Sushi Central

by Alasdair Duncan

  Out of the equation.

  Behind me there is a fish tank built into a wall. I guess it’s the wall of a restaurant. There are actually about six tanks built in, all facing out onto the street, and all filled with crayfish and eels and weeds and pebbles and green scum. They all float around lazily, as if in a trance, and this one tank near the top has way too many lobsters in it — there must be at least twelve of them in there, in a small tank — and they’re all swimming around helplessly, though they don’t have a great deal of room to move, and their feelers are getting tangled and they swim into one another and some of them are clawing at one another, probably clawing for space, but who knows, and it’s way too crowded in there and the thought of it troubles me so much I can’t even begin to deal with it.

  There is another fish tank, right down the bottom, which seems to be empty until I look closely. The water is green, thick with weeds and mould, and a single fish floats down near the bottom, languid, not even really moving, just there. I look at it for ages, but it hardly moves the whole time, just floats there, and it’s difficult to tell whether it’s even alive or not, or whether it’s just floating there, dead, and nobody has noticed it yet. I’m not sure what worries me more, the idea that it’s dead or the idea that it’s not. I wonder how long it’s been there. Weeks? Months? Couldn’t be, but it’s possible. Anything’s possible. I look at the fish for a bit longer and I realise the same green mould that covers the glass has started to grow on the fish itself, all over its scales, which look like they might once have been shiny and iridescent and beautiful but are now grey and murky, and I peer in there and realise that some of the green mould has even started to grow over the fish’s eye. Its eye.

  This is something I absolutely can’t deal with. I mean, I fucking lose it. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but the idea of the fish just floating there, not moving, the idea that the mould has started to grow over its eye, is way more than my fragile composure can cope with. I kneel down on the pavement and put my face right up to the tank and I start tapping on the glass. Gently at first, just to try and wake the fish up or whatever, to try and get it to move, to blink or something. My forehead is pressed right up to the glass and I’m knocking on it now and there are people walking past me and staring, I can tell, I think I’m starting to draw a crowd, but I don’t even care because suddenly my life depends on getting this fish to wake up.

  Mould. On its eye. Its eye. I can see through the tank into the restaurant, and some of the diners at a corner table — their figures are all distorted and green through the glass — have stopped eating and are staring at me as I knock on the glass. I keep going. I keep knocking. I have to wake this fish up. I have to make it move. It can’t be so far gone that it doesn’t care enough to move any more. It can’t be. The idea that anything, even a fish, could be that far gone — really troubles me. I have to believe that it’s not possible. That it’s not possible to let the mould grow over your eye and still not move. It can’t be possible.

  I’m really losing it. Knocking on the glass. Yelling at it. The fish doesn’t move. It floats there, doesn’t blink, not even a ripple in the water. The tendrils of weed so long they could probably strangle you. I can’t believe the fish won’t move. It has to. It has to fight back. It has to blink. It has to just blink and I’ll be happy. I’ll be satisfied.

  ‘Blink!’ I tell it. ‘Blink!’ And I’ve really started to draw a crowd now. I can hear hushed noises from behind me, a woman’s voice, I can’t hear what she’s saying but she sounds concerned, and the fish just floats there with the green mould covering its eye.

  Out of the equation.

  ‘Blink!’ I tell it. ‘Blink!’

  And it blinks. Just then, and just once. When its eye opens again, the clump of mould is shaken loose and begins to float away. Slowly. Twisting upwards. Almost like a ballet dancer in the murky water.

  I don’t know how I feel now. I probably don’t feel anything.

  A man has come out of the restaurant. He is Asian and he’s wearing a business suit, and I guess he’s the owner of the place. He looks down at me, uncomprehending, like, ‘what’s this stupid white boy doing?’ He looks at me like he totally doesn’t understand, which is not surprising because I don’t either.

  I stand. The crowd draws back a little, and there’s one woman, blonde and holding a camera, whose expression is a mix of fascination and terror, like I might be planning to attack or something, like I’m one of those children they bring back from the wilderness, who’ve been raised by wolves or, like, baboons or whatever.

  The owner says nothing at all, just stares at me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him. Which I am.

  I begin to move away, and he just stand there, staring at me. And the weird thing is, he doesn’t yell. I look at him and he starts to cry.

  He cries in that way men have of crying, in that way my father has of crying, with shoulders hunched a little, choked but silent, like someone trying to stifle a yawn.

  He cries. The owner of the restaurant cries, and the moment becomes big, like, bigger than I can even quantify, and I realise I’m just a very small part of it. The man stands there. Says nothing. Just cries. This is probably just the final act of some much greater personal tragedy for him. Whatever that might happen to be I feel bad about the fact that I’ve somehow been a participant. Whatever emotion has overwhelmed the man, whatever I’ve somehow triggered by being a part or a representative of some much greater sorrow … it’s a lot more than I can cope with.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him, backing away. I don’t understand this, and it frightens me a lot.

  He doesn’t say anything.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  I don’t run away or anything. I just walk. I walk away. What else am I supposed to do?

  I don’t look back at the crowd. I guess they’re starting to scatter.

