by Claire North
In the distance: drumming, and the sound of voices, amplified.
Charlie gave the woman a hug, and the child too, and said, “The world will change. Just you wait. The world is always changing.”
In Philadelphia, a mother holds her teenage daughter as she cries.
“I can do all the moves, I did a perfect splits and a perfect double backflip and I can do the lifts and I can do …”
She pauses in her recitation to blow her nose in a snotty handkerchief.
“Sweetie, maybe it was just the competition, maybe next year …”
“No, Mom! Next year I’ll be too old, they’ll never have me, this was my only chance to make the team!”
A pair of sparkling blue pompoms lie by her side. Her bright red hair is tied up in a bun behind her skull, her pink crop top clings tightly to her toned belly and breasts.
“It’s my thighs. I know it—and you know it too! It’s my thighs, they look fat, he practically said it, the others, some of them, they’ve had surgery and it’s just changed everything, you can see it when they do the kicks, but I’m fat. My thighs are fat, my butt is fat, but what else am I supposed to do? That’s just who I am!”
Her mother gives her another tissue.
Charlie gives her a stethoscope.
New Jersey.
“Dilute it a thousand times, that’s still a very strong solution for us, very strong, so we then dilute again and at this point the water is remembering the herb, it’s remembering the potency of that initial ingredient and this is good for indigestion, but also for colon cancer …”
Charlie listened to her talk, and when the lesson was done, he stayed behind in her clinic, the walls covered with boxes of herbs and images of the human body, divided by energy and chakra and a dozen other things he couldn’t name.
“You’re … the Harbinger of Death? But I … I feel fine.”
Charlie smiled, and gave her a copy of her own business card, much travelled, well thumbed, now returned at last.
“What is this?” she demanded, fingers trembling as she turned it over in her hand. “What is this?”
Charlie walked away.
“What is this?” she screamed after him, face opening like a cave. “What is this?!”
At the hotel, two policemen were waiting.
They showed no interest in Robinson, but asked to see Charlie’s passport, his entry visa, proof of where he was going, where he’d stay.
One said: “What you do is disgusting. What you do isn’t right.”
Charlie didn’t answer.
The other said: “There’s no point talking to him. He’s not even fucking human.”
Charlie looked away, and that night, not even painkillers could dull the throbbing in his head.
They drove north.
Chapter 97
New York came upon them slowly, peeking round New Jersey’s towers before finally blooming onto the horizon between the smoking chimney stacks and low industrial fog.
They dropped the car off at Newark airport. Robinson’s rocking chair was still in the back. The two men stared at it, awkward in the car park.
“Could take it on the train,” suggested Charlie wanly.
Robinson didn’t grace the suggestion with so much as a dry look.
“Call your brother, maybe see if …?”
Robinson shook his head.
“We can’t just leave it, I mean, the car is …” Charlie gestured, futile, round the kerosene-scented tarmac.
“I’ll see if the boys in the hire shop want it,” Robinson said at last, and marched into the office.
A few minutes he came out, a young man in a suit in tow. For a little while they argued at the back of the car, soft and cordial, before the man hefted the rocking chair out, and took it with him back into the office.
Now they were just two men with suitcases.
After a little while Charlie said, “Let’s see if we can find a train.”
Robinson hesitated, then followed.
The train clattered and screeched towards Manhattan. Charlie bought Robinson’s train ticket. It would have been rude to abandon him in Newark. The rolling stock felt old, on the verge of cracking apart, but it ran, and when they emerged at Penn, the roar of the city and the pace of the people flooding by hit Charlie like a padded punch to the face.
Robinson stared up, craning his neck towards the tops of the buildings, as the traffic honked and the taxis blared and the people marched and shoved their way into the subway, and Charlie let out a sigh of relief, feeling, perhaps, a little closer to home.
“Well,” he said, at last. “Here we are.”
“I guess so.”
“You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah.” Robinson let out a long, steadying sigh. “Yeah, I reckon … new life, new start. New … everything, I guess. I’ll build again, I’ll make something new, I reckon … This is a good place to begin, you know?”
“You’ve got my number, if anything …”
“Thanks, man, I appreciate it. But seriously, I got a good feeling, I got … You know when you can smell that dream? I know it’s New York, everyone always feels that way in the Big Apple, but me … I smell it. I think your boss, I think when he comes, he’ll be coming to kill the old me, the guy down in Florida, an’ sure, he worked hard, but he’ll be dead and I’ll still be livin’ and that’s for the best, I think. I think … that’s for the best.”
“Goodbye, Robinson,” said Charlie, holding out his hand.
“Goodbye, Charlie. Thanks for the ride.”
A moment, then they turned and went their separate ways.
Visits in New York.
An ancient old man, his head twisted to one side, who says, through a machine, “They said I would die forty years ago but still I lived. I lived and now I will finally die but in living I proved them all wrong.”
He will not fear Death, when Death comes, but will smile proudly into the eyes of a long-time-coming friend.
A cop, pacing up and down, one hand on his gun.
