The One Who Wrote Destiny

by Nikesh Shukla

  He describes the symptoms for knowing whether you’re in love as: clammy hands, inability to talk fluidly, a heightened heart rate.

  My hands are dry. Lukewarm. An inability to talk fluidly? I spend large portions of my day in silence staring at lines on a screen – I don’t think talking fluidly is possible for anyone of my ilk. My heart rate is slower, fuck you, fucking cancer, so that too can be discounted.

  I read on.

  I apply the rest of the schema to my situation. Have I completely forgotten my ex? Well, seeing as I’ve never had a girlfriend, a boyfriend, an other half, a significant other, a pal, a fuck buddy, a thing, a bae, before, that’s definitely a no. Can I not stop thinking about her? Apart from work and shows I’m currently watching, like Breaking Bad and Fringe, she does occupy a lot of my thoughts. If I had to quantify – maybe 10 per cent. But that’s significant, given that 60 per cent of my thoughts are subconscious, at least 10 per cent is work, 15 per cent is on the shows I’m watching and 5 per cent is probably on miscellaneous stuff it’s not worth individually listing because it’s not significant enough to warrant its own line item. So suddenly 10 per cent seems like a shit-load. Do I care about her? This seems vague. Of course I care about her — I wouldn’t want her to get rabies or be savagely mugged, but I extend that right to most of humanity, MOST of humanity, but caring for someone seems subjective. I don’t want to just sleep with her; instead, I want to share laughs with her, know what she’s thinking. Do I find her quirks charming? Seeing as she represents everything I hate about the world and I’m still interested seems, to me, to show that I am indeed willing to tolerate – tolerate being the operative word – her quirks. Do we have great chemistry? Between a technologist like me and a psychologist like her, we’re bound to have great chemistry . . .

  I laugh to myself. She looks up from the wine she’s pouring.

  I stare intently at my phone, flushing red.

  Once the couple have paid, she walks over to me.

  ‘What’s so funny, Spectacles?’ Mika says, using a nickname she’s tried a couple of times to disguise the fact that she doesn’t always remember my name.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, flustered. ‘You know.’

  ‘Tell me. God, I’m bored. Make me laugh, Spectacles.’

  ‘It’s nothing, Testicles,’ I reply, using the nickname for her I am also road-testing. Partly as a way to associate the nickname I hate with balls so she’ll have a Pavlovian response and stop calling me Spectacles. Maybe she’ll also come to hate testicles themselves through my conditioning. Thus far, she hasn’t objected. She wouldn’t, though. She may not like the nickname but she will enjoy the fact that I am a very generous tipper. ‘I’ve just thought of something funny,’ I say.

  ‘Teeeeeelll meeeeee,’ she says, leaning on the bar trying to place her face between mine and my phone.

  ‘You had to be there.’

  The article continues. Do I notice other women as much? This depends. I think most people are stupid so I tend to hardly notice anyone. Not for any reason other than that I’m not sure I need to. I notice her because I like her. Do I love spending time with her? Jesus, Justin, could you be more generic? Well, I ensure I make myself present at every one of her shifts. Do I mind compromising sometimes? Tolerating her various quirks is one big compromise. Do my other priorities take a back seat? No. Do I think about the future with her in it? I don’t have a future, I have a cancer. I am only thinking about the present and about working on the past.

  That’s that. Too many nos. I’m not in love. I have cheated the Kobayashi Maru test. I throw my phone down on to the bar in triumph.

  I hear my mobile making a shrill noise and look down at it.

  I must have accidentally hit the YouTube tab because a Bollywood song is playing. A woman in a black sequinned dress is dancing and singing even though she holds the microphone at arm’s length. People applaud. A man in a red tuxedo tries to get her attention. The song sounds familiar.

  I can’t quite place it.

  SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  GoTo: Data. Sets

  My mother died of the same cancer that I have.

  It infuriates me that I didn’t see this coming.

  Physiology has no coincidence. DNA has patterns. Established ones that run the helix of time. I’m trapped by my own genes. By the consequences of who fucked whom.

