Carry Me Off

All the walls are curved and lined with mirrors that make him look larger than usual. Opposite, a hole conceals a den of infinite mirrors, upwards, downwards, sideways. He sticks his head in and quickly back out again.

He moves on. Slot machines activated by fingerprint. He feeds it twenty-thousand and it lights up bright purple, flashing, all that ancient neon. A candyfloss soundtrack and an acute ticking in the bowels, below the floor and behind the walls, some concealed clock at work.

An attendant in a tuxedo appears with a cheeseburger and a gin-tonic. Three more before he leaves. Old John is in the corner of that dark assembly dressed like a jester out of antiquity. Loose puffy hose and a hat fit with bells. All yellows and greens and a bright-red face.

‘Still here?’ John says, moving towards the exit.

‘You see me,’ says Al.

‘Nothing better to spend it on? No woman at home?’

Al turns to him, still pressing the buttons. ‘Kind of question is that?’

‘Pity. I’ve not forgotten you.’

The attendant appears with a second drink. He’s tall, moves just like a man. There’s that ticking again. Now the jackpot sign lights up bright red. Little effigies of Satan flank the J and the T, and as his idle hands push the buttons the word Winner is flashing on and off.

‘Fifteen,’ Al whispers, smiling. John scoffs and moves along.

‘Very lucky, sir.’

‘Thanks, Jeeves.’

Al moves on with his winnings to a third room, this one empty. Someone by the door says: ‘Wouldn’t go on that thing.’

‘What is it?’

She sighs. It’s so dark he can’t make them out but it sounds like a woman. ‘Nance?’ He smells something sweet, strawberries fresh out the mould. The only light hangs above a wide seat in the centre of the room, laden with wires. A headset sits in the throne. He sits down and scans his finger. When he presses play this is what he sees:

A barren plot like a great landfill peppered with craters and men of blue and grey set in rows, their firelocks at their shoulders. Al lies ahead of his company above a trench, squinting down the iron sights of his revolver. He’s smiling in the cold and the mud. Gunpowder hanging over them, almost tasty. Cannon roaring and his stomach rumbling. Not used to that. He stands and draws his bayonet and sprints with just this into the distance, laughing all the way as Minié bite his kneecaps and in a great explosion of cannon he is dead.

Home is a bed and a desk and a hob beside a sink. A faceless landlord has painted over the mould above the hob. She’s standing there now. Tight gym pants and thick white socks pulled over the ankles of her slippers. Long legged jaundice lady in an oversized Kashmir. More specimen than woman. Engineered. She stood stirring a pot and chilli in the air stung the back of his throat.

‘Why don’t you shower?’ she said.

‘All right,’ Al said. He can’t escape without a kiss, then stands alone in the cubicle with the head high and bulbous and at the faintest touch dousing him and whilst drying his forehead in the mirror he considers the future.

They ate on the edge of the bed, hunched up like disturbed patients, watching the television.

Come and see the Ringmaster! Recruiting Now!

One window and it does not open and beyond it there is nothing to see. The occasional lightning strike. She served him real meat. From an animal. Afterwards she shuffled close, reached out to his eyebrows. ‘They are so long,’ she said. He moved away and lay down.

‘Why you move away from me?’

‘I’m just tired,’ he said.

‘Was the work hard?’

‘Oh yeah. It never stops.’

‘Is it make you sad? Can you get a new job?’

He laughed and reached out to her and she folded into his arms.

‘New job?’ he whispered. ‘I don’t think there’s many. If you went outside you might see.’

‘I went outside today.’

‘Oh?’

‘There was a man-statue. Statue-man? How do you call it?’

‘A living statue? You think I should do that?’

She shrugged. ‘You might make money. If I could get money for stand around do nothing I would.’

He took a deep breath and rolled his eyes and loosened his grip around her. He said, ‘I’d rather not talk about it. I have a good job.’

‘Nobody enjoys work but you have to do it. My father doesn’t like to work.’

He chuckled, shook his head.

‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What would you do if you could do anything?’

