IceBerg - 3. Chapter 3

Okay, here I was, walking towards the café. I didn’t know many libraries so he said Gecko Coffee House, near where I was working. I was so used to parking at work I completely forgot how much a pain it was to park anywhere in the city.

‘Coffee place? For writing? Wow, how beautiful and cliché,’ Jake sneered into my ear. ‘Join your douchebag clang.’

Not now. I had a meeting.

Clutching my folders in both hands as tight as I could, I kept walking forward. I kept my vision straight ahead. I had no idea what to put on this morning. At half eight in the morning, I ended up on Google asking, ‘what do writers wear?’

Now I was just wearing jeans and a smart shirt.

‘Because that mix of casual and smart with a beard didn’t scream hipster. At all. Great first impression, Nathanial,’ whispered an angry Jake.

I stopped.

Ah. I couldn’t do this. But I was already at the door of the café. I could have just turned back, or peered in the window see if he was there.

A middle-aged woman flung the door open, chatting over her shoulder. Her chest collided with mine. My chest was scalding, and my papers felt wet.

Her face turned ash; her mouth wobbled.

‘I am so sorry!’ she babbled.

My notes. I wanted to be a typical City Guy and shout in her face and get mean. She looked like she was about to burst into tears.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I gave her a brief touch on the shoulder and forced a smile. My scalded chest was stinging wet. ‘Accidents happen.’

Walking past her, I could hear a faint, ‘I am so sorry.’

All my printed work.

Through the busy tables and noisy chatter, I immediately headed towards the toilets. Grabbing paper towels, I patted my coffee-stained papers best I could. Paper folder. What was I thinking? Should have brought the laptop.

In the mirror was a man with a completely ruined shirt and a wild look of anxiety in his eyes.

Why did I bother wearing shirts? Seriously.

Snatching up more paper towels, I tried to scrub most of the coffee off. I scrunched the paper towels up and flicked them in the bin, frowning.

I crept out the toilet. I scouted out for Charlie Conray from behind the plastic café plants.

‘Nathanial!’

He was behind me. Of course, he was.

Turning around, I saw him sitting on a table on his own, right at the back the café. I gave him an awkward shrug and grin. He beckoned me over. He was also wearing jeans and a shirt.

Sitting down in front of him, I placed the work down, ‘Yes, um, sorry about that, I …’

‘What are you doing?’

I blinked at him.

‘You can sit next to me, there is enough room, you can show me your work better.’

‘Oh. Yes, yes, of course.’ I scraped my chair back and waddled in-between the tables to sit next to him. I caught sight of the knight tattoo on his arm.

‘I am sure that woman was sorry to see her coffee go,’ he raised an eyebrow at my shirt.

He saw.

He looked at my face and shrugged, ‘Everyone saw. It was the highlight of the whole café for twenty seconds.’

‘So, you’re saying you’re not impressed with this place?’

Was I being too forward?

He gave me a big grin, ‘Shall we begin?’

                                                                     ***

It had been an hour and he had already got me snorting my drink out laughing. I already spent the first ten minutes explaining things, showing everything, all my notes, feeling like fifteen years old at my English presentation all over again. He explained some of his ideas towards my notes. We debated where his ideas would fit in. We added more characters, another plot twist.

This was actually turning out to be really fun.

‘So, adding religion into the plot?’ he asked, stirring his second coffee.

He had offered to buy me one, but I immediately shot it down with a polite firm no.

‘I add religion to all my, um, plots,’ I said.

‘Remember, he is not you friend, this is professional, don’t fall into his sweet trap,’ Jake’s voice lulled in my head.

‘Sweet trap,’ whispered someone else.

‘How come?’ he blew a gentle steam off his coffee and sipped it.

I gave him a shrug and a weird smile.

‘That’s not an answer, Nathan,’ he said.

‘Just a running theme.’

‘You, religious?’

‘Ha,’ I gritted my teeth and looked away. This was where I showed my true roots. ‘Born and raised. I go back on Sundays for church.’

‘Go back?’

Crap.

‘See my parents?’

My face burned a little. Idiot.

‘Do you believe because of your parents or your own belief?’

Picking up my pen, I doodled on the paper, ‘Um, my own.’

‘That’s cool.’ I looked up. He was smiling. It was a genuine smile; he was showing his teeth.

‘I don’t push it on to people, I am not like that,’ I couldn’t help but babble.

‘I didn’t think you would,’ he kept smiling.

‘You’re not?’

‘My mom is an experimental Jew; my stepdad is a damn awful scientologist, so I turned atheist.’

