Chapter Five: Smithy
As soon as she turned her face towards me I knew who she was. The girl who, one year ago, asked where Jason lived. The man who died on the same day she came.
"Why did you do it?" He'd been one of my best friends, a good, not-so-honest man who'd always helped me when I needed it. She had killed him. I should have been lost in a torrent of rage, the amount of times I'd cursed her face or hoped she'd died. Seeing her here before me, though, that was a different story.
Her eyes were full of sadness, confusion, and all I could think about was how lost she must feel, having done something so terrible for reasons I would never know. I'd plotted her death a thousand different ways, but how could I ever hope to do any of them, with her glinting, green emeralds looking so pitiful.
"What?" she whispered. She either didn't have a clue what I meant, or she was one of the best actresses I had ever seen. Oscar nomination kind of stuff.
"You killed him. You killed Jason. Why?" I had managed to raise my voice above a whisper, the sadness still permeating the edges of my mind, casting shadows and darkness where there should only have been logic and utter clarity. Lucky for the girl.
"No! No, I didn't! He was my brother, why would I murder my own brother!" an edge of panic set into her voice, as if noticing my heavy frame for the first time. The confusion still lingered in her gaze, the complete bewilderment of a child finding herself lost and alone.
"Of course you did. You came here with an address, looking for him. Do you expect me to believe that his own sister wouldn't know where to find his house?" Pain twisted in her expression, as if this had been a thorn in her side, prickling her with every movement.
"He said he liked his privacy. That he would come to us if we wanted to see him. He gave us his street though. Just in case." A haunted look came into her eyes, repeating the words like a mantra that she had been told to say. Was she telling the truth? It certainly sounded like Jason, although privacy had been the least of his worries. Interfering girlfriends and unsatisfied clientele would have been closer to the truth.
"What was Jason's date of birth?" That should be easy enough, if she was his sister. I could vaguely recall him mentioning a younger sibling once or twice, maybe around eight years his junior. She should be about fifteen now.
"Seventh of September 1987. Mine's the first of August 1995 before you ask." She smiled, just a small, shy flash of teeth and the corners of her lips curving upwards. She was the right age, and she had seemed desperate that night, not the cold and calculating actions of someone planning a murder. Anyway, I had no choice but to believe her. I couldn't hold her guilty in my mind when I knew that Jason would have wanted me to let go and move on. Even if this wasn't his sister, at least I would eventually find out what had happened. She couldn't keep up a masquerade forever.
I turned and pounded my fist into the wall, using the physical pain as an outlet for the rage that suddenly flashed through me, burning at the very core of my being. I had blamed this girl for the death of Jason. I didn't deal well with emotions like that; fear, anger, hate. I'd been stockpiling them for the past twelve months, waiting for the day that I would see her blonde hair and green eyes again.
She watched me calmly as I smashed the wall over and over with my fist. When I felt the surge of fury ebbing away to nothing more than a trickle, I stopped, leaning heavily against the counter. My breath came in ragged gasps, showing the effort I had expended doing such a pointless task. A stream of scarlet ran lazily down my hand, the seams that were my veins no longer holding the precious liquid. I didn't care. I felt better, and it was safer if I damaged the plaster rather than Jase's supposed sister.
"Want a drink?" My manners had been a little lacking, with the accusations of murder I had thrown at her. It hadn't been disastrous, anyway. I'd done worse...
"Sure. Water would be great." That I could do, as long as it wasn't a euphemism for vodka.
I studied her as I filled a glass and added some ice. She glanced around the bar, taking in the tired decor and well-worn furniture. Her gaze darted over everything, and seeming satisfied, she relaxed, heaving a sigh as she set her bag on the sticky floor. I brought her drink over, deciding on a slice of lime along the way. The difference was in the details, as my gran used to say, and I planned on keeping to that advice. Maybe we could bond over Jason's more embarrassing childhood moments, the type everyone cringes to hear but at the same time gives you that little bit of understanding you were lacking in before.
"Here you are. The name's Smithy, by the way. I presume then that your Faye?" She nodded her affirmation, taking a sip of the water as a trail of condensation rolled casually down the side. The silence was nice, the perfect harmony of not having to speak or make the usual noise. Just being able to relax, to remember the moments that you couldn't ignore, the painful instants in time that grabbed you and held on.
