‘I reinvented myself. Don’t we all?’ He wondered how much she had really guessed about him, but she was up now, stretching her limbs like a ballerina moving through slow treacle. She was so high he could do anything with her, absolutely anything – the thought made him hard. ‘Do you think you could really fly?’ he murmured.
‘Maybe, maybe I could,’ she sang back as she bent over and he couldn’t help noticing that she waxed her pudendum. Closing his eyes for a moment, he tried imposing Susie’s face on hers, but it didn’t work.
His heart was pounding, his mind racing over all kinds of tangential possibilities and strategies. He could rule the world. What was he thinking? He did rule the world, puppet master of his own sphere, and now he was going to prove it. He opened his eyes to see Leia dancing to the music oozing through the hidden surround-sound speakers, looping like bands of iridescent light over and over the girl’s sinewy undulating body. She was so self-absorbed she might as well have been masturbating, he observed, before picking up a small digital video camera that he kept for recording – tool of the voyeur. ‘Do you believe in the multiverse?’ he asked, now standing in front of her, filming her gyrating figure.
‘Totally. In this moment there are a multitude of Felixes and a multitude of Leias – stretching out in front and back, each little scenario playing out entirely differently from the next… ’
He zoned in on her face, the eyelids encrusted with glitter-like make-up. ‘Exactly. So in one of these parallel universes those wings would work, you would really fly… ’ To his own ears his disembodied voice sounded distanced and profound – like the narrator in a documentary. Yes, that was it! He was the narrator.
‘I would?’
‘Completely. You would be a triumphant creature of the sky, your wings stretching out to catch the night breeze… ’
A slow smile spread across her face. Felix guessed the ecstasy was really strong. She glided toward him as if hypnotised, gently moving her shoulders so that the wings did seem to flap slightly as he gently directed her towards the balcony, following her as he filmed, the shifting orbs of her pale buttocks, the moonlight catching at her hair and shoulders, excitement thumping like a drum at the back of his throat as she stepped out.
‘You said it yourself: it’s all a question of visualisation… For if we are merely a shifting mass of atoms in a particular configuration in this particular set of physics, what’s stopping us from changing ourselves?’ he continued enticingly, the roar of the city now washing over them.
He felt great, omnipresent as if he could, if he wanted, stop time with one click of the camera. He stood side-on, filming her figure in profile as she leaned over the balcony, the wind transforming her long hair into the serpents of a Medusa, the spiky quills of the angel wings pointing downwards like outstretched fingers.
‘So in this parallel world there would be nothing stopping you from stepping up on that wall, and stretching your huge wings out to catch that strong wind coming in from the north, and with one small leap taking off and soaring high above the building, above the Chrysler Building, above the Trump, swooping down over the harbour, past the Statue of Liberty… flying like an angel, as powerful as an eagle, nothing stopping you at all… ’ He inched her nearer to the edge of the balcony, camera still whirring, and realised he was fully erect, the first time in weeks.
‘In that parallel world… ’ she ventured, oblivious to his excitement, the gold-painted feathers rattling in the breeze.
He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. ‘Imagine if you could step out of this world into that world, that all it would take was a leap of blind faith, of total conviction that you, and you alone, decided which existence you lived. The kind of faith it takes to be a great artist, to make one final statement of profound creativity. Imagine that – to transcend the mundaneness of gravity.’
She let him lift her up onto the wall, the side of the apartment block a screaming sheer drop that seemed, even to him, terrifyingly seductive in its plunging infinity.
‘Imagine… ’ she whispered, hypnotised, dangling her legs over the wall on the street side.
‘You said it yourself: it’s just a matter of visualisation and then you’re there,’ Felix murmured encouragingly.
Below them the wail of a police car belting its way through the streets floated up. Felix paused, thinking he would lose her; that she’d break out of the moment.
‘Total blind faith, a great act of art, a gesture against the ordinary life… ’ she murmured.