This was the second time I snorted out laughing. He chuckled at me while I wiped my face.

My shoulders felt more relaxed, I replied to him, ‘Wow, we are two enemies at the same table wanting to write about supernatural worlds.’

‘I think you should rename this,’ he tapped his finger on my notes. ‘Old Lady in Trance gives it away too soon. Just Lady in Trance, keeps away from the major plot line, keep the audience wanting more.’

I already knew that. But he was the successful one and I was not, so I clenched my teeth and kept my mouth shut.

‘I think we can convert the beginning of this into script. Have you ever written a script before?’

‘Adaptation?’ my mouth twitched.

‘Kind of. I can show you or I could?’

‘Don’t let him take over already! He will exploit the work!’ Jake shouted out of nowhere.

He was so loud I rubbed my ears hard.

‘No!’

I said that too quickly.

‘No,’ I said again, trying to calm my voice. ‘I just, um.’

‘I get it, Nathan. This is your work, I am not going to take that from you,’ he softened his voice. ‘I would like us to work as a team. Convert this story into script. Do you have any ideas of ending?’

My heart flushed, ‘Endings are my weakness.’

‘Don’t worry about that for now, we can stretch this into one series.’

‘One series?!’

‘Well, yes, this is clearly for T.V. right? The channels are looking for some ideas at the moment, to compete with Netflix, thought this could do the trick.’

‘I…’

This was fast. Not real.

‘I had no expectations,’ I carried on saying after catching my tongue. There was a silence before I asked, ‘How did you find my site?’

Tapping his nose, he nudged me and nodded towards his knight tattoo.

‘Magic knight,’ I said.

‘The knight that holds all the secrets to successful location.’

‘So, the knight spends many nights looking at millions of websites hoping to find his one true blogger?’

‘Many folks have a good fairy-tale godmother; I am stuck with this guy. He brings me creative types not princesses.’

‘Why a knight?’ I paused.

We looked at each other and both broke into a smile. It was automatic.

‘Why a knight?’ he sang.

‘Why a knight?’ I sang right back.

Chuckling, I dropped the pen I was playing with between my thumb and forefinger. I leaned back, just slightly.

‘A knight because I was drunk.’

‘Oh, that story,’ I couldn’t help but tease.

‘Plus,’ he added. ‘Because when I was growing up, knights, were my thing.’

‘Your thing?’ I repeated.

This was weird. Was he embarrassed? In front of me? That was stupid. This needed to be rectified. This guy shouldn’t have felt embarrassed in front of me.

‘Well, my thing was dolls,’ I shrugged.

The corner of his mouth twitched, ‘Dolls?’

‘Naturally I became gay, right, ha,’ I gave a small laugh. He did not laugh back.

When he realised that I was glancing at him, he broke into a wide smile with a weird look in his eyes.

He leaned back like me, and said, ‘Where is the doll tattoo, Greystone?’

‘It’s probably in the ass crack of your Knight.’

Why the hell did I say that?

He gave a big belly laugh and patted my back, ‘Get in the queue for everyone who takes a joke at my knight.

‘He should more shining,’ I teased, trying desperately to cling to this … whatever this was.

‘Everyone assumes knights in shining armours are the best, but think about it,’ he placed his hands on the back of his head. ‘If their armour is shining then they haven’t really been in combat, they haven’t fought hard. Their armours should have dents and cracks.’

‘That the real hero needs to be flawed because perfect heroes don’t exist,’ I said.

Clinking his tongue, he nodded, ‘This is why you are my writer of choice.’

‘You couldn’t have got this from a studio writer?’

‘Ugh, being in room with those guys, don’t get me started. They ball out ideas that are as generic as you can imagine. Why? Generic is always guarantee to sell,’ he sighed. ‘I just wanted something fresh and new writers do that. Just something I can be excited about.’

‘Must have been hard finding a new writer, there’s a ton of them in this city alone,’ I bit my tongue and bowed my head down. My voice softened. ‘Thank you, Mr. Conray.’

‘Ack!’ he gave a small punch to my shoulder. ‘If you don’t start calling me Charlie any time soon, I will call you Dollface.’

‘Dollface?’ I couldn’t help but smirk and stroke my beard.

‘What happened after?’

Slurping the rest of my squishy, I reached my free reached over to the keyboard.

‘Not much. We arranged to meet up for next week to start drafting. Same place and time.’

‘Bit weird though, when you said you were gay, and he didn’t really react well.’

‘I am not really offended by that. It’s not like bad or anything.’

‘But he knows you are gay; it’s on your blog. Just seems weird to me.’

