by Mat Osman
The drink-throwing girl was of course one of Brandon’s. The name change, he explained the next day, had been because she’d been warned off him by some well-meaning friend, so when they’d met at a party he just used the first name that came into his head.
Still today I’m wary of strangers. Once in a blue moon I’ll earn a double take and I’ll know something bad is coming. Usually a rant. Or an accusation. Or a demand for child support. Once, memorably, a fork jabbed in my arm. I’ve learnt not to try to explain. I simply take it and walk away and add it to my brother’s tab.
I’d told that story so many times that it came out automatically, but it was fun to watch Rae react. It was like she was at the cinema. She laughed at the funny bits, covered her eyes when it got embarrassing and tried to look sympathetic at the end (though she obviously found it hilarious).
There was a faint noise and, still laughing, she said, “Oh Lord, one second.”
She disappeared from view. Over the speakers I could hear the bubbling of the pot and a bird singing outside. When she returned she was hand in hand with Robin.
“Look who’s finally awake,” she said.
“I wasn’t actually sleeping. Just thinking. With my eyes closed,” said Robin, heading straight for the fridge. “Hi daddy.”
“Hi Robin. Your mum was telling me about your go-bag.”
He loomed into view, his mouth overflowing with biscuits. “Wanna see?” he said, spitting crumbs.
“Sure.”
He was gone for a couple of seconds and then hauled a rucksack onto the table in front of him. He undid the clips at the top, still chewing away, and pulled things out at random, pressing them blurrily against the screen: a couple of comic books, a compass, a pair of broken binoculars. There was a Meccano set still in its box, some Top Trumps and a Russian fake-fur hat with a plastic picture of Lenin on the crown.
“Wow, you’re pretty prepared,” I told him.
“I guess. You’re supposed to have knives or a crossbow but I’m too little. And I put a load of food in there but Mom took it out.”
Rae’s voice came from somewhere over his shoulder. “Because you had sandwiches in there not even wrapped, and cake and fruit and you left it there for weeks. It was beginning to smell.”
“You’re supposed to have food. It’s what it says online, in case all the shops are gone or everyone’s become a zombie.”
Rae poked her head around to look into the screen. “See? See the ideas it gives them?”
Robin didn’t look too distraught about the possible dawn of an undead apocalypse. I tried to help. “Your mum’s right about the food Robin, if it went off it might attract bears.”
“And that’s why I should have a crossbow,” he said, with an air of triumph, and vanished from view.
I could see Rae’s back shaking with laughter as she dealt with the stove. “Never argue with an ten-year-old.”
“So what now?”
Rae pulled her hair back and fastened it with a band. “Well, the people there at the hotel, were they surprised to see you?”
I considered this. “No, not at all. They did have some time to prepare themselves though but the room looked as if they were expecting someone to come back to it. They had messages for me and everything.”
She nodded. “I guess go through them? Who contacted you?”
The messages were in my coat pocket. I took them out and read the names. “Baxter, Saul, Tony, Baxter again, Tony again, Phil, a couple of clothes shops, Baxter again, Saul and a car rental place. Nothing interesting, I read them.”
“No girls.” She looked quizzical. “You aren’t censoring for me are you?”
I angled the messages towards her. “I’m reading them just as they’re written, look?”
“OK. I guess there’s one obvious thing.”
Was there? I couldn’t see it.
“No Kimi. The others have all called. But not Kimi. Maybe she wasn’t expecting you home?”
Rae’s eyes flicked back and forth as she was reading something written on the air. “First up, I think you should make sure they don’t know that you’re back.”
“Tell the guy downstairs not to tell them? What reason would I give?”
“You could…” She started and then smiled. “It’s Brandon. If he asks why, tell them it’s none of his fucking business. That is what he’d do.”
She was right. I could hear that sentence from his mouth with a drawl of pleasure. I tried it out. “It’s none of your fucking business.”
She shuddered. “Worryingly accurate.”
