Singularity

by Charlotte Grimshaw

  Lynx picked up the stinking bag of clothes. He got some clean boxers and a T-shirt out of Larry’s bag and helped him put them on. He turned the air-conditioning higher and left. Larry stared after him. He lay writhing in the silence, in chilled air of the brown room.

  A woman unlocked the door and called musically, ‘Housekeeping.’

  He managed to croak, ‘No thanks,’ and she sniffed and retreated, saying something condemnatory in Spanish. The pain receded enough for him to turn over, but the sickness came again and he vomited into the wastepaper basket. He smelled his own smell, and it seemed as though his body must be rotting.

  Faces swam through his mind in sick waves. Jacinta, Manuel, Mr Vaughan. Little Lynx, with his steady eyes.

  In the late afternoon Lynx came back from his outing. He kneeled on the bed and offered Larry a sandwich in a brown paper bag. Larry shook his head. Lynx brought him a cup of water.

  The boy said, ‘Leanne’s going to be looking for you. You better ring her and say you don’t want dinner.’

  ‘Lynx. Thanks.’

  ‘No worries.’

  Larry practised speaking. His mouth was dry, his tongue huge. Hi Leanne. How’s it going? I’ve got a meeting …

  ‘How does that sound?’

  ‘Fucked up,’ Lynx said. He grinned. ‘Like you got a tennis ball in your mouth.’

  ‘How about you say I met you in the foyer and I said I was going to a meeting?’

  He thought about it. ‘Okay.’

  Lynx tilted his chin in farewell. But as he opened the door he gave a grunt of annoyance and surprise. He backed into the room, with Slade’s meaty hand on his chest.

  ‘I been looking for you,’ Slade drawled happily, swaggering into the room.

  He stopped and stared. ‘Fuck man. What’s happened to him?’

  ‘He got mugged,’ Lynx said quietly.

  Slade leaned close. Larry struggled, pulled away, nauseated by the boy’s foody breath.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ Lynx said.

  But Slade paced at the end of the bed, hands on hips, looking at Larry from all angles. Larry watched him strutting up and down, all brute fat and hammy showmanship. He would be good on stage. A natural actor. The expression on him, he looked like a Roman emperor. He made Lynx seem like a frightened little kid. It occurred to Larry that Slade was gay.

  ‘Wow. That’s a fucked-up face, bro. Have you told Leanne?’

  He pulled a phone out of his pocket and took a picture.

  Lynx tried to grab the phone. Larry just lay there. He lay and thought of nothing while the big boy and the skinny boy wrestled and argued and hit each other at the end of his bed.

  Slade pushed Lynx off, angry now. He leaned down and took a picture up close, of Larry’s face.

  ‘If he’s been mugged you need to ring the cops,’ Slade said. ‘This is evidence.’

  Larry closed his swollen eyes. A memory came back to him. Himself on the back seat of the car. Manuel leaning over him. Jacinta looking over the seat back, eyes intent.

  She said, ‘The cash. Just take the cash.’

  Manuel hissing and swearing at Larry, holding him down, hands in the pockets of his jacket. The boys went off to dinner. Downstairs, Slade would be showing his picture gallery to Leanne. Leanne would ring Ezra. He thought of Raine. Tracy. Cupboard love. Strange what brings you to the end of things. If he hadn’t blabbed to Tracy, if Raine hadn’t decided it was the last straw, would he be lying here, sick and beaten, while young Slade put the final nail in his career? Would he have stayed sober, done his job, gone home?

  But he saw how it really was. You could blame the things that pushed you; you could say it was someone else’s fault. But really it was yourself that let go. You stopped hanging on and the world gave a shrug and shunted you free.

  In the end, it was only you.

  Leanne got housekeeping to let her in. She stood at the end of his bed. She put her hands lightly to her chest and looked at him. An expression swelled in her face.

  He turned away. Nothing was said.

  There were eight phone messages for Larry from contacts in the city. Notes were pushed under his door. There were questions, and requests for rescheduling of missed meetings. He answered none of them. He stayed in his room until it was time for the four of them to leave.

  In the teeming chaos of Los Angeles airport Emily and Larry came close. She was in transit, London to Auckland, behind the wall. She was on a different flight. They didn’t see each other.

  At the airport Larry drew out five hundred American dollars on his credit card and offered the money to Lynx. The boy took it, then tried to give it back. Larry gave him his expensive new watch and his phone. Lynx stood holding them, uncertain. Larry squeezed the boy’s arm and walked away.

  He got himself a separate seat on the plane. The woman next to him asked if he was all right. He asked if she would order a drink for him. The air hostess had stopped serving him, saying she believed he’d had enough. The woman got him one drink, but after that, she refused.

  At Auckland, he picked up his bag and walked out into the cold dawn. It was five in the morning; the sky was streaked with red clouds. The air was soft and there was a smell of grass and cows. He took a taxi to Ponsonby and knocked on the door of a house. When there was no answer he went around the back and got in through the window. Max was still asleep. Larry stood out on the deck watching the sun coming up. He waited.

