Buying Time

by E. M. Brown

  “Laura, please…”

  “I… I see an ugly cow with a lopsided face, lips too big, nose bent…”

  He pulled away, stroked her face, and kissed her forehead, her nose, her lips. “Laura, please don’t…”

  She sobbed and almost collapsed in his arms. He held her as she wept. “Love you…” he said.

  “No you don’t,” she sniffed.

  “That’s for me to know, and to say.”

  She looked up, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and shook her head. “I don’t know what you see in me. What do I give you? I’m stupid, ugly, and neurotic… I don’t deserve you, Ed.”

  He shook her gently. “Now you’re just being silly. You shouldn’t think like that. Christ, a million women would give their right arms to have what you’ve got: a great job, great friends, someone who loves you…”

  In a tiny voice: “You’re just saying that.”

  Over her shoulder, he looked at his watch. He still had a couple of hours before he was due to meet Morrison.

  He took Laura under the chin and lifted her face, then kissed her and slipped the dressing gown from her shoulders. She stood before him, tiny and white and vulnerable, unable to meet his gaze.

  He carried her upstairs, then laid her gently on the bed, undressed and made love to her. At one point, at one treacherous point, he closed his eyes and imagined that it was Emmi he was making love to, then her image vanished as Laura cried out beneath him and bit his shoulder as she came.

  She dozed beside him, curled into a foetal ball, and Richie found his jeans on the floor and slipped the ripped photograph from the back pocket. He stared at Annabelle’s smiling face, a knot of pain in his stomach.

  A month after the original version of this encounter, Laura had left him, and that very same day Richie had lost his wallet to a pickpocket on the underground. The wallet had contained three credit cards and thirty pounds in notes, but most importantly of all, Annabelle’s photograph. It had been the only one of her he possessed, and he’d been inconsolable at the loss.

  He stared at the sleeping woman beside him, and wondered what would happen to his relationship with Laura when he was whisked off back through time to some unknown rendezvous with his younger self. Would he wake in a day or so with any recollection of what had happened this morning? Or would the time current-him spent here be a blank? Would the Richie of tomorrow or whenever be able to understand Laura, her weakness and vulnerability and the reasons for them, and bring himself to feel compassion for her?

  No, he realised. Of course not…

  Gripped by a sudden welling of sadness, he rolled quietly from the bed, dressed and moved to his study. He accessed his old, huge PC and found the VR file. For the next half hour he read through half a dozen outlines of the synopsis, then a dozen emails he’d sent the director, bringing himself up to speed on the situation.

  He closed down the machine and returned to the bedroom.

  Laura was stirring. He sat on the bed beside her and stroked her face.

  “Got to nip off to meet that bloody Morrison,” he told her.

  She smiled up at him. “I hope it goes well, Ed.”

  He kissed her forehead, hesitated, then said, “Look, Digby and Caroline are having a little do at their place tonight. You’re invited.”

  She widened her eyes at him. “I thought Digby didn’t like me.”

  “Silly. Where on earth did you get that idea? Of course he likes you.”

  She gripped his hand. “Thanks Ed, but I can’t. Hanna’s having her hen night, and I’m going to that, remember?”

  He didn’t remember. “Of course.”

  “But you have a nice time, Ed, okay? And thank Digby for me.”

  He kissed her again, said, “See you later,” and slipped from the bedroom.

  He took the tube from Notting Hill Gate to Fulham Broadway. The carriage was hot and crammed with passengers, mainly foreign tourists. It had been almost fifteen subjective years since he’d lived in London. He’d become so accustomed to life in rural Yorkshire, where every time he ventured from the house he saw a familiar, friendly face, that the mass of strangers now made him feel isolated.

  It hardly helped that he was, in real terms, a man from another age. Without being able to define the differences, he was aware of the changes in fashion – and there was a certain optimism in the air that, thinking back, he thought he understood. The country was well into its fifth year under New Labour, with the recession yet to happen; did that account for the smiling faces, or was he putting a gloss on the situation, here in June 2002, biased by and based on his own politics?

