The Doorway, The Nighttime

THE DOORWAY, THE NIGHTTIME
By Derek Wheatley

Now, some might find what I do daily or how I plan my life around one person as a little bit, well, unorthodox or odd or at the very worst, depraved, but ….what do they know? And who are THEY anyway? The thing is that I need her to remain where she is. She is in my head, my heart, my dull, waking existence, in the way I talk, how I hold myself up in the world, in the very core of my being. On the other hand, I am not in her life, at least as far as she knows. Well, as far as she knows that I know. Maybe she knows exactly where I am at most if not all times, just as I know where she is, always, physically at the very least. The concept of existence here, now, with just my single self to navigate through the weary days and weeks, is to imagine one of those black holes that Stephen Hawking bangs on about and to hear the echo of my yells as I disappear down one. I have: No job to preoccupy my mind, only vanished shadows of former friends who I let go almost as soon as Cora declared her love for me, only memories of a beautiful dead dog who swallowed rat poison in a neighbour’s back garden and who was hastily buried behind the goals on the local football pitch – his favourite place to run after his tossed tennis balls – and most importantly, a broken relationship with just the sightings of movements and the flick of room lights as she says goodnight to the world; but for one, the new man on the scene; the filler of shoes, occupier of bed, kitchen seat and heart. From a shout down the street, I found out that his name is Donal and it took a mere 11 days from their first date for him to stay the night in her second floor flat. It’s not a competition (lucky for me!) but for the record, it took over a month before she considered sharing a bed with me for some heavy petting and cuddling which always threatened to spill over to something a lot more intimate, but I bit into my inner resolve, managing to hold off and not make a complete balls of things. Then again, maybe he had slept on the couch that first sleepover, it being hard to tell by the lights as they on-d and off-d that most torturous of nights, in which I vomited twice (from stress), once in a partial spray on to one of my shoes and somewhat surprisingly made a little over 6 euro from people who believed that a man squeezed lengthways into the deep alcove of a doorway – a doorway which during daylight hours leads into the Citizens Advice Bureau – with a 5 o’clock shadow, darkly-ringed eyes and using his coat as a blanket, was most definitely homeless. The next morning, awake with dawn and trying to banish the cold by brushing at my limbs with frenzied palms, I watched Donal exit the main doors, failing to spot me and turning left towards the city centre. Then there she was, bellowing DONAL as if his very name sent high voltage shivers up her spine. He’d left his hat behind. He kissed her with extra tongue, her lower back bending but not in that fashion of pulling away from someone. You have to remind yourself to breathe in such moments. To balance out the pain, I chose the technique of pinching the fleshy area under my upper arm. She flounced away, he strode. I tried the impossible, to implode in the mind or to self-combust into a mound of sorrowful ash in the doorway, inevitably failing to do either.

I guess in my head I have created a schedule around the vigils, creating a structure that would suit anyone who works nights. I wait outside the video shop until I see her beautiful face, covered partially by that radiant red mane of hers, as she walks through the opened doors and waves goodbye to whoever has taken over from her for the evening shift. As is a shop manager’s want, she works from 10am to 6pm, no late shifts. I stay well behind her as she takes her familiar route home, stopping occasionally in the shop for groceries or heading to her parents’ house for a home-cooked meal, where she will stay 2 hours (tops!), as any longer her mother will start in about how Cora’s life is going and the steps she could ‘possibly take’ to improve things. Her mother wants grandchildren and - with Cora her sole offspring - has been getting less and less subtle with her hints on the possible ‘one’ arriving on the scene. I often wonder if I was ever mentioned in a sentence involving the ‘one’ or babies. I sit on a low wall at the bottom of the estate if she does go to her parents’; avoiding eye contact with residents and pretending not to hear the odd taunt from shitbag teenagers who lurch around with contrived menace. When Cora reaches her building and steps inside, I sink into the shadow of the doorway, looking up as the lights flick on, winter now breathing hurriedly around us and nights beginning to eat away into evenings. I pull on gloves and a hat and watch her routine unfold. The kitchen and living room lights remain on as the bedroom light turns on and off as she retrieves clothes for changing in to after her shower, and returns to brush the knots out of that hair, strands of which I use to spin around my index fingers as if it was my own personal plaything. But what a plaything, what a luxury to hold and to be at one with!

