13:55 Eastern Standard Time

Excerpt eight from Nick Alexander’s gripping 13:55 Eastern Standard Time.

Catch up | Part one Eight Million | Part two Ok Sticker | Part three 13:55 Eastern Standard Time | Part four Slipping through | Part five A bus in Berlin | Part six A Really Good Decision | Part seven Yanks and Paddies

Frozen
Alice opens her eyes and frowns as she tries to identify the noise which lifted her from her light, cold-tormented sleep. It’s not that the noise – a low, mechanical humming – is particularly loud. It’s just that the silence of the cabin is so absolute, the rhythmic chugging so out of context.

She reaches out from beneath the heavy quilt and twitches the curtains back. Bright light tinged with blue streams into the bedroom. The sight of her breath rising confirms the data coming from her arm – the room is icy cold. Maybe the noise is some kind of heating; maybe if she just waits a little, it will warm up. But now she’s awake she’s too hungry to wait and see, so she steals herself against the cold and swings her legs to the floor. The cold, even through her thick, fleecy men’s pyjamas, is truly spectacular.

“Jesus!” she mutters. “How can they live like this?”

But as soon as she opens the bedroom door, a wave of warmth washes over her. Feeling a little disgruntled that she has pointlessly spent a sleepless night in a deep freeze – she only had, it seems, to open the door – she pads through to the kitchen.

Will and Jude look up and smile evenly as she enters the room. She wonders briefly if they are laughing at her pyjamas or smiling welcomingly at her, but her sleepy brain is quickly distracted by the smell of coffee.

“We were debating whether to wake you up for breakfast,” Jude grins.

“But you’re just in time,” Will adds.

At the sight of the two men together, at the sound of their shared sentence, a pang of something twinges deep within, and she frowns with a vague sense of irritation, but again, her brain is too slow to take the thought any further and she nods at the coffee pot. “There any coffee in there?” she asks.

Will folds the newspaper – it’s the New York Times she brought with her yesterday – and reaches behind for a cup. “Sure thing,” he says.

Jude, who is standing chopping mushrooms, glances over. “I’m doing a big cooked breakfast,” he says.

“Pancakes and all,” Will adds.

“How does that sound?” Jude asks.

Alice looks from one to the other, and then, addressing the space halfway between them, she says, “Just fine. That sounds just fine.”

“So did you sleep well? We thought you might want to sleep a bit late.”

Alice shrugs and takes the mug of coffee Will is offering. She takes a sip – it is bitter and dark, just how she likes it – then says, “I was a bit cold to tell the truth. That bedroom seems to be a bit of an ice-box.”

Will swivels to face Jude who wiggles his brow and bites his lip. “Gee, I’m sorry Alice,” he says. “I forgot to switch your vent on! You should have said.”

“Jesus Alice,” Will says. “You must have been frozen. It was eighteen degrees last night.”

“I’m so sorry Alice. Why didn’t you say something?”

Alice shrugs and shakes her head. “Last time we spoke, you told me the bedrooms were cold. I thought that was how it was supposed to be.”

Will shakes his head and laughs. “Poor Alice,” he says. “We put central heating in when Jude got his payout. Did you get any sleep?”

Alice shrugs again. “A bit, I guess. As long as it will be warmer tonight.”

“Will actually stoked the boiler up specially,” Jude tells her, now halving tomatoes, and placing them on the grill-pan.

“I knew you’d be cold,” Will adds.

She stares out at the thick-snow covering the trees. “Eighteen degrees, you say?”

Will nods, and points at a weather station on the wall. “That’s what the machine says,” he says.

“And the machine never lies,” Jude laughs.

“So how do you heat? I mean, what does it run on?” Alice asks, looking around for the source of the warmth.

“Wood. We have a wood-burning furnace – the latest thing. It’s self stoking, so you just load it with wood-pellets twice a day.”

“It’s completely ecological,” Jude says.

“Unlike the generator,” Will says, tauntingly.

Alice frowns and listens again. “Is that the low humming sound?” she asks.

Will nods. “The solar panels have iced over again; it’s a recurring problem.”

“So we have to have the generator on for a day to recharge the batteries,” Jude says. “It’s very un-ecological, but we’ve only had it on so far for, what?”

“Three days, four days … so far this winter.”

Alice nods and sips her coffee again. “The solar panels ice over you say?” she says.

Will nods. “It only happens when it snows at night.”

“And if it’s very cold,” Jude says.

“If it snows during the day it just melts…”

“Because they’re black,” Jude says. “They heat up in the sun, so the snow just melts.”