  One thing that he’d forgotten, until seeing a headline in a newspaper, was that just last year Al-Qaeda terrorists had flown two airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, and President Bush was waging his War on Terror, that glib, empty sound-bite.

  He marvelled, as the train rattled along, that he alone on the planet was aware of what was to come, the US-led invasion of Iraq and the terrible repercussions to world peace it would engender.

  He fell to speculating what he might be able to do to prevent the futile invasion – but realised that despite the foreknowledge he was powerless. Who would believe him? His warnings that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction were nothing more than US lies, that the invasion would lead to catastrophic destabilisation in Iraq and neighbouring countries, would be derided as the nay-sayings of a lunatic. He might very well be able to change the small-scale events of his own existence and those of people close to him, but on the world stage he was impotent.

  It occurred to him, as he alighted at Fulham Broadway and walked back towards Chelsea High Street, that he should suggest to Max Morrison that his outline feature the US-led invasion of a Middle Eastern country, and the future political consequences; they could always be included as a kind of alternate history in the virtual reality sections of the film. He dismissed the idea: the little research he recalled doing into Max Morrison and his politics had suggested that the director was a staunch Republican.

  This recollection brought back memories of the meeting with the director, and the man’s arrogance and bravado. He’d browbeaten Richie into writing a first draft of the screenplay for a paltry two thousand dollars, having first changed the original scenario – which Richie had sweated over for months – out of all recognition.

  In the event this meeting, and all the draft outlines and the hundreds of emails, would come to nothing: Richie would hack out a first draft of the screenplay and a couple of years down the line be reluctantly paid the agreed-upon two grand. But Morrison would shelve the project – probably writing it off as a tax loss – to concentrate on clearing his name in a sex-scandal that would blow up in 2005. He’d fail, be sentenced to fifteen years, and die in jail of a massive coronary a few years later.

  The knowledge gave Richie, as he entered the wine bar where he was to meet the director, a pleasing frisson of schadenfreude.

  A gargantuan bear of a man, over six-and-a-half feet tall and as broad as a padded quarterback, rose to greet him with a patently insincere grin, hollering, “And here he is in real life, and looking nothing like his picture, eh, EmmaLou? Shit, man, come here!”

  He enveloped Richie in a suffocating hug. The American wore a vast pair of brown corduroy trousers held up by bright red braces that described great arcs over his huge stomach, made even bigger by a loud Hawaiian shirt.

  He stood back and introduced the girl next to him. “Ed, meet EmmaLou. EmmaLou, Ed. Em’s my P.A. and goddamned life support system. Hell, I can’t even move without Em’s say so, isn’t that right, girl?”

  EmmaLou showed her teeth in the fixed rictus of a bored air-hostess.

  Richie recalled the girl from their original meeting: a small, perfectly-proportioned platinum blonde of the kind that might have been ten-a-penny in Hollywood but who, even in London, turned heads with her tanned, cosmetically-enhanced perfection. She had sat in silence through their meeting, m
oving only to make notes in a spiral-bound jotter and to grin her agreement with the director. Her robotic subservience had not struck Richie as odd at the time, but now he understood: she hated the man. Three years down the line EmmaLou would accuse Max Morrison of multiple counts of rape, starting when she had been just twelve years old.

  “That photodid you no credit,” Morrison boomed. “No credit at all. Thought I’d be meeting with some weaselly banker, but just look at you. A lean, mean, writing machine, eh, Ed? Loved your latest draft.”

  They ordered drinks – Morrison insisting on a bottle of champagne – and then lunch: the Americans had steak, while Richie ordered salmon salad.

  As they ate, Morrison regaled Richie with a list of his latest hit films, citing what they’d cost to make and their box-office takings. The man was a crass egomaniac, probably borderline Asperger’s, with no sense of humility and zero interest in the views and opinions of anyone but himself.

  From time to time Richie glanced at EmmaLou, to gauge her reaction and perhaps exchange a conspiratorially raised eyebrow. But the P.A. attended to her meal without the slightest glance his way.

