The Rest is Weight

by Jennifer Mills

‘Very good. How is my city?’

  ‘Working hard,’ I say. ‘Mr Wang, I have a question.’

  ‘Shoot,’ he says.

  ‘How did you choose me for this position?’

  There is a nervous silence down the phone and for a minute I assume he is not going to answer the question at all. I listen to his breathing, oddly personal through the land line in a way that breaths never are through mobile phones.

  ‘I mean, I don’t have a lot of experience. How did you select me?’ I say, in case he has not understood.

  ‘Facebook,’ he says.

  ‘But how many applicants did you have?’

  ‘You were the only one invited to tender,’ he says.

  Then Mr Wang explains his theory: ‘There is an elite in each country. In Australia it is very small. So all the professionals are connected. We find you by looking at who you know. Every employer does this now,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter what you have done, it matters to whom you belong.’

  I want to tell him that I no longer belong to Damien, the high school boyfriend-engineer, or Dr Jahangir, the third-year Civil lecturer. But he interrupts my thoughts.

  ‘I am coming down in a fortnight,’ he says. ‘To see your progress. Please be ready Friday.’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Wang,’ I say. He hangs up halfway through his own name.

  I work extra hard over the following fortnight, though I get a bit distracted. I can’t stop Googling the other people who have also worked on the city. Every time I look someone up I find there is some connection. Most of the urban shopping areas were designed by the company I did my internship with. The lake plantings were arranged through a horticulturalist friend of my uncle’s, whose holiday house we used to stay in when we were kids. I suppose the architecture world is small, and Mr Wang says he can trust Australians. And those connected to us. After a while I stop finding it spooky and start to see this as part of my inevitable participation in the urban plan. A kind of fate.

  Two weeks later, Mr Wang and I are driving around the empty city in a golf buggy. He is smaller and older than I imagined. He takes me on a tour of the golf course, part of a leisure complex designed by my former babysitter, who is now working for a sports science consultancy, more Googling revealed, which had secured a bunch of Olympics contracts. The place seems loosely based on the park she used to take me to when I was a kid, though that park has long since been turned into high-rise apartments. On closer inspection the element of memory is illusory, something I am projecting on to the place. It’s entirely fresh, entirely itself.

  We pull up by the lake. The geese, which are indeed real, scatter noisily into the water, making a rough scratch in the plane of perfect silence.

  We return to my office, or to the office part of my suite. I am embarrassed by the bed, though the hotel staff have discreetly remade it in my absence.

  ‘My suggestions,’ I say, as I show Mr Wang the unfurled plans.

  ‘It is all fine, fine,’ he says, barely glancing at them. He stands at the window adjusting his tie, then does something on an iPad.

  ‘We will have another meeting in one month,’ he says.

  ‘Sure,’ I say.

  I work even harder, straining my eyes under fluorescent lamps to find the right redesigns that will iron out all the flaws I can find. The high school should be moved closer to the park, and the high-rise car park further away from the bus terminal. I make a fresh plan of the city, then another. Thoroughfares need to be connected to transport hubs. Railway lines need to intersect, not disappear.

  After one month, I am convinced I have found every error, every potential accident blackspot and design flaw in the place. I am glad I have done so in time for Mr Wang’s next visit.

  ‘It is all going very well,’ he says, leaning over my work. I feel proud, though I know he is only skim-reading it.

  ‘But really, Mr Wang, the city is fine already. It will work as it is. You could bring the people in. Start selling.’

  ‘I know it is fine,’ he says, calmly.

  ‘Then why change it?’ I say. I blush then, realising I might be talking myself out of six months’ work.

  ‘It is all here, but it’s not perfect. It lacks something.’

  I look down on the empty streets. ‘The people?’ I say.

  ‘Not yet.’

  So I go back to work. I have already solved all the significant issues I can find, but I keep looking for more. There is actually plenty to do, when I look for it. There are tiny improvements on every corner. Mr Wang won’t send in construction teams until I am finished, and I am not finished until I say I am. But the following Friday, he calls to tell me we have to expand: homes for another five hundred thousand inhabitants. The local government has just approved it.

  After another month I am tired of sourcing exactly the right kind of non-slip handrail for the bus stop outside the retirement village, tired of replanting the park with low-allergenic, water-saving plants. I feel like I am almost ready and I think Mr Wang is too. Our Friday conversations are energised with this sense of urgency. But after several more weeks, I begin to get impatient.

  ‘When are the people moving in?’

  ‘Soon,’ he says.

  My next question is indelicate, so I begin it with: ‘Sir, how much . . . Are there limits to what we can do here?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘There are no limits. I am in rare earths. The region is monetising. We’ve even been green-lighted to grow this project. We have a deeply motivated investment sector. They will wait.’

  So he is a businessman, I think, if there is a distinction here.

  ‘But rewiring the power underground for the new sector –’ I say – ‘it is going to cost a fortune.’

  ‘There are many fortunes,’ he says. ‘More money than you can imagine.’

  ‘Maybe that is the problem,’ I say.

