Aloysius Tempo Read Free

might provide a moment’s warmth, but he didn’t speak up. He didn’t like that I was pissing in his pool as I asked it, didn’t chose to move into the warmer water I made.
    I’ve asked him how hungry he is, and eaten a ham sandwich and Mars bar while I waited for an answer.
    And I’ve asked him if it’s true he beat a ninety-four-year-old woman to death, if it’s true he likes the word to get around that he hires paedophiles and rapists as bailiffs?
    He says now, ‘You … can’t bruise me. You can’t … injure me.’
    I don’t know what the fuck he’s on about.
    I say, ‘Wha?’
    I’m sitting on a poolside seat, just watching and watching, and he says that to me.
    I stand up, walk to the edge, ask again, ‘Wha?’
    He goes, ‘It won’t look … like an … accident if … you bruise me.’
    And he starts moving to the ladder, his limbs juddering like some terrible disease has seized him. He’s starting to think about climbing it, about what happens if he does get my boot in his face.
    Speaking softly now, watching my own breath as the words come out, I say, ‘Something really pretty about bruises, isn’t there, Danny? Something elegant about the colour schemes, the way they change, the way they cover up the hurt in such a graceful way.’
    He’s wading, still trying to get to that ladder, all in slow motion, avoiding looking at me, and there’s a splutter, some kind of cough, some kind of cry that speaks of more than just clearing his throat.
    I say, ‘Bruises are like a badge of healing, aren’t they Danny? Like something that says to the world, “I was hurt but now I’m getting better.”’
    He reaches the ladder and I’m already there.
    I say, ‘Truth is Danny, you’d be doing me a favour. A bruise on the head would explain the drowning, wouldn’t it? It’d look like you bashed your cranium, lost yourself for a moment, slipped underwater.’
    He pulls back, waving his hands beneath the surface, trying to say something.
    I say, ‘In fact, come closer. Let me bash that head of yours. It’ll hurry this shit up.’
    He’s twisting his head from side to side now, teeth clattering but nothing coming out.
    ‘They say it’s nice after a while, Danny,’ I tell him. ‘They say that after a while you begin to breathe the water in and out of your lungs like air, that it gets euphoric, that you feel high, that it’s not the worst way to go.’
    And instead of the shaking, his head is nodding, nodding, nodding.
    I want to ask Imelda Feather if she would have the stomach to see this happen, if she would go the distance if she had to do this herself. And in part I think she would, in part I think she wouldn’t.
    But I can’t ask anyone anything. My job is to do, not to question. I’m good at this stuff because I know the weight of that distinction, because I have the stomach for the separation of reason and role, because I have the guts, the on-off switches to do the shit that others want done but cannot do. That’s the post, the accident game I have carved out for myself.
    And here I am, upgraded, saluted, salaried.
    I know why men come back from wars and never have a clear thought again. I know that minds are tainted by the kind of things I have seen, that neatly compartmentalising the explosive and unwieldy is not possible, that all that stuff has tamper switches, that being able to just shift it offside is a myth sold by shrinks and life coaches.
    You have to do it yourself, to think your own thoughts day in and day out and find a way to think other things as you think them, to think some thoughts louder than you think others. You learn to live with what made you, with what was done to you and what you have done.
    It’s the not being it, the not thinking it that drives people insane.
    It’s the trying to stop the unstoppable that drains the life force out of heads and hearts.
    *
    We’re touching 2 AM and exhausted Danny’s eyes are closed as he slides, deliberately, carefully, under