Chapter 12 #2
Melody can tell that the woman doesn’t recognise her. She’s frowning, the door closed over acting as a shield to protect herself from attack from this stranger.
‘Al? No, he’s not here. He doesn’t live here anymore.’
Melody frowns. But she just saw him go inside. He’s avoiding her? That’s understandable, it is weird that she’s at his home. She starts to slowly back away when suddenly the door opens next door, from number 12, and Al peeps out. He puts a finger over his lips.
‘Ohhh,’ she says slowly. ‘Okay, thank you, my mistake.’
Melody spins on her heels and walks away slowly, feeling self-conscious; she knows she has a weird and awkward gait.
She turns around and the strawberry-blonde is still staring at her, so she turns left, then changes her mind and goes right.
When she hears the door close she stops and checks on Al again.
Al peers out from number 12. He holds his thumb up, then down.
Melody gives him a thumb up to let him know the strawberry-blonde is gone.
He steps outside, relieved, and closes the door behind him.
He quickly walks over to her, more concerned about getting away than wondering why she is here at his address, or not his address as the case may be.
‘Hi, Melody.’
‘Hi, Al.’
‘Let’s get out of here, quickly.’
He walks so fast, she has to run to keep up. They walk back in the direction they came.
‘Are you a thief? Did you just burgle a house?’
‘No.’
When they reach the bench he says, ‘Is anybody looking?’
Melody looks back.
‘Don’t make it obvious.’
‘No. Nobody’s looking.’
They walk around the corner and for some reason, as soon as they’re out of sight, Melody starts laughing.
Al stops walking, bends over, hands on his knees as though he’s run a marathon. He looks winded, but not angry at her. ‘What just happened?’
‘Don’t ask me, I just followed your lead.’
‘What were you doing at my house?’ He looks at her as if the thought has just occurred to him.
‘Oh well, apparently it’s not your house, so don’t take the high ground with me.’
She intends it as a joke, as witty banter, the kind they enjoyed a few times today, but a shadow passes over his face and he straightens up, the humour gone.
‘Sorry,’ she apologises. ‘I was trying to talk to you outside your office, after work. But you didn’t see me.
I was calling your name but you didn’t hear me.
So I followed you to get your attention, and it led me here.
’ She says it all as if it wasn’t a twenty-minute walk.
‘I realise it’s a very stalkerish thing to do, sorry, but if I may just even the playing field a little, I saw you enter one house, that’s apparently not yours, and exit from another, so I’m guessing you shouldn’t have been there either. ’
He doesn’t say anything.
‘Your stalker song must be rubbing off on me.’
‘What song?’
‘The Police. “Every Step You Make”. You must really like it.’
‘It’s “Every Breath You Make”,’ he corrects her. ‘Must not be on your hot dance playlist.’
‘It’s not. Actually it’s “Every Breath You Take”.’ She sings it.
‘You take steps,’ he says, taking an exaggerated few steps.
‘You take breaths. Look, I’m making a breath.’ She blows out air, causing a steam effect to puff around them in the cold air. ‘Now I’m going to take a breath.’ She inhales, holding her breath, with wide eyes, cheeks full of air.
He watches her for a long moment, arms folded, smile tickling the corners of his lips.
‘That’s the longest you’ve gone without talking since I’ve met you.’ Then he pops her inflated cheeks with his fingers and she starts laughing.
The popping of her cheeks seems to burst his darkened mood.
‘I should be concerned that you followed me here, but I’m not. Why am I not?’
‘Because I’m unarmed and undangerous, maybe slightly unhinged but you like me. I should be more concerned that you magicked yourself out of a different house. So who is she?’
He groans. ‘Let’s walk.’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere.’
They fall into step.
‘She’s my ex-fiancée. I don’t think I’ve said that aloud before.’
‘The break-up is recent?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Did you have a love lock on the bridge?’ He looks at her, a comical expression, and she laughs. ‘I take it that’s a no.’
‘She broke up with me two weeks before Christmas.’
‘Ouch.’
They stop at the end of the road. She waits for his cue.
‘This way,’ he says, turning left.
‘Did she give you a reason or …’
She doesn’t want to mention the cyclist whose face his ex was eating at the front door, in case he doesn’t know.
He’s silent for a long time. She’s beginning to think he didn’t hear the question or doesn’t want to answer when he replies, ‘She left me for my best friend. Walter. He lived with us.’
The cyclist.
He stops walking and suddenly starts crying.
Fingers to the bridge of his nose, he covers his face with the other hand.
The sadness seems to have arrived suddenly, taking even him by surprise.
