Following his impromptu excursion
into the past and metaphysically impossible reunion with his dead girlfriend,
the day to day routine of Charlie Gillespie became something of a waiting game.
He would eat, sleep, smoke weed and shoot the shit with Kat, but he did all of
these things on autopilot – the whole time, he was listening for something.
Fine tuning his senses as best he could to the whims of the universe, trying in
vain to anticipate his next Quantum Leap.
But a watched universe never
boils, and Charlie found the weeks passing with worrying regularity. Before he
knew it, well over a month had gone by, and he began to despair. Might he not
get another chance to put things right with Alicia? Had he wasted the chances
he’d been given? Or, more probably, had he simply imagined the whole bizarre
affair?
He could tell that Kat was
feeling less and less inclined to humour him. He never intended to bring it up
in conversation, knowing only too well how deranged he sounded, but he found it
hard to stop himself. They’d be watching a reality show and Charlie would feel
the topic bubbling up in his throat like a hiccup.
“I know it’s going to happen
again, I just don’t know when,” he said once without provocation, and he swore
he could see Kat physically resist the urge to roll her eyes. She very
patiently explained to him that it had in all likelihood been a rather complicated
coping mechanism, and he should see the fact that he was no longer experiencing
these blackouts as a sign he should be moving forward.
But forward was not the direction
Charlie was interested in, and they both knew it. At the end of the second month,
Friday night came around but Kat didn’t. He knew he should pick up the phone,
but it just never quite transpired. Nothing at all seemed to carry much
importance anymore.
After what felt like a lifetime
of avoiding the local shop like the plague, Charlie’s cupboards were now well
stocked with all the essentials; lager, whiskey, vodka, schnapps for when he
was feeling exotic, and a variety of hard-boiled sweets to go with the treats
he had been able to procure from Twig, whose acquaintance he had decided to
renew.
Friday nights became quite the
party chez Charlie, not that anybody received an invite. He would crank up the
Arctic Monkeys, work his way through a bottle of spirits and a dash of whatever
else he had handy, and while away the hours rehearsing what he would say to
Alicia when he next saw her.
“Don’t call her a bitch,” he
would tell himself. “Don’t get into that row again, don’t ruin your last night
together. Make it perfect, like it should have been, like it has to be.” He
would play ballads and practise his slow dancing moves, knowing that “Careless
Whisper” or “I Will Always Love You” could always be relied upon to make
appearances at the end of the night in Yoko’s.
Charlie became so focused on
preparing for his next trip that he stopped trying to predict it. He had no
notion of when his reunion with Alicia would occur, only that it would, and this was where all of his
energy went.
Once, on his way back from a
fruitful meeting with Twig, he ran into Janelle in the street. He smiled and
went to give her a hug; she shrugged him off and marched away at a steady chop,
glancing back frequently over her shoulder, her eyes wide and panicked. She
didn’t recognise him. Charlie tried to think when it was that he had met her,
and where. The details eluded him; anything that had happened in his life
before Yoko’s reopened for business seemed not quite real.
Even the most impatient children
know that Christmas morning will always come eventually, and whether Charlie
was good or not, he knew the same was true of that club, of that night. And not
long after he saw Janelle, a week at most, Christmas came for him.
The third time that Charlie was
plucked from his linear existence and thrust back into Yoko’s, torn on this
occasion from a half-finished bowl of cornflakes, he recognised the pure
Eighties piano synth assaulting his ears before his vision even had time to
clear. Tears For Fears, one of the few old school groups Alicia had time for.
“Head Over Heels”.
He was standing on the edge of an
empty dance floor. He turned around, scanned the entire club, but saw nobody. The
place looked completely deserted. His chest began to tighten, he should have
known dreams didn’t really come true…
And then he saw her.
“You’re late,” she said, emerging
from the doorway that led to the Ladies.
“You’re dead,” he replied.
“Don’t change the subject, you’re
still late.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I’ve been waiting so
long for you,” she told him, taking him by the hand and pulling him towards the
dance floor.
“I tried to get here
sooner,” he said. “But I forgot the way.”
“Doesn’t matter, you’re
here now.” The song changed to something by The Cure, and Alicia began to rock
gently.
“I’m still not sure I
understand,” Charlie murmured, not entirely sure he cared anymore.
“Think about it,” Alicia
whispered in his ear. “When was the
music here ever this good?” She
stepped back and held out her arms.
“Dance with me,” she
said.
Charlie took her by the
hands and pulled her closer, as close as she could be to him without their
bodies merging. It dawned on him that he
need never leave this place, that he had always belonged here, at Yoko’s, with
Alicia. He would only ever be a stranger anywhere else.
The DJ spoke into his
microphone, informing the club that the final song of the night was about to be
played. Alicia wrapped her arms around
Charlie’s waist and he buried his face in her hair, breathing her in, and
together they began to sway.
~
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