A Model Partner

by Seery, Daniel;

  ‘That’s Gerry Carney,’ Pete says as they are clumping down steep steps into the basement. ‘It’s his shift tonight. I’m not even supposed to be here. Gerry’s all right though. Split up from his missus about a year ago. I warned him that she was a slapper. He wasn’t having it.’ Pete unlocks a door which leads to a corridor. He flicks a switch and a bulb weakly illuminates the dark space. ‘They have three kids. Three fuckin’ kids man. What a mess.’

  There are two doors at the end of the corridor. Pete unlocks and opens the one nearest to them. A dark shape immediately falls toward him. Pete catches it.

  ‘Fuckin’ Terry Wogan.’ Pete drags the body from the room. ‘His leg is all busted up.’

  He grunts as he balances it against the wall of the corridor. ‘Here, I’ll get the others.’ He ducks through the door, into a small room containing other dark shapes, and drags a second waxwork body from inside.

  ‘How many are in there?’ Tom asks.

  ‘Five or six. Hang on, have a look for yourself.’ He pulls on a string and a bulb lights up with a continuous fizzing sound. The waxwork models are crammed inside, leaning on each other. Tom helps to take them from the small space and they line them up against the wall in the corridor.

  ‘They don’t have enough room upstairs for any of these fellas.’ Pete has his hands on his hips. ‘So these will just sit here until one of the display ones gets damaged. Or if someone dies I suppose.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If one of these fellas die then they’ll put the waxwork back out on the floor. Ye can’t beat death for boosting your career.’

  Tom scans the models. There are five in total. Terry Wogan with the busted leg and Bob Geldof are closest to him.

  ‘Is that Daniel O’Donnell?’ Tom motions to a neat figure at the end.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Tom nods slowly.

  ‘The jumper?’ Pete asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tom agrees. He walks up the line of models.

  ‘Who’s that supposed to be?’ He points to a man wearing rags, long tangled hair, black circles around the eyes. His skin is a rain-cloud-grey colour with scattered red blemishes.

  ‘That’s just some man from the Middle Ages exhibit. He has TB or something. There’s a whole history-of-Ireland section.’ Pete taps the model on the face. ‘He’s an ugly bastard, isn’t he?’

  ‘Um,’ Tom agrees, examining him from the side.

  ‘They were thinking of moving him to that Viking exhibition over by Christchurch but supposedly some director got into an argument with another director and one thing led to another so they just shoved him in a closet instead. You know the way these things work. It’s all politics.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Tom says even though he’s not sure what his cousin is talking about.

  The selection of waxwork models isn’t ideal. They are all men for one, all a bit dated and the worse for wear.

  ‘Who’s that supposed to be?’ Tom asks about the final figure in the line-up.

  ‘That’s William Shatner.’

  ‘William Shatner.’ Tom moves closer. ‘Doesn’t look anything like him.’

  ‘I don’t know. If you look at him from a certain angle and close your eyes a bit. It’s from the eighties, around the time he made T.J. Hooker.’

  ‘That would explain the police outfit. Was he ever really that thin though?’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Or tall? I always thought William Shatner was short. This figure is, what,’ Tom stands straight, places a hand on top of his own head and moves his hand towards the figure until it reaches a point above the figure’s head. ‘Must be about five-nine or five-ten. Tall enough.’

  ‘What am I?’ Pete says. ‘Some kind of William Shatner expert? They probably just made it up from a picture of the man. Jesus, for all I know somebody was just chancing their arm and William Shatner doesn’t even know this waxwork exists.’

  ‘Waxwork piracy,’ Tom says as he investigates William Shatner’s hands. They have a feminine quality to them. ‘Interesting,’ he says.

  ‘Well, who do you want?’ Pete asks. ‘Pick one.’

  Tom is undecided. Really there are only three figures which would come close to what he wants: Bob Geldof, William Shatner or the man from the history-of-Ireland exhibit who has TB. The TB model is more feminine around the face but his arms are quite butch. Shatner, surprisingly, seems to have the most feminine frame. But Geldof is tall and thin. He could do a lot with Geldof.