He tries to talk to her, as if he can talk it away, pretend it’s not happening, but he can’t, his words won’t come out properly, and so he turns around, his back to her while he gasps and gathers himself.
He doesn’t seem embarrassed, just inconvenienced.
He’s comfortable with crying, used to it, this is a process.
Melody looks at the people passing by, who stare at him, then at her to see if she’s okay.
She gives them the thumbs up. She pats Al awkwardly on the back, which is quite the reach up for her, saying unhelpful things like ‘There, there’ and making hushing sounds.
Then she stops saying anything and lets him cry.
Finally he lets out an angry yell that takes her by surprise, sets her heart pounding, like a sudden gunshot.
‘I’m so tired of crying,’ he says, rubbing his eyes roughly. ‘Is there not a sadness-to-crying ratio or something, the more you cry the less sad you should get? How do you make yourself stop crying?’
‘I’m not really a crier.’
‘Never?’
‘I can’t remember the last time I cried.’
‘Are you emotionally stunted or something?’
She laughs. ‘Some would say yes.’
‘So you don’t believe in love, or romance, and you don’t cry. Are you human?’
She hears the playful tone.
‘I consider myself a rational, stable person who doesn’t get carried away by unrealistic fanciful thoughts.’
‘Who follows strangers home. And is afraid of lifts. And being stuck in revolving doors.’
He’d sensed her panic.
‘Hmm. You got me there. But are you really a stranger now? I’ve known you almost twelve whole hours. I’m deeply invested in this friendship. And we’re kind of like colleagues now, seeing as we’re working together on the love lock story.’
He sniffs a weak laugh.
She hands him a tissue. He’s handsome even when he cries. When his nostrils flare and his chin gurns. It’s a strong cry, she senses he fully commits to everything, even shedding tears.
‘Why do you have tissues if you don’t cry?’
‘To help male damsels in distress. Mansels,’ she says, laughing at her own joke.
He smiles, the creases on the corners of his eyes fanning. ‘When your engagement broke up, did you not cry then?’
‘Ooh, someone’s been googling me.’
‘I may have fallen down the Melody Yates rabbit hole after you left.’
He’s nicely lit by the lamppost which to others would be harsh, but for him anything that makes him more visible is flattering.
It has so far been a surreal evening and she could have this conversation with him all night.
Nonsense mixed with real-life stuff on a street corner on a cold night.
His nose is red, from the cold, and snotty tears.
His eyes sparkle from the tears about his ex-fiancée and yet he couldn’t be more attractive.
Then she realises he’s not just gazing at her adoringly, he’s waiting for an answer.
‘Oh well, I’m the bad guy in that situation,’ she says, and starts strolling again. He walks with her. ‘I broke up with Sam. And I felt extreme guilt that still cripples me to this day and I carry it with me into every relationship, but I did not feel sad.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because, I felt trapped when I was with him. I adored Sam, I was definitely in love with him, he was and is one of the greatest guys on the planet, but I didn’t want to be his wife forever, or at all. That feels so final, like there’s no way out.’
‘Like a lift.’
‘Exactly like being in a lift,’ she says with a smile. ‘Thank you, someone who understands.’
‘But you would have been in the lift with someone else, who could possibly help you out if it got stuck.’
‘Or who couldn’t. And we’d be stuck together, panicking. Fighting to breathe the same air and slowly dying.’
‘Would you have walked up the stairs with him?’
‘What? I think you’re misunderstanding the analogy.’
‘I’m not. Marriage is the lift. You prefer the steps. It’s not that you’re afraid to go up to the fifth floor, you’re afraid of how you get there. If this guy Sam hadn’t proposed—’
‘He didn’t actually propose, that was kind of a misquote. I pre-empted the proposal and said no.’
Al makes a pained expression as if feeling Sam’s hurt. ‘If he hadn’t tried to propose, or shown any interest in marriage at all, if it was just a casual committed thing, would you still be together?’
She narrows her eyes.
‘It’s not a trick question.’
‘It kind of is.’
He smiles as if he’s won.
‘Why did you enter your ex-fiancée’s house?’
‘Technically it’s still my house.’
‘You entered number 11 and came out of number 12.’
‘I’m going to be honest with you, because you seem to have been honest with me. I bought a bag of frozen mice and scattered them downstairs. I was about to go upstairs when she came back. I escaped out the back, hopped over the wall, asked my neighbour if I could go through his house.’
She gasps but doesn’t judge. ‘Is that why you stopped at the pet shop?’
‘You really did follow me.’ He shudders dramatically.
‘Revenge acts. This would be great for the podcast. What else have you done to them?’
‘I cut holes in all of Walter’s boxer shorts. And this is not for your podcast.’