Infidelity Quartet: Coda

When Billy was sentenced, I believed I would visit him religiously. Would stick by him through everything, be his loving friend and supporter, week in, week out. He was, after all, the love of my life.

Of course, it didn't work out that way.

The first time was the hardest. Seeing him there in the visitors' room, dead-eyed and lost. His face and neck were bruised, his lower lip swollen; it looked bitten. He was hardened in a way he never had been, not even during the trial. Just those few days in prison had changed him into something barely recognisable.

It didn't occur to me then that he was still playing a role; that his chameleon nature had found its most perfect expression. No, that bitter realisation came much later.

You don't want to know any of this. Why would you? It disturbs the neatness of the story I wove, that self-serving web of lies. You don't want to know, and I don't want you to. I want to remain the innocent bystander, the forgotten, beautiful one.

But there's always the guilt. Nagging and gnawing at the sleeping mind; and, lately, the waking one. Quietly insistent, nauseous, accusing. There is no escape from the guilt: It is the beating of his hideous heart!

Sometimes the urge to confess is overpowering.

There are still a few cruel diversionary tactics I could deploy. I never told you they found Jerry's semen in Eleanor's vagina, did I? That after all those years of selfless dedication, the unreciprocated love, the silent reproach from her living corpse... After all that, when she finally deserted him, he surrendered to his pent up yearning, released his anguish and frustration by fucking the unresisting shell she left behind.

Does knowing that make you feel better about anything?

I kept up the visits for as long as I could. It wasn't easy. The man I visited was a stranger, really, though I couldn't help but overlay his image with that of the gorgeous creature I had known since our schooldays, the one by whom all other men had always been measured and found wanting; the hero. He received me civilly, and perhaps he didn't blame me in the way I blamed myself; but mainly he did what he was best at: he fitted in.

The bruises soon faded, and there were no more. Not on his face and body, at any rate; sometimes his knuckles were scabby and raw. The lost, bewildered emptiness of that first visit was replaced by an emptiness much worse, much more brutal and powerful. Billy found his level.

It was clear long before the last time that I didn't, couldn't, fit in with the role he was now playing. I might hold myself responsible for it, but I could never be a part of it. It was clear... but I didn't -- wouldn't -- accept it.

Where did he get the gun?

Jesus. Where do you think?

The last time I visited, he made things quite clear.

"I don't want you to come here anymore, David."

I tried to be disbelieving, but I knew it was true. And I knew I deserved his rejection.

"I appreciate what you've been trying to do. But it doesn't help. Not anymore. Not here."

"Don't say that, Billy. Please don't say that."

"It's a different world now. You have no idea how different. Look around you: this is my life. What place is there for some schoolboy crush in all this?"

He put it so nicely, but we both knew it was just an act. A last nod to the world we'd left behind. His clientele now consisted of hard men with tattooed knuckles, and punks raped after lights out. Strength was all that mattered now, all that stood between soft flesh and sharp steel, and strength was something Billy had. Something he'd always had.

I didn't go back.

It wasn't easy, getting the gun. And even harder a second time.

Sometimes the urge to confess is overpowering.

There's always the guilt.

I thought telling the stories would help, but it didn't.

Nagging and gnawing at the sleeping mind.

And, lately, the waking one.
Posted by matt at May 25, 2005 12:00 AM