Cronix

by James Hider

  Glenn looked in the full-length mirror of the closet. As usual, his own reflection caused his spirits to slump even further. He pulled his crumpled tee-shirt up.

  “Does having man boobs really mean I can’t have a destiny?” he asked the slob in front of him. A pair of Rick’s dumbbells stood in the corner of the room. Glenn hefted one to his shoulder, contemplated declaring war on his flab. Out in the corridor, he heard Rick’s footsteps, suddenly brisk with pharmaceutical vigor. The front door slammed. Glenn turned and looked out the window at the glittering, seductive lights beyond.

  He put down the dumbbell, then shuffled into the kitchen in search of a beer.

  ***

  In a vain attempt to convince himself he was not a parasite, Glenn started to run errands for his friend. Little things at first, since Rick’s life was already by and large a catered affair – popping out to the shops for beers or snacks, stocking up on toilet paper and kitchen towels, anything to earn his keep. Rick started leaving a bit of cash for such errands, and Glenn always scrupulously provided change and receipts, though his friend never evinced interest in either. Occasionally, if Rick was in a rush to head out and was short of cash, or if Max caught him without the readies, Glenn would shoot down to the bank machine and withdraw a sleek wad of fifties. It helped ease the guilt and Glenn hoped it might put off the day when he became a burden to be cast off.

  As weeks stretched into months, the tactic bore fruit: Rick started to rely on him. His reliance on Max was also increasing. The dealer’s visits were ever more frequent and Rick became more slovenly in his personal upkeep. Glenn got into the habit of rising early to ensure his host was out of bed in time for work, with a freshly laundered suit and shirt, as well as polished shoes. Amid jokes about Glenn becoming his butler, the parasitic relationship slowly achieved a reassuring symbiosis, and Glenn's anxiety decreased in proportion to Rick’s growing reliance.

  As he felt more relaxed about his immediate future, his creative urges slowly returned. Glenn found himself tinkering with long-dormant ideas for projects while Rick was at work, or in the evenings when the restless trader was out prowling the city.

  He wanted to talk to Rick about the drugs, but never quite found the time. He assumed it must normal in the circles in which he moved.

  He knew his little services enabled Rick to carry on in his semi-dazed state. But on the other hand, it also allowed him to carry on supporting them both. Slowly, the guilt and anxiety yielded to a contentment that he had not felt for years. He had no discernible future, for sure, but for the first time that seemed not to matter. He was simply there, cruising, free of ambition, shriven of any looming destiny.

  ***

  “Hey, look here,” said Rick, a breakfast glass of mimosa in his hand. It was Sunday morning and he was sitting at the marble bar in the kitchen area. Glenn bustled around, picking up last night’s empties. Rick had dark circles under his eyes, and Glenn guessed he would probably retreat to his bedroom soon.

  “’Scientific research shows that a drunken bender stimulates the same parts of the subconscious brain that Buddhists activate when entering a state of Nirvana,” he read from the mag, one of the men’s lifestyle glossies he was addicted to. “’So slammed students who claim to have found the meaning of life when staggering home at night from parties, then wake up the next morning and can't remember what it was, aren't lying -- it really is a form of enlightenment.’ I knew it. I bloody well knew it.”

  “Well, we must have been close to Enlightenment last night, judging by this lot,” Glenn said, clanking the trash bag. “What time did you guys go to bed, anyway?”

  “Oh, few hours after you, I think. Sorry for waking you up, mate.”

  “’No worries,” muttered Glenn. “It’s your place after all.” Realizing how self-pitying the phrase sound, he quickly added, “Don't know how your liver stands it.”

  “Practice, my friend,” Rick smiled, gulping down the hair-of-the dog. “And according to this article, the scars on my liver are ‘merely the stigmata borne of the inability of the body to support the chemical enlightenment of drugs and liquor.’ Awesome.” He nodded happily.

  “Okay, I’m gonna take this lot for recycling,” Glenn called down the hallway. “Gonna take your car.”

  “Right you are,” shouted back Rick. “Keys are on the table.”

