by John Riley
WHEN CEO JESS HEADER started his walk of shame the length of HypnoTech club lounge, he did so knowing sixty invited guests heard the foul-mouth drunken rant from his wife, Linda. Spelt out loud and clear over the PA system. She let the world and its wife know everything.
She’d timed that embarrassment just when he stood at the wrong end of the room to stop her. Damn it! Jess had let his guard down, making small talk with Miles Platting, he wasn’t expecting to see here today. So, two surprises. Should he expect a third? These things come in threes?
Why for Christ’s sake didn’t Dave on the desk mute the mic? Bloody useless. Then again, he be no match for Linda bulldozing across the dias to snatch the microphone. Dave stood there red-faced, gesturing about what choice did he have.
Jess couldn’t get out of the room quick enough. She’d not only humiliated him but also embarrassed herself.
He somehow knew today would end up like this. He just knew it. Because company duty had brought them together. An awards ceremony acknowledging the great and good. You might as well have planted a bomb to go off. For that is more-or-less what the organisers had arranged.
Cometh the hour Linda exploded on the microphone, a megaton drop from up high.
Jess reeling and out of his mind heading for his car. His thoughts homing in on Linda’s brother, Clive, that cretin. He bloody well knew what was going to happen.
Clive on to it the moment Linda let rip. Him reckoned the rant was toe-curling misery and something shareable. The room had filled with an awkward silence. But not the socials, the row captured and uploaded before Jess had walked the room length.
Linda swung around.
“Here, get that down your neck.”
Lou offered another glass of wine.
Linda tottered back, dropping on the seat and glaring to the exit.
Meanwhile Dave tried to rescue the evening with a joke that fell flat. Made worse with that low murmering from an audience rejecting his attempt. Anyone else would have wanted to crawl away unseen, not Dave.
Linda wallowed in self-pity. How had the pair of them endured thirty years of marriage together? Every day row after row. She said he started them, and he claimed her mental illness needed treatment over some past trauma coming to the surface. Like it was always her fault.
But, and the real surprise, they have a son, not at home but living somewhere. And another bone to chew on for Jess sending bank transfers like she had some goddamn money tree.
Linda stayed in her silence as the others picked up the laughter. Her face set long. She detached from all that was going on. She resents being here. Just then, Beth laughed at some poor joke from Clive. Linda looked on, like silently questioning Clive.
“Well, you didn’t hold back, I’ll say that for you.” Lou said.
“Said what needed to be said.” Linda still staring beyond. “The only time I’d get an audience for them to know what he is.”
“Yeah.” Lou sighed, taking the drink.
It was seeing Marlene entering the club when Linda knew something was wrong. Marlene looked flustered, walking with tight little steps against the wrap of her dress. She came towards her, face red and puffing.
“It’s Jess, Linda. He fell getting into his car. He’s unconscious. Pete called for an ambulance. I think you better come outside.”
Jess lay flat out on the gravel when Linda saw him.
A small group from the party had gathered around Jess, and they parted to let her through. George, a family friend, had just driven over to join them at the function. He pushed through, panting like he ready to collapse and join Jess laid out by his side. He got close to Linda, supporting her arm and lowered themselves beside Jess.
June and Kay noticed George. They clocked his lingering grip around Linda’s waist.
“Jess, you could have waited while we got home.” Linda choked, stroking his forehead – he felt so cold.
“Where’s the ambulance, George?” Linda asked, worried.
****
Jess had time alone to reflect in his hospital bed before Linda arrived. When she did, it only took four minutes to start hostilities.
“You’ve made some big mistakes. The deals you’ve thrown away.”
And so it starts, thought Jess. He stared way ahead at some distant spot.
“You’ve made a right old mess of things now.” She pulled that face.
“How did you even begin to think I wouldn’t know?” She pointed the rolled-up magazine she came in with at him.
She drew into herself all tense.
“Marlene naively thinks it’s your illness.” Linda mocked her faux concern through clenched teeth.
Jess said nothing except the heart monitor bleeps began to speed up.
Well, pill-popping Jess Header had made mistakes in his long life. Lost many deals towards the end, massive ones as well. And yes, made a right old mess of things. You could say the cancer affected his pickled brain.
Not the reason, thinks Linda.
“He doesn’t try to think! He’s just lazy! Doesn’t try. Won’t try!”
Jess, returning fire, hammering home his point. “Show me a person who hasn’t made mistakes!”
“Woman! You don’t stop! You’ve no room to talk. Christ! You throw money away on rubbish…never worn.”
“Well that’s because you never take me anywhere.”
“I do, but you become an embrassement. Do you ever realise how much you put away. Eh? Do you? Same old…same old…Hell, you might say some mistakes shouldn’t have been born! Know what I’m saying..! Eh..! You hear me? You’re not listening now, are you? Have you lost it?”
They both clock the bleeping heart rate monitor, which doesn’t stop them.
“All those pills you’ve taken!” Linda vents. “Vitamins, a load of eyewash. You don’t know what you’ve taken, and all those blue ones you’ve necked. I didn’t know where to put my face at the Mayor’s ball. You’d look like you’d grown another leg sticking out like it did entering the room before you did!”
A silence lingered. No winners yet, and seconds out for round two.
Well, believe it or not, Jess Header has the time, for the moment, to reflect on his mistakes.
He’s old enough to have seen many enemies meet their maker and answer for their crimes. Not Jess, well not yet, because he worked out something the other night, and knowing what he knows now, reckon he’s stumbled on something while slowly dying in his hospital bed.
The point is he’s been trying to contact his younger hedonistic self through dreams.
He’s convinced we’re not to know by the powers that each one of us can alter our timeline. He’s found information that his younger self could benefit from knowing.
“Forearmed is forewarned,” as if the tap to the nose says, I know a secret that you don’t.
Linda sighed, wrapping her arms and legs tightly, pulling that face again. Neither spoke.
He isn’t going public with this knowledge, no way, any person trying to put forward such a revelation would look like a buffoon, and experience can be a cruel teacher, thought Jess.
He has no friends anymore, something of a loose cannon, especially when not taking the red pills. Even George had stopped visiting.
Maybe it was the length of silence when the mood changed. Just for a second or so, something altered. Jess reached out.
“We should never have met, eh never had clapped eyes on each other.”
She looked at him and softened her gaze at the sudden change in tone.
She sat with him most days, observing the frustrations. He slept more often. The doctors blamed the disease. Linda felt the loss without a fight to pick with him. He looked weaker. She sat with him, each time aware of how lonely her life had become.
Jess slept, like he wanted it to be encouraged and became frustrated when it wasn’t happening. He’d tried to explain something, but Linda thought it ramblings. For Jess, in his dreams, he tried to make his headstrong younger self understand to avert his present fate.
He woke, like yanked out. Another thought rushed in. He needed them to understand, and he needed to be heard.
Jess had got it in his head that the doctors were thinking of changing his medication. He’s getting overly possessive, telling them to leave his goddamn pills alone and him wanting to sleep all the time. It was his only chance to change things for the better. He just needed a few more dreams, which are crucial for his life and that of another. She didn’t know it but was dependent on him getting it right.
-end-