“I felt it coming a long time now, a long time coming I’ve been feeling it, my end, the end, it’s coming, always it’s coming, I know that, I’ve always been …”
Charlie gives him a stress-busting candles and aromatherapy set.
“What the fuck is this?”
“I think there might also be a CD at the bottom with the sounds of nature.”
The cop throws him out for taking the piss.
A different cop, staring at him too long and too hard as he rode the subway back to the hotel.
A guy in a black suit who he thought he’d seen before, walking along 33rd Street.
He ate pizza in Harlem with an old woman. “It’s all changing,” she tutted, gesturing at the street. “It’s all changing, gentrifying, that’s what they call it, gentrification, when I was a kid it weren’t nothing like this …”
He listened to jazz in Washington Square.
“For the first time ever, from Cuba, on the trumpet … ?!”
Three hours passed beneath the shade of the trees, playing pigeon-poo bingo on the benches along the paths, and he listened to music, and hadn’t noticed the sun move.
He wondered where Robinson was, thought of calling him, having a drink.
Decided against it. There was still an appointment waiting for Robinson, and Charlie wasn’t sure it was his place to interfere.
From an internet café off 44th Street, he called Emmi.
The first time, he didn’t get through.
He went back later that afternoon, bought frozen yoghurt, tried again.
This time, when the call connected, he nearly wept with relief.
“Charlie?” Tired, late at night for her. “Charlie, where are you?”
“New York. I’m coming home soon, my flight is booked for tomorrow.”
“I missed you.”
“I missed you … so much.”
Trying to hide the sound of salt on his face, what the hell is this? H
e hasn’t been gone so long, he’s always travelled alone, why is he crying to hear her voice, what the hell has happened?
“How’s America?”
“Good. Tiring. Good.”
“You meet anyone interesting—I suppose you can’t talk about it.”
“No, no, it’s … it’s fine. I met a lot of people, some really good people, really interesting, really … really kind. Also met a leader of the KKK …”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Seriously.”
“Is he dying?”
“I think … maybe yes.”
“I … don’t know how I feel about that.”
“Death is always sad,” he replied, faster than he realised. “Sometimes life is sad too.”
“Charlie?”
“Yes?”
“You okay? You sound …”
“I’m just tired. Really, really tired.”
“I’ve talked to you when you’re just tired, you sound …”
“I’m fine. I’m fine. I’ll see you very soon.”
“Okay then.”
“I … I’ll call when I get back.”
“Good. Let me know what time your flight’s due in.”
“I will. I love you. Bye.”
“Bye. I love you too.”
He didn’t hang up, and neither did she, and for five, ten seconds, the line remained open, before, awkward in the silence, he ended the call.
He walked through Central Park, because it was there.
In a wide space of open grass, six hundred people were doing a yoga session. The speakers, relaying the instructions from their leader to the rest of the crowd, were badly set up. The sound from the first arrived a microsecond after the sound from the second, which arrived a microsecond after the sound from the third, creating an echo that rippled down the field and made it hard to hear much of anything at all.
He walked around the reservoir, watching the reflected city in the water.
At the top of a mound clustered with dry, drooping trees, a tall, pale man with a shaved head in orange robes was practising hitting the air with a quarterstaff. Another man, tanned skin, gym-built arms, watched hypnotised before finally walking up and asking if he could join in.
The taller man smiled patiently, said, sure, why not, and proceeded to execute wrist locks, armlocks, takedowns, to kick out his leg and hurl him from the hip and shoulder to the ground, twisting bone and muscle until the man cried out in pain, at which point he let go.
Having been released from agony, the man bounced back up to his feet and exclaimed, that was totally awesome let’s do it again!
They did it again.
At the end, the man in orange gave the stranger his staff and said, “Jump over my staff.”
“Uh …”
“Hold the staff in both your hands, and do a tuck jump over it.”
“Oh I don’t think I …”
“If you believe you can do it, you will.”
The man nodded, took a long, deep breath, held the staff in both hands. He tucked his knees to his chest, leaping as high as he could, swung the staff beneath his buttocks, caught one foot on the passing wood and fell over backwards, groaning on the grass.
Half a mile further down, a Jedi knight swung plastic light sabres patiently at the air, while a small crowd watched but didn’t get involved.
“It’s a martial art,” he explained, when Charlie asked. “I am learning the ways of the Force.”
“Are you … an actor?”
The Jedi stared at him, patient, frustrated, already bored. “It’s a martial art,” he repeated. “I am learning the ways of the Force.”
A TV studio.
Bright lights, security checks on the door—no guns beyond this point. Three cameras, raked audience seating, a long curved desk, a comfortable couch for guests to sit on, bottled water and tall, sturdy glasses. Security men around the edge of the stage; a background composited from various city skylines, meshed together into a neon glare.
He saw Patrick a second before Patrick saw him.
“Why are you …?”
“I was invited,” Patrick replied, clean and bright. “And I know the host.”
“You do?”
“Yes. She interviewed me once, a few years ago. About a project I was part of.”
