“Well, that was a mouthful.” The three of them had crossed the Seine from the Isle St. Louis. It began to get chilly. Jerry pulled on his old car coat and checked his heat. His resurrected needle-gun, primed and charged, was ready to start stitching up the enemy. “Shall we go?”
“You know what my French is like.” Mo stared with some curiosity at Max Pardon. A small, neatly wrapped figure wearing an English tweed cap, Pardon had exhausted himself and stood with his back to a gilded statue. “What’s he saying?”
“That his taxes are too high,” said Jerry.
7. PUMP UP YOUR NETWORK
“Daran habe ich gar nicht gedacht!”
—Albert Einstein
“NOW LOOK HERE, Mr. Cornelius, you can’t come in here with your insults and your threats. What will happen to the poor beggars who depend on their corps for their healthcare and their massive mortgages? Would you care to have negative equity and be unemployed?” Rupert Fox spread his gnarled antipodean hands, then mournfully fingered the folds of his features, leaning into the mirror-cam. This facelift had not taken as well as he had hoped. He looked like a poorly rehydrated peach. “Platitudes are news, old boy.” He exposed his expensive teeth to the window overlooking Green Park. In the distance, the six flags of Texas waved all the way up the Mall to Buckingham Palace. “We give them reality in other ways. The reality the public wants. Swelp me. I should know. I’ve got God. What do you have? A bunch of idols.”
“I thought idolatry was your stock in trade.”
“Trade makes the world go round.”
“The great idolater, eh? All those beads swapped with the natives. All those presents.”
“I don’t have to listen to this crap.” Rupert Fox made a show of good humour. “You enjoy yourself with your fantasies, while I get on with my realities, sport. You can’t live in the past forever. Our Empire has to grow and change.” He motioned towards his office’s outer door. “William will show you to the elevator.”
8. IS HE THE GREATEST FANTASY PLAYER OF ALL TIME?
One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief … My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade … if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it …
—George W. Bush to Mickey Herskowitz, 1999
BANNING NEVER REALLY changed. Jerry parked the Corniche in the disabled parking space and got out. A block to the east, I-10 roared and shook like a disturbed beast. A block to the west, and the town spread to merge with the scrub of semi-desert, its single-storey houses decaying before his eyes. But here, outside Grandma’s Kitchen, he knew he was home and dry. He was going to get the best country cooking between Santa Monica and Palm Springs. The restaurant was alone amongst the concessions and chains of Main Street. It might change owners now and again, but never its cooks or waitresses. Never its well-advertised politics, patriotism, and faith. Grandma’s was the only place worth eating in a thousand miles. He took off his wide-brimmed Panama and wiped his neck and forehead. It had to be a hundred and ten. The rain, roaring down from Canada and up from the Gulf of Mexico, had not yet reached California. When it did, it would not stop. Somewhere out there, in the heavily irrigated fields, wetbacks were desperately working to bring in the crops before they were swamped. From now on, they would grow rice, like the rest of the country.
Jerry pushed open the door and walked past the display of flags, crosses, fish, and Support Our Troops signs. There was a Christmas theme, too. Every sign and icon had fake snow sprayed over it. Santa and his sleigh and reindeers swung from all available parts of the roof. A big artificial tree in the middle of the main dining room dropped tinsel around its base so that it seemed to be emerging from a sparkling pool. Christmas songs played over the speakers. A few rednecks looked up at him, nodding a greeting. A woman in a red felt elf hat, who might have been the original Grandma, led him through the wealth of red and white chequered table-cloths and wagon-wheel-backed chairs to an empty place in the corner. “How about a nice big glass of ice tea, son?”
“Unsweetened. Thanks, ma’am. I’m waiting for a friend.”
“I can recommend the Turkey Special,” she said.
Twenty minutes went by before Max Pardon came in, removing his own hat and looking around him in delight. “Jerry! This is perfect. A cultural miracle.” The natty Frenchman had shaved his moustache. He had been stationed out here for a couple of months. Banning had once owed a certain prosperity, or at least her existence, to oil. Now she was a dormitory extension for the casinos. You could have bought the whole place for the price of a mid-sized Pasadena apartment. M. Pardon had actually been thinking of doing just that. He ordered his food and gave the waitress one of his sad, charming smiles. She responded by calling him “Darling.”
