The Gatekeeper

by Nuraliah Norasid

  5116 CE

  Sketch

  The art director called for a time check and was told, “Three-thirty.” The photographer directed Eedric to gaze at the red fire extinguisher behind him in the studio space. Eedric focused on it only cursorily while he mentally calculated the amount of time it would take for him to reach the casting later at 4.20. The manager at the agency wanted to write off the casting, deciding that the “timing was too tight” and that this inane magazine Eedric was regularly modelling for was more important than a small, but growing, start-up.

  Eedric was not too quick to write it off yet. Not because he had a soft spot for the “small fish in a big motherfucking ocean” type of guys (or that these ones professed more ethical trade practices, because the fuck you think those are real?), but because his greatest folly was that he wanted—and he believed that he was able—to do as many things in a day as he possibly could. That he could also do everything right in any one day: ace this photo shoot, then change into his own clothes, sling his sturdy backpack over his shoulder and get to the next casting, on time, preferably early, by bus or the CTT, city train—as most efficient urban dwellers do—instead of resorting to the taxi or private hire car service. For the 12th time that week. And it was not even Friday.

  A spot below Eedric’s cheekbone itched and he tried to scratch it while the photographer was looking through previous shots in the program opened on his laptop. He did so subtly and gently, taking care not to upset the foundation that he suspected was the problem in the first place.

  The photographer turned back to him, adjusted his camera lens and assured him, “Okay just a few more shots and I think we’re good.” Eedric smoothly transitioned into another pose to the snap and whirr of the capturing instrument. He was in a blazer, beneath which he had on a very thin shirt with an extra deep V-neck, so deep that he had to have foundation applied to his chest and “accentuated” by contouring.

  With every flicker and whirr, Eedric would change to a slightly different pose, sometimes with artistic direction and sometimes without: tilt head a little further up, down, move to the side; bend arms, cross arms, hands in pockets, hands pretending to adjust sleeves to show off the watch, lean back weight on one foot, lean forward. Shift this here, shift that there.

  Change into a different wardrobe a few times.

  “Wardrobe” was a rack of clothes just off the white area demarcated for photographing. Two women were stationed as wardrobe assistants, doing the mundane work of steaming and arranging the sets, coming forward with a belt or pins where any were needed. The women themselves were of little consequence to Eedric: fresh tertiary school types, early twenties, in some dress or whatever rag that could pass them off as acolytes of the fashionable and the avant-garde. Which was pretty much every fresh tertiary school type in the country these days. They would not have got his attention. Not a whit, if it had not been for the fact that they had been chatting non-stop since he got there, and as the clock ticked nearer and nearer to the time that he needed to leave, the louder their voices seemed to become.

  It was also as if every sound in the space grew increasingly magnified. The responding buzz of every letter that was typed as the art director, leaning now on the table with the laptop and camera lenses, replied to a message on her smart phone. The creak of the photographer’s new sneakers as he shifted his weight and position to take the right shots. The rhythmic purring of the cold-as-fuck Ristrom air-conditioning, just above him, a little past his left ear. The studio walls closing in faster and faster as was what had been muffled became a world of sounds, so unnervingly close, so knife sharp. There was a buzz, farther out in the mess of cubicles and daily repetition, of voices, phones ringing, fingers typing on keys, people laughing over the coffee machine as the liquid cascaded in a thin stream into a plastic cup that was placed a little off of the circle centre. A car drove away from the pick-up point on a road that was in bad need of re-tarring. And above it all, there were the two girls chatting on and on about a colleague, that shitty service at some vacation and, as it turned out, about him:

  “Wow, the model today is a fine piece of…”

  “Heard he has a reputation though…”

  “Oooh, for what?”

  “Bad temper. A bit weird, I heard.”

  “But he looks all right leh—”

  The blood started to pump in his ears as his heart rate accelerated. The photographer was snapping his fingers now—focus, Eedric, focus. No, no, you’re frowning too much. Smile lah, brother, smile. And there was only that low growling, growing in his throat, emanating from somewhere deep within him. There was a tightness around his face and he knew it was not very much longer before things—no, before he was going to be a problem. He bit at the inside of his bottom lip, as if the pain was ever going to help if he did not get to his suppressant medication before he—

  “Okay, I think that is enough shots for the spread.” The art director’s words could not have been spoken by a better angel. She still gave him that wary eye as she and the photographer concluded the shoot with a few quick scans of the photos that had been taken, but at least she knew when they had to stop. Eedric went over to the wardrobe rack, shrugging out of the blazer as he did. The girl he handed it to gazed up at him, fluttering her lashes and smiling, as if that was going to make her endearing. Her shirt was sheer and underneath it she had on a lacy black bra. He tore his eyes away, peeled the shirt off with the swiftness of someone whose clothes were burning him up and, after throwing on the T-shirt he had on when he came in and removing the eyeliner and foundation with the make-up wipes that the other assistant handed to him, he was off. 3.55pm. He was going to need a cab.

