V 02 - Domino Men, The Read Online Free PDF

barely breathing, stared back.  Distantly, I recognized his squinty face, his mop of ginger hair.  The earth around the fallen man glittered with broken glass lit up by the artificial illumination of the hospital — a miniature constellation in the earth.
    “Henry…?”
    How did he know my name?  How on earth did a hospital window cleaner know my name?
    “Henry?”
    “Hello?”  Even to my own ears, I sounded stupid.  In the distance — shouted orders, the roar of engines, people sprinting toward us.
    “The answer is yes,” he said.  “It was a struggle for him to speak and the words forced themselves out in a brittle rasp.
    I knelt down beside him and, panicking over what to do next, grabbed for the nearest cliché.  “Don’t speak,” I said.  “Don’t try to move.”
    But the window cleaner seemed determined to talk.  “The answer…” he said again, his eyes alight with fervor, like this was the most important thing he’d ever say.  “Henry…”  He wheezed again, a terrible percussive rattle.  “The answer is yes .”
    “Then I was pushed aside as people rushed to help, professional life-savers with their flapping coats and sharply worded questions, a babble of don’t touch him and how did he fall and we need to get him inside.  Actually, I think the word miracle was tossed around more than once.
    Even as they took the man away, levering him gently onto a stretcher, trying to calm him down, giving him something to ease the pain, he was still staring at me, mouthing the same words over and over again.
    “The answer is yes.”
    I stared back, frozen to the spot.
    “The answer is yes.”
    He struggled up in his stretcher and tried to shout.
    “The answer is yes!”
     
     
    I suppose it’s unusual to get within spitting distance of thirty without ever having been in love.  All I can say is that it’s been worth the wait.
    I’d met Abbey six months earlier when, having noticed her advert in the “To Let” section of the city newspaper, I had called round to see her about the spare room.  I saw from the instant that she opened the door that I’d never want to share my life with anyone else.  Dispiritingly, I saw also that she was radiantly beautiful, a shimmering vision in skinny jeans and canary-yellow heels and therefor stratospherically out of my league.
     
     
    When I got back from telling about a dozen different people the story of how the window cleaner had fallen at my feet with that unforgettable thwump , she was sitting in the lounge, slouched in front of our TV — an ancient old box which she said had been sitting in the place when she’d bought it.
    Abbey seemed tired and disheveled and was doggedly picking her way through a plate of over chips, but she still managed to look heart-piercingly gorgeous.
    I said hello and at the sound of my voice, my landlady struggled to sit upright.
    “Sit down,” she said, still chewing, reaching for the controller to switch off the TV.  “I haven’t seen you for days.”  She thrust her plate in front of me.  “Have one of these.”
    “No, I couldn’t.”
    “Please.  I can’t finish them.”
    “Really, I’m fine.”
    “Have you eaten?”
    “Well, no, but—”
    “Have one, then.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Positive.”
    “P’raps I will.  Thanks very much.”
    “My pleasure.”
    I took a chip.
    “How was your day?” Abbey asked, upon which, for the first time in almost a decade, I burst into tears.

    After that, we talked.  Dabbing surreptitiously at my nose with a Kleenex, I told her about my granddad, the phone call from my mother and the man who’d fallen from the sky.  She seemed to sympathize and at one point even made an awkward move toward me as though to offer a hug, although I flinched away and she shifted back.
    “Henry?” she said, once the story was told, sounding eager to cheer me up.
    “Yes?”
    “When’s your birthday?  You said it was soon.”
    “Oh.”  I’d almost forgotten.