Distortion

by Gautam Malkani

  Eyes, nose, mouth, ears.

  Between four and five feet tall.

  There’s this scene in the film Blade Runner where a guy in some kinda interview situation is asked to describe his mother. Instead of doing so, he shoots the interviewer.

  “… You know what those people are like, Dhilan. They think that if a person’s sick it’s because they deserve it. Either because of something bad they’ve done in this life or something bad they’ve done in a previous life. They’ll say I’m being punished for divorcing your dad. That’s how these people actually think, Dhilan – they actually have the time and the energy to think these things.”

  Kept telling you that it weren’t punishment like as if she was trying to tell it to herself. Told you how some religions even saw women’s periods as a punishment for bad things they were supposed to have done. And always worrying about what the “other people” thought of her. The ones with the husbands and the handbags that matched their saris. Like as if she was some cokehead straight outta rehab and they’d all placed bets on how long she’d take to fall apart again. Or for her poor, fatherless son to fall from the proper path.

  Anycase, you didn’t even want to tell anyone. Didn’t want to talk. Kids would just make fun of you; grown-ups would probly just feel sorry for you. They wouldn’t be able to do nothing about all the things you was worrying about, so nothing to talk about. Truth is, you actually wanted to close ranks.

  “Or at least just for now,” she said as you stopped outside the house – dead slowly but always parking like she’d pulled up after a car chase. “Let’s just keep this to ourselves for the next few weeks. Then I’ll start by telling the immediate family. But for now just you and me.”

  … Because, just because, Dhilan. Because I’m asking you not to tell anyone yet …

  … No, not even your cousins in Birmingham, Dhilan – they might tell your cousins in London …

  … Because people will think it’s my karma and they think karma means punishment instead of destiny …

  … No, not even people at school – not even the white people …

  … Yes, I know we told everyone that Uncle Ashok had cancer – but that was because he didn’t really have cancer. Instead he was dying of a different disease …

  … Because I’m asking you to keep it a secret, Dhilan. Haven’t we always had our secrets? I wish I could keep it a secret from you, but I already know that would be impossible.

  After that, you tried to make her calm.

  Made her watch some TV.

  Didn’t let her use her fone.

  Okay – but voice calls only. No getting baited by all them scare stories.

  Stop clicking on the links.

  Took you a full two hours to bring the subject of her sickness back up. Did it by asking her how she was feeling. The takeaway dinner. The Tesco cherry and raspberry mousse that seemed to become your after-news-of-new-tumour tradition.

  “Well, you tell me,” she pushed away her bowl. “How the hell do you think I’m feeling?”

  Oh gimpfuck. You hadn’t meant to upset her. Started scrambling explanations like fighter jets. Told her she’d misheard you. Told her you’d asked if you could feel it.

  “What do you mean ‘feel it’, Dhilan? Feel what?”

  You followed through the dumbfuck logic of what you’d just said and realised you’d now have to follow through with your fingers.

  “Feel what, Dhilan?”

  Couldn’t tell her you meant her boobs or her breasts. If anything, you’d have to say it singular. But if you said it singular, you might offend her. And you couldn’t exactly say you meant her lump in case she thought you were dissing her singular boob by calling it a lump. In the end, you just called it “it” – told her you wanted to make sure “it” didn’t hurt her.

  “It doesn’t hurt me, sweetheart. Not even a teeny bit. The doctor says breast cancer lumps hardly ever hurt.”

  Still, her hand to your hand; then both hands to the side of her breast – i.e. her right breast, i.e. the only breast she had left. The new lump impossible to distinguish from the surrounding flesh. Her probly bra-less beneath her peach summertime dress. Soft at the touch of your fingers; hardening at the brush of your wrist. You stood up, cleared away the dessert, the plates. Told her again that you wouldn’t tell no one.

  12

  “WAKE UP, DILLON.”

  In theory, Ramona’s mattress ain’t no more soft than my own student hall mattress.

  “Dillon, wake the fuck up.”

  In practice, mornings are easier when I can’t sleep through the night.

  “Some people are here to speak with you – they say it’s about your mother.”

