“I’m sorry. I just have to pop out for a minute. Please bear with me.” She said this in a way that implied she had more for me. Strange, the soft way she shut the door behind her. There was something not right here. Then I had it. She was giving me a chance to look at his file. My promised favor reciprocated.
She had left it prominently on her desk. I picked it up, sat so my body blocked it from the doorway, opened it. There was a yellow Post-it note inside the cover, strong block letters. BLOOD WARNING—AB NEG. I thumbed down through a heft of documents—health plans, changes of medication, write-ups on violent behavior. The blood drummed in my ears. Finally the bottom. Admission documents. Preliminary diagnosis: vascular dementia. A letter attaching a Power of Attorney document from one Lucian Gee from a law firm called Hoodmore de Vere. I memorized the address. Put the file back just so.
A minute or so later I could hear Bette talking to someone outside her office. She came back in. I concentrated on not looking at her directly to avoid getting caught in that I-know-you-know infinite regression.
I went back to say good-bye to Mr. Hardcastle and retrieve my guitar. Exiting her office, I nearly got run over by a gurney being wheeled by two parka’d medical attendants on the way in from outside. I helped them through the double locked doors. Ivanka came trotting up, pointing the ambulance men to the community room. Her eyes held me.
“We send him to hospital as a precaution. Nurse thinks he has small stroke…we hope small. They will watch him there.”
What? I had only been away twenty minutes. In that time Hardcastle had had a medical emergency and the ambulance had arrived? I thought everything was slow around here. I looked at Ivanka. She was a poor liar, the “we hope small” needed more confidence, not hurried through.
The house nurse came to me. Me! This dude who, to quote Marie-Christiane from the Drummond Hotel, had walked in off the street, blustered his way into this place—okay, showed some generosity of spirit toward our fallen civil servant. Now the nurse was conferring with me, telling me why they were moving him, why the hospital, all in the soothing funereal tones of preparation.
I had a long flight the next day to the opposite side of the world. Home. Hardcastle was at a different gate, waiting for a much longer flight. This time tomorrow I would be over Arctic wastes, streaming high, cold and fast towards San Francisco. Just then my trip home began to feel like a desertion.
Okay, I told myself on the cold, not wet walk back to the train station, Mr. Hardcastle only had a month or two left on the clock. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Damn it, here it was again. All I had done was be a good scout with Hardcastle, gave him some time, some songs, a good vibe or two. Now I was entangled in his death.
Why was I so caught up in this man’s life? Something, possibly his inert face, reminded me of Kirk’s deadpan one. Why did Kirk visit him? What did they have in common? Was it through Hardcastle, the old Russia hand, that Kirk got my father’s book of poems? Apart from biographical detail on the Internet, what did I know about Hardcastle? Well, I’d snooped into his medications, details about his violent behavior, his rare blood type. It wasn’t likely I would learn any more now.
At the train station back to London I couldn’t help thinking of Tolstoy, his last hours. I had a twenty-minute wait for the next train. I called Sula. She was so fresh, alive and fast-thinking. I knew I wouldn’t get her, but the possibility buoyed my spirits. I left a voice mail.
She called me back when I was on the train. Of course, there was a crucially-placed tunnel, then some other reception problem.
“I called because I was hoping you could cheer me up.”
“It is not something I know how to do very well. Especially myself.”
“That’s the hardest. I don’t mean cheer me up by saying something profound or funny. Just being you is fine. You know, talking?”
“Tell me, what is wrong?”
I told her a little about my visit. She made the right noises. I felt better. It could be the start of something, something that may have already started. I didn’t know.
Our conversation hung there as the train negotiated its way through the grim, brick wilderness of south London. The grimy house backs, limp curtains, dirty opaque bathroom windows, overgrown postage stamp yards with small, telling accessories; a rusted barbeque, a children’s trampoline, old bikes, a defiant herb garden. Backstage in lives lived ordinary. Did I want her to meet me? In ten minutes I would be rolling to a crisp stop at Waterloo, only a few tube stations away from Imperial. No. She didn’t need to see my morose side just yet (and mull that over for the two weeks we were on different continents).
Sula was insistent. “See me for a coffee. I need a break. You would be doing me a favor.”
We met at a French patisserie chain near South Kensington Station. The type with pillows tied on white iron chairs and glass-topped tables that looked designed for a gazebo. Sula was already there.
“You are one minute early,” she said, looking at her watch, serious, brows knitted squarely, before her smile came out. Oh, a joke. She had calculated in her head the average speed of the train, time at each station, time to interchange, etc. Then those brows turned up, “Your friend is soon to die?”
I nodded. “He’s taken a turn for the worse. You know when we were talking about entanglement, in quantum mechanics, how the act of observing creates matter out of potential matter, something like that? Well, I’ve become entangled in his death.”
I went on to explain how he had overtaxed himself trying to form one last coherent comment. How that effort had sent him to the hospital.
“How are you entangled just to visit him?”
