by Tim Scott
“In the film, they met in the park and fed the ducks,” said Maddox. “It seemed more interesting than the café.”
“There are no ducks.”
“Well, there’ll be something we can feed. I brought bread.” The cop held up a plastic bag with a presliced loaf, squashed at the edges. It had been a crazy thing to do, but he thought somehow this would make the man in black more human. “Everything has to eat,” Maddox said. They were walking on the sodden, uneven slabs of a side path. “There must be some birds around here we can feed. You want to throw some bread?”
“No, and I can’t stay; you know that. What’s the matter with you? Find the fridge and we’ll make arrangements to collect it.” They had reached the fountain, but the shallow lake that at one time would have held water lilies now shone with a thin sheen of gaudy licks of oil. The remains of a coffee table slumped over the parapet.
“Well, I’m throwing bread.” He threw a few slices and they landed in the mud. “Maybe this is not a good time of day for them.”
“There are no ducks.”
“But what if this is their siesta period?” said the cop undeterred, chucking another slice into the sodden, ragged grass.
“Next time, we meet in the café,” said the man in black.
They reached a small pavilion. It was scrawled with graffiti in long spidery writing. “The state of the economy is fucking awesome!” it said. Companies saw graffiti as cheap advertising. And the government still used it, too.
Maddox stopped.
“Hey, look! You see over there? What did I tell you?”
But the man in black had gone. “I knew there would be some birds. Over here!” he called waving his arms. But the large black bird flew off.
“Maybe I should have brought sandwiches,” Maddox said. “Maybe ducks don’t go for plain bread so much these days.”
chapter
SIXTY-TWO
I needed pastries.
My mind was going walkabout, and dizziness swamped my thoughts.
Abruptly I remembered how I had once met a man dressed in a blue cardigan standing by a rail stop, and he had told me that if you ate noodles they absorbed words beginning with k. That the more noodles you ate the less you said words with a k in them. If you ate a lot of noodles it would cut down on your use of words with the letter k by about 50 percent. And the next time I’d visited a noodle bar I had eaten with reticence. The memory loomed in my mind like a bad song, so I couldn’t shake it.
“Absorb words beginning with a k,” I said as I stumbled down yet more streets with Nena. “They absorb words beginning with a k.” My mind tried to lose the memory in a backwater as a heaviness returned to my body making my limbs unwieldy and foreign.
And then, tucked into a fork ahead, we came to a pastry shack, its tin roof waving haphazardly and its squat chimneys poking at the air. The whole thing steamed like a racehorse after a stiff canter.
Nena gave the man our order and he nodded. “No problem,” he said, pouring our coffees into Styrofoam cups. I leaned on the counter, aware that he was wearing a white coat that hadn’t actually been white for years, and he had the jowls of a man who knew how to stuff away pastries with the best of them. “You like a man with a toupee?”
“Sure,” said Nena.
“You heard of a model called The Executive?”
“No.”
“It’s classy. I’ve researched them all, done all the stuff you need to do. You want to know where the best toupees are made? Vancouver.”
“Never would have guessed it,” said Nena.
“Yeah. And a toupee could really change things for me. Suddenly, I’d look like I was in the twenty-five-to-thirty category. But my wife says toupees are for sad people.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Do I look sad?” The guy was really fired up now.
“No. You look terrific,” said Nena.
“Exactly. Sure I go through times when I feel down, but everyone has them. Everyone cries some afternoons, right? So anyway, I colored in the bald part of my head with a special felt pen and suddenly—bang—I was in the twenty-five-to-thirty category. They had all these words in the magazine you could choose to describe yourself. I chose sleek. Can you imagine that bit of my head the same color as the rest?” The man nodded at me and bowed his head. When I didn’t reply he looked up. “Is he okay? He looks terrible.”
“I’ll be fine. I have a headache,” I said. “The coffee will sort it out.”
“Coming up. So, this could easily be the day I get The Executive. Then my wife will stop looking at that guy from the bridge club. I should blow his fucking brains out. There you go. Twenty dollars. Nice talking to you.”
Nena nodded and paid him.
My skull felt like it was constricting, and my legs were stiff and heavy. I straightened them as we sat down on some steps and the texture of the rough stone felt reassuring under my fingers.
I drank some coffee and felt it flow into me. Then I took a bite of a pastry. The taste made its way past my aching jaw and I felt my mind try and settle. It was a slim connection back to the real world, and it put a thin gauze of normality over things. I took another bite and tried to retrace my way back to who I was.
“You still alive, then?” said Nena.
“Yeah,” I said and had some more coffee. “But I feel like I have one hell of a hangover so at least we have pastries. Did you know in any hijack they always send in pastries? It’s supposed to be harder to kill anyone after you’ve eaten a pastry.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said. The sun shifted from behind a cloud and the warmth made me begin to feel more alive.
I had some more coffee.
