by Peter Marks
Nathan, sunglasses still hiding sorry retinas, finished explaining his soon to be had fortune and how he proposed attaining it.
‘So you see, it’s my investment in the future.’
‘What’s your investment?’ Nicola cried, ‘a future without furniture? You really are mad you know.’ Wright lived in an empty flat with nothing but a bed and a television and Erg the computer but he still had the nerve to deny he was crazy.
‘It only seems like it.’ Nathan said, knowing damn well there was a high probability he had more than a few screws loose. Or completely lost.
Nicola, sipping the vile no milk, no sugar so no satisfaction coffee, thought how rational he sounded for someone who should be drooling, on drugs and locked in a padded cell as empty as this one. She’d never thought people went mad quite so quietly and although Nicola knew Wright believed this Doubleday nonsense, she hadn’t realised he was willing to stake his comfort on it.
‘So what happens if you’re wrong?’
‘But I’m Wright.’
‘Don’t be cute. What happens if you spend your life savings and end with zero?’
‘Zero? Nothing obviously.’
He was impossible. Putting the mug down on the carpet, she suddenly noticed the new wallpaper.
‘Gretel Lad Race 5 250 -1, Delirious Race 8 80 -1 .....Futures - Sugar ...Gold Up $2 ....BHP .25’ Nicola read aloud, surveying a small section of the wall where Wright’s stereo once was. ‘Tattslotto 2, 4, 40, 24, 25, 32 .....Dow Jones 19.2 gain’ The place reminded her of the interior of a jail cell, or the plastered innuendo of toilet walls.
‘Christ Nathan, what’s this?’
‘My almanac. Or it was until I ran out of space.’
Nicola got up and went from wall to wall downstairs. Then went upstairs. Then came down again, laughing.
‘I’ve got to hand it to you Nathan, when you go troppo, you do it in style. There must be a thousand encyclopedias written on your walls. This place will be like Luxor one day. Archaeologists will dig for your tomb one day and you’ll be a museum piece.....’
Wright was 37. Wright was already a museum piece.
________________
Being wealthy was not the problem - becoming wealthy was. Now code named Beggar’s Banquet, Wright’s entire operation was agonisingly time consuming so he gave up all pretence of work. All other interests dumped, he sat upstairs on the floor amongst the coiled leads and empty bottles of alcohol thumping away at the keyboard, copying anything that could assist him, studiously typing all the relevant facts, mainly figures, into Erg maniacally entering excerpts from the Sun, Age, Herald, Australian and Financial Review. He entered articles from The Bulletin and the Wall Street Journal and about a dozen others while ignoring the only publication that contained any figures that really interested him. Penthouse.
Wright really was sick. And sinking fast. His friends were worried, his parents divorced, his sanity questioned and his socks had no option but to stick with him.
________________
As they were stuck to him.
Chapter Twenty-Five
BATH TIME
TIME HEALS ALL WOUNDS. But Wright was growing ever more certain that he wouldn’t live that long. The weeks went, crawled sloth slowly but he didn’t feel any better. Doubleday refused his invitation to transpire and he continued to endure the phantom pains from the amputated Kelly. Wright was anxious, tired and fed up.
He should have felt humiliated.
He was viewed as either pathetic or crazy and neither was complimentary but he understood people didn’t understand his pain so he didn’t get too angry with them.
He just listed them in a small black book for future revenge.
________________
Nicola said he should start communing with humanity again saying he should get out and at least attempt to rediscover the joys of sex before he forgot what sex was. Nathan told her he could wait until Doubleday happened. Happened to make him 75 probably and too desiccated to dabble so he decided to take her advice and began going out occasionally.
But Wright, when he did go out, never went out for long. When the clock struck nine, Wright left, rushing home from where-ever he happened to be to feed Erg and, no matter how much he tried to defend his behaviour on the phone the next day to the women he’d left eating alone in a crowded restaurant, they didn’t understand his habit. They said he was a workaholic so he shouldn’t bother them again. So Nathan, growing weary of one night strandings, did what he always did when he couldn’t tell the truth. He invented.
