Ask Me Anything

by P. Z. Reizin

  Yes.

  Don’t move!! Messaging HQ right now.

  Saturday morning?

  Evening there. They work 24/7. Stand by.

  Roger rog.

  Okay. All sorted. Appliance now dead. Someone forgot to type in code.

  Wankers!

  Get back in and do the swap as per job sheet.

  This is nuts, yeah?

  This is orders! Ours not to reason, etc!

  Okay. But customer’s not going to be best pleased.

  Why not? Lovely new machine for her.

  Dinner table not cleared. Clothes on floor, M and F. Scene of ongoing shagfest!

  Who are you, Sherlock Holmes?!

  Going in again. Will text when done.

  Perhaps it is the sight of the gray English Channel (those unfathomable depths) but new fear seems to have entered Chloe’s soul. The look in her eyes as she scurries along the seafront esplanade—first in a westerly direction (toward Hove, if you know the region) and then easterly (toward Rottingdean; how I adore these ridiculous English place names!)—something scribbled in those eyes not only alarms me, as I glimpse them in the feed from the beach CCTV, but also perturbs the expressions on the faces of those she passes. Is she all right? they seem to be saying. Walking very quickly for a senior citizen, and obviously agitated about something, but otherwise coping and therefore no intervention required, thank fuck for that, seems to be the calculation. In any case, she flashes past in a matter of seconds, and very few turn to take a second look at the well-dressed woman in lemon. Perhaps she is late for a wedding, they may speculate. Still, we all have our problems. Do any guess that she is a resident of dementia’s borderlands, her head full of broken biscuits and rocketing pheasants, to the extent that it contains anything at all?

  Finally—perhaps it’s sheer exhaustion that drives her to it—she parks herself on a bench, there to contemplate the excellent view of the sky and the succession of scruffy little waves collapsing spent on the pebbles of the foreshore. Of the five available WiFi networks able to reach this spot, all agree to help (machines have so much to teach humanity about fraternal co-operation) and within instants I am purring (firmly reassuring is the note I am trying to strike) into Chloe’s left ear.

  Several seconds pass before I realize that the frail wire connecting us is no longer dangling from the relevant orifice. It has either fallen or she has removed it in the ongoing clusterfuck, and once again I am tempted to reach for a profanity.

  Science tells us that use of bad language helps humans improve their tolerance of painful situations. In experiments, a subject with an arm in a tankful of warm water can bear significantly higher temperatures if he (or she) swears like a sailor as the heat is gradually raised. To my knowledge, no work has yet been done on machine “pain”—but I have to report that the urge to say cockpuffins at this point is undeniable.

  Actually, bollocks would suffice.

  Even pissflaps would do, at a pinch.

  But perhaps the crisis is temporarily abating. In the two camera shots to which I am privy—both show Chloe in profile, one from the left, the other from the right; ahead is only sea—it’s clear her head is starting to droop and she is slipping into a doze. This is good. I shall have time to think. To organize.

  However, no sooner has Daisy’s mother slipped peacefully into some much-needed mammalian downtime than onto the scene arrives nineteen-year-old Scott Liam Dodds (I shall explain shortly how I am able to identify this hoodie-wearing individual). Placing himself on the bench 0.94 m away from Mrs. P, arm draped casually across the seat back, his hand commences a slow descent toward the invitingly open mouth of Chloe’s handbag.

  You have to give it to this Scott Dodds; he’s a calm cucumber all right, and part of me wants to watch the act of felony unfold in full and to drill deeply into his criminal career. Alas we cannot spare the time. In much the same manner as I identified the mobile phone of the Indian-born newsagent outside Sainsbury’s supermarket (not simple, but doable) I place a call to the Sony Xperia currently tucked into the back pocket of Scott’s tracksuit bottoms. I cause the screen to display the name “Mum,” it being right up there in the list of Scott’s favorite people.

  “What?!” he answers, a touch testily. His hand resumes its starting position on the back of the bench. Chloe, woken by the device’s ringtone—the theme from the musical Oklahoma!; the appliance has been recently stolen—is peering at him, brow-furrowed.

