In Your Dreams

by Holt, Tom

  Sophie nodded. ‘You could always refuse,’ she said. ‘I mean, stand up for yourself, just tell them straight, you won’t do it.’

  ‘You think they’ll listen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor me.’

  ‘But it’s so—’ She glared at him, as though being the victim was his fault. ‘I mean, why can’t they find someone else to do their silly work for them? Why’s it got to be you?’

  But it doesn’t have to be me, Paul didn’t say;they could make you do it instead. Which is why— Instead, he said: ‘It won’t be so bad. I got the impression that most of it’s just boring and tedious, anyhow – not actually dangerous. I mean, they don’t charge around waving swords and dressed in armour any more.’

  ‘Don’t they? How would you know?’

  ‘I don’t,’ Paul admitted. ‘But it stands to reason, doesn’t it? I mean, technology’s moved on, hasn’t it? Benny Shumway was talking about explosives and poisons—’

  ‘And other really safe things to be around,’ Sophie said. ‘And besides, it’swrong. These areendangered speciesthat you’re talking about exterminating. You’ve just got to look at that Ricky Wurmtoter creep to see what sort of a man he is. Probably got a dragon’s-foot umbrella stand in his office. I mean, what harm did a dragon ever do you?’

  ‘None,’ Paul said. Yet, he thought. ‘Look, there’s no point giving me a hard time about it, it’s the last thing I want to do. Or rather,’ he added, scowling, ‘the last thing but one. Thelastthing I want to do is give Mr Tanner an excuse to do horrible things to me for breach of contract. Or had you forgotten—?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Sophie said quickly. ‘But even if he did, it wouldn’tkillyou. And you wouldn’t be killing harmless dragons, either. I really think you’ve got to be firm this time. Take a stand.’

  ‘Sophie—’

  There were all sorts of things he could say; all sorts of things, just crying out to be said – how it was all very well for her, she wasn’t the one who’d been volunteered to fight bloody dragons, she was going to spend the next three months learning about the Entertainments Sector, probably going to film premières and swanning about at drinks parties round swimming pools meeting the stars. Also, what exactly would she do, if she’d been the one to draw the short straw? Also, why the hell did she think he was giving in so tamely, if not because if he refused she’d be forced to do it, and then she’d be the one who’d get blown up or eaten by dragons? It showed how much he’d learned in the last six months, even without reading the office-procedures manual, that he didn’t say any of these things, or anything at all.

  ‘What?’ she demanded.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Sophie gave him a scowl that would’ve stripped barnacles off the underside of an oil rig, and went back to sorting through Mortensen printouts. Paul did the same, vaguely aware that World War Three had been postponed at the last moment. Our first fight, he thought, but it didn’t make him feel any happier about it.

  Usually they went out for lunch, to the small Italian sandwich bar round the corner where she’d once bought him an epoch-making ham roll. But today she had a meeting with Judy di Castel’Bianco, to learn more about what she’d be doing; it would probably last all afternoon, and she’d see him back at the flat. Fine, he thought; with Sophie in that kind of mood, it’d probably be just as well. He spent the lunch hour and the rest of the day shuffling spreadsheets, and was about to call it a day (twenty-five past five; everybody was required to be off the premises by five-thirty, because of the goblins) when Ricky Wurmtoter came in.

  He came in without knocking, which was unusual in itself. Also he looked ruffled, almost worried. He had a suitcase, and Paul noticed that he wasn’t wearing his claw pendant.

  ‘Paul,’ he said, ‘sorry to bother you. I’ve got a favour to ask.’

  ‘Sure,’ Paul answered nervously.

  ‘Would it be all right—’ Ricky Wurmtoter, mumbling? Never in a million years. ‘Look,’ he said, and if it’d been anybody else, Paul would have thoughtfurtiveor evenguilty about something.‘I don’t like to ask, but could I borrow that door thing of yours? You know, that thing you used to get into the place where Humph Wells marooned those two clerks?’

