by D. B. Thorne
‘Kay is right,’ said Masoud. ‘It is too obscure.’
‘Or people are too stupid,’ said Phil.
‘Considering that you also got it wrong, I imagine you would need to place yourself within that bracket,’ said Fran. Phil began to reply but thought better of it and went back to his drink.
This was the Brain Pool, or alternatively what Solomon could accurately describe as All the Friends I Have in the World. He joined them two nights a week, although the relationship was one-sided in the sense that they’d never met him, not face to face, had had to make do with an avatar of a spinning question mark for the past eighteen months. He dialled in remotely, but given the varying levels of social ineptitude within the group, Phil occupying the furthest reaches, it wasn’t an issue. They’d asked why to begin with, but ultimately they were more interested in the questions they set together for TV programmes and radio shows and newspapers and any other quizzing forum they could find.
Solomon did know that Phil was an anarchist, though that didn’t qualify as a profession. Fran had told them that she had a private income, which meant she was rich and didn’t have to do anything. Masoud was an Iranian refugee who had been a nuclear physicist in Tehran but wasn’t allowed anywhere near a British nuclear facility so drove an Uber instead. And nobody really understood what Kay did, something at the intersection of neurology and computer code, biological algorithms or organic computation or bio-organic algorithmic computation. It was complex, even for Solomon.
Solomon had never questioned why he knew so much, or how he retained such vast amounts of knowledge. He just did, storing complex information in ways he considered normal even if nobody else did. Chronological sequences lived in his mind as abstract many-coloured landscapes, whole swathes of history reduced to patchwork configurations he could recall at will. Entire knowledge systems, geometry or thermodynamics or organic chemistry, lay coiled up in elegant multi-threaded helixes, springing into words and facts whenever he called upon them. Names, events, physical laws, anything he ever learnt was absorbed, converted into abstract forms and patterns, complex polyhedrons and kaleidoscopic panoramas. He didn’t know why. It just was. He never forgot anything, and he had learnt a lot. A whole lot. Which was why the Brain Pool felt so right when so much in his broader life now felt so wrong.
Fran had the contact that had got them this new Channel 4 gig, and she spent the rest of the time explaining the format, the kind of contestants they could expect, the level of questioning. Just below PhD level, she rather thought: think enthusiastic amateur, probably professional, likely postgraduate with some kind of failed-doctorate axe to grind. Their kind of contestant. Meant they didn’t have to demean themselves with questions on characters from Dickens or the periodic table. Yawn.
Last orders came and the meeting ended and Solomon hung up, the picture on his monitor switching back to his desktop image of Diego Maradona facing down five Brazilian players. He sat staring at it for some time, knowing that he should eat, drink, do something, but too drained to move.
A notification slid onto the screen, just to the right of Maradona’s head. From Kay. It read: Hey. Nothing more. Solomon looked at it without moving, without expression. After a long time, minutes, he leant forward and typed:
Hello.
Sorry about your sister.
Thank you.
Any news?
No.
The last news Solomon had had was that afternoon, the ward sister telling him that no, there had been no change, yes, Tiffany was still stable, and yes, visiting hours were the same the next day, ten until four. Would she call if the situation changed? Of course, she had him down as next of kin. Who else was she going to call?
Well. Good luck.
Thank you.
Kay had never messaged him before, not directly, and Solomon typed his replies as if each key of his keyboard might be wired to an IED. A new message appeared:
Hey, I wanted to ask you a question. Questions.
Okay.
Do you mind?
No.
Okay. So … Are you married?
No.
In prison?
No.
Hmm.
Hmm?
I have another question. But I have no right to ask it.
You can ask.
Sure?
Sure. Go ahead.
Are you differently abled?
Sorry?
You know. Do you have … Are you in a wheelchair or something?
Oh. No.
Okay …
Solomon didn’t reply, just watched the ellipsis that Kay had left, its implication that she hadn’t finished, that there was more to say.
Then why? Why can’t I see you?
