Zero history

53. CRICKET

The phone’s cricket-noise woke her, though instantly she was uncertain whether she’d actually been asleep. She’d lain curled all night beside him, for the most part awake, out of some need to process the fact that he was there. He’d smelled of hospitals. Something he’d used to dress the wounds. He hadn’t let her see that, describing his injured leg as “a work in progress.”

He’d sat in the armchair to change the dressings, on a black garbage bag taken from the backpack slung behind the scooter-chair, undoing the safety pins down one inside leg of his trousers. She’d had to wait in the bathroom, leaning against the towel-warming pipes that caged the shower, listening to him whistling, deliberately tunelessly, to tease her. “There,” he’d called, finally. “I’m decent now.”

She’d emerged to find him safety-pinning the hem of his trouser leg. The black bag he’d spread across the chair was on the carpet now, something knotted into one of its corners. “Does it hurt, to do that?” she’d asked

“Not really,” he’d said. “The rest of it, the reconstruction, physiotherapy, that’s less fun. Do you know I’ve a rattan thighbone?” He grinned at her, evilly, sitting more upright.

“What’s that?”

“Rattan. The stuff they weave baskets and furniture out of. They’ve found a way to turn it into a perfect analog of human bone.”

“You’re making that up.”

“They’re just starting to test it on humans. On me, in fact. Works a charm, on sheep.”

“They can’t. Turn that into bone.”

“They put it in ovens. With calcium, other things. Under pressure. For a long time. Turns to bone, near enough.”

“No way.”

“If I’d thought of it, I’d have had them make you a basket. Brilliant thing about it, you can build exactly the bone you need, out of rattan. Work it as rattan. Then ossify it. Perfect replacement. Actually a bit stronger than the original. Microscopic structure allows the blood vessels to grow through it.”

“Don’t mess with me.”

“Tell me more about what this Milgrim said, to Mr. Big End,” he’d said. He always pronounced it that way, as though it were two words.

She found the receiver, feeling more absurdly massive in the dark than ever, lifted it. “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” said Bigend. “Be in the sitting room.”

“What time is it?”

“Eight-fifteen.”

“I’m asleep. Was.”

“I need to see you.”

“Where’s Milgrim? And Heidi-”

“We’ll be discussing him shortly. Heidi’s no part of it.” He hung up.

She squinted at the glow around the edges of the curtains. Returned the receiver as quietly as she could to its cradle. Garreth’s breathing continued, unchanged.

She sat up, carefully. Made out the dark horizontals of his legs. He’d insisted on sleeping in his trousers and stocking feet. On his bare chest, she now knew, were new scars, healed but still livid, next to older ones she could have sketched from memory. She stood, padded into the bathroom, closed the door behind her, and turned on the light.