‘And what happens, if I tell you to fuck off?’
‘I won’t lie to you, Pete. You do that and we’ve failed. And this isn’t the sort of company that believes in second chances. We’re off the job and they set about destroying you. And they’re good at it, believe me.’
‘Maybe I don’t give a shit.’
‘Maybe you don’t. But the tests suggest otherwise, Pete. Look, let’s stop pissing around here. I’ll tell you some things I know about you, shall I? Your IQ comes in at 154, which makes you a borderline genuis, but for some reason you’ve never made anything of it at school. Your personality profile tells me you’re independent, you don’t like doing what people tell you, you want to think for yourself, do things your own way. But you’re seventeen. You don’t know what that way is, most of the time. It also tells me you’re open-minded, you’re excited by new ideas. You think on your feet, you’re articulate, you’ve got more self-control than anyone I’ve ever met, and you’re not scared of anyone. You know what that makes you? It makes you a very, very powerful sports car stuck in city traffic. And either you’re going to get out of there real soon, or you’re going to overheat, meltdown, and no one’s ever going to know what you were capable of.
‘You ever feel like that, Pete? You ever feel trapped? You ever feel the world closing in? I don’t want to say this next bit, because it’ll sound trite and false and that pisses me off, because it isn’t. I actually mean it. I don’t need PBs. I have immunity from their shit. They’re just one gig for me. I have other work. If you take them down or you don’t, ten minutes after the storm dies down, another one will spring up to take their place. No one cares. But I’m not letting you get out of this pool without explaining yourself because I care about what happens to you. Jesus, Pete, you know how often I meet people like you? Not often enough. And look at me, believe me, please. I’ve been there. I’ve been you. So this is sort of personal to me.’
‘What do you want from me?’ I ask.
‘I want you to spend a little more time thinking about this, before you decide where to point all that Pissed Off you’re carrying. You going to do that?’
‘It’s getting sort of hot in here.’
‘So sit up on the snow. You’ll cool down soon enough.’
She moves first. Hauls herself up on the side, so she’s sitting on a rock. She leans back, stretches out onto the snow. I watch.
Marcus looks to the sky.
‘I should call in the chopper. The weather feels like it’s changing.’
‘Get the laptop, when it comes in,’ Lucinda tells him.
‘If there’s time.’
Marcus gets up, walks across the pool. He takes a towel from the bag, throws on his clothes, disappears past the steam. I follow Lucinda’s lead, lean back against the snow. I can feel the whiteness of it. Pure keen energy transfer. My skin stings, my head clears with the cold. I can think again, and choose to think nothing. This is how it works. This is the way we face our biggest decisions. Eyes closed, brain turned off, instincts groping a way forward through the fog. She’s right. I’m not like them. I’m not like the others.
I’m cold now. I sink slowly back into the water. It’s magic. Just me and her. Unfolding one picture at a time. I’m memorising every one of them. I float across so she’s above me, still half out of the water. I feel her leg against the top of my arm. The lightest bump. I’m here, is all it says. I’ve noticed.
‘You alright?’ she asks.
‘I guess.’
She moves back down into the water. Shoulder to shoulder now.
‘I don’t want to tell you what to do. I just don’t want you get hurt, that’s all. Do you really hate them that much?’
‘Who?’
‘PBs.’
‘Nah, not really.’
‘But you hate the idea of them telling you what to do.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I get that. But look, some fights aren’t worth having. You’ve got a lot of years left, a lot of good fights still to have. They can destroy you. Please believe that. Or you can ignore them, treat them like they don’t matter so much either way. That’s what I do. And then, when I’m sure I don’t much care, that’s when I can start using them.’
The decision comes in an instant. It starts in the stomach, so fuck knows what the brain’s really for. Not the stomach exactly. I think it’s the thigh this time, the point where our bodies meet. My skin is making my decisions for me. And when I speak the words they sound so right it makes me feel powerful.
‘So what should I do?’