He shrugged. ‘Something that people enjoyed. I’d play in a band or something. Or tell jokes. That advert said it. I could go and play music and travel. I could see myself doing that, even I knew what it would mean.’

‘You can do it! My father said anything is possible.’

‘Don’t you know what I’m talking about? Where do you think they get their entertainers from in those places?’

She frowned. Large eyes. He looked around. The white walls, the black window. The room smelled like hot chilli and steamed rice. No clock but that faint ticking. He turned his head towards it, but then it was behind him. He said, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m sure he believes that.’

She frowned and tilted her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Can you forgive me?’

‘It’s okay.’

‘I want to understand. Can I do going to work with you?’

‘With me? Come with me?’

‘Yeah! I wanna!’

‘Well…I’d love you to but they don’t just let anybody walk around there.’

She was nodding. ‘I understand.’

‘And if I could look at you all day how could I focus?’

They hugged and when she couldn’t see his face he felt a heat spread across his brow.

She faced him again and said, ‘I am excited to go new apartment. We can have a bigger bed.’

‘Absolutely. Whatever you want, we’ll have it.’

‘Aw.’

She enveloped him and kissed his cheek.

‘Thank you for everything. Will it definitely be ready for the end of the month?’

‘The new place? Oh I think so. Six weeks or so.’

She kissed him and smiled and fetched a plastic bag of white speckled mushrooms from out of the desk drawer. Another surprise: ‘Where did you get these?’ he asked, holding up the bottles of vodka she’d fetched from beneath the desk.

‘The same place everybody does…?’ He shrugged. Different access. What did it matter. They laughed all night and when they woke it was still dark.

He went to the Greville and sat a while at the bar, in the dark. He heard voices but saw nobody. Faint LEDs of violet and turquoise turned on at the push of a button. Something to drink? Same again? Then back to black. Old piano music crackling through the speakers. The bar was square, and to his left and right drinks glowed, illuminated the faces of his fellow patrons. When he met women’s eyes in that cool light they looked away.

From the cardroom upstairs he heard rolling chatter. People smoked batteries to green, blue, red whisps. The room smelled of candyfloss and beer. His head was in his hands when a familiar voice called out from the darkness.

‘Hey, Al. Back again?’

‘Nancy? Come and have a seat. What are you drinking?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t forgotten everything you know.’

‘Well you should.’

He pressed the button on the bar and a violet light came on above him. A man in a tuxedo, with glazed eyes, appeared and asked, ‘What can I do for you, Mr Hargreave?’

‘A double of the usual and whatever this young lady wants.’

‘Honestly, Al.’

‘Come on. Take a seat.’

The tuxedoed man said, ‘Sir I should remind you that lewdness is forbidden.’

‘I’m really not his type, Jeeves.’

‘Just fetch the drinks. Nancy’ll have a mojito. You like those. Don’t pretend you don’t.’

‘Certainly sir.’

‘It’s honestly okay, Al. Have you been in the arcade again? You don’t look well. Come and have a game of cards or something.’

‘I…not tonight. But I need to talk to you.’

‘The tourney starts soon. I’ve got to go.’

‘Just sit down.’

‘Unfortunately, Mr Hargreave, it seems you’ve reached your weekend limit. I won’t be able to serve you.’

‘So I can drink em but I can’t buy em?’

‘That’s right, Mr Hargreave. Not without your exemption card.’

‘And how much do they cost?’

‘Just leave it, Al.’

Under his breath he muttered, ‘Curse yon alloy heart,’ and finished his final drink.

The light went off. Nancy went towards the stairs, the cardroom. She turned and said, ‘Does she know you’re out here?’

‘She thinks I’m at work.’

‘She…how did you pull that off?’

He kept on sitting with his head in hands. She turned up the stairs, shaking her head. He pushed the button again. ‘Where’s that music come from?’ he asked, pointing at the browned speaker in the ceiling.