I. Solomon looked at the word, the single letter. Not we, not the group, the Brain Pool. I. Why can’t I see you? He had no idea how to answer, what to write in reply. It was as far out of his grasp as thermodynamic engineering. No, it was a lot further than that.
It’s complicated.
Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.
That’s okay.
It’s none of my business. I’m sorry.
No, really. It’s fine.
You might be horribly disfigured!
Seriously, forget it.
Solomon stared at Kay’s last line, read it again and again. Did this mean he had a moral duty of disclosure? She might have meant it as a joke, but there it was. The question was implicit. You might be. Meaning, if you are, you should say. Wouldn’t ignoring it constitute a lie? He was so tired that he didn’t know, had no way of telling. He told himself to stop thinking. He did too much of it, and how often did it help? He blinked, then typed:
Horribly is a relative term.
He sat back in his chair, immediately wishing that he could unwrite the words yet at the same time infused with an almost indecent release, as if he had just shared something exciting, taboo. He could not take his eyes from the screen, but when the reply came, it was agonizingly prosaic.
Oh God. I’m sorry.
There was nothing left to say, and Solomon simply waited until Kay’s status went inactive. He was left with an anticlimactic feeling, like that of an unsatisfactory first sexual encounter, a leap into a tantalizing unknown that had proved shabby, embarrassing and unfulfilling. He lost track of how long he sat, staring at those last words, but eventually he stood up and went to bed. He needed to be up to see his sister. She was what mattered.
five
LUKE WAS SITTING IN THE HOSPITAL CHAIR, BADLY REGRETTING most of the events of the night before, when his brother walked in, head to the ground and hood up, dragging himself along, Luke thought, like a walking apology for existence. Luke winced at the stabbing pain in his head and managed a rough ‘Here he is.’
Solomon turned his head minutely towards him and said, ‘It sounds as if you had quite a night.’
‘Needed to let off some steam,’ said Luke. ‘You know.’
‘I’m not sure that I do,’ said Solomon, and Luke watched him carefully, trying to work out whether there was any judgement implied in that answer. Solomon walked to the window and said, his back to Luke, ‘How is she?’
‘Same. Listen, you’re here now. I’m going to get myself some coffee. Something stronger. You be all right?’
‘Of course.’
Solomon waited for his brother to leave before turning around. Two years without going outside, he thought, and now he had done it twice in two days. His sister looked the same apart from a bruise on her cheek that had been purple the day before but was now changing colour, Solomon imagining the haemoglobin breaking down, producing biliverdin, turning the bruise green like a flower going putrid. The blip of the cardiac monitor and the suck and hiss of the monitor transmitted its illusion of calm, a calm that could be broken at any moment by a frantic bleeping as any one of a million internal human processes failed. Solomon hated, no, despised uncertainty. Hated processes beyond his control.
‘Mr Mullan?’
/>
He looked up, surprised by the voice, and saw a doctor in a white coat, carrying a clipboard. ‘Yes?’
His face caused the doctor only a moment’s pause, and the first thing he said was ‘Acid?’
‘Sulphuric.’
‘Looks like it hurt.’ The doctor was young, and Solomon could not help but smile at his clinical humour.
‘A little.’
The doctor smiled back briefly, then looked down at his notes. His name tag read Dr Mistry. ‘Well, we’re not here for you, are we? I have some questions about your sister.’
‘I’ll help if I can.’
‘Does she use drugs?’
‘Recreationally? I imagine so,’ Solomon said.
‘You imagine so?’
‘She’s young, she’s pretty, her job is … unconventional. So yes, I imagine so, now and then.’ He paused, remembered he wasn’t talking to the police. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘The amount of pentobarbital in her bloodstream was high,’ Dr Mistry said. ‘Be good to know if she had any kind of dependency.’
‘No,’ said Solomon. ‘I’m sure of that. How long do you expect her to be unconscious?’
‘At the moment we’re keeping her under,’ the doctor said. ‘Induced coma. She’d been in the water for a while, and until we know more … What she’s been through, we don’t want any seizures. No sense risking it.’