‘All you need is to stand up on the top of the wall, then let go, let your wings take you… soaring out into another level of existence… ’ he whispered, intensely excited by his power over her. Slowly she swung her feet back up to the top of the wall, then rose into a squatting position. Framed by the camera, she resembled one of Max Ernst’s half-bird, half-woman creatures. Felix’s heart was now a huge ape shaking the bars of its cage.
‘You want me to stand, to fly off this wall… ’ she asked in a sing-song voice as she slowly rose to her feet, arching high above him as he tilted the camera to capture the whole of her tall physique set against the night sky.
‘I want you to fulfil your destiny, to make something of yourself.’ Felix’s voice hung suspended against the wind while he prayed that the camera was recording every single word.
The waitress balanced against the wind, her wings now rustling wildly, her hair streaming back. Felix’s imagination was already in the next moment, the girl’s tumbling figure with the flailing arms and legs helpless in the fall, the rushing pavement; the collision of flesh and concrete.
He would fly with her, he would be her.
*
Latisha watched the girl standing up there on the lip of the wall like an angel, like the building had suddenly sprouted a statue of flesh out of the white stone. How she stayed standing on that slim edge, Latisha could barely imagine, the breeze throwing up the girl’s red hair and those wings looking like they might blow away with the next gust of wind.
Latisha wanted to scream, but she was frightened she would scare the girl and send her plummeting toward the stream of cars that kept on streaking down the street, unaware of the drama above. And so she sat there, immobile, not daring to breathe, to move, the alchemy of the movements of her own body linked to the girl’s across the street. Behind the girl, on the balcony, she could see Felix. She turned the binoculars onto him, focusing the lens. His expression filled the two circular frames; he was a man in rapture. Don’t push her, don’t push her, Latisha prayed. Don’t push her like you did Maxine. Next to her she felt the ghost praying with her.
*
Susie sat bolt upright in the bed that was alien to her – wrong position, the sheets twisted about her damp with sweat. She’d been in the middle of a nightmare. She couldn’t quite remember what it was about, but Maxine had been there, leading her somewhere, somewhere full of shouting and fear.
On the bedside table the clock digits glowed 03:00.
*
Felix put the camera down on its tripod, making sure everything was in shot, then watched for a few seconds as Leia stared down at the traffic streaming 23 storeys below. It was fascinating and empowering; he had control over whether this girl would live or die.
‘I want to fly,’ she sang. ‘I want to fly… ’ For a split second it seemed as if she was about to fall, then Felix moved forward and grabbed her, pulling her back over to his side of the wall. They stayed there for a moment, her buttocks against his crotch, his arms wrapped around her waist as he pressed himself against her wings.
‘God, that was such a buzz,’ she laughed.
‘Baby, you want to fly, I can make you fly… ’ Still hard, he pulled off her G-string and roughly parted her legs with his knee, bent her over the wall, her hair falling forward over her face.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, fear creeping into her voice.
Felix didn’t bother answering. Instead he moistened her anus with his finger, wh
ile freeing himself with his other hand.
‘No,’ she moaned, struggling, which only excited him further. Now he had her pinned against the wall, her legs spread wide, her wings rising up on either side of his torso. Roughly he entered her, the image of him sodomising an angel as exciting as the act itself. The skyline of Manhattan swaying with his pounding, the girl struggling beneath him, so tight he had to steady himself to stop himself from coming, and all the while Susie Thomas’s face in his head, her arse, her breasts, her unconquerable attitude. He would show her, he thought now, thrusting as hard as he could.
*
Latisha watched horrified through her binoculars, the art dealer’s face flushed red as he pounded into the angel, her breasts and head, the long hair hanging down, pushed down over the wall so that all she must be seeing was the yawning street and pavement before her. He was raping her – it was an outrage, a travesty and a crime, and yet Latisha was transfixed. The image was so gross, so violent yet mythical, she couldn’t drag her eyes away. The art dealer was flexing his power, showing the angel who was boss, but Latisha also suspected she was witnessing the real Felix Baum in action for the first time.
