Page 94 of Twice
As far as romantic relationships, well, they started and they ended. I never misled anyone, always saying I wasn’t a forever type. The truth was, after Gianna, I shut down my heart. Women picked up on this quickly. Those who did bother to share their beds with me had their own built-in departure clocks. I was left more often than I did the leaving. Didn’t matter. After all that had transpired, none of it really hurt me.
I got diagnosed with my disease late last year. Then, earlier this month, I had a stroke. It’s hard to describe that, Boss. I was painting a client’s patio and had just stepped off a ladder when I got dizzy. My head began buzzing. I had been holding a paint can with my left hand and I don’t remember dropping it, but when I glanced down the can was rolling away and my foot was covered in buttercup yellow. I fell in the driveway. My face hit the concrete. My arm went numb. I heard people yelling, but it sounded like they were underwater.
I woke up in the hospital.
My left side was unresponsive. I had bruises on my face and elbow. Worst of all, I couldn’t speak. I had to listen helplessly as nurses and doctors asked me to blink if I understood what they were saying. They read the records of my diagnosis, and the chief doctor said, “That likely increased your chances of an incident.” Yeah. No kidding.
Anyhow, I was there for a week or so when an older nurse, who noticed no one was coming to visit, entered my room and said she had something for me. She held up a DVD.
“It’s calledAlfie,” she said. “Have you seen it?”
I shook my head slightly, which was all I could do.
“I noticed it on the shelf of discs we keep for patients. I thought, with your name, maybe you’d want to watch it.”
I blinked OK. What else was I doing?
She put it in the player. It came up on the TV screen. She touched my arm, smiled, and left. And finally, after all those years, I watched the film about the person whose name I shared.
It was horrible.
The story was cruel. The main character was despicable. For some reason, I thought Alfie would be a lovable playboy who you rooted for through his romances. No. He was a cad. A louse. Insensitive. Mean. Referring to women as “birds.” Leaving them as soon as they developed feelings for him. He said his understanding of females only extended to their pleasure. When it came to their pain, he didn’t want to know.
I realize it’s just a movie, Boss, but as it went along, I felt worse and worse about myself. Maybe because I kept hearing female characters call the name “Alfie!” in frustration. Lying there, motionless, I thought about the various deceptions I had used with the opposite sex, from young Adrian and our kiss in the closet, to high schoolers like Natalie and Jo Ann Donnigan and Lizzie, to college women like Maisie and Danielle, to Nicolette Pink, and, of course, mostly, to Gianna. The woman who told me “destiny is patient.”
I had tried, over the years, to put our relationship in a box and hide that box somewhere far from my heart. But in that hospital bed, with Alfie cavorting on the screen, the memories of what I’d had and what I’d lost came back with a fury. I wanted the film to stop, but I couldn’t reach the remote. I couldn’t call out.
So it kept playing until the final scene, when Alfie turns to the audience and delivers the summary of his existence. He says when he looked back on how he’d behaved, especially with women, you’d think he’d gotten the best of it.But what did he really gain? He kept his freedom. But he had no peace of mind. And without that, he had nothing.
“So, what’s the answer?”he wonders in the final lines.“That’s what I keep asking myself—what’s it all about?”
Then that familiar song starts playing. By the time it did, tears were streaming down my face. I tried lamely to swat them away with my one good hand. And I wondered if this was how I would spend my final moments on earth, alone, with no one who cared about me, in a sterile hospital room, the only sounds being the muted conversations of strangers in a hallway.
What’s it all about, Alfie?After all these years, it turns out that lyric was referring to a sad, lonely, pathetic man. A man without love. I wept in that hospital bed, because I had become my namesake.
?
Now I will add these final paragraphs.
I have been writing this notebook story for a long time, Boss. To confess. To explain. But mostly to say I am sorry, beyond sorry, for the foolish things I did to you. To us. To our love. I beg your forgiveness.
I have said my stroke happened this month. And it did. This month—in another lifetime. I went back and repeated many decades. But they have passed now, and that stroke is looming again. It will hit me very soon, and my voice will be gone. I had planned for you to read these pages after I died. But things have changed, and there is still much to tell you.
I have lived today more than once. The Bahamas. The casino. Being arrested. Detective LaPorta, who, despite his bluster, I sort of like. All of it, up to the moment that this notebook is about to be taken from me and, I can only pray, winds up in your hands.
If it has, if you have read this far, then this is my final request: let me finish this story in front of you. There is a landmark here on the island called the Queen’s Staircase. I will be there tonight, at 11:30. Don’t worry about how I escape custody; you can do a lot when you know what’s going to happen.
The Queen’s Staircase.
Please come, Gianna.
I can explain everything if you do.
If you choose not to, if this is all too much, I understand. I have lived a lifetime with you just out of reach. I can die that way as well.
Nassau
Mike Kurtz had been sitting at Gate 9 of the Lynden Pindling International Airport, awaiting a flight to Miami, when security identified him. He was handcuffed and driven to a police station in downtown Nassau.