A mellow siren out of the backrooms, a wide auditorium where attendees indulged in dreams, a buffet of burgers and fries and unlimited drinks. Overweight men in cheap suits laughing and hugging. The music sped up and in the air hung the sweet smell of open bottles. The stage was lit with a faint purple. A balding pianist sat at his profession wearing blackout glasses, pointing his head to the ceiling. He didn’t miss a key. Somebody shouted, ‘Old McDonald!’ and the performer cried, ‘Can do Old McDonald!’ and men stood and linked arms and danced mindlessly while Al watched from the doorway.

He turned. Old John in his jester gear was approaching. Al looked away but felt the old man near him.

‘Good, isn’t he?’

‘I wouldn’t know.’ John sighed.

‘You can’t avoid me forever.’

‘Is that what you say to talent agents?’ John scoffed.

‘You just stay away from that place there. You think because you left I stopped caring about you? And if you don’t care how it would make me feel, at least think of yourself. Don’t do something you’ll regret.’

‘Does he regret it? That man, playing. I’d wager he doesn’t even know.’

‘We used to have something. We had hope at least.’

He used the SkyPath, otherwise known as a bridge, to get home.

A mile of concrete, beige, sporadic black patches where graffiti have been erased. The rain drizzled onto his hood just enough to soak through. Same for his trainers, the failing mesh. He stuck his tongue out to taste the water and noticed a star and raised one eyebrow. It shines for him, he thinks. He went on. From the darkness came another youth in all-black on a scooter. Gone again. Atop a nearby building a man hanging, his hands tied behind him, his face exposed and gaunt, cheeks bloodied by the stones of children and the nagging vulture beaks.

Work. Day or night, summer or winter. All the same. An exodus of meteorologists. Ambition a livid daydream in that numb generation. Somewhere in the fog or beyond are empty streets and the shells of homes converted to rooms, rooms within rooms, beds upon beds, the roads aflood with sewage and behind windows smeared with ash you might see children and the last of the birds nesting together. Plastic, leeching bedframes. That’s how he remembers it. All history nucleated to silence. A lift brought him one-hundred floors down to another bridge, no closer to the ground than the previous.

At home they sat naked at the end of the bed and watched the fifty inch television. A dull silence. Topless women promote smoothies as she beside him plays with her hair. He was restless, as if the room were growing smaller. He took a drink and left he plastic cup beside her laptop. She sighed.

‘Is it okay for you cleaning it up?’

‘Sorry. Course.’ He washed it and left it to drain and passed by the laptop again, the cluttered desk. A pair of purple headphones on their side. Want to see a disappearing act? Bring them to my side of town.

‘Can I log in and do something quickly?’

‘Of course,’ she said, fetching a bag of mushrooms out of the drawer. He had twenty-two thousand left in his account. Pay day soon. Maybe a week left. Government assistance for the unemployable. There’s nothing to do and nothing to buy. His money goes on food and dreams.

‘What is that?’ she asked.

‘Work stuff. I’m stopping next month. No drinking, no gambling. I need to do a better job of…there’s things we need that I don’t have.’

‘But you must enjoy yourself. You must have freedom to do things. Why else did I come here?’

‘Man can enjoy himself too much.’

‘What else will you do?’

He shook his head. She took his hand and brought him back to the bed and they lay together. She kissed him and held firm until he cuddled into her and they worked to the rhythm of the clock in the walls.

Later she fished a bottle out from under the desk. A mess of wires and shoes, boots for scaling mountains neither had ever seen. They mixed alcohol with whatever might dampen the taste and ordered food which arrived five minutes later via a hatch by her door. They left their cups on the desk, between the food packets and the empty bottles, layered with orange pulp and the first specs of blue mould. Worlds within worlds. She took pills and from opposite he watched her arms sprawl behind her head, molesting the bedframe, laughing dreamily.

‘I’m a liar,’ he said, his throat locking up, his chin in his collarbone. ‘You actually believe I have a job don’t you? That I actually do something. But do I really give up all this?’ He looked about himself. ‘All this?’

She smiled and made a little moaning sound. ‘I can’t wait.’