“Where did you learn to knock people unconscious?” I said. “My older brother went to self-defense classes and used to practice on me when I was a kid. But then one day he got in a fight he couldn’t handle, and he got himself killed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. But it was a long time ago and I don’t feel sad in quite the same way anymore. Sometimes bad things happen, don’t they? Who was Abigail?”
“That was a long time ago, too.”
“Yeah. But the memories still appear like reels of film, playing through your mind time after time.”
“Yeah.”
I sipped some more coffee and the taste ran through me, easing away the headache that had settled at the back of my head after making repeated trips around my skull. And suddenly I found myself telling her everything in a torrent of words and emotion. And as it came out I felt my chest release as if these memories had become some physical thing I had been holding deep inside.
Eventually I finished, and Nena was silent for a long time. “And you can’t forget her, can you?”
I shook my head.
“So was I wrong about us?” she said and got up. “What does it matter anyway? People come and go. You know you wanted to find that switch to start your life moving again?”
“Yeah.”
She threw the remains of her coffee across the alley.
“There is no switch, Huck. That’s why you can’t find it.”
chapter
SIXTY-THREE
Fridge Detail 471 had been sent to comb the backstreets, looking for strays after a report of a sighting. There were five in the detail, all in orange Fridge Detail fatigues. And five didn’t fit in a drongle. “He promised me an owl,” Malbranque said, squashed in by the man next to him. His speech was light, shorn of the weight of meaning.
“Yeah, well, you can shut up about your fucking owl,” said the man. He was sweating. It ran down his head and he mopped at it.
“But it was the wizard.”
“I don’t care if it was the fucking president of Azerbaijan. You’re driving me crazy. And you’re taking up too much space. You shouldn’t be here. And I shouldn’t be here, either. I once worked for an architect in a proper job. That’s where I should be, not here with you.”
“Oh.” Malbranque st
ared wide-eyed, as though he had been told some great secret. “But I thought that the—”
“Don’t you dare say wizard again.”
“Okay, easy now,” said a woman. “We’re nearly there. Keep your eyes open. There was a report of a spin dryer in this district an hour ago, and I want a proper sweep, with everyone working as a team. Is everyone clear about that? Huckleberry, are you listening?”
Sky Malbranque nodded.
“Good. We’re on a bonus, here. This one could be high on the wanted list. So work as a unit. You all happy, people?”
They all nodded.
The drongle stopped.
chapter
SIXTY-FOUR
We passed a bunch of Health and Safety workers fixing up a new sign: “Do not eat Cheez Whiz just before you go to bed or you will have strange dreams.”
“You see them?” said Nena. “When people get scared, they start trying to control everything. They become desperate for order. That’s what that city wall is about. People are scared, and they’re trying to rationalize their way out of it. Trying to make it all neat.”
Eventually we found a lone drongle and clambered in.
“They say having people insecure is good for the economy,” she said as we moved away. “The theory is people buy more stuff to feel better about themselves when they feel insecure. So there was a department in the government a few years ago, planting reports of fake burglaries in the press. And they even went as far as employing actors to perform petty crime in areas of the country where it was regarded as too safe. Maybe this fear virus is a more sophisticated strategy.”
I nodded. “I had the same thought. You think it’s the government doing this?”
“It could be. But whoever it is, I am going to find them and stop them.”
“Why? Why go on with this when you can walk away?”
“Because I’m a part of it, and at some stage in my life I decided to stand up and be counted.”
“What does that mean? That you’ll start killing cops? Did you kill the cop whose head is in the fridge?”
“No.”
“So what if it comes down to that? Then what?”
“I’ll deal with it,” she said. “You just show me where the fridges are and then you’re out of it. Or do you still think I have the answers to fix your life?”
“I’m not leaving, Nena.”
“No?”
“No.”
She didn’t reply. Just simply broke my gaze and stared outside.
Eventually the drongle stopped a block from the warehouse.
Nena climbed out and gave the massive receipt to a lone kid who spotted us from fifty yards away and came running up breathlessly with a smile.
He giggled, submerged under the pile of paper he struggled to grapple along with the dime I pressed into his hand.
Five minutes later we slipped into the warehouse office and walked through to the hangar.
“Hey,” said the fridges, pedaling their way up to me. “It’s you! Hey that’s great. Guess what? Guess what! I’ve got something to tell you!”
“I already know the date of the Klondike gold rush,” I said. “And I told you to hide if anyone came in.”
“Oh, sorry. It’s just that we’ve been playing murder in the dark. You should have joined in.”
“Yeah, we missed you,” said the Frost Fox, waddling across. “Hey! It’s Nena!” it said and began singing. “Where’s she gone? Here’s a bit of trivia! It’s got the highest lake! That’s right, it’s Bolivia!” They all joined in with the harmonies.
“I guess you met me yesterday, huh?”
“What say we have pizza to celebrate being back together!” said the Ice Jumper. “I love families.”
“Yeah, and let’s have Primula. What could be better before pizza? Processed cheese, straight from the tube!”
“Not a bad idea,” said Nena. “The pizza, I mean.”