  He paid Max in American dollars. Max liked the idea of this. Larry threw in an extra couple of fifties. Max gave him a cautious glance. ‘You all right?’

  Larry shrugged.

  They lit a pipe then and there.

  Afterwards, in Max’s bathroom, Larry upended a bottle of pills and held them in his palm. He juggled them lightly, before washing them down. In the kitchen, he found a bottle and poured himself a drink. He felt nothing.

  He was walking through grassland. It was hot and still and the track stretched ahead, broad and overgrown and pitted here and there with the hoof prints of cows. Along the track were green pools fringed by waving stands of native reeds. There were green frogs, motionless and watching in the water. The cicadas made a racket so loud that you thought you could see it, a shimmering, glittering wall of sound. The track ran by the side of the river, and the toetoe waved in the air like spears against the blue glare of the sky.

  Then he could hear the sea roaring, and once he’d crossed a bridge he was looking up the slope of a giant dune of black sand, so black it had a blue sheen to it. He was climbing the slope, the sand hot on his feet, and when he reached the top there was the great curve of the coast stretching away north and south. Across a mile of sand was the sea, fringed with wild surf. He turned and turned and the black desert was a roar of violent motion. Heat shimmered up off the sand, the toetoe waved, the sea roared against the grey cliff s.

  He crossed the back of the monster dune, and reached a patch of grass under the cliffs. He lay down under the cabbage trees. Everything was huge. The air had size and weight. Above him, the sky was expanding.

  He turned on his back and saw shapes hovering above his face. They were dragonflies, colourful, glittering, darting and zooming in the bright air. He reached out, wanting to touch the light, quick, beautiful things.

  A light shone in his eye and something touched his face.

  There was a green curtain, and behind it, a voice. It came to Larry, over the sound of the sea. ‘My nephew made me take him to the Observatory yesterday. He told me about supermassive black holes. Did you know there’s a giant black hole at the centre of our galaxy? In three billion years time we’re going to collide with the next-door galaxy, Andromeda. He tells me this will throw us into the black hole. The end of the Earth.’

  He heard a jingling sound.

  ‘So I thought I’d ring you,’ the voice said.

  He was moving. A door banged open and closed.

  Someone said, ‘It’s chaos in here. May. May. Sorry, can I grab you? We’ve got t
hree at once. Can you intubate this one?’

  The dragonflies, flitted, sparkled, zoomed away.

  He was on the sand, walking away from the valley, towards the sea. Far away, he could see people walking in a line against the waves. Little black figures against the dancing, glittering water. The heat rose and made mirages, great puddles of silver on the sand. The cliffs boomed behind him, the iron sound of the wind in the stone.

  He saw Emily standing on the dunes. She was small. A kid again. She had red stains on her mouth.

  They walked together through the hot iron landscape, along the back of the black dune, beyond the toetoe spears and the waving reeds. There was a circle cut in the rock, with light at the end of it.

  Something black rose out of the sea and whirled in the air. Larry and Emily stood together as it came towards them. It swelled and swelled and made a sound like birds.

  In the sky there was movement and panic. A voice shouted in his ear and an object was pushed into his throat. His body was moved around. He felt tiny pricks in his arms.

  A great jolt crashed against his chest. Then another. But he turned towards the sky.

  Emily looked at him. He said, ‘This is my dream.’

  She stared into the black shape that was coming across the sea. It was colouring the sky around it, turning the blue into bright streaks of purple, blue, starry green.

  ‘It looks like a migraine,’ she said. The black shape was getting closer, swelling, with the noon glare behind it.

  They went on together, over the iron sand. The tunnel was ahead of them.

  At the end of it he saw Per, standing in the circle of light. He kept sight of Emily until the black thing was above them. He wanted to stay with her. He was afraid.

  She said, ‘It has been decided.’

  The black thing was made of dragonflies. She was absorbed in it and flew away.

  He understood. He crossed out of his dream. There was darkness all round him, and tiny frozen stars.

  OPPORTUNITY

  A man confronts death after an operation, a devout Christian encounters a man who hurt her long ago, a secretary uncovers her boss’s secret shame. And in a house in Auckland an elderly woman is writing the last book of her life, one which, she says, contains all of her crimes. How are the characters connected and who is writing the stories?

  Each of these astute stories is an inspection of motive, rich in vivid insight into a diverse range of lives. Together, they form a unified whole. Opportunity is a book about storytelling, about generosity and opportunism; above all it is a celebration of the subtleties of human impulse, of what Katherine Mansfield called the LIFE of life.

  In 2007, Opportunity was short-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Prize and in 2008, Opportunity won the Montana New Zealand Award for Fiction, along with the premier Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry. Charlotte Grimshaw was also awarded the 2008 Montana Prize for Book Reviewer of the Year.

