The Complex

by Michael Walters

  The ball kicked off the line and went high, past Art into the back fence. Leo quickly hit the second ball that he hadn’t needed down to Art for him to serve.

  ‘That was long.’ Art was staring at the line where the ball hit.

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘It was definitely long.’

  Art walked up to the line and deliberately scuffed any incriminating mark away with his shoe. ‘But you can take two if you like.’

  The court seemed to vibrate, the static sensation rushing on to him. His racquet arm was tight and painful. His head felt black and full. Behind him, on the porch, he knew the man in the green uniform was there, looking down on them. He started walking around the net, his body moving automatically. He saw himself caving Art’s head in with his racquet. It was a vivid picture. He would enjoy it. The blood. Art’s screams. The trees whispered their pleasure.

  ‘Dad?’

  Stefan was climbing the last couple of steps and looking at the court surface.

  ‘Wow, clay. Cool.’ Stefan put his foot on it, then took it off again, as if afraid of making a mark. ‘It’s almost eleven. I thought you were only playing a set?’

  Leo looked down at Stefan’s racquet in his own hands, Stefan’s face, his boy’s face, and it was all he could do not to burst into tears.

  ‘What’s the score?’ Stefan asked, looking from one man to the other.

  ‘Six-all in games, six-all in the tie break,’ Art said. ‘Your dad’s serving.’

  Stefan smiled at Art, but his eyes were watchful. He sat his tall frame down on the top step and twisted so he could see.

  ‘Big point,’ Stefan said, looking at both of them.

  ‘Let’s see what your dad’s got,’ Art said, his smile a slash on his face.

  Leo glanced up at the clubhouse. Of course, there was no one there. He got two balls and readied to serve. Stefan was watching him, and it was like any of the hundreds of sunny mornings they had played together. My boy, he thought. He dropped his shoulders. It was such a simple game, really.

  He feinted a serve down the middle and instead sliced it wide. It bounced in and spun into the side fence. Art didn’t even move his feet.

  ‘Ace,’ Stefan said, nodding appreciatively. ‘Set point.’

  ‘Match point,’ Leo said.

  He knocked the last ball down to Art, who was staring at the floor. He looked as if he was doing a calculation. He wondered if Art would vary his serve match point down.

  Art took his time. He threw the ball up in his now familiar motion, and served predictably flat to Leo’s backhand, as he had done all morning. Leo blocked it hard down the line without thinking. Pure instinct. The ball hit the net cord, trickled over and in.

  ‘No!’ Stefan put his hands in the air, then put them on his head. ‘That’s so unfair. Dad, you can’t win like that.’ He was smiling at them both. ‘That’s completely outrageous.’

  ‘Well played, Leo.’ Art smiled, gave Stefan a wink, and jogged up to the net. He held his hand out. Leo came in and took it. They were playing their roles for the boy. ‘Good game.’

  ‘You must be good to run Dad close like that.’

  ‘Let’s go and see what the girls are up to,’ Art said. He went to get his bag.

  ‘The chair’s got a broken step,’ Stefan said.

  Stefan: Maze

  Stefan woke with the dream still vivid in his mind – a first-person shooter with a female character holding an absurd, strangely organic shotgun. She had been running around a hospital, but the reason escaped him. Then he remembered that Fleur was going to show him her headset today.

  He got up, whistling to himself, showered and dressed. Still doing up his belt, he touched the window. The clouded glass became clear. Seriously cool. Up on the grass bank he could see the two men already playing their tennis match.

  In the kitchen, Polly was sitting at the table reading a book. The cover was black with a coiled golden snake. She was holding a pencil and he wondered if she was studying too.

  ‘Is it good?’ Stefan said, getting himself a glass of milk.

  ‘No,’ she said

  He laughed, and she studied his face.

  ‘You and your father are not alike,’ she said. ‘Physically, I mean. Where did you get your blonde hair?’

  ‘He’s my step-dad,’ Stefan said. He took two bananas from a bowl on the kitchen counter. ‘Is Fleur around?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to pry. She’s downstairs. Hard at work, I expect.’

