‘Thank you Mike’ I reply to his jest. ‘I meant in the bedroom.’
‘I got that.’
‘In whose bedroom?’ Evan calls me back surprising me. ‘Hello baby.’
Evan reaches in for a quick kiss, the subtle tentative way in which he does in front of others even though he’s no fan of public displays of affection. ‘Congratulations, how does it feel to pull off one of the biggest transactions the world has ever seen?’
‘It was nothing and a team effort’
‘Too right’ Steve Richards laughs, a tiger of a man, joking and bloody lovely, but I wouldn’t want to cross him in business hours though, apparently he goes through personal assistants like hot dinners. ‘Modest Evan, and it was the biggest, pulled together in only three and a half years.
‘Atlantis, the first floating city.’
His hand makes way to reveal a projection of thecircular floating island, accommodation for seven thousand residences, shopping malls, all amenities, gyms and boutiques, helipads. Atlantis. Jewel of the seas.
‘Setting sail in 2024, and what’s the bet you guys have a penthouse apartment.’ Nods Steve.
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‘To Atlantis.’ ‘Salute.’
‘To Atlantis’ comes an echoing chorus of voices.
I raise my glass joining in the Viking tradition of eye contact during cheers and pretending to slosh each other’s champagne into each other’s glasses, in case of poison.
I catch eyes with Maria, Evan’s long time, hard working and persevering personal assistant. Italian, her hair curled and tonight voluptuous, she’s wearing a beautiful blue dress I’ve never seen before. She raises her glass with us. ‘Well boys, congratulations.’ She says.
‘Maria!’
‘Treacle.’ Kissing me on the cheek. ‘And Evan, congratulations making a spectacle of yourself.’
‘As always. ‘
In an instant phones are going of left, right and center.A somber tone hits and Mike comes over in a flustered panic. ‘There’s another riot kicking off in the city, they are disabling access, apparently thousands have taken to the street.’
An exchange of worried looks take place amongst those not reaching for or staring at their phone. Around seven years ago there was an economic downturn and unfortunately not much had recovered. The poor were unable to afford their homes and the margins between the underclass and the rich became wider. The middle class barely exists today. The riots have been labeled the riots of disparity. We were the lucky ones. Evan managed to
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recuperate the losses from his father dismantling his empire of businesses. Russell his father sold off his estates and Evan’s inheritance. Evan was not happy and took this to be a personal insult. He’s spent the last years since with determined vigor to put himself on the map and in my view impress his father. His father had lost interest in money and was happy to settle for a quiet life, urging Evan to do the same, settle down and have children. Evans interest has been to capitalize on hisroots; tonight he glows with pride in his accomplishments, as attractive and motivated as ever. Hopefully we’ll now be able to settle. Money has never been a great motivator of mine and now I find myself in the position of luxury I find it hard to imagine going back to my roots, though living on a farm would be nice, with space.I’ve been looking after his ill mother for the years since Russell, his father, departed. He was found dead outside his home, the circumstances largely unknown.
The commotion clears as Mike announces that helicopters will take us back to our estate. It would be the first time we’ve been choppered around.
‘I've got the car here’ I remember. ‘Maria can take it.’ Evan says.
‘Sure I can. I’ll bring the car with me to the burbs tonight and head over to Peacehaven tomorrow and pick up those photos your mum’s been asking for.’ It’s been near three years we moved Sylvia into the hospice. ‘Have you been to see your mum recently Evan?’ Maria asks.
Evan becomes disgruntled and angry instantly, ‘You're
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our assistant Maria, we ask you to help us with our affairs not get personally involved in them.’
‘Sorry Mr Mason.’ She apologizes.
‘Evan, please.’ He says. ‘And you've no need to apologize. Let us move on.’
‘To Evan.’ Maria raises her glass. ‘And the captains of Atlantis!’
Drinking, laughing, eating, and somewhere along the evening it gets messy with a few lines of click in the bathroom, a super drug that enhances the senses and sexual prowess. Evan whispers in my ear and I take him by the hair and let him ride me in the cubical, his life banging against me, two animals in the throngs of passion, I hold his face towards mine, lick his mouth as he grabs my hair. He looks longingly at me, kisses me and makes his way out of the bathroom, helping inch my leggings back up. I fix my hair and reapply my lipstick and head out to have a cigarette of the balcony and think of the luck in being in such a position. If only it wasn’t at the cost of time with Evans mother. I worry for her.
