Spares

We abandoned the car out in the Portal, and returned to New Richmond; Vinaldi and Nearly through the front entrance, me round the back, as usual. Vinaldi returned to his empire to check that nothing untoward had happened while we’d been gone, sort through his mail, that kind of thing. I asked him to subtly spread a rumor that I’d disappeared, and he said he’d put the word out. Nearly went home to shower, and realized that she’d in effect been on an unpaid holiday for the last couple of days, so maybe she was going back to work, too. I didn’t ask her.

I went back to Howie’s, and spent a while concocting likely deaths for myself. The most convincing story I could come up with was a drug overdose, which gave me pause. That’s not a great comment on a life. I slotted Mal’s disk in and got it to hack the name Jack Randall into the pending file on the list of city dead. The death couldn’t be absolutely official because that required a confirmatory code from the coroner’s office, but I made it appear that my body had been found in the Portal. The coroners could rarely be bothered to go out there, and I knew from experience they’d just rubber-stamp it. The notification would automatically be relayed to the Police subnet, and from there the word would spread to the few people to whom it would be interesting. It also gave me pause to realize that all of them would regard it as good news. All in all, it was a bit of a gloomy experience. I was officially a ghost.

Then I turned the computer off, ate a cheeseburger at last, and started drinking heavily. The burger was excellent, and cheered me up no end.

Say what you like, but history is shit. It’s dirty, and it smells—with good reason, because it has provided the visceral energy which brought the present moment to where it is. This present is like our bodies: They look so clean, because they’re washed every day, but they leave little piles everywhere behind them. Past presents digested, excreted, and left for posterity—and our later selves—to smell.

As I sat in Howie’s office, in the hours before dawn and alone, I felt as if I were sitting in the midst of a hundred piles of shit, the stink of each subtly different from the others. When I tried to trace where each had come from I got lost. I couldn’t remember the steps clearly enough. It was all too complicated. Time to wipe the hard disk and start again.

Howie had left me by myself for the time being, at my request. I was trying to remember when my life had stopped making sense, when the loops got nested so deep I couldn’t see beyond them. You never value simplicity as a child because you’re always leaning into the turns, wanting to become older and get your hands on all those older things. As a child, your options are limited, and as such, so simple and free. Each day is a simple progression of activities, not fractured with the demands of the future.

There are countless things you can do when you’ve grown up, so many calls upon your time. You can smoke. You can drink. You can take drugs. You can work—in fact, you have to, because you have to pay bills. Then there are the things you can’t do. You have to not goof off, not sleep with other people even if they’re available. You have to be happy with where you are and what you’ve got, when the essence of childhood was the belief that there would always be something new.

The addictions and the mandates of being an adult take up so much of your time that you can never simply be. Every thought and every action is shaped and undermined by all the other actions or thoughts you have to forgo. You can find yourself haunted by people and events that never even existed, so surrounded by spirits that the real world shades away. You still search for Narnia, even though you’re too old to believe in it and now it doesn’t want you there.

Innocence is the freedom from having to have a cigarette every half hour, freedom from loving someone, freedom from the endless fallout of bad things which you have endured or done. Freedom from time, and ail time’s passing leaves behind it. The countless smells of shit

The melancholies of youth are to do with not being taken seriously, and the opposite sex. The desperate, biological exposure of that need; the feeling of being left behind when other boys seem to know about smoking and beer and girls—or when other girls had better clothes, a boyfriend of sorts, and tits. Not so much a feeling of being left behind, in fact, so much as a dreadful fear that you were on a subtly different and less vital curve, one which would never bring you into contact with these exciting, contraband substances.

And yet, when I got those things, I realized the truth in the only movie that really scared me as a child. I thought of the time when I saw Pinocchio on television, and I remembered the way the film spoke to me even though the animation was archaic and two-dimensional. I wonder whether my reaction then was a forerunner of what I feel now, if it was an intuitive preunderstanding that these forbidden things really would turn you into a donkey, forever tilling someone else’s field. But you run for them with open arms anyway, because that’s what growing up is about, and only when you stand tired and wet in the rain and mud, the yoke grown so close that it is a part of your shoulders right down to the bone, do you realize what you have done.