He drank alone at the desk. Elbows up. Drank and drank and his organs cramped up, stung as if pierced. Sweet necrosis. Carry me off. Slow and steady. One after the other. This is his work. If God is kind the dead are ignorant. Soon he has water for the pain and falls into bed beside her and in each sleep comes the brief relief of absence. And when the strike of white tendrils wakes him she never stirs. The company of a single tear. Why me, why myself? I wake every day with these same hands. The ego is a cannibal. She talks aloud, hoards the dreams of the world. He wonders where his went, why now the night is awash with blackness, absolute escape, silence.

‘And this was one my grandmother drew,’ he said, laying one drawing after the other on the top of the bar in a line. Jeeves stopped him from laying down the next one.

‘One moment, Mr Hargreave,’ he said, wiping away a wet patch.

‘Now if you please, sir, I’d love to see it.’

‘Thank you, Jeeves.’

He finished his drink and put the drawing down. ‘It’s composed in charcoal. A drawing of the family home. She said they had a garden and you could see frogs in the spring.’

Jeeves looked them over. His wide face sterile, purchased out of neverwas, a white oil sweating through his permeable face.

‘Unfortunately, Mr Hargreave, I just can’t recommend you pursue this. A grandmother’s talents are not your own. This is all average at best.’

‘You really think so? There’s nothing here for anybody?’

‘I’m only trying to be honest. To do my best by you. Won’t you get paid soon?’

‘I should do.’

‘Well…you could always make an investment instead.’ Jeeves pointed, smiling. A banner on the far-side of the room, crystal-resolution. White letters on a red background.

Play the Lottery Today!

Al chuckled. That venom in the nation. Paralysed, destined to stall. When Al packed his drawings into a bag and stood to leave, he did he heard the first keys of the piano crackle over the speakers. He went to the auditorium and the place was empty but for the stage, lowly lit. That balding pianist, hunched at the keys, pressing one after another as if to test it.

His face was long and gaunt. Al approached him.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

The man looked up. ‘Who, me? Why I’m fresh as a daisy!’ He sat up straight and broke into something jazzy, bopping his head with the music.

‘Can you stop a second. I want to ask you something,’ Al asked, but the man went on playing a bawdy tune from some long-last collection.

From the side of the stage a man in a scuffed tuxedo, chewed collar, unbuttoned neck, appeared.

He wore a mask with two large eyeholes and a gap for his mouth. Slowly he entered the light smiling, bowed his head with a strong arm outstretched beside him, and smiled.

‘How do you do, friend?’ The music did not stop.

Al said, ‘I don’t have a ticket. I’ll go.’

‘No, please. Why the show hasn’t started. Stay, stay. Listen to this. Isn’t he fabulous?’

‘He’s something.’

The pianist continued his stiff dancing, his lower-half firm in the seat. If not for the light coning him he might look young.

The masked man said, ‘Do you play?’

‘Not at all. Can’t work, can’t draw. I can wipe my own backside. See how long that skill lasts me.’

The man laughed. ‘Good. David here couldn’t play a note when I met him. Could you David?’

He stopped abruptly and said, ‘Not one note!’

‘Carry on, there you go. Play a fan favourite.’

‘Fan favourite! I can do that one!’

And immediately into Pop Goes the Weasel.

‘Old song,’ Al said.

‘Older than this place at least. What might your name be, my friend?’

‘Al. And look…I think I know who you are. I wanted to talk to him.’

‘You want up don’t you? You want to play.’

The ringmaster’s eyes widened, like a sadist raising the whip. Al moved away and scratched his head. ‘I know you. I know your trade.’

‘You do?’

‘Everybody does.’ Al pointed at the pianist. ‘He wasn’t a simpleton when you first met him.’

‘Simple is he? Can you play like that?’

‘He’s good at one thing.’

‘He’s happy. There’s certainly nothing he wants for.’

Al nodded, smiling. ‘Maybe. I think people want things. They just don’t know what. That isn’t the same as wanting nothing.’

‘Tail as old as time,’ the man said, and he tapped David’s shoulder. The pianist switched immediately to a slow ballad Al did not recognise. ‘People don’t take the things they’re offered. You’re not like that. You know what you want. You come backstage with me. It’ll only take a minute. You won’t regret it, friend.’

