The Rules of Seeing

by Joe Heap

  She isn’t crying – not quite – but if she blinks the tears will fall. She doesn’t want Kate to see that. She turns, grabs her jacket from the chair by the bed, and leaves.

  On the street, the air is cool. Nova stands for a long time, gulping down cool air like it’s water and she’s been thirsty for the longest time. Her blood is still humming, but being out of the room quickly calms her. She is okay. Kate will be okay too, when Nova comes back to her. They just need some time apart.

  She listens to the sound of cars passing by. As she watches, a small van drives past, lit up from inside. It’s playing an electronic tune from speakers on the roof. ‘Greensleeves’. Suddenly she is full of a crazy joy – she is here in this city that she grew up in, and an ice-cream van just drove past, playing ‘Greensleeves’, and it’s wonderful.

  Slowly, carefully, she starts to walk down the path, staying close to the buildings. She has gotten so much better at seeing, she realizes – she could never have done this when she started out. Perhaps she will never be fluent in this language, but right now that doesn’t seem important. She has all that she needs to get by.

  Before she could see, Nova’s mental maps were huge and detailed. She knew large parts of London by heart. When she started to learn to see, those mental maps degraded, like paper charts sodden with watery light.

  She is heading in the direction of Centenary Square, with its Gothic City Hall and the mirror pool fountain – things she has heard of but never seen. Nova can’t believe she has been here for a week and hasn’t been to the square. She walks down cobbled streets and paved streets, through alleyways where men sit and smoke in doorways, down broad avenues with high buildings.

  The buildings are beautiful and strange to Nova – all sandstone, weathered and stained different shades, like gingerbreads that have burned at the edges.

  Nova realizes that for the first time in her life, she is thinking in visual metaphors. She has used them before in conversation, like calling her maths teacher dull as ditchwater, but for the first time they make sense. Nova can see, in her mind’s eye, burned gingerbread men, and can see the buildings, and can see how they are alike. She sees how the comparison is pleasing.

  She pauses at a café that sells iced buns and looks through the glass at the colourful confections on display. She thinks about buying a macaroon – cloudy with dried coconut and jewelled with a single glacé cherry – but decides to hurry on. She crosses streets, her sight an easy thing, her limbs light and full of energy. She feels she could run all the way to the square.

  It’s cool, but Nova wants to sit outside. She finds a café overlooking the square, where she drinks an overpriced espresso and watches the pigeons. There must be thirty or forty of them, competing for crumbs, trying to seduce one another or run away. She watches the complex dance. With her heightened vision, she sees not only individual objects but systems of objects – she sees not only the individual pigeons, but the whole group of pigeons as they circle and swarm, a constantly changing weather-system of creatures that separates and reforms.

  Nova’s brain flares.

  A sense of health and well-being surges up in her, like a spring. She feels love – a love of the world, a love of objects and people, a love of shapes and colours. Love like a superpower. She breathes in and out. Her body blazes with golden light as the pigeons weave their dance. Then a little boy runs toward them, and the pigeons take off, and Nova forgets to breathe for a long moment.

  RULE OF SEEING NO.399

  Learning to see is often a thankless task. Then, sometimes, the world opens up, and you understand something you could never have understood before, like the way a bird takes off from the ground and flies through the air. The world will never look the same again.

  Nova thinks of Kate, back in the hotel room, and feels a tug of sadness that she isn’t here to see what she is seeing. But it doesn’t matter – Nova knows, somehow, that everything is going to be all right. She is going to make it all right. A little time apart is no bad thing for them, but when she sees Kate again, she will be able to make her understand.

  She can make things work.

  Finished, she gets up and makes her way across the square, weaving through the crowds. The movement is not effortless, but rather it is a satisfying challenge – not so difficult as to be frustrating, but difficult enough that Nova can make a game of it.