I found a small kitchen in the warehouse, and a little while later, I opened the oven door to the smell of pizza. Pizza was definitely the way forward. In fact, it’s always a strong fallback position in times of crisis. It’s standard practice during the peace talks of warring nations to order pizza. Although, on one famous occasion, the only pizzas that turned up had pineapple as one of the toppings.
Those two countries were still fighting seven years later.
I had also heard of hospital recovery rooms that ordered a constant supply of fresh pizza because the smell was found to be the most effective way to draw people out from the anesthetic. They then gave the pizzas to the patients on the ward. Doubling up like that really pleased the management.
The two of us ate without saying a word, but it wasn’t exactly a pause. There’s no such thing as a proper pause when there’s pizza about. If Harold Pinter had had all his characters always eating pizza no one would have even noticed the pauses.
And so, for a moment none of what had happened seemed to exist in any meaningful way. There was only pizza. And there was only the atmosphere that descends when you eat pizza.
The Chinese from ancient times used to call that kind of peace chi energy, and trained long hours in martial arts to try and create it. They would have been astonished to learn that the same calm effect could have been gotten from eating a certain kind of cheese on toast out of a cardboard box.
“So,” said Nena eventually as the Tiny Eiger hummed beside her. “You sure you can’t think of anything else that can help us? A name of a street or a person, perhaps?”
The Tiny Eiger shuffled, then opened its door. “Sergeant Maddox.”
“Sergeant Maddox? A cop?” I said.
“Sergeant Maddox,” it repeated, then closed its door and nuzzled into her leg.
chapter
SIXTY-FIVE
The rain smudged on the vaulted drongle roof, so Mendes could hardly see anything of the passing streets. And there was too much traffic. The drongle rambled gingerly along the wet roads until it snagged in a jam at the next junction. It was hardly moving now.
He closed his eyes as sweat ran down his cheeks.
“And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!”
“So twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled around,” he said, losing the thread of the poem. He fell silent, staring into the hazy passing chaos of people struggling through the regular day-to-day trauma of their lives, and he felt an inexplicable sweep of pathos.
Eventually, they reached the city wall and the drongle nosed its way grudgingly between the hawkers and beggars.
“Walls and towers were girdled around,” he repeated softly as the drongle stopped sharply with a shudder. However much he wanted to, he could not turn away from this now. Something was forcing him on. He took out the card and checked the address, and then levered open the goose-wing door, which hissed gently, and stepped out into the hustle of the sidewalk. A gaggle of kids pressed up to him in the rain. “Take your receipt for a dime! Take your receipt for a dime!”
He bundled the receipt into their arms. Then he turned up the collar on his leather coat and slipped easily through the crowd until he came to the steps. He didn’t feel himself. He had a fever.
He hesitated for the briefest of moments, as though by treading on the first stair he would be committing himself to a future he didn’t want to disturb.
chapter
SIXTY-SIX
The red smoke was visible from ten blocks away as it curled into the air and started to form a mushroom cloud.
“Stop!” called the woman on the stairs, as she leaned on the wall, coughing. “Please!”
More canisters, tumbling in with stifling clouds, scooping aside the air.
She waved her hands at the stuff as a horde of bulky figures dressed in Security Detail uniforms broke down the door next to her and swarmed inside.
“Please!” she called again, and grabbed at the a
rm of the nearest person in black riot gear, who spun around clumsily and pointed his gun at her. “I have asthma.”
The figure undid four straps and took off his helmet. He was dripping with sweat.
“Sorry, madam. I can’t hear, and also we have a clip of a cat sneezing being randomly played. Very good, too, but it can get distracting. I’ll show it to you if you like.”
From the inside of his helmet came the tiny audible sneeze of a cat.
Across the way, another guy from the detail collided clumsily into the wall.
“Please, get me outside,” she said.
“Oh. Could you hold on for the guys with the large picture of the puppy? That’ll calm you down no end.”
“No!”
“Well, okay,” said the man, as she began coughing again.
He helped the woman down the steps and down to the hustle and bustle of cop drongles parked outside and handed her a drink of wonker. “Do you want a box of doughnuts as well? There’s jam, apple, or goose pâté. Pretty disgusting, those last ones.”
A figure still in full combat gear came striding over, wearing a helmet adorned with a massive plume.
“I know I should have waited for the detail to come in with the picture of the puppy, but she didn’t feel she could wait,” said the guy.
Maddox took off his helmet.
“The OURU. Where is the OURU?” His head was running with red-stained sweat. “My back is killing me.”
“I got a strong smell of lavender earlier. I’ll find out, sir!” He disappeared and after a few minutes a man with sunglasses strode over purposefully.
“Police Osteopath Urgent Response Unit. You have a lumbar problem, ma’am?” the OURU man said to the woman.
“Not her. Me,” said Maddox. “It’s me with the problem.”
“We’re onto it, sir.” Soon more men with Osteopath Urgent Response Unit stamped neatly across their backs came running carrying a massage table. “Just relax, and we’ll get treatment straight to your lumbar.”
“You boys are quick. I appreciate that,” Maddox said.