I dialled Kaspar. “Hey Kas, if anyone calls I’m still away on my lost weekend and you don’t know when or if I’ll be back.”
“You’re still away, I don’t know when or if you’ll be back.”
“Thanks Kas.” I went back to the screen. “OK, what now?”
“Call them and listen to how they react?”
I wasn’t sure that I was the best person to do that. I have a hard time reading other people’s intentions and moods, or so I’ve been told. “I don’t think I’d be great at that. How about speakerphone?”
“Totally. I was already feeling bad about making you do this alone. Do we start with Kimi?”
I thought about it. “No, let’s start with Baxter. He seems the least likely to be caught up in all this and I think I might need to be eased into being Brandon.” I was already sweating at the idea of pretending to be him. With the staff here it had been fine, they’d made assumptions, and I’d gone along with them. This was deliberate deception though.
We set up the speakerphone right by the computer monitor so Rae could hear everything. “Here goes,” I told her, and she crossed her fingers on the screen.
He picked up after a couple of rings.
“Baxter, it’s me, Brandon.”
There was no pause before his rush of words. “Where have you been? Actually don’t answer that, I’m sure I don’t want to know, but you really can pick your times. Have you been watching the message boards?”
I was instantly out of my depth. “No,” I made a face at Rae, “I’ve been pretty busy.”
“Well you should. I thought about it and instead of announcing I’d found this thing in a yard sale like I said, I thought there might be a more subtle way of doing it. So I contacted Frank Isaacs.” He paused there and I surmised I was expected to know who that was.
“Good thinking,” I said.
“I know, right? You know what a gossip he is. I did this whole spiel: found something at a library auction, probably nothing but if it is what I think it is then it’s the find of the century blah blah blah. Told him I needed someone with impeccable credentials to have a look at it, flatter flatter flatter, and so on.”
“Great,” I said.
“Yeah, but he got super excited and he’s dropping hints everywhere. I’ve got offers Bran, serious offers, and we don’t have the fucking thing, do we?”
Rae’s look was as blank as mine.
“I guess not.”
“So, when? Is your guy ready?”
I gave a hopeless look towards Rae on the screen. She scribbled YR BRAN TUFF IT OUT on a piece of paper.
“No, he’s not ready. Don’t fucking hassle me Bax. He’ll be ready when he’s ready.”
He sounded anguished. “But it’s so much money. Isn’t that what you wanted? What we wanted?”
“Sure, but I won’t be fucking hassled, especially by you Baxter.” I had no idea why I’d added that.
“Fuck, I know, sure. Look, please ask him to hurry. It’s ready. Six-figure ready. I’m still coming to yours tomorrow, right? I’ve got a couple of things you’ll need.”
I grunted. I wanted desperately to be off the phone. “Sure. Tomorrow. See you Bax,” and hung up.
There was a tightness in my chest. Impersonating Brandon physically pained me.
“Way to go!” Rae was cheerleader-bright. “The first conversation’s always going to be the hardest and I think you were
suitably asshole-ish to pass. He sounded properly told off, don’t you think?”
I did. He’d tucked away his anger pretty quickly.
“What d’you think he was talking about?”
I’d been winging it so hard that I’d barely taken in a word. Rae fiddled with something off-screen and then played the conversation back.
“Something from a yard sale that’s worth a ton of money? He mentioned a record too, could it be the one he told Kimi about? Though they seemed agreed there was no money in that.” She played it again. “Who’s Frank Isaacs?”
“No idea. It sounded like someone he assumed Bran knew.”
“Wow, you were convincing.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard. “Isaacs, Isaacs, there’s a load of them. Baseball player? I don’t think so. Academic? Oral surgeon? How about this one?” She slipped on a pair of reading glasses and I caught her glancing to see if I was watching. “Frank Isaacs is the author of Teenage Genie — The Strange and Beautiful World of Brian Wilson.”
I gave her a blank look.