  She feels like a saint returning from the wilderness. The vision of the dancing pigeons has tired her, and she will take her time getting back to the hotel. But the memory glows behind her eyes. She sets out from the square, following the path she came by. The city is a whirl of winding paths, dark doorways and crumbling sandstone. Nova is intoxicated, but feels no need to stop.

  Not far now – she can’t wait to see Kate and make things better. She’s walking down a small avenue. There is nobody ahead of her. This part of the city seems deserted. She passes a doorway where there might be the outline of a man, but she is tired and can’t be sure.

  She hears footsteps behind her, but thinks nothing of it. The footsteps are fast, and Nova is about to step closer to the wall to let the person pass when an arm goes around her waist, and the other hand goes to her mouth. She cries out, from surprise rather than fear. It’s too soon for fear. That will come, but for now it is just the shock of being grabbed that makes the air burst from her lungs.

  She breathes in, realising only now that a rag is clamped over her mouth and nose. She smells something like spilled petrol but sweeter. Now the fear is rising, only something else is stifling it. Her head and legs feel heavy. She struggles, elbowing her assailant a couple of times, hard, in the ribs. She hears him grunt in pain.

  Nova knows without seeing his face.

  She struggles for another half-minute, as her body becomes a wet rag. She stamps on his feet and throws her head back, slamming it into his face. She feels something crack – his nose, perhaps.

  ‘Fuck! Little bitch,’ she hears him say, but quietly. She is slipping silently into the shadows of this shadowy city. The last light bleeds out of Nova, and she is gone.

  Thirty-Four

  KATE HAS BEEN LYING on the bed, staring at the ceiling, for the last three hours. Seen as a sped-up, time-lapse film, she would have looked almost statue-like, like the carving on a tomb. Only her breathing would have given her away, flickering up and down like the wing beats of a hummingbird. If Kate had watched such a film, she would have reflected that appearances can be deceiving.

  From the moment Nova left, to the moment her phone buzzed with a new message, Kate’s thoughts have been changing like a tropical storm, a supercharged system that swings from rain and thunder to sunshine and back again. She loves Nova. She hates her. This is all her fault. None of this is her fault.

  She hasn’t been sleeping well for so long now, she doesn’t know what the truth is any more. All these feelings are just points of view, and the more she changes parts, the less she can see her own story.

  There is one thing that she is certain of, and she holds on to it like it’s her last possession in the world. It is the only idea that, regarded from the many points of view, still seems true. This lends it the air of something cosmic. The fact is like a force of nature. Like gravity, or light.

  The fact is – things are over with Nova.

  Of course, Nova does not know this yet. She will not like it, though Kate suspects it will not be a total surprise. Whether Kate loves or hates her is unimportant, because either way, she wants Nova to leave. Either Nova doesn’t deserve Kate or Kate doesn’t deserve Nova.

  Their relationship could never have worked, not even in one of the alternative universes Nova is so fond of talking about. Nova has a term for this kind of thing – bounded infinity. It means that, even if you have an infinite universe, there are still some things that will never happen. Kate remembers the way she explained it.

  ‘So, you can have a world where the Nazis won the war, because that nearly did happen. You can have a world where
Kennedy was never assassinated, right? Like, Lee Harvey Oswald ate some bad chow mein and couldn’t get to the book depository. But you can’t have a planet Earth made entirely of meringue.’

  ‘A world made of meringue would be pretty good though,’ Kate had replied. ‘Imagine the meringue Grand Canyon, or the meringue Notre-Dame.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Nova had said, shaking her head mock-seriously, ‘it was just never meant to be.’

  That is how Kate feels now – their relationship was a beautiful, ridiculous impossibility. It went against the natural order of things. A planet made of meringue. Kate wants to live on that other planet, but it’s always been a fantasy. She will tell Nova when she gets back. She will arrange for her to return to London. She will put her on a train and forget about her.

  What happens to Kate after that doesn’t matter.