  The studio shared the glossy Abbett Kros Building with other companies and magazine titles, and the building itself was situated on the outskirts of Manticura’s financial district. One would think that a cab would be a common sight in an area of busy people and no sit-down restaurants or cafés, but Eedric could not see any on the roads. He waited, peering up and down the street, until the anxiety and the anger from the waiting and the thrumming in his ears became too much. He pivoted away from the roadside, nearly running into a pedestrian who seemed as much in a rush to get somewhere as he was. Eedric bared his teeth at the man before running off to a narrow side street, not wanting to see the expression on the guy’s face—likely one of shock and fear. It would not be the first time. No, no, it would not be the first time.

  Eedric ran headlong into the side street and lashed out at the first large trash bin he saw. His fist was alien in its largeness as it met and dented the green side of the bin, his fingers elongated into talons and the nails long enough to dig into the skin of his palms. There was a coarse quality to his breathing and he must have rasped a barely discernible curse or two, venting his frustrations on the goddamned marbled wall, before he was calm enough to prop himself up against it, gazing up at the strip of sky between the two high rises he found himself trapped between.

  Why does it have to be so bloody blue? He thought that only because he was tired of always asking, Why the fuck does it keep happening to me?

  It was several determined intakes of breath later before his heart rate was normal again. He took his phone out then, and with a sense of deep shame opened the application to call for a private car service. Something he should have done if he had had any sense of himself at all.

  At Sunday family brunch, Eedric felt like an undergraduate in morning lecture again. The words uttered around him meant little as his head and eyes fought off their tired drooping.

  His mind drifted. He could be in his room with a tumbler full of coffee finishing that fetch quest in the game he was playing last night, or pushing his Alchemy skill to a hundred and crafting monster sleep poisons with a thousand damage points. His hands felt weighted by the ghost of a console controller. His right leg began shaking to a monotonous hum in his head. And then he stopped himself, remembering where he was.

  The doors leading out to
the patio of potted bougainvillea and summer lounge chairs were left open, inviting in the heat and still air of the Manticurean dry season. Beyond the glass screen of the dining enclave, the swimming pool glowed in the manicured green like an aurora in the polar night. The ceiling fan spun slowly. A sweat droplet tracked down Eedric’s back. Father and Stepmother sat across from him. Beside him, in a pale summer dress, was his girlfriend Adrianne. Conversation was flowing. There were eggs on her plate, sunny side up and sprinkled with pepper.

  He took to watching her, this perfect, airbrushed creature. Her complexion was always even and her high cheekbones tinged with pink. No stains on her teacup. Eedric swore her lipstick was tattooed on. Her gossamer hair, which had been recently curled, was pulled back from her face and held by a bejewelled barrette. Her nose continued to remain matte. But she glowed. His eyes drifted back to the pool, face constricting. Eedric was sure that her glow had UV radiation.

  “It’s very nice outside, isn’t it, Jon?” Adrianne asked, turning to him.

  Eedric’s infant of a yawn died midway in his throat. He had been rocking his chair on its two back legs. His mouth snapped closed and he lurched forward, bringing the levitating front legs down hard on the carpeted floor.

  “Yeah,” he replied as he straightened up in his chair. Absolutely, whatever you say.

  He glanced across the table to meet Stepmother’s severely lined, staring eyes, and wondered at their colour: burning like the sky on a scorching day, and always staring, always reprimanding.

  “What do you plan on doing today, Jonathan?”

  Eedric turned to Father, whose own eyes were onyx set in a tanned face creasing into itself.

  Father had a way of asking questions so that whatever you replied with meant you were still screwed anyway. “You have homework, Jonathan?” simply meant, “Yes? Let me see you try something harder, something other kids couldn’t do,” or, “No? No homework? Then there’s time for extra tuition sessions or piano lessons, isn’t there?”

  Father was pedantic about private tutors being only elite university scholars Eedric saw more of than family. And despite the music school graduates being from fancy countries, Eedric continued to play the piano and the violin as if he had Tuyun fingers. Or so Father liked to say.

  “It’s a Sunday,” Eedric pointed out, “so, nothing much”. As if obligated, he added, “Job interview, though. Tomorrow.”

  He waited for a scoffing exhale of breath from the older man, but Father only nodded behind his cup of coffee, staring into it as he drank. Eedric turned his own eyes away once again, and saw a couple passing through the narrow back gate of the estate. Their brown-and-blue striped su(ma) roc, the semi-amphibious marshland sub-species of the loyal pet, paused to sniff at the hinges. The roc’s shorter back legs made it appear squat and its spiked, dorsal fin was drooping to the side, the tips almost touching the animal’s body. Its tongue lolled out from a face flattened from years of artificial selection. Eedric wondered what the owners were thinking walking a su(ma) roc in this weather. The animal should be in an indoor habitat, soaking in a pool of water with the right amount of minerals mixed in for it to absorb through its skin. The man tugged at the leash. The roc fought against the tug, continuing to sniff at the gate, before relenting. Then the couple and the roc were gone.

  Gone to the rocs, that was what Father thought of him. Getting interviewed for jobs that did not involve selling his backside for men’s products seemed to be his only real career. And damn, was Eedric a professional.

  Eedric knew what it looked like: all the money Father had invested to groom him for elite society thrown out the window by his vanity. He was, in the old man’s mind, every bit his Mama’s son.

