The Vanguard

by SJ Griffin

Chapter Four

  I sat in the deep end of the empty hotel swimming pool beside a jug of mojito. The pool did have water in it at some point, but it was more fun and less trouble empty. We filled it with balls once, that was great. All kinds of balls, beach balls, footballs, tennis balls. We jettisoned the golf balls early on because we found they caused bruises and fractured cheekbones. I pondered those days for a while and renamed them the good old days. That made me feel ancient. Ancient and unhappy. I was just getting right into being ancient and unhappy when I heard the others come through the double doors above and tip tap over the tiled floor. One by one they climbed down the ladder and dropped the foot or so to the bottom of the pool. They assembled before me like a delegation and I raised my glass to them.

  ‘We’ve been having a chat about this morning’s pyrotechnic incident,’ Roach said.

  ‘And his magic act,’ Minos glared at Casino.

  There had been a row. Lola looked like she wanted to throw a tantrum of hitherto uncharted intensity, Minos was seething about something and Casino had got one of his stroppy faces on. Only Roach looked calm and untroubled.

  ‘Yes, we’ve had a chat about everything and I also had a confession to make,’ Roach said.

  ‘He’s very clever,’ Minos said.

  ‘Very, very clever,’ Casino said. ‘He knows lots of things.’

  ‘Mostly because I’ve read them in books,’ Roach said. ‘But I seem to have no problem remembering them. Would you like an example?’

  ‘Not right now,’ I said. ‘I’m up to here with party tricks.’

  He looked hurt and I would have apologised but the rum wouldn’t let me.

  ‘Can’t you do anything?’ Lola said, giving me an unpleasant look I didn’t feel I deserved.

  ‘No,’ I refilled my glass.

  She looked at me and then grunted. There was something funny going on with her but I couldn’t work out what it was. That wasn’t unusual, she could be very enigmatic when she wanted to be.

  ‘The question is,’ Roach said. ‘Where did these new abilities come from? Who gave them to us?’

  ‘That’s two questions. I have another. Why the hell would anyone give him,’ I pointed at Minos. ‘The power to set things on fire? It’s a wonder the whole hotel hasn’t gone up in flames.’

  ‘I’m trying to come to terms with that myself,’ he coughed. It smelt of smoke.

  Why couldn’t I do anything? That was the real question I wanted to ask. It wasn’t fair. I would have been excellent at being able to do something. I’d waited and waited for something to happen, I even spent my time trying to kick start all manner of things, just to change things. All the ducking and diving, the petty theft and grand larceny was all just to make something happen when you got down to it. All my life, waiting. Now something was happening and it was all happening to other people. Lola looked like she was torn between two conflicting feelings, like she didn’t know whether to hug me or hit me. ‘What about you?’ I said to her. ‘What can you do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’ Roach said.

  ‘No. Nothing at all,’ she said.

  ‘You haven’t noticed anything?’ I said.

  Have you?’ Lola glared at me. There was all together to much glaring going on.

  ‘No. Nothing.’ I said.

  ‘Maybe it’s a male thing?’ Lola said.

  ‘It seems unlikely,’ Roach said. ‘Maybe you just haven’t noticed them yet?’

  ‘Or you’re lying,’ Casino was leaning against the side of the pool. He was addressing Lola.

  ‘I’m not lying,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you ask her if she’s lying?’

  All three of them sniggered.

  ‘Sorcha is a terrible liar,’ Roach said. ‘Be reasonable, Lola.’

  ‘I am not a terrible liar,’ I said.

  ‘You haven’t noticed anything?’ Roach said.

  ‘No, that’s what they wanted to know,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’ Casino said.

  ‘The people in the shop,’ I said.

  ‘Haggia and Marshall Dailly?’ Lola asked.

  ‘How did you know that?’ Minos span round to face her. He was like a ginger tornado.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Their names. I never told you their names,’ he said.