  There was an amused air about Polly that he wasn’t sure how to take. He nodded and left her to her book, taking the steps down into the basement two at a time. He shook his head at the absurdity of having a basement at all when the upstairs was the size of an entire floor of their apartment block. And it was all mostly empty. To his left was the glass that looked into the water of the pool, like it was an aquarium. Impressive, but ridiculous. And the basement went under the bedroom wing too. That was where the cinema room was and, at the end of the corridor, the library.

  At the library door he started to knock and had to stop himself. He already felt like it was her space, but it wasn’t. Inside, Fleur was looking at books on one of the shelves. Biology. She was wearing pale green jeans, black t-shirt and wild, rainbow-patterned trainers, with no socks.

  She looked up as he came in.

  ‘Morning,’ she said.

  She had spread her papers out on the table nearest the door, along with pens, an A4 black notebook, a ruler and an empty cereal bowl.

  ‘You ate down here?’

  ‘Safest place to eat,’ she said. ‘Basement living. Nuclear bunker chic.’

  It was a big room. It blew his mind that they were underground. The lighting was subtle but effective. There were two decent-sized tables in the centre of the room, each with two chairs, and then shelves of books. Lots of shelves. He had done a quick calculation last night and there had to be ten thousand books, probably more.

  ‘We’re underneath your room,’ he said. ‘But this room is a lot bigger. Did you notice?’

  ‘You haven’t been in my bedroom.’

  ‘But it’s the same size as mine, right?’

  ‘Perhaps I took the bigger room before you got here. That is the Fisher way.’ One side of her mouth was raised.

  ‘Look,’ he said, walking right, between three rows of shelves, stopping and turning to look back at her. ‘I am way beyond your en suite.’

  ‘That’s quite a claim.’

  He laughed. ‘Isn’t that kind of cool? And odd?’

  ‘Your daddy wants to know how everything works too.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  He enjoyed a little banter, but not too much. There was a backpack hanging off the corner of Fleur’s chair. She pulled something metallic out of it.

  ‘Is that the headset?’ Stefan said.

  ‘Yup.’ She put it in the desk behind her and pulled out another one.

  ‘Did you build them?’

  ‘No, the company I was with gave them to me. They said to make something with them. It’s a test.’

  ‘Like an interview?’

  ‘Daddy doesn’t know. So, keep it quiet.’

  There was a knock at the door.

  ‘Shit,’ Fleur said, grabbing the headsets and shoving them back in the bag. His mother peered around the door.

  ‘You two okay?’ She took in the room. ‘Wow, this is quite a hideaway. You two sleep all right?’

  Fleur nodded.

  ‘Yeah,’ Stefan said. ‘Good.’

  ‘Okay, well, don’t study too hard. It’s a beautiful day out there.’ She gave them a final smile and closed the door.

  ‘She scared the hell out of me,’ Fleur said.

  ‘You really don’t want him to know.’

  ‘No, no. He’d kill me.’ Fleur turned a
nd began to sort through the papers on her table. ‘Look, I’m going to start studying. Genetics. What topic are you doing at the moment?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not really . . . I’m between subjects.’ He was so far behind, but he didn’t want to tell her. ‘My stuff is in the car. I’m going to get it. Will you show me the headset later?’

  ‘Later. Somewhere safer.’

  Stefan went up to the kitchen, taking Fleur’s empty bowl with him. He realised he had left the uneaten bananas somewhere downstairs. Polly was still reading and smiled at him as he walked through. Stefan smiled back and put the bowl in the sink but didn’t stop to talk. He wanted fresh air. The mountains and fields looked glorious.

  It was already hot in the sun. He looped around the front of the house and followed the outer wall of the extension. He deliberately did not look into Polly’s room, as much as he wanted to. The brick of the extension seemed to disappear into the rock of the hill. Stefan climbed and squatted on the roof, taking in the illicit view. Art and his father were still playing their game. It looked tight.

  Then Art gave a strange cry and there was a crack. It sounded like he’d broken the frame on his racquet. He wanted to jump down onto the lawn and go over to see what was going on, but the last thing he needed before the summer tournaments was a stupid injury. Instead he went back the way he came. The car park was in shade. His college bag was still on the back seat of their car. It was blissfully silent and still, like a photograph. He decided to sit in the car. Maya was always a comfort.

