by Kerrie Noor
Pete shivered. Now as the sugar was leaving his system he was heading into the cold panicky stage, and the loss of the plugulator began to play on his mind. Hilda screeching about it didn’t help either; what was he to do? He could try to connect, discreetly speak to that nice Operator in the back, maybe she could help.
He looked out the window and stared at the cars speeding by; they looked so free and interesting, and not at all like what he had been told on Planet Hy Man. He turned to Woody. “Better than the stomach-churning dematerialization and/or transportation,” he muttered, attempting a bit of lighthearted banter.
Woody flashed a smile. He was starting to feel good. He was onto something, something that was definitely going to lead to somewhere. Woody had had that hunch since he came back from the bus stop; except at the bus stop, that hunch was of the horror-film, will-I-survive, am-I-going-mad” variety. Now he felt he was heading into a Terry Pratchett, possibly Star Trek, world of great and witty stories.
Woody was a teetotal, halfhearted Buddhist of minimum words with (up to now) a vague belief in karma. Now his karma had soared to new heights . . . all those years in the wilderness. He had been unemployed forever and had often felt like jumping off a bridge, and he may well have done if it wasn’t for medication. Now perhaps he could send the medication over the bridge, because he had, by his side, this man—or whatever he was, from wherever he was from—to help. What sort of story was he going to make, and how many words would his family have to eat when this baby of a tale got out? All those years of being called “a foolhardy dreamer,” of being told he was as thick as the slab of butter on Grandfather’s piece, not to mention all the other insults.
When Woody heard the commotion in the dressing room, he knew his gut feeling had not let him down, and as he picked up the odd words like Identities and plugulator, he knew he had stumbled onto something and found the fantasy he had been looking for.
He took out a notebook and began to write, like he always did when he had more words than he could speak.
Pete watched Woody open his notebook; it was full of handwritten words. He smiled to himself—and because he was a robot it really was to himself—perhaps he was not so “finished.” Woody had a pen and some paper and by the looks of things he could write, and Pete had total recall at his fingertips.
THE OPERATORS ROOM was in an upheaval. They were trying to restore connections while Beryl (ignorant but not blissful) stood at the back of the room asking why they were playing “elevator music” and “did anyone know anything about batteries and, if so, how long do they take to recharge on Earth?”
The Operator, while scrambling for coordinates, had realized that, thanks to Hilda, the lights had gone out and the silence button didn’t work. Every sound from the shed could be heard on the plugulator and there was no way of controlling it. The Operators were forced to come up with the only solution available to them: to drown out the noise with music—Quadraphonic Frank—Frank Sinatra’s songs played on a pipe organ. A leftover from the good old days when elevators required a small man to operate them.
While Hilda stomped out of the shed pretending that she had done nothing to the coordinates, the first in command ordered the voice from the back to search for the manual for demolishing without evidence—not an easy thing to do in a shed so dark you could not see the rim of your glasses.
The third in command slid on Frank Sinatra, or “our Frank,” as the operator liked to call him. Beryl entered.
“Regrets, I’ve had a few . . .” drowned out every noise going, including Beryl, who was now shouting, “You told me that recharging was not a problem on Earth.”
The Operators played deaf; they hadn’t the heart to tell her about Hilda playing Captain Kirk with the controls.
“Why is everything so dark in here?” Beryl yelled. “And what is she doing by the stairs?”
“Oh, it’s Vegas,” said the first in command, sticking her head out of the cupboard. “We think she has put a wire somewhere under the stairs . . .”
The secretary turned up the volume. “I did it my way!”
Beryl looked confused. “What; Vegas and her wears?”
“Vegas has planted a wire.”
Beryl sucked in her breath as the Operators waited on the reaction the first in command was banking on. Everyone knew that the mention of Vegas to Beryl had her distracted, wired, and hopefully ranting for at least half an hour, followed by an exit.
“Vegas, did you say?” shouted Beryl.
