Tom offers a grunt of understanding.
‘This whole area is mine. You can have any part of that area out there.’ She rotates her two hands outward in unison like a flight attendant. ‘You can touch anything. Go ahead. Tip the back of the chair. Sit at any of the tables. Hug the poxy pillar for all I care. But don’t touch anything past this point.’
Tom frowns and slumps his shoulders.
Fiona begins to hum, takes a cloth from beside the sink and wipes the area under the taps.
‘Do you want a drink?’ she asks as she does this.
‘Give us a pint.’
‘Are you a hotel resident?’
‘Will I still get a pint if I say no?’ Tom asks.
She shakes her head.
‘Well then yes,’ Tom says. ‘I am a resident.’
‘Room number?’
‘Sixty-three,’ Tom picks a random one.
She moves to the electronic till and types in his room number.
‘Well Mr Zhang Wei,’ she turns. ‘I think this is your first time visiting the bar.’
‘It is,’ Tom says. ‘Don’t bother charging the drink to my room though. I’d rather pay in cash if that’s okay.’
Her left eyebrow drops slightly but she smiles.
‘It is Mr Wei.’
She pours him a pint and takes the money. Tom throws the change in a large tip-jar on the counter. She thanks him and returns to cleaning the counter.
Tom sips his pint.
Ticka-ticka-ticka
He contemplates having another search for Karl.
Ticka-ticka-ticka
Surely he’s back with the lads now.
Ticka-ticka-ticka
He has to get that watch back.
‘Ten past ten,’ Fiona says.
‘What?’ Tom blinks.
‘You keep looking at your wrist like you’re checking the time.’
‘Sorry, I hadn’t noticed,’ Tom says.
Fiona smiles and nods and moves to the end of the bar.
Tom folds his arms tightly in an effort to control his actions. He sits straight in the chair. Soon, he begins to imagine the watch on his arm. He can almost feel the band hugging his wrist, can almost feel the coolness of the metal plate on his skin.
Ticka-ticka-ticka
He sees an image of it in the corner of his eye. It is quick, the barest of flashes skimming across the surface of his thoughts. He knows the longer he is without the watch the more concrete the image will become and the more he will feel the urge to act in order to dispel it from his head.
He tries to ignore it.
Ticka-ticka-ticka
He clenches his fist and grinds his teeth together. There is this horrible sensation in his chest, a kind of crawling.
And it will not leave him until he acts.
Ticka-ticka-ticka
There is a cooler at the back of the bar, loaded neatly with various beers.
It buzzes gently.
Bzzzzz
Tom unfolds his arms and takes a large mouthful of his pint.
The buzzing is increasing.
He taps the glass with his little finger, a steady, constant beat.
‘Have you ever been stung?’ Bill Duggan, the psychiatrist, had asked once.
Tom recalls how he had been fishing for any memories which may have involved buzzing and considering if they are in some way associated with his anxiety or compulsive behaviour. At the time he wondered what term the psychiatrist had written in his ledger to describe Tom’s condition. Tom would label it as a trap. Because it is a trap, Tom thinks, a hole or vast cavern in the earth whereby a single thought or notion can echo around in his head like a call in a cavern until he feels as if he is going mad.
‘Maybe when you were a baby?’ Bill Duggan had prompted.
‘No.’
‘Were you afraid of bees as a child?’
‘No.’
‘Have you any memories to do with wasps even?’
‘Not really.’
Tom remembers only one, a fairly insignificant memory of a wasp nest in the shed of his grandmother’s back garden when he was a kid. Tom remembers their constant arrival and departure, the way they squeezed through a small hole in the grouting between the bricks, back and forth constantly as if they were being controlled by some outside force. And thinking about it now, Tom understands that this wasn’t so far off the mark. They were controlled by something, some basic primeval thing that is etched into the make-up of all wasps. And perhaps this is what he should link his problems to, not to a single event but to some instinctive glitch in his make-up, some survival mechanism that won’t turn off, that is urging him to protect or to seek or even to flee, which relates to a danger that doesn’t actually exist. Because how can you protect if you don’t know what you are protecting from or how can you seek if you don’t know what it is you are looking for? How can you flee if the thing which you are escaping is yourself?
Tom looks at his wrist.
The buzzing stops. He decides to replace the momentary quiet with something else.
His sight moves to Fiona and he speaks.
‘Do you think you’re funny?’ He leans on the counter.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She walks to his side of the bar, folding the cloth as she moves.
‘It means what it means,’ Tom shrugs. ‘Do you think you have a good sense of humour?’
‘I have my moments like everyone else,’ she says.
‘Try to make me laugh,’ Tom folds his arms and sits back.
‘Feck off,’ she gives an exaggerated look of exasperation.
‘Go on, I’m trying something out. An experiment.’
‘You a scientist?’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t think so.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I can’t say. My boss won’t let me be rude to the customers.’
Tom stares at her. She bows her head to hide her reddening cheeks.
‘I was trying to make you laugh,’ she says quietly.
‘Oh yeah. It didn’t really work.’