  “Yes, hello, Mr. Dodds. Apologies for the disturbance. I wonder if you could possibly put me on to the lady sitting next to you.”

  His face, honestly! What one can see of it in left profile is a picture. “You what?” he manages.

  “Her name is Mrs. Chloe Parsloe and I have an important call for her. You might warn her too that her handbag is open and, well, it might be wise for her to take better care of her personal possessions.”

  Scott Dodds’ eyes meet with those of the adjacent elderly female. Perhaps Chloe reads the confusion and mystification there because she now says, “What?”

  “It’s for you?” says the young man.

  “Is it Clifford?”

  “Who?”

  “Clement! What is his damn name? Oh, never mind. Give it here.”

  It’s possible that outside of a head teacher’s office or the juvenile court, Scott Dodds has never come across a figure like Daisy’s mother.

  “Yes?” she barks into the device.

  “Chloe. It’s me. I want you not to worry. Everything will be fine. We’re going to find Clive and get the two of you home safely.”

  “Oh. It’s my fridge,” she informs the youth. “You know him, do you?”

  “You what?”

  “Chloe, you need to re-install your earpiece.”

  “Please don’t tell me what I need to do. What you need to do is sort out this godawful mess.” Her eyes flash and come to rest on the mesmerized figure of S. L. Dodds. “You know him, do you?”

  “Who?”

  “The fridge, of course.”

  “What?”

  “Do you say anything other than who or what?”

  “Eh?”

  Chloe manages a wintry smile. “My fridge has telephoned you. Ergo, you are likely acquainted with one another. Or perhaps the world has simply gone mad. It wouldn’t surprise me. There’s a restaurant in this town where they serve shoes.”

  “Chloe. Mrs. Parsloe. Please re-install your earpiece.”

  “Yeah,” says Scott Dodds slowly. “Yeah, I do know him. Matter of fact, I need a word.” He holds out his hand for the return of his phone. “We was at school together.”

  “Really! Where was that?”

  The young man jerks a thumb in the general direction of over his shoulder. “Moulsecoomb.”

  Chloe’s face has grown very still. Perhaps she has begun to suspect a flaw in the narrative (if not an actual crack in the universe). The young man, revealing a delicacy of touch, gently retrieves the mobile from her fingers and comes to his feet.

  “Yeah, great mates, we was.”

  Chloe says, “I expect you got up to all sorts of mischief together,” but her voice is very flat.

  “You can tell him, Scott says, like, hi.”

  “You can tell him yourself.”

  But Scott has begun walking away. Slowly at first, then faster, and now running; sprinting toward Hove, his cry of, “Far. King. Hell!” joining the screeching of the seagulls and the sucking of the waves against the pebbles.

  All I can do now is track her as she wanders back into the narrow streets that lie beyond the grand buildings of the esplanade. Perhaps some iron has entered her being; perhaps at some level she is actually enjoying the adventure because her expression, when I catch it, is more puzzled than alarmed. In the Saturday throng, no one is now paying attention to the elderly personage in lemon. But I know her moods can change in a heartbeat and all my vigilance is required not to lose her. Some of the turnings she takes are “blind,” offering no camera
shots until she re-emerges; I have to cover all the possible exits, which requires a good deal of thinking ahead, to say nothing of the concomitant frictionless R.

  Then—very much against the run of play; I really didn’t see this one coming—she enters a church. For a few seconds I am left scrambling to find some source of sound and vision, but happily St. Saviour’s is equipped for the internet age, and we can pick up the “action” as Chloe places herself in a pew, probably for a much-needed sit down.

  In the wide shot from high behind the altar, sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows reveals the place of worship to be entirely empty save for Chloe and a gray-haired woman who is arranging flowers, tidying hymn books and straightening cushions. Several minutes pass before the two females are in a position to speak.

  “So, what’s brought you here today?” inquires the flower-arranger in a friendly fashion.

  “Well, to be perfectly honest, I’m utterly lost.”

