The Ends by James Smythe

Author:James Smythe [Smythe, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-06-21T12:00:00+00:00

19

The wall of heat when the plane doors open, and we walk down the ramp to the tarmac. It’s startling, and immediately gets into your lungs. I remember being a very young child, one of the few memories I actually have that are mine, rather than that I was told about, received memories from photographs or stories: of getting off the plane in Florida that first time, of feeling that wall of dense, damp air, cloying in its heat, heat that stuck to your mouth, your throat.

Rhonda says, ‘Tell me about myself.’ We walk across the empty runway, towards the terminal. A long walk, but there are no planes landing as we do it. No danger.

‘I read the same book as you,’ I say.

‘But she – I – she’s so dry. You know? What was she like? What am I like? Am I happy, sad, do I mope around, am I excitable, what?’

I say, instinctively, ‘You seemed content.’

‘Content! Fucking content? That’s all I get?’

‘I mean, you seemed happy. Content, happy. You saved my life.’

‘No shit?’

‘You did. It was incredible.’ Her eyes light up. We are at the doors to the terminal, ready for the empty concrete, for the quiet solitude of a place that should once have been bustling. She didn’t know it, this will mean nothing to her. She didn’t write this bit down, and I wonder why. Not wanting to boost her own ego, perhaps? But now, I spin the story, wanting it to hit harder. ‘I would have been killed, it was literally touch and go.’ We stop walking, letting the other passengers – or cargo, are we cargo? – go in before us. ‘There were three of them, absolutely deadly, weapons, willing to kill me; and you came along and saw them off.’

‘Shit, okay. Was I, like, dangerous?’

‘You had that air about you,’ I reply. She looks pleased with that. I bend the truth, or maybe I don’t: ‘They saw you, and they legged it.’

‘Legged it, what’s legged it?’

‘They ran off.’

‘What were they doing to you?’

‘They were beating me,’ I say, ‘stealing from me.’

‘Shit!’

‘It was,’ I say. ‘That’s how I hurt my head.’

‘I wondered.’

‘That’s how. You patched it up.’

‘She did, she patched it up. And then, what, you told her: you needed to find Birdie, right?’

‘Yes,’ I say, but as soon as I say it, I can feel the logic unpick itself; a seam ripper, down the line of my quest. Why am I searching for Birdie? What can she offer me? Rhonda then, she had asked me why I was looking for Birdie. What I wanted to get out of it.

She left. She left me, and I say I want to see her, but really: is this about me? Not her?

‘And she helped you. A fucking quest, she accepted a fucking quest! Badass.’

‘Yes,’ I say. I want to know why Birdie left. But more than that: I want to know why she left me. I have never reasoned with it before, because it felt without reason.

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