Putting my squishy down, I replied to AJ’s comment, ‘You think too much. I want to see how this goes. The last success of writing I had was when I was fourteen years old and I won the school poetry competition.’

‘Did you give up writing for a while?’

I would have usually started to panic at a comment like that. Fingers going numb, chest starting to ache. But this was AJ. The worst I l could do was slam my laptop shut and walk away. I could have walk away. I could have.

‘Actually, I gave up writing for a few years, I only started writing again two years ago.’

Keep it simple, Nathanial.

‘What made you give up, if you don’t mind me asking?’

Ah. That old question. I nibbled my bottom lip.

Nope. No. I couldn’t do it. Jumping up from the swivel chair, I took deliberate long strides over to the kitchen to open my cupboard door with as much force as I could. I scratched the back of my head.

Cupboard was always nearly empty. Slamming it shut, I walked back to my laptop. I sat down, clenching and unclenching my fists. I picked up my empty squishy on the table and threw it into the bin.

I looked back on AJ’s comment.

‘A relationship got in the way.’

That was the nicest way of answering his question.

‘You guys still…?’

‘Damn, no!’ I couldn’t help but swear. ‘No. no. No.’

‘That is a lot of nos. Sucks you guys ended badly.’

I debated on telling him about Jake. That was always a fun topic. A fun humiliating topic. No, I wouldn’t depress the conversation with Jake.

‘Don’t be sorry. I am glad he is out of my life. He wasn’t a nice person.’

Again, that was the nicest way of putting it.

‘Well, I for one am glad you are not with him.’

Tilting my head, I smiled at that.

‘Now, back to the Trance story,’ he typed. ‘I have some ideas.’

‘Everyone has ideas about this story now,’ I teased. ‘Okay, lay it on me, what suggestions you have?’

                                                                   ***

AJ became very chatty over the next few days. Every day after work I ended up talking to him until one in the morning.

My wrists were starting to feel sore with all the typing. I couldn’t help it, though. I loved this. This was the best interaction I had had for so long. Oli was away at his sisters for a week and Gregory had been homing in on me more than usual this week and I had the delights of scrubbing up sick a few more times. I needed this with AJ.

‘So no to gadgets and no to creativity, oh, you are one of those jocks then?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Sports?’

He paused a while.

‘I don’t like that term. It sounds like meathead or caveman idiot.’

Crap, no, no, don’t do this, AJ. I didn’t mean anything.

‘I’m sorry, AJ.’

‘I do sports, yes. ‘Jock’’

‘What sports do you do?’ I typed each letter with care, not wanting to scare him off.

‘Just general.’ He paused again. ‘How about you?’

‘If you saw me run, you’d never stop laughing about it and I can’t catch a ball to save my life. I like swimming though.’

‘Swimming?’ he placed a smiley face emoji at the end.

That got him.

My stomach grumbled.

Oh, yeah. I needed to eat.

I got up from the desk and wondered over to the kitchen. I opened the fridge.

The fridge glowed but all I could see was Jake. Jake snorting at me, Jake rolling his eyes, laughing.

Not this again.

Shutting the door shut with a clenched fist, I rested my forehead against the white door. I snapped up straight, snorting a little and rubbing my nose against the back of my hand. I grabbed a big bag of chips from the cupboard. Back at the laptop.

Staring at the screen, I could almost see AJ’s face come alive. His jaw moving, his eyes twitching with excitement. I could almost see him sitting at his own desk, fingers typing away. Almost like I was looking him in the eye. A young man, a year or two older than me, staring back at me through the screen, his words forming sounds of a deep voice.

I wished I had a photo of AJ. To see his hair colour, his green eyes.

His voice. I bet it was masculine, smooth, deep. He was a tall sports person. Toned. Good looking. There it was, my chest skipping. Happy, ha, ha, ha. La.

‘Hey, mind if I ask a personal question?’ I pressed sent. I threw my head back, emptying the rest of the chip packet into my mouth. I forced myself to chew, even though I wanted to be sick.

Needed to eat to be alive.

He took his time to reply. ‘Sure. Fire away.’

‘Would you ever want to meet in person?’

He didn’t reply.

Crap, I lost him. I typed as fast as I could. Trying to savour this conversation before AJ disappeared. Every word was urgent.

‘I mean we would do internet safety of course. Meet somewhere public, we can bring friends, Oli has said in the past he would be happy to come along. Or we could tell people we are meeting, we can meet for an hour. I know we are both free different times, but we could try an hour out in a café or bar or somewhere, you know?’

He went offline. I smacked my chip packet into the bin next to my desk.