When their meals arrived, he picked up his knife and fork and shrugged. “Don’t feel too sorry for me, Jerry. It’s healthy enough, once you get back and lose those old interstate habits. You know LA.” He spoke idiomatic American. He leaned forward over his turkey dinner to murmur. “I think I’ve found the guns.”
Gladly, Jerry grinned.
As if in response to M. Pardon’s information, from somewhere out in the scrubland came the sound of rapid shooting. “That’s not the Indians,” he said. “The locals do that about this time every day.”
“You’ll manage to get the guns to the Diné on schedule?”
“Sure.” Tasting the fowl, Max raised his eyebrows. “You bet.”
Grandma brought them condiments. She turned up her hearing aid, cocking her head. “This’ll put Banning on the map.” She spoke with cheerful satisfaction. “Just in time to celebrate the season.”
Jerry sipped his tea.
Max Pardon always knew how to make the most of Christmas. By the time the Diné arrived, Banning would be a serious bargain.
9. THEY WANT TO MAKE FIREARMS OWNERSHIP A BURDEN - NOT A FREEDOM!
In August most upscale Parisians head north for Deauville for the polo and the racing or to the cool woods of their country estates in the Loire or Bordeaux … Paris’s most prestigious hotel at that time of the year is crawling with camera-toting tourists and rubberneckers.
—Tina Brown, The Diana Chronicles, 2007
“WELCOME TO THE Hotel California,” Jerry sang into his Bluetooth. In his long, dark hair the beautiful violet light winked in time as the ruins sped past on either side of I-10: wounded houses, shops, shacks, filling stations, churches, all covered in dayglo blue PVC, stacks of fallen trunks, piles of reclaimed planks, leaning firehouses, collapsed trees lying where the hurricane had thrown them, overturned cars and trucks, collapsed barns, flattened billboards, flooded strip malls, mountains of torn foliage, state and federal direction signs twisted into tattered scrap, smashed motels and roadside restaurants, mile upon mile of detritus growing more plentiful the closer they got to the coast.
In the identical midnight blue Corniche beside him, connected by her own Bluetooth, Cathy joined in the chorus. The twin cars headed over cypress swamps, bayous and swollen rivers on the way to where the Mississippi met the city.
Standing in the still, swollen ponds on either side of the long bridges, egrets and storks regarded them with cool, incurious eyes. Families of crows hopped along the roadside, pecking at miscellaneous corpses; buzzards cruised overhead. It looked like rain again.
Here and there, massive cracks and gaps in the concrete had been filled in with tar like black holes in a flat grey vacuum. Hand-made signs offered the services of motel chains or burger concessions, and every few miles they were told how much closer they were to Prejean’s or Michaux’s where the music was still good and the gumbo even tastier. The fish had been enjoying amore varied diet. Zydeco and cajun, crawfish and boudin. Oo-oo. Oo-oo. Still having fon on the bayou … Everything still for sale. The Louisiana heritage.
“Them Houston gals done got ma soul!” crooned Cathy. “Nearly home.”<
br />
10. PIRATES OF THE UNDERSEAS
At places where two road networks cross, a vertical interchange of bridges and tunnels will separate the traffic systems, and Palestinians from Israelis.
—Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, 2007
“CHRISTMAS WON’T BE CHRISTMAS without presents,” grumbled Mo, lying on the rug. He got up to sit down again at his keyboard. “Sorry, but that’s my experience.” He was writing about the authenticity of rules in the game of Risk. “I mean you have to give it a chance, don’t you? Or you’ll never know who you are.” He cast an absent-minded glance about the lab. He was in a world of his own.
Miss Brunner came in wearing a white coat. “The kids called. They won’t be here until Boxing Day.”
“Bugger,” said Mo. “Don’t they want to finish this bloody game?” He was suspicious. Had her snobbery motivated her to dissuade them, perhaps subtly, from coming? He already had her down as a social climber. Still, a climber was a climber. “Why didn’t you let them talk to me?”
