Our Future is in the Air

by Corballis, Tim

  ‘No one wanted it. Of course we didn’t want it.’

  ‘Didn’t we?’

  ‘You just said you—’

  ‘I didn’t. I, me, me. I didn’t want it. No. Fuck.’

  ‘You think I did?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that. Are you the investigating officer?’

  ‘No. That’s not really my kind of role. You should know that.’

  ‘Well, Shanks, I don’t even quite know what your role is.’

  ‘Good.’ A smile. ‘You should keep your voice down.’

  Grey nodded. They stood at the edge of the area where the body lay. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I have no idea. As I said, I’m not the investigating officer. It seems likely that there’s no connection with our activities.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. It seems… ’

  ‘I don’t think anything will be traced back.’

  ‘Shanks? Did we kill him?’

  ‘You need to think about what is most relevant.’

  ‘I know. Of course.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Shanks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What is your first name?’

  ‘I don’t have one. Goodbye, Grey.’

  Grey drove home. He would hold off reporting about this. Or was it already known? Actually, a detour. He turned off, though he was already nearly there. He only paused in thought for a second to wonder whether someone was spying on him. Shanks? There were rumours at work that, in the future, spying would become a kind of GENERAL CONDITION, with all people spied upon at all times, from all angles. It seemed unlikely—how could any government afford all those spies? He was driving towards the house, Janet’s and Marcus Milne’s house. There was no obvious reason. In fact, he was angry at Shanks. Did he acknowledge this to himself? It was a familiar anger, from when they had worked more closely together, not quite at the level of consciousness but sitting in his body as the desire for a kind of physical escape. In this state he reminded himself of Pen, unable quite to sit still. All of this psychology of the watcher and the watched, the kinds of attachments they formed to each other. In his forgotten uncertainty about whether he was being watched, he watched himself. He placed himself in the place of Pen (but Pen had no car?). Pen had been asked to put himself in false skins. Grey didn’t usually think in such terms. He stopped in a habitual place, near enough to observe the house. He hadn’t been here since she asked him to stop watching them. Two people left the house. He began to note the time down and their names (known) but stopped himself. He was not, in fact, here in an official capacity. He was here and not here, in one false skin and another slipped on over it. He was observing himself observing the house; he watched the pen in his hand and the notebook. By observing himself, did he obviate the possibility that others were observing him? He became a self-observing particle, a perfect circle removed from the world and its—

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Oh.’

  The door was open and Janet was looking in. She was looking a little the worse for wear.

  ‘I didn’t need to find you back here this morning on my morning walk.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought you’d finished with all this.’

  ‘I have! I have.’

  ‘So you’re just parked here, a notebook in your hand?’

  ‘Yes, um, actually. Yes.’

  She got in and sat next to him, pulling the door shut behind her.

  ‘Look. I don’t want the kids to grow up with some guy following us all around.’

  ‘Kids? I thought you only had one.’

  ‘We all live together now.’

  ‘I knew that. Yes.’

  ‘That’s just it. Isn’t it? You knowing things. Why do you insist on knowing things? Yes, yes, it’s your job, but—’ She threw her hands up.

  ‘Hey, why don’t I drive you?’

  She looked at him. ‘On my morning walk?’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Are you good at your job?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘I bet you’re pleased with the election.’

  ‘I suppose I am.’

  Something now between them, the beginning of a confession. Confession? No. What hung in the car, in its air? Did they both feel a charge, or a change? Each was of course feeling the effects of something different. The car, however, its metal casing, united them in their difference.

  ‘Fuck it, I have a bit of time. Drive me somewhere.’

  Almost too quickly, Grey started the car. Had Janet noticed that the open page of the notebook was empty? It might, in any case, have been because he had just turned to a fresh page. But: ‘You’re not really on duty, are you?’

  ‘It is Sunday.’

  ‘You have weekends off?’

  ‘Often. Shouldn’t you be with Peter?’

  ‘He’ll be okay. But it’s really—I don’t like it when you use his name.’

  ‘Would you use mine?’

  ‘Um… ’

  ‘I mean my first name. I’m sick of people calling me Grey.’

  ‘What is your first name?’

  ‘Kenneth.’

  ‘Do you like to be called Ken?’

  ‘Actually I prefer Kenneth.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, about Peter. There’s other adults there. They look after him. We’re all together.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Janet was looking at him.

  ‘Keep driving up here.’

  He kept driving. They went past the last of the houses, up a hill to where the road ended at a car park. There was one other car there, empty.

  She said, ‘We can stop here.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You probably disapprove of me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not looking after my son properly.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘Why?’

  She reached across and took hold of his penis through the fabric of his trousers. He sat, inert, slightly sad looking. She said, ‘I’m doing this for me, just for me. I still hate you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Can I kiss you though?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He kissed as if he wanted to pull something from her. She undid the buttons of his trousers and his belt, then said, ‘You have to touch me too, fuck you. Here.’ She pulled away and undid her own jeans, sliding them down, and her underwear too. ‘That’ll make it easier.’ He didn’t look for a second, then looked.

  ‘What about pregnancy?’