I tried to bend the world, and didn’t bend enough myself. I wasted so much time looking for someone who would light up the forest that I didn’t see what I had. Henna was a beacon who would pull me out of the woods, with a strength in her arms which had been put there by my lack of love. I’d stand in front of her, bedraggled and sad in the discovery that what I’d chased was not worth the catching, and believing that Henna never knew what I was really like because I lied. And of course she understood all along, and loved me anyway.

She’s not here anymore, so there’s no one to pull me back. Pinocchio was rescued, and in time turned into a real little boy. The rest of us stand shivering in the rain, and bray.

Howie believed most of what I told him had happened in The Gap, though he did inquire exactly how much Rapt I’d taken. Then he asked me what I was going to do, and I told him.

“How, precisely, are you intending to do that?” he asked, handing me a beer. The bar outside was crowded and noisy, but the office felt like it was miles away from all that.

“There’s a memorial service for Louella Richardson tomorrow,” I said cheerfully. “Maxen’s going to be there, salving his conscience. He’s going to have an uninvited guest.”

“How are you going to get in?”

“I have a plan,” I said.

Howie nodded. “You want some help with the details? Like where exactly you’d like to be buried?”

I smiled at him, thinking how weird life is. I met Howie when I was asking after a murder once, and leaned on him hard for information. He’d refused to play ball for so long, and so imaginatively, that I found myself kind of admiring him. Then I found myself ending up in his bar when I wanted a drink, and even brought Henna and Angela a few times. Now he was the only person in the world prepared to help me, however ridiculous my ambition. Vinaldi had made it clear before leaving that he was having no part of it. His argument was with Yhandim and the others, not Maxen.

“No,” I said to Howie. “But thank you.”

Howie shrugged, drained the rest of his beer.

“Good haircut, by the way,” I said.

Howie ran his hand ruefully through his hair, which was spiking considerably more than usual. He looked like he had a blond hedgehog sitting on his head. “The fuck it is,” he said. “But I’ve got a detailed and well-thought-out plan.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to firebomb the fuckers. That’ll teach them that when I say ‘just a trim’ I mean it.” He explained his theory that hairdressers sprayed some chemical on your head that made your hair look longer than it really was. When they asked you if they’d taken enough off, you always looked in the mirror and said no, take a little more. Then the moment you left the shop, all your hair shrunk back to its normal length again, making you look as if you’d been designed for cleaning round the U-bend of a toilet. You couldn’t blame the hairdressers, because you’d told them to take more off, and they’d achieved their real aim of making every man look a complete fucking idiot. It was a good theory, and I applauded him for it.

Howie stuck around for a little longer but in the end headed back to the bar in search of peperoncinos. I sat in the glow from the lamp and cleaned my gun for a long time. It didn’t really need it, but it seemed like the thing to do. Then I got a couple more cheeseburgers sent through and munched on them instead.

Later, I heard a knock on the door behind me and turned to see Nearly standing there with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“I’m not going to try to talk you out of it,” she said. “I just thought I’d make sure you went off to certain death with a hangover.”

“You look nice,” I said. She did. She was wearing a long dress, and when I ran my eyes over the pattern I realized it had to have come from the same store where Suej’s first and only piece of clothing had been bought. I started to say something, but she interrupted me, the words coming out in a rush.

“Actually, I lied. I am going to try to talk you out of it, and this is how I’m going to start. Jack, don’t do it.”

“Sit down, Nearly,” I said. She came and perched on Howie’s chair, placing the wineglasses in front of her on the table. She left the bottle there for a moment, and when she saw that I wasn’t going to open it, reached forward to do it herself. She tossed the cork away and poured two glasses, filling them right to the top. Then she lit a cigarette, sat back in her chair, and looked at me.

“So?” she said, after a silence. “What are you going to tell me? That Maxen deserves to die, and that you’re the man with the God-given task of making sure he does?”