I sleep during the day with the help of prescription pills and the sound of whales on my mp3 player. Sometimes I imagine myself as Jonah inside the belly of the whale, being carried across oceans, the only way to escape Cora and the night time sessions in the doorway, and with this idea of release I sleep long and deep until my late-afternoon/early-evening alarm wakes me with a start and the revitalising juices of seeing her walk, her face, her posture push their way into my limbs and mind, shaking wariness away. Between my stretches and groans, and before my shower, I try to catch up with the important news that may have passed me by. I charge my phone and mp3 player, I drink two cups of strong coffee made from a machine on its last legs. It is a short walk to the video shop from my place. At my local shop I stock up on cigarettes and chocolate bars, warmly greeted and farewell-d by Polish Anna or Zambian Chibesa before taking up my position on the street where she works, at the mouth of ‘Graffiti alley’, close to the bus stop where elderly women congregate on Thursday evenings bursting with conversation and speculating on bingo wins and how they would be spent; the usual shout being that the back of Irish weather would be seen for at least a couple of sun-baked weeks. Ever since Vivaldi died, I feel compelled to pat the head of every stray dog that passes me. There are so many stray dogs in this city, you begin to assume or at least imagine that this is where they come to die. Cora always hated Vivaldi, always hated dogs in general. I mean who hates dogs? What sort of a bitch hates dogs like Vivaldi?

Now the one problem with listening to music while being buried deep in the recesses of a doorway is the surprise factor, and by that I mean the passing pedestrians. Of course the frequency of traffic varies depending on the given night. As far as vehicles go, by the time the driver gets to your area of situ, his or her chances of seeing you are close to zero on a road with a speed limit of 40kph and the narrowness of the street always demanding their full attention. Pedestrians are different though. On weeknights, it can be so quiet at times that it resembles a sort of ‘28 Days Later’ type scenario, but if there does happen to be people around, it is usually the insomniac dog walkers (shocked enough by seeing you there as to move past without so much as a second glance) or the lonely drunk (too happy to share a cigarette and an often overly-loud conversation about ‘fuckin’ bastard bankers’ or the simple pleasures of an outdoor slash against a wall). The weekends are more unpredictable. During my third weekend on Cora watch, I was befriended by a couple of lads who had consumed four-too-many drinks between them and after filling them with tall-tales of homelessness and hard luck, got a sound hiding for my troubles, resulting in blurred vision, a bloody nose and a sore shoulder. But in true tough guy fashion, I finished my watch, watching Cora through watery eyes – behind which beat a headache – as she made her way to 10am mass, before I headed for home (giving up on her for one day) with faulty steps and mindful morning strollers, a little horrified by my state. Yeah, weekends were never the most comfortable of times, there was rarely any fear of drifting off as my nerves jangled enough as to be almost audible. Weekends were not good for the mp3 player or inner calm.