‘Which doesn’t answer my question. How long?’
The doctor raised his shoulders, not quite a shrug but as good as. ‘Comas are strange things,’ he said. ‘Meaning there’s a fairly hefty chasm in our knowledge of them.’
‘Right,’ said Solomon, grateful for his honesty. ‘I was aware of that.’
‘Best we can do right now is keep monitoring her and hope for signs of change. Change for the good,’ Dr Mistry added.
‘You said pentobarbital,’ said Solomon. ‘Which is a barbiturate.’
‘Right. You’re a medical man?’
‘No, just, I must have read it somewhere,’ said Solomon. He paused, then said awkwardly, ‘Thank you.’
‘No problem.’ The doctor looked at his face, a professional scrutiny. ‘How do you cope with that?’
‘Cope?’
‘It must be difficult, out here.’ He nodded towards the window. ‘In the world.’
‘I do my best to avoid it,’ said Solomon. ‘Unless I absolutely can’t.’
The doctor nodded, then put his head to one side, still looking at Solomon. Eventually he said, ‘Well, don’t give up on it. The world, I mean.’
‘And if I already have?’
‘That’s not the impression you give,’ the doctor replied. He tapped a pen against his clipboard, then said, ‘Good to have met you.’ Solomon was still wondering how to respond when he turned and left.
Luke arrived back half an hour later and immediately slumped into the hospital-room’s chair, closed his eyes and groaned, long and loud.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Solly, Solly, I’m not,’ his brother said. ‘I’m a long way from. Any news?’ he asked, opening one eye, the one nearest their sister.
‘I saw the doctor. He told me that she’d tested positive for barbiturates.’
Luke didn’t answer, slid forward in the chair so that his head rested on the back, his legs straight, feet crossed. ‘Oh?’ he said eventually.
‘Does that sound like Tiff to you?’
‘Course it doesn’t,’ Luke said. ‘But she didn’t take them herself, did she?’ He settled his chin onto his chest, eyes still closed. Solomon watched him for a while, wondering if he was asleep, but then Luke said, ‘Fucking Robbie, wasn’t it?’
‘Maybe,’ said Solomon.
‘Maybe? Ain’t no maybe, Solly.’
Solomon didn’t answer, knew there was little point arguing with his brother. And Luke was probably right anyway. Robbie White was as nasty an individual as he could imagine, and he wouldn’t put a lot past him. But still. It didn’t feel right, even though he couldn’t exactly say why.
Luke shook his head, chin rubbing the front of his Adidas top. ‘Boy’s going to wish he could crawl back inside his mother, start all over again.’
It was strange how, in this hospital room, his brother got the chair, his sister got the bed and Solomon got to do the standing up. Got to do the right thing, the expected thing, which was to be subordinate to the needs of his siblings. Hadn’t it always been the same?
‘I don’t know.’
‘We’ll know it soon’s I ask him,’ said Luke, as if to himself, sprawled on the chair. ‘It’s the way you ask, that’s what I’ve always said.’ He said nothing for a long time and Solomon thought that he really had gone to sleep, right up to the point when he said, with a lack of humanity that made Solomon close his own eyes in dismay, ‘Fucking Robbie. I’ll be seeing you.’
Robbie White had been Tiffany’s on-and-off boyfriend for years. Almost four. Three years, nine months and a number of days, depending on the official start date of their relationship, which wasn’t confirmed, as far as Solomon knew. Which was nearly four years too many, if you asked Luke. If you asked anyone, Solomon supposed, or at least anyone who cared about Tiffany. Because Robbie White was one of the most unpleasant, unpredictable and manipulative people Solomon had ever met, and during his chaotic upbringing he’d encountered more than his share.
He wasn’t big, or imposing. He wasn’t aggressive in his demeanour. He had a job, a normal job installing satellite dishes. He had no police record, at least nothing serious, and had never been near prison. Yet there was something wrong with him, something Solomon had difficulty articulating. Adjectivally, he was narcissistic, malignant, sadistic. And he simply would not, apparently could not, listen to reason.