“You were out of it,” she said. “Or cycling or something. They thought you might be dead.”
He shook his head. “There’s days I wonder about you.”
Catherine Cornelius decided to step in. He was clearly at the end of his rope. “Can I ask a question, Mo?”
Mo took a breath and began to comb his hair. “Be my guest.”
“What’s this word?” She had been looking at Jerry’s notes. “Is this holes, hoes or holds?”
“I think it’s ladies,” said Mo.
“Oh, of course.” She brightened. “Little women. Concord, yes? The dangers of the unexamined life?”
11. REBOOTING THE BODY
We could hear the Americans counting money and saying to the Pakistanis: “Each person is $5,000. Five persons, $25,000. Seven persons, $35,000.”
—Laurel Fletcher and Eric Stover, The Guantánamo Effect: Exposing the Consequences of U.S. Detention and Interrogation Practices.
HE HAD BUILT up his identity with the help of toy soldiers, cigarette cards, foreign stamps, all those books from the tuppenny lending library with their wonderful bright jackets preserved in sticky plastic. Netta Muskett was his mum’s favourite and he went for P. G. Wodehouse, Edgar Rice Burroughs, P. C. Wren, Baroness Orczy, and the rest. They were still printed in hundreds of thousands then. Thrillers, comedies, fantastic adventure, historical adventure. Rafael Sabatini. What a disappointing picture of him that was in Lilliput magazine, wearing waders, holding a rod, caught bending in midstream, an old gent. It came to us all.
Didi Dee seemed to feel more comfortable without her clothes, nodding to herself as she looked at his books. Was she confirming something? He sat in the big Morris library chair and watched her, dark as the mahogany, reflecting the light.
“I wasn’t exactly a virgin. My dad started fucking me when I was twelve.” She turned to study his reaction. “Does that shock you?”
Jerry laughed. “What? Me? I’m a moralist, I know, but I’m not a petty moralist. You think a spot of finger-wagging is what Jesus would have done. So I should be saying ‘Bloody hell! The fucking bastard’?”
She came back into the bedroom and started snapping on her kit. “It was all right. He got it over with quickly and then he was guilty as hell and I could go out all night and do what and whom I liked without his saying a word because he was scared I’d tell the cops and my mum would find out, though really I think she knew and didn’t care. Gave her a quiet life. So by day I was doing my mock A-levels at St. Paul’s and by night I was having all the fun of the fair.” She blinked reminiscently. “Or thought I was. It took me a bit of time to find out what I liked. What I was like. When I met you I’d just turned twenty-one. I thought I was ready to settle down.”
He didn’t make the obvious response. He licked the smell of her cunt off his upper lip. He needed a shave. Maybe he’d teach her how to use the straight razor on his face. She required training. She’d said so herself. “What a waste.” He thought of those lost nine years.
Suddenly her face opened up into one of those old cheeky grins. A lot better than nothing but it made him want to pee. No, he wasn’t really getting that old feeling. She showed him her perfect ass. So this is where nostalgia got you. She lay down next to him. A coquette. “I trust you,” she said.
This puzzled him even more. He had once understood her, even if she didn’t like him much. Her passivity was her power. It gave her what she wanted or at least it had done so up to now.
He changed the subject a little. “Why are you so cruel to the dead?”
“Because they betrayed me by dying.”
“And who will you betray by dying?”
“Who will you betray?”
A no-brainer. “Nobody,” he said. “Why?” He suspected one of those boring little traps Christians set for you. Of course God loved him, but he didn’t feel very special in this near-infinity of planes that was the multiverse. He was as big as the multiverse, as small as God. It wasn’t always this hard to understand. Space is a dimension of time. Light speed varied enormously. There was a black tide running.
“A black tide running.” He tucked her head into his shoulder.
She tensed. “Is that another dig at Obama?”
“What?” He had fallen asleep suddenly. “What about him? Has he betrayed you?”
“That isn’t the point. Electing him was what it was about.”
