The Machine. James Smythe

       11

      Laura says goodbye to Beth. There’s no thought of this continuing onwards – Beth remembers when that wouldn’t have even been a question, that a pub shutting didn’t mean you had to go to bed and tuck yourself in and end the night – but Laura’s adamant. She’s drunk and swaying, and Beth asks if she can find her way; if she’ll be all right. She’s insistent that she doesn’t need Beth’s help.

      I can get home, Laura says, I honestly can. She reaches over and grabs Beth’s shoulders. Beth, she says. Beth. It’s been such fun. We have to do this again.

      Laura stumbles off and leaves Beth in the street. She starts home. The walk back takes her ages, as she keeps stopping, leaning against walls. She catches sight of herself in the huge mirrored windows of the porn shop tucked between the kebab house (heaving) and the tiny grocers (which is perpetually empty, and seems to survive only on the occasional sale of a bunch of flowers) and she realizes that she doesn’t look anything like the woman she’s been for the last five years. She’s relaxed, and it’s all over her face. Her posture, even; the comfortable slump of her shoulders. It’s enough to make her cry, and she does, facing the water on the far side, away from the street. She’s never been in one of those shops, but she wonders if they can see out of that mirror: if they’re all watching the strange woman sobbing on the other side of the window.

      For the rest of her walk home – which she extends by taking side-streets, by passing back along the front, by stopping and watching the people drinking in the streets, grabbing each other’s arses, chewing each other’s mouths off – she wants to be discovered. She wants everything out in the open. She doesn’t think about Vic for at least half an hour, and when she realizes that, she feels incredible. Magical, even. He’s everything, but that pause … to take it was so freeing. She passes students and parents and colleagues, but they don’t notice her, or they aren’t looking, or they don’t say anything. She doesn’t know which. She’s drunker than she’s been in years, and she can feel it through every inch of her.

      Beth opens the front door on her third try. She drops the keys on the mat and bends to pick them up, but her ankle shakes as she does it, so she props herself against the frame with her hands.

      Shit, she says. She swats the keys into the flat, and they skirt along the floor, making a noise, scratching the fake wood floorboards as they go, ending by the wall of the living room. She kicks her shoes off after them. Then pulls the door shut as she staggers forward.

      I’m home, finally I’m home, she yells, and she puts her bag down, takes her coat off and she marches down the hall, pressing one hand against the wall the entire way. Home is the hunter, she says, which is something that Vic used to say, as a joke.

      She opens the door to the bedroom and there it is: the Machine. She kicks the power on and the vibrations start, more acutely than before: she can hear it, feel it coming through the floorboards, the carpets, the walls. She can feel its vibrations through the wallpaper. She says his name, once, quietly, to remind herself of him – of what this is all about – and then walks to the Machine and puts her hands on it, palms out, on either side of the front panel. Its vibration runs all the way through the metal of every panel and part as it readies itself. She paws the screen, which is black, blacker still than the metal body of the thing, and her touch brings it to life.

      You’re in there, she says.

      Through the scrolling list of dates one leaps out, one that took place on the day after his birthday that first year of his treatment. She wonders. She presses play, and the doctor speaks, a prelude to Vic.

      What did you do yesterday?

      Beth took me out for a meal. We, uh. She booked a Greek restaurant. We both really like Greek food.

      You seem distracted.

      No. No. Just, it’s just coming hard today. Difficult for me. Don’t know why.

      She pictures him there, struggling to keep it together, and she takes the Crown down from the docking station and nearly puts it on but doesn’t. Instead she rests it on the bed next to her, and she moves her right hand from the screen and down between her legs, pulling up her skirt, and then into her underwear, sliding down. She rubs herself as she sits on the edge of the bed, and then moves her body along the lip of the mattress. She remembers how she used to do this before she knew him, when she was still a girl.

      She moves herself to the bed proper, face down, hand back inside her, rubbing, her back arched like a cat caught in a stretch. She gasps, one hand propped against the Machine, the vibrations through every part of her body, through her skeleton, through the other hand as it pushes her forwards.

      It’s over as fast as it starts. She sits up and listens.

      Do you mind if we begin the process? the doctor asks.

      No, sure. Start.

      Talk to me about Beth. How did she feel when you were away?

      I don’t know, Vic says. Beth’s heard all of these recordings before, back when she was administering the treatments for Vic at home. When – she joked with herself – she went rogue.

      Don’t you talk about it?

      We did, but I can’t. I mean, she was sad. She cried a lot, near the end.

      Do you remember why you came home?

      I was, uh. Vic sounds upset, and he breathes through his teeth. Was I sick?

      You were sick, yes. The doctor stands up – the noise of the chair legs scraping against the linoleum floor of the hospital – and there’s some tapping in the background. Vic, listen. I’d really like you to lean back and shut your eyes, and listen to something for me.

      You don’t want to talk? Because I can keep going, I think. He sounds desperate.

      No, not for the moment. Just listen to this, and then we’ll talk afterwards.

      There’s a click, and the playback stops. The end of that recording, and the start of the first session where the Machine started filling in the gaps in what it had taken away.

      Beth lies back on the bed. The room spins. The light is still on, and the Machine is on, and next to her – she reaches her fingers out – and then in her hand is the Crown. She shuts her eyes. She can’t stay in here, she knows. Her bed is in the next room. And she doesn’t know what she might do.