Take Tiffany’s twenty-first birthday. Luke had gone the extra mile for her, hired a venue, a hall outside an Essex village. She’d pulled up in a stretch limousine pumping music, and Solomon had watched her tumble out with a happy shriek. Robbie was with her, glued to her as usual. Sometime during the evening he’d taken exception to Tiffany speaking to another guest, Solomon forgot who, which meant he’d never known. Robbie’s reaction had been to backhand her across the face in the middle of the dance floor, then drag her out to the still-waiting limousine, which had then taken them both home, from her own twenty-first-birthday celebrations.
It wasn’t this, though, that was so disturbing. It was the next day, when the pair of them had turned up at the venue as Luke was paying off the PA hire company and Solomon was helping load gold-sprayed chairs into a Luton van. Robbie had pulled up in his tuned and lowered hot hatch and stepped out. So had Tiffany, but he’d gestured at her to stay where she was. It was sunny, and the area in front of the venue was gravelled, and Robbie had crunched across to where Luke was handing over a thick wad of notes.
‘Luke.’
‘Fuck do you want?’
‘Lost my sunglasses. Last night.’
‘So?’
‘So I’m looking for them, aren’t I?’ He wore a sly smile on his face, closer to a smirk.
‘Tell you what,’ said Luke, taking a step closer to him. Robbie didn’t flinch or make any move backwards, in itself incomprehensible. ‘You leave right now and I’ll try to pretend last night didn’t happen.’
Robbie looked down at the ground and pulled at his nose with a finger and thumb. He laughed softly and looked back up. ‘But I still wouldn’t have my sunglasses, would I? And they weren’t cheap.’
Solomon had watched Luke in fascination, wondering just how long it would take before he lost it. He knew that Luke respected their sister’s life choices, as far as possible. But there had to be a limit.
‘You hit my sister.’
‘That’s between us. Me and her.’
‘You really think?’
‘She’s a big girl. If she doesn’t like it, she can leave.’
‘You don’t hit her. Never.’
‘Yeah, well,’ said Robbie. ‘These things ha
ppen, don’t they?’
Luke looked away and nodded up into the blue sky, as if thinking, though Solomon knew he was only trying to control his rage. And controlling his rage wasn’t something Luke had a glowing record on. Or any record at all. Eventually he looked back at Robbie’s half-amused smile. ‘Why doesn’t Tiff come over? Tell me about it herself?’
‘Nah,’ said Robbie. ‘We’ve got somewhere to go. I already told her, she hasn’t got time.’
This, Solomon knew, was a provocation too far. But before Luke could do something regrettable, the guy from the PA hire came back and said, ‘You’ve given me too much.’
Luke told him to piss off and count himself lucky, but by the time he’d turned around, Robbie White was walking back to his car, their sister watching him over the roof. Luke went to go after him but changed his mind, decided to leave it, wait for the right time. And as they left, Solomon wondered just why Robbie had come in the first place. Had it really been for his sunglasses? Or some other reason? Solomon didn’t understand people very well, didn’t have a natural feeling for their instincts or motivations, but it seemed to him that he might have come back just to rub their faces in the fact that he, Robbie White, exercised more influence over their sister than they did.
‘Shit,’ said Luke, rubbing his eyes with the tips of his fingers. ‘Need to go.’
‘Now?’ You’ve only just got back, Solomon thought but didn’t say.
‘Something’s come up. Nothing good, either.’
‘Oh?’ said Solomon. ‘Is it anything you want to share?’
Luke shook his head, hard, like he was trying to rearrange everything inside the way it was supposed to be. ‘Doesn’t matter. Not now.’
‘Are you sure?’ Solomon looked at him curiously. It wasn’t like Luke to mention anything about his dealings. Activities. Whatever you could call them.
‘Sure. Don’t worry.’
But Solomon did, because it wasn’t often he saw Luke worried. Luke could handle himself. Luke handling himself wasn’t an issue and never had been. That was the understanding.