Tom looks across the bar to the skewed menus. He reaches over to fix them.
‘If you try that again I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
‘Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.’
‘You’d better start thinking.’
‘Sorry,’ Tom mumbles. He takes a sip of beer. ‘What do you think is the best way of finding out if someone has a good sense of humour?’
‘Try to make them laugh I guess.’
‘And if you aren’t face to face?’
‘I don’t know,’ she shakes her head slowly. ‘I suppose, judging by the people that come in and out of this place, I guess that most people have a good sense of humour. They just find different things funny. Ye know, some people might like slapstick. Others might have a dry sense of humour. Everybody is different.’
‘What about you, what sense of humour do you have?’
‘I’d probably have a quirky sense of humour,’ she plays with the nail on her thumb.
‘And you seem pretty normal,’ Tom says.
‘Thanks a bunch.’
‘Yeah,’ Tom takes his notebook from his pocket.
He opens it and writes the words ‘common sense of humour’.
‘It’s not about finding out who has the best sense of humour,’ he says. ‘It’s about who laughs at the same things as you.’ Tom stands. ‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Fiona looks confused.
‘You missed a bit,’ Tom says and nods to the far end of the bar.
‘Where?’ Fiona takes the cloth from the counter again.
‘Over there,’ he points.
Fiona turns and Tom quickly reaches across the bar and fixes the stack of menus before hurrying toward the corridor which leads to the nightclub.
Chapter 7
Tom’s hangover is a parched, sandy mouth and a steady throbbing in his crown, a pain which intens
ifies as he shuffles to his neighbours’ bed-sit. He sits on an armchair and rings Karl on his mobile phone. His call gets directed to the message service.
‘Karl,’ Tom leaves a message. ‘Give me a ring when you get a chance. It’s about the watch. About my watch, about the watch that you borrowed last night. You might have already tried to get in touch about it. I did have my phone on but I know that sometimes the connection isn’t great, especially if you were trying to ring me from the nightclub. Sometimes it’s just the sheer volume of people in the place that can cause a problem with the signal. Or it could be a mast on the roof. Or it might even be where you’re ringing from in the building. Anyways, I just want a word about the watch. My watch. If you could let me know how I can collect it from you that would be great. I’d rather have it sorted out before Monday if we can. Otherwise I’ll get it from you when I see you in work. But again, if we can sort it out before Monday it would be better. All right? Okay. Bye then.’
Tom hangs up and stands. He stares at his phone for a moment, half-expecting Karl to ring straight away. The phone remains mute and the screen stays dull and grey, almost resentful-looking, Tom thinks as he mopes around the bed-sit.
Ticka-ticka-ticka
He considers ringing again, just in case there is a problem with the answering service, but decides he will give Karl a little time to respond. He sets a reminder on his phone for an hour later.
Reminder: Watch, Karl
He moves to his chart, closes his eyes and randomly selects a heading. When he opens them again he finds that his finger has landed on ‘Features’.
Tom thinks about this while he returns to his own bed-sit. He supposes features could cover body shape and facial features. This might take some research, he thinks.
Tom has an old pair of binoculars. He picked them up years ago, at a swap-day organised at work by Clarissa from Accounts. Tom brought an old radio along and a set of place-mats. He swapped the place-mats for a picture of Elvis that now covers a crack in the wall to the left of the door to his bed-sit, and traded the radio for the binoculars. They have been sitting in a drawer ever since. Tom only removed them once when drunk and spent a few minutes gazing through the reverse side, imagining he was in a larger room. The novelty of that lasted until he almost fell against the sink.
Tom fetches the binoculars and makes his way to the roof.
He has been up here before, a couple of years back, when his television reception had gone on the blink. Mr Reilly, the landlord, happened to be on the premises at the time and he led Tom to the roof and explained, in his customary high-pitched yelping, the best way to fix the aerial. It mattered little that Tom could barely understand a word he was saying because he soon learned that fixing the aerial consisted of hammering the metal prongs at random points while cursing at the top of the voice. He attempted this method a few months later when the reception went on the blink again, and was delighted to find that he had two additional television stations on his set when he returned to his bed-sit.
The building is five storeys high and the roof is a series of level areas of different heights broken up by sections of sloping tiles. A frail wooden stairwell sways to a narrow door which opens up on to one of the level sections. There is a lip of concrete at the front of this section. A deckchair lolls beside a disused, red-bricked chimney stack, a colourful piece of shredded fabric curling around the wooden frame. Tom figures that this is where Mr Reilly likes to come to smoke. There are plenty of cigarette butts crushed into the concrete to reinforce this theory.
Tom tests the strength of the chair by pressing both hands into the fabric before he eventually sits down. It is a nice spot, apart from the frequent fluttering of pigeons with the bite of cold on his face and the stomach-warbling scent of the local takeaway which hangs in the air. The noise of the street reaches him in drifts, contorting with the distance, the blaring of engines, the monotonous thump of dance music filtered through obstacles, the squeal of tyres, the whoosh of extractor fans. It is the outside world but from a different angle than normal, the angle of hidden solitude, a position that he feels a lot more comfortable with.