Jason's face swam in front of my vision, the well-preserved lines and creases I had tried to keep a hold of. The photos that I had kept of the good times were the only reason he hadn't become another blurred figure, just another image of a fragmented face half-embedded in my memory. I could picture the last time I saw him.
"Come on, Smithy! You're always good for a bet!" It was just another of our weekly wagers. A game. It wasn't the Liverpool v. Arsenal type of thing (although of course Liverpool would win). It was a bet of fate, the type that had been made to tempt the hand of God. "It's only a tenner, for God's sake! I'd like to think that your life meant more than a ten pound note!" We were betting on who would die first. It didn't matter how much I would pay to keep myself alive, at least in a figurative sense. I was more concerned about how much my life was worth to him.
"Alright, alright! You're on! Ten quid says you die first." I hoped he didn't. I wished he would get the money, although it wasn't like I could give it to him if I had already passed through the veil. I wondered if you could put that kind of thing in a will. His azure eyes were sparkling in the sunlight, looking a thousand different shades of blue as he searched his pockets for the little black book of bets. Taking out a pen, he made a note on the page, his long elegant fingers scrawling a sentence. Jason was the sort of person who wanted everything written down, and he enforced his rule using rumours of his iron fist. All of his clients were listed and records of any and all transactions were kept in a safe. He was clever like that.
"We still have that one about who will wreck their house first, too, don't we?" I asked, curious to see whether or not Jason was just that good with organisation. He flicked through the pages, nodding in affirmation when he finally turned the last sharp corner that confirmed his memory.
Putting the book away, he glanced at his watch, the simple pearl face that retained its masculinity through straight lines and sharp edges. He groaned. "Smithy, I'll see you around, I've got some stuck-up rich guy due in ten minutes and he will not be a happy man if I keep him waiting. As you know, some of the people I work with can get very nasty indeed if they are actually treated like a human being instead of a god. Do me a favour and get yourself run over by a bus, will you? A tenner would do nicely to get a Chinese." He grinned. Any insult that could possibly be offensive melted away as he flashed another smile before turning to leave. The irony was that if you thought about my upbringing, Jason could easily have been a 'stuck-up rich guy' to me. We should have nothing in common, and yet we got along like a house on fire.
Watching him walk down the street, I decided to make a careless comment, just to join in the banter, to have a bit of fun. A remark I didn't know I would live to lament, the final crack of a whip that fate wouldn't tolerate.
"Go and burn down that lovely house of yours, catch a few of those fumes while you're at it. I could do with some pints on the house."
I snapped out of the memory, glad that I didn't have to watch the endless playback of regrets. The past was the past, and there was no way I could change it. I knew that, logically. It was just my heart I had a hard time of convincing, especially with my half-baked attempts to debate with my emotions. I'm not the calmest individual. Anger-management classes had spat me out before they could chew me up, along with words like 'wild' and 'unpredictable'. I didn't mind all that much. You couldn't exactly say that life was a smooth cruise in a Mercedes Benz.
Faye was watching me intently, reading the pain in my eyes and the misery in the lines of my face. She waited a few seconds before commenting, enough time for me to prepare myself against the oncoming onslaught of feelings and emotions I had taken such care to hide.
"You miss him, don't you?" she said, surprisingly sensitively. I nodded. There was no point in trusting my voice to speak when it could be so fickle. "I don't really remember much about him. He was always absent, you know? He never really had time to speak, and you can't build a relationship out of thin air. I wish...I don't know. I wonder if I would have wanted to know him better. He was keeping so many secrets." Her outburst didn't surprise me. People let something build until it explodes, rather than just releasing the pressure in a couple of easy stages. I silently scolded myself. I couldn't really talk on that front, now, could I?
"I do miss him. He was my best friend. It's like losing a limb, except there's no crutch to help you get back on your feet. It hurts, but it'll get better. It's already been a year. You shouldn't feel so guilty about everything though. It's okay to not be grieving for a stranger, Faye. You're regretting the loss of an idea, the possibilities that aren't open anymore. If it helps, there's an empty flat above the bar you can crash in if you feel like you need to get away." She grinned, her face lighting up with gratitude she could barely contain. Her eyes turned glassy, shining a little too brightly in the dim light. I turned away. Crying made me nervous.
"Thanks, Smithy. For everything. I don't know if I'll ever actually get to use the place upstairs, but it's nice to know that it's there." She put her glass on the table, scooped up her bag, and left without another word or a backward glance.
The girl had style, anyway.