‘Agh!’ I rubbed my face hard. Idiot. I scrunched my eyes.

What kind of idiot would ask about meeting up? He wouldn’t even give me his real name and I asked about meeting up? Was I that stupid?

‘Are you that stupid Nathanial?’ I could hear Jake’s gnarly voice digging into my ear. ‘Of course, you are stupid. Getting swept away. Happiness. Like someone like you could ever feel real happiness.’

‘Ah!’ I snatched up for the bland desk lamp and flung against the wall.

Breathe.

Breathe.

It was Saturday, three days after my chat with AJ. He had finally replied back.

‘My job means I can’t have a social life. I can’t go out and meet people. I would love us to meet, Nathanial, I think if we were in a room together, I wouldn’t be able to leave it, I wouldn’t be able to stop talking to you, I love every conversation we have. But I travel with my work and when I am not travelling, I am up early every day, finishing late every day. When I get free time, I am just so tired I end up on the laptop because I don’t get to see people, so the laptop is my social life. All I have to get me through is reading your blog and talking to you.’

‘I get it, AJ,’ I typed. ‘I am work ridiculous hours too, probably not as much as you, but I am picking up overtime so I know how depressing it can get when you literally don’t have the time to see other people. Thank god, for this internet.’

He sent a smiley face emoji and added, ‘Thank you, Nathanial. For understanding. Not many do, but I love my job, I wouldn’t quit for the world, it’s just a few sacrifices.’

‘I bet he is a jerk in real life,’ Oli grinned. ‘Or worse, a homophobic closet case. Or a serial killer, the prime minister. Ooh, FBI!’

‘So, you are definitely FBI then?’ I tried to joke about it.

‘You’ll never know for sure, ha, ha,’ he typed. ‘If I am ever free, even for an hour or so, I will let you know. Trust me on that, please, okay?’

I smiled and I typed something I haven’t said for a long time, ‘I trust you.’ I added on, ‘Just so you know, I am very prepared to do all the safety rules for meeting up.’

‘Ha, ha, good,’ he typed. ‘So, you were at work today, any famous faces you meet today?’

‘Well, I.’

I stopped. I was almost going to tell him how exhausted I had been at work today. Because of Jake and this other person. Person, voice. Sounds. They didn’t shut up all day. I stared at the screen.

I could have talked to AJ about it. Just to tell anyone what it felt like in my head. Maybe typing up would be easier than saying the words out loud, I could have edited the sentence over and over again before I sent it.

I deleted my last two words. Instead, I typed in, ‘Actually, you know, I saw a Hugh Jackman lookalike, it was crazy!’

                                                                 ***

Two thirty-five am. Wow, it was late.

This must have been the fifth video I had watched. A guy gone mad and went on to kill five people. Schizophrenia. That was from a news story in Texas five years ago. Earlier I saw the Halloween costume, all orange with cuts through it, labelled the ‘Schizo’.

I had been lying in bed, in the complete dark, watching the five videos. I watched famous movie scenes with the mad man killing people, talking to the voices in their heads. Or the mad man having an amazing talent and not understand human beings around them. Or just being plain old strange.

I didn’t want to kill anyone. Nor did I have some amazing talent. I mean, I was a writer, but I wasn’t any kind of genius. I didn’t know what I was. The characters going mad had had a trouble past. Guess Jake would have counted for that.

But it was the hospital scenes. The way the characters were viewed nervously by the people around them, treated like an unfamiliar bomb. Never treated the same way they were before.

Placing my phone on next to me, I stared out into the darkness.

I needed to clean my flat, it had been a while, and I decided to clean it over the weekend coming up. Make it smell nice again, maybe buy some actual spray for the air, so the staleness would go away. I touched my face. My cheeks were wet.

I would have lost everything if I told someone about Jake. The other voices. The random noises.

Even if I wasn’t thrown in a padded cell, I would have definitely lost my job. My family. They would be paranoid I would go on a murder rampage or start to draw on the walls or start talking to the furniture. The permanent label on me. Another lost cause. Oli wouldn’t have known how to talk to me, he would be freaked out. Because he wouldn’t know if it was me or the ‘schizo’ voices he was talking to.

To tell anyone about this would have been suicide.

I wasn’t any of these characters I had watched.

Maybe it wasn’t schizophrenia.

I could have gone to the doctors. Picked up some medication to deal with Jake. But what if there was a side effect and I was forced to tell everyone I was taking them? What if they didn’t even work at all?

Closing my eyes, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep well tonight. I tossed over to my side. It was still very dark, and I was very aware of how alone I was in my flat.