“But because it snowed at night, and then just melted a little, and then froze over again…” Will continues.

Jude shakes his head. “So now they’re all frozen and white, so even though the sun is out, well, they just stay frozen.”

“Jude tried to chip it off, but he’s scared of breaking them.”

“They’re made of glass, so…” Jude says, now pouring pancake mix into a bowl.

Alice nods, slightly dazed by the early morning information overload. She stares out of the window again, at the drips forming on the icicles around the black plastic rain-butt outside the window.

“We had new windows put in your bedroom too,” Jude says. “Triple glazed ones. It used to be even colder. Imagine!”

“I’d rather not,” Alice mutters.

“Yeah, that cash arrived just at the right time,” Will laughs. “Just before winter.”

Alice swivels back to face them. “Did you get the deal you wanted in the end, Jude?” she asks.

Jude wipes his hands on a cloth and pushes through to the bathroom, mumbling, “A minute, I just…”

Will nods exaggeratedly and replies for him. “He got nearly four hundred thousand dollars,” he says.

“Four hundred thousand!” Alice nods, impressed.

“He gave most of it away though,” Will tells her. “To charity.”

Alice wide-eyes him. “He gave it away?”

“Yeah, it was causing some friction,” Will says. “It’s hard to explain.”

Alice frowns. “What, between you two?”

Will wobbles his head from side to side. “Kind of,” he says. “It can be complicated, in a couple, if one of you comes into money… And he was asking me to give up my well paid job so that I could come and live here at the same time, it was creating an imbalance, even though we didn’t want it to.”

Alice shakes her head. “Wow,” she says.

Will nods. “But even with what he kept, well, it cleared all the debt, and we fixed all the stuff that needed fixing.”

“Well, yes,” Alice says. “Four hundred thousand … Jude was talking about twenty, I think, when I last spoke to him about it. Good negotiating!”

Will nods. “A stroke of luck,” he says. “One of Jude’s oldest friends bumped into this guy, in London of all places. And he knew the production company; he knew what the budget was.”

The door to the bathroom creaks and Jude reappears.

“I was just saying what a stroke of luck it was, Scott bumping into that guy in London,” Will says.

Jude laughs. “Yeah, amazing! Sure made negotiating easier.” He looks at Alice now. “He told us the budget they had set aside, you see.”

“Jude was going to settle as low as ten thousand at one point, weren’t you doll?”

Jude nods. “Yeah, good old Scott.”

Alice nods. “And he just, bumped into… To who exactly?”

“Sucked his cock more like,” Will laughs.

“Will!” Jude admonishes. “They dated,” he explains, turning back to face Alice. “And he, this guy Scott dated in London, Simon is his name, he is like the ex husband of the woman I was negotiating with. Weird huh?”

Alice nods. “Truly bizarre,” she says, glancing back out of the window at the rain-butt. “Maybe there is a God.”

Jude snorts. “Yeah, well…” he says. “Let’s not get into that one.”

“No,” Will laughs. “Let’s not.”

“So why can’t you just lay something over them – to absorb the sun and melt the snow?” Alice asks.

Will blinks at her. “I’m sorry?”

“Over your solar panels,” Alice says. “Why can’t you just stretch a black tarp or something over them? And then take it away once the snow has melted, or gone soft, or whatever.”

Will frowns at her, then cocks his head to one side and looks at Jude. “Jude?” he prompts.

Jude pulls his gaze away from the skillet and frowns at them both. Then he opens his mouth as if to object, pauses, raises an eyebrow, and finally shrugs and says, “Alice, you’re a genius.”

Alice shakes her head and pushes out her lips. “Sorry, it just sort of came to me. I was watching the snow melting on your rain-butt.”

Will shrugs back. “It’s worth a try,” he says. “It happens every winter.”

“We’ll have to go over to Cole’s and buy a tarp and some of those elastic things,” Jude says. “It could work.”

As they drive through the blinding white scenery, Alice sits silently and lets life glide by. It feels pleasant and distant, like a nature programme. Beside her in the cab, Will and Jude twitter and chatter randomly about students at the community college where Will teaches, and ideas for Jude’s next novel, and laundry powder, and what to cook for dinner.

Alice doesn’t really listen to the words. She’s concentrating more on the sound – the gentle bubbling of the conversation between this couple who are so comfortable together, who so clearly love each other, and who through years of living together have got into the irritating habit of finishing each other’s sentences.