“There’s no point in us having this conversation, Nearly.”

“There isn’t if you’re just going to sit there and patronize me. I can get that from clients.”

“So why aren’t you working tonight?”

“Because I don’t fucking feel like it, okay? You’re not big on explaining your motivations. I don’t have to tell you jack shit.”

I sighed. “It’s late, Nearly.”

“Drink some wine, dickweed,” she said, and her eyes flashed dangerously. I was actually a little frightened of her. Having her in the room, in this mood, was like being corralled with an interesting but imperfectly trained wild creature.

“I don’t want any,” I said.

“Drink it,” she said sweetly and with utter seriousness, “or you’re not even going to make it through to tomorrow morning.”

I’d finished my beer. It was simpler than walking to the fridge to get another one. I picked up the glass and drank a mouthful of wine.

Nearly winked at me humorlessly. “Great,” she said. “The training session’s going well. It’s almost like you understand every word I say. How long before I convince you that trying to kill Maxen is a stupid thing to do?”

“You don’t understand.”

“So explain it to me,” she said, and now her face was different again. Open, vulnerable: the face of someone who was genuinely trying to see into my mind.

“I should have done it a long time ago,” I told her. “It’s either that or keep running forever.”

“Bullshit!” she screamed, catching me unaware again. The hubbub from the bar in the background seemed to dip for a moment, as if her voice had carried all the way out there.

I shrugged. “That’s the way it is.”

“So explain it to me properly,” she said. I looked away irritably. “So explain it to me,” she repeated, implacably, and then a final time at wall-shaking volume. “SO JUST FUCKING EXPLAIN IT TO ME.”

I found I was talking then, without meaning to.

“The brain’s a mistake,” I said, and she snorted derisively. “It’s an evolutionary disaster. The mutations bit off more than they could chew. Yeah, we can oppose our thumbs and make marks on paper, but along with that came gaps and interstices, horror pits and buried emotions, concentration camps, Hitlers, and men like the Maxens. They’re created by the fact that the real world and The Gap just never got along.”

“Jack, I think too many slices of processed cheese have addled what’s left of your brain. You’re going to have to unpack that for me or I could go away thinking it’s just meaningless bullshit.”

I wasn’t even talking to her by then, I don’t think. I was talking to myself, or perhaps to Henna.

“The genes with their random quirks created the human brain like a child building a MegaMall from a kit. It looks like a plane, it sounds like a plane, but don’t for fuck’s sake try and fly in it. In the wings and the engine, in the hold and the seats, there are parts which don’t quite fit together. Screws which weren’t tightened enough. Things fall through the gaps and don’t quite go where they should. Doors swing shut in the wind and suddenly you find yourself not recognizing anything you feel, running on collapsing code, and not remembering what it meant.

“We live in huge hotels, full of hundreds of shifting rooms. Our emotions are the tenants—some fleeting, short-term, others long-term residents. Some treat the house well, some don’t; some lock the doors and windows after them, others leave them open. A good tenant will leave the key under the mat when he leaves, so that new people can come in every now and then. But sometimes something will happen that seals the doors shut, leaving you with whatever happens to be inside.

“I’ve had a long run of bad tenants, the kind who spill stuff over the walls and put cigarette burns in the carpet and leave the windows open for the wolves to come in. Sometimes they go, without paying their rent or cleaning the kitchen; leaving the mess for the next bunch of barbarians to build upon. Sometimes they stay, glowering in corners, refusing to forward people’s mail and fighting spring-cleaning to the death.

“I’d like to believe there’s some good tenants in there too, but they’ve been forced up into the attic, hiding in crawl spaces and never coming out. I never get to see them because there’s too many thugs at the front door who won’t let me in.

“I’ve never been a very strong landlord, and I felt it was finally time to collect some rent. I needed to evict some of these guys, to have my life returned to me. Finally closing the book on Arlond Maxen seemed like the only way of getting the house keys back.”

I stopped talking then. There didn’t seem to be any more I wanted to say. Nearly stared at me, her eyes wide open.