“I’m not saying it’s logical. Visiting him’s like sitting in the stands at a ballgame; today it’s like I’m on the field. I’m not beating myself up about this, it just affects my mood is all.” I took a cue from her look, explained what “beating myself up” meant.
We went quiet for a time. A comfortable quiet, one of those times when it felt like we were a couple, had a chance to be one.
“Sula, what do you think happens when we die?”
She gave me a full-lipped poof. “Physics theory says there are many worlds. Infinity of copies of you, me, all the people. We must ask ourselves what is the effect of one copy that is no longer? What does ‘no longer’ mean? Perhaps we talk about a copy that still exists but is like a book that we will not read now.”
“So who is doing the reading of this book?”
I knew this would bring out one of her high-voltage smiles. I was not disappointed. “Perhaps we could say ‘reality,’ but this is to go around in circles.”
“You know, Kirk and I had a lot of wild theories. He was the one guy I could say anything to. We would come up with the strangest ideas. It was like a friendly competition. One time we came up with our Big God, Little God theory of religion. The main idea was Kirk’s. He was the science guy who had some depth in that department. In our theory there’s a big god who creates everything, like some infinite great expectoration. That means like throwing up. In Kirk’s words it doesn’t take much intelligence to create Everything, just more power than the universe is capable of imagining. Then there is this Little God, whose job it is to pick a path through all this possibility, and from that path create a credible story, a history that makes some sense.”
“It sounds like your friend has read about configuration space.”
“Oh, probably. We liked to build towers until they fell from overelaborate nonsense. It was my turn to add to its height. So I came up with the Kho point. It’s a point just short of infinitely far away, like some prime we’d need a computer larger than the universe to find. So, at this point, far, far away, all bets are off. Not even Little God can go beyond Kho and know the future. It’s like breaking the sound barrier. So Little God has to simplify to keep everything on this side of Kho, so he can keep in control of the communal story. ‘Simplify’ means taking cards off t
he table. Death. The great simplifier.
“The question became which god would you pray to? Which was another way of asking which was the primary god? Of course we had to define ‘prayer’ first…” I trailed away here.
“I am sorry I did not have a chance to meet Kirk.”
“He was just being flip; well, that’s how it usually started. Kirk wasn’t afraid of taking on any established theory or belief. This was in our early days.”
“This is precisely what I need to help me…to be so…” She was stuck, laughed at herself in a way that showed she was being careful with me, then dug into her handbag and came out with her small Greek-English dictionary. Her long, slender fingers rifled the pages below her considered frown. “Here,” she said, leaning over to me, pointing to a word with an unmanicured, unpainted, short nail.
“Irreverent,” I pronounced for her. I took in that musky cinnamon and clove Sula smell which caused some reptile part of my brain to start wagging its vestigial tail. All science out the window, just like that.
She tried to pronounce it, but started laughing. Ease now between us. My world became chock full of possibilities.
“We had a lot of wild theories. I’ve forgotten most of them. Not Little God, though. He’s a god I can get behind. I wrote a song about it. Only Kirk’s heard it. “Little God Blues.” There’s something comforting in a god you can feel sorry for, root for. You want to say to him, look, if you have to discard me, I’m happy to be your assistant. Call me to your side. I’ll sift through shoeboxes full of 3-by-5 cards in some infinitely dimensioned hall for a few thousand years.”
“It would be more simple to play with not so many cards.”
“Less merciful, though. I’ve never understood all that stuff about the Lord in his infinite mercy. I understand it for Little God, though.”
“You have a piece of chocolate, here,” Sula said, pointing to a spot that was the mirror image of mine on her mouth. She was laughing at her awkward jolt of a topic change.
“Can’t you come back before the fourth?” I asked, determined to take advantage of this sustained comfort between us.
“You think it is a long time now. Then you will be at your home. You will forget about…London. Then it will be easy for you.”
Yes, all my friends were there. Also my former girlfriend, Lucy Hashimoto, who was the opposite of Sula. Lucy was non-judgmental, accepting. It would be easy to visit my house that she was “renting” and slip back into our muted and occasional passion. This, with Sula, was like an unstable particle that, if harnessed, offered glimpses of a new world of illimitable energy, lasting world peace and guitars that stayed in tune.
We stood up, looking at each other. I wondered what kind of good-bye was most appropriate, always struggling to keep this particle from not boiling back into potential again. I gave her a two-cheek kiss, holding my head next to hers for a few beats too long on the second one. My fingers lightly tested her shoulder blades. “Oh, and thanks for being such a friend.”
“Friend,” she repeated, considering. I didn’t understand her smile, only that friend was not the right word.
CHAPTER 20
“Black Cotton” from Back to the End (4th Album) 2:44
Kirk’s. About me after Molly. I had mentioned to him that line of Auden’s: “Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.” Yes, the entire world should be in mourning; not going about its usual business. Kirk couldn’t understand why we needed to know the gloves were cotton. It is Kirk’s softest, most melodic song, like walking into a right-angled room after his numerous out-of-true constructions. But, Kirk being Kirk, you wondered about optical illusions. And, Kirk being Kirk, he called it, privately, “The Elevator Song”, a wry nod to its muzak potential. In the bridge he works the words to the edge of the beat, compressing “I’m in need” into two and a bit syllables so he can draw out the pause after “need”. Live, he often repeats those two-plus syllables like mantra until the second half comes around again.
