13 - The Rub

Cammie looked down from the letter with tears in her eyes. It was the third time she had read it. The first had been immediately after finding it in the envelope that Steve had given her in the cafe. The second time had been at her home, on her bed, after walking there that same day. The third time was now, in Steve's lounge, after calling him the next day and asking if they could meet. He had suggested his place, and she saw no reason to decline, sensed no danger in the situation. The location of his apartment was amazing, right on the beach, but the apartment itself was small and boxy, little more than a lounge, a kitchen and a bathroom. Like a hotel room.

He met her at the door, and before she could say anything, he'd asked if she'd bought the letter. She had said yes, and he had asked if she would read it again before they spoke. She had agreed and come into the lounge, where he offered her the couch to sit on while she read. He had fetched her a glass of water while he had waited for her to finish, and placed it on the coffee table before her. Crying makes you thirsty, and she grabbed at the glass and gulped down against the pain in her throat. She put the half-empty tumbler back on to the glass tabletop; she looked at him through bleary eyes.

"You poor thing." was all she could think to say.

He made a small, inward shrug of humility. "Don't think of it as happening to me. It happened to someone else, and he's gone now. I just happen to be house-sitting his body, for the meantime."

Cammie reached across the coffee table, which Anthony was leaning on from the other side, his knees on the floor, buried half and inch in the thick carpet. She put one of her hands over one of his, gave it a squeeze, and then left it there, resting lightly. He looked down at her fingers, which were more slender than his, and did not move or speak.

"You've been through so much." Cammie said, gasping to choke back a tear. "I don't know how I'd handle it."

"I suppose not many do." he said thoughtfully. "Many people might think they would react one way, be stronger, or even weaker. But no-one really knows, not until they are there, themselves. I don't fool myself. I realize I don't have it as bad as some people. I hear cancer is pretty bad. I'm don't think I am strong. I'm weak, really. I want out. Others might go on, even in the face of more terrible things. It doesn't feel like it, I don't feel the fear itself, but I think the only answer is that I am too afraid to go on."

"You've done so well to get this far. Don't throw it all away, Anthony." She really didn?t know what to say. She felt far past her depth. Her father had died when before she was old enough to remember him. She didn't get along with her mother and they lived in different cities. She had been to funerals, aunts, cousins, the parents of friends, but those somber occasions had left her filled with the same blank uncomfortableness- she'd never known what to say, or how to make people feel better. She usually just stayed silent. She did the same thing now. Looking into Anthony's perfectly placid expression, she felt a moment of the anger that his wife must have felt before leaving him- how could he look so impassive in the face of such horror? She looked down at the surface of the coffee table, and a tear ran down her nose and fell to the glass with an audible splat.

"Camille, please look at me." Anthony said calmly. She looked up, sniffed and wiped her eyes. He continued in a strong voice: "Please listen. I don't want you to try and change my mind, Camille." he said. "That's not what I want from you, or what I need from anyone. Can I please ask you not to try and change my mind, to try and understand why I need to do this? Why I can't live like this?"

She nodded, the tears flowing again. "I just wish..." Anthony cut her off by making a long 'shh'-ing noise with his lips and tongue.

"Don't grieve for me." he said, turning his hand over under hers so that their hands were holding and he was gripping hers in return. She squeezed harder as he spoke. "A few days ago you wouldn't have known or cared if I lived or died." he smiled the small, sad smile she had noted before. Now she knew why it must be so. "Aside from a less breakfasts to serve, I mean." She laughed in spite of herself, a nervous bark of a laugh that turned into sobs as soon as she realized what she had done.

"I didn't come into your life to bring you grief, Camille." he continued. "I came to make it better. Please, now that you know why I must take the path that I have chosen, can you bring yourself to agree to my proposal?" She didn't know which definition of the word proposal he was using, and she supposed it did not much matter.

"Please?" he said. "It would mean so much to me."

"Why me?" she pleaded in return.

"Because you seemed nice. You smiled when you served me coffee. You're young enough that my gift can make a difference, but wise enough not to squander it. Why not you, Camille? Who is more deserving?"

"There are a million people more deserving." she said through tears. She pulled her hand out of his grip. His hand followed hers for a moment, as if reluctant to break free from the gesture they shared, but she lifted her hand up and away from his, to wipe tears from both of her cheeks.

"Then give them the money once I am gone. If you can't bear to have it, give it away. It will be your choice to make, Camille."

She nodded, then shook her head, then asked for a tissue. He fetched her a box from the bathroom and handed it to her. She pulled out a great handful and blew her nose into them.

"I'll fetch some tea." he said. "Do you like tea?"

She nodded, unable to speak.

He went into the adjacent kitchen and she heard the lonely noise of a widower making tea for two. The clink of cutlery on pottery cups, the sou and hiss of boiling water being poured. Cammie wiped her eyes and forced herself to stop crying. She took a few long, deep breaths, the way her mum had taught her to when she was a kid, when she had wanted her to stop crying. It worked. She slowed her breathing and blew her nose again. The tears had stopped.

Anthony came back with a tin teapot in one hand, and with two cups and a cup-sized jug of milk crammed into the other He placed all four items onto the glass surface of the coffee table. Cammie could see the glass immediately around the tin pot steam up instantly from the heat. He had no coasters.

