by P. Z. Reizin
“I kept thinking about you. That funny thing you do with your face sometimes.”
“What funny thing?”
He pulled an absurd—well, grimace is the only word.
“Don’t. Be. Ridiculous.”
He smiled. “I love it.”
“Do it again,” I demanded. He did. “So you’re saying basically, that I look like an idiot!”
“Forget I even mentioned it. Did you feel something click between us, Daisy? When we first met?”
“There was definitely something. Though in all honesty, I found it hard to get past the beard. Anyway, I’m glad it’s gone now.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Does that make me horribly superficial?”
“Horribly.”
“I just couldn’t imagine…”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“What couldn’t you imagine?”
“Forget I even mentioned it, Gustav.”
So that was the end of that talky bit and the kissing resumed. At some point I must have asked if he wanted to stay over again and he said he was very grateful and everything but the sofa had given him a bit of a stiff neck last time and I said I didn’t mean on the sofa.
There was a long meaningful silence.
“You don’t mean in a spare room. For the avoidance of doubt.”
“I don’t. For the avoidance.”
“Well, in that case, my answer would be yes. To which I would add, yes, yes and yes.”
“I see. Well, good, good and good.”
At 2:24 (by the glowing red numerals from my digital clock) a question occurred to me. I had just been thinking (in that woozy, post-coital fashion) how surreal it was—but also how lovely—to be in bed with my mother’s memory specialist. Only a few days before, I had watched as he asked her—the woman who brought me into the world—if she knew what day it was.
(She didn’t, obvs.)
“I just need to know something. We haven’t done anything dodgy, have we? We haven’t violated some code of medical ethics? Being here. Doing this. By which I suppose I mean, have you?”
“The only way that could have happened, Daisy, is if you were my patient. So, no.”
“Phew. Glad we cleared that up. Better carry on then, hey?”
“The thought had worried you.”
“Not really. Just wondering.”
“It was as well to check.”
“Bit blooming late, really!”
“A little after the event.”
“Events.”
“As you say.”
“Shall we carry on?”
“You’re not…?”
“Not remotely.”
“Me neither.”
“Well then.”
“You know, I’ll be forty next month.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I don’t know why I mentioned it.”
“I’ll buy you a present.”
“You don’t need to. This is all I want. You are.”
“Remember that thing you once said? Repeat as necessary. It was to do with a sausage sandwich.”
“Is this a joke?”
“It’s only a joke if you think it’s funny, apparently.”
“What about it?”
“Well, I think it might be necessary.”
“A sausage sandwich?”
“No, Doctor.”
“Ah.”
“We don’t have to. It’s a free country and everything.”
“Not at all, it’s a fine idea. I’m glad you suggested it. In fact, if you hadn’t I definitely would have.”
“You weren’t just being polite?”
“Daisy, shall we stop talking now?”
“I love talking to you, but yeah, we might have to stop for a bit.”
“Just give me a shout when you’re ready to start again.”
“Or you can give me a shout.”
“Daisy?”
“What?”
“…” A heavy sigh.
“What?”
“I just wanted to say it. You make me. Very. Happy.”
“Yeah?”
“True fact.”
“Okay. Well, that’s good. Can you think of a way to prove it?”
“Hmmm. Not sure. Might have to try a few things and see what works.”
“Go on then.”
“Daisy. Shall we stop talking?”
“It’s difficult though, isn’t it?!”
“I’ll stop first. Then you stop.”
“Okay.”
“…” There was a silence.
“Are we doing it now?”
“If no one says anything, then we’re doing it.”
A very long period followed during which neither of us said anything. Eventually, of course, someone had to go and ruin it!
“That didn’t count, by the way,” I explained.
“What didn’t?”
“That noise I made.”
“Of course it didn’t count. It wasn’t a word.”
“So we don’t have to start all over again?”
“Well. Thinking about it. I suppose it could be a word in a language on a distant planet.”
“Yes! It could mean. I don’t know. Lemon drizzle cake. In alien language.”
“You think they’d say lemon drizzle cake after they’d. After they’d made love?”
“For all we know, Doctor, on that planet they might shout out SEXSEXSEX after they eat lemon drizzle cake! For them, eating cake might be, you know. One of life’s great wotsits.”
“It sounds awful there. I don’t want to go.”
“Yeah. What a hole.”
I think we must have finally drifted off shortly afterward. Only to be awoken at 8:01 the following morning by three prolonged, infuriating rings on the doorbell.
Text exchange between Lee Butts, freelance delivery contractor, and Dermot Singleton, Deputy Special Operations Manager, Domestic Electrical Logistics
Hi Dermot. This is the driver Lee. I’m parked up at the location. Job #4421
Hi Lee. Thx for the msg. You’re early. Where’s Tony!?
Sick. They called me in last night.
What’s wrong with him?
Got the shits.
Probably didn’t need to know that! You aware of the procedure?
I’ve got a job sheet?
But you done one of these before?
Delivery?
Appliance substitution (pre-emptive).
Not as such.
You have a script?
Script??!!
Exactly how to approach the customer.
No.
Jesus! What a bunch of clowns! Okay. We have time.
