Z - Memory

Memory

But it has taken the life out of me this, this working through the
night, it has changed everything. Sometimes it makes you forget. The
road falls asleep, blurs.

A man is in my driveway when I get home. He's sitting upright, but he
is sleeping, his body piled on itself to keep him in place. This is
just as the morning is showing, the light revealing the skeletons of
trees against the background. I speak at the man from a distance. I
speak louder, slowly getting closer, till I can reach him with my foot,
nudge him awake. He is wearing a suit, a red tie, and he has a beard
with flicks of grey coming through. I push him with my foot and he
makes a noise. shakes his head. The man, he smells like cigarettes and
nightclubs. He has dust in his hair. I speak at him again, his eyes
flinch like a child pretending to be asleep.
'I need to go home' The man says, the morning mist hanging on his
words. He looks down at himself, smiling. 'Like my suit?' He asks. What
I'm thinking is I don't need this.

It's silence in the car. The road hums under the tyres.
'Why the suit?' I ask him. The man stares at the window.
'Do you know...' The man says. 'All the girls I've been in love with,
when I take the first letter of their first names it spells SINNA.
That's gotta' be a sign, right?' He doesn't turn his head to say this.
It's empty grassland in the breeze outside, the sound halted by the
windows.
'I went out last night.' The man speaks again, as if he's been waiting
for the right moment to say this. He says 'I went out to places I've
been before. I walked along the river and watched a reflection of a
plane float across the ripples. I watched a young couple argue outside
the cinema. Watched the city come alive into the night, then fall away
to silence. And I listed to the church bells echo through the papers
blowing across the streets.'
'Did you have someone with you?' I ask.
'I did. But not last night.' The man shifts in his chair. 'Last night
I went to places I've been with people before.'
'How did you end up out the front of my house?'
'On a night last year I walked by your house and held her hand along
the street lights. I kissed her that night, outside your house. I
remember standing with her on the pavement, her hair flicking my
cheek.'
'So where's she then?'
'Things happen. She went, and I know why, let's just say that. She was
beautiful that night. Are you married?' We drive into a small town,
just waking up.
'Yes' I tell him. 'Yes, I have a young boy.' The man stays silent as
we go through the shops lining the street, painted car park spaces
along the ground.
'I could've been married.' He says.

We roll into the next town, the man looking around more now. In my head
I'm thinking all the girls I've loved, they spell NKANC or something.
The man says:
'Just there.' And points to a shopping centre. I walk him in through
the cars and people dancing with shopping trolleys.
'Sometimes I wish I'd never been with a girl.' The man says. 'Don't
you?' I say no.
'Last night...' and he smiles. 'Last night I went to all the places
I'd been with the women I've loved and tried to pretend they never
existed. All of them. I tried to pretend I'd never thouched their skin,
their hands their lips. That's what happened to me.' He looks ready for
criticism. He looks ready to cry. But in some way I understand.
'I could've been married.' He smiles. The man hand me a photo and it's
him in his suit and a girl and I think she's smiling because of
him.
'Nothing will ever be the same without her. I can't pretend she never
existed.' Then he says thanks and turns, walks into the crowd and the
noise of the morning rush. And in the photo he's smiling. The city
lights surrounding them.

I'm still thinking of it when I walk into the car park, the maze of
vans, sedans and wagons. Parents filling their cars with plastic bags.
And I can't remember where I've parked.