Nor were the weekends good for knowing where she would be. Again, as shop manager, she benefitted from doing the rota and so only worked one weekend in every four. The other three were hers to do what she chose. Now, Cora was never a huge one for heavy drinking or dancing in one of the cities less-than-chic nightclubs, but she did like to get out; sometimes to the cinema or to a play or for a couple of drinks in one of the quiet wine bars where tinkling piano keys and seductive lighting are the order of the day, but since Donal’s arrival, with his big GAA head and enviably good dress-sense, Cora was now frequenting the more run-of-the-mill establishments favoured by 20 to 25 year olds who liked to watch sports on large screens as they talked shite or ate free cocktail sausages – provided by generous bar managers – and consumed pints of Heineken between single rounds of grossly coloured shots. What she might have jokingly referred to as ‘slumming it’ back in our time together, she now seemed to take to like a dirty priest to a playground. On the nights when she drinks at bars or scoffs popcorn at the cinema, I walk the general vicinity with the look of a man who has a purpose to his existence. Arousing suspicion is best avoided, yet escaping detection is crucial. You must never stray too far at the risk of losing her, but also, never find yourself passing too close to exits where her beauty and his ruggedness might emerge from at any moment. Anyone who thinks that this is easy should try it sometime, see for yourself that it is more than a game, more than some stupid pastime used to while away redundant hours. Come and see what it is like to live every moment for someone who doesn’t even know that you are there.

Our generous government pays me to watch her, well, in a way. Weekly collection of monies at the most convenient post office allows me to pay my rent and other bills, while still leaving money to buy late night dinners at the 20-hour-a-day eateries that serve greasy chips, sloppy kebabs and cold cans of gratefully appreciated minerals. Zucco’s is my favourite because it is just around the corner from Cora’s (her flat, just about visible through the large side window) and the staff never ask questions as to why it is that I am there almost every single night – the odd night missing spent in McDonalds or The Munch. Of course they ask questions, but ones more to do with what I thought of the football at the weekend (no time for TV!) or whether or not I thought Angela Merkel’s hairstyle made her look ‘a little like a retard or not?’ (tough one, but probably….). Another bonus of frequenting a place so often is the general softening of rules just for you. It starts with a free 7up, maybe an extra chicken piece in your snackbox, and before long you find yourself with a free bag of chips and a cheeseburger you didn’t even ask for. Let me tell you, at 5am on a chilly Tuesday morning with an empty belly, even a cold cheeseburger is as welcome as a warm hug from a loved one. So all-in-all I do okay moneywise, there are no financial difficulties for me, no, my difficulties run a lot deeper, right to my heart. I’m not even sure what happened with regards to this routine, just that it did happen. Would she find the nightly pilgrimages romantic? Of that I couldn’t say. I like to think so though. Really, I’d like to think she thinks of me before drifting off to sleep in his arms.

So what do I do at night when I’m there? Well I don’t just stare longingly at the darkened empty windows (well for part of the vigils I do). For most of the time my eyes wander and my mind contemplates the naked essence of my current being. What I am doing is nothing but the prolonging of a broken engagement, this I know of course, I’m not stupid! But I wasn’t ready to split from her; maybe I never would have split from her, had it been my choice. So this is my choice, I will be comfortable with following her until I’m ready to call it quits and dump her from my life. I’m on my own now, for some time actually, having peeled myself away from the friends and family members formerly in my orbit. It is hopefully just a short-term separation from them, I’m not in the business of upsetting my loved ones, but I know allowing them in on my little secret would be devastating to my plans. I don’t need any type of American-style intervention; as I said, this is a temporary game plan, who knows, maybe she will come to her senses (as they say), see the light (as they say), even cop-the-fuck-on (as they also say). I’m not even that upset or jealous by the whole Donal thing, which is possibly a great thing, a hint at the unapparent ease with which I am letting her go. This was bound to happen; she is great, almost perfect in fact. Besides, he’s just a rebound, I suspect.