  I don’t really understand why things like my cancer weren’t predicted. It’s as though we assume that leading a healthy life, having a balanced diet, eating your five-a-day, exercising regularly, making positive decisions, staying happy is going to free you from your genes. It won’t.

  It’s not hard to spot the patterns. I have lung cancer onset by pulmonary fibrosis and scar tissue forming in my lungs. So did my mother. I don’t think Ba did – she told me once she would inevitably die of a broken heart.

  My dad has diabetes. Raks has diabetes.

  Patterns.

  Trying not to notice them is tough.

  How did I not see this coming? It’s a blind spot in my knowledge. I knew of my mother’s condition, but my need to know as little of her as possible, to keep her as a spectre, meant I was blinkered. My efforts to forget that she ever existed because she has had zero impact on my life made me misplace even the simplest details about her: the tragic cancer, her murdered father, her run-over brother, her ridiculous husband, her dying early, her twin children who were motherless. If I had seen it coming, I would have tried to have different goals in life. I wouldn’t have ploughed so much time and energy into this company. I probably wouldn’t have travelled any more – I would have retired early and made films, written scripts, recorded that acoustic comedy-songs album I planned after I drunkenly wrote the lyrics to a song called ‘Rubber Girlfriend’, about having a sex doll as a life partner. Imagine Raks’s face. If I was the funny one. It would be worth doing just to see his reaction. That would be the ultimate comedy.

  Heading home from Pivo one night, I stub my toe tripping over the fountains in the pedestrianized town centre. They’re rancid stagnant ponds that look deep enough for a child to drown in. The step down into them is low and they are deep. I miss avoiding them because I’m thinking about something. These patterns. They’re bothering me.

  When I get home, I clean the whiteboard that I’ve put up in my living room and write down the names of any family members I can think of. I realize, halfway through, that I’m using a Sharpie, a permanent marker, instead of a dry-wipe one.

  ‘Oh, well,’ I say to the room, to the picture of me and Leonard Nimoy framed above my monitors. ‘I’m dying so who the fuck cares.’

  I can only think of ten people, which is ridiculous. I get to the point where I’m writing down things like Snaggle Tooth Auntie; All the Gold Rings Uncle; Cousin Who Has Definitely Sexually Assaulted Someone Because He Boasted About It to Raks and Raks, to My Surprise, Didn’t Tell Him What a Cunt He Was (I write him down as Grope Cousin); Wig Auntie; Wig Uncle; Wig Uncle With Bad Breath; Pharmacist Uncle; Very Vocal About My Childlessness Auntie; and on and on. They’re a blur of masas, masis, fuvs, fais, mamis, mamas, faibas and kakas and kakis. I know them by salutation only.

  And Ba.

  No one knows what happened to her. She just disappeared. I wondered about her. She was kind to me and Raks when we went to see her in Kenya. She kept telling us the entire trip it would be the last time anyone saw her. She was ready to go. And soon afterwards, she stopped writing, we stopped writing and our link with Kenya was cut.

  She showed me kindness. She tried to get me to relax into life. She tried to sell me on destiny. She also tried to convince me to let go a little, that everything was pre-written, which is laughable and unscientific. Raks bought into her narrative and took from it that he was owed something. She had had such sadness in her life – I suppose the idea that life was pre-written meant that at least someone was watching over her; that she hadn’t quite lost everyone.

  The relatives who are alive are written down in green.
The ones who aren’t are in red.

  I put Ba in red. There’s no way she can still be alive.

  Then I sit at the computer and start typing the names, along with their alive-or-dead status, and what they died of, to the best of my knowledge.

  I should phone my dad and check some of these details. Probably all of them. I’m not the most up to date on the movements of the Jani family.

  At some point, I fall asleep in my favourite position, curled up on the two-seater leather sofa I spent nearly one thousand pounds on because it’s so comfortable, even though I can’t stretch out on it fully.

  The flicker of the television screen showing sitcoms from a dedicated comedy channel, together with the frenetic whirr of fans in my computer tower and the space-flight twinkling stars of monitors, soothe me into a deep sleep.