  Casino, Roach and I looked from Minos to Lola and back again.

  ‘This is ridiculous.’ It was Lola’s turn to storm off. She marched across the pool and clambered, with as much dignity as she could muster, up the ladder in the shallow end. I raised my glass, empty again, to her in farewell. My storming off had been better, but she coped with the ladder well.

  ‘You told me their names, but I never mentioned it to these guys,’ Minos said to me, waiting until Lola had slammed the doors. ‘So how does she know that?’

  We all looked at Roach.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Are you not the intellectual giant now? Can’t you work it out?’ Casino said.

  Roach thought for a moment. It was almost beautiful to watch. ‘I think the most likely answer is that she does have a new ability and that allowed her to find out the names. But she doesn’t like it, or she’s ashamed of it. Or perhaps she thinks we won’t like it and will ostracise her from the group. It’s provoked fear, whatever it is.’

  ‘Wow,’ Minos said. ‘You are smart.’

  ‘I said I thought that bump on the head had made me cleverer,’ he said, half in wonder.

  ‘I wonder how clever you are,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s go to Michelangelo’s and find out,’ Casino said.

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ I said. ‘This is getting us nowhere.’ Besides I was already drunk and a little more drunkenness wouldn’t do me any harm.

  Michelangelo’s. Bar of ill repute, stale beer and genius quiz machine. No one, legend had it, had ever got more than four consecutive questions right on it. Michelangelo said the spirit of his ex-wife was trapped in it. We pointed out that she wasn’t dead but he said that just went to show how evil she was.

  I volunteered to go and liberate Lola from the sulks. Her set of rooms was on the fourth floor. She was lying in her wardrobe, that is to say that she was in a room that was full of clothes, laying on a pile of vintage fabric almost a metre high. She was waiting for Casino to finish some designs for her. I knocked on the open door.

  ‘Please come to Michelangelo’s with us,’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want you to.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘Yes. What other reason?’

  She sat up and looked at me. It was a funny look. Like she was trying to work out what was going to happen at the end of a book by looking at the cover. I loved those old books and their covers, the rum had cheered me up no end. I loved rum too.

  ‘Because I love you?’ I said.

  ‘OK, there’s no need to get cute,’ she said. ‘Let’s see how smart the big lug is.’

  How did she know that? I decided not to ask. It was only the afternoon and there was plenty of day left to get worse. Besides if Roach was right and she was bothered and bewildered, it wasn’t for me to make it worse for her. I figured that when she was ready she would tell me and then we’d sort it out, all of us together, because that was what always happened. She slipped her hand into mine as we walked down the sweeping staircase, beneath the dusty chandeliers with their broken bulbs. Sometimes she felt very small.

  I was grateful that Michelangelo’s was in the opposite direction to Haggia’s shop and the further we walked from it the stronger my resolve to forget all about it became. It was still not an iron clad resolution but the support of a few more alcoholic beverages would prove a magnificent bolster, of this I was sure. Tixylix drove past us, slowing down to make sure we’d seen him. I didn’t know what his issue was, maybe it was Lola. He seemed like a small problem though, the easy to ignore kind. I wondered where Vermina was, the
n decided I shouldn’t wonder. We were getting a fair bit of attention due to the large box of rum that Roach was carrying on his shoulder. I couldn’t even lift it but Roach was strolling along like he was carrying a kitten.

  He put the crate on the bar in front of Michelangelo.

  ‘What’s this?’ the landlord asked.

  ‘Rum,’ I said.

  ‘From where?’

  ‘From the land of rum,’ I said as Minos opened the box and pulled out a bottle.

  ‘Wow,’ said Michelangelo once he’d knocked back a sample. ‘Quality.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘This is the deal. You let us drink that bottle, and let’s say these two, for free and you can buy the remainder for a very reasonable price.’

