Page 14 of A Distraction of Lies

“Pretty, isn’t it?” I mumble rolling onto my back. My fingers run over the black lace, inching into the top of my panties. It’s nice here. Soft and relaxed. Real. Gray’s real now. He’s here and we’re getting undressed. We should make more of our friendship. Enjoy each other. If that’s what friends do. Who knows? Maybe he can give me all the real I’m after. “Why don’t you come christen this lace for me, Gray?”

He walks backwards away from me, a smile on his face. There’s nothing funny about him moving away. But he keeps going until he’s in the doorway and switching the lights off.

Spoilsport.

***

The realisation of my situation hits me at exactly the same time as I remember hearing the sermon being delivered. It was lovely. Words of my husband being in a better place now, and that while he would be missed, he would be waiting for me one day to join him.

I roll and inch my eyes open, taking in the room around me. Expensive. Dark. And not mine. I’m not sure why I thought it would be, but I had hoped, whilst lying here, that Gray might have taken me back to mine. Obviously not. I take in the sight of my dress casually flung at a chair, my shoes beside it. I suppose I should be thankful of his gallantry. He could have done anything to me in the moment last night. The thought makes me frown and pull my knees up to my chest, self-doubt chasing across my skin. Rick was fucking other women. Maybe I’m not attractive enough for Gray to have been interested in.

The sound of silence carries on, as I let everything flash around in my mind. Insecurity, worry, a little panic. They’re all there now a new day has dawned on me and the alcohol has left. What now? I squeeze my eyes tighter closed and snuggle back into the pillow, ignoring the pounding headache. I’m not ready for what now yet. I need time to process, to think. The apartment isn’t even unpacked, and all his things are still there waiting for me. I haven’t got anyone to send them to. Goodwill maybe. All of it. Or the trash. I can’t … I don’t know what to do. I’m alone and everything I was is now a wreck of memories that have nothing to do with reality.

Drink. I want a drink.

Tequila again.

That’ll work for a while longer yet. It’ll give me something to nullify the inevitable. I can get lost in it like addicts do, find solace in the never ending abyss that lies in the bottle. I rise slowly at that thought, feet gently landing on the cream carpet. They hurt, tingles cross the pads of my soles. I lift them to look at why. They’re black underneath, filthy with grime and dirt and small cuts. Oh god, what the hell did I do last night? At least I remember Gray. A little hard to forget my adulterous dead husband’s boss. Or bosses, bosses boss. Or the fact that it was him drinking with me.

Lots of drink.

My hands plant on the bed as I stare at my bare feet and remember the funeral. There wasn’t that many people. Dozen or so. I suppose that’s what happens when you’ve lived in as many places as we have, barely making friends while you were there. Hardly anyone flew here. It makes me wonder if the same would happen if I died. No real friends other than a few I could pick the phone up to, but both of them are now in Vancouver. Oh god, Gemma and Graham.

I hobble over to my bag, digging my phone out. Four missed calls and several texts. All of them with Gemma’s name attached to them. A groan falls from me as I wander to the other side of the room and peek behind a door to see if it’s a bathroom. It is, so I get about tidying myself up. Time to get out of here and back to my own apartment. Not that it is mine, but Gray was right last night. The lease is long on it, already paid for. I have time to work out what to do. Time to drink and forget.

A while later and I walk out of the bathroom and reach for my dress. It stinks of cigarettes and booze. I shrug into it regardless and slip my feet into the heels, quickly sending Gemma a text to tell her I’m alive and well. I check the time. Ten in the morning. She’s probably flying back home now with Graham. They were only in for the day and night. I sniff up a remnant of feeling despondent about that and slip the phone back into my bag. I’ll probably never see her again anyway. What was once close is now far away and unreachable, and what was once considered friendship is now nothing but a memory.