She hugs me. I hug her back. Hot in the middle of an icy nowhere. Souls, who needs them? We’re not like that. We’re different, Lucinda and me.
Marcus appears on cue. He doesn’t ask how it’s gone. I can hear the helicopter getting closer.
‘No time for the slide show,’ he tells us. ‘Weather’s closing in. We can see it back at the homestead. Come on.’
He passes us towels. We dress quickly and lift back out into the world just as the wind begins to raise its objections.
The champagne is dry on my tongue. I don’t like it much, the taste is wrong. I wait for the second hit, the sweetness I’m used to, but it teases me with its bubbles and disappears. I like the feel of it though. The lightness of this moment. The confident hold of the leather couch, the certainty of belonging. The perfect position to launch a smile. Marcus walks across to me and fills my glass. Not the first time. It’s late afternoon. We haven’t talked much since returning.
‘Ready for the video then?’ he asks me.
‘What’s it of?’
‘Just a little advertising campaign they’re thinking of running. You’re in it.’
‘Me?’
‘If you agree. It’s a whole series. You’re the last one. We’ve just used an actor for now, to give the idea. See what you think.’
He dances out an instruction on the keyboard in front of him and the huge flat screen on the opposite wall comes to life.
There’s a guy I recognise, a Green Party politician, dreads and a scooter. He wheels into view, eyeballs the camera.
‘Yeah,’ he says with a smile. ‘I’ve been known to be at the occasional party where a joint’s been passed my way. But if you were there, and you chose to say no, that’d be fine by me too. Each to their own, you know?’
And his face breaks into dimples as he scoots way. The camera pulls back and we see the Beehive behind him.
DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO runs across the screen. There’s music too. I don’t quite get it. But I like it. There’s something about it. A sort of quiet, cheerful, fuck you.
Next ad’s a discus thrower, big Samoan woman, towelling the sweat off in a gym. A little blonde bimbo type sucking on a water bottle walks past. The athlete watches her, smiles. It’s a beautiful smile, the sort a whole country feels proud of.
‘Yeah,’ she tells the camera. ‘I see all types in here. Skinny little white girls who live on water. You don’t want to touch them in case they snap. Still, their choice, right. Me, I quite like eating.’ She shrugs and picks up a dumbbell, and you just know it weighs more than the white girl. I want to see it. I want to see her snap one of them. DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.
A third ad, and it’s just as smooth. A guitarist down at the beach, sun shining. Strumming away. Good looking, a twinkle in his eye when the camera arrives.
‘I like Sunday evenings best. That’s when the other bastards all go back to their jobs.’ We pull back to see where he’s looking. A line of big Australian cars, pulling their boats back home, the families looking back longingly, already starting to sweat. Back to the guitarist.
‘Me, I get to stay here. I’m an artist you see, that’s what what it says on my file, down at Income Support. Not so much work out this way. Still, I’m getting by, you know?’
He laughs. Leans back. Strums some more. A long shot shows him silhouetted against the sunset. Yeah, they’ve got me. I want to be him.
DO WHAT YOU WANT T
O DO.
Number four is an endurance athlete, up on a mountain in the rain, sucking it in. He stares into the camera, high on something. Grins just as the rain turns to hail.
‘Okay, so some people spend their weekends on the couch. That’s their business right?’
We pull back. He’s alone on top of the ridge. We see him running along, happier than anyone needs to be. Insane, sure, but happy.
DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.
Then there’s my ad. They’ve chosen an actor who looks the part. Better-looking than me, I guess, but I can fake it. Hoodie up, standing in the street, package in his hand. Close up. It’s a Prince burger. He pulls back the wrapper, looks at it. Looks up at the camera. Grins.
‘Some people like these things apparently. And that’s their business really, don’t you think?’
And he throws the burger back over his shoulder, without looking, and it lands in the bin on the other side of the road.
PBs. DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO.
‘They’re just roughs, of course. We’ll make you look better than that. One fifty up front. No other obligations. It’s good isn’t it?’
