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He knows Grace is dead. He knows it. It's hard to forget, even if at times there’s nothing he would like more than to reopen his skull and tear out that part of the brain in which the memory of that night is stored. It would be so easy to go completely crazy without this memory, unconditionally believing that all the visions are not just hallucinations of his traumatised mind, but an honest reality. The warmth of her breath, the softness of her touch, the music of her voice - all of it would be real to him if he’d just forget.
She’s an inseparable part of his soul, but just that now. Not even a person, not even a body. The imprint of her personality is stored in his memory safe, that's more of a broken shell at this point and his mind is abusing everything he knew about her. All the kind words she ever said to him are now perverted to such an extent that he hardly recognizes her. She’d never ask him to kill himself, he realises in the rare moments of clarity. She’d never ask him to leave their son on his own.
But when she comes to him again all of the anger is swept away. He’s amazed every single time he sees her, right before himself, so real and so alive. The warm feeling is spreading in his chest, so close to relief. How can she be buried under the ground if she’s here, in his presence. She takes his breath away every time and every time he’s faced with the same aftermath. Kind eyes become mocking, the soft curve of her lips morphs into a violent grin. The air shifts. And he feels like a fool.
He knows the symptoms.
He also knows that it’s only Grace who visits. Not John, not Greta, not his mother, not anyone from whom he’d killed. Just her.
Until recently he believed it was just her but he’s not sure anymore.
It started simple. He’s drunk and high, he’s in his office. He’s mumbling nonsense, and he’s miserable, and he’s probably crying too, and all of it for Lizzie to witness. He doesn’t look at her and he doesn’t need to know that she’s stunned by this, even if his state isn’t new for her to see. He has no idea what he’s saying and who he’s talking to but at least Grace isn’t there. He’s glad. He’s always ashamed of himself when she visits him at his lowest.
“Solomons is dead, Tommy,” Lizzie says, her hand is steadying him, she’s worried but also tired.
Tommy laughs as a response. And then, right after, there is an unexpectedly small window of clarity and he falls silent. His face changes, and he sees Lizzie’s doing all the same. She’s scared and he never saw her with that kind of fear and worry at the same time before.
But Tommy is terrified. There’s a pile in his throat and a spasm in his chest at the sudden revelation his mind comes up with.
Awareness of his surroundings grounds him with a force he’s not prepared to. They’re on the floor, the planes of his desk are pressing in his back, it’s his hands that are crushing Lizzie’s in the iron grip. Her eyes are wide open and she’s so close he can see his own reflection in her dark blues.
He’s terrified because Lizzie is right.
Alfie Solomons is dead.
He says it out loud and Lizzie nods, and there’s tears in her eyes and she’s terrified as well but even in this moment of lucidity Tommy cannot understand why.
Because Alfie Solomons is dead.
He called him two months ago and his housekeeper, Edna, picked up the phone and said that Alfie is unwell, that he’s gotten worse. Tommy drank himself to unconsciousness that day.
But he remembers now.
The worried sound of Edna’s voice, the shaky notes as she described the symptoms Alfie suffered from. “I tried to get him into that wheelchair of his, Mr. Shelby, thought being in the open air would cheer him up, but he was too stubborn.” She was crying because she wasn’t sure if Alfie would make it this time. There were calls from her after that but Tommy was never home to answer.
But if Alfie Solomons is dead then who Tommy visited in Margate just last week?
***
He forgets about that too easily but the memory comes to him as a strike the next time he meets the man.
Tommy is eyeing him cautiously, trying to listen to his feelings, gathering up all of the experience he has with Grace’s ghost. The scar on Alfie’s face is healing slowly but surely. Grace never has a healed bullet wound for him to see.
Edna is serving them tea and Tommy’s wondering whether she’s a vision too. She can’t be, there's telephone calls proving it.
Alfie’s clothes are always different but in the same fashion - crumpled shirts, two vests at the same time, different rings for different days. Tommy swears, the number of grey hair in his beard is growing with every blink.