  ‘I’ll have an abortion.’ She sat across him. ‘I always wanted one.’

  ‘Uhm. I don’t…’ But he didn’t carry on.

  She said, ‘Put your seat back. And touch me.’

  He did, one then the other. He touched her, awkwardly, reaching his arm past hers where she was holding him. Then she slid forward and let him enter her. It was all very quick. They stopped for a second together like that, and he couldn’t look at her. Instead she looked down at him. Was he transformed for her, in that instant, into a human being? His face was sorrowful—or that was just his face. With his eyes averted, it was a nice face. What was she doing? Oh, yes she liked it. There were layers of other feelings—not all happy, not all angry, but those were mixed in there too. Was it possible to separate them out? The mix of them made her body move again, and, well, his too, by some sympathy in him, some sexual mutual impulse, and he pushed deeper in her, reaching up too to touch her under her T-shirt. Fuck it, she pulled it off for him; she unbuttoned his shirt then leaned down to kiss him, letting her skin touch his skin there, her breasts brushing his chest. What was going on in him? Had he wanted it? Presumably: all that ‘spying’, especially this last stop. But there’s imagination and there’s reality. What was he working out of all this? The crossing over from hints and hopes to this, full blown, this thing, this fucking (he pushed up into her
more now, held her by the hips) and it must have felt good, so good? He met her eyes—he forced himself to, didn’t he? It almost stopped everything, that look, but then their bodies seemed to know what to do, and the look locked them in and their eyes became part of it, a complicated set of flickerings, down or to one side but never enough, it seemed, to break off contact. He closed his when he climaxed.

  He said, ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Keep going!’

  He tried, for a while. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake don’t say sorry.’ She kissed him. ‘Touch me.’

  So they carried on. He was no expert, but she took his fingers in hers and helped him a little. Something about it was taking too long—for whom? When she climaxed it was more her than him that did it. A silence. A small laugh from her—but not cruel, more just a release of tension, an acknowledgment of something. She was lying awkwardly across him, her head on his shoulder, looking out the car window. There was nothing and everything to say. They both opted for nothing, though in each of them there were small starts, only sharp intakes of breath, hardly noticeable to the other.

  ‘I feel—’

  She put her hand over his mouth. She said, ‘I have to get back.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘This doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh, look, not that it wasn’t, um, meaningful.’

  ‘Yeah. Can I… ’

  ‘Do it again? I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’m married.’

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘But so are you.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘… Yes. Yeah, it is. What are you… are you going to tell her?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Why not?’

  A silence. Then: ‘I’m not like you. I don’t mind it, all the free love—but I’m not like that. It’s hard for me to think like that.’

  She looked up at him, straightening back in the process. ‘Free love? You, all of you—you talk about it more than we do it. We’re not just fucking all the time.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And there is no you and we. Is there?’

  ‘No. But I thought you wanted to change everything, to fight everything we stand for?’

  ‘Grey… Ken. Kenneth? I don’t know. I need to get back.’

  How could they, though, now? However, he put the seat up, then pulled up his trousers and buttoned his shirt. She got dressed too. She said, ‘I don’t know what to say now.’

  He said, ‘I love you.’

  She said, ‘Yeah. Well, I love you too. Oh… that sounded sarcastic. Really, I liked that, having sex with you. Don’t get all mixed up, Grey. Kenneth.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You love me now, I love you, that’s fine. That’s free love for you. It’s just now, here, while we’re in this car. You won’t love me tomorrow.’

  ‘It can’t work like that.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Not for me.’

  ‘I’ve never done this before, either—not like this.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  When he started the car, it cut through the conversation, sinking the turmoil back into each of them—into their own thoughts. She said, ‘So that was my morning walk.’ A laugh—from both of them. Then she said, ‘I don’t know whether to say thanks, or sorry.’

  He said, ‘Don’t say sorry.’ Then: ‘I don’t either.’ And then, any number of other hesitations. As they neared the house, Janet ducked her head. Was the movement involuntary? She couldn’t duck down low enough so that she was altogether invisible through the car’s windows. She turned, lowered, covered her face with her hand. Grey/Kenneth didn’t acknowledge the action—or, was there a look on his face, registering annoyance? Had that look, in any case, been growing as they drove, largely in silence?

  ‘Bye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Both, we can assume, wanted to say more. They were caught, still, in their need and inability to speak. Grey/Kenneth especially. The car was a mad, clamorous emptiness without her. He wasn’t driving very safely. He looked in his rearview mirror to see her, but blinked away the sight. Where could he go now? Nowhere was as terrifying as home, but there was nowhere else to go. The city, the world, spread itself out as a vacant network, a feelingless expanse, something without texture or solidity (he wanted, actually, to crash the car into something). By what method was Shanks surveilling him? Was there a bug in the car? Grey/Kenneth could, he thought, deny anything—even the sex with Janet—but there was something now, an exception: Pen’s body, lifeless, decomposed, not examined. That image would find its way through all of Grey’s (Kenneth’s) concealment strategies, even his self-concealment strategies—the strongest ones. He had made Janet perform a betrayal that was worse than it would have been if Pen had been alive—a betrayal Janet couldn’t know about. RESPONSIBILITY, a term that had been at his core, bore on him now, not a foundation but a weight pressing on his foundationless remains. His body bore it as it bore the feeling-memory of her, of being in her. But having sex with her, it had felt in some way inevitable—so, where, what responsibility was it?

