Singularity

by Charlotte Grimshaw

  Don whistled up the girl in the pink top. She left off emptying bins and sauntered over. Her name was Jacinta. They offered her a drink. Later, Don danced with her round the boardroom table, his hand on her arse. She was drinking out of a plastic cup; liquid spilled as he twirled her around. Beyond the glass wall the offices were emptying out. Over the freeway, shapes hung, black against the orange sky — were they birds? The lines of cars flowed like a jewelled river, through black gorges studded with light. The sky in flames. Larry stood with his forehead against the glass. He saw lava flows, molten rivers, bleeding through the iron land. The glittering freeway. Freeway: even the word shone with light. Desolation. Blackness. Flames. Everything was beautiful. He felt power, energy, he was lit up with love.

  Now in the street, the hot wind blew papers and grit around him. He looked along the neon strip, wondering where to go. He turned and the girl in the pink top was standing beside him.

  She was thin, brown and sexy in her tight clothes. She had a stud in her nose and split, sore-looking lips. Her skin was rough close up, and her eyes were ringed with black kohl. She didn’t smile. She said, ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hello.’

  She said, ‘You going home?’

  ‘Back to the hotel. But I don’t want to.’

  She looked at him, considering.

  He said, ‘Shall we go somewhere.’

  ‘Where you from again?’

  ‘New Zealand.’

  ‘How about you take me there one day?’

  ‘Why not.’

  She shrugged ironically. ‘Well. I’m going home.’

  He said, ‘Can I come with you?’

  She looked startled and gave him a considering look.

  ‘Sure. Why not.’

  He followed her, his eyes on her arse in the tight pants. She turned and said, ‘You sure you want to come with me?’

  She told him she was going to take the bus. He could have paid for a cab, but said nothing. He was following her into the iron city. He wanted to go into the black deeps of it, to be lost.

  A man pushed a shopping trolley past them. He had five radios strung on it, each blaring out a different station. He was shouting and crying to himself. Beggars lay along the pavement beside their stinking bundles. At the bus stop a middle-aged woman in expensive clothes worked the line, begging abjectly for change. She said she was sorry, so sorry. A man walked past carrying a live lizard on his head, its claws clinging to his hair, the long reptile tail bumping down his back.

  The bus was filled with crazies, tattooed gang bangers, the weary poor with their bundles. An obese mother heaved a toddler onto her knee. The boy’s hair was cut in a Mohawk, his ears pierced with rings. A woman had an ancient radio stuck to her ear with masking tape. She nodded and winked at Larry, as though they were agreeing, secretly, about what she could hear. A black woman wore a plastic bag over her dreadlocks. Larry looked at the people festooned with bits of city rubbish, like primitive tribesmen, decorated with scraps of their concrete terrain.

  Larry sat opposite Jacinta. She had a scab on her lip and a dark bruise on her neck. She gave him a sexy, unfocused stare. She smelled of bourbon. They swayed, looking at each other. She twirled the silver stud in her ear. Outside the lights floated past and turned into ribbons. There was a smell of burning in the air.

  They were in a liquor store. The lizardy old Korean behind the counter watched Larry with cold eyes. A sign above his head promised, ‘Armed Response’. Jacinta bought a bottle and they swigged it walking down the road.

  She led him to a block of apartments that looked like a motel. There was waste ground next to it, strewn with junk and old cars. Larry heard voices raised in the distance, a sudden scream of tires. Jacinta unlocked a battered door and they went inside.

  He sat on a couch. Through the ranch slider he could see a patio lit by a green light bulb, and beyond that, quite close, a section of freeway curving away, and a bridge over it, criss-crossed with metal bars. Across some open ground there was a house with its windows covered by iron mesh.

  Jacinta disappeared. He heard a man’s voice coming from one of the rooms. When she came back she was holding a lighter and a glass pipe.

  She sat down next to him. When she smiled her eyes turned to slits of black kohl. She said, ‘Okay. You relax. You put your bag down there. You ready to get high?’