  Who to pick?

  Tom taps his foot quickly, stares at each model, and this terrible image enters his head, the three rigid figures tied to tall metal stools with rope, a colourful TV setting behind them and a partition beside.

  Hi there, I’m Tom from Dublin.

  (applause)

  I like to look at the structure of school jotters, enjoying the straightness of lines, the equal gaps between each one. What do you do for fun and how would it involve me? This question goes to number three, Bob Geldof.

  Well Tom, when I’m not saving the world from famine there is nothing that I enjoy more than reassembling old Atari game consoles. So if you pick me tonight perhaps I can bitmap your sprite and maybe we can create our own graphics interface together.

  (laughter)

  The rock star, the TB victim or the actor? They each have their advantages and disadvantages. Eventually it is the connection with Star Trek that sways his decision.

  ‘William Shatner,’ he says.

  ‘Good choice,’ Pete agrees.

  They return the other figures to the small room and Pete carries the model upstairs, where he wraps it in a grey, frayed and bobbled blanket before taking the money from Tom.

  ‘If anyone asks, you didn’t get this here,’ he warns Tom.

  ‘Sure,’ Tom says and exits through the door of the sole wax museum in Ireland.

  Tom takes the bus home.

  He stands Shatner in the space normally reserved for buggies and sits next to him. There is an old man at the top of the bus, bundled in jumpers, a scraggy hat on his head. He smells of Parmesan cheese and offers a loose, rumbling cough frequently. A boy sits with his mother at the back of the bus. He gradually makes his way forward as the journey lengthens, closer to Tom and closer to the blanket-covered model. He has red hair and a scowl, is probably about eight or nine, but Tom can’t be sure. His eyebrows are low and he continuously looks from the model to Tom as if he is trying to decide which of the pair he is most disgusted at.

  ‘Is that a dead body in there?’ he eventually asks and points to the blanket with his thumb.

  ‘Corpses can’t stand,’ Tom says and turns towards the window slightly.

  The boy exhales loudly. ‘What is it then?’ he asks.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ Tom keeps his voice low enough so it doesn’t reach the boy’s mother in the back row.

  ‘Nothing,’ he exhales loudly again, moves seats, taking the one in front of Tom.

  The bus moves through Drumcondra, stopping at the teachers’ college. Two women get off. Tom studies their shape. One of the women is small and curvy, a number 6 maybe, Tom thinks. Her curves give her a smooth, slinky movement. The woman beside her is thin with a long slender neck, a number 1. There is something elegant about her movement, athletic too. It is too difficult to pick a preference. The complexities involved in sorting through the variety of bodies make him feel tired.

  What do you want?

  What does he want?

  What does anybody want?

  The boy has turned in his seat and he is staring at Tom.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asks.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me.’

  ‘You were doing this,’ the boy blinks continuously for a few seconds.

  ‘No I wasn’t.’

  ‘I saw you,’ he says. ‘What’s that?’ he asks quickly, nodding to the blanket.

  ‘William Shatner,’ Tom mumbles.

  ‘What’s a Shatner?’

  ‘Wil
liam Shatner. It’s a person.’

  ‘A real person?’ The boy grips the blanket and moves to lift it.

  ‘Here, leave that.’

  ‘Give us a look.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who’s William Shatner?’ The boy sits down again.

  ‘He’s an actor.’

  ‘What was he in?’

  ‘Loads of things. Star Trek, he played Captain Kirk.’

  ‘Let me see him.’

  ‘If you see him will you piss off and leave me alone?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Tom briefly removes the blanket from the top end of the model.

  ‘That’s William Shatner,’ the boy says. ‘The state of him.’

  ‘There, I showed you. Now leave me alone.’

  The boy tuts and moves to the back of the bus.