So I get to look cool, and get the money to back it up. And they’re both there willing me on, the two people in all the world I want to be like. I’m a little drunk. This isn’t a good way to make decisions. I breathe in, try to slow it down, think through this thing clearly. Is this where everything was leading? A nut-off in a burger queue, and some freak setting up a website, a protest gone wrong, and a brain that doesn’t know when to go quiet. Is this why my guardian angel got so excited, on that very first day? Has it been here all along? Has it known exactly what it was doing?
Or have they outsmarted me, headed me off? Is this the way it’s meant to be, or the way they want it to be? And who the hell is ‘they’ anyway, and why can’t it be both? And why shouldn’t I be rich and cool and famous? Who said I couldn’t have it all? Why am I even thinking about feeling guilty?
‘So?’ says Lucinda. Her hand is on my leg, bringing me back to the room.
‘What?’
‘Do you want it?’
Is that really the question? Of course I want it. Who wouldn’t want it?
‘Yeah, I want it.’
Her face breaks in to the prettiest smile. I feel my smile giving it back.
‘So…’
‘What?’
‘They wanted to bankrupt your family and we got you this. Aren’t you going to thank us?’
‘Haven’t said I’m doing it yet,’ I tell her.
‘Not saying you have to,’ she replies.
‘Thanks though.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Good on you, Pete. I knew they had you wrong. Time to celebrate.’ Marcus stands, grabs another bottle, rips off the foil.
‘Just before we do that,’ Lucinda says, cautioning him with her hand, ‘there’s one more thing we need to clear up.’
‘What’s that?’ he asks. ‘Oh, right. Forgot.’
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘Well,’ Lucinda says, ‘you’ll remember we took your computer, well they did, the company. And your files were examined.’
‘Yeah.’ I don’t see where it’s going. Blame the alcohol.
‘We know you had help, getting into the site.’
‘I didn’t.’ An instinctive reply. A block. Deny, buy time. It’s a simple rule.
‘Pete, we know you did. We’ve read the emails.’
‘Of what?’ I ask.
‘You know.’
‘I don’t.’
And a strange thing happens. She hesitates. These two, they never hesitate. Lucinda’s uncertainty screams out like a boil on the face of a supermodel. It gives me confidence. Confidence to slow down, think this through. I try to remember how much of it was on email, how much we talked in his chat room. Mostly it was the chat room. Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s the bit they couldn’t access. There’s not much I know about Rob, but I trust his computer skills. They know a little, they probably know a person like him might exist, but it’s not enough. They haven’t been able to work it out. I feel a weird sort of thrill run through me, a readiness for battle. What does it mean, I ask myself, that Rob exists? What does it mean to them, what does it mean to me? They’re looking at me, waiting for me to say something more. I can bluff this. It’s like they say themselves. I’m not stupid. I don’t say a word.
‘Pete,’ Marcus starts. For the first time I notice how often they use my name when they speak to me. Teachers do that too, and telemarketers. ‘Last night, when I asked you to shut down the computer, you couldn’t.’
‘It’s not a system I know. I was tired.’
‘It’s hardly complicated.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘So how did you get into the PBs computer?’
‘You know that.’
‘So tell me for yourself.’
A lie is just the truth with a paint job. The less you make up the less there is to go wrong. Pete’s law. As I tell it, it becomes truth inside my head, the way the good lies do.
‘Phil Wade. I didn’t hack into his computer. I broke into his house. I wasn’t looking for anything special. I just, I don’t know, I knew he worked there, I thought I might have found something. And he has a diary, and it has stuff in it. I found something that looked like a list of passwords. Bigboy. Bigboy64. I remembered it because it sounded funny. And then I was bored, so I went on to the site, tried the remote access, used the password. It wasn’t difficult. I’m not a computer expert. I don’t know anything about hacking. You know that. You’ve seen my computer.’
‘So why him? Why Phil Wade?’ Lucinda asks the question. I’ve told you already, how she can control any situation. Well now I have to tell you how things change. How there’s something about her voice, a word catching on the way out, and a glance at Marcus, to see if he’s noticed.