  He wondered about the man in the next room. But he was so drunk that the thought whirled away. He saw Raine’s face. Soon she would leave him. She had suffered enough. There was the thing with Aunt Evelyn. And he was going to lose his job. The strings that tied him to the world were unravelling. He was almost floating free. He saw how beautiful and peaceful that was. He’d tried to keep life together and now, in a single shunt, the world had released him, pushed him out to the other side.

  He took the pipe from Jacinta and breathed in. A great swoop in his head, a moment of frozen time, nothing but little bubbles and screeches, bat-squeaks in his ears. Then the hot slam in his chest, the stars in his eyes blowing outwards, exploding in streams of light.

  He wondered whether he would die in this room. He felt himself pass through time and thought he was dead already. Jacinta in her pink top, her face crossed by ribbons of smoke, held her glass pipe aloft, leading him on. Her eyes rolled up in her head, she licked her dry lips and moaned. She leaned close; her breath was sharp and sour. He watched the smoke curling and twisting from her mouth.

  Fires in the distance. Iron city. He saw himself walking through a trench of blackness, beside the freeway, by the river of jewels.

  Emily had a dream about Larry. He was saying something to her but she couldn’t hear.

  She woke up. She was in her sister’s house in London. She was staying for four days before flying back to Auckland. She thought she’d heard Caro. But Caro was at home with Beth and Per.

  It was 3am. There was a thin wail, Marie’s baby. She turned and slept.

  The following morning Emily went on the train up to Oxford. Her editor, Angus, had sent her to interview the New Zealand vice chancellor of the university, who was creating controversy with a new and unpopular regime.

  When she got back to London it was late, and Marie was getting ready to go out. Her husband was away for a week, working for the bank in New York. Marie had tried to get Emily into the work party she was going to, but had been firmly told, no guests.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind if I go?’ she said.

  Emily didn’t mind at all. She’d offered to look after Marie’s kids, but Marie had arranged a babysitter, in case Emily wasn’t back from Oxford.

  When the babysitter arrived, Emily went out. She took the Tube to Euston Station. She walked to Oxford Street and bought some clothes, a pair of shoes and some presents for the family. As she roamed through the streets she fell into a trance of pleasure. There was nothing to tie her down, no Caro to attend to, no immediate deadlines, just the city and herself absorbing it all. Everything about London pleased her, the crowds, the rush, the drama of security announcements, the fact that a bomb could go off, the crazy wish that a bomb would go off, not too close but close enough to hear and see: these were secret pleasures in the private roaming hours. It was only possible to feel like this when you were alone, in the streets, in a foreign city.

  Hours later, when she arrived worn-out at Euston Station, her train was cancelled, and after she’d waited for the next one, it was cancelled too. She realised she didn’t need to go back to Marie’s, and the freedom made her happy. She went to a newsagent and looked at a Time Out. There was a film on in Tottenham Court Road. She walked there, buying a filled roll and a drink from M&S on the way. She ate the meal in the cinema and watched the film, and thought it was the closest you could get to pure happiness.

  Not that she didn’t want ties. Not that she didn’t love Caro, her family. But to be alone, outside time, to make decisions without having to consult anyone: it was bliss.

  She got back at 1am and let the babysitter go. Sh
e was making tea in the kitchen when Marie came rocketing through the door, wearing a short dress and long boots. Impossibly glamorous, hilariously pissed, she lurched around the kitchen trying to get her boots off.

  She said, ‘It was a terrible party. There was hardly any food. It ran out. They’d booked a place that was too small, and they told half the junior staff they’d have to go to the pub down the road. There was only booze, and everyone got pissed and then the CEO stood up and made this appalling speech. It went on so long that people started yelling at him. Some woman next to me was shouting, Get him off. People are going to wake up in fear tomorrow. They’re going to get fired.’

  She got one boot off and toppled against the wall, standing on one leg. ‘What have you been doing?’

  Emily said, ‘I took the train to Euston. I went shopping, then the train was cancelled, and I went to a film. I bought this bean roll thing and ate it in the movie. It was brilliant. I loved it.’

  ‘You loved a bean roll?’ Marie tugged at her other boot. It flew off and hit the wall.

  ‘Everything, the bean roll, the city, freedom. And strangeness, the unfamiliar streets.’