“Brian Wilson? From the Beach Boys? Oh god Brannie would have killed you. He was obsessed, totally. Knew everything about him.”
“So, could it be something of his? Something rare?”
She thought for a while. “I guess, maybe. A record? But what do they need Brandon’s guy for? And more importantly who is Brandon’s guy?”
I read through a couple of Beach Boys web-forums but there was nothing that seemed to come back to whatever Baxter had been talking about. Robin had reappeared, sitting watching TV in the background, and Rae moved onto other chores now. I watched the effortless elegance of her hands, like two creatures independent of her, straightening, smoothing, tightening, stroking. They were never still, moving across Robin and his possessions — lunchbox, backpack, duffel coat — like an endlessly economical language. A language with a million words but each one saying I love you. I felt a jolt of desire. Not for her, or at least not just for her, but for their life. I want, I said to myself, words I never say. I want, I want, I want. I wanted to keep watching but the alarm buzzed on my phone. Umbrage needed attention.
On the tube something pulled at me that I didn’t recognise at first. An undertow: like homesickness but not for home. As we rushed beneath the city — Farringdon, Holborn, Bond Street — it grew stronger. A tide tugging at my depths, calling me back to The Magpie and the big-screen link to Tahoe. At home, Umbrage looked flat in the grey afternoon light — just a model for once. I pulled out The Book and tried to write some magic back into it but everything I wrote petered out. I wished Robin were here to see it from another angle or that the city’s crooked backstreets were illuminated with The Magpie’s crackling energy. I made tea and toast and watched the transport system make its circuit, always back to where it began. The wires of the blender motor hung down. It was still plugged in — one press of a button would be all it took to start the earthquake up again — but it felt petty somehow. Upheaval and destruction; instead I saw Rae’s face as we read Bran’s description of his leaving. And then the idea was there, unexamined but correct, right there in my mind. I called the hotel, holding the shape of Brandon’s mouth clear in my mind. “Kas, daaarling, I was wondering if you could arrange moving a model for me.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. Her name? Address?”
It took me a second. “Not that kind of model, unfortunately — this might be a little trickier.”
It took me nearly twenty-four hours to get Umbrage ready for transport. As the city had grown and taken over more of the flat I’d had to make it portable so that districts could be reconfigured. The plumbing and electrics were built into the underside of the land and I had detailed technical drawings of how they fitted together.
While I slept Kaspar had rounded up a team of movers for me. They were a gaggle of architecture students — little more than unpaid interns really — at one of those huge practices that employs a thousand men in complicated glasses to build airports and skyscrapers. They were at home with large-scale models, but I got the feeling that this was a nice change of pace for them. They scurried around the room at The Magpie, quietly conferring with each other as they reassembled the city around the staircase in the music room. When the first level of supports had been fitted I got Kaspar to send up pizza and we sat among the struts and ate.
“We did the model for a whole planned city in Northern China a year back. Ten thousand housing blocks, arenas, malls, bridges. The whole thing was wired up for night-time too. A lot bigger than this but nowhere near as much fun.”
The guy talking seemed to be their leader, or maybe just the mouthiest of them. He was leaning on a plywood plinth that they’d made for the Dread Palace of Psma. They’d reconfigured the huge new-town sweep of the Huslings, where the majority of the city’s residents lived, into a comma-shaped slope that wound its way around the carved posts of the staircase. Most of Danaan, the sacred quarter, was relocated up in the balcony itself and the stained glass highlighted different locales throughout the day in suitably religious ambers and purples.
While they worked I played “First Footprint” again through the big speakers. I’d taken to listening to it over and over, letting it seep into the walls of the apartment. I still couldn’t quite hear the beauty that Brandon and Rae found in the music, but I’d grown fond of it. One of the students, a shaven-headed boy in a jumpsuit, stopped and listened for a while.
“Pretty. Is it one of yours?”
The “no” was on my lips before I thought about it. “Yeah, just a demo though.”
He listened, eyes darting between the twin speakers. “The quality’s pretty good. SoundCloud?”
