The Stratocaster
by Gillian Wills
I read somewhere that if you hallucinate in sound, you’re likely to have a mental illness; if the hallucinations are visual, it can be a symptom of a neurological disease. But just so you know, I don’t suffer from either. I’ve given up talking to my friends about what can happen when my nerves are strained to their limits because all I get is a withering look, which is why I’m telling you about it.
Dominic Darker, my partner, was on a European Tour with Red Chairs, a chart-topping band. He’d been gone two months. I’d made a chart and ticked off each day like a child longing for Christmas. It would be another eight weeks, fifty-six days before we would see each other again.
He’d made me promise I wouldn’t go to parties during his absence. He thought I’d be tempted to hook up with someone else, because Dominic toured up to eight months a year.
I was threatened by his fear of being alone, his celebrity status, international travel and the inevitable fawning from predatory women. I was a high-school music teacher, my life was simple, regulated. I rolled with the rhythm of solitude, the freedom to loaf after work.
On the eve of Dominic’s departure, we’d promised to text and send photos to each other every day. I’d sent him shots of London buses, window displays of electric guitars, grey squirrels, pubs and profusions of red geraniums in window boxes. In return, I’d get images of tourist hot spots and of his beloved Fender Stratocaster abandoned on a stage. Our well-being depended on these daily exchanges.
After two months, Dominic’s messages stopped. When I hadn’t heard from him, I panicked. My flatmates — Katherine, a know-it-all public servant. and David, an architect — would exchange knowing looks if I clumsily banged the crockery together when I unstacked the dishwasher or, if I had red-rimmed eyes.
Frantic, by day, I channelled my scalding anxiety into coaching an orchestra or a rock band and kept it in check until I reached home. There, my spirits plummeted under Katherine and David’s eagle-eyed scrutiny.
After five days without a word from Dominic despite my pleading emails, David confronted me. ‘How long is it now?’
‘Not long.’
‘Seriously, Jenna, it’s time to reboot your life.’
‘He’s probably in a mountainous, no Internet area. Last I heard, he was in Switzerland.’
‘Katherine and I are going for a curry after work. Want to come?’
‘I was going to...’
‘What?’
* * *
When we got back home, I was queasy, I’d binged on onion pakoras washed down with too much wine. I wanted the comfort of my bed, but when my bare skin touched the ice-cold sheets, the tears fell, my heart raced. I tried reading but couldn’t take in the words. It was chilly, and yet I was unable to cross the floor to put a radiator on. David knocked.
‘Jenna?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fancy a coffee? I’m making one.’
‘I’ll pass on that but thanks for tonight.’
* * *
Sleep eluded me. I recited the reasons why Dominic hadn’t written; he’d lost his computer, he’d broken his arm, he was desperately ill, in jail, he’d lost his memory, he’d been kidnapped, he was depressed. I pulled the covers over me and thrashed the sheets as I restlessly changed position.
But a dreadful, flapping began. I lay still as death. Something hovered above me, and I flinched at the nasty whoosh, whoosh as if a fruit bat were flying around the room, sucking and slapping at the air, with big leathery wings.
I dug my nail into my arm when the banjo on top of the wardrobe twanged; a glass vase smashed, an avalanche of loose change tumbled off the mantelpiece. I wanted to crush, to press myself into the terracotta bed linen; disappear into the fabric’s weave.
I was terrified. My trembling fingers switched the light on and the otherworldly soundscape ceased. There was a moment’s relief until the waft of ‘Jazz,’ Dominic’s cologne, choked the air. The wooden floor was a mayhem of pens, pencils, guitar picks, splintered glass, a broken photo of us.
Of course, the percussive flapping wasn’t a fruit bat. I’d encountered many when we’d lived in Queensland, but cat-sized bats were thin on the ground in London’s Camden Town. My heart raced when I saw the poster of the Red Chairs crumpled on the floor. It had been pinned to the wall with a nail and blu-tack when I went to bed, and I knew that glossy paper had been the airborne terror. Dominic and I had been so close we could row without a word exchanged. Now I felt a hollow disconnect, as if our love, the electricity between us had been switched off at the mains.
Shaking, I piled paperbacks on the poster to anchor it. It was creepy, the atmosphere charged, the space washed in a lurid, yellow light. I saw the room was all him with its smudged grey walls, the Indonesian carved desk, the deluxe sound system, his bike propped up against the wall. With the exception of a puddle of my clothes and DNA, there wasn’t a trace of me. I held my breath, my chest stitched tight enough to rip, and I walked out and closed the door on that sickly, scented space.
On the next landing up, David’s light was on. I stood at the foot of the stairs and yelled: ‘I’d like a coffee after all. Shall I make you one?’
His reply was muffled but definitely a ‘Yes.’
Copyright © 2021 by Gillian Wills