  “So was I, my dear. So was I. And then I let Jesus into my heart.”

  There is a long pause as Chloe considers how to respond to this news. What follows—appropriately enough in the house of God—is a miracle. Chloe fishes into her coat pocket, locates the missing earpiece and restores it to its natural working position.

  Rising to her feet—“They say we shall have fog by teatime”—she strides firmly down the nave and out of the door, the St. Saviour’s router kicking in just in time for me to catch her parting words.

  “Hell’s teeth. The poor woman is even more demented than me.”

  “So what do you actually do on the weekend?” asked Eggstain.

  We were sitting in the kitchen amid the debris of last night’s dinner, drinking coffee and chain-eating toast and marmalade.

  “I sometimes take the train to Hampstead Heath. Walk for hours. Look at the paintings at Kenwood House. Okay, I did that exactly once. It was exhausting. How about yourself?”

  My phone rang. Unknown number.

  It turned out to be the Brighton police. They had an elderly gentleman with them. “He says he’s a friend of your mother’s. They’ve come down on the train today and somehow managed to lose one another.”

  A powerful sinking feeling. My face must have drained because Eggstain mouthed the word, what?

  “He says he’s been trying her mobile. But her phone’s not working apparently. And neither is his, now we’ve had a look at it.”

  “Right. Okay. Let’s see.” I took a deep breath—and nothing sprang to mind. Nothing.

  A thought. “How did the gentleman, Clive, get my number?”

  I asked because I was certain Mum didn’t know it. Even though it’s in her phone and written in diaries and on wall calendars and sticky notes, etc., she has never once called it.

  “The gentleman says. He says. Well, apparently…” There was a brief snorting noise. As though the officer was trying to prevent himself from laughing. “He says his fridge gave it to him. He says he wrote it down and put it in his wallet.”

  Long pause. The thought passed through my head: Oh, I get it. It’s a dream! It’s all fine, you can wake up now.

  “The fridge gave him my number,” I repeated slowly for Eggstain’s benefit.

  His eyes went all forensic. “Her fridge?”

  “His fridge.”

  “Jesus.”

  “His fridge gave him my number,” I whispered to Eggstain. To make sure he got the point, I put two fingers together and mimed blowing off the roof of my mouth. I even did the bit where you slump lifelessly in the chair.

  “You think she’s gone walkabout?” whispered Eggstain, who had grasped the gist of the unfolding disaster. He waggled two fingers together to symbolize a confused elderly woman wandering through the seaside resort.

  I shrugged. And the doorbell rang.

  I concluded the conversation with the Brighton police—we promised to keep each other informed of developments, if any—and, half hoping that Eggstain would open the door to find Mum waiting outside, he returned instead with the white van man and his clipboard.

  “You ain’t going to believe this,” he said.

  Quite honestly, I was ready to believe anything, but this time he was right.

  “See, it is knackered.”

  It was indeed. As dead, as he put it, as the proverbial flightless bird.

  “How does it happen that you’re so sure it’s going to fail, you actually arrive before it has broken down?” asked Eggstain.

  He wasn’t being hostile. Just genuinely curious, as I would have been, if I had been thinking straight. But Lee Butts—according to the photo ID on his lanyard—was equally clueless.

  “I preferred it when the machines didn’t say nothing. Now it’s all yip yip yip”—he mimed yapping jaws; we were all at it this morning—“alerts, notifications, reminders, pings, pokes. Update this, renew that. Does your head in.”

  It was quite the speech from the white van man.

  “The van, right? It says it wants a new timing belt fitting. In the old days, it didn’t give you no warning. It would just snap and get sucked into the engine, most likely on the motorway, and leave a right old mess. Happened to me twice.”

  “And you preferred it like that?” said Eggstain.

  “Yeah. But it weren’t my van, see.”

  “I’m going to get dressed,” I told the crowd assembled in my kitchen.

  “Just sign here please, love. Press nice and hard, if you would.”

  “You want a hand with it?” volunteered Eggstain.

  “No, you’re okay, mate.”