Two more minutes straightening off the bed and I head out into the unknown. The place is huge, all of it shrieking of money and glamour. Black marble floor. Complementing woodwork and fabrics, all of them as opulent as the marble under my feet. I move gingerly, as if trespassing on unknown land, and look over the paintings and sculptures around what seems to be a lounge area. They’re all as moody as him. Dark frames, dark content, dark forms made of steel or bronze maybe. Perfect. For him anyway. It’s all perfect and neatly placed and shiny. It’s completely silent, though. No sense of life or movement.

I look out of the large art deco window, eyes casting down the tower of stories below us. Traffic rumbles by down there, all the yellow cabs cluttering up the roads. I end up leaning my aching head on the cool glass, just staring as if some sense of direction will suddenly present itself. It won’t, but a few more minutes up here, taking in the view and thinking about anything but my reality, is soothing. Not my normal. Not what was perfect but is now a lie.

“Mrs Tanner?” I jump at the sound of a woman’s voice, head pushing me back away from the window. An older lady stands there in a black dress, a white apron around her waist. “Mr Rothburg has already left, but he said you were welcome to breakfast. Can I get you something? Coffee, Tea?”

“Oh, no. Thank you, though. I’ll be on my way.”

“Of course, Mrs Tanner,” she says, leading me somewhere. I follow, glancing around the rooms as we go. Every single thing is as immaculate as the lounge I was in. And it keeps going, more dark walls complementing more equally dark paintings. My arms go around me, fingers gripping in to remind me that whatever last night was it’s not my life. Neither is this elegant home.

“Did he leave a message for me at all?” I ask.

“No Mam. Would you like me to tell him anything for you?” the woman replies.

I look around the large foyer we’ve arrived in, noting the large vase of white lilies dominating the dark centre table. Is there anything I want to say to him? “I … I don’t think so. No. Thank you, though.”

“You’re welcome Mrs Tanner,” she says, pressing a button on the wall.

The elevator slides open seamlessly, no noise accompanying it. It isn’t until I walk in, press the button to descend, and the doors close that I realise a thank you might have been a good message to leave. He did look after me after all. Not that I can remember a great deal about the night. Embarrassment floods me at the thought of conversations I can neither remember nor drag from the depths of my brain. Maybe I don’t want to remember. It’s not like anything good happened yesterday. I buried my husband, and then found out he was an adulterer. And then, to build on that horrendous situation, I went off with a man I don’t know to get drunk, as if that would make matters better, and probably said a million things I shouldn’t have said.

The lobby looks familiar, as I walk out. Extremely. Mainly because it’s the same one I’ve been using since we got here. I glance around, making sure, and then look upwards, suddenly realising he lives at the top of our building. His building, I presume. Okay. Right. Stupid. I turn and head back into the elevator, pressing the button for the eighth floor, and wait for it to take me back up.

The corridor looks just as familiar as I walk into it and wander along, but it doesn’t feel familiar anymore. Everything about it is now a lie. The way Rick and I joked that night before going out. The way he was all over me, as if we were some loving couple. The way I cried at the opera, thinking of him by my side on our anniversary, grieving the night away. The only thing that’s real about it is the footsteps I’m taking now with the realisation of his affairs firmly in my mind.

I open the door and hover in the entrance way, taking in the boxes still piled up at the side of the room. Our things. Things I thought I’d be able to arrange so that this space would become our home. I would have been oblivious to his adultery then. I would have made a home, possibly made babies, and been here for him each morning and night like I’ve always been.

I feel the tears on my cheeks before I realise I’m crying. They trickle in their sense of grief, reminding me that I should be a wreck. I’m barren to it, though. My mind’s elsewhere, as I wander and touch pictures of us. Perhaps I’m trying to find sense in it all, find reasons for why he’d do this to me. By the time I’ve picked up each one and placed it back down, the only words running through my head are ones that came from Gray’s mouth yesterday.

“He was a prick. Most of us are.”

Foolish Hannah. Foolish, too trusting, and beaten down in the aftermath.

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