Then this masked man clenched his fists and took a deep breath. His lips tightened, as if close to orgasm. ‘I’m going,’ said Al. ‘I can’t…I just can’t.’

‘You’ll be back,’ the man whispered. Al heard and kept going for the door.

One morning he woke and she was already gone. His head ached. He slid out from beneath the cover and shivered naked before the desk, looking for her, calling into the bathroom. Empty. He went inside and unravelled a ream of toilet paper and returned to bed. Beneath the cover he grew into a warmth, a bulbous death’s head, a solo chorus and all-purpose isolation. Love just another asset.

She was home around lunch. He hadn’t made her anything. He was in bed, his hair a greasy mop, the back of his neck a mass of rolls and blackheads. She dropped a bag beneath the desk and spread her arms wide, waving and smiling. He rose naked and hugged her.

Smiling, she said, ‘Will you shower?’

‘I will,’ said, Al. He watched her, little doll, the kind boys burned with cigarette lighters. Then he looked at the bag. ‘What’s this?’

‘Just something to give to my school. My father sent it to me.’

‘Sent you a bag?’

‘Of course no,’ she said. When he bent to reach it she held him back.

‘What?’

‘Will you shower? And get dressed?’

‘Don’t you want me to see? Is it a surprise?’

‘It’s just…’

‘If we’re going to be partners we need to trust each other, don’t we? I’ve told you we need to always be honest with each other.’

When he searched the bag he found a credit slip for half-a-million. School fees, she called it. He couldn’t catch his breath. Soon he was dressed and sat at the edge of the bed.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, holding him. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the bag. A lifetime. He swallowed and he looked at her and kissed her one last time.

‘You’re beautiful.’

‘Aw, thank you. But what’s wrong?’

‘You’re not mine. You’re not for me. This is wrong.’

She laughed but it soon trailed off as he stood.

‘Will you…will you soon shower? Put some new clothes on.’

‘I…I won’t. Do you want one last hug?’

‘Stop being strange. You just relax now.’

‘I have to go.’ He glanced once more at the bag. ‘I’d only end up hurting you.’

The lump in his throat stung as he swallowed.

‘Your work make you stressed. Just sit down.’

He paused. ‘I…’ She looked betrayed and for good reason. ‘You really believed me, didn’t you?’

‘But…but we will move to the new place together.’

The great dysphoria. A pit in his stomach. He apologised once more and left and that was the last he saw of her.

He was sat at the bar in the darkness, awaiting a drink from Jeeves. It was busy. People with nothing better to do. People.

Nancy touched his shoulder and smiled. He smiled back.

‘I hoped you’d be around. Friday tournament. Starts in twenty minutes doesn’t it?’

‘You know as well as me.’

‘That’s one way of saying it. Stay and have a drink.’

‘I don’t…I can’t.’

‘Please,’ he said.

‘I just wanted to ask why you were speaking to…to that man on the piano. Don’t even go there, Al. Nobody wants that.’

‘Nancy I could throw myself off the Skypath. It’d be the same difference. I left her. She deserves better. But I don’t want it to end here. I’m quitting the drink, the gambling. But you know yourself there’s nothing else. Am I wrong?’

‘Come and play a tournament. You might win.’ He scoffed, shook his head.

‘I won’t say anymore. They say you’ll never worry again. And people will love you.’

‘That won’t be you! Don’t you understand that?! Everything’s backwards, Al! Don’t you see?’

‘Shh,’ he said, holding his hand over her mouth. ‘They’ll hear.’ She sighed, then nodded. ‘I don’t blame you for anything,’ he said.

Jeeves reappeared with a mojito. ‘Miss Bailey, your drink.’

‘Mine?’

Al went to the auditorium.

A new land. The sun shines here. Beneath the moon, the moon, a crowd gathers on stones drawn to be by ancients. They throw tomatoes when unimpressed. The real thing. But not for this man. He knows all their favourites. Can’t see but never misses a key. They clap while he faces the sky. He wasn’t born blind, made that way by the drills. Play them out, Al, cries another. Can do Pop Goes the Weasel, he says. The blind don’t weep. Now the sun is shining and man wants for nothing.