  Glenn rode the mirrored lift to the underground parking. Rick’s silver BMW 650i convertible stood in its reserved spot, his gleaming red Ducati 1098 next to it. Glenn liked these Sunday morning runs to the bottle bank or supermarket – it was the only chance he got to drive Rick’s sleek motor, and he was always surprised at the simple rush of pleasure driving such a car induced.

  He pulled up in the empty lot of the supermarket. It was quiet, just a few families trailing shopping trolleys across the tarmac. He noted the jealous glance of a middle-aged shopper with howling kids as he slid past, a glimmering shark among the tuna of family hatchbacks.

  It was late summer now, the leaves fringed with brown and the sky a bowl of blue. An odd feeling of freedom made him feel like taking the car for a spin before heading home. Rick wouldn’t mind: he was probably already back in bed.

  Glenn gunned the car up Pentonville Road, heading for Hampstead with the roof open to the late morning breeze, music cranked up loud. The roads were quiet, and he sped along leafy avenues and through red-brick council estates, the changing moods of London flitting past. The car smelled of leather, Carolina Hererra aftershave and a trace of cannabis.

  He stopped parked in Primrose Hill, near cafes just filling up with Sunday brunchers. He walked up to the emerald heath and looked down on the vista of London: he could make out the smoked glass tower where Rick was no doubt slumbering again. Glenn smiled: it looked so different to the grey, rainswept landscape he had inhabited months before.

  He had a coffee and a sandwich in one of the street cafes, paid for by the small change from Rick's hall table. A modest extravagance, but all he needed on such a beautiful day.

  The apartment was silent when he returned. He loaded the dishwasher, swabbed the counters with a cloth and slumped on the couch with the Sunday papers. He was soon asleep.

  It was half-dark when he awoke, the orange glow of the city staining the ceiling of the apartment. The clock said 7:15pm. He flicked on the television and watched a documentary about house renovations. It was the time of evening when he was prey to easy boredom, when Rick was out and he was alone with nothing to do. He checked his email. No messages again. He paced the twilit apartment, walked into Rick’s room and put on the light. He immediately mumbled an apology when he saw his flat mate was still crashed out on his bed. He went and drew himself a bath, undressing and wrapping himself in a white towel.

  Afterwards, he could not explain how he had known something was wrong. Only that he was sure something was. Hot water gushed from the tap as he crept back and knocked at his friend’s door.

  “Rick?” he said. “Rick, you awake?” No answer. He walked in and gently turned the body over on the bed.

  “Oh shit,” he said. It was as eloquent a eulogy as the dead trader was ever likely to get. Glenn stumbled out the bedroom and stood in the hall. Tears trickled down his cheeks and he knew they weren’t for Rick. He was too wretched to cry for his friend. No, these were pools of self-pity, borne of the knowledge that he was alone again, that this sanctuary was gone for good. He reeled to the sofa, blind with a sniveling, infantile despair.

  Glenn lay inert a long time, as the water in the bath cooled and the semi-darkness of the city night eventually congealed into grey dawn. He didn’t rush to call an ambulance: it was clear that Rick was dead, or at least that was what he kept telling himself. His face had been rigid and white, as alien as something in cold cuts counter.

  Dawn brought him to himself. Glenn was relieved to find he was, after all, sad for this man he had known since childhood. Not a crippling sadness, he admitted: he had felt sadder about the passing of childhood pets
, but sad enough to make himself feel less self-centered.

  Of course, the question now was, what the hell was he going to do?

  He had until seven, when alarms sprang into life and the city rousted itself, before he had to call an ambulance. That phone call would cut the umbilical that had kept him safe and warm in Rick’s drug-fueled world, high above the cares of the metropolis.

  He weighed his options: another wet autumn, then winter, bearing down. No money, no job, no prospects. Rick’s family might take a couple of weeks to wrap up his affairs, put the flat on the market. They might let Glenn stay during that time. But what then? Either go back to his parents, or sleep rough, maybe find a squat. Jesus, he was slipping through society like the bedraggled people he saw begging at the Tube.

  The first flare of orange sun caught him with his face pressed against the glass overlooking the balcony.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered to the sunrise.