“I didn’t realise you were famous.”
“Expert,” he replied, with a flash of a smile. “Not famous. Sit with me.”
Charlie sat with him, as the lights went down.
The host: bright dyed hair, straight teeth, brown eyes, dazzling smile, charming, funny, her long, thin legs visible beneath the structure of the desk, her speciality the open question: “And how did that make you feel?”
First guest: sports personality.
“Yeah, like, it’s been like, a real good season, yeah, and like, I think if we like, do better next season then it’ll be really great.”
Second guest: minor politician.
“The problem with the schools—now let me finish—I’ll tell you the problem with the schools, people always get this wrong, always, they always think—I’ll tell you …”
Third and fourth guests: a wannabe Senator and a scientist.
“Climate change is hokum,” exclaimed the wannabe, tilting her head back in derision at the thought. “It’s just left-wing hokum, the scientists don’t agree, they don’t get it right, the last few years the world’s got colder.”
“Actually,” murmured the scientist, early fifties, polite, badly dressed, awkwardly shiny in poor make-up, “I think you’ll find that—”
“You know what it is? It’s an attempt by the rest of the world to stop America reaching its full economic potential, that’s all it is, it’s an attempt to …”
Charlie’s head, aching. He leant forward to press his fingers into his skull, to drown out the drumming.
Tick tick tick tick …
“If you have evidence for that …”
“Evidence, I don’t need evidence, I’ve got my eyes, I’ve got my common sense, when did ordinary Americans give up on believing in themselves, that’s what I want to know, when did …”
“But if you look at the data …”
“Scientists just try to blind us, they just try and confuse us with their long words …”
Tick tick tick tick …
“The shrinkage of the ice caps …”
“And even if it is real, even if it’s happening, I say, so what! I wanna grow grapes in Maine, I think it sounds amazing, less winter, yes please …”
In a land of ice …
… in a land where no trees grow …
Charlie must have grunted, because Patrick was now looking at him, leaning over, whispering in his ear, you okay, you okay?
The scientist, getting flustered. “I don’t see how you can reasonably state—”
“Look, you’re just one guy, I’m just one woman, but I’m speaking about what people want, not about some hypothetical model that you people can’t even get right. I mean, wake up and smell the gravy, it’s time to get real about …”
Tick tick TICK TICK TICK TICK.
“Professor Absalonoftsen went onto the ice, now listen to me, he went onto the ice and he never came back and that was—”
“Why should I sacrifice my lifestyle? Why should I be forced to make these choices? I know who I am, I know how I live, I know what my values are and you …”
“Will you let me speak?!”
“… come here telling me what to do with my life? I mean screw that, screw that, it’s just a load of nonsense it’s just—”
“Let me speak, you ignorant, stupid woman!”
The scientist’s scream, loud enough to cut through the room, caught somewhere between rage and tears.
Silence.
The host, who had let it run, loved to let it run, revelled in it, cleared her throat. “Okay, guys,” she breathed. “I think it’s time to just calm it down and …”
“Did he just
call me that?” whispered the woman, eyes wide, face white. “Did you just hear what he said, did you hear, I want an apology, I demand an apology, that was just … Are you a misogynist, are you a bigot, did you just hear what he …”
Charlie was aware that there was a security guard next to him now, and an assistant with a headset on, helping him to the door. Patrick followed, as they led him into a backstage room, white light and a couch, a storage cupboard converted for first aid, how prescient, Charlie thought, how thoroughly well thought through.
They sat him on a couch, and the woman with the headset said she was a first aider, and was he diabetic? No. Epileptic? No. Did he have pain in his chest? No. Did he get migraines?
… yes. Maybe that was it.
She looked relieved. Her first aid course hadn’t had much to say beyond these basic questions, and it was good that of all the answers, his took the problem largely out of her hands.
Patrick sat by Charlie’s side as Charlie drank a cup of water, and said, “You’re not okay.”
“I’m … just over-tired.”
“Charlie. I’ve seen you on the ice. I saw you in Lagos. I see you now. What’s happened to you?”
“I … I think I’ve seen … There’s this sound in my head, this … I walk and sometimes I hear … I hear people talking, I hear the world talking and it’s … I’m fine. I’m fine. Thank you, I appreciate this, I appreciate you … I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I’m fine.”
“I didn’t come to New York to see you die. That’s not the world I want to end.”
“What is it, then?” he breathed. “What world are you here to see die? Which world are you making today?”
Patrick thought about it a while, then said, “I think … I think I am looking for a world without fear. I think the ice is melting, and the old gives way to the new, and in America they shout and argue and scream at each other over the airwaves, and when it’s all done, when the world has turned and we have made something new, I think it will be … maybe not better … but I think it will be honest. I think we will be honestly who we are. Who we are now. Death said that a world was ending … and with that world, a way of life dies, and a way of being dies with it, and I think when it is done that this new world … it will be better. I know you don’t think so, but it will be … I am looking forward to living in it. I am honoured to see it grow.”