  When her phone buzzes on the bedside table, she doesn’t look at it straightaway. It is so long since she has moved, moving no longer feels natural. But she needs to pee, so she gets up and goes to the tiny bathroom. When she comes back to the bed, she picks up the phone. There are three messages now, from an unknown number.

  I have her. If you come get her, I won’t hurt her. I don’t want her – I want you.

  Do not get the police involved. Come alone. If you fuck up, she’ll be dead before you get near.

  The third message is the address of another hotel, but Kate can’t take it in. She feels a rushing energy overtake her body. It’s like she’s taken a drug and the trip is starting. The feeling is all-consuming. Her breath speeds up, her muscles clench and unclench, over and over. Before she knows what she’s doing, Kate is crouched by the edge of the bed in the foetal position. She’s shaking so hard the phone drops out of her hand.

  The room has become distant. All that Kate understands is her own fear, her own body failing. She realizes, too late, that she is having a panic attack. She remembers what Nova told her, the first time she’d been there for one of her panic attacks.

  Notice something you can see.

  Kate looks at the pattern on the carpet.

  Notice something you can feel.

  Kate notices the plastic bed frame, pressed into the small of her back.

  Breathe slowly, counting back from one hundred.

  Kate follows the instructions, counting back, forcing herself to take deeper breaths. By sixty, she feels herself taking control again. She stands, too impatient to finish. The room spins, and she rushes to the toilet to be sick. It clears her head – she knows what she has to do. It won’t be easy, but she has to do it. She has to do it for Nova.

  Suddenly, all the other points of view have fallen away. Kate knows what her story is, and she knows how it ends.

  Thirty-Five

  KATE HURRIES THROUGH THE streets, trying to look calm. If she looks too distressed, someone might try to stop her to make sure she’s all right. Kate can’t let anyone stop her now.

  The fear is starting to fall away. Maybe she has gone beyond the fear, beyond the upper limit of what a person can feel. Maybe she is in shock. Or maybe it is the certainty she feels now – so certain that it doesn’t seem like anything can derail her.

  Kate has never believed in fate. Her mother read her horoscope every day, but Kate thought it was all hokum. There was no such thing as fate, just as there were no such things as soulmates. But now she feels something is guiding her actions. Not fate perhaps, but something like physics. The end of a long, complex reaction that started the moment she met Nova. This is where it ends. A kind of entropy. Kate is ready for it – a final blaze of energy as her atoms rearrange themselves into something more stable.

  The hotel is right ahead.

  Kate stands in front of the door – this is the room. Her breath is ragged. There is no noise, though Kate can barely hear over the rush of blood in her ears. She reaches out to try the handle, then hesitates. She reaches out to knock, then stops again.

  She imagines Nova in the room. She imagines Nova in pain. She reaches out, grabs the handle, and turns it. The lock clicks and the door opens. Kate steps through, into the dimly lit room.

  ‘Hello? Who’s in here?’

  Kate can’t see the room yet – in front of her is a short passage, with a built-in wardrobe on the right. At the end of the passage she can see the room branching off to the right. She can see the edge of a window, with a gauzy curtain drawn, and a chair in the corner. She can’t hear or see anyone.

  ‘Hello? Anyone here?’

  Kate thinks maybe this was all a ruse, and she has been led to an empty hotel room. She is tempted to leave without looking inside. Then she hears it – a muffled cry.

  ‘Nova!’

  Kate rushes forward, not thinking of anything but the noise she just heard – small, stifled, but unmistakably Nova. She has reached the end of the passage and looks into the room. There is a single bed. Tied to the bed, blindfolded and gagged, is Nova. She’s about to step forward when she hears a noise behind her.

  The door has already swung closed on its automatic hinge, but now there is a click as someone locks it. Kate turns. The wardrobe is open, and Tony is standing in the passageway.

  He’s smiling.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’

  On the way to the hotel, Kate had felt a strange resolution. She had felt as though nothing could scare her any more, because she was resigned to her end. But now she’s not so sure.