  The following minutes passed like a dream, partly from lack of sleep, but mainly from the knowledge that Glenn had irrevocably crossed some boundary when he failed to call an ambulance. He was busy, and that helped: he only stopped once, briefly, to stare at his palm, searching for the destiny line that Cathy Dunswick had divined so long ago.

  He tossed the contents of the fridge into black refuse sacks. Taking a steadying shot of 25-year-old Bowmore’s, he returned to Rick's room and hefted the body by the armpits. The first steps Glenn took towards his new destiny were shuffling backwards through the spotless kitchen, dragging his old school pal to the empty refrigerator.

  Once he had the corpse settled inside, he paused. There was still some single malt in the glass. He lifted it to his lips. A voice inside his head repeated the same refrain, over and over again. The artist becomes Hitler. A muscle beneath his right eye went into a sudden, violent spasm and he raised a hand to calm it. The tic kept twitching under his fingers, unstoppable. Then he knew it was his own voice he was hearing.

  The artist becomes Hitler.

  He raised the glass and drank it dry.

  ***

  It was dark already when Professor Poincaffrey suggested they wrap it up for the day. Lost in his story, Oriente realized he had been talking for hours. He felt as if he had been watching the tale unfold before him, memories untouched for years suddenly blossoming into life. He could briefly smell the odor of Rick’s flat, a long-ago tincture of lemon-zest floor cleaner, cigarette smoke and leather upholstery. The olfactory memory vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  The academics shook his hand, promising the session would resume in the morning. In the hubbub, like the end of the lecture, Oriente heard one of the professors exclaiming, “Extraordinary, just extraordinary.”

  Hencock seemed less impressed. As he passed him at the door, Oriente heard the inspector asking Poincaffrey how he could know all of this. “After all, he wasn’t there, was he? He wasn’t there with this man…Glenn, was he?”

  “I don’t know, commissioner,” replied Poincaffrey, getting his rank wrong in his rush to escape the dull bureaucrat. “I’m sure all will be revealed in due course.”

  Snubbed, Hencock stepped up to Oriente and took him lightly by the elbow. “This way, Mr Oriente. There’s a vehicle waiting.”

  Agent Demarra escorted Oriente back to the hospital. In the overgrown, barely lit streets, Oriente could make out virtually nothing of the city. Most buildings were long gone – the conservationists concentrated only on those of designated historical value, though some carried out side-projects in their spare time, maintaining a house or pub they might once have loved, before the Exodus. Occasionally, the DPP car would emerge from the darkness and trees into a half-lit square of stone terraces, ivy grasping at the facades.

  Demarra bade him goodnight at the hospital. There was a guard at the door, Oriente noticed. Passing the nurses’ station, he peeked in to see if Lola was on duty, but there were two nurses he did not know. He went to his room, undressed and lay in the dark.

  The next morning was foggy, the mist tangled in the trees that stood thick around the hospital grounds. Lola burst in at seven, face bright and showing no trace of the early hour.

  “Morning sweetie,” she said, setting down a steaming breakfast tray. Bacon, fried eggs, grilled mushrooms with toast. “Full English, my friend. If you weren’t sick before, you will be after this lot,” she said, stealing a mushroom.

  “Hi Lola,” Oriente said, grabbing the coffee before she pilfered that too. “Why are you here so goddam early? I don’t have to be at the Delpy till ten.”

  “There’s a demonstration this morning on the bridge, so I had to get in early because some of the roads were going to be closed. A couple of local kids were killed by a Cronix a few days back, up in Hackney. The families organized a protest, say they don't want any more downloads until the system's fixed. They say there are way too many Cronix and scolds out in the woods right now.”

  Odd, Oriente thought: Guld had said the same thing back in Dorking. He remembered the desiccated human skulls he had seen dangling from the belt of the Cronix near Fitch’s monument. The protesters’ demands seemed eminently reasonable.

  He snapped off half a rasher of bacon and chewed on it as she sat and stared at him. “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she shrugged. “Just finished my job for the morning. Got nothing better to do than watch you stuff your face.”

