Gamers

Vic’s heart raced and his stomach churned. His palms sweated and his cheeks burned. His chest felt tight, his collar more a choker chain than a shirt.

He stopped in the middle of Paulo’s front yard, looked back to the little blue hatchback then to the front door. It was a nice yard. Freshly mowed and edged, the gardens abloom and the fence immaculate despite its age. It looked the same as it always had.

A magpie landed on the roof, taunted him with its springtime melody.

He checked the shopping bag’s contents one more time. It wasn’t too late. He could flee right now. No one would know. No one need know. Well, Ainsley might, but then he suspected she had greater concerns.

The door opened. “What are you doing here?”

A blunt greeting. A Paulo greeting.

Vic approached slowly, tried not to stare at the faded band shirt and stained flannel, the grey-black stubble and greasy hair. The gut. “Hello,” he said. “I—”

“You what?” Paulo was not overly tall but he was broad of shoulder and thick through the chest. He had a manner, a way of looming no matter the situation or his intent.

“I’ve been staying at Hank’s. Figured I’d drop by before the airport.”

Paulo sniffed. “Your brother’s place is thirty minutes away. Before the airport.”

Vic knew this of course. He knew that Paulo knew he knew it and yet for all his agonising he had failed to concoct a better lie. Some actor he was. Some writer.

“Well, I’m here now.”

Paulo appraised him openly, his opinion on Vic’s chinos and burnt orange polo writ plain. “You’re thin.”

“I guess.”

“You’ve grown a beard.”

“Yes.”

“Your haircut’s stupid.”

“Paulo, look, if—”

“What’s in there?” He pointed at the shopping bag like a kid pointed at a dead animal. “I saw you mucking about with it.”

Vic clutched it tight. “What?”

Paulo gestured at the little white dome above his head. “Security camera, idiot. I’ve been watching you lurk for twenty minutes.”

“Can I come in or not? I haven’t got much time.”

What passed between them might have been described as a glance or maybe a stare at a stretch, but it was nonetheless filled with the weight of years and contorted memory. This was a mistake.

“Whatever,” said Paulo. “I don’t give a care.”

*

No sooner had the doorway been vacated when Paulo’s wife, Ainsley, graced it with her presence. She looked as fine as ever. High cheeks and curly hair. A starched skirt and blouse over a figure that belied her motherly credentials.

Surprise warred with concern warred with relief. “You’re here,” she said. “Good.”

Yeah, thought Vic. Wonderful.

*

Ainsley ushered him through the living room at a fast clip, stiff-backed and full of muttered pleasantries. Vic saw an open beer can and a blinking game controller. The pause screen was frenetic in the way of all the next-gen consoles, overwhelming with scrolling stats and implorations to update and stream and share. He guessed it was a shooter of some sort.

Ainsley beckoned from the kitchen. “Come on now. Time for that later.”

“I can’t stay long,” he said. “I’ve got—”

“The audition. I know.”

Vic followed her in, his chest tightening in spite of her soft-spoken manner.

“Well go on then,” said Paulo. “Sit.” He lorded over the circular table like a consigliere or chairman of the board, though in this instance he looked as bemused as he was irritated.

“I invited him,” Ainsley said. “It had to be done.”

“Is that so?” Paulo folded his arms. “Why?”

“You know why, Paulo Jansen.”

They engaged in a kind of three-way standoff.

“She told me you’re ill,” said Vic. “But not how.”

Paulo looked sidelong at his wife. “I don’t want your pity, Vic.”

He wrung on the shopping bag. “Please. Just tell me what’s going on. What’s wrong?”

“Tell me what’s in the bag.”

Another standoff, broken only by the ringing of Ainsley’s phone. “Damn it,” she said. “I’ve got to take this.”

Vic waited for her to leave. “Is she still working with the foundation?”

“Didn’t come up while you were talking behind my back?”

“Come on, man. She said you’re going to bloody Mexico! Something about experimental treatment.”

“She shouldn’t have.” Paulo plucked a thread from the cuff of his flannel, unwound it with a dexterity that belied his meaty hands. “You shouldn’t have listened.”

Vic’s nerves had settled somewhat, though his cheeks still felt hot. The room felt hot. He looked out the window, caught a flash of magpie black and white.

“Are you bloody right?” Paulo asked. “Bloody staring. I’m supposed to be the one...” He shook his head. “Never mind.”

“Ainsley thinks we need to bury the hatchet,” Vic said. “Before you leave. In case... it doesn’t work out.”

“Oh. The hatchet. Can’t have that laying around.”

He took a breath, worked hard to find the balance between anger and anxiety. “Look, man. I’ve got an audition tomorrow. If we’re going to—

“Then just go. I’m not keeping you here, Vic. No one is.”

“Tell me what I did then? Why’d you stop talking to me?”

If anyone had perfected the art of indignation it was Paulo, and he brought all his powers of affront to bear now. His brow rose, his lips twisted. “Have we not been talking? I never noticed.”

“It’s been five years.”

A shrewd turn, calculating and suspicious. “You don’t remember, do you? Figures.”