  Marie started laughing. ‘A bean roll. A film by yourself. Anyone would think that was a bit bleak.’

  ‘Bleak?’ Emily paused, surprised. ‘No, it was great.’

  Marie cracked up. ‘A lonely bean …’

  ‘No, it was brilliant.’ Emily didn’t want Marie to think she was putting a brave face on a dull evening. That would spoil the real pleasure in what she’d felt.

  ‘It was fantastic. Especially the bean roll,’ she added, to acknowledge it was maybe a bit strange. When Marie started laughing everything seemed funny. Anyway, it wasn’t likely she didn’t understand. Marie was the sharpest person Emily knew.

  Marie said, ‘I wonder how Larry’s getting on in LA.’

  ‘It’s great how he’s staying sober.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  They thought about their brother.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Who’s that, so late?’ Marie said.

  She came back into the kitchen. ‘It’s Caro, missing you.’

  Emily grabbed the phone. She and Caro talked for half an hour, and for a long time after that, as Emily lay awake in bed, the distance between them seemed unbearable.

  Larry opened his eyes. There was a man standing over him.

  Jacinta said, ‘This my brother. Manuel.’

  Manuel was tall and thin, with high, round cheekbones and dark loops under his eyes. He looked like an owl.

  Jacinta put her arms around his neck. ‘Manuel, can you drive us to Mr Vaughan’s?’

  Manuel’s owl eyes went anxious and resentful. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘That asshole.’

  Jacinta started pleading. Her voice went high and whiney. Larry studied the brown checks on the couch. Nausea rose in him and then fell away. He tried to rest his elbow on the arm of the couch, missed and fell over sideways.

  Then he was up and moving, Jacinta pushing him. They went out into the hot noisy night and lurched along the balcony. Larry looked through a window at a man in a singlet. The man came towards the glass, eyes furious. Larry turned away and the lights froze in a long stream of colour before his eyes.

  He let Jacinta guide him. They crossed a courtyard and then they were in a car, Larry slumped in the back seat and Jacinta and Manuel arguing in the front.

  Larry lay on his back and watched the lights flash past, the trail of colour they left in the air. He sat up when the car stopped moving. They were parked outside a small house with green fairy lights strung over the front door, and ornate white grilles on all the windows. Jacinta was out there banging on the door.

  Manuel lit a cigarette. He said morosely, ‘This Mr Vaughan’s place. He was her high-school science teacher. Then he got fired. She been fuckin’ him since I don’t know when. They been experimentin’ since she was a good little girl in school.’

  The door opened. Light spilled out. A fat woman stood behind a security grille. They heard shouting. Jacinta put her hands on the bars and rattled them.

  Manuel said, ‘Uh oh. That’s his daughter.’

  ‘Don’t come here,’ the woman was shouting. ‘Take your sick ass out of here.’

  Jacinta stumbled off the side of the porch. She tried to throw a cigarette through the grille. The woman danced around behind it, yelling. ‘You get nothing here. You don’t come round here.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Jacinta screamed. She gave the security door a last slam.

  She came staggering back to the car.

  ‘He’s at work.’

  ‘Oh man,’ Manuel sighed. ‘Can’t we go home now?’

  ‘No. Please Manuel. I need money. You need money. Come on.’

  Larry’s stomach lurched as the car swerved out into the road. Jacinta threw something out the window. There was the sound of breaking glass. When Larry looked back he could see the figure of the woman jumping and yelling against the light from the doorway, her hands on the metal bars.

  ‘She look like a dog,’ Jacinta said.

  They were on the freeway. Larry looked at the cars drawing alongside, falling back. Bridges rose ahead and fell behind. They veered across the lanes and rocketed off in an incensed blast of car horns, past dark warehouses and closed shops. Around the corner was a street of restaurants and bars.

  Manuel drove into a carpark. Larry got out. The woman shouting behind the grille had roused something in him. He felt the pulse of something like rage. Hot waves broke in his head, he saw the point of violence, the happiness of it. He had been swept into a stream of energy; he was enormously strong. A sudden lightness made him stumble into a pile of cardboard boxes. On a billboard above them, lit up with chemical blue radiance, a woman dived naked into a pool.