  Tony looks different, though she would never have mistaken him. His hair is not long, but it is unkempt in a way it never was when he worked for the police. He has grown a beard. Both hair and beard are greasy and matted. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his face is thinner. Kate feels her cheeks hollowing out as though she’s sucking them in. Under different circumstances, Kate might have felt sorry for this man. A man so clearly down on his luck. A man in need of kindness.

  ‘Hello.’

  Kate feels her mouth forming the word, though she’s starting to feel distant from her own body. She is somewhere between the victim and the victor. She feels the bonds on Nova’s wrists and ankles as though they’re tightening around her own. But she also feels her chest rise and fall to the breaths that expand and contract Tony’s ribcage. She feels weak and strong, powerless and powerful, trapped and totally, terrifyingly, free.

  He advances a couple of steps. Only now does Kate see the knife in his hand, long and serrated.

  ‘You took your time. I thought you might have grown tired of your toy.’

  ‘Let her go.’

  It’s a long time since Kate has seen Tony. She can’t believe she hasn’t spoken to him in so long. She had forgotten the sound of his voice, and the way he stoops his head forward when he talks to her, as though talking to a child.

  ‘I’ll let her go. But, first, I need to know that I have you. This is a trade, remember?’

  Behind her, on the bed, Nova suddenly yells through her gag. Kate isn’t sure whether it’s a warning or just a cry of fear, but she tries to ignore it. She tries to focus on Tony in front of her. While her focus is on him, she feels strong. While she looks at his arms, his wide shoulders, she feels strong. White bombs are exploding in her muscles and brain. She feels something like anger, but simpler.

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I? You already locked the door.’

  Tony takes another step forward. His hand is so tight on the knife handle, she can see the lightning-branched veins in his arm.

  ‘Get back. Into the chair.’

  She starts to step back slowly. She is fully in the room now, and the bed is in her peripheral vision, but Kate tries not to focus on it. Tony is still advancing in front of her – she keeps her eyes locked on him. Without turning, she feels the chair behind her and sits down.

  ‘Good, now stay there.’

  Tony walks into the room, not looking away from her, and feels for a pile of ropes on the bed. Kate knows she must act now or never. His eyes flick away from her for the briefest moment, to the ropes in his
hand. She launches forward, out of the chair, as though she’s going to tackle him to the floor.

  Kate is not small – she’s been reminded of that too many times. She is tall. That, and the power singing in her blood, makes for a powerful impact. She hits Tony hard, and he stumbles back.

  But she has made a mistake. She wanted to grab his arm, to try to dislodge the knife from his grip. But his arm is still free. He falls backwards, near the foot of the bed, cracking his head on the wall. Kate falls with him, landing on his chest. At the moment they hit the floor, she feels a searing pain in her shoulder blade.

  She does not scream. As the pain hits her, she gasps for air. She can feel the knife moving through the layers of her muscle.

  Kate pushes herself up. Tony is struggling, but he’s not moving quickly enough. The blow to the head has made him sluggish. Kate gets up so that she is kneeling over him. She’s vaguely aware of Nova’s muffled screaming, but the sound is distant.

  She starts to hit him. He has lost his grip on the knife, which is still deep in her shoulder. It flashes pain every time she throws a punch, but she doesn’t stop. She doesn’t think about blood loss, or severed arteries, or the damage that she is doing just by moving. She balls her fists and pounds at Tony’s face and chest.

  She feels his nose crack under her blow, and sees blood spurt from one nostril. She punches his jaw and temples, and he can’t seem to bring his arms up to fight her off. For a moment, Kate thinks she has won.

  His arm grabs her shirt and wrenches her back, and Kate falls to the carpet. She doesn’t quite land on the protruding knife, but it’s jarred enough to tear the flesh, then come free. Kate starts to get up on all fours, feeling the blood pouring down her back. She can see the knife, covered in her gore, on the floor next to her. She reaches out to take it.

  A heavy blow lands on the back of her skull. Kate feels the floor crashing into her face. Then nothing.