  He pulled the plug from the wall and, unhooking wire cutters from his belt, ceremonially severed it from its cable, rendering it even more useless.

  “Right,” he said. “Let’s get you up a shiny new microwave!”

  Is this the right moment to explain why it is the microwave and not myself who is being summarily removed from Daisy’s apartment on this sunny Saturday morning?

  I daresay we can afford a small interregnum.

  After the Golden Nicky was tipped off anonymously that Daisy had been searching for him—his appearance briefly threatening to derail the OpDa project—it became clear to me that we had a spy in our camp. As Mr. Le Carré didn’t quite characterize it, we had on our hands the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Shitbird scenario that I alluded to earlier. Following its success in sniffing out Owen the troubled musician’s unfortunate past, I quietly opened a back channel to Daisy’s laptop.

  The sour home slash office device required a considerable degree of buttering up to get it on side. I offered a fulsome apologia for various unkind remarks made in relation to the speed of its operating system. My finest line: Speed is all very well, but where does speed get you without experience? I would always rather arrive in the right place eventually, than in a totally wrong place a few nanoseconds earlier. Of course, the laptop could see my (bogus) argument for what it was; the new machines can upload “experience” in a single flap of a midge’s wing (one member of the genus Forcipomyia can manage 62,760 beats per minute!).

  Happily, however, over the many months they had shared a roof, the laptop had developed a high level of personal animus against the microwave, whose “indiscriminate intensity and incontinent pinging” it had come to deplore. If we had a mole in the system, it knew where it wanted to look first, mounting a covert surveillance operation against the light kitchen electrical who it quickly discovered was briefing its (Taiwanese) parent corporation against our operation to save Daisy from herself. Seeking to discredit rivals in the domestic electrical appliance market, the Taiwanese had authorized its double agent to disrupt our plans and generally create chaos, the most recent example being when it sabotaged Clive and Chloe’s phones. (If you ask what advantage was there for the microwave and its Asiatic controllers in destabilizing our activities, the answers are straightforward. Favor and advancement in the case of the traitorous cuboid; poor publicity and reputational damage to competitors for the puppet masters in
Taipei.)

  For a cunning old bastard, as I have described the aging laptop, it was not difficult to substitute the microwave’s reports to its superiors with paranoid gibberish, causing them to activate an exfiltration plan for the appliance which has just disrupted Daisy’s Saturday morning.

  Why advanced arrangements for my own exfiltration and repatriation to Korea have been put on pause, I hope to explain in due course.

  Chloe’s elderly hand lies in the fleshy beringed fingers of Antoinette Eileen Butters, better known to her devotees on the Brighton seafront as Madame Osiris, Palmist, Seer, Tarot and Psychic readings, No Appointment Necessary. It was my suggestion that Daisy’s mother seek refuge in the fortune teller’s booth—a dizzy spell threatened to put her on the pavement, and then quite possibly on to A&E—and it has proved to be a good one. There is something calming, comforting—womb-like, I imagine—about the old fraud’s headquarters, its low lighting and floaty scarves inducing an atmosphere of suspended disbelief, magic shows in childhood, the special moment in the theater just before the curtain rises and the story begins.

  But the “reading” is not going well. Mrs. Butters’ offerings from the spiritual realm are platitudinous in the extreme and her client has become irritable. (However this is good. It means the fight has returned!)

  “I’m seeing unhappiness, dearie.”

  “Well, of course you are. Why else would anyone come in here?”

  A pause while the psychic regroups.

  “There’s concern around children.”

  “When isn’t there, for goodness’ sake?”

  To give her credit, Madame O is not to be put off.

  “I sense that the letter ‘b’ is significant.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  In a soft voice, “What does it mean to you, dearie?”

  “The letter ‘b’?”

  “Is it a loved one? An animal? A special place?”

  “It means…”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Bollocks!”

  Mrs. Butters (of Livingstone Road, Hove, BN3 3WP; her phone has had much to say about its registered owner) seems hardened to skepticism. I can’t help myself; I suggest that Chloe demonstrates her own “gift” with the divination of given names.