“Uh-huh,” she said, eventually, slowly nodding her head. “I suppose that was kind of interesting. Verging on the content-free, but interesting. I guess you had some slow evenings back there on the Farm.”

I shook my head at her. I didn’t know what I was trying to say, and didn’t want to have to try to explain any further. I was just marking time until tomorrow, when I could go and do what I had to do. I wanted to spend the intervening time just staring into space and cleaning my gun, doing a final inventory; maybe some Annual General Meeting for Jack Randall, Inc., where all the unfinished business was neatly wrapped up just in case the proceedings were adjourned forever.

Nearly cocked her head to one side and peered at me intently. “It ever occur to you that maybe you’re not the only one whose life is a bit fucked up, Jack?”

“It’s all in place,” I said.

“No, it isn’t There’s nothing in place. You have to listen to the past just as much as you fucking want to, no more. Things can change. Okay, so the spares died, Suej died—I’m going to miss her, too. It wasn’t your fault. You did what you could, and it wasn’t enough. Sometimes it isn’t. Forget them, and forget Maxen, and forget everyone else. There’s new stuff out there to have.”

“Like what?” I said. I wasn’t asking in the hope of an answer, just putting words out into the air. Nearly paused for a moment, then abruptly refilled her glass.

“Well, like me,” she said, as she put the bottle back down. I stared at her, and she shrugged. “I mean, I’m beginning to think I must kind of like you or something, notwithstanding the fact you’re a fuckwit. Otherwise why would I be sitting here listening to you talking psychobullshit, when, as you charmingly point out, I could be out there earning money?”

She looked up at me, chin thrust out belligerently, and for a moment I really saw her; saw the intelligence in her face, the clearness of her eyes, the perfect, animal way in which she sat in a chair. I didn’t see her as a friend, or a woman, as Howie’s employee or someone’s daughter. I saw her as Nearly, as an inexplicable, inimitable, irreplaceable person.

And then, just as clearly, I remembered sitting with my back to the wall of a room on 72, five years ago. I made a promise to Henna’s body. I have broken so many other promises, so very many. To keep that one was the least I could do.

I shook my head, and Nearly lunged forward and grabbed me by the lapels of my jacket. Her grip was surprisingly strong, her eyes on fire and her face livid. She’d known exactly what I was thinking.

“She’s dead, Jack, and by the sound of it, that was your fault. It was your fault because you wouldn’t leave something alone, and now you’re going to do exactly the same thing and this time it’ll be you who gets killed. You think she would have wanted that? You think that’s going to make things better?”

“You have no right to use Henna like that,” I shouted, prising her hands from my jacket. “It’s none of your fucking business and Vinaldi shouldn’t have told you about her.”

“Fuck Henna!” she spat. “Henna’s dead. I’m not speaking on her behalf. I’m speaking for me. I don’t want you to die.”

“I don’t care what you want,” I said loudly, and heard the words drop like coins into a well without bottom.

“It’s because I’m a whore, isn’t it?” Nearly said. “Because I sell it to earn a living. We all like the idea of a woman who enjoys fucking but we don’t want them if they’ve ever been with anyone else, right?”

“It’s got nothing to do with that,” I said quietly, and I think I was telling the truth.

“Yeah, right.” She slugged the last of her drink down. “Well, hey, Jack—finish the rest of the wine by yourself.” She stood, snatched her cigarettes from the table, and then looked down at me, utterly furious. “Maybe it’s better you go off and play tomorrow after all,” she said. “Otherwise that’s all it’s ever going to be, Jack. Finishing the wine by yourself.”

As she walked toward the door I stood up, too, suddenly afraid.

“Don’t go like this,” I said, reaching out to grab her shoulder. She slipped out from under my hand and kept going. “Can’t we be friends?”

Her face was hard, and she looked like someone I’d never seen.

“Friends is no use to me, Jack. I’ve got friends. I don’t need any more. What I need is someone who’ll light up the woods so I can find a place to stay.”

I blinked. “What made you put it like that?”