The first night of watch felt strange; I was uncomfortable, sick to my stomach. It was a Friday night – two days after our split - and peoples’ voices burst the nights intended silence like fists through glass. I heard foul language, peoples’ splashing vomit on cobbled stones, fights that would only involve words and not physical violence, whooping car alarms, the obligatory dog barks, drunken salutations and dodgy engines. By the second week I had drowned them all out with calming music or the songs of the sea. On the third Saturday, she came through her doorway, her attention directed firmly at her mobile phone. She stood directly opposite me; I could see her full figure – thin and dressed up to dance – through two parked cars. If she looked up and across, I mean really looked, she would have seen me staring at her with tears in my eyes. Angels don’t usually visit these streets. A taxi whisked her away to louder, more sociable places, as I sat in the joy of her memory, unable to follow, unable to stand. I was ill and shaky when she returned in the early AMs, heavier of step and fumbling with the key cord for the door. A beep, a click, a thump and her figure faded into nothing but a brightly-lit hallway with just the one viewer, a sad and lonely guy in a doorway, smoking strong cigarettes and drinking orange juice through a straw. Morning wasn’t far away by then and my bed was calling but I didn’t want to leave that doorway ever again at that point. Life could wait. Cora, standing between two cars, patiently waiting, was something so real as to be closer to surreal. But of course, bed won, she would sleep on that morning and for a few hours after, do her own thing, until I returned to observe and report to no one in particular.

I’ve wept into my pillow during some of the sleepless daytime hours, but only once did emotion breakthrough in the doorway (see last paragraph). There really is no time for emotion, no place. It’s too crude a setting to become embroiled in crying games. Months have passed and routines have been strictly adhered to. When will I get off this slippery slope and take control of a life of my own again? It’s sad, but the idea of that now scares me more and more as time goes on. Where would I be without the glimpses of her every day? I’ve even grown fond of the sightings of Donal’s large head and ruffled hair. We are like a threesome within a small circle which I have drawn and within that circle I am the director of an independent film starring two good-looking lovers. I capture the chunks of their mundane existence, also in control of what I see, so in turn what you – as the viewer – sees. But there is still no ending and the cameras are rolling, and the screenwriter is under pressure to perfect and polish the ending, because we are all interested in finding out just when she will dump him and return to the man she has always loved. Come on screenwriter, you only have the equivalent of a ten minute cinematic experience to pen the scene, we are all dying to see the young stud (ha!) emerge from the doorway triumphantly resurrected like Jesus form the tomb, to grab the beauty, and dip her romantically like lovers finishing a dance in an old black and white masterpiece, to kiss her with moist lips and softly pressured tongue. Come on screenwriter! Hurry!

It all kicked off last night when shards of glass sprinkled down upon my head. Fuckin’ scumbags, loaded up on booze and bravado. I was sure when I looked up from the ground and my music induced daze that I would see some hooded-creatures of youth or slightly oversized, short-sleeve-clad frustration of the unemployed mid-twenties set, but no, I saw four guys who could have been a young Kings of Leon; with their skinny jeans, pointed boots and the styled “mess” that was their hair. It was all in mime and silence, looking totally absurd until I removed my earphones and silenced music that those clowns would surely not approve of. They were aiming the glasses at the wall above me so the shattered pieces would rain down, to frighten rather than harm. One stood back, still drinking from his pub-stolen glass, fear in his young eyes, displaying a clear wish to propel himself away from this locale. Collectively they told me I was a “fucking bum”, “a cunt”, “a junkie”, “a scumbag”; what I was was none of these things, only a loser. I was away from them, and still here. I picked glass from my hair with care. I couldn’t hear them. Gushing sounded in my ears, maybe blood, maybe something entirely foreign and new. Movements in front stopped, but for the one who stepped forward and drew his boot back, letting it fly, kicking me - closer than I felt I already was - to oblivion.