I remembered the name from the google search. “That’s right.”
He was over by the laptop. “Can I get the link?” he gestured.
I nodded and he opened up the page and wrote something down in a notebook. “Just one comment? That’s a crime. Hang on, let me add something.” He typed away and then gave me a shy smile. “Right, back to the world of dreams, huh?”
When he was back in the main room I went to see what he’d been talking about. It took me a while to understand the set up, but underneath the song’s waveform there were two square icons. I clicked on the leftmost one. It was a picture of the student, black and white, nicely lit, with a time-stamp and his comment — beautiful track, beautiful man — and a winking emoticon.
I looked back into the main room but he was crouched over one of the easternmost guard towers, an oxyacetylene torch spitting in his hand. I tried the second icon. A black square for a picture and one line of text. “Really? This is worth dying for?” It was dated nearly a week ago.
I texted Rae CAN YOU COME TO THE SCREEN? and she was there in seconds. I showed her the comment and she was silent for a second. Clouds formed on that pretty forehead. She typed again.
“The commenter? They’ve commented on another SoundCloud track, look. Click through. Different song, same comment. Oh. And there’s more text.”
I did as she said. A page opened up with another song, another waveform. Malevich was the artist’s name, the track title “Mythical Beasts”. And in the track description, a link. I opened up a second tab as the track began to play and the link ushered in page after page of raw text.
Mythical Beasts
This is a copy of Brandon’s text. It starts and finishes halfway through a sentence, as if it had been cut from some larger piece. One paragraph in the middle was repeated… I’ve cut it back.
…waking up to a smatter of construction noise and rain. My feet hung out from the bottom of the bed and the furniture looked like a child’s. In the bathroom I risked a look in the mirror. Me and my reflection: now there’s a broken relationship. Irrevocably broken (as we learnt never to say at relationship counselling). At least when I was young the mirror and I had some laughs. Sometimes we argued, especially after a long night, but we always made up. She’d send me off into the good night with a spring in my step and so
ng in my heart.
But now we can’t stand each other: look what you’re doing to yourself, don’t you care how I feel?
“Let’s start again.” That’s what I wanted to say, as I took it all in. The eggy pouches under ruined eyes. Blotches and abrasions. The downward drift. Sandtraps and deep rough.
“Let’s start again, darling.” Of all life’s tricks the ageing process is surely the nastiest. It should be the other way around. When you’re young you have everything — that’s when you could afford to look like a bombed-out city. It’s when life begins to crumble that it’d be good to have dumb good looks to fall back on.
Last night’s conversation with Kimi was still with me. I examined what I’d proposed as if it weren’t my life at the heart of it. It still made sense. Before the show I hadn’t known exactly what I was going to say to her, besides floating the idea of some swansong record. But the gig had bored me. Worse, it made me feel like a fucking music critic. Four stars out of five. Triumphant return to form. Her music was dragged along in the wake of a relentless business logic: spring was the perfect time to sell the act to summer festivals, so new material would have been ready by March, whether it was any good or not. The setlist never left you stranded more than two songs from a hit. The merchandise was a tasteful collaboration with Christopher Kane and the catering was vegan. I wanted to do the exact opposite of what she was doing. Something brutal and pure and final and complex, that couldn’t be chalked up to greed or ego because I wouldn’t be around to see it. I thought about a couple of my more recent songs through the prism of my murder. How would they sound as messages from beyond the grave? Some tracks couldn’t handle the increased gravity and imploded. That was fine, it proved they were weak. But some did the opposite: they blossomed under the pressure and swam with double and triple meanings. Coal became diamonds.
A hint of tune scampered around my head. Those dream-born melodies are easy to lose. A stray song on next door’s radio or thoughts of the day ahead can wipe them right away; it’s like having some kind of skittish animal in the room. I hummed and picked out notes on the laptop. First the melody, then the chords; trying to catch the interplay of sadness and joy.