  “Don’t you have any other patients? What about the Muerte down the hall?”

  “Oh him. Nah, they took him off to jail yesterday, while you were out. Good riddance too.” Her mood suddenly brightened again. “Hey, I saw Quinn last night for a drink. He said you were great. A real star.” She laughed, a throaty gurgle like an enthusiastic baby. Oriente stopped chewing.

  “He’s a good looking boy,” he said. “You picked well.”

  “I always pick well,” she said. “Anyway, he told me everything, though he wasn’t supposed to. I’m not sure why he was so excited by your story. Just sounded like some loser who ended up putting his dead friend in a fridge. Why would everyone get so worked up about that? Was the guy some kind of a criminal?”

  Oriente swallowed his bacon. “No. Just confused. And alone.” He stabbed his egg with a piece of toast. “I’d tell you more, Lola, but I’ve been ordered to keep shtumm by the professors.”

  “Okay,” she shrugged. “I’ll get it all tonight from Quinn anyway. I’m gonna see him at the Casa Roja. Best food in town, if you can call this place a town. Mostly trees and ruins. Pretty depressing.”

  “Really? I rather like it,” said Oriente. As he wiped the last grease from his plate with his toast, she picked up the tray.

  “There, finished for the day,” she said. “Tough job, nursing.”

  ***

  As the Airbus began its descent to Newark, the large gentleman sitting across the almost empty first-class cabin from Glenn hailed the stewardess as she made a last run with the duty-free trolley. The man was casually dressed, in black jeans and a dark sweatshirt that refused to hide an expanse of a white belly. He spoke to the stewardess in a thick Slavic accent and pointed to an item listed in the duty free brochure.

  “The Chanel, sir? Certainly.” He immediately flipped a page and pointed a thick finger again. “The Macallan? One bottle, sir?” The man grunted, lifted two digits. “Two bottles? Anything else sir?” For the next five minutes, he rustled his way through the brochure, pointing out whatever took his fancy. More perfume, colognes, wines and watches, paid for with a carelessly proffered platinum card.

  Glenn watched with a thrill of anticipation. Who knew what crumbling post-Soviet economy had been looted by this monosyllabic lump, so that he could cruise at 30,000 feet and indulge his every whim? Had Glenn been sitting back in economy, his knees numb and his back stiff as he peeked through the curtain into this other world, he would no doubt have found some scathing comment about his imperious attitude. But this time, Glenn was sitting here right next to him, and could, if he had
so desired, have similarly strip-mined the duty-free brochure.

  Against the expectations of so many years, he had slipped back into life: some rusted gear had mysteriously been re-engaged. He was moving, the world was speeding by and New York City was reaching up through the clouds to embrace him. He smiled politely as he asked the stewardess for one last gin and tonic.

  He knew he should have felt guilty, but couldn’t muster remorse. He hadn’t killed Rick any more than the ogre next to him had brought down Communism. He had simply manipulated a situation, and just as his fellow traveler had escaped the smokestack ruins of a bankrupt empire, so Glenn had taken what would not be missed by its former owner and done his own flit. Besides, history was just one long litany of sociopaths doing and getting, while saner people poured on scorn and wondered why they hadn’t done and got themselves. He wasn’t Hitler after all, he told himself, he was still an artist. A con artist.

  As he nursed his brimming drink, the ice vibrating pleasingly against the glass as the plane surfed cotton wool cumulus, Glenn smiled at his own re-invention. No: his own rebirth.

  After interring Rick in his icy tomb, Glenn had gone through the drawers in his flat mate’s bedroom. He knew Rick kept a small black notebook that he occasionally consulted when he forgot a PIN number or password. He found them on the inside of the last page and copied them on a scrap of paper.

  Armed with the numbers and the cards he had taken from Rick’s wallet, he set out. It was still early, and there was no one about. At the first bank machine he came to, he took out the cards and the piece of paper, tapped in a code with a card. It was rejected. The muscular spasm beneath his right eye flared up again, but he meticulously inserted each credit card, using the same PIN number, until the machine spewed out a neat wad of twenties.