*
‘Tell me you wanted to jump, baby. Come on, tell me you wanted to jump… ’ he groaned in her ear, now close to coming, as he pounded faster and faster and deeper and deeper into her, his nails digging into her cheeks, the tightness of her slippery around him. He lifted one hand away from her arse and grabbed for a breast, the other arm curled around her waist, pulling her repeatedly down onto his cock.
‘Get off me!’ she screamed, as he continued.
‘Just say it… ’ He was close; he only needed to hear the words.
‘I…wanted…to…jump… ’ she muttered through tight lips, wanting him to stop.
‘Say it louder.’
‘I… wanted…to… jump… ’
He came with a huge shudder, his body collapsing over her.
A second later she pushed him off. ‘You sick fuck! You wanted me to jump! You wanted me to die!’ She reached for her G-string, wiping the tears from her face.
Collapsed in the corner, Felix laughed. ‘Oh, c’mon, you said you wanted to be a great artist, to make great art. I was just showing you how.’
‘Screw you, I’m out of here!’ Angel girl ran back into the apartment. A second later Felix heard the front door slamming shut. It was only then that he stopped the camera. Glancing down at the playback feature, he watched a little of the footage. It was good. Good enough to masturbate over later.
*
Susie stared at the ceiling: a moth fluttering around the bedside lamp was throwing a staccato shadow up against the roof beams. A multitude of disconnected images from the past two days ran through her brain: the view from the plane’s window, a billboard she’d sighted from the cab coming in from Kennedy Airport, Felix Baum’s face when they first met, that knowing look in his eyes, a curl of chest hair visible at the top of his open shirt, the scent of him as he leaned towards her in the restaurant. Sighing, she rolled onto her side, her fingers sliding down to her clitoris.
*
Back in his bedroom, Felix stripped and crawled into the cool cotton sheets. With his drug-addled heart still hammering away, he curled up, the nightlight he’d installed at the foot of the bed a comforting glow that swept him back to a fictional childhood full of Disney characters skipping through fields of blue cornflowers under a pink sky.
*
Latisha watched the lights go out behind the big windows. First the lounge, then the bedroom. She checked her watch and began punching Theo’s number into her mobile phone. By the time she got down to the ground floor, her nephew would be waiting to drive her home after his shift. She glanced over at Felix Baum’s apartment. She now knew where he lived and how he lived. It was all she needed.
Chapter Five
Felix looked up at the large windows of the converted warehouse, wondering if Susie was up yet. His groin still ached from the excesses of the night before, while a vague sense of guilt hovered at the back of his mind. He pushed it down and consciously buried it under the moment. A shot of wheatgrass juice and two espressos had partly banished his hangover, and now, with a combination of the spring sunshine and the sharp air, he was wired. After resting a corner of the large wrapped parcel he was carrying against the wall, he pressed the intercom, anticipation tightening his throat.
Am I really this nervous? he wondered, having convinced himself otherwise on the cab drive over. It was hard wanting someone this much, and the growing sense of losing control both irritated and, paradoxically, excited him; she wasn’t like his usual prey, younger, impressionable women and men, who unquestioningly bought into his charisma, the power and all the manifestations of it. Susie challenged him – he knew he’d have to win her over, seduce her intellectually; and the gift he held in his arms was the first part of a well-thought-out strategy.
*
‘I brought this for you.’ He thrust the parcel into her hands. She carried it over to the huge kitchen bench and pulled the paper off. It was a small aquarium, containing a miniature desert landscape, with a rock arch, under which cowered a large reddish tarantula.
‘Most men bring flowers. You bring spiders?’
‘I read that you love them, that you considered them your totem.’
She grinned. ‘I do. Their love lives are great metaphors.’