  Tom’s thoughts drift with the movement of the vehicle. Up and down and forward to his plan for the waxwork model and backward to the sexual-harassment incident in work and to Doctor Bill Duggan, the psychiatrist.

  ‘Your compulsions Tom, tell me about them,’ he had asked.

  Tom explained about the bees.

  But the bees hadn’t been as bad at that stage, not nearly as bad as they are now.

  ‘It’s like the bee is in the air near me,’ Tom said. ‘Its wings are buzzing and this buzzing is accompanied by whatever idea is stuck in my head, ye know like,’ Tom drags his fingers down his neck. ‘Like maybe the idea to squeeze my fists tightly three times or something.’

  ‘Why would you want to do that Tom?’

  ‘I don’t know. Ideas just come into my head like that. Like if I turn off the television I might get the compulsion to squeeze my fists tight and then every time I turn the television off after that I’d feel the urge to squeeze my fists together.’

  Doctor Bill wrote something in his ledger.

  ‘I’d try to ignore it and then the buzzing would get louder and would sound kind of angry. And the longer I leave it the louder it gets and then there is so much buzzing that I’d just squeeze my hands tightly so that everything would return to normal.’

  ‘And it’s always bees?’

  ‘No. It’s been other things. The bee thing seems to be more common though.’

  ‘Do the bees make you feel anxious?’

  ‘It’s hard to say.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure if I feel anxious before the bees arrive or after.’

  ‘So you might feel anxious turning off the television?’

  ‘No. That was just an example.’

  ‘Can you give me a real-life example of when the bees have arrived?’

  Tom thinks for a moment.

  ‘Not right now.’

  ‘Can you remember the first time you ever had a compulsion?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Before the bees, in what way did your compulsions manifest?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess I just felt that I had to do them, like the thing with the bottle-top.’

  ‘The systematic turning before removing the cap.’

  ‘I just felt like I had to do it.’

  ‘What do you think will happen if you don’t do it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Think about it Tom,’ he had closed the ledger. ‘And try to think about how far you would go in the effort of keeping everything in order.’

  Tom nodded.

  And he thought about it.

  And he couldn’t come up with an answer.

  Chapter 10

  Tom checks Karl’s office on six separate occasions on Monday morning. By eleven he realises that Karl is not going to clock in. The calls he makes to Karl’s phone after eleven are all directed to the message service.

  Ticka-ticka-ticka

  On the way home from work Tom stops at a camera shop, a place that smells of plastic and leather, with excessive lighting on the ceiling, the walls busy with cameras on small Perspex ledges. The only camera he had ever owned before was a Polaroid Sun 600, black and silver with a built-in electronic flash. He was ten years of age.

  It has been a long time since he has seen one like the Sun 600 but he did come across some Polaroid snaps in work a few months before, taken at a staff night out. Up to that point Tom had believed Polaroid cameras to be extinct, proof of their existence only found in the bare bones of older models following explorations of neglected attic spaces or excavations of junk rooms. But here was evidence of their existence, small photographs tacked to a notice board, uncannily similar in size and colour contrast to the photographs taken from his childhood. The style made Tom think that this type of camera doesn’t actually capture a scene. Instead it merely transposes the characters onto a retro background. Unfortunately, he knows a Polaroid camera won’t be suitable for the job he is planning to carry out.

  Tom has some issues with cameras, the main ones being the risk of photograph underdevelopment and the fragility of film and the pause between the pressing of the shutter button and the moment when the camera reacts. It may only be one or two seconds but a lot can happen within this moment of time, a level smile can become crooked, a movement of the eyes, dropping of the head, dropping of the shoulders. The randomness is a cause of anxiety for Tom and this is why he asks the shop assistant for a fast camera as soon as he enters the shop.

  ‘How fast do you want it?’ The shop assistant is a tall, thin man with dark hair and circular designer glasses.

  Tom isn’t sure how to answer that.

  How fast is a camera?

  How fast is a washing machine, a television set, a shiny chrome-plated four-setting toaster?