  ‘I knew you had the vision to make the connections,’ he says. ‘I could see that from the beginning. Good network skills.’ I can hear a slight agitation in his voice and I know that I have already asked too much.

  ‘I mean, there is no problem,’ I say. ‘I will carry on.’

  And I do, and it goes on. I order the redirection of special ribbed pavers at a major intersection to reduce trip hazards for the blind. I decide a small factory should be relocated half a mile north away from the wind range of a primary school. I redraw and redraw. But I am getting slower.

  In the evenings, as I update my Facebook status with news on the various reconstructions, I start to think about what Mr Wang says about networks. I think about my friends – all young professionals who went to top-ranking schools – and whether we have a sense of ourselves outside our hundreds of friends and followers. The more elite friends I have, the stronger my sense of destiny. I look at the lists, think of the interests and connections we share. When I update my status I imagine how Mr Wang might see me from the outside. He probably sees me as more competent, more motivated and involved than I really am. I suppose that’s how I want people to see me.

  But even though my status updates remain enthusiastic, I start to get tired of the work. I grow bored with living in a hotel. With the permission of Mr Wang I move into an apartment building across the street; the staff come with me. On the inside, the apartment looks a bit like the home of a girl I played with when I was about ten, a girl named Brianna. Further searching reveals that she is now working as an interior designer: pictures of my new apartment are in her online portfolio. I realise I have stopped being surprised by this stuff.

  The apartment building has a pool, and in my plans I quickly add one to the hotel. I spend long hours swimming laps. The water has the kind of silence I can bear. The pool is enormous, like the one we used for our high school swimming carnivals, and as I swim I imagine hundreds of girls in the stands, dressed in
house colours, cheering me on.

  I begin to sleep in, spend hours in front of karaoke dating shows on the flat screen, eating too many sandwiches. I go for long walks through the empty city and feed my crusts to the geese. I go entire days without working at all.

  Mr Wang still calls me every Friday.

  ‘We are close,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Almost there.’ I feel slightly annoyed.

  ‘I am thinking about names,’ he says. ‘I am thinking about Simena. Ubar. Helike.’

  ‘I like those,’ I say.

  ‘How are your designs going?’

  I have done nothing for days. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘I am still working on the bike paths. I can get a full plan to you later this week.’

  ‘Take your time,’ he says, ‘I want everything to be perfect.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say.

  ‘Also, we have the go-ahead for another industrial zone in the north-west.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘Another one.’

  It will need workers, transport, retail zones, utilities. I sweep the chocolate bar wrappers from my desk and unroll a new sheet of paper. I begin to suspect that Mr Wang wants the city to stay empty. That we both do. With this thought I feel a shudder in my spine. I know I am going to be here forever. There is no function to this work except its destiny of growth, no purpose to my being here except as a prisoner.

  After staring at the fresh sheet for a while, I ring downstairs to the concierge. There is a wave of static on the line and then a voice says, ‘Miss Bourne, what would you like?’

  ‘Listen,’ I say in a low, urgent voice, ‘what was here before?’

  There is silence on the end of the line. Then a hushing sound, tinny and close. A machine.

  ‘No past,’ she says. ‘Only future.’

  I think about this for a moment. I lift the phone over my head to stretch my arm, then return it to my ear. When I return it the splashing static sound has cleared.

  ‘Can I get a massage?’ I say.

  ‘Certainly.’

  I scrunch up the blank sheet and reach for the remote control.

  Extra time

  Graham’s house gets dark early. Thick trees shade its western edge. They are the neighbour’s trees, but they offer no protection from the neighbours. In the afternoons the children next door erupt like corellas in unruly din. The man who lives there, the father, likes to grind metal. The epic of his usefulness drills holes in Graham’s afternoons.

  Graham is not useful. He has no interest in conducting repairs. He is fine with atrophy.

  There are eight digits ticking down in a corner of Graham’s desktop.

  He knocks his can of soft drink against the computer screen, and a little of the liquid spills. He dabs at it with his sleeve. The fabric soaks it up, it will probably stain, but he doesn’t mind. It’s just a little spill, that’s all.

  When Graham goes out to get the mail in the afternoon, the glare astonishes him. The light here is unforgiving. Graham considers this, decides that it’s not quite the right way around. The light doesn’t lack forgiveness. What it lacks is contrition.

  The grinding noise pauses as the next-door neighbour observes him. Graham intends to say hello to the neighbour, but has left it at vague nods for months and now there is no escaping the awkwardness. Whenever he looks up the man is in a dense cloud of sparks, hidden beneath his safety glasses, intent on grinding. Graham tries to avoid the man’s masked eyes. The man has been complicit in this until now.

  As Graham gets his mail out of the box, he glances up at the house across the street. The curtains are closed. They are always closed, though they used to be open. You could see a woman in there, carving stone. Graham knows because he watched her through his front window.

  At first Graham thought that she was a sculptor, a stonemason, because she spent her days carefully chipping away at a large rectangle of pinkish marble. She worked in good natural light, in a white room, with little else but the chair, the block, and a bench. Her tools were manual, and she straddled the block between her strong thighs, bracing the stone against her body. It all looked like some kind of artistry.