  What surprised Paul most of all was that Ricky Wurmtoter wasasking. Ever since Paul had chanced upon the Acme Portable Door, a thin plastic sheet that, when pressed against a wall, turned into a door that opened onto anywhere or anywhen you wanted it to, he’d been expecting at any moment to be yelled at for misappropriating it and ordered to give it back immediately. He’d found it, after all, in a desk drawer; by no stretch of the imagination could it be described ashis, and since it was clearly a rare and valuable piece of equipment, he was amazed that nobody had noticed it was missing. He’d finally reached the conclusion that no one (apart from himself, Sophie, Mr Tanner’s mother and the firm’s senior partner) knew that it was him who’d got it. But apparently Mr Wurmtoter knew too, and here he was asking nicely.

  ‘Um,’ Paul said.

  ‘I’ll let you have it back just as soon as I’ve finished with it,’ Mr Wurmtoter went on – totally weird, he was practically pleading. ‘Only, it just might make all the difference for this job I’ve got to do; and, well, the sooner I get the job done and get back here, the sooner you’ll be taken off pest-control duty and put in with Caz Suslowicz or Theo van Spee or somebody. How about it?’

  ‘Sure,’ Paul repeated. He reached into his inside pocket and produced the cardboard tube in which the Portable Door lived. What with one thing and another, he hadn’t used it for months, hadn’t even given it a thought. Even so, he felt curiously reluctant to let go of it, and when Ricky Wurmtoter practically snatched it from him, he felt a tiny flicker of anger, a minuscule urge to fight—

  ‘Thanks,’ said Ricky Wurmtoter, visibly sagging with relief. ‘That’s really kind, you’re a pal.’ While Paul was still speechless, he added, ‘Well, won’t hold you up any longer, you’d better be getting a move on if you don’t want to run into any of Dennis’s loathsome relatives. Thanks again, Paul, I won’t forget this, you’re a real life-saver. And you will get it back, promise.’ Mr Wurmtoter grinned awkwardly, sneezed ferociously, and more or less ran out of the room.

  Oh, Paul thought. A pal. Me.Also a life-saver – arealone, too, not just some kind of cheap imitation. On the other hand, he reflected, he was now minus one extremely useful enchanted object, which could well have come in handy when (for example) faced with an angry fire-breathing dragon. Presumably that was why Mr Wurmtoter –his palRicky Wurmtoter – wanted it so badly. Oh well.

  Won’t mention this to Sophie, he thought, though he wasn’t quite sure why. He put on his coat and headed for the front office.

  No goblins as such; but Mr Tanner’s mum was on reception. That is, behind the reception desk was a stunningly lovely chestnut-haired beauty he’d never seen before in his life, who winked at him as he went past. Mr Tanner’s mum was a goblin; like the rest of her kind she could assume human shape at will, and she made no bones about the fact that she fancied him rotten, something he tried very hard not to think about. Pretending that he hadn’t noticed, he hurried past and didn’t slow down till he reached the bus stop.

  It’s not true that it’s easier to get from Bokhara to Tashkent on a three-legged camel than to travel from the City to Kentish Town by bus. It just seems that way, particularly when you’re in a hurry. Paul had found out long before that magic doesn’t work on traffic jams (implying, rather disturbingly, that traffic in Central London ismeantto be permanently gridlocked), so he spent the journey fretting and looking at his watch, which if anything appeared to be running backwards. His idea had been to get home before Sophie did, tidy the flat, do the washing-up, cook dinner and generally impress her with his caring, responsible side. After dinner, he’d smear a solemn look onto his face and suggest that it was time they had a Serious Talk about Us, which would please her no end; Us was probably her favourite topic of conversatio
n, and although generally speaking he tended to lose the thread after the first few minutes, it never seemed to matter, so long as he agreed with everything she said and maintained eye contact. That was the plan; a sort of pre-emptive apology for whatever it was he’d done, or was about to do, wrong. Unfortunately, infuriatingly, it looked like sixty thousand cars had sworn to stop him or die trying.

  When Paul eventually set toe to pavement, it was thirty-five minutes after his ETA. As he scuttled homewards from the bus stop, he quickly reshuffled his plans. If he still managed to get home first, the main priority was the washing-up, followed by a quick skirmish with the dirty laundry on the bedroom floor. Most important of all would be that he suggested the Serious Talk. Basically, once he’d tabled the motion, that’d be his duty done for the day. He could rely on her to do all the serious talking.

  When he unlatched the door and flopped through it, his first reaction was relief. She wasn’t there, so obviously she hadn’t got home yet. Then he saw the envelope.