  Before the invention of spine-supporting memory foam, mattresses made of foam were mostly for brothels. No bed-springs, no noise.

  “My mother?”

  Brothels and hospitals.

  “Yeh. Your mother.”

  Ramona’s student room is L-shaped, the bed tucked outta sight. Now another voice – some bloke’s voice – rolls in round the corner from the doorway: “We should’ve brought you two lovebirds breakfast in bed. Some McDonald’s Egg McMuffins, maybe. Dipped in boiling Big Mac jus de boeuf. ” Sound of her room door closing – latch like a slow handclap. “Still, how about one of these instead – they’ve been sweating through the paper bag like my ass cheeks in a sauna.” The two aged-out Botox men join Ramona at the foot of her bed with an offering of Starbucks oatmeal cookies.

  “Er, excuse me,” Ramona tries drawing her already-drawn dressing gown, “I told you two to wait at the door for him.”

  Can’t recall if I’m butt naked under her duvet so stay under it just in case. Sitting up in bed like I’m sick. One of them flips on the light switch, killing off the sunlight behind the curtains.

  “You realise you weren’t in lectures this morning, Dylan?” Botched-Botox man is still on his whole biker jacket thing, but today the leather is cracked and faded. “Nor were you at your client’s office doing your do-do-da-da data entry. And also you weren’t in lectures.”

  Display on my Dylan handset gives me the damage report. Three missed client meetings, forty-nine reminders and an already-rescheduled conference call. I know my fones ain’t actually part of me but, thing is, they also ain’t not-me. Oh, and there are bloodstains on my touchscreen again. That ouching below my left shoulder blade from the cleansed-and-dressed stab wound (or graze or scratch or, whatever, some minor abrasion).

  “And you also weren’t in your dorm room. And of course neither were you somewhere else.”

  Beside me, Ramona’s broken three-inch pencil heel – staining her bedsheets like some amputated finger. Pointing and laughing in the general direction of my dick.

  Younger-looking old man cuts me a look to see if I’m gonna play along with this bullshit. If we’ve agreed the basic groundhog rules. If we on the same wank-stained webpage. Then he starts backing away till he’s out of frame again cos of the whole L-shaped room situation. Fiver says he’s gone to stand by the door. Can always tell when someone’s blocking the door.

  Breath mint. Eye bogey. Leave fones switched to silent. I ask the men what the hell they doing here.

  “They started banging on my door ten minutes ago,” Ramona says, stepping away from them to stand beside me at her bedside. “Well?” she goes to the older-looking old man. “Tell us, then. You said you wanted to talk to Dillon about his mother – well, what’s happened to his mother?” Squeezing my hand like as if she’s prepping me for the worst – or more like for whatever she imagines could be worst. Ain’t got no clue how I’ve always had me a drill for that day. All them times during lessons sitting there waiting for the knock on the classroom door.

  “Don’t be talking ’bout my mother,” I give it at max volume before either man can speak.

  “We don’t want to talk about your mother,” goes the botched-Botox man.

  Ramona does that thing where she scrunches her nose. “Wait, what? B
ut a minute ago – when you were beating the crap out of my door – you said you needed to speak to him about his mother.”

  “You clearly misheard. We said we needed to speak about his baby. Not his mother, his baby.”

  “What baby?” I ask this without freaking out like other guys might. Let’s face it, my jism rarely travels further up a girl’s anatomy than her ankles.

  “Your tech start-up, Dylan. What other baby could we be talking about?” And then to Ramona: “Perhaps you could give us a few minutes.”

  The lack of a question mark is a big bulging mistake. Ramona puts up with so much shit from me, ain’t no room left for her to take it from anyone else. “Or how about you guys go hold your business meeting somewhere more suitable? Like, for instance, the 1950s” – slam-shutting her laptop even though it ain’t even switched on. “Besides, I need my room this morning. I’ve got a degree to study for so that I can be underemployed and forced to live in perpetual pre-adulthood with my mum.”

  Keep my arms under the duvet like as if I’m shamed of my hairy knuckles or something.