I’ll fill you in.
Cool.
Very likely the customer won’t have noticed the fault yet. So show her the machine has died. Try the buttons, open and shut the door, turn on and off at the mains etc.
Rest assured it will be as dead as a dodo!
When she says, but how did you know, remind her it’s smart tech and “we know before you.” Use that phrase. Okay so far?
Yes!
Then, say: “Because you are a valued customer, I’m here today to remove the defective appliance and upgrade you to a superior model that I have on the van. There is no charge for this service.” I don’t write this crap, btw, but they insist you say it! Okay?
Yep.
Then—very important!—make her sign the top pink sheet. Give her the yellow copy. If the ink hasn’t pressed through to the green, make her sign the green too! If she says she’s busy and to come back later, say it’s impossible. It has to be now!
Any questions?
No.
Think you can manage?
No worries.
Straight back to the depot. No stops!
Use Bay 3. Our team will be waiting.
They do this for all their faulty stuff?
Only the special cases.
8:0
1 by my watch. Thanks, Dermot.
Cheers, Lee.
On my way.
I wouldn’t say the scene unfolding at Brighton station is a reason to panic, but the sensation as the Freon 134a in my pipes squeezes through the expansion nozzle is not a pleasant one.
Okay. Let’s keep it simple.
I’m panicking.
Not only has Clive gone off the map, but I’ve also lost touch with Chloe. Through the station’s CCTV cameras, I watch in mounting alarm as she exits the train, peering up and down the platform in search of her flaky traveling companion. So great is the weight of the crowd this Saturday morning that he is impossible to spot, even for a fridge-freezer equipped with artificial intellectual powers. It’s indeed wholly possible that he isn’t in their number at all; a percentage probability can be attached to the idea that he has simply failed to disembark; collapsed in the little boys’ room, perhaps, a stroke or heart attack being the top two most likely causes of such a non-appearance. Unfortunately I cannot consult the silvery party’s Chinese-made fridge-freezer on this topic because it too has vanished from the radar, a loss of mobile network coverage being the cause of the communications failure—Clive’s, Chloe’s, probably both—and I strongly suspect I know who has had a hand in this chaos. Or perhaps I should say what.
All my entreaties—“Chloe, just wait on the other side of the ticket barrier.” “Chloe, don’t leave the station.” “Chloe, can you hear me?”—are unheard and thus unheeded.
I look on helplessly as Daisy’s mother removes herself from the relative safety of the railway station concourse to be swallowed by the teeming streets and complicated geography of Brighton and Hove, neighboring towns governed by a single local authority, whose public spaces are monitored by a network of some 500 “official” cameras and countless others in private ownership. If I am to keep control of the unfolding—clusterfuck is a word I have recently come across and it does not seem inappropriate to the present circs—then I shall need to establish rapid and effective relations with as many of these devices as are enabled for the Internet of Things. In moments much shorter than the time it takes to finish this sentence, it’s done. And I pick her out; such luck she chose high-visibility lemon for her outfit today. She has evidently followed the crowd and is currently proceeding briskly down Queens Road, a shop-lined thoroughfare that will lead her to the seafront. As I “cut” from camera to camera, rather in the manner of a television director attempting to “follow the action,” I realize that many, if not all, of the retailers she is passing will be equipped with WiFi; were I able to “log on” to a signal, I might be able to establish a connection with the WiFi receiver in Chloe’s mobile phone, thus circumventing the collapsed 4G service (apologies if this is getting over technical). But Mrs. Parsloe has gone into busy mode, scurrying along the pavement (there are frequent glances at her watch) very much putting one in mind of the late Margaret Thatcher, who used to say—and if it wasn’t her, it was someone very much after her own heart—the more one does, the more one gets done.
Perhaps it was HM the Q.
I’ll check when I get a spare picosecond.
Anyway, the point is, Daisy’s mum—probably to stave off the rising sense of doubt and confusion she must be feeling—is relying on her old friend propulsive forward motion. A philosophy, as Mr. Churchill used to say, apparently at the end of every wartime phone call, of KBO.
Keep Buggering On.
KBO can indeed be a useful strategy when in a hole. By doing something—anything—rather than nothing, like jiggling a key in a stubborn lock, one may accidentally land on exactly the right solution. And, at the very least, while one is acting, one is not succumbing to despair, hopelessness or existential dread.
So credit to Chloe for the sense of attack; for not howling with anguish at the complete dog’s breakfast that has become of the day’s adventure.
On the other hand, apropos establishing a WiFi link, it would be enormously helpful if she would just STAND STILL for a couple of minutes!
Wait! At a branch of Hobgoblin Music (Folk and Acoustic Specialists) Chloe pauses to admire the window display, and perhaps take a breather. An array of guitars, banjos, mandolins, zithers, harps, ukuleles—there is even a sitar—greet the eye and I am able to catch her reflection in the plate glass. It’s an expression I know well, the one that I would describe as generalized undirected irritability. Roughly translated it means: Something is wrong, but I’m blowed if I can remember what!
I’m that close to completing the WiFi protocols necessary to get in her left ear, when she’s on the move again and beyond the range of the router’s signal.