  It was on the kitchen table, and it saidPaulin her handwriting; and that was very bad, because when she left him little notes to say she’d just nipped down to the shop or the video library, she wrote them on yellow stickies and stuck them on the fridge door. An envelope on the table, withPaulon it, couldn’t possibly be anything good. Feeling as though some malevolent joker had opened him up and stuffed him with newspaper, he sat down and opened it.

  Paul—

  We’re finished. When I got home tonight I realised that there’s no point going on. I care about you and I know you care about me but I also care about us and I know you don’t. It’s not your fault, it’s just that you’re you and I’m me and I can’t see any way round that, and if we tried we’d end up with neither of us being who we are. I’m sure you can see that, can’t you?

  They want me to go and do three months at the Hollywood office – I didn’t know they had one but presumably they do – and when I get back I’ll come and get the rest of my things. I’ve sent the landlord a cheque for my half of the rent, so you don’t need to worry about that. If you need to get in touch with me I suppose you can call me at the office out there, but I’d rather you didn’t. There isn’t anything left to say, really.

  I’m sorry, Paul. I didn’t mean it to end up like this, but I think we both knew it was coming, sooner or later, and it’s best to get it over and done with rather than dragging on. I think we’ve both been kidding ourselves all along. It’s not because you’re a bad person or anything that you’ve done. I should have been honest with myself earlier, and then it’d never have got this far. Don’t forget that the rubbish has to go out on Thursday evening. I think the seal’s gone on the vacuum cleaner.

  I hope everything works out for you.

  Sophie

  Chapter Two

  And then I woke up, he told himself, and it had all been a dream.

  People are sometimes easily overlooked. The holes they leave behind when they aren’t there any more are far harder to miss. It made Paul think of science lessons at school. He’d never been able to get his head around concepts like negative numbers and antimatter, but now it made complete sense. Everywhere he looked, and even when he closed his eyes, all he could see was the absence of Sophie, the gap where she used to be, should have been, no longer was. It was so large, it dominated the landscape so much that he was pretty sure it must be visible from orbit, like the Great Wall of China or the lights of the San Francisco freeways. Maybe (he speculated, not that he gave a shit) that’s what ghosts are; the huge empty spaces left behind when someone dies, kept wedged wilfully open by the self-destructive human mind. Above all, for some crazy reason, Sophie’s tangible absence put him in mind of the ridiculous Portable Door, except that it was a gap in Nature that opened only into the past, and through which it would be extremely perilous to go. Paul made himself a strong cup of tea, but it didn’t really help much. He considered going to the pub on the corner and drinking himself into a spongy mess, but he had to go to work tomorrow and learn how to fight stupid dragons. Just on the off chance he tried magic, but he gave himself a headache concentrating very hard, and when he opened his eyes Sophie still wasn’t there. That figured: magic only repairs that which has got screwed up. In this case, apparently, the mistake had already been rectified.

  There wasn’t anything on the telly apart from game shows and snooker, and he wasn’t in the mood. He tried going to bed, but the hole next to him was so wide and deep that he was afraid he’d roll into it and never climb out; so he sat in the armchair. He’d have read a book, only all the books on the shelf were hers.

  At three o’clock in the morning, Paul came to the conclusion that he didn’t like himself very much; which was a pity, since he was stuck with him, forsaking all others.

  At seven o’clock he got dressed, shaved, combed his hair. There wasn’t any bread, and the milk wasn’t entirely liquid. Magic would’ve set it right, but he couldn’t be bothered. He went to work.

  The receptionist smiled at Paul as he went past the front desk, which showed how much she knew about anything. He really didn’t want to go to his office, because there’d be a hole on the other side of the desk he didn’t particularly want to meet. Fuck Ricky Wurmtoter, he thought; just when I could use a Portable Door, he’s got it. But he went and sat opposite the hole for a few minutes, until suddenly he remembered that he was supposed to report to Benny Shumway first thing to begin his Heroism lessons.

