It’s well past sunset when we sidle up to the hotel. We’d booked three nights, I wanted one but Martin was sure we’d need a good few days to deal with the house. Martin parks up, we grab our bags from the back, we head in. A touch screen automated check-in service spares us from having to speak to anyone. There’s little less appealing right now than the thought of having to wander, machine-like, through the tedious hospitality script with someone who isn’t paid enough to give a shit.
The room’s small but functional. Twin beds. We shove them together and I sit at the desk while Martin undresses and ducks into the ensuite for a shower. I pull out the unreadable book and the odd tin box, place them on the desk. I rest my chin in my hands and stare at the two objects, those artefacts of a dead king. That’s what he was, in his way. A monarch in his own mind, not bound by the laws of lesser folk, burdened with the cruel fate of being born working class and in the twentieth century when he should have been occupying a Renaissance-era palace and surrounded by courtiers, servants, sycophants of every variety. Instead he was in the modern world, running club nights for students and using his powders and potions to seduce the clientele.
That’s how he’d met my mother. Given her some top-shelf ecstasy at a gig when she was twenty. He’d been young then too, twenty-four. Thirty years later and his target audience hadn’t changed, nor had his methods.
Why do I know that?
Do I know that, or is it an assumption?
My mind feels clogged, uncomfortably tight. The gears aren’t turning the way they should, something’s caught in the mechanism.
I stand and wander over to the window, pull a curtain to one side and look out at the car park. Devoid of human life, except for one figure in a long dark coat, standing with the light behind him. Is it the same guy from the bus stop? The same guy from the window? Even if not, I’m certain I’ve seen that man before. He’s not doing anything threatening, of course. Just standing there, waiting for a taxi perhaps. Probably it. Can’t just think the worst of people.
The shower ceases its hissing. A few minutes later Martin delicately opens the door. I pretend not to notice, watch the moon. He sneaks up behind me and wraps his arms around my midsection. I smile and lean my head back. He kisses my cheek twice. His skin is soft, moisturised, hairless. He rarely shaves, usually just clippers his unruly fuzz down to vaguely presentable stubble. My smile widens and I turn in his arms, wrap mine around his neck. There’s a towel wrapped around him and nothing else. He’s cautious, slow, respectful of how difficult I’ve found today. It’s sweet, but unnecessary.
I kiss him forcefully and walk us both towards the bed. I tug the half-hearted knot at his waist and the towel drops. He pulls my tee-shirt over my head and sits on the edge of the bed, peppering my chest with kisses while he runs his hands from the top of my arse down the back of my thighs, then back up the front to undo my belt. He makes quick work of undoing my jeans, pulls them off along with the boxer shorts beneath. I push him back to a lying position and crawl on top of him. I kiss his neck and caress his abdomen, explore the delicate valleys between peaks of Crossfit musculature.
My hand slowly wanders further south. Martin chuckles, runs his fingers through my beard, locks eyes with me. ‘I love you,’ he says.
I grin broadly and say, ‘I love you too.’
And then lightning strikes my brain. There’s a flash, a hammer strike to the core of my self.
The sudden pain starts in my skull, the center of my brain, and in a fraction of a second works its way to every nerve ending. I lose focus, lose sense of who I am, where I am, what’s happening.
Then the smell hits me. Sour rot, astringent miasma. I’m dressed, standing in a wallpapered room with a 1990 calendar on the wall, holding a polaroid camera. On a table next to me is the lock box from my father’s bedroom. I know it’s the same one even though it’s new and unscathed. It’s open and filled with photos face-down.
On the bed across the room a young girl, no more than thirteen, fumbles with the buttons of her school uniform shirt. She looks at me, smiles weakly with hollow eyes. ‘Owen,’ she says weakly.
‘Owen?!’ Martin calls.
He lightly slaps my cheek.
I’m laying on my back, on the floor.
He’s crouched beside me.
There’s panic on his face, a film of greasy sweat on mine.
‘Oh, thank Christ, you’re okay, Fin,’ Martin says and pulls me into a fierce hug.
I’m stunned. Unsure of what just happened. I was there. It was a memory, from before I was born. My birth father’s memory. I know it, as surely as I know I’m 5’8”, as surely as I know my birth father was 5’4”, as surely as I know we have the same eyes.
My eyes drift to that lock box, sitting on the hotel room desk, cloaked in faux honesty. I struggle to my feet with Martin’s help. I approach the desk, park myself on the chair.
‘What’s going on?’ Martin asks.
I reach for the box. It’s not locked anymore, not for me. My hands shake. I place them both on the lid, ease it open. Hold it there, not closed but nowhere near open enough to reveal the contents.
’What the fuck,’Martin breathes, shaking his head.
I feel a twinge of guilt for not responding, but my focus cannot not be interrupted right now. I inhale, fill my lungs with recycled air and a hint of my own odour. Fuck, I’m a mess.
Enough dicking around. I flip the lid open, glance at the contents.
Polaroids. Dozens, if I’m any judge. I can’t bring myself to look through them and Martin covers his eyes with one hand, the other on his hip, inventive curses on his lips. So, really, we don’t know if they’re all as bad as the few that are visible on the top. They’re bad enough though.
Young girls, early teens, undressed. Not always alone. He’s in some of the pictures. That’s the first time I’ve seen my birth-father’s face.