  Out of the equation.

  255

  Earlier, at the cafe: Anthony put another coin into the Pac Man machine and I left. He told me to call him when I’d got over this fucking attitude thing that I have.

  256

  I am at Sushi Central. I don’t know why I came here, except that this is the place I always seem to drift to, and I feel most at home here. I feel like sushi, though I don’t really feel like sushi as much as I feel like the idea of sushi. It will calm me down. Something familiar. Anthony has just told me to get over this fucking attitude thing that I have and I am thinking. I am thinking about losing myself, wondering if I am capable of doing this, and I think about it until it is all I’m thinking about, losing myself, letting myself go, wondering if it’s possible for me to let myself go, to be like Jeremy, like Anthony for that matter, to be the kind of person who doesn’t think, who just does. I am wondering if this is possible.

  I am sitting at one of those stools with the red vinyl covering. Fast and candy-sweet pop music with lyrics I don’t understand is blasting out of the sound system. There are couples all around me. They seem happy. There is a man siting two seats down from me, by himself. The waitress asks if I would like some green tea. I tell her I would. Yeah. That would be cool. I take a plate of the tuna salad from the sushi train. Eat it without even tasting it. I’m cold. I am thinking. Anthony. I am thinking.

  257

  My system is crashing: At home Saturday afternoon. It’s raining outside. Sitting at my computer. Nobody is online. I bring up that one photo of Anthony, the profile shot. Leaning into the glass. His reflection; two Anthonys.

  258

  From : Calvin

  To : Jeremy

  Subject : kind of urgent

  Hey Jeremy, how are things?

  I need to talk to you again. Will you be online soon?

  Stay cool,

  Calvin.

  259

  Saturday night. Living room, sitting over my old Nintendo. The sounds of rain outside.

  Super Mario Broth
ers 3: Mario is in his raccoon suit; gliding through the level, spinning around and knocking out the little turtle things with his tail. Mario’s jumping up into this secret area in the clouds. You can tell you’re meant to be looking at ‘clouds’ because the area is rendered in deceptively simple white and blue pixels. That faux-naive way they had of representing things like that in old video games. Huge globs of white, they take up the whole screen, and every now and then a patch of blue will emerge from behind. So you can tell it’s meant to be clouds. Mario is running through the area collecting the little coin things. White. Puffy clouds. Blue sky. This is the first blue sky, or even representation of a blue sky that I’ve seen in as long as I can remember. I want to make Mario fall off the cloud but there are no gaps for him to fall through.

  260

  Sunday. IRC chat.

  sweet*Prince: hey jeremy

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: hey hey calvin! how r things?

  sweet*Prince: all right. you?

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: hahhahha. pretty sweet, you know

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: there was this fuckin kick *assssssssssssss* rave at southport friday night.

  sweet*Prince: sounds cool

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: ahha, it was kuhl!!! we were pilling and dancing around and it was a fuckin blast. I wuz *so* tired by the time we crashed the next morning but it was totally worth it.

  sweet*Prince: sweet

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: so what did u need to talk to me about?

  sweet*Prince: um, nothing much, it’s just

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: ahha!

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: I knew u couldn’t resist me!

  sweet*Prince: okay, um …

  sweet*Prince: do you remember that guy you were telling me about?

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: the big brother guy?

  sweet*Prince: no, not him. I mean the guy with the photos. the uniform guy.

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: … yeah. I remember that.

  sweet*Prince: I’ve changed my mind.

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: changed your mind?

  sweet*Prince: yeah. about the guy, I mean. I want to meet him.

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: u want to meet him?

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: = )P

  sweet*Prince: yeah, I guess

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: are u serious about this?

  sweet*Prince: I need the money

  sweet*Prince: it’s a long story. I can’t even explain, but I’m really short, and like …

  sweet*Prince: I need the money in kind of a hurry

  sweet*Prince: and since u told me about this guy, I thought, you know …

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: hahhahhahha, I *knew* u would.

  sweet*Prince: what does that mean?

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: I don’t know. whatever

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: all I mean is I know u can do this. you’re hot enough.

  sweet*Prince: you think so?

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: sure, yur hot. totally.

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGIgus: = )

  sweet*Prince: so … what’s the deal with this guy exactly?

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: nothing too extreme. He’s basically pretty harmless, you know.

  sweet*Prince: how much can he give me?

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: how much do u need?

  sweet*Prince: … would how much I need change things? I mean, do I have to …

  sweet*Prince: … like …

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: look, just to take the photos, this guy will give you like, a hundred bucks, maybe two hundred if you play your cards right.

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: anything over that and you can negotiate … you know, play it by ear.

  sweet*Prince: okay

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: u sure?

  sweet*Prince: yeah

  ŠaÇ©hå®™inë/RELIGÍoùs: kay then. I can hook you guys up. I’ll have to get in touch with him first. organise when and where, u know.

  sweet*Prince: cool

  261

  He’s basically harmless. I let this information sink in; I wonder what basically harmless actually means; like, if it’s possible to quantify harmlessness on a scale of, say, one to ten, where would this guy, this basically harmless guy, fit in?