  For a time he also thought she lived alone. Over many months he watched the carving stone shrink into nothing. Then the boyfriend appeared.

  The boyfriend came into the room and stood behind the woman, holding her shoulders as though she would float away without his weight on her. They both gazed blankly into the street. There was nothing left of the marble. Although it was dark inside his house, Graham let his curtains fall closed.

  The next day, the house across the street had its curtains closed too.

  No one comes or goes from these houses much, but that is not unusual. No one here goes to work any more. They don’t have to because of the accident.

  Six years and two hundred and twelve days ago, there was a spill.

  For the first two of those six years, the town doubled in size. The lawyers, politicians, scientists and disaster tourists kept them all busy. The hotels employed many of the recently unemployed, and the media attention distracted the rest.

  The class action settlement gave the residents plenty to live on for the rest of their significantly shortened lives. The company promised sustained infrastructure in its wake, free rent ad mortem, discount fuel and food and water, cheap broadband, all the doctors money could buy.

  Despite the conditions, many chose to take the money and go. In the week of the court settlement, the sudden bloating of the town happened in reverse: a regurgitation that ejected bile and stomach lining and lawyers along with the sick. Some chose to live elsewhere, closer to family. Some left because they could not bear to remember. When settled in new places, these people became evasive about their previous home. Some even changed their names.

  The company has also changed its name to escape the stigma, changed it three times with the various mergers. It now has a website entirely devoted to its good corporate citizenship. It doesn’t hide from the disaster – it compassionately responds to it. On the website there are pictures of the smiling remainder of the town, enjoying the infrastructure the company left behind: an indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley, a bar with a tropical motif. Lifestyle, the website says, in aquamarine italics.

  Many stayed. Aside from the proffered lifestyle, it might have been curiosity that kept them there, sipping their non-toxic piña coladas in air-conditioned comfort. Curiosity or simply inertia. For Graham, it was a visual problem. When he tried to imagine his life elsewhere, his mind became a fog, as though he had cataracts of the future.

  In the unrepentant glare of afternoon he loiters at the letterbox, fingering his fortnightly cheque. In the early days, committee-forming, hopeful types opted for collective investment of the compensation money. Graham was never very hopeful, but neither was he inclined to administration. He gets his dividend and asks no questions.

  Graham stands a moment longer at the mailbox, beaten down by the harsh light, and waits for the stun to work its way out of him. He glances across the road, but the woman hasn’t reappeared. He wonders if she’s left town. A pity – he wanted to ask her about a tombstone.

  He turns to go back to the house, and the grinding stops again. The neighbour pulls his safety goggles off, puts them on the bench in front of him. He wipes sweat from his face and looks at Graham. For the first time, he opens his mouth. He speaks as though there has never been any awkwardness, as though they have always had these little talks. He says,

  ‘Got your cheque then?’

  ‘Yes,’ Graham says, and rests the weightless object in one hand. There is a peeled silence. Feeling the discomfort settle on his collarbone like fallout, Graham forms a question.

  ‘What are you grinding there?’

  The man looks blankly at him for a while, then describ
es a small arc with his left hand. He uses the angle grinder to amplify his gesture, like some bionic deaf-mute, Graham thinks, but he offers no interpretation.

  Between them, steel lies bent in a set of angles. A frame of some kind the man is constructing, or dismantling.

  ‘For the kids,’ Graham says, taking a punt. The man nods, and lifts the safety goggles from the bench, only to heft them in his hand, balancing the grinder. To Graham it seems fundamental that he equalise these mismatched objects. It would not be out of place if the neighbour were to conduct an illustrative experiment, like Julius Sumner Miller.

  But he only says, ‘A man has to work.’

  Graham nods sagely, although the maxim has never resonated with him. He’s comfortable, his needs are satisfied. At this point in his life, labour seems superfluous, even self-indulgent.

  After the plant closed, Graham found he enjoyed the idleness. He spent a lot of time on the internet, mainly as a voyeur on social-networking sites. He watched a lot of football. He went to the local film nights and the car boot sales and even the bars at first, but has slowly eased himself away from this sort of thing. He thought of these activities as sort of like an insect walking up the inside of a wine glass. At a certain point, no matter what effort you make, the upward slope becomes too steep, and you are better off letting yourself slide into the syrupy dregs of grog.

  However, because of your instincts, you can’t just lie at the bottom and allow yourself to atrophy.

  Atrophy was a word the doctors used. It was embedded in the advice he read in one of the company pamphlets, back when they thought they might find a fix. ‘Affected persons may experience atrophy,’ it said. His doctor explained it was something that happened to your tissue, the flesh wasting away through disuse. In evolution it happened, over time, to the human appendix, and the wings of certain beetles.

  The doctor told him that he should try to keep busy. Take his mind off things. Graham nodded, but he wasn’t afraid of his mind. It had already settled on the image of the wine glass. The picture was strangely soothing.