Everything changed after my wife died in a shark attack. I’d always mocked her fear of the ocean, treated it as a kind of low-grade hysteria, but it turned out her fear had been well placed all along. The shark had taken a leg and come back for an arm. It was a terrible thing to contemplate, that part, significant parts, of my wife had been eaten. But at the same time I felt no animosity toward the shark. How, I thought, could I be angry at it for doing what it was put on this Earth to do? It was as if I was unable to blame my wife”s murderer for her murder, which made her violent demise even more unbearable, of course.
The day after the funeral, I went back to work. It may seem callous, but I needed to be doing something. I could tell my friends, my late wife’s friends really, disapproved, that they thought it was unseemly, but I figured it was my wife who had died, not theirs, and so I was entitled to behave however I saw fit.
And for a while, the mindless meetings and sheer pointlessness of my bureaucratic job gave me a lift, a reason to continue. Needless to say, it didn’t last long. Fuck this job, I recall thinking one day whilst filling in some form for some oblique purpose. Once the form had been duly filled, my mind was made up. I immediately emailed my boss - a man who bore, and had always borne, I thought, more than a passing resemblance to Jabba The Hutt - to let him know i would be taking extended leave on compassionate grounds. And then I hotfooted it out of there. Actually, no, first I went to the toilet to relieve my anxious bladder, and then I hotfooted it out of there.
For three months thereafter I was bed bound. Or not quite bed bound, I still had to eat (Huel) and drink (Huel) and go to the toilet many times a day (on account of my prostate). And then, one day, I decided I’d had enough of moping. My wife was dead: a shark had partially eaten and killed her. There was no getting around that brute fact. And the sooner I accepted it for what it was the better.
After bingeing for a few days on protein shakes, I felt something like my former self. I packed my bag with essentials, switched on the burglar alarm and exited the flat. I had no idea where I was going or what I was even doing.
Somehow I wound up at my brother’s place. It had been ten years since we’d last spoken and he was understandably surprised to see me on his doorstep. I asked him if I could come in and he said sure.
I followed my brother into the kitchen and sat down at the quartz island. He handed me a beer and came and sat next to me. After taking a fulsome swig, I told my brother about the shark attack, sparing him the grisly details. He seemed indifferent. He said it was terrible, of course, that I must be bereft, but I could tell he couldn’t care less. I asked if I could stay a few days and he said yes, of course, but he only had a sofa bed. I said that would be more than fine.
My brother left the flat early the next morning, presumably to go to work. Since his banging about had woken me up, I decided to get up. I made myself a strong coffee and drank it on the patio smoking the cigarette I had found in my brother’s bed. A woman was staring beadily at me from a window across the way. I tried to ignore her but it was hard. Eventually I stopped trying to resist the urge and I looked up and stared at her. She had black bangs and a marble-white face. She was smiling. Subtly but unmistakably so. It reminded me of the way my wife smiled. I hurried back inside.
Later, I returned to the patio, sparked a cigarette and waited for the woman to appear at the window. She didn’t.
Later, I returned to the patio, sparked a cigarette and waited for the woman to appear at the window. This time she appeared, but only briefly, her face quickly hidden behind a brocaded curtain.
And that was that, I thought. Except it wasn’t, of course. What sort of a story would this be if it was.
*When my brother got home, he immediately went to the fridge and pulled out a beer. Only after downing it did he realise I was sat at the island. He seemed surprised, as if he’d forgotten I’d turned up out of the blue the night before. Want one? he said, nodding at the beer in his hand. Why not, I said.
As we drank our beers, my brother and I attempted conversation. It was hard. There were so many things we couldn’t talk about it was difficult to think of things we could. As soon as my beer was finished, I told my brother I was planning to move on in the morning. My brother made a half-hearted attempt to dissuade me, which I brushed aside. The relief in his face was palpable. He went to the fridge to get another beer and I went and laid down on the sofa bed. My brother continued drinking at the island as I lay there feigning sleep until I was in fact fast asleep.
The next day I checked into an Airbnb - a studio apartment with white walls and black window frames and hyper-Scandinavian furniture. I took a shower and then vegetated in front of the television, which filled an entire wall. After however long of monging out I came to my senses and realised I was me again. It felt bad to be reminded, akin perhaps to finding out that the Easter Bunny was a con job. Hence why, I suppose, I tried to find a way to forget again. At first I thought some class A’s might do the trick, but then I remembered that I had zero clue how to procure them. Then I pondered whether alcohol might be the answer, but of course it couldn’t be, what with me being an alcoholic and all. So the only credible option left open to me was sex. Yes, sex.
Immediately, I received a neural notification from my life agent, who I have deliberately not named (I know it’s unusual, maybe even odd, but I have my reasons). I would have told the life agent to go right ahead and speak, but I didn’t need to. The life agent already knew that’s what I would do. Moreover, the life agent knew exactly what I wanted it to do without me saying a thing, hence why it informed me that an escort would be arriving at my Airbnb within the next twenty minutes. I didn’t thank the life agent because it already knew I was grateful. Not that it mattered.
When I opened the door to the escort, I was momentarily shocked to discover that it was the woman with black bangs. But then I realised it made sense somehow, that this was meant to be and that in fact we had done this many times before. Can I come in? she said. Of course, of course, I said. I opened the door wide and she sashayed on through.
We didn’t waste time talking. Neither of us wanted to talk anyway. This was a strictly carnal affair. I knew it and she knew it. We fucked with maniacal intensity. For many hours. When we were done we collapsed into each other and slept as one. I dreamt of my wife. She was swimming away from me, terrified. I kept shouting at her to stop swimming. I couldn’t understand what she was so scared about.
I awoke to find myself on the floor of my bathroom, staring up at the underside of the toilet, which was, I noted with disgust, stained brown. I could smell bacon. I followed my nose to the kitchen. Black-bangs woman was at the stove frying bacon stark naked. I lit a cigarette and said: my name is Noah, what’s yours? My name? she said, turning to face me with a little coy smile. Uh-huh, I said. It’s….Juanita, she said softly, almost imperceptibly.
I liked the name Juanita and I liked Juanita even more than her name. I told her this and she reacted by moving into my Airbnb. Thus began a concupiscent frenzy that had no precedent in my life, perhaps no precedent in human history.
At some point, however, the romping became humdrum. It was inevitable of course. But, still, the realisation stung. I willed it not to be the case, tried to pretend otherwise, but it was no good, I just couldn’t keep up the pretence. I came clean with Juanita and she seemed hurt. Humdrum? she said. I nodded. Tears filled her eyes.