  In their report the Montana judges praised Opportunity for its stories ‘packed full of drama, surprising turns and compelling characters.’ The judges considered Opportunity ‘the most structurally sophisticated book of fiction submitted … Its stories offer reflections on the art of writing and storytelling, its structures and its self-awareness don’t compromise the traditional pleasures of fiction … In its structure it resembles the work of Tim Winton; in its stylistic compression it shows hints of Jorge Luis Borges; like Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway it offers an uncompromising but tender portrait of a city.’

  REVIEWS OF OPPORTUNITY:

  ‘Charlotte Grimshaw’s Opportunity is one of the most gripping books of short stories I’ve ever read … Grimshaw’s imagination and vision is astonishing. Her prose is spare and amazingly expressive. Opportunity is a book to read compulsively and re-read for its subtlety, penetration and sheer brilliance.’ Writers’ Radio, Radio Adelaide

  ‘Grimshaw says Opportunity is a novel with a large cast of characters … Each story stands by itself and adds to the larger one … Grimshaw isn’t interested in being virtuous — the opportunity to explore the LIFE of life gives her writing a taut energy … A darkly glittering achievement.’ The Dominion Post

  ‘A writer with impressive command of style and subject … Do take the opportunity to read Opportunity. It’s riddling and rewarding. Appreciate its skill. Acknowledge its depth.’ New Zealand Herald

  ‘This is the most enjoyable New Zealand collection of short stories I have read since Emily Perkins’s Not Her Real Name.’ Christchurch Press

  ‘Opportunity is beautifully crafted, colourful and hard to keep to yourself. A sense of detail, vividly narrated, gives the whole book a richness that belies its simplicity of structure … Never heavy, always one step ahead of the reader in terms of black humour and unexpected outcome, Opportunity deserves to be read aloud.’ Capital Times

  ‘Charlotte Grimshaw just keeps getting better and better.’ Next

  ‘The best Charlotte Grimshaw stories combine her unflinching eye with real emotional insight.’ New Zealand Listener

  FOREIGN CITY

  Anna Devine, a young New Zealand painter living in London, has two chance encounters that set her on a search for answers. Can she really ‘see’ her new city properly? Can she reconcile family life and art? Her search leads her into past mysteries of her troubled family and her brother’s death, and towards future complexities: infidelity, dangerous freedoms, and a whole new eye on her foreign city. In Auckland, in another time, Justine Devantier is reading a novel in order to find out about its author — and possibly about herself. And in a fictional city a man looks for a woman he knew long ago. At the core of this intricate plot is British novelist Richard Black, who may hold the strands that bind all the protagonists together.

  Grimshaw’s brilliantly drawn characters walk through her foreign cities in different guises. She gives us a ‘true’ story, a fiction, a love story, a story of family connections lost and found, and a dazzling ride through the creative process — its practitioners, its casualties.

  REVIEWS OF FOREIGN CITY:

  ‘She is terrifically good at building cities out of words.’ New Zealand Herald

  ‘Smart and readable, Foreign City not only cements Grimshaw’s already considerable reputation, it marks her out as exceptional.’ Dominion Post

  ‘A swarming energy pervades every page she writes … her descriptive writing has always been of the highest order. Most of it would work just as well as poetry.’ New Zealand Listener

  ‘She’s world class.’ North & South

  ‘Grimshaw builds enormous narrative power through her use of structure, which keeps us guessing, concentrating hard, to the last page.’ Herald on Sunday

  ‘Like Dickens, Grimshaw makes characters of her cities. Her evocation of the British capital, especially, is superb.’ New Zealand Books

  About the Author

  Charlotte Grimshaw is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, Provocation, Guilt and Foreign City. In 2000 she was awarded the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship for literature. She has been a double finalist and prizewinner in the Sunday Star-Times short story competition, and in 2006 she won the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Award. In 2007 she won a place in the Book Council’s Six Pack prize. Her story collection Opportunity was short-listed for the 2007 Frank O’Connor International Prize, and in 2008 Opportunity won New Zealand’s premier award for fiction, the Montana medal. She lives in Auckland.

  By The Same Author

  Provocation

  Guilt

  Foreign City

  Opportunity

  Copyright

  A VINTAGE BOOK published by Random House New Zealand 18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand

  For more information about our titles go to www.randomhouse.co.nz

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand

  Random House International, Random House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 2SA, U
nited Kingdom; Random House Australia Pty Ltd, Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney 2060, Australia; Random House South Africa Pty Ltd, Isle of Houghton, Corner Boundary Road and Carse O’Gowrie, Houghton 2198, South Africa; Random House Publishers India Private Ltd, 301 World Trade Tower, Hotel Intercontinental Grand Complex, Barakhamba Lane, New Delhi 110 001, India

  First published 2009

  © 2009 Charlotte Grimshaw

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  ISBN 978 1 86979 138 4

  This book is copyright. Except for the purposes of fair reviewing no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.