To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

sighed. I picked up my glass and drained it, and helped myself to more so we could finish the first bottle. “He and I haven’t spoken or communicated in any way for years. The last I heard he was in New York.”

Startling me, life intruding on fiction, Joseph said, “What about 9/11?”

I stared at my plate, mind racing. Then raised my eyes to him bleakly. “I don’t bloody know. We did try to find out but it was too vague. There were enough unanswered questions for parents who knew their sons were in one of the Two Towers. I don’t think, frankly, William would have been anywhere near. He didn’t work, he bummed his way around, in the American sense that is. A waste. My son is a talented artist. He…”

My glass was full, I put it down.

Joseph drained his.

Perfect host, even in sorrow, I looked up and said, “Let’s have the other bottle.”

Before he could make a move I reached for and secured it. I sat there holding it on my lap as if I had forgotten what one did to open a bottle.

Joseph said, “Fine by me.”

“Yes,” I said, “yes.”

And I put the bottle down and gripped it between my thighs, pulling the corkscrew and scissors towards me.

The top of the bottle was just below the edge of the table. I sat there again, looking down at it, getting the plastic glove-thumb, unseen, from my pocket. Then I took the scissors and put them to the neck of the bottle, then took them off again and lowered them against the thumb on my knee.

“Sorry, Sej. Just give me a minute. The trouble is,” I looked up piteously, “you do remind me of him – not any nephew, my son. He took after Lynda. Dark, good-looking…” How flattered she should have been, the real Lynda, dowdy little thing with her flat brown hair.

But he waited. Although he looked quizzical I had bought just enough time. I snipped the top from the thumb, a tiny slice, meaningless to the uneducated eye.

Then I worked the serration of the scissors on around the bottle-neck, got off the foil, replaced the scissors on the table and drove in the screw.

I did this efficiently, only blinking as if tears were in my eyes.

My hands were rock steady. They amazed me. My legs, gripping the bottle, were starting to shake.

The cork came out. Then, the final pass. I let the bottle seem to come loose, let it go down as if falling, gripping tighter with my legs while I grabbed for it with my right hand, now well below the table top. And crushed the contents of the thumb into its open mouth.

‘Rescuing’ the bottle I was able to give it a mixing shake. I plumped it back on the table with a grimace of triumphant misery. Fumbling for a non-existent handkerchief in my pocket, I restored the now-voided thumb.

Then I reached for my paper-towel napkin and wiped my face.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to get emotional.”

“You need another drink.”

“I don’t normally drink much.” I leaned over and sloshed the drugged red into his glass. Then I drank some of my own, left from the first pure bottle. I held the glass in my hand, keeping tabs on it now. I stared into it, and watched, distorted in its side, Joseph Traskul aka Sej gulp down half his new wine.

I played with the last of my steak, pushed it around with my fork.

“No. I can’t eat any more.”

He smiled. “I’ll have it.”

“Yes, if you don’t mind. I hate wasting food.”

“You look very pale,” he said to me as he picked up the remains of the steak and neatly ate it with his fingers, dipping it in the mustard.

“Yes.”

“Well don’t worry, Roy. I’m not your son.”

“I know that very well, Sej.”

“For one thing,” he said, wiping his hands, “I don’t intend to leave you.”

The shock of that, even in these circumstances, thrilled me with horror, as Poe might have said.

But I drank some of my wine and answered, “I don’t see how you can have any interest in me at all.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He drained the glass once more.

How much of the powder had been in it? Had it dissolved properly? Had it all sunk to the bottom? So far, he seemed unaffected.

I tried to recollect how long that one tablet I’d taken had needed to become effective. About ten minutes, I thought. And that had been without the addition of four or five glasses of wine, besides anything else he might have had during the day. But he must drink more. I had to be certain. Wonderful. He took the bottle and refilled his glass. Less wonderful, he leaned towards me to top up mine.

I snatched it back.

“No thanks, Sej. I don’t like mixing two different bottles in one glass. It can spoil the taste, even with cheap booze.”

“What an old fusspot you are,” he said, as my father might have said it, if not about this. “No wonder Lynda got fed up and took off with that walrus.”

His tactless cruelty, if the tale I’d told him had been true, was predictable. But I smiled and agreed. “He was like a bloody walrus. You’re right.”

He was drinking the wine.

He said, “You’re right too. This bottle isn’t as good as the first. Bit chalky.”

Did he guess?

I didn’t react except to say, “Perhaps it’s off. Shall I open the other one? That’s all I’ve got.” Say No, say No, this one is fine.

“You try it, see what you think,” he said. And he held out his glass straight across the table to me.

He knew. He knew or he suspected.

I reached over and took the glass, and held it to my face and sniffed the wine. There was no suspect smell.

“It smells all right.” I would have to taste it now, my God it had enough in it surely potentially to stupefy me, just one sip. But sip it I would have to. I put it to my lips and exactly