  “And, anyway,” Ramona presses on, “who the hell actually stands with their hands on their hips like that? You fellas been taking body-language lessons from ITV police dramas?”

  The botched-Botox man starts scoping out the Pinterest situation going on across Ramona’s opposite wall. The fotos, the poems and the pizza flyers. A laminated copy of her Blu Tack permit. Leaning in closer like he’s doing that pinch-to-zoom thing. Postcards, leaflets, ticket stubs – random shit from random things round London we’ve somehow managed to do together. A gig, a film, Somerset House ice rink. Fridge magnet of a book we read for GCSE English. Nando’s, Tate Modern, selfishness, Wagamama, subterfuge and deception, a flyer for the LSE Ideas Fest. Tapping his foot in time with the gig ticket. Nodding at each post like it’s firing up memories. Hands behind his back, fingers working his string of meditation beads.

  “Well, go on then, Dillon, tell your two bum-chum business buddies to get out my room.”

  Some new flyer up on her wall I ain’t ever noticed before – some famous music person she hasn’t schooled me up on yet. Some grime or hip-hop or rock or roadworks or sirens or life support. Never thinks any less of me, though, just corrects me and moves on: “No Dillon, Kanye West and Yeezy are the same person. And Kafka was a novelist not an Organisational Management theorist.”

  I’m hitting some whole new level of limpdick gimpery today, though. Problem is I just woke up. Ain’t that I’m not a morning person or nothing, it’s just I only ever dream as Dhilan.

  “Well? Tell them, Dillon.”

  Her mouth like when she hates posing for Instagram pics. Arms too open to fold, too closed to plead. Then inadvertently drawing attention to her underwear by snatching it off the radiator rack and shoving it in a desk drawer. She scrolls through her facial expressions – from sad to angry to nothing. But ain’t neither of the men even notices her face. Or the way her dressing gown barely even encryptionates her body as she grabs some clothes, slips on some heels, tells the younger old man to move away from her door, clicks out of her own room.

  *

  Now an ad for a detachable lumbar support. A story about jellyfish. The Big Tech firms sucking enough data from my fingers to know when I feel spineless or insecure or just in need of a self-esteem signal-boost. Anyways, fuck my fones – the pain below my shoulder blade gives me the clarity of backbone to tell the men to leave, go, get the fuck out of Ramona’s room: “Please, I think it would be better if both of you left.”

  “Little bit late for chivalry, kid.” Blankpage-Botox man leans against Ramona’s desk, hands touching her drawers. Same necktie he wore yesterday but he’s swapped out his sharkskin blue suit for a three-button charcoal-grey. Some scar on the sleeve that needs stitching.

  Take a swig from last night’s Red Bull then jack up my voice so that Ramona’ll hear me if she’s hanging in the corridor: “So I take it you two fellas still wanna buy my start-up, then?”

  “Only because you still want to sell it to us,” goes the blankpage-Botox man. “How much did you want for it again, Dylan?”

  “Ain’t want nothing from you two.”

  “Well that’s not very much, is it?”

  I tell them ain’t got time for all this beating-around-the-bullshit. Even try milking the fact that today I got me a stage-prop to back me up, lowering the duvet a little and jabbing at the dressing across my general breast area: “See? Can you grandpas see this? I got an injury problem here. I need to go get me a tetanus injection before the doctor’s surgery shuts.”

  “You had a ten-year tetanus booster two years ago,” goes the botched-Botox man.

  “I told you guys yesterday: you can’t scare me by knowing everything about me. I run a tech start-up, remember – I know how the digital economy works.”

  “And as we told you yesterday, we’d very much like to buy your little typing business.”

  “But if that’s what all this bullshit’s really about, then why the hell you just tell Ramona to leave?”

  “We didn’t.” The botched-Botox man now sitting at the other end of the mattress – embedded smell of Ramona’s Sudocrem doing hand-to-hand combat with his cologne. “We simply asked her to give us a minute. You were the one who told her to go – by not asking her to stay. In fact, all we did was ask her to give us a minute.”