  Harmless, like, ‘it doesn’t bite, you know, unless you put your hand in the cage’?

  262

  At this stage I’m taking a number of factors into consideration:

  a) I don’t have to do this.

  b) I’m choosing to do this. A lot of guys are actually forced into these kinds of situations. I’m doing it because … Why, because I want to? That doesn’t make sense. But I’m doing it anyway. Because:

  c) I have to know how it feels. How Anthony felt. Therefore, it’s okay lying to Jeremy about needing the money. I want to know how it feels to disappear completely.

  And thinking about it, the whole thing can’t last more than about two hours anyway. All I need to do is dress up for the guy and then stand there. That doesn’t require a great deal of effort on my part. I mean, in a weird way I should probably be flattered if the guy finds me good-looking enough to take photos of in the first place.

  Everyone’s good-looking at my age.

  No. Push those thoughts away.

  Take yourself out of the equation.

  Would that be possible?

  263

  Kitchen: Still the same two red flowers in the vase. The Polaroid on the fridge. Cold day. One of those moments that seem suspended in time, when the half-light of the overcast afternoon fills the room; when there is nothing around you but silence; when you find yourself barely able to move, or even breathe. There is a lemon lying on the bench in front of me. The bright colour seems incongruous; it’s sarcastically bright. So I cut it. I cut it in half, then half again, then half again. I pick up one of the smaller pieces — an eighth of the lemon — and drop it into a tall glass. I know that if I lick my fingers, the taste of lemon juice will be on them, but I don’t lick my fingers. I stare at the glass for a while, at the glass with the eighth of a lemon in the bottom of it. I stare into the glass and try not to think about Anthony. I pour some water in — four cubes of ice, even though it’s such a cold day — four cubes of ice, leaving just one in the ice tray, and sit it back down in front of me.

  264

  I’ve become totally neurotic about that Placebo album, especially that one song. You know the one. I was at HMV in the city; there’s a guy there who I used to totally want to fuck, and I was always devising, like, these little scenarios wherein someone introduced me to him and we hit it off and he told me how hot I was and blah blah, you know exactly the kind of thing I mean, but anyway, yeah.

  I was in there the other day and I happened to pick the album up, just to look at it again, and this particular guy happened to be walking past, and he told me ‘This is a killer cool album’ and I smiled and told him ‘Yeah’ and then he sort of looked away or something and we didn’t really talk much after that, and as I was leaving I was wondering if it was kind of, you know, crazy of me to get all bent out of shape about a stranger from HMV, and possibly it was, but it seems like such a long time ago now, a more innocent time. I miss stupid crushes. When did everything get so serious?

  265

  Porno: Anyway. As I was saying. I’ve taken to sitting in my room listening to that album over and over again, like, sometimes six or seven times in a row. I’m playing it now. One in the afternoon. I’m about to head into the city, so I can meet Jeremy. So he can give me directions. That guy. I don’t know why I have to meet Jeremy. I don’t know why I’m meeting him in the first place. It’s stupid. I’m stupid for doing it. I’m stupid. I’m fucking stupid. But I have to know.

  Trying to decide what to wear. What do you wear? You know. I mean, it’s not like I�
�m freaking out about this or anything. I can totally handle it. It’s just, like, an equation. A transaction. Whatever. Totally not a big deal.

  I continue looking through my clothes, hunting through them, trying to find something I want to wear. There’s a blue T-shirt with ‘King Of Cool!’ and a big picture of a polar bear on the front. It’s, like, postmodern, or ironic or whatever. There’s that red ‘Brain Dead Body Still Rockin’ ’ one. I consider them both. I put the red one on and take it off again. I choose the blue one, mostly because of the picture of the polar bear.

  266

  I printed out this email that Jeremy sent me and blu-tacked it to my wall. It seemed kind of significant or whatever. I don’t know. I worried about the positioning of it for ages and ages. I put on a CD and kept trying to sit down, trying to make myself concentrate on the music or something, but every few seconds I looked up and it seemed to be in the wrong place, and I kept having to get up and move it around. It never seemed to look right anywhere. In the end I took it down.

  267

  From : Jeremy

  To : Calvin

  Subject : all set up

  Hey Calvin

  How r u?

  Talked to the guy and it should be fine. If yur still interested, call me. U have my number

  Talk to ya soon

  Luv yur work,

  Jeremy

  268

  I’m standing on the terrace. There is a coffee mug in my hands, white, with the logo of some drug company on the front, along with the name of some prescription drug or other, I don’t know. There are coffee stains in the bottom and around the rim. It feels cold in my hands. I walk to the railing, hold it out and then let it drop all the way down to the tiles by the pool, just to hear what it sounds like when it smashes.

  The noise is not as satisfying as I expected it to be.

  269

  This one particular song I used to listen to all the time is on the stereo. The final track from this particular album, which is kind of fitting. The singer is being taken over. She’s practically ready to kill herself. All fucked up over a boy and only because he looks so fine. It kills me that the lyrics of some sticky pop song can so totally reflect my exact thoughts and feelings. I mean it. It’s really fucking annoying.