Gone

Trigger note: Story deals with themes of death / dying. Nothing graphic!

Kate lies on the floor, hands clasped over her stomach, listening to her carpet sizzle. The bottle said to leave on for no more than five minutes. She closes her eyes. Three and a half minutes go by. The sizzling stops. Kate turns her head slightly to breath in the faint smell of bleach and counts out another ninety seconds. Taking the cloth which lay beside her, she rubs until a layer of white foam appears, replacing the red wine stain which had been there moments earlier.

           She stays on the floor, watching the dampness fade. A Luas trundles by. Birds sing to each other from the trees outside.

           Kate reaches out to touch the carpet. Nearly dry. The promise ring on her ring finger looks looser. She traces a square of light which has appeared next to her, before heaving herself up onto the bed.

*

Luca always said that Dublin was changing. A place that was fast losing itself to corporate drudgery in an attempt to be something bigger than it is. A new hotel every week, catering only for suits and tourists who would soon be walking around in just another conveyor-belt city.

*

Kate finds herself waiting on a Luas to go drink coffee somewhere that isn’t her own kitchen. People scattered either side of her. Standing in front of concrete walls decorated with indecipherable names and the ding-dinging of cards being tapped on. She feels the clothes melting off her body. Blue jeans. Grey sweater. White vest. Bra. Knickers. Socks. Vans. Handbag, necklace, earrings, hair-tie. All fade away until she’s left standing there, naked. This body. This body is all I have.

Onboard, Kate watches the reflection of her hand as it rests on the purple plastic she is now encased in. Like being in the belly of a giant worm. The promise ring glistens. Four tiny blue gems in a thin silver band.

She passes bobble-headed strangers, waiting to go the other way. Passes a young man walking out of a building, hands on hips, looking either side of him before choosing a direction to walk. A meerkat in a suit. A crowd waiting to cross the street. She sees a face that looks like someone she knew of from home. Alice. A friend of a friend, who’d gone to the other secondary school in Athlone. They’d never spoken. Kate wonders what Alice might be up to now. Maybe she’s right there, waiting to cross the road at Trinity College.

           She reached a café, small and tucked away, orders an Americano and looks out onto the laneway. A man with a thick, white moustache drops a cigarette, picks it back up, continues smoking. She closes her eyes and rests her head against the window.

*

That first night of Spring. Kate and Luca looked out onto the Dublin Mountains from their balcony. Indigo on violet. Kate took the joint Luca passed to her, inhaled deeply.

           “My lip balm is after getting all over the end of this. Sorry.”

           “I’ll be getting a taste of your lip balm either way,” said Luca, wiping an imaginary piece of ash from Kate’s cheek.

           They sat close, passing the joint between them. Kate talked about work, about the new guy who’d started at her firm. “He doesn’t know a spreadsheet from a sliced pan. It’s torture.”

           Luca laughed, then told her how his friend Seán was moving to Australia.

           “He thinks he’ll be happier there. That, or he’ll find Pamela Anderson waiting for him on a beach.”

           “We should go one day,” Kate said.

           “We’ll add it to the list.”

           The evening was still and they breathed it in together. Luca’s thumb moved along Kate’s, over and back. A bright red light appeared in the distance.

           “Where do you think that plane is going?” Kate asked.

           “Timbuktu,” Luca answered. The light started flashing. “It’s not moving. Maybe it’s not a plane after all.”

           “What is it then?”

           “Big Brother.”

           The light flashed faster and faster, until a shadow of a shape appeared. Like a squashed oval.

           “What the –” Luca stood up, dropping Kate’s hand as he stepped closer to the edge of the balcony,

           “Luca, what is it?”

           The shape got closer and closer, until it had swallowed the whole sky above them. Kate felt an intense cold. She went to stand up, but was met with a blinding white light and a high-pitched ringing in her ears.

*

“Miss, I’m sorry but if you’re finished, we have other customers waiting for a seat.”        

A nasally teenager stands over Kate, eyebrows raised and eyes pinched. She moves her head and goes to pick up the cup of coffee in front of her. Cold.

