Page 142 of I Am the Messenger

They sit on the kitchen table, wrapped together, gently moving and pushing down. They're half pale and frustrated. They have nothing to do.

The light smothers him.

He sits there for nearly an hour, and the radio seems to fade out more than anything else. When I look to the window, he's resting his head on the kitchen table, sleeping. The radio's up there, too, next to him. I walk away; I can't help it. I know I'm supposed to go in there, but tonight doesn't feel quite right.

I walk home without looking back.

We play cards the next two nights. Once at Marv's and once at my place. At my place, the Doorman comes and sits under the table. I pat him with my feet and study Ritchie all night. The previous night when I stood outside his house the same thing happened. He woke up, entered the kitchen, and listened to the radio.

The Hendrix tattoo stares at me as Ritchie throws down the Queen of Spades and wrecks me.

"Thanks a lot," I tell him.

"Sorry, Ed."

His existence consists of these late, lonesome nights, waking up at ten-thirty in the morning, being up at the pub by twelve and across at the betting shop by one. Add to that the odd dole check, playing a card game or two, and that's it.

There's a lot of laughter at my place because Audrey's telling the story of a friend of hers who's been looking for a job in the city. She went through one of those recruiting agencies, and they have a policy of giving people a small alarm clock when they get a job. When she got the position, she turned up on the same day to thank the people who hired her and forgot about the clock. She left it on the counter in the main office when she left.

The clock was sitting there in the box.

Ticking.

"See, and no one wants to touch it," Audrey explains. "They think it's a bomb." She throws down a card. "They call the head honcho of the company, and he practically shits himself because he's probably getting it off with one of his secretaries and his wife's finally got the better of him for it." She lets her words pause to keep us listening. "Anyway, they evacuated the whole building, called the bomb squad, the police, the lot. The bomb squad arrives and opens the box when it starts ringing." Audrey shakes her head. "She got fired before she even started...."

When the story ends, I watch Ritchie.

I want to move on him.

I want to make him uncomfortable, to rip him from where he is and put him in his kitchen at one a.m. If I can achieve that somehow, I might see a longer version of what he looks like and how he feels. It's just a matter of timing.

&n

bsp; The time comes half an hour later when he suggests we play cards at his place in a few days' time.

"About eight?" he asks.

When we've all agreed and are about to say goodbye, I say, "And maybe you can show me what radio station you've got there." I force myself to be brutal and calculated. "The late show must be excellent."

He looks at me. "What are you talking about, Ed?"

"Nothing," I say, and I leave it at that because I've seen the look on his face again now and I know what it is. I know exactly how Ritchie looks and feels when he sits there in the paralyzed kitchen light.

I go into the blackness of his eyes and find him somewhere far inside, searching through a maze of anonymous, empty avenues. He's walking alone. The streets shift and turn around him, but never does he change step or mood.

"It's waiting for me," he says as I take my place next to him, deep inside.

I have to ask it. "What is, Ritchie?"

At first he only continues walking. Only when I look down at our feet do I realize that we're actually going nowhere. It's the world that moves--the streets, the air, and the dark patches of inner sky.

Ritchie and I are still.

"It's out there," I imagine him saying. "Somewhere." He walks with more purpose now. "It wants me to come for it. It wants me to take it."

Everything stops now.

I see it so clearly in Ritchie's eyes.