  It was a great deal, for everyone. Minos had got so much rum off a ship that had been salvaged from somewhere in the Strait, it had taken three days to bring it all back to the hotel in a truck we’d borrowed from Emirhan. Minos’s crew were very democratic and took turns at taking whatever they found, if they couldn’t handle what came in or didn’t want it, the next pirate in line got it. Minos could use anything so his take was way above everyone else’s. They didn’t mind though, we shared the spoils around like the liberal egalitarians we were.

  Michelangelo agreed right away. Roach had his rum on the rocks, Minos had a triple straight with a rum chaser, Lola and Casino had daiquiris and I had a mojito, again. The bar was a long dark room with a tiny counter at one end and three machines at the other end by the door. There was a music tablet which had thousands and thousands of songs on it, all from the DarkNet. There were so many songs that everyone just played the top twenty so they didn’t have to stand there all night choosing music and forgetting to drink. It was an eclectic selection. There was a machine that would beat you at poker and take all your credit and the quiz machine that was possessed by the undead ex-wife. There were a couple of booths and a few small tables. It wasn’t fancy but people didn’t go there for the ambience. Most people who went there wouldn’t remember having been there come the morning after, so Michelangelo felt it didn’t matter what it looked like. Casino got Roach a barstool while I searched my wristset for the cheat code that would give us unlimited play for one token. Roach struck a meditative pose and rolled his head around on his neck. It made a crackling sound. The machine woke up when I fed it a token, then I told it the code. Roach took the hot seat and we gathered round. I wished everything was all right in the world but it wasn’t. Everyone kept glancing at each other, except for Roach who was concentrating on the screen before him, trying not to catch anyone’s eye but determined not to miss anything anyone might do. We might have pretended that we were focused on the battle between Roach and the forces of Michelangelo’s ex-wife but we all knew, I think, that something was wrong.

  ‘How many’s that?’ Casino said some time later. Maybe an hour. Maybe less. Maybe more. Time had become very elastic somehow, all stretchy and twangy.

  ‘Seventeen,’ Minos said.

  ‘Eighteen,’ Roach said, cracking his knuckles.

  Question nineteen was something about ancient Greece. There was no Greece anymore, so it was all ancient, but this was really ancient, like before clothes ancient. Casino would have been most suited to it. Roach pondered for a moment.

  ‘I think it’s C,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ the rum said with my mouth. ‘Definitely C.’

  He pushed the button. The machine made a mournful noise and the screen dissolved into pixels like tears.

  We stared.

  ‘Genius or not then?’ Casino said.

  ‘Nineteen is pretty genius,’ Minos said.

  ‘Pretty genius,’ Lola had cheered up, because of the restorative power of the daiquiris. Michelangelo had run out of synthetic fruit so she was having rum daiquiris. Lola was swaying in time to the music, I think. The bar might have been swaying in time to the music. The more I drank the harder it was to tell what was swaying. I’d spent the last ten minutes finding the word julep hilarious having overheard a woman order a mint julep. Roach had told me what one was twice but the information kept sliding out of my head.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Roach said.

  ‘Don’t be sad,’ I patted him on the arm.

  ‘I guess it’s futile to pit your wits against a machine, such is the element of luck involved,’ he said.

  ‘Why don’t you have another go?’ I said. ‘More drinks?’

  I was full of great ideas. Bursting with them. I negotiated my way to the bar, which seemed to be uphill and yet downhill at the same time. ‘Hello,’ I said to Michelangelo.

  ‘Hello, you,’ he said to me, which made me giggle. You and me.

  ‘Hello, I would like some drinks.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes. Rum all round,’ I wafted my hand towards the others in an instructive fashion.

  I’d been drunk in my time. Many times I’d been drunk in my time. And what times they were. The drunken times. But this time I was drunk. Very drunk indeed. And it had only just gotten dark. Become dark. Gone dark. Whatever. I think it was fair to say that I had surpassed myself.