I’m in need; I’m in need; I’m in need
I’m in need of warmth and all I got’s the sun
CHAPTER 21
Any minute Frank would arrive to drive me to the airport. The door buzzer rang. I was down a few minutes later with my bags to find Natalie standing there, ferreting around in her backpack for something. She no longer had access to our building. She gave me a sheepish smile in acknowledgement of why.
“I’m supposed to come over and apologize.”
I didn’t call her on the forced nature of such apology in the interests of a quick exit. “All right, accepted. Look, I’m on my way to the airport—”
“I know. I know. I’ve put this off until the last minute….You came out worst of anyone. I’ve—”
“Look, the only thing that matters with an apology is that it’s sincere. Are you telling me you’re sincerely sorry?” I know, I sounded like her old man, but damn it, I had to deal with those annoying white van blokes cleaning up my flat. They were taking Matthew Steyning for a ride and had tried to double dip by charging me for services he’d already paid for. That’s before we get to my missing guitars.
We were interrupted by Frank’s arrival.
“Take me with you.”
“You got your passport?”
“No! The airport. We can talk. Your driver can drop me back in the West End.” Where does a thirteen-year-old get so much poise? When I was her age, poise was standing in on an errant fastballer.
Frank was okay with it.
“It’s like an atomic bomb. A few invitations and boom! I fucked up, no doubt about it. But after a certain point it’s like, so excessive.” Natalie was looking the other way, out her window.
“Life’s excessive. All these trees, blades of grass, sand, water, stars.”
“I tried to stop it…” She trailed away here.
We were cruising west through an affluent area of wide streets, tall, red brick blocks of flats, a commercial parade of shops aligned down the hill towards Chalk Farm, Camden Town, a long mile further south was the start of Central London.
“You know, when my father left I was a lot like you are now,” I started. “All this rage, hurt…I felt there was something wrong with me, even though I told myself countless times that this was larger than me: he had left the rest of my family, too. It’s like your party was all of that compressed into one wild night.”
“So what happened to your father?”
“I told you he was born in Russia, right? He went through the war as a boy, never talked about it. You knew it couldn’t have been good. My mother never discussed it either. ‘Your father’s had a difficult life’ was her one-line dismissal of that topic. But he managed to get out, to California. Got married, all that. Then one day when I was twelve, he made the return journey. No good-bye, no warning. Just a letter.” I paused for a moment. “You have cleverly shifted this conversation to me.”
“I’m okay to talk about Mum. It’s just that it’s all a game. No one’s looking for her.”
I decided against attempting some meaningless reassuring blather, which led to a temporary silence.
“Would it have been any easier if your father had said good-bye?” she asked.
“I don’t know. He was dead in a little over a year. We didn’t know this until later; we were spared that part. Life! You hang around long enough and it’s sure to take a few nips out of your hide.”
“Can I ask you a serious question, after my serious apology?”
“Have you apologized? I’ve lost track.”
She swiveled to face me, steepled her hands together, and proceeded with a goofy speech about being so very, very sorry. Sounded Indian. She knew how to play up her youth when she needed to.
We were quiet for a few minutes as the anonymous office blocks on the fly-over went by. I knew what she was doing, creating space for her serious question. Finally she looked away from her side window, the wet brick shops and
houses sweeping by now.
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
“That’s your serious question?” She had asked it jokingly (because it was serious). I hadn’t thought of Natalie in that way. Her looks were a work in progress, like ideas working into a theme. Her face presented these ideas and you were left to guess at the eventual adult. You found yourself rooting for her, that her overlarge mouth was simply ahead of the curve, that it would all meld into a harmonious whole eventually. For now all you could say was she had an interesting face on an as-yet tomboy body.
“Maybe there’s two.”
“Ask me the other first,” I said, teasing her.
She waited long enough to give her second question space. We were through the last roundabout, heading to the motorway. Half my mind was on check-in, long flight, that one moment of panic I always get where you’ve been on the plane forever but your watch says only four hours. What if you can’t make it another eight? Distant embryonic thoughts of home.
“Are you coming back?”
There was so much unfinished business I had never considered not returning. That unknown link between Kirk and Claudia, both distracted and touchy before both disappearing within a week of each other. Kirk, forever; Claudia, I suspected, also dead. There was the faintest hint of an evil Russian from Hardcastle’s warning, combined with his long years in MI6, which in turn neatly tied in with Francine McLain and her Russian background. She was the lynch pin connected to Hardcastle and to Claudia. I definitely needed to see her. Finally, there was Sula. Our awkward, on-again off-again quasi-romance had enough occasional sparks to give me hope of an eventual fire.
“I’m leaving my new guitar here. I don’t normally desert them.” Natalie turned and came into my eyes, annoyed. Why couldn’t I give her a straight answer? Her blue-gray eyes slid away, disappointed
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