“What are you talking about?

“You held that party with all your little theatre friends. Ainsley and I were in the city with the kids. To watch the football. I swear you accidently invited us.”

“The party?” Vic racked his brain for any crime or its accompanying denial.

Paulo moved to the sink and filled a glass. “Well?”

“Jesus, Paulo. You didn’t even tell me you were coming until that afternoon. It wasn’t an accident, just a surprise. I didn’t think you’d have much interest in that crowd.”

“And so you ignored us the whole time. Shoved us in the corner while you schmoozed.”

“It wasn’t like that. I was trying to host. You left early! You said the kids were tired.”

Paulo lowered his voice, wary despite Ainsley’s absence. “One of those squeezers said something about what she was wearing. She pretended not to hear but I know she did.”

Vic fussed at his collar. How was he to supposed to explain it? The nagging ambition, the insecurity and the self-loathing. He had sweated for months over that little gathering, plotting and coaxing and contriving in an effort to make it seem like it was ‘no big deal.’ Those people, those ‘little theatre friends;’ he had hated them as much as he had wanted to be one of them.

“That’s hardly my fault, Paulo. You can’t hold a grudge against me over people you don’t even know. About something so petty.”

“I think about it more than I should. I replay it in my head. I imagine jawing that bloke even though I’m glad I didn’t. I remember how embarrassed you were of us.”

Vic had been embarrassed. He had been embarrassed over how hard he’d tried for people who’d hardly given him the time of day before or since. He had been embarrassed to do it in front of his best friend.

“I had no idea,” he said. “You should have said something.”

Paulo resumed his seat. “I’d always thought it was different between you and I. That I understood you. All that shit about getting out of this place. All that about wanting something ‘more’ than fishing and football. I figured you just had ‘more’ mixed up with ‘different.’”

“I never had it mixed up! Everyone else did. I never thought I was better than anyone.”

Vic clutched the bag. Even now he struggled to see it, to reconcile his supposed arrogance with his actual diffidence. Yes, he had wanted to get away and yes, he had wanted to be a writer and an actor. But what of it? He had never put on airs.

“You act like it’s me who stopped talking,” Paulo said. “But how often did you text? Call? That stupid party just laid it all bare.”

“I know I could have done better, but it hasn’t been easy for me either. I took a chance, Paulo. I sacrificed. Sometimes that’s what it takes.”

“Don’t give me that. You’re a bloody draftsman with a hobby. You have a real job. You’re not some struggling artist.”

And there it was. The real regard in which he was held. The contempt. The condescension. The implication that his dream was no more than a passing curiosity. A hobby.

Paulo softened. Just a little. “Look. There’s nothing wrong with having a thing on the side. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It doesn’t have to be a career.”

Now it was Vic who moved to the sink. He found a glass, drank deep in lieu of facing his friend. Why did the man always have to cut to the quick so easily? Why couldn’t he ever indulge someone?

“I saw your game,” he said, trying to change the subject. “What is it?”

There was no answer, only the scrape of a chair. Heavy breathing.

“Who the hell are you?”

An electric chill ran the length of Vic’s spine. He turned quickly, gasped.

Paulo’s face was a rictus, a thing more animal than man. A thing that reminded of those beaten, perpetually snarling dogs they showed from the animal shelters. Fear masquerading as anger. “Who are you?” he repeated. “What are you doing in my house?”

“What?”

“Get out! Get the hell out!

“Paulo, what are you—”

Paulo had always been the more athletic one, the tough one. He rode dirt bikes and played football and hunted pigs. He got into scuffles. But Vic had never been afraid of him. Come to think of it he had never been physically afraid of anyone. He had never been attacked.

And so when Paulo launched himself he was stuck cold, too shocked to so much as flinch. The punch caught his temple, enlivened him with the thrum of contact.

Vic moved instinctually, pushed his palms up and into Paulo’s jaw. Paulo’s hands shot upward in turn. Builder’s hands. Powerful hands. Hands now clamped firmly about Vic’s throat.

Panic ensued, seized him as surely as that vicelike grip. Was this it? Was he about to die?

Vic wailed on his friend’s head and neck, his punches slow and ineffectual as a dream. Dark spots peppered his vision, closed in on the edges of that snarling visage. He sagged, thoughts slowing as the vim seeped from his limbs.

He was dying.

“Paulo!”

Vic sensed movement in the periphery, caught the distinct shriek of a female in crisis. He recognised that voice but could not fashion it into any kind of context. He heard the roar of his own blood, another creak and scrape of a chair.

A click. A hiss.

Then release.

Vic staggered sideways, sucked in a heady cocktail of air and fire extinguisher’s foam.

The ensuing moments were hard to discern, though by the end of it he was cringing in the corner. Paulo curled foetal on the floor. Ainsley knelt beside him, her cheeks tear-stained and flushed.

Vic eyed the spent extinguisher, realised both he and Paulo were soaked.

Ainsley looked up. “Are you okay?”

“I... think so. Is he—”

She shook her head. “Help me get him to the bed. I’ll... I’ll explain after.”