From the roof he has a clear view of the apartment block on the other side of the street. He can see the paved footpath below from both sides and about half a kilometre worth of passing traffic. He scans the area with the binoculars, quickly discovering that they are more difficult to master than he had expected. It is tricky to get the timing right when following a target. He overshoots on occasion and loses his target when others cross their path. But he perseveres and eventually he begins to get the hang of it.
Tom aims for a figure approaching in the distance on the left-hand side of the street. He wiggles the focus wheel at the top of the binoculars until the image clarifies. It is a man, bald, wearing tight tracksuit bottoms and an undersized T-shirt. His large gut oozes over the elastic band of the bottoms and he grips a lead, the other end of which is attached to a tiny King Charles pup. Tom aims for the man’s face. There is a hazy element to the view, a lack of distinction between different facial features. Tom plays with the wheel but the image worsens. Tom realises that they are not as good quality as he originally thought.
He tries another figure, a woman pushing a buggy, limp blonde hair and a puffy yellow coat. He has the same problem as before. It’s as if he is looking at a hazy projected image instead of a form. There is a man standing across the street. The man is picking his nose. Tom aims for him, steadies his arms. The longer Tom stays in the one position the more clearly he can make out his target. The key is stillness.
If only everybody would stop moving around so much.
He lays the binoculars on his lap and rubs his eyes.
Then again, he isn’t really looking for a definite, is he?
His ideal woman is not going to come strolling down the street just because he happens to have a set of binoculars. That’s like expecting to see a UFO just because you’ve allowed yourself to believe in them. No, if anything this field-trip is merely an exercise in creativity, something to stir the mind, a warm-up for the task ahead. In fact, the blurriness of the features is a good thing. He read somewhere that people don’t see the detail in faces, on a conscious level at least, and that memory fills in any missing gaps. There must be thousands of faces stored in his head. In reality he already knows the face of his ideal match. He just has to remember it.
Besides, the face that he is most attracted to may not be the perfect face, scientifically or traditionally. It just has to be the face most appealing to him. Because there are flaws in even the plainest of things, always a notch in the seemingly flat board, always a blemish on the porcelain urn, always a taint in the clearest of diamonds. So, no, it doesn’t have to be perfect. He merely has to be aware of all the possible options for each characteristic before he makes a final decision on his number-one face.
So a hazy scan will have to do.
Down to the people who hurry about their business.
Down to the partners who hold each other’s hands, to the boys that bounce off each other and joke around, the girls balanced on high shoes, the old men with sticks, the dogs that piss against the lampposts and the crows that land on electrical wires to watch the world bustling below their feet.
Down to the woman who stops in front of the entrance of the building, who is taking a phone from a red handbag and pressing the buttons.
She is familiar to Tom.
He quickly rotates the focussing wheel on the binoculars. A blurred impression of her face expands and contracts in the lenses before the image improves.
Tom’s phone rings.
He fumbles with his pocket while trying to keep his sight on the figure. He loses the image but finds his phone.
There is a woman on the line. Karl’s wife. Angela.
Karl’s wife!
That’s who is standing at the front of the building.
‘I want a word with you,’ she says.
‘Hang on, I’ll be right down,’
Tom says.
She looks up quickly and scans the windows at the front of the building before returning her phone to the bag.
Tom moves downstairs. He meets the trundling Maureen Hill on the way. She acknowledges him without smiling and Tom doesn’t hang around to chat. He jogs down two more flights and exits onto the street.
‘Where is he?’ she asks as soon as she sees Tom.
‘What?’ Tom says. His forehead wrinkles.
‘Where the fuck is he? He didn’t come home last night. And I know you were with him.’
‘What?’
‘I know you were with him. Karl told me you were going to be there. He said,’ she deepens her voice to mimic her husband. ‘“Tom is going, that bloke that used to live on my road.” And I said, “That odd bloke that works in the factory?” And he said yes. So I know for a fact you were there.’
She folds her arms and indicates, with a nod of her head, that it is his turn to speak.
‘Yeah,’ Tom says. ‘I was out.’
‘Then what are you lying for?’
Tom runs his hands down his face. He can’t think straight.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘Where is he? Is he up in your place?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Come on,’ she moves toward the door. ‘We’re going to check.’
‘He’s not up there.’
Her eyes partially close with suspicion.
‘All right,’ Tom doesn’t want to argue with her. He opens the front door and leads her upstairs.
‘He’s gone out with the lads from work before and he’s always come home,’ she says. ‘He goes out with you once and he’s out all night. What does that say?’
‘I don’t know,’ Tom mumbles over his shoulder as they move upward.
‘It tells me something is going on,’ she says.
Maureen Hill is still hanging around the stairs. She raises her eyebrows on seeing Angela and gives her the once-over. Tom pretends he doesn’t notice and quickly rounds the banister rail onto the next flight.
‘Is this the only door to your place?’ Angela asks when they are outside Tom’s.
A Model Partner Page 6