“Sorry. I’ll just –” Kate stands up and heads towards the door.

“Miss?”

Kate turns.

“Your bag.”

*

Luca always told Kate that she was the only family he needed.

           Luca’s only living family member was his sister, Gabriela, who lived on the other side of the city. Kate had met her a handful of times. Career-focused, driven, nearly twenty years older. She drove a four-year-old BMW, only dated women with Master’s degrees. Different to Luca in so many ways.

As for Kate; she had no siblings. Her father had never been in the picture and her mother had migrated up and west, to Donegal, where she could enjoy a bottle of vodka in peace.

Kate and Luca. They were two. They were one.

*

Kate wanders along the Quays. A blur of people pass her by, caught up in a lunch-time bustle.

           Seagulls strut along the walkway, eyeing up anyone new. A couple of them fight over half a kebab. A pigeon manages to swoop in and nab a piece of lettuce. It flies off, four others take its place.

Kate follows the thick trail of green algae on the embankment with her eyes. Over and back. Over and back. Her mind drifts.

*

Early that Spring morning, Kate woke from the couch with a jolt. A blanket had been draped over her. She shook it off, went straight to the balcony. A spattering of ash around the ash tray, two metal chairs and round table still there. The sky was blue. Cloudless. Empty.

She called out for Luca. Silence. Found her phone. No messages or missed calls. Straight to voicemail. She searched every room, a knot in the pit of her stomach getting larger and hotter, a clammy sweat prickling her entire body.

She called Gabriela, told her Luca was gone.

           “Well, he’s somewhere, Kate. What happened?”

When she arrived, Gabriela was all business. She told Kate sit down, made a cup of sugary tea, and checked all the rooms herself.

           “Kate, you’re shaking. He could have just nipped out. I’ve tried his phone a couple of times, he’s always letting it go dead.”

           “Last night. He was – he was taken. He’s gone, Gabby. They took him.”

           Gabriela looked at her with a look Kate would soon get used to. Sympathy. Pity. Condescension.

           “Kate. You said you were smoking? I don’t think –”

           “Gabriela, please. That has nothing to do with it. I know what happened. I was there.”

           “OK. Drink your tea. If he’s still not back in a couple of hours, I’ll drive you to the Garda station and we can report him missing.”

           “He’s not missing. He’s –“

           “Kate. You’re upset. You’re shaken up. I’ll stay here with you if you want to get some rest, but I’m going to need you to think straight. If my brother is missing, I want to find him. Now drink up.”

Together, they knocked on the doors of neighbours Kate had never met. They checked each one of the underground carparks in the complex. Rang Seán, rang some of Luca’s other friends. No one had seen him or heard from him that day.

*

A man in faded tracksuit bottoms and army green jacket is suddenly standing in front of Kate, hand outstretched.

           “Spare change for the homeless?”

           Kate raises her eyes to his face. Acne-pocked, tousled hair grey with grease.

           “Spare change, missus?”

           “His bank account. There’s been no movement in his bank account in four months. How can that be?”

           “Missus? Spare change?”

           Kate shakes her head, takes out her purse, hands over a twenty euro note. She watches as he walks away, his every wobbly step. He hocks something up and spits it on the ground, approaches the next stranger.

*

Gabriela took Kate to the Garda station later that afternoon. Reports made. Photographs provided. Names of friends, acquaintances, exes.

“Colleagues?”

“He’s a freelancer. A photographer. He takes pictures for…catalogues and stuff.”

“OK. Can you give us the name of some of the people or companies he did that work for?”

Cups of tea were made and drunk. More questions asked. More lists made.

           “OK, Ms. Doyle. You say your partner was… abducted?”

There was that look again.

           “Yes. Last night. We were on the balcony.”

           “And his phone and wallet are both gone?”

           “Yes. We saw a light, and this shape –”

           “Yes, we have your statement, Ms. Doyle. We have to cover all bases, you understand. Is there any reason you can think of that he might have left? Did you have an argument?”

           “No. He’d never just leave like this. We were just talking –“

           “Ms., eh, Santana said that marijuana was involved?”

           “Yes, but – we were just talking and joking. We were happy.”