  ‘That’s it, get it all up,’ Minos held back my fringe, the only part of my hair long enough to get sick on it. ‘Better out than in.’

  I could see people’s feet as they circumnavigated the puddle of vomit I was gifting to the pavement.

  ‘But I haven’t eaten any carrots,’ I said.

  ‘There, there. You’re just making some room for more, that’s all. You know what you’re like.’

  ‘I’m finished,’ I wiped my chin on my t-shirt. ‘All better.’

  Minos grimaced. ‘You go in.’

  I sauntered back into the bar in a very, very straight line. Some of the bar was spinning, which was an unusual feature. A moment later Minos joined me. I turned back to see him close the door on a suspicious glow. That fire bug. The others had decamped to a booth where Casino was still firing questions at Roach who hadn’t got one wrong in an hour. I was pleased to see my glass was full again as being sick always made me thirsty and gave me a horrible taste in my mouth a bit like vomit.

  ‘I’m bored of this now,’ Lola said. ‘I declare you a genius, Roach.’

  We cheered and toasted him. He smiled. We lapsed into silence. It was uncomfortable again. It wasn’t as if we talked all the time, but we used to be able to sit in a peaceable quiet. Not anymore. It was sad. I felt tearful and found I couldn’t sit still.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said a voice.

  We all looked around.

  ‘Excuse me,’ it said again.

  I studied my drink. It didn’t have a face so I figured it couldn’t have been that talking. Unless it was ventriloquist rum and then it could have been talking without moving its mouth. Except I knew it couldn’t have a mouth of any kind because it didn’t have a face. I wasn’t that drunk.

  ‘Yes?’ Casino said.

  ‘It’d like to get out if that’s OK,’ it was a male voice.

  ‘Have you got an invisible friend as well?’ I asked Casino.

  ‘No, have I?’ He looked a little bit concerned by that idea.

  ‘I’m not invisible,’ said the voice as its owner crawled out from under the table. ‘And I ain’t his friend.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Lola said. ‘A stranger is just a friend you haven’t made yet.’

  ‘And they don’t come much stranger,’ the man said.

  That’s what he was. He was a man. Well, he was more of a bundle of dirty rags with a man inside them. He was old and like many old people he had too much skin. Maybe some of the rags were skin. It was very hard to tell. He might have been two men. Twins. It didn’t matter which eye I shut it was still just as hard to tell.

  ‘I’m Casino, how do you do?’ Casino held out his hand.

  ‘What kind of a name is that?’ said the ragged man.

  ‘What’s your name then?’ Casino said.

  ‘Prophet,’ said the man.

>   ‘That’s not a name, it’s a vocation,’ I said, feeling very pleased with myself indeed.

  ‘It’s more of a calling,’ Prophet said.

  We went round the table exchanging names.

  ‘Are you local?’ Lola said. She was good at small talk. It was a legacy of her upbringing. The wealthy only engaged in the smallest of talk. Tiny, tiny talk.

  ‘No,’ said Prophet.

  ‘Where are you from then?’ Lola said.

  ‘He’s from under the table,’ I said.

  ‘Nowhere,’ Prophet said.

  ‘Nowhere?’ Roach said.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘We aren’t from anywhere either, are we?’ Casino said.

  ‘No. We aren’t from anywhere,’ I said. I had a desperate urge to be at home, in bed. I wasn’t in the mood to be sociable to strange old men. I got up to leave and call time on the madness. I was already a camel carrying too many straws. Prophet was not moving to let me get past him. I started to climb over him, issuing forth farewells to everyone in the bar.

  ‘You aren’t going anywhere,’ Prophet said from beneath me. ‘We’re all going to have a drink or two and then you’re going to offer me a bed for the night.’

  ‘Is that right?’ I said with the most sceptical eyebrows I could manage under the circumstances.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said.

  I woke the next morning to the sound of Prophet snoring from his sleeping bag. He had set up camp in the room across the corridor from mine. He had been absolutely right.