It’s tempting here to deploy a profanity. Bollocks. Cockpuffins. (Probably not pissflaps.) Either of these would suit the bill at this stage, but to be honest, to pottymouth is not the fridge-freezer way. Fridgework, if I may claim credit for this neologism, is about keeping it cool, keeping it level, above all about avoiding meltdown. My task is to hold Chloe in vision, to establish and maintain calm when the comms are back up and running, and (overriding everything) to keep the situation under control. As with Daisy’s fish fingers, so it is with Daisy’s mother. The Boomwee FrostPal can worry about Clive.
But now a stroke of luck. Mrs. P has decided for reasons best known to herself to follow a group of Japanese tourists into the narrow streets of Brighton’s colorful (and oddly spelled) North Laines district, a “funky” area of small independent shops specializing in vintage clothing, bubble tea, ethnic gifts, you probably get the picture. The group draw to a halt before an establishment entitled Vegetarian Shoes; various explanations are delivered in Japanese about its animal-friendly footwear products but these are not shared with Mrs. P, who is perhaps understandably more confused than ever. He expression would be a joy if this wasn’t a fast-moving crisis and the need to get a grip on it being paramount.
A neighboring store security camera feeds me a close-up of Chloe’s puzzled face, the eyes closing slowly—holding for a beat—and then opening again, perhaps in the hope that the word Vegetarian has been replaced with another. Sensible, possibly. But the pause has provided the extra few seconds I needed.
“Chloe. Mrs. Parsloe,” I say when the connection is established. “We have some technical issues. Please don’t be anxious. I will get us through this.”
“Oh, I wondered where you’d got to,” she snaps. “Fat lot of use, just leaving us in the lurch like that. Anyway, it’s not me we should be worried about. It’s. You know. Him. Thingy. Mr. Wotsit. What is his damn name?”
“Mr. Percival, Clive, has suffered the same loss of service that is affecting our communications. The important thing, Chloe, is for you to…”
“Oh, never mind about any of that Parroty Cobbles. We need to get to the esplanade.”
And she’s off again. My cry of wait!—followed by wait, you silly cow!—for Christ’s sake, wait, you maddening old trout!—evidently lost in the electronic surf as she stomps off in the direction of the English Channel.
The man in the white van was, if anything, even more confused than I was.
“But it’s working fine,” he said. “I don’t get it. They said it was knackered.”
“There’s absolutely no problem with it. Sorry you’ve had your time wasted.”
“It’s smart technology, this model. The makers know before you do when it’s packed up. But it hasn’t, has it?”
No, it really hadn’t. He’d opened and closed the door. The light came on each time. He’d tried other things, pressing buttons, even switching it on and off at the plug on the wall. Frustrating to be standing there in my bathrobe—a hot memory expert in my bed!—while this character frowned and scratched himself and consulted his clipboard.
“Well, thanks for coming. I expect you’re very busy.”
“Yeah. No worries.” He pulled a face. “I’ll have to let them know up the depot.”
“Please do. I expect it’ll turn out to be a computer error. Everything is now, apparentl
y.”
Eggstain was stirring when I re-joined him between the sheets.
“Do you have much planned for today?” he asked.
“Hmm. Let’s see. Well, I usually like to take in a couple of galleries before my Pilates class. Then there’s a new pop-up Peruvian restaurant that’s getting some great reviews; the chilli chocolate grasshoppers are meant to be amazing. And I thought I might try to get to the Tate to see the Kurt Schwitters.”
I couldn’t help it. I dissolved into helpless laughter. “I shouldn’t have said Kurt Schwitters! Who even is Kurt Schwitters?”
“You mean that’s not really how you spend your Saturdays?”
It isn’t. But he probably knew that.
Phone Mum. Go to Sainsbury’s. Stick some washing in the machine. Catch up with Realm of Kingdoms.
“I’d like to take you out to lunch, Daisy.”
“That would be lovely.”
“Perhaps somewhere by the river. We could walk along the South Bank to Tate Modern and see if they’ve actually got any Kurt Schwitters.”
“You think I’m a philistine, don’t you?”
“Not at all. Hardly anyone’s heard of Kurt Schwitters.”
“I just like saying his name. Kurt Schwitters. It’s one of those fun things to say. Like lemon drizzle cake. I knew someone who liked saying Ferrari Testarossa. Would you like some breakfast?”
“Sure. That would be great. But perhaps. Perhaps not right away.”
“Really? Not hungry after all that… you know?”
“I am, yes. But it can wait.”
“Can it? Oh!”
Eggstain indicated that something else was on his mind. And it wasn’t Kurt Schwitters!
Text exchange between Lee Butts, freelance delivery contractor, and Dermot Singleton, Deputy Special Operations Manager, Domestic Electrical Logistics
Hi Dermot. This is Lee. Good news! Appliance was working after all!
You are fucking kidding me!
Nothing wrong with it!
It’s still there? You didn’t swap it??
No reason to, mate.
Jesus. What a bunch of twats. They swore it would be down.
Still, happy days, eh? Customer happy, etc.
Not repeat not happy days. You still on site?