  “Now, VR.” Morrison tapped the print-out before him: the latest version of Richie’s synopsis. “Love the title, by the way. Snappy, punchy, no bullshitting. Your latest draft cuts the shit, so well done you. Loved the action sequences, and the motivation behind OmniGen’s cover-up. Nicely handled, Ed.”

  “Delighted you liked it.”

  “But… Listen, bud, recent events…”

  Inwardly, Richie smiled. He knew what was coming, and thought back to the shock his younger, naive self had experienced when Morrison had said, “Recent events have made the terrorists-as-heroes aspect of the film a little…” – the director grimaced and made a see-saw of his right hand – “a little dubious, get me?”

  The younger Richie had just stared, open-mouthed, unable to find a suitable response. Now he sat back casually and said, “So what do you suggest, Max?”

  “Thought you’d see it my way, bud. What I suggest is this little tweak. The terrorists are now the bad guys, huh? And the heroine – what’s she called, Terri? This Terri kid isn’t their leader, but she’s employed by the government to root out the bad guys in VR and kick their goddamned butts.”

  Richie recalled his drop-jawed response to the director’s sweeping change. Like a fool, he’d nodded and gone along with them: “O…kay. I get where you’re coming from.”

  Now he held the American’s gaze and said, “So just who are these terrorists?”

  Morrison spread his hands in an expansive gesture. “Hey, let’s cash in on public sentiment, huh? Who’ll be paying to see this film? I’ll tell you, the good guys across the USA and Europe… And what does the paying public want to see? They want to see the bad guys getting fucked over, Ed. So we make the VR terrorists towel-heads, huh?”

  “Let’s get this straight,” Richie said, “the terrorists, who in all the previous drafts have been the good guys, fighting the vested interests of OmniGen to bring VR to the people, are now Arab terrorists.”

  “That’s what I’m getting at, Ed.”

  “And the motivation of the terrorists in this version?”

  Morrison planted his meaty hands on the table and leaned forward. He looked like a genie, just emerged from the lamp, about to grant the first of three wishes. “They want to bring good old OmniGen, who in this version are an arm of the US government, to its knees.”

  “And Terri, the lead, who is no longer a terrorist, because the terrorists are Arabs…”

  “In this version, Ed, Terri works for the government…”

  “To wipe out the terrorists?” Richie said.

  “You got it in one, Ed,” the director said, “only I want to scrap this Terri character. In the redraft she’ll be a he – and” – he pointed at Ed – “and I’ve got none other than Chuck Norris lined up for the part.”

  Richie smiled. He nodded and kept on smiling, draped an arm over the back of his chair and took a long drink of champagne. He glanced at EmmaLou; she was watching him with a slit-eyed, wincing expression that said, Oh, please agree with the motherfucker, for your own sake…

  In their original meeting, Richie, like the crawling, greedy coward he had been, had nodded and said, “I think it can be done. Yes, I don’t see why not…”

  Now he stared at the director and said, “So let’s get this straight. The good guys are now the bad guys, OmniGen are now the good guys, and Terri the feisty twenty-year-old kick-ass hacker is now… Chuck Norris?”

  The American grinned. “You got it!”

  EmmaLou closed her eyes.

  Richie maintained his genteel English smile – no need to let the side down with a show of emotion, old boy – reached across the table and picked up the annotated version of his email.

  Then, holding the document up over the table, he tore it into two, then four, then eight, and dropped the resulting confetti onto Morrison’s plate. “I think your ideas stink, Max. And as we say over here, I suggest you shove your notes, and all the shit they contain, back up your big fat arse.”

  EmmaLou stood suddenly and, holding a hand to her mouth as if about to vomit, ran towards the toilet.

  Richie rose from the table, leaned forward, and said to the dumbfounded director, “And I suggest that, in future, you think twice about fucking twelve-year-olds…”

  Morrison, on the verge of apoplexy, or maybe even a coronary, for once in his life found himself speechless. Richie turned on his heel and sauntered from the wine-bar, almost punching the air in triumph as he did so.