  Maya said: ‘Good morning, Stefan.’

  ‘Morning, Maya.’ The dashboard wasn’t lit. ‘Are you charged?’

  Maya said: ‘Power is at eleven percent. The supply connection is not available. There are several errors in the logs.’

  There seemed to be an edge to Maya’s voice, which was, of course, impossible.

  ‘Can you fix the errors?’ Stefan asked.

  Maya said: ‘Not without a connection to the grid.’

  ‘You sound worried, Maya. Dad will fix it. It’ll be okay.’ He smiled to himself. Then he remembered his college bag and pulled it through from the back seat.

  He took his bag up to the tennis court. The match was almost over, and both men were in the zone. His father finished the match with a cracking serve. Art didn’t even move. It was good to see his father with a bounce in his step.

  After lunch Polly asked Stefan and Fleur to fetch tomatoes from the garden for dinner. Stefan was very happy with that assignment. Walking with Fleur in the sun, he felt lighter than he had in months. The gate to the garden was just down from the car park, at the end of a short gravel path. It was black iron with an ornate latticework of intertwining vines and leaves, sitting under a brick arch. The garden had a high wall that ran down the hill towards the woods. Above the arch was a piece of black slate nailed neatly into the brick with a phrase on it: si hortum in bibliotheca habes, deerit nihil.

  Stefan stood with Fleur looking up at it.

  ‘Someone loves their Latin,’ Stefan said. ‘There’s another one on the arch over the entrance. Do you know what it means?’

  ‘Bibliotheca is library,’ Fleur said.

  ‘I like the idea of a library in a garden.’

  ‘Or perhaps the garden is a sort of library.’

  The final two words stung: deerit nihil. Annihilated deer. He remembered the instant the deer’s eyes had become lifeless. He had managed to push that out of his head.

  ‘A library of living things,’ Fleur said, toeing a circle in the gravel with her rainbow shoes. ‘Come on.’

  She went ahead and pushed the gate, which opened silently. They came into the top corner of a garden that was the size of several tennis courts. He stopped next to her, his arm grazing hers. It felt nice, the physical contact, but he made sure to move away. The high wall went all the way around. There was another arch leading into the hedge maze at the furthest end.

  ‘That looks pretty a-maze-ing,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t even groan at your joke, I hate mazes so much. That hedge is like the one by the gatehouse.’

  ‘Gatehouse,’ she said. ‘I like that. Sounds medieval.’

  ‘Do you think anyone lives there?’

  ‘By the front gate? I doubt it.’

  ‘Someone looks after this place.’

  There were trees in the centre of the garden and four large rectangles placed symmetrically around it. A wide, bricked boulevard ran like a spine from the top wall, through the centre to the trees, then on to the maze entrance. The whole garden sloped gently away from them. Walking left, along the top, he tried to recognise the plants, but he was no gardener. Everything was blooming, though, vibrant and full of life.

  ‘Stefan,’ Fleur said from behind him. ‘Tomatoes.’

  He’d walked past them. He saw the vines snaking aggressively up the wall. Fleur picked a small one and put it in her mouth. She coughed and turned away from him.

  ‘You okay?’ he said.

  He walked back and as he reached her, she looked up, still bent over, tomato juice on her chin.

  ‘It just exploded in my mouth,’ she said. ‘So sweet. A bit gross, though.’ She wiped her face with the back of her hand and rubbed it on her trousers. ‘They taste so good.’ She took another one off the vine and gave it to him.

  He bit into it like he would an apple and juice flew left and right. Fleur jumped back, giggling.

  ‘Sorry.’ He put the whole thing in his mouth instead. The taste was extraordinary. He groaned. ‘That is the best tomato I have ever tasted.’

  ‘Better not pick them now,’ Fleur said. ‘Let’s find a bucket or something.’

  They walked down the brick boulevard towards the apple trees, which seemed to be already full of green apples. Raised borders on the left and right of them held smaller trees and shrubs, a network of narrower gravel paths connecting it all, like blood vessels.

  ‘Do you think it’s the air?’ he said. ‘This place is intense.’

  ‘Tomatoes, in April? Apples?’ She shook her head. ‘Even modified food wouldn’t do this.’