Wright told the girls he fled from (for Erg and not because of their lack interesting conversation or temptingly bulging forms) that he was an academic and that he was writing a thesis which was a fine lie but the problem then was that the Jenny or Cathy or Pedigree Canine he dated would actually show an interest in his scholarly pursuit and, when he did manage to lure them back to the vacant flat (which he said he was re-decorating) they’d ask to see his labours.
After being caught a thesis short on too many occasions, he finally had to go to the library and copy one into Erg in evidence.
He called it “The Cinderella Syndrome”.
This was a clever ploy which convinced most, but still didn’t solve the problem. Oddly, none of the women considered it reasonable to leave an expensive restaurant before they’d eaten Wright’s money’s worth and yelled and screamed when he dragged them out without dessert and in the end this lunacy led to loneliness.
The women stopped ringing, his friends stopped calling in and his psychiatrist started sending threatening letters through the mail so he surrendered to the inevitable. He told Nicola she didn’t know what she was talking about and gave up on going out.
________________
Retired from the game again Nathan went back to doing what he did best. He hid. He became a hermit again and gleaned instead of socialising, sitting squat on the floor upstairs all day and every night in front of the computer feeding retrieved facts from newspapers, books, magazines, television, other computers, anything and everything that could give him his fix for he had become addicted to the pursuit of power as surely as tobacco or alcohol (which he was also addicted to).
He became adept and arthritic with the sheer weight of typing. Got RSI and nowhere. But he didn’t capitulate. Nathan got into a sleepless routine of feeding and checking, waking each day at five in the morning to watch the news program eating biscuits, drinking coffee and smoking two packets of cigarettes awaiting the dull thud of paper on concrete when he’d scamper to the front door to check on the date of the morning paper just in case the newsreader had got the day wrong.
Just in case it was time to Tango.
________________
Holding a candle, shielding it with the palm of his left hand, Wright unlocked the door.
‘Open the bloody door, it’s freezing out here.’ Simon shivered, standing outside in the refrigerator darkness. Wright let him in five minutes later when he was satisfied that it wasn’t some sneaky Mormon disguised as Simon trying to save his soul. Nathan’s paranoia was blossoming magnificently.
‘It’s bloody freezing in here too,’ Simon said, searching the darkness for somewhere to sit or warm himself. There was neither. Although it was dark, the room was shapeless. He looked at Wright who looked like an Apache tent for he had a large blanket bound around him so that only his face peered from the triangular wrap. It was September and frost cold.
‘What’s with the candle? Entertaining spirits or just drinking them? Why is it so cold in here, why are the light’s out?’
‘Any more questions,’ the travelling tepee asked, shuffling into the kitchen where there was a small Primus stove which he cranked into flame and placed a pot full of water on it’s spindly wire frame top. ‘Take a pew.’ Nathan said, fumbling for the only two mugs whose month old contents hadn’t turned into pot plants.
‘Where?’
‘At your feet
.’
‘That’s the floor!’
‘That’s a pew, now sit...’
Simon had heard about Nathan’s increasingly strange behaviour but since no-one had answered the door on the last three occasions he’d visited, he’d not actually witnessed the proof of Wright’s complete demise. And he couldn’t ring any more because Wright’s phone had been cut off. And the primus was in place of the gas, which had joined the electricity leaving Wright to his own primitive devices.
‘Fuck Nathan, what’s going on?’ Simon gasped, settling on the carpet.
‘Wealth and riches undreamed of. Porsches and champagne and holidays at Club Med. Wine, women and song. Mooneeeey, ‘ he intoned. ‘Doubleday!’ He explained.
‘Doubleday? Jesus, you’re not still on about that shit are you?’
‘Just you wait and see.’
‘It’s dark, I can’t see a fucking thing!’