‘The females eat the males, right, during sex?’
‘Depends on the species. Some have evolved tricksy ways of avoiding the female post-coitus. There’s these crazy bark spiders – they orally lubricate the female’s genitals during mating to pacify her and avoid being eaten. Interestingly, the males only bother doing this to the older females.’
‘Well, if I had to choose between cunnilingus or death, I know which one I’d go for.’
‘I’m guessing the younger females are smaller so the chances of being eaten by one are far less. Tarantulas are a little more romantic. The males mate only once; they reach maturity then spend months spinning a sac full of sperm like a present. They carry it on their backs until they find a female to deposit the sac into – that in itself is precarious – then they die of exhaustion.’
‘Romance worthy of opera,’ he quipped.
Susie stared into the aquarium. ‘She’s gorgeous, what’s her name?’
‘Winnie, as in Winifred. she can keep you company while you’re in NY. I’ve organised for a supply of baby mice to be delivered every week or so. They’re her favourites, apparently.’
‘I’ll think of you every time I feed her.’
‘That’s the idea. So you’ll need walking boots, not five-inch heels.’
‘I’ll put my Doc Martens on. Where are you taking me?’
‘It’s a surprise but you’ll love it. It’s one of my secret places, I’ve never taken anyone there before.’
‘So why me?’
‘Because I think you’ll get it.’
*
The grain terminal stood monumental and stark in its decrepitude against the sky and water. The 12-storey-high fortress was a testimony to past industry and Susie, staring up at the beige-coloured building splattered with soot and dirt like some rough charcoal sketch, fell in love with it immediately. ‘It’s like something straight out of Gotham City. You can almost imagine it as a black-and-white Marvel comic illustration. The way sections of it are tumbling back into the harbour like the exoskeleton of some massive centipede is great.’
‘The locals call it the elevator. Isn’t it fantastic? It’s like some mythical Orwellian vision of the future past, or something like that, you know what I mean?’ Felix raised his voice against the wind that was whipping up from the Hudson.
‘They used it to store grain?’
‘For washing, drying and storing – then it would be loaded onto freight ships to be made into beer and flour eventually. It’s stood empty since 1965.’
‘Wow.’
‘Come on, we’
re going in.’
‘But there’s a no-trespass sign. And cops?’
‘Screw them. I know a way in.’
*
Inside it was a magnificent labyrinth of white columns, rusting steel pipes, corridors that, Escher-like, seemed to stretch either way like mirages. Graffiti and local street art was paint-sprayed at random on the concrete like ancient hieroglyphs, evidence of other illicit visitors. Rusty railway tracks for abandoned carts of wheat ran between the repeating pillars, with mysterious large metal trays, their purpose long forgotten, sitting like ritual baths, squat and defiant. It was function that had become art in an arbitrary ruin that no real installation artist could possibly mimic. Susie was enraptured, and when she spoke she found that she was whispering, almost as if they had landed in a place of worship. She pulled out her camera from inside her jacket and took a series of shots, framing the columns, tracks and industrial pipes like abstract sculpture. After she’d finished she turned back to Felix.
‘How did you find it?’
‘When I first arrived in New York, I was a total greenhorn. I lived in Brooklyn and I used to see this building on the horizon like some strange giant. I was intrigued; it seemed isolated, like I was. Then, when I had my first break, when I persuaded Robin Stanwick to leave Gavin Brown and let me represent him… ’
‘… Stanwick was huge at the time… ’
‘… actually he was cooling off, it was me that launched his collage era, that’s when he really made it.’
‘That was you?’ Susie couldn’t keep the awe out of her voice.
‘My first real artist. Anyhow, at the time, when he finally rang me with his decision, secretly I was shit-scared. I came here, broke in and watched the dawn from the roof. And it was on that sunrise that I made a pledge to myself. At the time it felt like the building itself was praying with me, championing me. I’ve been coming back ever since.’
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