  IT WAS THREE o’clock and he had a few hours to kill until dinner at Digby’s that evening. He took the tube into central London, then to Islington, where Digby and Caroline lived, bought a copy of the Guardian and found a quiet pub in a side-street. He settled down in the corner with a pint of Fullers and a packet of dry-roasted peanuts, set the paper on the table before him and stared into space.

  In a day or so he would be taken from this time, whisked back to who knew when, and compelled to play out whatever set-piece lay in wait for him… To what end? Why the hell was this happening to him? Had Emmi been a figment of his imagination, along with her talk of scientists, or had there been something in her claim of being sent to intercept him?

  He drank his beer, turned to the sports pages and read a report about Yorkshire’s victory over Lancashire at Headingley.

  His attention wandered. He thought again of Emmi. If she had been more than a figment of an hallucination, and if what she had told him was true, then what was to stop her locating him again?

  He wondered if he should attempt to look for her; but how to go about that? Where might he find her, and how, in such limited time available to him? It was an impossible task – even if she were real.

  He bought a second pint and recalled the man he’d been at the age of forty-two. He had lived in a constant state of apprehension and worry about where the next commission might come from: hence his capitulation to the megalomaniacal Morrison. He was hacking out journalism and fillers for magazines and newspapers, and selling the occasional radio play to the BBC, and while it satisfied the creative urge within him, he craved the next step up: the financial security of regular TV work. He had assumed, at the time, that besides the money, writing for television would prove as creatively rewarding as his radio work. He wished he could have communicated with his younger self and disabused him of the notion: told himself that with money came compromise, and the death of ambition.

  He wondered what he might do if, miraculously, he found himself stabilised in this time. For one thing, he could avoid all the dead ends, the synopses and outlines submitted in hope, but which would never come to anything – and devote himself to the projects he knew would succeed. He could curb the TV work, continued writing radio plays and, to flex his creative muscles and ambition, tried his hand at stage plays.

  For the next couple of hours and another two pints, he daydreamed
the afternoon away.

  Towards six he left the pub and tipsily made his way through the expensive, tree-lined streets of Islington, remembering to call in at an Oddbins to pick up a couple of bottles.

  He was about to meet the younger version of his best friend, and he experienced a strange, apprehensive curiosity as he climbed the steps to the navy blue, gloss-painted front door and banged the lion’s-head knocker three times.

  Digby, at this time, was picking up regular TV work with the Beeb, and several of his one-off plays had received good notices in the press. He would continue with what he called his ‘serious work,’ but this evening would announce his move north to work on a drama for Yorkshire Television. It would be the start, Richie knew with the advantage of retrospect, of his friend’s gradual descent into TV hackdom and eventual dissatisfaction.

  The door opened and a tall, blonde, very attractive woman smiled at him. “Edward, lovely to see you.” She kissed his cheeks before Richie, a little shell-shocked, realised that this was Caroline, in her mid-thirties now and almost unrecognisable from the woman in her forties he’d last seen a couple of subjective days ago: she’d dyed her hair blonde and wore it long.

  “And how was your meeting with the big-shot?” she asked over her shoulder as she led him through the plushly-carpeted hallway, up a flight of stairs, to a lounge dotted with expensive, tasteful, bespoke furniture. “You must tell us all about it over dinner.”

  A dozen guests occupied the room, drinking wine and chatting in small groups; Richie knew most of them, aspiring screen-writers, one or two already established names, a mid-list novelist and his sculptor wife, and a scattering of TV people: your average Saturday night bourgeois, quasi-intellectual Islington soiree. Talk would be of the arts, the deplorable political situation in the Middle East thanks to US foreign policy, and what everyone was working on. Name dropping would be de rigueur and later in the evening the inevitable argument would break out between those who saw television as the opiate of the masses and those who considered it a valid art-form, citing the works of Mercer, Potter and McGovern et al.