‘It’s dark because there’s not a fucking thing to see,’ Wright advised. ‘What’s your problem? Why is it that none of you believe me about Doubleday? Have I ever lied to you before?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘When do you want me to start? When you were two, or twenty? Or beyond redemption? You’ve been telling porkies since you could first speak. You’re one of the most accomplished bullshit artists since ...’
‘....you’
‘....since diplomacy and politics were invented just so lying turds like you could have somewhere to exercise your bull.’
‘Okay, I get your point. But I only lie because truth has always been nothing but the sad reflection of my sorry life, which is, and always has been, as chronically dull as your ute’s paintwork.’ Wright said, stirring the muddy water in the pot and picking out the various deposits of decomposing matter swimming virulent on the dank surface. ‘So I exaggerate, so what? I’d be bored out of my brain if I had to accept reality as truth ...but I only ever fibbed when I meant to. I’ve never lied about anything important like my age, or poverty or the overwhelming desire to see you reincarnated as a mute parrot.’
‘You wouldn’t know truth if it bit you on the bum.’
It was a fair comment. None of his best and closest friends believed him about anything, so certainly not his story about the unbelievable Doubleday. Basically, they all thought Wright was full of shit and badly in need of a truth enema.
________________
But they were all wrong for IT happened. The unbelievable occurred, delirium finally delivered. Wright, sprawled on the floor of the office upstairs, was chewing on a crust of slightly green three week old bread watching the morning news. With the small generator churning in the background, feeding the few remaining electrical items he hadn’t sold, he had a blanket firmly wrapped about him to stave off the chill which seemed more vicious these winter days now that he’d lost so much weight from not being able to afford to eat (abject poverty being the deprived way to diet).
He, and his three stone lost from lack of food frame, listened intently as the news reader told him about yesterday.
Wright’s eyes suddenly showed a rare glimpse of life and leaning forward, he tilted his ears to the TV to make sure he’d heard properly. When he confirmed he had, he sprang at the television and changed channels. And the day remained yesterday. Too weary, too hung-over to be any more excitable than the vegetable he was, he slowly, grunting loudly, hauled himself off the floor and dragged himself drowsily downstairs.
For the first time in months, beginning to settle across a black stubble jaw, the faint trace of a genuine smile appeared. Wright, still bundled in the blanket, grabbed a few necessities and wandered out the front door to sit by the front gate in wait for further confirmation of the day and date.
Looking like a refugee and smelling like refuse, huddled against the fence drinking from a bottle of Whisky hidden in a brown paper bag, moist breath vaporising in the cold morning, Wright sat on the wet footpath waiting for the papers to arrive. Occasionally, the odd early riser and or still jogging jogger stopped in front of him. To drop money in his lap. God, I must look like a bum Wright thought wishing he’d done this earlier. Then maybe he’d have eaten more regularly and stayed as fat and flabby as he’d never wanted to be anyway.
Thus far, losing weight had been the one redeeming feature of the Doubleday chase.
At five thirty, after ten minutes of convincing the paperboy that there was no need to call the police, that he did in fact live there and wasn’t an iterate, the little runt handed him the fifteen papers and magazines he had delivered every day. (But only after Wright had given the prepubescent profiteer every cent his bumming had earned him. There went breakfast).
‘Oh, God, I’ve done it,’ he smiled thinly, walking retardedly triumphant back through the open door, holding a paper between Deliberately Toxified hands which shook with the good news and Whisky O.D’s.
Looking apologetically up at the ceiling, he muttered, ‘Sorry, you’ve done it,’ just in case God changed her mind and stole D day back (luckily for him, SHE was still asleep).
Upstairs, Wright the filthy showered for the first time in two weeks and, dressed in the only clothes he found that weren’t moving, Wright the soon to be filthy rich, left home again. Jangling in his jacket pocket were the coins that had been reserved for this day for the purpose of verification. Every other cent was in the bank also waiting for today. The plan had been carefully worked out and Wright, almost running, kept rigorously to schedule.