The party is rambunctious. Today people move to sea whilst others fight for their space on land. Some dodgy karaoke is taking place and it’s hazy, I’m high. My eyes flicker out and it looks like a wolf is moving between people’s legs but then its gone, a shadow. A helicopter comes in sometime later, my husband gets in first and helps me aboard and we
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fly home. Down below the city is in turmoil, I clock some click again and time is lost flying over a city of rioters with the occasional fire erupting from the world below, figuratively and very literally I am very fucking high.
∆
I’m within our lush penthouse, cosy and warm, home. Evan is dealing out a line more click. I can take or leave the stuff until I get started, its harder for Evan, he been losing himself in it since his father threw his arms up at his inheritance. Our life lines the walls in photos, our trip to the troposphere where we passengered the reaches of Earth and experienced zero gravity.
‘After all’s said and done’ Says Evan. ‘If these people want to get themselves out of poverty they have to work at it. Its their own laziness keeping them poor.’
‘And what of the top one percent that have bought up all the property and keep everyone in rent arrears as they gather interest on their accumulated wealth. Where’s the fair tax?’
‘This is money I’ve earnt why should I be penalized for it’. ‘You know that I’m not working, I’ve spent the last few
years looking after your mother…’
Evan cuts in ‘Why bring her into it? Maybe you could work…’
It irks me to hear him talk like this but I don’t want to upset him. I shouldn’t have bought Sylvia into this. As strong,
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noble and kind as he is, sometimes he’s like playing with fire. I guess he’s right but I stopped working for the right reasons and against my own judgment maybe. I wish he remembered the sacrifice it was for me. Loved me that bit for having done what he suggested best for us.
‘I’ve wanted to get back into acting’ I say. ‘The last production that I was offered was when your mum got worse and I couldn’t commit to it. We decided it would be better for me to look after Sheila, we talked about having a child then.’
‘Raise a child into this. It’s senseless violence out there. They're not our people, there are too many people on the ground, no solution, everyone's interested in having what the neighbors got rather than earning their own.’
It’s true in part about raising a child now with excessive population problems but further and further I see intelligent people not having children for this exact reason whilst others without life experience feels it’s their natural obligation to have children before thinking, before living their own life, forming their own identity, before becoming something they themsel
ves are proud of. What am I proud of? I think.
‘Couldn’t we do more?’ I say. Change the mindset, like your dad did? With random acts of selfless kindness.’
‘Russell did enough for them, that was my inheritance he gave away! Anna, can we get back to this evening? You are pissing me off’ Dark fury floods his face, it feels like the air has been sucked from the room, he balls his fists. Why‘ do
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you have to bring my parents up?’
I get scared of him when he’s like this; I pacify and smile at him. ‘Let’s not talk about mum tonight.’
‘She's not your mum Anna’
The pain’s back, the degree of separation that has to be put in after these years of marriage, nothing is let go.
‘I mean as family, mother in law’ ‘She's my family’
I want to say I spend more time looking after her than he does seeing me. My face reacts somehow, he’s furious. I‘ care for her at the hospice around the clock’ I attempt to explain ‘it's my full time job these days, she still thinks I'm her sister, calling me Valerie she doesn’t even recognize me..’
‘You are so defensive the whole time! Valerie is dead. What are you doing to me? Why tonight?’ he rages.
I take a deep breath not wanting to argue and try bringing the conversation back around, my energy is heightened, my natural instinct is to kiss him, tell him its okay but then he wont feel listened to. ‘Forget it! This has been biggest project for you sweetheart, but you've not seen your mum in months, I've been supportive with Atlantis, with your Ma, I love you.’
‘Supportive? Anna, you've just been here.’ Evan takes another line of click.
‘Please Evan, I love you I'm just saying I see your mum and its what she needs. She'd be so proud of you tonight, share it.’
‘You're thinking about yourself, what about what I need?’
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I reach out for him.
‘You need to know when to back off.‘
‘Let's sort this out, what's it going to be like when we start a family’
‘I don't want children’ ‘You said you wanted kids’
‘Well that was then.’ He coughs. ‘I was just telling you what I thought you wanted to hear.’
Evan’s angry and just when I feel this is it for another night and he’s about to shut conversation down for good he comes back to me like he disappeared into another world and now he’s back.