‘He works for PBs.’
‘A lot of people work at PBs. I presume his is the only house you broke into. So again Pete, why him?’
There’s nothing friendly about the question. I don’t mind. I’m almost enjoying this.
‘He’s a got a kid, who goes to my school. That’s how I knew.’ A lie, as far as I know. I don’t want to tell it. I know they can check.
‘Does he?’ Marcus asks, not me, but Lucinda. She looks at me.
‘Boy or girl?’
A 50-50 chance. That’s fair.
‘Girl,’ I tell them, not hesitating. Marcus looks to Lucinda, she nods, and in my head I take my guardian angel in my hand and blow it the gentlest, most grateful of kisses. Lucinda hasn’t finished.
‘So what was the house like? How did you get in?’ She’s not convinced.
‘I don’t know. Big hedge out the front. Pool at the back. Two storeys, brick. I climbed up a drainpipe, crawled in through the toilet window.’
‘What colour’s the roof?’
‘Tile I think. I don’t remember.’
She stares at me. Doesn’t smile. Pulls out her cellphone. Dials.
‘Phil, Lucy … No … Just listen, Phil. I need an answer to this one question. It’s important. Is it possible in the last week someone broke into your house?… I see. Did she see what he looked like?… Okay, thanks.’
She hangs up, looks to Marcus, motions with her head and the two of them leave me sitting on the couch, an unopened bottle of champagne on the table in front of me. I notice my hands are shaking. I hit the keyboard, dial up the game. I’ll bluff it.
They’re gone 15 minutes. Time enough to crash four cars and lower the lap record by three seconds. I keep playing when they walk back in, don’t look up till the race is over.
‘You’re getting better,’ Marcus smiles. Lucinda’s smiling too. The cracks have been papered over, the glue is drying, the creases of truth are stretched away. She sits beside me, picks up the other control. Marcus opens the next bottle. She drives well, just like you’d expect. Tight, aggressive, concentrated. The first ra
ce she wins. The second time I can beat her, but let it go. I don’t care enough. The third race and I’m drunk. They make me make a list, of all the things I’ll spend the ad money on.
17 APRIL
PBs doesn’t matter to me now. No. Not true. It’s hard to give up when you’re winning. When you’re right. I will take them down. And if I have to go down too? That’s not important now. I just care about him. Save Pete. Then destroy PBs. I have to do both. Or we can never stop running. Billions of dollars at stake for them. They will kill us if they have to. It can work. If I have enough time. If they haven’t closed me down. If I can trust Gideon.
They must not come after us. So the world has to know. I can’t stay to find out. Can’t wait to see if the last encryption breaker worked. Pete is in danger. It’s stupid to go in alone, knowing what I know. But I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and I can’t unsee it. It’s what I have to do. Whatever the consequences. You can’t let a whole new life slip by without once trying to catch hold of it.
Who else could I tell? No one would believe it. Would even listen to me without the proof. And I don’t have time. The train is jolting into the station, brakes scraping like a fork on glass. The guard stands at the door, key in hand. He looks at me. Wondering, maybe. I feel oddly light, buoyed by terror and excitement. With every step I take towards the hill and the Makara road and the lodge that overlooks the sea, I come closer to living.
They believe they are invincible. That is why we can win. Sophie and Pete. Us against the world. Always.
9
What is it about showers? I don’t see it coming. I wake with a headache, and a dry mouth; with fuzzy teeth and a feeling that I have missed the morning. Champagne saying goodbye. I lie there a while, lost in the huge feather pillows, seeing the week that has passed, a week like no other in the life of me, then equally unlikely pictures of the weeks ahead. Fabulous, optimistic pictures. Pictures of what it might be like, to have a small portion of fame and a large helping of money. Silly, happy fantasies. The people I will meet. The way they will notice me, regard me. The way I will impress; demand new, finer, opportunities. And the way, of course, I will fall in love. An adoring equal. A place, at last. My year of having made it.
Deep Fried: A Novel Page 13