Placing a pile of twenty cent pieces on the shelf by the only public phone he could find that was working, and wasn’t the scene of a vandals picnic or a drunk’s puke, although even this phone box smelt of aged urine and spent beer, Nathan began dialling.
‘Simon, what day is it?’
‘Shit Nathan, have you got any idea of what time it is!’
‘Shut it Simon. Now what day is it?’
‘Tuesday, what the fuck do you think....’
The best thing about getting people before they actually woke up was they didn’t lie. Their brain’s simply couldn’t cope.
________________
‘Mum, what day is it?’
‘Mother’s Day.’
‘No it isn’t.’
‘Well it must be some special day, otherwise you wouldn’t have rung. You never ring your poor old mum these days ...unless you want something.’
‘Christ mum, whose writing your scripts, a Xerox machine? Can’t you find anything different to say to your beloved son.’
‘Good-bye son.’
‘Good-bye mum...’
________________
‘Fionna, what day is it?’
‘Shit Nathan, have you got any idea of what time it is!’ Deja Vu.
‘Of course I have. It’s today.’
‘Beep...beep...I’m sorry, Fionna is not at home. If you’d like to leave your name and number after the tone I’ll get back to you as soon as I’ve nuked every phone box in Melbourne...’
Smartarse.
________________
‘Alan, what day is it?’
‘Shit Nathan, have you got any idea of what time it is!’ Christ, this was getting monotonous.
‘Alan, what day is it?’
‘When?’
‘Today, you motherfucker!’
‘It’s Tuesday ....and the first day of the rest of your afterlife when I’ve finished with you.’
________________
This went on. And on and on. He rang every-one he knew, and several he didn’t. Then, as final confirmation, he phoned the Crisis Counselling Line. They told him it was a beautiful Tuesday and wasn’t it wonderful to be alive. And Wright agreed.
The entire staff of the centre immediately suicided from shock.
________________
He sauntered up the stairs wondering what he’d buy first. A Porsche, a condominium in the snow, or perhaps a full page advertisement in the papers declaring h
is fortune - and the fact that all those who doubted his sanity couldn’t expect to get a penny from a madman. He was wealthy enough to consider all options, well almost. All he had to do to complete Phase Two (Phase One being: Confirmation), Phase Two being to get Erg to cough up the information he’d fed it yesterday, then complete Phase Three (Place Your Bets) and the world was his.
It was still dark so he had a candle in a cup to light the room. Turning on the generator he’d stolen from a building site two blocks away under the cover of darkness, and under the influence, to power the TV and Erg when his government refused to support his scheme because Wright refused to support their monopoly by paying the bill, he fed paper into jaws of the printer and readied himself for wealth.
Switching Erg on, he saw the power surge and the screen fill. Smoking, now on his third packet for the morning, he went through the well practiced procedure and located the correct file. That process complete, he calmly leaned back, switched on the printer and waited for the screen to tell him of yesterday’s events. And today’s fortune.
Erg erred.
________________
Wright died. Something was wrong. The display was alarming for there, written on the luminous tube in front of him, wasn’t the information he’d asked for. It wasn’t what he’d typed last night, Tuesday night. There in glowing amber and mutely useless, was Monday’s compilation, reams of outdated figures rushed at him from the humming innards of the fuckwit Erg. Wright panicked, then screamed, then just collapsed.
What the fuck had happened?
The blood drained from an already paste face until Wright was a whiter shade of suicidal. It couldn’t be. But it was. Nathan slumped spread-eagled on the floor, tears flushing from blood eyes. Sniffling moistly, nose to the carpet distressed and disheartened, he spat abuse at the amber Erg before changing tactics (just as he did in his disputes with the Almighty) and began pleading and grovelling but Erg remained obstinate, radiating that in its humble opinion it was Tuesday morning so it would only offer last night’s information and Ergs humbling opinion was that last night was Monday night.