“Sure, he’s doing such a lot for black pride.” Jerry rolled over and found a half-smoked box of Sullivans. He lit one. “God knows what poor old Mandela thinks.”
“The Labour Party’s trying to find one just like him.”
“Hardly worth blacking up for.”
From outside came a shout of glee. They both recognized it. Mo was jumping on his prey. He must have caught a kid.
12. POPSCI’S GUIDE TO SUMMER SCI-TECH MOVIES
Staring at the vast military history section of the airport shop, I had a choice: the derring-do of psychopaths or scholarly tomes with their illicit devotion to the cult of organized killing. There was nothing I recognized from reporting war. Nothing on the spectacle of children’s limbs hanging in trees and nothing on the burden of shit in your trousers. War is a good read. War is fun. More war, please.
—John Pilger, New Statesman, May 10, 2010
MO WASN’T HAVING any and neither, he remarked happily, had he been getting any. But there was this little yellow lady to the west of Kathmandu and the crew had come to know her just as “Belle.” They were banging on the wedding gongs and decorating dresses, and they were praying that she didn’t go to hell, because Mo he was a white man and not the best at that and they didn’t want their girl to wear his band. They consoledthemselves, however, that they needn’t curse the moon for poor Belle would be a widow pretty soon. So they smiled at Mo and offered him the best seat in the house until Belle herself, she said, could smell a rat. And they put their heads together and they made a little plan to see her married by some other means or man. Really, Mo thought, he was probably a goner.
“Mo?”
He turned. He had been on his feet long enough to understand his bit as he fell onto the carpet. Buggered.
He could still hear. “Of course it’s not curare.”
Jerry was wistful as he watched Mitzi Beesley drag the little fellow into the hedge. “But then again it’s not chocolate, either!”
“I wouldn’t personally be talking about sweets,” Didi Dee murmured. She had become shy. Flirtatious. Weak. Self-righteous. Religious.
Why was she searching out his contempt?
This whole thing was altogether too retro for Jerry. He cleared his throat, spat on the ground. Where was his 1954? Surely earlier? What numbers had she offered him?
Should he get into the spirit of the times? Feeling guilty. Finding places to hide. Telling lies? You needed a voice. He couldn’t muster a voice on top of everything else.
Somewhere up there in the
diminishing hills he heard an engine. Jimmy van Dorn’s awful old Rolls-Royce.
Time to be shunting along. He kissed Didi on her dimpled cheek. “Tee tee eff en.”
THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
1. GUNS IS GUNS
Everyone will be wealthy, living like a lord, Getting plenty of things today they can’t afford But when’s it going to happen? When? Just by and by! Oh, everything will be lovely, when the pigs begin to fly!
—Charles Lambourne, Everything Will Be Lovely, c. 1860
During the tour you will visit many of the key sites connected to these infamous “Whitechapel Murders.” You will retrace the footsteps of Jack The Ripper and discover, when, where and how his five unfortunate victims lived and died. You will also discover why the Ripper was never caught and what life was really like for people living in the London’s notorious East End.
FREE Jack The Ripper starts and finishes at Mary Jane’s, named after the Ripper’s fifth and final victim, Mary Jane Kelly, where from 6pm you have access to 2-4-1 house cocktails, 2-4-1 bottles of Kronenbourg, £8.90 bottles of house wine, £8.90 cocktail jugs and 3-4-2 on all small plates of food … what a killer offer!!!
—Celebrity & Pop Culture Tours of the Planet, Celebrity Planet 2010
“I ADMIRE A MAN who can look cool on a camel.” Bessy Burroughs presented Jerry with her perfectly rounded vowels. Born in Kansas, she had been educated in Sussex, near Brighton. Regular vowels, her dad had always said, were the key to success, no matter what your calling. “God! Is it always this hot in Cairo?”
“It used to be lovely in the winter.” Jerry jumped down from his kneeling beast and came to help Bessy dismount. Only Karen von Krupp preferred to remain in her saddle. Shieldingher eyes against the rising sun, she peered disdainfully at a distant clump of palms.
Modem Times 2.0 Page 5