  Other man picks up one of Ramona’s stray TV-watching slipper-socks, sniffs the sock, then stuffs it in his pocket. Starts fucking about with her make-up kit, which basically just consists of lip balm and a spare tub of Sudocrem – i.e. the smell of her smiling. The way that she smiles sometimes. And that ouching in my chest right now? It’s just the shoe injury thing, okay? I just need a better technique for kissing her feet from a supine position.

  The two aged-out men continue longing out their General-Purpose Threatening Behaviour while I weigh up whether to just level with them. Voluntary disclosure. After all, I ain’t some gimpshit idiot who takes a whole week and five scenes to figure out that maybe there might be a link between two separate up-the-arse headfucks. Ain’t got that kinda time. All I’d have to do is just ask the old men a straight question – the obvious question, the honest question, the question that jumped me last night while I was walking back from work. Does all this bully-boy badassery of theirs have something to do with the fact that apparently my dad once worked for one of my data-entry clients? I’d have to cut out the vagueness – tell em straight out that he wrote for the newspaper where I’m helping fix up up some digital archive. How I’d stumbled into his name in an old version of the staff directory, even though there’s diddly-fuck all info about him on Google. Even though I’m for sure the man’s always worked in insurance. Problem is, with these two goons, best probable outcome would be a trick answer to my straight question. Allow it – if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s keeping shit on the sly.

  “Listen, fellas, why don’t—”

  “Why don’t cats like being held?” the blankpage-Botox man cuts me off. “Why don’t cellphones have thermometers? Why don’t men ever listen to women?”

  Botched-Botox man holds his finger to his mouth like as if to say mute the fuck up. Then he leans in and sniffs the mattress. “Seems that you’ve rejected our masturbating advice. That’s a pity, kid. Our advice was freely given. You’ve no idea how excruciating it is to watch you fuck up your love life for the rest of your life.” Pats the bed like he wants me to shift down next to him. I do practically the opposite. “Dylan, you realise your mother isn’t like Google or Facebook, right? Which means she won’t even know that you don’t actually fuck Ramona. So she won’t be any more inclined to approve. Or any less inclined.”

  “I thought you guys wanted me to leave her alone and masturbate?”

  He hands me a Volvic instead of the Red Bull. I pop a painkiller instead of a Pro-Plus. “Just pick a path and commit to it, kid. Otherwise all this mother–son madness of yours will become hardwi
red instead of merely being your default setting. And I’m not just referring to your phobias and perversions, I mean this whole damn thing, Dylan – the whole tiresome hating-whatever-you-love shtick.”

  Bothers me that he thinks I’d be so easily taken in by his whole kind-and-caring Uncle Phil routine. Not cos it means he reckons I’m an idiot, but cos it’s exactly how I’d want him to roll. I mean if I were tripping. Delusionating. Okay, if I were just making these dudes up. Kinda blatant this time – them showing up while I’m lying in bed, like one of my mummy’s lucid dreams.

  “You guys ain’t for real, are you?”

  “You doubt our seriousness, Dylan?”

  “No, I doubt your existence. When I say you ain’t for real, I mean as in you ain’t actually there. I don’t need to be in an M. Night Shyamalan film to have already wised up and worked that shit out.”

  I watch both men closely for any signs of panic, mayhem and meltdown caused by my devastating powers of deduction.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t be so insipid,” goes the botched-Botox man. “The clock is ticking and you’re wasting time looking for a humdrum plot twist to get you out of this. Meanwhile the clock is ticking.”

  Blankpage-Botox man has to scrunch up a pair of Ramona’s knickers just to stop himself from facepalming. Then he face-palms anyway – sneaking a sniff as he does so. And, yeh, I know I should probly stand up for Ramona’s honour or something. Do that whole gallantry thing. But who the fuck would I be kidding?

  “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, Dylan, but my associate and I are both men of flesh and blood. Well, perhaps also a bit of Botox, but then you guessed that much the first time you saw us. In any case, follow the logic of your laughable suggestion. Even if you seriously think we’re just some figment of one of your fictional online personas, you’re forgetting that your fictional personas are real. They even have real-life girlfriends made of flesh and menstrual blood.”