           “Could he have been in trouble with any – I don’t know – dodgy types, Ms. Doyle?”

           “No. He’s not some thug or anything, he gets on with everyone.”

           “OK, Ms. Doyle. We have your report, but you need to understand that people go missing every day. Sometimes, people just up and leave. We’ll do everything we can to investigate, and we’ll be in touch over the next few days with either yourself or Ms. Santana. In the meantime, I suggest you get some rest –“

           “I don’t need any more rest. I –“

           “Get some rest, and I suggest you seek some sort of counselling for what you’re going through. It’s not easy when a loved one goes missing –“

           “He was taken.”

           “OK, Ms. Doyle. We’ll be in touch. Is Ms. Santana taking you home?”

*

Kate turns her head from the Liffey. People are shouting. A couple fighting on the streets. He’s been texting some young one, she’s going to kick him out as soon as they were back.

           Kate remembers left yesterday’s load is still in the washing machine. Decides to walk home.

*

Weeks had gone by after the initial missing person’s report. Kate watched as Gabriela put up posters, shared his image on social media, called up newspapers. The story never picked up any traction, bar a few hundred shares on Facebook. People go missing every day.

           Kate hadn’t gone to work since the night of the abduction. She couldn’t face the familiar faces of total strangers, the forced smiles, the listening to rants about how no one in this place ever bothers to empty the bloody dishwasher.

Her and Luca had been saving for a deposit. Or a campervan and a ticket to anywhere. The balance now diminishing; paying rent and bills, microwave meals and bottles of wine.

Her friends came over less and less. Kate was relieved. She was tired of the pity, the sucked in lips when she recounted what had happened, the therapists’ numbers left less than discreetly on the dining table or bedside locker.

            Then there came the last day she saw Gabriela. She had stormed out one morning, fiercely angry.

           “You could help, you know. I’m here trying to find my brother. And you just sit there all day, staring out that stupid window.”

           “He’s not out there. He’s –”

           “Kate. It’s hard for everyone, OK? Please don’t insult my intelligence by telling me he was taken by fucking aliens. Whatever happened between you two, he’s gone. He left you. And now he’s disappeared. Go get help if you can’t get that through that thick, empty skull of yours.”

There had been times Kate did go searching. She’d go alone, up and down the Dublin Mountains. Hell Fire Club, Shankill, even down to Kippure.

The last time she’d searched, she’d gone to Fairy Castle. Ancient, untainted. She had reached the summit of Two Rock mountain, taken the forest path on to Three Rock. She had lain down on top of the giant boulders, looked out onto a grey-washed sky. Come back. For me.

*

Back at the apartment, Kate opens a bottle of wine.

           She steps out onto the balcony and sits down, looking out at those same mountains. A powdery blue shadow against the evening’s sherbet sky.

           Kate wraps her shawl tighter around her, takes a gulp from her glass, presses it against her forehead. She looks back up and her entire body stiffens. Her neck prickles. A red light. There’s a red light in the sky. The exact spot. It starts to flash.

Kate stands up, unblinking, gripping the handrail so that her knuckles turned white.

           It stops flashing. Disappears. Kate lets go of her breath, crumples into herself on the tiled floor.

Moments later, a large drop lands on Kate’s hand. Another, and another. Her head re-emerges. She points her already damp face toward the sky, lets the cold rain fall down on her, before lifting herself up and going inside.

*

Luca and Kate would lie on the couch together, Kate on the inside wrapped up in Luca’s arms. Listening to their records. Luca had bought the record player from a music shop he visited regularly, each time ecstatic at the good deal he’d been given. He connected to his parents through music. They had both been exceptional guitarists, famous for their samba music back home. Luca said the guitars had been given away or sold after the funerals – before he could even blink.

           Eyes closed, Luca’s hand would play gently with Kate’s hair.

           “I love you, Kate. I’ll love you forever.”

           “Promise?”

           “I promise.”

*

Kate wakes with a grunt to her phone ringing. Gabriela.

           “Kate. They’ve found him.”

           “What?”

           “His body, Kate. They’ve found Luca’s body.”