*

“Dementia?”

Ainsley nodded. “Early onset. We don’t know how, why, any of that. He’s had all the scans, all the tests. They can’t do anything.”

“Dementia.” The word felt strange in his mouth. Dirty. Taboo.

“He’s quit work, Vic. He never told me how bad it got but I know he went to the wrong construction site more than once. He was missing deadlines and getting orders wrong. He... he yelled at a contractor. There’s been other things of course. Around the house.”

“Ainsley...” He struggled to meet her eye, to contemplate what this must be like for her. How could she stand it? How could she just go about things? “Mexico? Really?”

“There is a specialist. From Zurich. He’s... controversial.”

Vic probed at his neck without thinking. “By which you mean risky. Unproven.”

“Yes.” Her resolve broke momentarily, shifted from despair to bitterness then back in the span of a thought. “All the rules, all the laws... They assume you’ve got something to lose.”

Something to lose. That was as sad an epiphany as he had ever experienced. Paulo slept upstairs, dosed on melatonin and whatever else, but his wife spoke as if he was already dead.

“Has he ever done anything like this before? Attacked anyone?” The thought occurred to him that Ainsley herself might be in danger, and yet he did not know how to broach it.

“No. Not that I know of. He must have gotten confused, what with the beard and the hair and that.”

Vic grimaced. “Ainsley, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m glad you came.”

“Paulo wasn’t.”

“He’s been isolating himself. He won’t socialise with his other friends, let alone tell them what’s going on. He hasn’t told the kids either. All he does is drink beer and play video games but he doesn’t enjoy it. I think he’s given up.”

Vic pushed the shopping bag toward her. “I brought this back for him. It got lost in my things somewhere along the line but I thought it might serve as an olive branch, so to speak.”

Ainsley took out the old game controller and smiled. The thing was faded grey and grimy and almost certainly didn’t work but she held it with near religious reverence. “I don’t know how many days, how many nights, you two spent playing those bloody games.”

“Too many.”

“No. Not too many. He was always more himself around you, Vic. More... settled.”

Vic nodded. It seemed so mundane now, perhaps even silly, but gaming had been their common ground. Shooters and RPGs in the main, but anything really. He didn’t even remember how it had started. They hadn’t been close in school but at some point after graduation they had just sort of fallen in together. Yes, Paulo had had his football and riding and his other friends and Paulo was laying his own angst-ridden plans. There had been women and the pursuit thereof. There had been apprenticeships and university and leaving home. But somehow, somewhere, they had forged a bond. A connection.

Vic stood without thinking, spoke over the welling lump in his throat. “I’m sorry, Ainsley. I have to go.”

Her voice was a whisper. “Yes. The audition.”

He looked out the window one last time. “Good luck in Mexico.”

*

Paulo rested the old controller in his lap, stared at it and the pause screen in turn. He hadn’t played since Vic’s appearance the day before. Since the fugue. Ainsley had told him everything, though she may as well have made it up for all he could recall. He may as well have passed out completely.

His phone buzzed from across the room. A dozen steps and he could get it. No point in that then. No point in anything.

He heard his wife bustling about the kitchen and shed a fresh tear. What would happen when he forgot her? He studied his hands. Would he throttle her too? The notion was untenable.

He put the controller aside and considered again the merit of just ending it now. It would be hard on Ainsley, but then there was no easy option. There were, however, upsides. God knew she would need the money when he was gone. Better to save it than spend it on flights and hotels and the quack’s eye-watering fee. Better to just… accept it.

Paulo stared at the pause screen, only vaguely aware of the passing of his lovely wife. Of his Ainsley. That poor woman. She deserved better than this. She deserved better than him. The mere fact of what she had contrived with Vic said as much. It was misguided, yes, and entirely regrettable, but it gave yet more proof of the goodness of her heart. And so that was why he grieved. Not for himself, but for her. For the knowledge that she would be alone. That she was already alone.

“Paulo?”

He turned slow, saw both Ainsley and Vic standing in the doorway, the latter of whom wore a scarf. Shame rendered him mute.

“I wanted to see you again,” Vic said. “Before you leave tomorrow.”

“Why?” The question was an earnest one, though he was aware of how it came out, of how he always sounded coarser than he really felt. “Don’t you have your audition?”

Vic’s shrug was deprecating. Almost everything he did was deprecating. “It was a shit part anyway.”

Shame turned to guilt, both for yesterday’s conversation – he remembered that – and the pettiness of the preceding years. God knew he was just as culpable as his old friend, just as stubborn and lazy and preoccupied. The difference was poor Vic had a habit of tying himself in knots or running away. Paulo tended to ignore things.

“I’ll put the kettle on,” said Ainsley.

Vic watched her go, his forced smile unconvincing on someone who purported to act. “I was thinking we could play that game.”

Paulo glanced at the screen and the old controller, taken by a grim and sudden humour. “Do you even remember how?”

Vic sat down, his grin broadening into something genuine. “I don’t know. Maybe you can show me.”

The End