Alfie always had a tendency to rumble nonsense about things Tommy has no idea of and he has a habit of dissociating while Alfie talks so he can’t be one hundred percent sure that it’s actually new thoughts he hears and not his subconsciousness playing tricks on him.
So this time, he listens. And it’s hard because Alfie’s talking about the novel they both have read and even if his opinion is opposite to Tommy’s, as it always the case, it’s not the conclusions Tommy hasn’t come to himself.
Tommy studies his thinking process the way doctors study infected wounds and Alfie’s points are so drastically different that it’s starting to get suspicious. When Tommy says duty, Alfie says love. When Tommy says family, Alfie says business. When Tommy says no, Alfie says yes. It’s madness and Tommy tries not to panic, clenching at the sight of Alfie’s rings, trying to remember if he ever saw them before, not just at Alfie but at anyone else.
“You’re working yourself into a state here, mate,” Alfie says at some point when Tommy’s voice went hoarse from the fierce discussion. “It’s just a book.”
It’s not just a book, Tommy thinks, but it’s “Don’t call me “mate”, Alfie, we’re fucked,” that he lets out. Alfie laughs at that with his full chest and calls Edna for another round of tea.
“Would you like to do it again, treacle?” Alfie asks, eyes glittering. “Do you wanna fuck a dead man?” Tommy can’t decide if he’s a God or The Devil but he agrees anyway.
When the cups are long empty and the sheets are warm and wet from their sweat, when there’s a puddle of cum that’s not his own and it’s between his tights, Tommy almost believes that Alfie’s real.
***
If Alfie is a God then Tommy is a Devil, he thinks but the thought makes no sense to him at all. Alfie’s just as devilish as Tommy is and they both suffer from God's complex very deeply. Grace is a Devil too. It’s two of them, sitting on Tommy's shoulders, arguing with each other every day.
“She’s dead,” Alfie says, there’s pity in his eyes Tommy despises but it’s humbling in a way.
“He’s dead, too,” Grace sweetly whispers in his ear. All of his insides are crumbling and Tommy wants to scream.
“You’re dead too,” Tommy repeats her words instead. “What’s the difference?”
It’s a puzzle he can’t figure out. He wishes it was possible to negotiate with his own mind, to make a deal, to come to a closure in a form of conclusion.
“Do you fuck her?”
He doesn’t. And it’s somewhat of an answer he looked for because the ghost is gone now and his head is clear. He looks at Alfie, the scar that’s now a curved line, the grey in his beard, two vests, different rings. He can’t figure out his good eye’s colour.
***
“You’re smoking like a chimney,” Alfie says. “I have a condition,” Alfie says. But Tommy smokes anyway, sinking in the chair he declined his and waiting for whatever comes next.
It’s always the same routine. Brief on business, followed by Alfie's advice, sometimes some negotiations if Alfie decides he wants to take a bite from whatever deal Tommy’s making.
Then, Alfie asks about his family and Tommy lights his first cigarette, always betraying the promise he made to himself - to actually listen and start smoking less in Alfie’s presence. He’s deprived of alcohol in Alfie’s presence too - he simply doesn’t have any at home, and maybe it’s the reason he’s still inhaling nicotine.
Then, Tommy is silent, but not for long, because the more he thinks about not telling Alfie all the tea - the more it’s boiling in his head, so he spills it out.
Alfie provides comments, but not recommendation, only if it’s a matter of his children's education but he’s very subtle about it. Tommy takes notes nonetheless.
Usually this is when Tommy goes spiralling about his children and Alfie always teases him how much pride he takes in his little ones. And Tommy does, indeed, even if he keeps to himself the fact that he learned all of it from Lizzie and the maids. But Alfie’s eyes are always too knowing to Tommy’s taste. It’s whether he knows him too well or he’s just a print of a character he used to be, created by Tommy’s sick brain, a persona his mind comes up with to soothe the insufferable pain Grace brings, the only friend who actually listened Tommy while he was alive so he breathes live to the only person he was comfortable sharing his thoughts with.