I woke up with my hand in my mother’s. It must have been through my phone and wallet that nursing and hospital administrative staff had tracked my family down. I had drifted in and out of consciousness for most of the night. I was kept under close observation by a nurse named Kate and my ever-fretful mother. My dad had dropped her off just after 4am, and then fucked off back to bed; thinking it was my fault, just a product of a drunken night out, oh he knew everything! My mother touched the bandage on my nose. The Kings of Leon boy had broken my nose, right eye socket and right cheekbone and to round it off, kicked out two of my teeth. Painkillers cancelled out feelings to the area where dental surgery had already taken place and to the remainder of my face, at least for the time being. My blackening eyes were the opposite to a panda’s. Questions of who, why and when were asked, but the mask of concussion could be a wonderful thing; feigning ignorance could and would come later. My mother finally left when I needed to undergo a quick inspection to check my state. My eyes followed a finger then the tip of a pen. The doctor was pleasant but in a hurry to move on to more urgently ill patients. Two more hours before I could leave, I was told. For the first time since my awakening I thought of Cora. She would be in work. I should by right be fast asleep at home, resting up for a watch in the doorway that was a scary place now. My mother returned with strong smelling coffee and the stench of cigarettes on her breath. The news of two more hours was passed on. She checked her watch, patted my knee and smiled.

She revealed herself with a swish of the privacy curtain around my bed; frantically alive against the sterile surroundings. Unconsciousness called for just a second but fell away into nervousness and confusion. Cora. Stunning in her plain top and comfortable looking tracksuit bottoms, her hair tied in a thick ponytail. I wouldn’t say she smiled as such, it was a…..well involuntary twitch of greeting and more to my mother than me. She stood to my left, small talk with her and my always-accommodating mother flew back and forth across me, until my mother stood and awkwardly excused herself to go get a coffee – a beverage which she rarely consumed, only seeking its solace during times of worry. Left alone, she spoke, telling me how it was SHE who turned me on my side so I wouldn’t suffocate in my own blood which had been threatening to put an end to me. She was slightly hysteric, I noticed, perhaps understandable when she went on to explain how every night when she turned off her bedroom light she would check on me, EVERY night. She knew all along and let it go on, thinking – like me – it would come to its natural end and then everyone could properly move on. She explained how Donal was unaware of my presence (I resisted asking how his lovely fluffy head was) and how she wanted to tell him early on in their relationship, so he could do something to scare me off. But she knew Donal, knew it would be more than a warning or something like that. So she valued my health, a tiny victory of sorts. My hand being now empty and limp on the bedrail where my mother had left it, was crying out to be held and it would continue to cry its sob of solitary. Cora stood back and away, looking down at me with a look of something unreadable; but if I was a betting man I would put money on pity or disgust

So she told me in no uncertain terms: NO MORE! Anger stirred in her, tears balanced on her lower lashes. She wanted rid of me and that was it; enough was enough. She used cliché after cliché until I nodded reluctantly, something of a sign for her to leave. As the space she occupied emptied, so it filled again with my sad-looking mother, telling me that I could leave now but would need to see my own doctor tomorrow for a check-up and a prescription if required. I walked sheepishly past staring eyes down the long corridor, through reception and out into sunshine. The day smelled great, fresh and disinfectant-free. A running argument started and continued on the way back in the car: my mother demanding I spend some nights at home due to the possibility of Post-Traumatic Stress (or some-such drivel she picked up on morning TV) and me belligerently declaring that I was going back to my own place. I won. She hugged me on departure. I got to my door before I started to cry, engulfed by the visions of the previous night’s brutality; completely unprovoked and unwarranted. I checked my face in the mirror and sighed. I pulled back my lips to see the red stains and swelling of surgery in my mouth. I swallowed two heavy duty painkillers (provided by the hospital), just for the hell of it (I wasn’t supposed to take more for 2 hours yet), more for mental pain than physical. The world was shit and I was part of it and I wasn’t ready to fall off the edge, to give up, to become some sort of lost romantic with no arms to hold me or no place to go. So I didn’t.

I’m here. It’s the nighttime. The concrete is stained red, in dots and rivulets. My face is sore so I take two more of the heaven sent, red and white tablets. Every passing figure is now a threat, but I will be stronger the next time, ready and waiting. I wonder if Donal is around, not for any particular reason, just for something to wonder about. The light in her bedroom turns off. I stare at the new darkness and wonder if she is staring back.

The End