  In the middle of the night, I think I hear the Naseeb song come on the television again. I’m discombobulated and don’t know if I’m imagining it.

  I wake up the next morning to find that, drunkenly coughing in my sleep, I have hacked up a thick slug of phlegm that hangs from my mouth like a fish hook. The television is off.

  MONDAY MORNING

  GoTo: Doing Drugs with Your Boss Creates an Uncertain Work Environment

  Miles calls me.

  ‘You can’t leave,’ he says firmly, masking panic, I assume.

  ‘I can. I have. Thank you. For the memories,’ I add, in case he thinks I’m being sarcastic.

  ‘When did you clear your desk?’ he asks.

  ‘This morning. I came in at six. I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘What about the Robertson project?’

  ‘Debugged . . .’

  ‘The landing page?’

  ‘Working now . . .’

  ‘The . . .’

  ‘I’ll save you some time, Miles,’ I say. ‘I finished them all last week and over the weekend. I have cancer. I’m dying. As you know. I don’t like unfinished business. And I could go at any time. So I thought I’d finish up my projects so I don’t have you rueing my name as I head for the afterlife.’

  ‘Aren’t you an atheist?’

  ‘Even atheists repent on their deathbeds. Hedging their bets. Just in case.’

  ‘You can’t leave,’ Miles says. ‘You just can’t. We need you.’

  ‘I am fully aware of how indispensable I am to your company. But this is a good thing. Maybe you’ll find someone else to nurture for the next fourteen years. Or you’ll find someone to have a less co-dependent relationship with.’

  ‘Neha, look, I’ve never told anyone this . . .’ He pauses.

  This is it, this is the moment he professes his undying love for me and I tell him what a disgusting turd he is, how his constant sniffing, inability to iron shirts, daily lunch of Babybels and cold cuts of meat is enough to make me vomit. That when he touched up my knee when we were doing that bump in the disabled toilet before the pitch, I wanted to take his hand and break it over the cistern before shoving it as far into the U-bend as possible before flushing and kicking him in the nuts with Tracy from HR’s stilettoes.

  ‘If you leave, I can’t give you your profit-share points. I can’t cash them.’

  ‘Why?’ I ask.

  ‘They don’t really exist. There hasn’t been enough growth in the company for me to be able to pay them. And I imagine you could initiate legal proceedings, but you have to ask yourself, do you have the time? With your condition?’

  I hear him laugh – a quick ha-ha.

  ‘That’s fine,’ I say slowly. ‘Remember the ten-thousand-pound equipment budget you gave me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m keeping it all. I’ve already taken it. You can have it back when I die.’

  I hang up the phone and smile.

  Smiling makes me cough.

  I wish I had a permanent scanner attached to my lung, projecting its image on to one of my monitors, so I could observe the cancer, get to know her. I’ve called the cancer Nisha.

  My phone rings.

  Assuming it’s Miles, I let it ring out.

  I look at my phone later. It’s my dad. I haven’t spoken to him for three months now. Sometimes I don’t even miss it. Those are the days when I remember I haven’t spoken to him or he tries to get in touch. The rest of the time, he doesn’t figure in any of my thoughts.

  I call him back.

  I need his help.

  TUESDAY LUNCHTIME

  GoTo: Fathers Always Pay

  Dad meets me in Pivo.

  He comes with a plastic bag filled with my favourite snacks from the Gujarati shop opposite his house. He goes there most mornings to get deep-fried breakfasts, freshly cooked samosas and milky sugary masala tea. I’m surprised I haven’t had a phone call in the middle of the night saying he’s had a heart attack.

  I know it will come one day. Although his father drowned. Who knows whether the pattern of circumstance replicates? Between diabetes, a bad diet and the threat of drowning, my father has not got long left.

  He has taken to bachelor living with the verve of a student.

  Still, this simple act of parenting, feeding a child – though I will throw all the food into my already-overflowing bin when I get home – charms me in its quaintness.