“Yes, ma’am,”
“That suck-up . . . what is she up to now? She’s so far up Hilda’s proverbial she could clean her teeth.” (A few pulled a face of disgust.) “If Hilda were to tell Vegas to lick a footman’s toe,” ranted Beryl, “she would—even though Vegas is too young to know what licking can do to a man.”
The secretary led Beryl back to the door.
“Loyalty oozes out of that Vegas like jam out of a doughnut.”
“Yes, yes, we all know about Vegas and her oozing,” said the secretary, maneuvering Beryl outside.
“That flathead wants to stick her nose in everything—before filtering.”
“Absolutely, ma’am.”
DJ SAT ON THE FERRY wondering what the hell was going on with whatever it was he was listening to. The voices had become muffled out by elevator music—organ music from the fifties, the sort that his father called crooning . . . .
“And now the end is near and as I face the final curtain . . .”
Every now and then the music was blocked out by a woman called “Sirness” or “ma’am” reading the riot act about “cost-cutting batteries” and “how long did ‘it’ take, for God’s sake?”
Then as her voice faded, another woman, called purely “ma’am,” began shouting for the “goddamn coordinates” and the “need to set some bait.”
DJ did doze off, and in his dream he played the church organ like a madman in a kilt that swung like a ship sail and on an organ so large he had to walk from one end of the keyboard to the other. His imagination, like his storytelling, had always been vivid, but his mother had never complained; in fact, she encouraged it.
DJ had visions and memories he told no one about, ever since his mother had told him the Story. His grandmother called his mother’s story a load of balls, but then his grandmother thought Star Trek was about mountain climbing for celebrities.
DJ started to think about the first time his mother told him the Story. She went all peculiar at the time, closing the windows and pulling the blinds, warning him if he told anyone she’d more than “box his ears.” DJ was only ten and had no idea what a box around the ears meant, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t like it. And when she turned the TV up so that the neighbors couldn’t hear, his heart started to pound. Was this a spy story? Was his mother a secret agent?
“It was a hedge like no other,” she had begun. “It was 1959, I remember it well . . .”
DJ hadn’t liked the sound of this . . . he held his breath and tried to close his ears, which was impossible, as his mother was holding his hands.
“On a hot afternoon, while huddled behind a hedge, Legless caught a glimpse of a woman in an apron and fluffy slippers. As she bent over her basket of washing, Legless stared at her small behind pressed against her nylon skirt and lust filled his loins. Surprised at his lust, he decided to take action, an action which had not been spoken about for years on his planet.”
The Story haunted him all through school, and for years DJ couldn’t face washing baskets full of clothes, fluffy slippers, or aprons.
Finally, when he came of age and attended his first Identities meeting, he began to understand what his mother was trying to tell him. In fact, one of the favorite pastimes of those who attended the meeting was retelling how their mothers had told them the Story. When times were tough it always got a good laugh.
Chapter Eighteen—The Second Connection
“SWINGING HAS NO AGE limit.” —an Identity, age unknown
&n
bsp; Pete and Woody got off the bus, walked to the top of Buchanan Street, and stood by the Donald Dewar statue. Pete by now didn’t look twice at such a figure; he had become accustomed to “men” everywhere and was beginning to think that looking at men wasn’t as unpleasant as those on Planet Hy Man made out. In fact, he was beginning to think that the Voted In and the like could do well to visit Scotland; a roll and sausage, according to Woody, could be a pleasant experience. And as for those who drive cars—he had seen a few smiling, some even listened to music, many as young as any he had seen in the Operators’ shed.
Pete enjoyed walking; it was so much more fun with a wig. He, against Woody’s advice, chose a wig that was blond and hung down his back, almost as long as Woody’s dreadlocks. And now Pete had completely fallen in love with the feel of long hair and used any excuse to toss, as he called it.
Woody and Pete stood outside the first coffee shop they came across—a café with not one cake to be seen, just empty tables and a sad-looking student staring into his phone.