She’s feeling very emotional, she realises, here in the warmth both physical and emotional of the pickup. She’s actually feeling almost tearful, a swirl of conflicting emotions fighting for dominance. She’s enchanted by the beauty of the surroundings, warmed by the presence of Will and Jude who long ago became her closest friends. But she’s also irritated to hell by their cosy chitchat; she feels almost suffocated by it. She watches tree after tree slide past, and decides that it’s maybe just lack of sleep, and general end-of-year tiredness, and then she digs a level deeper and vaguely acknowledges that she’s jealous. She’s forty-two and still doesn’t have a partner, still doesn’t have someone to sit in the cab of a pickup and talk about laundry soap with. It’s like her life has been stuck in a groove, frozen in suspended animation, for the last ten years. Everyone seems to be moving forward, building, planning, going places… Everyone except her.

As they slowly round a bend, pushing through a surprisingly narrow channel between the mounds of snow, Alice sees something dart across the bank. She points, and Will pauses mid sentence to look.

“Fox!” he says.

“He’s fast,” Alice says. “He’s a fast fox.”

Maybe detecting something in the tone of her voice, Will raises a hand to stop Jude picking up the previous conversation. “You OK?” he asks her. “You seem kinda quiet.”

Alice sighs. “Just thoughtful,” she says. “Lack of sleep, and a change of scenery. Makes me think about stuff.”

They move onto the highway, and Jude, out of habit, reaches for the dial of the radio. But Will intercepts his hand and pulls it to his lap, causing Jude to glance sideways at him. Alice sees all of this from the corner of her eye and silently sighs.

“So what’s wrong Alice?” Will asks her. “Spit it out.”

Alice laughs. “Oh, nothing’s wrong,” she says. “Really.”

“OK, so what stuff are you thinking about?”

Alice snorts. “Oh the usual. Why am I still single? That kinda stuff.”

Will slides an arm around her shoulders. Alice wonders if it will make her cry.

“Search me,” he says. “If I were straight, I’d snap you up, girl.”

“I love being here with you guys, but it makes me so darn jealous too,” she says quietly. “You’re so lucky, you know.”

Will squeezes her shoulder, then turns to stare at the highway.

They drive in silence for a few minutes; the only sound the humming of the engine and the sloshing beneath the wheel-arches. “It’s not luck though,” Jude eventually says. “None of it is luck.”

Alice takes this in, nodding slowly to herself. “Sure, I mean, I know you guys work at your relationship,” she says. “But you were lucky to meet each other; lucky to meet that significant other. That’s all I mean.”

After a pause, Jude asks flatly, “You want me to be honest Alice? You want to know why I think you’re single?”

Alice feels a lump in her throat. Jude’s honesty is legendary, and she’s not sure she’s up to it today. She glances at Will. He’s pursing his lips and blowing as if he is making a smoke ring or whistling.

 “Jude, I’m not sure that now is quite…” Will says, clearly thinking about the fact that they’re all trapped in the cab of this truck, thinking about the fact that he’s sandwiched between them.

And then Alice decides, what the hell.

“Actually Jude,” she says. “If you think you know, then please tell me. There isn’t anything I would like to know better.”

She sees Will pull a face and squash as far back into the seat as he can.

“It’s because you’re lazy Alice,” Jude says.

“Lazy,” Alice repeats flatly.

“Yeah,” Jude says. “Lazy.”

“I’ve been called many things, Jude,” she says. “But…”

“Only about relationships, mind,” Jude continues. “You’re not lazy about your job, or lazy about your friends, or lazy about sport. But you are lazy about relationships.”

Alice pushes her lips out and nods in a non-committal manner. “I think I put quite a lot of effort into it,” she says, after a pause. “I’ve done Internet dating, speed dating, and…”

“Yeah,” Jude agrees. “You put plenty effort into meeting people. But none at all into making it work out.”

Alice nods again and glances at Will. He is pulling a raised eyebrow, don’t-ask-me kind of a face.

“But I haven’t met anyone significant,” Alice protests. “That’s all I mean when I say you’re lucky. I’m not getting at you.”

“Sure Alice, Will and I met. We were both in a gay bar and we met. But that’s where the luck ends. We met. Just like you met that guy from San Diego.”

“Oh, Jude! He was from San Diego!” she protests. “He was still with his wife!”

“He’s not now though, is he,” Jude points out.

“But they split after he and I split, you know that. I was just… I was just an adventure for him, that’s all.”

“Is that what he said?”

“He was living with his wife Jude. In San Diego. It was an affair. It wasn’t a significant life-partner kind of thing.”