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Tom says. ‘The faster the better I guess.’

  ‘I suppose it really depends on your price range. What is your price range?’

  ‘Thirty euro,’ Tom says.

  The shop assistant grunts, rummages in a box near his feet before placing a small silver digital camera onto the counter.

  ‘Is it fast?’ Tom asks.

  ‘It’s the Usain Bolt of the thirty-euro cameras,’ the shop assistant says without smiling.

  There is a charity shop near his building that sells cushions; horrible gaudy things that cause a phantom itchiness on the skin of Tom’s arms and legs when he is in close proximity. He hurriedly searches through a pile, scooping up the cushions which contain spongy foam and throwing the fluffy feathery type back in. There is a rack of women’s clothes near the door, dresses and blouses, a pile of trousers in a waist-high metal cage. Tom selects a dress, light material, daffodil yellow with red dots. He pays for everything at the till.

  Tom then buys a couple of rolls of black insulation tape from a store that sells an unsettling variety of clothes pegs and plastic drainers, and follows this up by purchasing the cheapest Stanley knife possible in the hardware store next door.

  He picks up a six-pack of beer and returns to his neighbours’ bed-sit and to the wax model.

  Tom holds the dress up to the model. It is long enough to reach the ankles and there is ample room to add some lumps and bumps to the model in the places where women commonly have lumps and bumps. Tom rests the dress on the chair, fetches his measuring tape and discovers that William Shatner is exactly five-nine. Tom is six-two. He is comfortable standing next to the model, even taking into account the loss of height due to the slant of the model when Tom leans it against the wall. Tom is happy to go with five-nine as a height for his match. It will simplify future measurements to do with the model. He carefully writes ‘5ft 9in’ in the Height section on his chart.

  The decision causes a small flutter of excitement in his stomach.

  Tom opens a beer. He cooks some rice, studying the model while the water bubbles away. The body should be easy enough to alter, he thinks, but he isn’t sure how to sort out the face. Perhaps some modelling clay will work for the nose and ears, papier mâché even. It might be possible to alter the face into a new shape, file the nose or thin the cheeks. The colour of the model
’s skin has dulled from age. The eyes are very detailed though. In the light of day the model has a surreal quality to it. The painted skin, the hardness, the lack of movement, it makes Tom think of a character in a skilled portrait painting, one which has somehow escaped the background and climbed from the frame.

  The figure alters as the light leaves the day. The dimness adds a realistic quality to the model. It becomes more human but with an empty quality, as if it is just the hollow shell of a human. This makes him think of taxidermy, whereby somehow removing the core of the animal makes it seem even more dead than if it was splayed open on a roadside, pink guts protruding through wiry, dark fur.

  More dead, Tom thinks and laughs.

  Dead is dead.

  Tom tidies his rice into a mound in the centre of his plate. He eats, starting at the edge and working inwards. When finished he cleans his plate before fetching the dress and insulation tape. He removes the packing from the cheap Stanley knife and tests it. The retractable blade moves with a stuttering movement when forced, and the plastic casing has sharp defects in it. It is usable, but only just.

  ‘Sorry about this, Shatner,’ Tom begins to unbutton the police jacket. ‘But needs must and all that.’

  He removes the clothes from the model to reveal a body with little detail to it. He puts the dress over Shatner’s head and gets one arm into the sleeve easily enough. The lack of flexibility makes the second arm more difficult. It is only when he stretches the fabric as far as he can that he manages to get it to fit and even then he hears the crackle of the fabric tearing slightly before he is successful. He rests the model against the wall.

  ‘Not bad, Shatner,’ he scrutinises it from the side. ‘Not a bad fit at all.’

  He opens the cushions and removes the foam from each one. He cuts and rolls pieces of foam into circular shapes large enough to sit in his palms and uses the insulation tape to hold them into shape. He then pulls the dress up and over the model’s head and tapes the two foam balls to the chest. He drops the dress to see how they look on the frame.