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Back The Presence of Absence
Chapters (40)
  1. also by simon van booy
  2. the presence of absence
  3. Title Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Epigraph
  6. Prologue
  7. the presence of absence
  8. Part One
  9. 27.
  10. 26.
  11. 25.
  12. 24.
  13. 23.
  14. 22.
  15. 21.
  16. 20.
  17. 19.
  18. 18.
  19. 17.
  20. 16.
  21. 15.
  22. 14.
  23. 13.
  24. 12.
  25. 11.
  26. 10.
  27. 9.
  28. 8.
  29. 7.
  30. 6.
  31. 5.
  32. 4.
  33. 3.
  34. 2.
  35. 1.
  36. [quick black]
  37. [scene change]
  38. Part Two
  39. acknowledgments
  40. a note about the author

You can’t change the past, only look for clues in a puzzle in which looking for clues is a clue.

19.

I’m awake in my hospital bed. All the lights are off. It is dawn and the sky is a faint canvas upon which the day will be sketched. I hear someone⁠—probably the night nurse⁠—going back and forth outside my door. Her shoes make dry squeaks like a thirsty mouse.

Oh, wait.

A light has just come on.

The glass in my door has warmed from gray to gentle orange. There is no lock or handle, just a small window with wire mesh between squares of glass. Once, I caught Hadley staring in through the grid, as though our lives’ problems were something to be solved by mathematics. I pretended not to see. She was there for a long time looking in. When Hadley finally entered, I was going to make a joke about what she was doing, but then she kissed me and her cheek was wet so I decided not to play games.

A trolley just rolled past my room at speed, which is curious because it’s too early for breakfast.

Nothing about today has been decided; the sun has yet to relieve her anemic sister.

I’m going to keep the light off as long as I can.

There’s a button near my pillow⁠—not the one that makes the bed go up and down, but for a lamp that I never put on because it’s dazzling, though useful, I suppose, for people with failing sight.

My window to out there⁠—where you are now⁠—is not the seething black it was when I started typing today. Night is draining. I feel good about that. And about this: us being together. Good company you are.

I haven’t seen Hadley or Jeremy for a few days now. That’s a long time in my world. But they’ve been traveling. I told them to, insisted really, that they get some time away from the hospital⁠—I even offered to pay for it, told Hadley to max out my credit card, which made them both laugh.

Jeremy said he found some foreign editions of my books for sale at the Strand, not the big ones I’m known for as a novelist, but the slimmer works⁠—novellas and short stories. He thought they might look nice on the small shelf here in my room, beside the pile of magazines Hadley adds to with each visit.

There was a time I believed it was me writing the words in those books; that was before I understood that I could very well have been you.