The Memory of Water

⁴² A CONVERSATION WITH A HOLOGRAM

I spin around, cry out. The studio has grown dark and at first, I think it’s Eve, but then she walks forward into a shaft of light and I see Denise. Susannah. The woman who had sixteen million reasons to kill Eve and anyone else who stood in the way.

“Susannah,” I whisper into the dark.

“You can call me that,” she says.

“Why did you say your name was Denise?”

“I never did. That’s the name you chose.”

I shout out an ugly laugh.

“That’s the name I chose,” I splutter.

“Yes,” she says, stepping closer.

“But now you’re Susannah,” I say.

“Yes,” she says, “if you like.”

“I found this photo of you, and this one. Your name is Susannah.”

“Okay,” she says.

“And Eve was an only child,” I say. Denise nods.

“Why did you pretend to be her sister? What was the point? Why didn’t you just take the money and run?”

She looks at me as if I should know the answer.

“I didn’t know about the money,” she says, then shakes her head and corrects herself. “I knew about the money but not about the will. Not about the life insurance.”

We keep quiet for a while.

“No one suspects you. No one even knows you…”

“No one even knows I exist,” she says. Her words echo in my head. No one even knows she exists. She is close now. If I reach out I will be able to touch her. Heat creeps up my body in a smooth, liquid motion, as if I am being filled up with boiling water. There is anger in every muscle, organ, cell.

“How could you?” I demand.

“I didn’t,” she says.

“You may as well tell me the truth. I’m going to die tonight, aren’t I?”

“Are you?” Jesus, it’s like having a conversation with a hologram.

“I’m surprised you didn’t do it sooner,” I say, “You had so many opportunities.”

We had been so intimate, I feel sick with it. Sick with the blood-red intimacy.

“I didn’t kill Eve,” she says again.

“Why would I believe that?”

“Because I was in love with her,” she whispers.

“What?” I say. I am confused, knocked off balance.

“I’ve always been in love with her.”

“What?”

“We’ve been… lovers…since school.”

“If that were true I would know,” I say. “Eve and I were close.”

“We kept it secret. Telling the truth caused a lot of pain.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were fifteen when we told our parents. My dad beat me so badly I had to be hospitalised. You’ve seen my scar,” she says, touching her chest. “One of the broken ribs punctured my lung. Eve’s parents didn’t touch her, wouldn’t touch her, wouldn’t look at her, just threw her out. Her father’s reputation was ruined.”

I search her eyes but I can’t read them.

“She moved to Jo’burg. She used to write to me but if my dad found a letter from her he would lay into me. It was worth the risk, just to hear from her, but when I told her she stopped. That’s been the pattern of our relationship our whole lives: bad things happen when we are together, but we can’t be apart. Because we love each other, we want to protect each other, so we stay away. But sometimes we can’t help it, and then we have to deal with the consequences. The last time we were together is the last time I saw her alive.”

“I don’t understand. What consequences? Do you mean because you are gay?”

“No, being gay has nothing to do with it. Being in love with Eve didn’t make me gay any more than being with you didn’t make me straight. Love isn’t held back by gender. The consequences I am talking about run deeper than that. We were never meant to be together. We were star-cross’d.”

“Romeo and Juliet,” I murmur. Their fate was sealed the moment they locked eyes on each other. In the end, their actions were inconsequential because their destinies were already in the stars.

“You didn’t kill her?”

She is close now, our bodies are touching. She takes my hand.

“How could I?” she breathes into me. “Killing Eve would be like killing myself.”

This makes sense. In my mind they are becoming the same person. Yes, I think, you are Eve’s shadow.

She pulls my head down and forces her lips onto mine. I hesitate. I try to think. Slowly, slowly, she draws me out. Her mouth is safe and familiar. I feel the wall come up from behind me and touch my back. I don’t remember taking off my clothes but we are skin-on-skin. I feel weak and we sink down onto the spattered sheets. She senses my weakness and takes control, manoeuvring so that the whole length of her body is on top of mine. Then I am inside her and she rocks up and down, up and down until I am hypnotised. There is weight on my wrists. I open my eyes but it’s dark. I feel her fingernails – she is holding me, pinning me down. She is a Black Widow spider. Up and down, the smoothest breast-skin, breast-silk, her nipples graze my chest. I start to feel the build, coming from somewhere far away. A spark, a low flame.

She whispers something into my ear but it seems so far away that I can’t hear what she is saying. The flame creeps nearer.

“What?” I say, my voice is a growl.

“I said, ‘So now you can stop the act’.”

“What are you talking about?”

She leans right in, her lips touch my ear.

“I know.”

The flame is a fire. As she continues to rock I feel all the blood I have go to my cock.

“What do you know?” I groan. There is a rushing in my ears.

“I know your secrets. I know what you are.”

“Tell me.”

Oh God, the trail of fire is coming at me fast.

“I know it was you.”

Must have misheard. Paranoid. She doesn’t stop rocking.

“I know you killed Eve,” she says.

My eyes fly open. Here eyes bite into mine. I try to shake her off but she is holding me down, her hands full of new power.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “I had no reason to.”

“You had the oldest reason in the book: you loved her and you couldn’t have her. You thought, if I can’t have her, then I will have her story. You sacrificed her for your writing.”

“No,” I say. No. “I wouldn’t. Couldn’t.”

She is heavy, she is squeezing me. I feel dizzy. Flashes of light on my brain. Pictures in fast forward. I see my violently scribbled notes, the mind map, the knife in my study. I see myself sneaking into Eve’s apartment in black gloves and balaclava.

No.

I see Eve’s bloodless face, the savage red ribbon on her chest.

“No,” I say, “The police think I did it because I planned to do it. But it was only a plan. A concept. An experience, for a… story.”

“The police think you did it, because you did it.”

I try again to buck her but her strength is Amazonian.

“Just like you did it before.”

My spine turns to ice.

I retreat as far as I can into my mind. Into the space where I am allowed to hide things. A safe corner of denial. I want her to kill me. I would rather die than listen to this. I wish I could die. God, I wish I could just stop existing. I wish I had never existed.

“I didn’t do it before,” I murmur, more to myself than to her.

“Why do you think your mother left you?” she snarls.

I am slipping into a hungry pool of darkness. I try to think of something else, but the cold blackness is swallowing me whole: toes, ankles, calves. Knees, thighs…

“She left us because she couldn’t stand it any more. She couldn’t stand our… mortality.”

“After Emily.” she says. Anger shoots back into my body, makes me stronger, and we struggle.

“How did you know about Emily?” I shout into her. She is my secret. My haunting. “How did you know?”

I am filled with a sudden power and I am able to throw her off and stand up. She comes at me but I manage to swing her into the wall and she hits her head with a thunk. She is still for a second, then she stumbles for me again and we are two shadows wrestling in the dark. I kick her legs out from under her and as she falls, I pounce on top of her. Swift, stealthy, like a killer. Like I have done this before.

“It was an accident!” I shout into her. I don’t want to hear another word erupting from her mouth. My hands are around her throat and I am squeezing as hard as I can. She is making sounds I don’t want to hear, so I press harder. “It was an accident!” I shout over and over, shaking her, causing her head to bounce on the concrete floor, until at last, at last, at last she is quiet.