"Have you lived here long?" she asked as he poured hot brown liquid from the pot to the cups, holding one hand over the lid of the pot to prevent it from hanging open.

"About three months." he said, and then knelt on the carpet next to the coffee table, across from her, as before. She was surprised by his answer. There were no pictures on the walls, no books in the bookcase, nothing to set the place apart from a million other apartment rooms, all across the planet. He may have moved in the day before and she suspected it would be much the same. "I came here shortly after Alison left. I wanted to be somewhere where no-one knew me, where I could be anonymous. I guess I wanted to see if I could start again, as someone else. I guess there's nowhere to hide when the problem is inside you. Milk?"

"Please." she said. She always felt better, more coherent, after a good cry. Cleaned out, renewed. She thought to herself absently that, before yesterday, she had not cried in years. She watched the milk swirl into beautiful clouds in the brown atmosphere of the tea, before the clouds coalesced and the brown became white.

"So," she began. "lay this out for me one more time:"

"Yes?" Anthony said, passing her a cup. She took it, but did not sip.

"We get married."

"A technicality only."

"Fine. And I sign a pre-nup. Saying what?" She believed his story and trusted his motives, but she was not completely beyond cynicism.

"That you cannot reveal the conditions under which we were married, at the risk of forfeiting all of your inheritance."

"Okay. Then what?"

"Then I die."

Something had kicked into Cammie's psyche when she had forced herself to stop crying, a sort of mental block which allowed her to view this as a hypothetical scenario, rather than something she was actually discussing. This allowed her to be somewhat more cavalier towards the situation than she had been even only a few minutes earlier. Even so, she was again taken aback by his casual declaration of his own demise. She forced herself on:

"And I get the proceeds of your will and your life insurance payout."

"That's right."

"Which is four hundred and forty thousand dollars?"

He sipped his tea with one hand and with the other made a side-to-side motion. "More or less. There'll be a significant amount of tax, and the exact insurance payout isn't set in stone, but to the best of my calculations yes, the final figure will probably be just over four-forty thou, yes. And I will leave explicit instructions with my lawyers that the pay-out be a strictly no-questions asked payout, no legal tape at your end. That will cost a little more, but makes things easier for you. It's not "

"And then what?"

"The rest, I am afraid, will be up to you, as I won't be around to know or care. But I am not an egotist, or a solipsist. I believe in the existence of the world, and the responsibility of the individual. I don't think I can make this world better by staying in it. I think my presence here makes it worse. But I really believe I can make the world better, especially your world, by doing this." He took a deep breath, in and out.

"And that's the whole deal?" she said. "No strings attached."

He took a long sip of tea. She watched him. He'd answered.

"Anthony? What aren't you telling me?"

He had stopped sipping, but continued to hold the mug to his lips.

"What else do I need to know?"

He withdrew the cup and placed it back down on the table. Stood up and began to pace.

"I ... I need your help." he started.

She agreed. "I can help you Anthony. You don't need to do this."

"No, you misunderstand. I've already tried to end my own life."

"What?" She was stunned. Even after all he had said, she had difficulty getting her head around the concept.

"I ... I've tried before, to end things. Before Alison left, even."

"My God. How?"

"Lots of ways. I've tried to drown myself. I've tried to electrocute myself. I've tried to throw myself off a cliff."

"What happened?"

"I ... couldn't do it."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean ... my body ... have you ever ... been at the top of a high cliff, and felt your body push you away from the edge, against your will?"

"No."

"Okay, uhm, bad example I guess. Have you ever touched a hot stove plate?"

"Yes."

"What happened?"

"I screamed and pulled my hand back."

"Did you? Or did your hand just pull back without thinking?"

"I ... yeah I guess it just instinctively pulled back, yeah."

"It's like that. My body wants to stay alive. Like an instinct, like pulling back from the fire. It won't let me kill it. If I put a gun to my head, it won't let me pull the trigger. If I try to throw myself off a cliff, my legs refuse to take the final steps. They wobble and lose strength. My body knows what I want to do, and it won't let me do it. It's like trying to tickle yourself. It can't be done."

"Lots of people kill themselves!"

"Well ..." he said sheepishly, embarrassed at his own lack of resolve. "I seem unable."

"So, what, in order to claim your life insurance I have to ..." she swallowed audibly. " ... kill you?"

"No! God no. I'd never ask that. Never in a million years. I'd never do that to you, or anyone, Camille." He looked guilty that he had projected the wrong impression, even for a moment.

"Good!" she asserted. She was still quite confused. "So ... uhm, how exactly can I help you?"

He stopped pacing and sat heavily down on the couch next to her.

"Well, it's a bit of a conundrum, to be honest." He said, staring at his hands. "I can't think of a way which is intentional, looks like a suicide, and that I can actually bring myself to do. I want to get out, but I can't find the door, it seems."

"So you need help ... finding the door?"

"Yes. I mean, if you can. I'd certainly appreciate it."

She sighed heavily. "But no killing, right? I ain't no killer."

"No! Of course not. I'm ... I don't know how I'll do it, but I will be the one to do it."

"If we can think of something."

His face brightened, inasmuch as he seemed capable of such a thing.

"We?" he said hopefully.

"You're not the only one who wants out, Anthony." Cammie stood up, and held out her hand.

He took it.