  Eedric had had jobs before, common ones peddling insurance to people on the streets, in underground linkways, or as far inside the CTT stations as he could go before the security guards asked him to leave. Out of a hundred in a passing crowd, one would care to stop, and out of a hundred who stopped and gave their contacts at the end of the survey and a hollow speech about the mileage of a savings plan, there was a twenty per cent probability they’d given fake numbers and fake names. By his calculation, less than one per cent were genuinely interested, though to be perfectly honest, he didn’t know if it was in the plan or his flirting ass. The rest turned faces away, thrusting their palms out before he could even utter a word of introduction. Most had their eyes fixed to their phone screens or the floor. And Eedric would have to push his face into their personal space just to get a greeting in.

  Being ignored was fine. He was getting used to it. Those smartarsey, hippie types with their guilt-buying anti-capitalist, anti government tripe? He hated.

  Still, he could handle all of that, the lectures, the ignoring, but one woman some months back made him throw in the towel. Maybe he ought to have stopped his approach when he saw the worn hoodie and the hands that were balled into pockets, and the closed way she had walked as if she was a tightly wound cocoon, afraid of contact. Scerean. Then again, maybe he’d been so close to snapping his tether that he couldn’t care less about the “warning signs” that his seniors had advised him to watch out and not stop for.

  Her name was Arah—funny name—and she earned about a thousand a month, all paychecks combined. Marital status? Married, she’d said. Three children, husband serving time. All of that alone should have been good reasons to smile and wish her a nice day, but she had regarded him with such tired kindness that he’d felt it only right he returned the favour. She answered him simply. No rudeness, no contempt. Her features were pleasant enough, in the characteristic, latter generation Scerean sort of way: dry, army green scales; large eyes, string-and-knot pupils; flattened nostrils attached to the end of a long bridge that stretched from forehead nearly to the chin; permanently pursed dry lips; distinctive brow plates made out of partially overlapping scales, and high, prominent cheekbones. A pale cleft at the top of her head resembled horns and these closed up into blunted knobs down the back of her skull. She was tall, slim and swaybacked from the inverted knees and elongated calves that were throwbacks to the earlier, more dragon-like manifestations of her race. The worn look of her scales made her appear much older than her proclaimed 25 years of age.

  She replied to his questions on her saving habits with: “No savings.”

  “Oh.” He could only stand there, clasping his clipboard against his belt buckle. He felt stupid. “You still need savings, though. Just in case,” he tried.

  She smiled. “Not easy ah.”

  “I see,” he said.

  A corner of her lips curled and she regarded him with a brazen head-to-toe sweep. She shook her head and then asked him, “You have a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “My husband, he broke into five cars before they catch him,” she revealed. She paused, considered, then gave him a nod. Lightly patting his arms, she told him, “A lot of bad people in the world, son. A lot of poor people too.”

  He had been the one to turn away first, in pretence of trying to find someone else to survey.

  Son, he had thought and almost spat. Always “son”—child and not relation.

  Silence had descended on the table. Adrianne lifted her cup to her lips and kept it there for a longer time than anyone needed to take a sip so dainty. Stepmother was doing the same while Father stared out to the pool, his hand fisted at his mouth.

  Finally, Eedric sighed and said to Adrianne, “Do you want to go somewhere?”

  He pushed his chair back before Adrianne could answer and stretched his hand down to her. Adrianne lowered her cup. Eedric saw her wince when it clinked with the saucer, before she took his hand and stood up, clutching her tiny purse. Her eyes swept over the table apologetically.

  “There are Mist sales going on in town,” Stepmother said to Adrianne. “Let me know how low the prices are and maybe we can go check it out.”

  “Of course! Sure!” Adrianne chirped.

  Eedric started to walk away just as Father to
ok a stick out of his cigarette case. From behind him came clicks from Father’s lighter, followed by a final resounding one when the ornate cap was snapped back into place.

  Sounds could well be amplified in the house because everything about it was large, from the rooms to the sofas, as if it was meant for beings larger than the average Human. Eedric could not help but feel as if his every step echoed and his every reach short of touch. He preferred the closeness of Mama’s flat where he used to stay on weekends. It was a small flat with only two bedrooms. One Mama shared with his grandmother. The other was for his uncle and doubled as a place to keep the mattress that Eedric slept on when he visited.

  He missed staying over, missed even the fawning of his grandmother who never remembered his name, calling him various others like Rudin, Sultan, even Mariani once. He missed the scents of ginger, cinnamon and betel nut that could be detected no matter where in the flat he stood. There was always sound in the apartment even when everyone was asleep, for a radio was kept on to whisper the oldies throughout the day. His uncle was a big, gruff man who had never married. He spoke little, slinking into his room when he returned from his job as a general worker at the hospital, coming out later to watch the nine o’clock news on television. He built gaming computers as a hobby, sometimes for others. On weekends, the sounds of the games he played to try out his systems intermingled with radio songs and busy kitchen sounds. And Mama would sing along to the radio as she worked.

  His visits dwindled in the passing years, to the few public holidays and special occasions that Mama’s side celebrated until, when he’d completed his degree, they ceased altogether.