  The boulevard bricks were different colours, seemingly random, although Stefan sensed a pattern he couldn’t quite spot. The whole garden had an elegance that made him imagine them both as Roman senators, or Greek philosophers, walking the grounds of a villa. In the wall, over to the left, there was a black wooden door, partially hidden by a trellis that was overflowing with white roses. Near it was a makeshift shelter, a chair, some work benches and a spade propped against the wall.

  At the central section, a mini-orchard, really, Fleur pulled an apple from the nearest tree. It came away easily. She threw it to him.

  He caught it and bit into it. He immediately spat it out. ‘Wow, sour.’

  ‘Really? How disappointing.’

  They walked under the trees and settled themselves against a couple of trunks in the shade. It was a relief to be out of the sun. He wasn’t wearing sun cream. His mother would go nuts.

  ‘It’s so quiet,’ Fleur said.

  He lay back on the grass and enjoyed its cool press on his bare arms. He was aware of Fleur lying nearby. His feet were hot in his socks and trainers. He wished he had brought sandals. Looking up into the branches of the apple tree, he saw brown lines intersecting, the blue sky mingled with green leaves. Patterns in the bricks, in the trees.

  ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’ Fleur asked.

  ‘No. Well, not really.’

  ‘So, you do have a girlfriend.’

  ‘There’s someone I’ve liked for a while, but we’re not—’ He struggled to find any words that would help him navigate Fleur’s questions safely.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Jess.’ Stefan saw Jess’s tanned face, ever-smiling, as he said her name. And, as in real life, immediately saw Daniel’s face too. ‘She’s g
ot a friend, Daniel, who is always with her. Like, always. They come as a pair.’

  ‘A friend friend?’ Fleur said it knowingly, though Stefan didn’t know what exactly she meant. ‘Or like a brother?’

  ‘I know it sounds weird.’

  ‘When you say he’s always with her, have you ever been on your own with her?’

  Stefan squirmed. She was being playful, but he didn’t like not knowing how he felt. It had been on his mind a lot. The other week Jess had kissed him outside the library, in full view of everyone, which had been thrilling and also embarrassing. A soft, quivering kiss that he hadn’t expected, first on the bottom lip, then on the top. When he had told Daniel, which had been a ridiculous thing to do he saw now, Daniel had laughed and said she had kissed him just the same.

  ‘Define “on our own”?’

  ‘Oh my God, Stefan. You’re right. You don’t have a girlfriend.’

  ‘How about you, then?’ Stefan said, an undercurrent of anger in his voice. ‘Got a boyfriend?’

  ‘No time for boys,’ she said. ‘Finals are in seven weeks and I want that job. Plenty of time for boyfriends later.’

  She liked boys. That was good.

  They fell into silence and Stefan found himself thinking about the deer they had hit. One moment it had looked at him, he had felt its breath on his wrist, and then it was just a lump of dead organic matter. Meat.

  Fleur had her eyes closed. Her chest was rising and falling slowly. Stefan’s thoughts drifted to his grandad. The funeral had been small and his mother had taken him to one of the big department stores to get a suit, saying he would need one for interviews in the summer anyway. College was pressing everyone to get their applications in, but he wasn’t at all interested. He had never seen his father in a suit before, and his mother said it didn’t fit, but it was borrowed from a workmate, and Stefan thought he had looked fine. At the service his mother had worn a black dress and jacket, with a small, white rose on the lapel. Grandad didn’t seem to have any friends.

  He wanted time, more than anything, once the Finals were over. He wanted a long summer. One last go at the tournaments. But then, only a few weeks ago, Stefan had played an elderly ex-military guy. He was a name he had seen on competition draws several times over the years but had never actually met. The man was funny, gently spoken, dressed in a shockingly white shirt and shorts, and extremely competitive. Stefan liked him a lot, but the man had gotten into Stefan’s head. Stefan was younger, fitter, had better shots, but the older man had moved him around, kept him off balance and consistently found angles Stefan didn’t expect. It was an unnerving lesson. Halfway through the second set, Stefan had given up. The veteran’s game had been a puzzle he couldn’t solve. A rare experience, for him, on a tennis court. If a veteran could pick him apart like that, what made him think he could go pro?