“Shall we go in and wait?” said Woody, who was about to continue with a comment about the lack of tray bakes when . . .
Poof! Boom! Fizzle . . .
Pete, in mid nod, disappeared from the street and with a silent puff of smoke appeared at the window table inside the café. The student engrossed in his phone didn’t notice. No one did except for the homeless man (“ol’ fella,” as Pete would say) camped in the doorway. Woody stared at Pete through the window; Pete shrugged with a “wasn’t prepared for that one” look, followed by a “TV shampoo ad” flick of his hair.
Woody stared at his phone. Hadn’t it died?
“A fiver and I’ll keep my mouth shut,” coughed the ol’ fella with way too much phlegm to be healthy.
Woody turned his phone around. Did he press something?
“I said a tenner and I’ll no’ say anything.”
Woody pressed a few buttons. The ol’ fella let out a huge cough, Woody passed him a scrunched-up napkin from his pocket.
“Fifteen quid and your secret’s safe,” said the ol’ fella.
“What?” said Woody.
The ol’ fella with a face matching the scrunched-up napkin sniffed. “I know what I saw . . .”
“That person,” Woody said—with the wig, it was hard to tell if Pete was male or female—“is merely a magician, showing off.” He refused the return of the napkin with a wave of his hand.
The ol’ fella slid the napkin into his pocket. “I know what I saw!” he muttered.
Woody sighed; Pete was still waving from the table, as incognito as a boil on the tip of a nose mid eruption. He couldn’t be any more conspicuous if he tried, thought Woody. Even the ol’ fella in front of me, high on vodka, in the middle of a funeral could blend in better than Pete in an empty café.
Woody pulled from his knapsack the tray bakes from the Edinburgh coffee shop wrapped for his mother and handed them to the ol’ fella, with a “that will keep your trap shut” comment.
The ol’ fella, unimpressed, gave the man, woman, or whatever it was sitting under the wig the finger and muttered a few unprintable words to Woody about Pete looking nothing like either a woman or a man and more like something out of a panto for those “visually impaired.” Woody, impressed with his choice of words, placed a pound coin at the feet of the old boy, who, without even looking at it, asked for more.
Woody walked inside and sat by Pete. The table was dirty with empty coffee cups and half-eaten biscotti. Woody flicked a few crumbs away from his table and thought about the bus stop.
“There are others, aren’t there?” he said to Pete. And before Pete had time to expand Woody’s knowledge of extraterrestrials, the Nokia began to bleep.
“Hello?” said Pete.
Silence.
Woody played with a few buttons. “Hello,” he shouted.
“I can see Woody,” said one of the Operators with a soft, hopeful tone.
“Hi, Woody,” continued the Operator.
Bunnie’s face flashed on the Nokia screen next. “Who’s that?” said Pete.
“Who are you?” said the Operator.
“Who the hell are you?” said Bunnie.
Pete and Woody stared at Bunnie’s face on the phone as “Strangers in the Night” blasted out over the voices—no one could hear them.
DJ WALKED OFF THE FERRY along with the rest of the passengers from Dunoon. Some he knew with a nod, some he didn’t. They walked into the cold across the terminal and onto the train station, heads bent with just the clip of footsteps breaking the silence. It was, after all, a dark Sunday afternoon and DJ was engrossed in what he was hearing.
The elevator music was working its way through every song that Frank had ever sung. And as the organ blasted out “Strangers in the Night,” DJ concentrated; he could hear “Woody and Identity” talk from the Operators. He found a seat as far from anyone on the train as he could and tried to decipher what he was hearing.
THE OPERATORS WERE in a state of disbelief. Hilda had left under a cloud of commands, only to march back in again complaining about cycling helmets now setting off alarms on her H-Pad and could they do something about it, pronto! “Oh, and by the way,” she said with a throwaway gesture, “the dashboard is playing up and may require a little tweaking.”
“Tweaking—that dashboard is as knackered as Beryl’s waistline,” said the secretary.
