnesia,' I say, and I see her flinch like she's
been slapped. She opens her eyes as wide as they'll go. Her makeup
forcibly reminds me of the Phil Spector string section in The Long and
Winding Road, and my face turns goldfish-like as I try to decide
whether or not this is a good thing. She's waiting for me to reassure
her. I guess at what she wants to hear. 'But I remember you.'

She smiles. I smile. She lunges forward and before I know it her
breast's hanging out my mouth again. 'Wait, wait,' I splutter. She
backs off. 'Christine's my wife, right?'

'Right.'

'But you're not my sister.'

'No.' She flashes a faux-coquettish smirk.

'So why?' I trail off as she eyes me suspiciously. 'I'm sorry. I'm
still a bit, you know? trying to catch up.'

'Aww,' she says, 'sorry baby. I didn't realise how bad it was.'

'Why did the nurse say you were my sister?'

And with that, she goes on to explain the whole crazy scheme.

* * *

She leaves her number in my mobile. Two days later I call her.

'Hey Tim.'

'I'm out,' I say.

'Already? But I thought the doctor said it'd be at least another week,
and-'

'No, you don't understand. I'm out of the plan.'

She exhales heavily. 'What do you mean, out?'

'I mean I quit. I'm not going to go through with it.'

'But? What's wrong?'

'Nothing. I just don't want to do it anymore.'

'But you said-'

'I've changed my mind. I've thought it over.'

'But it was your idea! You spent months setting it up!'

'Yeah, you told me.'

'So why?'

'I don't remember any of it. I don't remember talking about or doing
any of the things you mentioned. And now, when I think about it, the
way you tell it?'

'What?'

'It seems like a really stupid idea.'

'I told you, it was your idea!'

'Well? I'm quitting, anyway. I'm out.'

'How can you get out? What are you going to do - divorce her?'

'Maybe.'

'What do you mean, maybe?' Her voice is getting whiny and distorted.
'What about us? What is this?' She makes a hissing noise. 'Tim? What
about us?'

'Look, my free minutes are all off-peak. I'm going to have to
go.'

'Tim! What's going on?'

'Bye.' I nod to the nurse, who takes the phone away from my ear and
presses the disconnect button. 'Thank you,' I say, but she doesn't
smile.

* * *

I think plans are best left to God.

Turns out my wife's previous husband was a big noise in
telecommunications, had part share in a company just before the market
went vertical. Died of a burst ventricle. Nasty business. Sudden. Like
trapping your fingers in a car door.

Who could have seen that coming? Who could have planned for that?
If she hadn't had dreams and schemes of investment and early retirement
and cottages in the south of France then maybe wifey would have felt
differently that morning, when she awoke to discover she'd lost an
inattentive husband and gained a small fortune. Perhaps she'd have been
daring enough to consider, just for a moment, that it might not be such
a Bad Thing. That it might be, in its own quirky-sacred way, somehow
providential. A Gift.

I try to tell her this one night, but it comes out wrong.

* * *

'Are you a good secretary?' I ask Michelle.

'Yes,' she replies.

'You're my secretary?'

'Yes.'

'My good secretary?'

'Yes.'

'My good, obedient secretary who always does what she's told?'

'Yes, yes.'

'You love me telling you what to do, don't you?'

'Yes. Oh God, yes.'

'You're such a dirty girl, aren't you?'

'Yes! Yes! Yes!'

Some months have passed since the blonde who wasn't my sister stuck her
tit in my mouth and as promised I am banging my secretary, Michelle.
It's not entirely clear whether we've slept together before. I didn't
ask. It's difficult to put that kind of thing delicately.
We're in a hotel room with low wattage bulbs. The gush of the taps
echoes round the ensuite as Michelle washes her post-coital face. I
yawn and tug on my boxers. My wife, a.k.a. Christine, a.k.a.
fish-flaps, is waiting for me at home. Brendan is staying at his friend
Michael's house this evening, so Christine and I are having a special
dinner. I got candles out from under the stairs before I went out, and
brought a bottle of Basque Rioja up from our cellar. I asked her not to
make any plans. We haven't made love since I woke up.

Michelle steps out of the bathroom, oddly coy now she's back inside her
underwear. She winks, cheeks pale and hair splayed, accentuating a sort
of dishevelled coroner's photo allure.

'I'd best be off now, chica,' I say.

'You take it easy,' she says. She shifts her weight from one foot to
the other as I pick my trousers off the floor and flatten out the
creases.

'Uh, Michelle?'

'Yeah?'

'I? We'll arrange the meeting with Trevor Milton first thing on Monday,
okay?'

'Oh.' Her chin against her chest, she gazes into the carpet.
'Sure.'

'Good.' One of my socks is in the folds of the duvet. I decide to buy
Christine a bouquet on the way home. I want to get her sweet smelling
flowers, ones she can leave in a vase in the kitchen. I want her to see
how much she means to me.

'Geoff.'

I lift my head from tying my laces. 'What?'

Michelle stares at me for a second. 'Nothing,' she says. I stand, give
her a peck on the cheek and hand her the room key.

'See you after the weekend,' I say.

I'm halfway down the corridor when a concierge emerges from one of the
rooms, yoked to an enormous vacuum cleaner. He gives a mischievous grin
and nods. I come here a lot.

'Good afternoon, sir,' he says, like it's a private joke. I return the
nod and the smile and he seems tickled half to death. He chuckles and
smirks as I limp off towards the elevators, his brown eyes sparkling
like rockets.