‘I don't want to upset you baby, I don't want to pass on my genes.’
The emotion is a little too much tonight, I want to see a small Evan running about, I love this man and have dedicated myself to him, my life now wrapped so completely to his. The strong guy that people know and underneath how I held him when his father passed and how he made me promise never to leave him and how I’ve stuck with him through his weeks of disappearing. ‘We wouldn't be married if I didn't want to see more of you in the world.’
‘I'm not a good person, this isn't me, I'm cold it's just who I am’
‘You are a good man Evan’
‘Leave it Anna, I need to be alone a while, stay here for a while I’m going to the lounge.’ He takes another line.
‘I’d like to take a walk if you’d like the space.’
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‘Don’t be stupid, its dangerous.’
‘I’ll be safe and will stay on the estate.’
‘No Anna, you’ll be raped or murdered, do this for me’. I’m angry, I dig my fingers into my hand to keep me
awake, I don’t want an argument, its unfair, he can’t control his sense of abandonment. It’s not your fault Anna I tell myself, it’s all okay, it’ll be fine by morning. My seventh grade school teachers voice repeats in my head. You’re an actor Anna. Act.
‘Okay sweetheart’ I say. He looks at me incredulously and tells me goodnight, leaving the room.
MARIA
Peacehaven. Love this place. A quiet viliage on a meandering river. Ford Fiesta ST has pulled in. Brakes on. Maria, you have arrived at your destination. I snigger. Welcome to the Masons Mansion. So sad that no one visits this place any more.
I’m on the phone to Anna, I love her, and I wish things would sort themselves out with Evan, she’s such a good girl, he has her acting like a personalassistant and that’s my job. I open the front door, put down my bright pink suitcase.
‘I'll pick up Sylvia’s brush too.’ I say into the phone. ‘As long as the hair is combed through a mother will always be giving her girl a good education.’
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I can hear Anna still driving on her way to see Sylvia at the hospital down the phone.
‘Sylvia’s well past her education years.’ Anna says. ‘She wants the family picture on the mantle and there's one of her that Russell kept in his work shed.’
I pick up a picture off the mantle, removing a layer of dust from the glass exposing a 15 year old Evan, a scrawny boy with fitted clothes, and his parents Sylvia and Russel. They are all suited and booted and a reminder to the privileged lifestyle they used to live. I have to give it toEvan he made it in his fathers stead, he is his fathers son.
‘Anna, give this photo to Evan and he’ll get to see his mum.’ Suddenly I’m biting my tongue on bringing this up but knowing that Anna would see it injest.
‘I’ll give it to Sylvia’ she says. ‘Encourage her to become a model again.’
‘I’m sure respirators are in this season, bless her heart, hospital pageants ain't what they used to be.’
‘Hospice pageants, ha’ Anna laughs. ‘Oooh -‐ level Up!!’
I put the picture of Sylvia and Evan in thesuitcase, unlock the back door and survey the wild green that used to be a garden. I mouth the word fuck. Not that anyone’s watching but it feels right to do so. Sometimes in my head I’m a reality TV star and a total dick. A total dick mostly.
‘I tell ya the gardener is doing a good job’
As I step outside I hear a creak and a murmur. I turn to follow the noises that next doors fence is obscuring. So
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I hold the phone up to my ear and whisper to Anna‘hang on a second, I’m being watched.’
‘Who are you?’ Comes a voice from the fence as I take the phone from my ear.
Nothing can be seen, some ominous, obvious rustling and breathing comes from behind the fences border. It’s Elizabeth Snelgar, she’s awful, about 68, I’d befriend her but she makes a point of seeing the worst in everything. If it’s sunny it’s too bright, if it’s raining it’s not sunny. She moans about her family that they don’t visit and the last time they did, about eight years ago, she chewed their bones for not being who she expected them to be.
‘It’s me Ms. Snelgar’ I call out. ‘You’re trespassing.’
‘No, I’m not Ms. Snelgar I’m here to collect things for Sylvia’
‘I heard you are you trying to sell the house? Is Sylvia still in hospital or does she just not want to come back?’ I open my mouth in response but Snelgar continues. Can’t‘ imagine I’d want to live in a house where my husband was found murdered!! And look at thatgarden!! Russell wouldn’t put up with this mess, he's turning in his grave.’
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