  He followed Jacinta across the carpark to an open door. Inside he could see the white glare and bustle of a big commercial kitchen.

  She put her head in the door and hollered something in Spanish. Someone shouted back. They waited. A man came out.

  ‘J,’ he said.

  He was middle-aged, paunchy, tall, with a sallow, handsome face and greasy black hair.

  He lit a cigarette. ‘You know I got no money,’ he said.

  ‘You owe me.’

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘You know it is true.’

  ‘You’re wired and fried. I bet you don’t remember the last time you came down here. It was two nights ago. You got to stop this. You hear me, you got to stop this.’

  Jacinta’s shoulders hunched. She put her hands over her face. Then she flew at him, scratching his cheeks. He fought her off. He put his hands on her shoulders and started to shake her. Spit flew off her, her hands pawed and her feet thrashed.

  Larry hit the man in the side of the head. The man lurched sideways and let go and she fell into a crouch, gasping. The man looked down at her. Then he turned with a thoughtful look and punched Larry full in the face. Larry heard the smack of bone on bone. There was a gap, nothing but wheeling sky, stars turning, cool blue light, a woman jumping naked into a pool.

  He woke up. Mr Vaughan was watching them from the doorway of the kitchen. He was walking away, held up by Manuel. Jacinta was ahead, hunched and sobbing. They got in the car and drove.

  Later, down a side street full of vacant lots, with Jacinta passed out on the back seat, he remembered the name of his hotel. The Marriot. It came to him, on a hot wave of the dope he was sharing with Manuel.

  The Marriot.

  Manuel, holding smoke in his lungs squeaked, ‘You want me to drive you?’

  ‘Please. Please.’ It was all he could say.

  He came into himself again in a hushed empty corridor of the hotel. He had no idea how he’d got through the foyer, or how he had found his way to this floor.

  He sat on the carpet, panicked by the identical doors, the lines of numbers. Then he remembered his key.

  He found his floor and his room, but the key didn’t wo
rk. The electronic light stayed red, no matter how many times he shoved the card in the slot. He kicked the wall.

  The door beside his opened. Lynx stuck his head out. Larry looked at him wordlessly.

  Lynx’s eyes opened wide. ‘Fuck.’

  Larry propped himself against the wall.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Mugged.’ The word came out like a sob.

  Lynx took the key and slid it in the slot. The light went green. Larry staggered into the room, Lynx behind him. He looked at himself in the mirror. Both eyes were ringed with black bruising. His lips were swollen. His face was not his own any more. His eyes were wild and frightened, as if his real self was a creature, some raw, wriggling, half-formed thing, peeping out from behind the mask of alien flesh.

  He turned, saw Lynx’s expression and was struck by the variety and richness of it: glee, horror, mirth, revulsion, pity.

  Lynx said, ‘You lie down.’

  The boy brought a towel and carefully washed Larry’s face. He cleaned the blood away from Larry’s neck and ear with warm water, then soaked a flannel in cold water and laid it across Larry’s face. He took off Larry’s shoes, and washed his hands where blood had dried in a brown smear. He put a pillow under his head, dragged the sheets out from under him, and covered him up.

  ‘It’s nearly light,’ he said. He brought Larry water and made him drink it.

  ‘You sleep,’ he said.

  Larry caught his arm. He croaked, ‘Let’s not tell about me being mugged.’

  Lynx looked down at him.

  ‘Best if we don’t …’

  Lynx’s voice was patient. ‘You stink of piss. You stink of drugs. When you’re steady, you have a shower. Okay?’

  Larry reeled. His whole body was filled with pain. He slipped towards a ledge. He plunged down, into black.

  Around eight in the morning Lynx came back. He got Larry up, supported him to the shower, and stuffed his dirty clothes in a plastic shopping bag. The drugs still in his system gave Larry their last prop, the strength to get over the edge of the bath and stand in the shower. He was a quivering mess of pain. His legs trembled. With Lynx standing over him he vomited repeatedly into the toilet, naked, sick beyond endurance, wishing he could die.