  His home was unchanged. Why would it be changed? Before he got out of the car he glimpsed her through the window, and his oldest boy too—a head of hair, streaking from one side to the other. Did she look out and see him? Actually he didn’t get out. He backed the car away again. Should he wave? No harm either way—it would make the later reconstruction of events simpler. He waved. His SPY MENTALITY would serve him well, but later. He would wear it, then become it.

  He drove out, and back across the city. SURVEILLANCE had never felt more complete—as if it were present in the air itself, thickening it. Also present in his blood. How could he find Shanks? At a traffic light, he looked around the car, expecting to see him somewhere. He was driving back to the SCENE where he had—just that morning!—seen Pen’s body. Was it a conscious decision to drive there? At least, he found himself driving in that direction. Shanks would be there—that was enough reason. Shanks would be keeping an eye on the situation. Shanks Shanks Shanks Shanks. Shanks knew everything; Shanks had put him in this situation—how? No. Now he had Janet to take care of. No. What strings could Shanks pull? Janet, Janet Evans. If Shanks didn’t know, at least Grey, Kenneth, should ask him. Had Shanks always been the one who knew things?

  He stopped outside the building and went around the side. There was the site: the body had been there. Now it was empty. There was no sign that anything had taken place.

  He couldn’t remember what to look for. Now, in any case, no stains, no remainder.

  Leonard caught her in the kitchen. ‘Who was that with you in the car yesterday?’

  ‘Car?’

  ‘Looked like a pretty nice one… ’

  Was he smiling? Yes. ‘Oh, yes. That was a friend. Family friend.’

  Peter was sitting on the bench, eating his breakfast. He looked at her. There was a look in his eyes. Janet said to him, ‘It wasn’t your dad.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Just in case you were wondering.’

  ‘No, Mum.’ Leonard patted him on the head, and Peter smiled. Was Peter missing Pen? Was Janet? Almost involuntarily, she looked out the window, as if she might catch Grey sitting out there—though the road wasn’t visible from here. She did miss Pen, achingly, though the ache now made itself felt as a great arcing bend in her body, against which she tried to straighten; the ache was a task, a burden. The body as a STAGE for all kinds of events… yes, though she tried not to, she could feel Kenneth/Grey on her, in her. At the same time, though, it had been a way of dispelling him, discharging a need, clearing something away. She hadn’t anticipated that it would leave so many traces, so many small bodily reminders. Maybe it was a younger person’s luxury, to
be able to forget sex so quickly? But no, this sex was something different, and anyway, she hadn’t exactly planned it. Peter was looking at her again, and she snapped back to the present, to him, to his look; she returned it, then hugged him.

  He said, ‘I know you miss him.’

  She hugged him harder. Leonard’s back was turned, but there was something legible in his body. When he turned back it was also legible in his face. She dropped Peter to the floor and he skipped out. ‘School!’ she called out after him. ‘Dani’s already ready.’ She raised her eyebrows at Leonard—could a conversation happen in these kinds of gestures? What conversation would it be?

  He said, ‘It’s none of my business.’

  ‘It was nothing. He was an old friend.’

  ‘You kind of disappeared.’

  ‘Did Peter… ’

  ‘No. No big deal. You should invite him in next time—it’s your house.’ Then: ‘This thing with your husband, it must be really hard.’

  She nodded. Lilly and Marcus bustled in then, bringing the conversation to a close.

  ‘Shanks? Why haven’t you been answering your phone?’

  ‘Hello, Grey. You’ve found yourself in a compromising situation.’

  ‘What? What do you… ’

  ‘Use your deductive abilities.’

  ‘I went back to the scene, Shanks. It was all cleaned up.’

  ‘What scene?’

  ‘Pen Evans. His body. Shanks! You know what… ’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is there something you need to tell me?’

  ‘Where’s his body?’

  ‘Body?’

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘What have you done, Grey?’

  ‘Grey’s resignation from the Service didn’t come as a complete surprise to us. He had been unenthusiastic about his work for some time. Some put it down to the discrediting of the Service, after our failure to achieve a conviction for espionage of economist William Sutch earlier that year. Sutch died not long before Grey resigned, so it is possible that this did affect him. Grey wasn’t directly involved in the Sutch case though, and his halfheartedness seems to have preceded the court’s decision.’

  ‘His marriage had also been on the rocks?’

  ‘We are not sure how long that was going on. It seems he was never around much for his children—his job took him out of the house at all hours. This in itself may have led to his levels of stress. In any case, Grey had been acting strangely and not focusing on his work. There were unexplained absences. The atmosphere at the Service in those days was, as far as we remember it, relatively relaxed, but Grey’s erratic behaviour did attract some attention. We know that he fell out decisively with Shanks, his regular contact in the police, shortly before his resignation. At around the same time, he didn’t come home to his family for a number of weeks.’