The two Operators manning the dashboard were cursing the fact that on their shift “she who must interfere” had done just that and now they were supposed to not only follow Woody, Pete, and what seemed like half of the West of Scotland but undo what had been done, without knowing what had been done.
“What are we, mind readers?” said Operator one.
A few minutes later . . .
Poof! Boom! Fizzle . . .
“What the beetroot?” said Operator two.
“It wasn’t me,” said Operator one.
“It wasn’t me either; it’s that dashboard—Herself, it would appear, has set off the timer. Looks like it has moved Pete a couple of yards into a café—how productive.”
“She hasn’t a clue.”
“Completely mashed it.”
Operator two turned a few knobs while Operator one turned up the volume of the elevator music.
Fly me to the moon . . .
DJ STARED AHEAD. WHO were these women? Then he heard Hilda’s voice again, this time shouting about “a goddamn Identity” being “nothing more than a goddamn cyclist passing by.”
“His helmet must have set it off,” said Operator one, followed by a muffled, “so much for the tweaking!”
Operator two turned up the volume on the elevator music.
“Come fly with me . . .”
DJ stared out of the train window and tried to mask his expression. He was beginning to feel chills in his spine that had nothing to do with the cold. Where do such women exist?
DJ had toyed with the idea of telling his mother about the plugulator, but her knowledge was pretty much limited to one story.
“Speak to Archie,” she said.
So DJ did and immediately regretted it. Archie, his pal—or mentor, as Archie liked to put it—had an irritating habit of quoting himself and took forever to express himself. He clogged up DJ’s phone for ten minutes, calling himself “the fountain of all knowledge,” which DJ knew to be a complete exaggeration.
“I’ll sort this out,” he finally said. “I’ll speak to the others.”
DJ tried to argue, tried to tell him to “keep it quiet”; the last thing he wanted was the whole of the West Connection to know. Why did he listen to his mother?
DJ remembered the first day he met Archie. Archie was telling the Story at a meeting and DJ, like everyone else, was engrossed.
“Mother was hanging out the washing; bending over a basket, when . . .”
It was the first time he had heard the Story told by someone other than his own mother. Since then, DJ had heard it from Archie’s kind
so many times he had lost count. He had been told the Story in German, Japanese, and even an American accent. And each time the tale grabbed the attention of many because all Archie’s “kind” had a way of telling a story that could captivate.
His mother called it the “gift of the gab,” but then his mother always had a polite way with words.
DJ met Archie when DJ was, to quote his mother, “coming of age.” DJ was coming to terms with the fact that he was not like other boys, which wasn’t easy when you attended one of the toughest schools in Govan. It was his tenth birthday and he was standing by his mother watching her put the last of the candles on his birthday cake, and he was trying to help and getting nowhere.
After the third slap from his mother’s hands telling him to stop interfering, DJ asked her, “Why marzipan when chocolate worked so much better?” A question similar to many that DJ asked.
His mother sighed and told him to go speak with his Uncle Archie.
“Storytelling and baking aren’t talents you should brag about,” said Archie to DJ, “not to the ‘masses,’ anyway.”
DJ nodded out of politeness; after all, he had been brought up well. Archie, to emphasize his point, rolled up his sleeve to reveal a scar. DJ said nothing; he was not quite sure what to say to a grown-up with a scar. Even now, DJ still had no idea what the scar had to do with anything. But DJ did learn to “macho things up a bit,” as Archie liked to put it, and he never looked back.
Occasionally, though, when he watched his mother ice her cakes, his urges took over and, in the privacy of their home, he decorated like there was no tomorrow.
FINALLY, THANKS TO the hard work of the Operators tweaking and beyond—and the first and second in command fending off the likes of Hilda, Vegas, and Beryl—the dashboard was almost restored to its former glory, and a picture came up as clear as soluble aspirin. There in front of them were Pete and Woody at a table with an ol’ fella outside, pulling faces through the window while gesturing with his fingers—which the Operators knew was not a positive thing.