  ‘Sorry I’m—’ he started to say as he opened Mr Shumway’s door, but the office was empty. He stood on the threshold, frowning. He’d been at JWW long enough to know that the cashier’s absence ( Dammit, he thought, is nobody here any more? Pretty soon, I’ll have the whole place to myself ) could mean many things. It could be an intelligence test, the first step in his training; or maybe, twenty years ago, Mr Shumway had sold his soul to the Evil One and the bailiffs had just been round to collect him; or maybe he’d just nipped across the landing for a quick pee. For once, though, not knowing what was going on didn’t bother him particularly. One of the advantages of nothing mattering any more is that nothing matters. Paul sat down and stared out of the window. Some trick of the light meant that he saw his own reflection, rather than the buildings opposite. He didn’t like looking at that. Depressing.

  ‘Great,’ said a voice behind him. ‘You’re here, finally. I’ve been all over the place looking for you.’ Mr Shumway didn’t sound happy, but that was hardly unusual. Paul noticed that in addition to his customary shabby charcoal-grey suit, he had a pair of safety goggles pushed up onto his forehead, and a pair of scorched leather gloves. He took these off and stashed them in a desk drawer. ‘Right,’ he went on, ‘since we’re late starting, and since we’ve already met, we won’t bother with the getting-to-know-you crap. Beowulf.’

  Paul wondered if that was dwarvish for ‘atishoo’. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Beowulf,’ Mr Shumway repeated. ‘Fine, you’ve never heard of it.’ He opened another drawer, picked out a dog-eared paperback, and tossed it at Paul. Much to Paul’s surprise, he caught it. ‘Read it carefully, it’s got a lot of useful stuff. For your information, it’s an Anglo-Saxon epic poem about a guy who fights monsters. I’m assuming you’ve already read sections five, nine and forty-six of the office procedures manual—’

  Normally, Paul would have lied; but nothing mattered any more, so why not tell the truth? ‘Sorry, no,’ he said. ‘I—’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Mr Shumway clicked his tongue. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know this is all an unwarranted intrusion on your free time and you don’t want to be here, but I’ve got work to do. I’m a realist, so I don’t expect you to help; but I do expect you to try as hard as you can not to be a bloody nuisance. Do as you’re told, do your homework, and don’t waste my time. Understood?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Paul replied, as guilt welled up inside him like the contents of a backed-up toilet. ‘It’s just that—’

  Suddenly, alarmingly, Mr Shumway grinned. ‘I know
,’ he said. ‘Makes you feel a bit like you’ve just been kicked in the nuts. I remember one time I got told to get lost by the love of my life, I went straight out, got completely blasted, woke up in hospital. Got discharged a week later, married the nurse. Fifth wife. Nice kid, had a nose like a parsnip. Don’t worry about it,’ he added cheerfully, ‘you’re probably better off. Great thing about getting dumped is, it means you’re now at liberty to go back to the sweetshop and try a few new flavours. It’s only boring people and doves that mate for life, and have you ever seen a cheerful dove? Anyway,’ he said, moving a pencil so that it lay exactly parallel with the edge of the desk, ‘that’s enough about that. No point you hanging about here if you haven’t done the background reading. I suggest you piss off somewhere quiet and read those chapters in the manual, and when you’ve done that, come back and we can get started.’ He hesitated, sneezed like a cannon shot, and wiped his nose on a huge red-andwhite handkerchief. ‘Right?’

  ‘Right,’ Paul replied, slightly dazed.

  ‘Fine. That means you can leave the room. Goodbye.’

  Paul was through the door and halfway to the stairs when he heard Mr Shumway’s voice behind him, calling out, ‘Remember, Beowulf. Get it read.’ When he looked round, he saw Mr Shumway’s door closing.

  So, Paul thought as he trailed back down the stairs, everybody in the office seems to know; probably knew before I did. Not a problem, saves me having to do the embarrassing explanations. Probably better off, Shumway had said. Was there a current Mrs Shumway? Paul hadn’t heard about her if there was, but that didn’t mean a great deal. No framed picture on the desk, for what that was worth. He went back to his office and took the procedures manual down off the shelf, feeling his tendons creak as they took up the strain. As he did so, it occurred to him that Mr Shumway hadn’t said go back to your office and read the chapters, he’d just said somewhere quiet. Possibly just a sloppy choice of words, but perhaps it was compassion; maybe Mr Shumway had shared confined spaces with people who weren’t there, and understood. Well, it was an interpretation, and Paul could read a fat, dull book just as easily somewhere else as here.