Usually when Tommy lets out everything that happened in his life in the period of time they haven’t seen each other, like a life version of cheap and unpopular dispatch, Alfie clings to something he had said carrying the conversation from that point.
Tommy rests, taking in Alfie’s form. It’s quiet in his head after that, as what feels like a mountain is finally out of his shoulders. It’s the time when he allows all the masks to slip as well, and he smiles, and laughs, and says ridiculous things Alfie calls jokes.
Alfie always calls him beautiful but this is the time when he thinks the same of Alfie as his face is lit up from whatever nonsense leaves Tommy lips, words or kisses.
Sometimes the talk leads to arguments but it’s not the kind of argument to scream at each other, or accuse each other, or to pull out guns, or start to crush the furniture - and it’s pleasant. Tommy didn’t know it could be like this, even with Grace there was always an opportunity to hurt each other's feelings. Alfie’s different and he teaches him that there’s another way of dealing with confrontation, and it’s crazy that it’s Alfie who shows him that, from all the people.
Somewhere after all of it there’s a number of options that always leads to the same outcome and the outcome is Alfie’s bedroom.
***
“I think you aren’t real,” Tommy says one day.
He’s early, it’s barely morning and he woke Alfie up. His head is throbbing and Alfie said he had a madman look when he opened the door.
“I don’t know if I should be offended or flattered.” Alfie’s grumpy in the mornings, he always is, and now he doesn’t even spare Tommy a glance, just staring at his newspaper with an annoyed frown.
“I think I’m hallucinating you,” he elaborates, while clenching the desk of the kitchen table and leaning forward, enough to smell the night sweat of Alfie’s shirt.
It’s a revelation Alfie’s aware of for a long time now but he gives him a furious look and places the cup loudly on the table nonetheless.
“I’m not your fucking wife,” he points a finger in an inch of Tommy’s nose.
“But I killed you.”
I killed you too is a thing he doesn’t dare to say.
“Because I wanted you to!” Alfie roars.
“I didn’t want to kill you and now your death is on me, Alfie!” He bursts. “I am the one who’s fucking guilty. I am the one who carries that weight. And all of that because you couldn’t do the job yourself.” He’s breathing heavily now, Alfie’s finger is replaced by Tommy’s.
“You shot me, right, you shot me because I shot you first. It was your duty as a man to shoot back. And you’re, my friend, did just fucking that.”
“My finger fucking slipped!”
And here is it. Silence.
Alfie abruptly gets up and his chair falls with a loud noise and Tommy winces, nerves are heated to the limit.
Here they are, all cards on the table. Tommy’s guilt, Tommy’s selfishness, Tommy’s regrets. In what world do people kill their lovers because they’re deathly ill? In the novels Alfie’s so fond of, probably.
Alfie takes a gun, from fucking nowhere, and point it at Tommy.
“If you shoot at me, I won't shoot back.” Tommy drops coldly but his insides burn with adrenaline. His body reacts like if Alfie’s real and he hates it and he loves it at the same time, because it means that there is a small chance he may be. “Fuck your duty, Alfie. Fuck you,” he spits.
“If you think, right, that I'm metaphorical, then, logically, my gun is metaphorical as well. Which draws us to a conclusion that the bullet in this gun is metaphorical too. And you can’t die from a metaphorical bullet, Tommy. The question is would you like to find out.”
The sound of the cocked trigger shatters the kitchen. He’d fire, Tommy thinks, his hand is steady and he has the right face expression he saw many times before.
“Did you really think I'd kill you?” This is not a negotiation, it's an argument, similar to the ones they have over literature, only now there’s a gun ready to be shot and the situation grows too unpredictable. So Tommy lays out his point of view like he always does. “I knew you had cancer, I knew you were dying. I came to the beach because I wanted to stay there with you, fucking retire, not to kill you like a sick horse!”
Alfie swallows, Tommy sees Adam's apple moving under the bottom of his beard. There's so much grey in it now.
“I betrayed you. Your other duty, as a man, is to kill the traitor.”
“Love is the death of duty, Alfie.”
Alfie takes a long loud inhale.
“Duty is the death of love.”
And shoots.