She shrugged. “Who gives a shit? It’s just a phrase, like ‘Hey, we can still be friends.’” Her eyes ran over me, as if capturing something. When she spoke again, her voice was calm and dull. “No, I don’t want to be your friend, Jack. You’d be a lousy friend. For a start, you’re going to be dead, and dead people never return your cal Is.”

She grabbed my face in her hands, and kissed me hard on the lips. It wasn’t tender, or forgiving. It was fierce and uncompromising, the flip side of a punch in the mouth.

“Good bye and fuck off,” she said, and walked out of my life.

I sat in Howie’s office until six, then went into the bathroom. I stood in front of a mirror and shaved, and when I was finished with each itemi I threw it into the trash. Shaving cream, razor, comb, toothbrush. Then I examined my reflection for a while. I looked like an alien.

The bar droid told me Howie had gone to bed. I got it to serve me a coffee and drank it sitting at the bar.

The room was almost empty, just a lone couple sat at a table in the corner, come in for an early coffee on the way to work. They were holding hands, and something told me they’d just spent the night together for the first time. The girl’s hair was still wet from its morning wash, her normal routine disrupted; his cheeks were pink from using a razor found lying around in her bathroom, feeling oddly unsettled, wearing yesterday’s shirt and smelling of someone else’s deodorant. Neither of them seemed quite sure what to say, how to be, as they struggled to deal with suddenly widened perceptions of someone they saw every day at work. Confused memories of the night before; of the shock of so much skin.

The cat I’d pulled from the abandoned Farm was also there, curled up asleep in one of the corners. I was glad it had found a home. It would never want for peperoncinos, at least.

A little while later the young couple stood up, hesitated, and then held hands as they walked out the door.

I thought about leaving a note for Howie, but I couldn’t find any paper and I didn’t know what I would say. Seven o’clock, I left the bar and walked to an xPress elevator. There was very little life on the streets. The only place doing business was a Chinese restaurant with a variety of tired-looking dishes sitting in hot plates in front of the window. The restaurant was called the Happy Garden, but it didn’t look like a Happy Garden. It looked like a Pretty Miserable Garden. It looked like the kind of place Schopenhauer would have enjoyed during the period when he had a bad urinary infection.

At 100 I showed my fake pass to the guys standing there. Their eyesight wasn’t as good as the one who’d stopped me with Vinaldi, or maybe they just cared less; either way, I got through and made it up to 104.

Golson was still half asleep when he opened the door, but woke up rapidly on seeing me.

“Whoa, big dude,” he said. “You’re turning into a regular feature.”

“You got someone with you?”

“Yeah,” he said, smirking. “Sandy came back for some more.”

“Get rid of her,” I said, shouldering past him into the apartment. It was beginning to feel like a second home. Golson scuttled after me as always, making small and unimportant bleats of disagreement.

“Hey, man—I can’t do that. I promised to take her to the Memorial as my guest. That’s why she came with me last night. She kept her side of the bargain—she ain’t going to leave now for no man.”

Sandy was sitting up in bed as I entered, looking fetchingly disheveled. I twitched the sheet off, then pulled out my gun and racked it

“Sandy, go home,” I said. “There’s a danger this man may only be after your body.”

I walked into Golson’s kitchen and started nuking some coffee. It was cinnamon apple, but I reckoned if I smoked heavily enough I could mask the taste. Gotson stayed in the bedroom and watched with bewilderment as Sandy gathered up her clothes and left in a way which underlined her chagrin, slamming the door hard enough to shake the city to its foundations. I smiled. Everybody I knew seemed cursed to do the same thing again and again: The if-then loops go on and on until you find some way of breaking out.

I was sipping my first cup when Golson stomped in. “Hey listen, dude,” he began petulantly. “That was beyond. I mean it. Okay, so I got laid already, but the service starts at nine and how am I going to mobilize someone foxy enough to be my guest by then?”

“You already got a replacement guest,” I said.

“Oh yeah?” he said, hopefully. “Who?”

“Me,” I said. “Get dressed.”