  He walks with a hunch now. Because our meetings are sporadic, I see the change in him. He looks older each time. Which I know isn’t an insightful thing to record. That’s just how time works. He doesn’t look as though his body is embracing, or even coping with, the marching-on of life. He limps when he walks. He’s wearing open-toed sandals today, with a thick cushioned sole. One of his big toenails has turned black, readying itself for an imminent departure. His fingers tremble as he hands me the bag of food. We hover, both wondering whether the other will embrace. It begins to get awkward so I take the lead and sit down. He sits down too. I stand up again.

  ‘Pint?’

  ‘Please,’ he says. ‘And nuts. Salted. Not dry-roasted. Maybe they could cut up an onion to mix in? And green chilli?’

  ‘I’ll ask,’ I say, knowing I won’t.

  As Mika pours the pints, I look at her forearms. They are splotchy today. As though she’s had an allergic reaction to something.

  ‘What’s up with your arms?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh, you noticed,’ she says, without breaking eye contact with the taps of lager. ‘It’s a new make-up I’m wearing called cheap cleaning fluid that my skin is allergic to . . .’

  She eye-rolls at me.

  ‘That sucks,’ I say, in the absence of any way to solve her problem either practically or emotionally.

  ‘Your father?’ she asks, nodding to my dad who sits with his eyes closed, head bowed, asleep probably.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Tuesday lunchtime seemed like a good moment for a family reunion.’

  ‘I hope he doesn’t sleep through the whole thing,’ she says, handing me the lagers.

  I tell her to add them to my tab. Part of me, now that I’m unemployed, wonders if I’ll live to pay it off. Another part of me hopes I do. They’ve been good to me here. Well, except for the bouncer who told me on Saturday night that he wouldn’t let me in wearing trainers. Dress sexier, I was told. It’s Saturday night, for fuck’s sake, I was reminded. I pointed out men walking in, one even wearing the same trainers I was, more battered than mine. Yeah, but this is Saturday night in Watford – we have appearances to keep up.

  Dad has placed a five-pound note on my side of the table.

  I push it back to him. The movement causes the uneven table to wobble and spill lager where his hands rest. He opens his eyes, casually, as though he has been playing possum.

  He picks up the five-pound note and waves it at me.

  I shake my head. ‘I put it on my tab.’

  ‘Take it,’ he says aggressively. ‘What else do I have to spend money on? Other than my children.’

  ‘A fiver doesn’t cover the round, Dad. It’s fine.’

  He extracts his wallet and pulls out another fiver. Fold
ing one into the other, he places them next to my pint glass.

  I leave them there.

  ‘So, my beautiful daughter,’ he says, clasping his shivering fingers together. ‘You know that Manish is having a janoi next week? Shall I pick you up on my way?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Dad, listen. I need your help.’

  I realize, the second those words slip from my mouth, that they’re badly chosen. Asking for his help rather than demanding the information I need is the easiest way for him to try and slide into my life again. I start to retract.

  I don’t want him to know about the cancer. It’s nothing he can help me with. And the last thing I want is his sympathy because that sympathy will be laced with a mournful regret about my dead mother, rather than any genuine concern for me.

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ I add, trying to play the whole thing down. ‘I just need information.’

  ‘How can I help?’ Dad leans forward on to the table until he occupies the entire space between us.

  ‘I’m building a database. For a medical company,’ I lie.

  He doesn’t understand what I do. I can make him think it’s database design. He probably doesn’t even know what a database is.

  ‘I need test data. Can you email me the names of everyone in our family going back as far as you can, both your side and my mum’s side? Their relation to me. What they died of. What age. What country. I might require more filters and more information but I won’t know till I sort this initial data set and see what it tells me.’ I pause. ‘Please,’ I add, hastily.

  Dad leans back the moment he realizes this help I need requires work from him.

  ‘Impossible,’ he says. He looks around, for an invisible audience waiting for the punchline. ‘I’ve forgotten the password to my email.’

  He laughs and slaps himself on the thigh for emphasis when he sees his joke hasn’t had the desired effect.

  He and Raks have a long-running competition to see who can make me laugh. It’s been running for fourteen years. So far Raks is winning two to one.

  The numbers are so low I can tell you exactly what each one did to make me laugh.