“When Jude and I met, he was living in Chicago, and I was in New York,” Will says.

Jude nods. “Yeah, I spent hours travelling back and forth, days, weeks. And then when I wanted to move here, Will had to give up everything to join me. That’s not luck Alice. That’s effort. Do you see what I’m saying here?”

Alice nods. “OK. But it was worth it. Because you love each other.”

“And sometimes we hate each other, for days.”

“Weeks,” Will says.

“Yeah,” Alice says. “Well, I’ve never even seen you have a crossed word.”

Will shakes his head. “Alice,” he says. “You have no idea. We nearly split up when Jude got that money.”

“It was terrible,” Jude says. “Will went all strange on me.”

Will shakes his head. “Yeah, I don’t know why that happened really, but it just made me feel…” he shrugs.

Alice nods. “Ok,” she says. “So you had what, like, one bumpy patch in how many years?”

“We had others too,” Jude says. “Like that one with your brother.”

Will rolls his eyes. “Major drama,” he says. “My brother drinks a lot, and he had such a go at Jude one Christmas.”

“They had the biggest row,” Jude says. “And I couldn’t really say a word.”

“And then Jude and I fell out over it too,” Will says.

“I didn’t think he should be avoiding his brother so… Ooh, it got complicated.”

Will shakes his head and sighs. “But not as complicated as you and Luke,” he says, a sour note entering his voice.

Jude pulls a face. “No,” he says blankly.

Alice frowns. “Luke?”

“Yeah, I cheated on him,” Jude says, sheepishly.

Will nods. “That was a major one.”

“Will nearly moved out,” Jude says.

“Will did move out,” Will corrects.

Alice shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I had no idea.”

“It was about sex,” Jude says. “I was kind of bored and … Will has this really slutty friend…”

“Had,” Will corrects. “Luke, a leather queen. But cute. And a complete slut.”

“And I got all confused, and thought, you know, as a writer, that I needed to explore the darkest reaches of my sexuality. And then I got it all mixed up and thought I was in love with him,” Jude says.

Alice shakes her head. “Is this, you know, since I knew you? Because I really had no idea.”

Jude nods. “Yeah… I guess it was kind of private, and for a long time we were just working through it.” He shrugs. “And in the end, really it was just sex. That’s what I learnt I guess. That sex can be just sex.”

“We both had to learn that,” Will says, managing to glance fondly at Jude. “But we did, didn’t we babe. We got through it.”

“Like you do when you hate your job,” Jude adds. “Because in the end, we just don’t think there’s a better picture anywhere else. It’s as simple as that.”

Will squeezes Alice’s shoulder again, but she shrugs him away. “So I’m single because I don’t try hard enough,” she says. “That’s what you’re saying.”

Jude sighs sadly. “No, Alice, what I’m saying…”

Alice waits for a moment, and then prompts, “Yeah?”

“I’m just thinking about the words,” Jude says. “Hang on…”

Alice stares from the side window and blinks back tears.

“OK, what I’m saying,” Jude says. “Is that, I think … maybe… Maybe you think it’s your job to find someone, and like, God’s job to make it significant,” Jude says.

Alice swallows and looks back at him. “My job to what? Sorry, I tuned out.”

“Never mind,” Jude says.

Alice frowns. “No please,” she says.

Jude coughs. “OK, maybe you think it’s your job to find someone and God, or life, or the universe or whatever-you-believe-in’s job to make it significant.”

Alice frowns, and then nods. “OK, yeah. Pretty much. And?”

“I’m just saying that it’s maybe God’s job to find someone, to make someone manifest in your life … and maybe it’s your job to make it significant,” he says. “I’m just suggesting that it’s maybe the other way around.”

Catch up | Part one Eight Million | Part two Ok Sticker | Part three 13:55 Eastern Standard Time | Part four Slipping through | Part five A bus in Berlin | Part six A Really Good Decision | Part seven Yanks and Paddies

• Nick Alexander grew up in the seaside town of Margate. He has travelled widely and lived in the UK, the USA and France, where he resides today. Nick’s first five novels – the Fifty Reasons series – were self-published from 2004 onwards and went on to become some of the UK’s best-selling gay literature. In March 2011 his crossover title, The Case of the Missing Boyfriend, reached #1 in Amazon’s Kindle chart, and was ranked #27 in the overall UK ebook chart for that year after netting over 70,000 downloads. Subsequent to this, Nick was signed by publishers Corvus Atlantic, who have taken over his full backlist and committed to publishing future titles. For more information please visit the author’s website on www.nick-alexander.com

 

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