Naked City

by Anthony Cropper

  Periodically, he would leave the room without an excuse. He would be gone for ten minutes and return less exasperated – calm almost – until he walked to the water cooler; then he would become angry again when he saw it was empty. This cycle continued well into the afternoon until the support staff came with a new container. Then Ryan was forced to look for a new distraction. He found it, three hours before the end of the day, beneath the window. A rare moment of inspiration.

  Below, the statue was still holding his spear pose. He still held it, though juddered a little, when the milk carton crashed down onto his left arm. The contents missed most of his torso and spilled out over his trousers. The carton rattled to a stop by his feet. There was no-one in the square to watch this piece of vandalism; the builders were on their break and the sun had scoured the rest. Only one other person had seen the incident.

  ‘You threw it,’ said Jasvir.

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘You threw it.’

  ‘Why would I throw it, Jas?’

  The answer was ‘why not?’. She had seen it on his face as he had looked out over the statue, as he had raised the carton to eye level and pretended to read the advertising; a rare moment when she had pierced into his mentality. And it struck her as before; the sheer casualness of his actions. There were no repercussions in his world. A dropped carton stayed dropped. Jasvir had felt him make the choice, seen him pretend to fumble, and protested too late. She had waited for a reason to protest. She had wanted a reason.

  ‘He might appreciate the shower,’ smiled Ryan, then lost that painful smirk a little as he returned to his desk. His duties still lay there, unfinished, and there were still three hours to go.

  ‘You should apologise. It’s not right,’ said Jasvir trying to focus her anger into one moral push. She had hoped for something stronger.

  Ryan lifted a sheet of paper and talked underneath it. ‘I’ll do it later.’

  It was no use. Jasvir hadn’t the stamina to hate him; not now and not forever. His continued presence only triggered bouts of dislike, not a festering anger. Had Ryan been a stranger, she would have passed him without any emotion. Had Ryan been a colleague elsewhere, she would have made polite small-talk with him. But there, in that room together, they traded their occasional barbs; it would never go beyond that. Jasvir recognised the unfortunate uniqueness of their relationship (its artificiality as well). She felt that somewhere beneath that exterior was a reasonable man, just married and with a new home, who had been pushed by heat and boredom into petulance. Still, she couldn’t help feeling that, for him, it was nothing a night out in Leeds or Manchester wouldn’t fix. There were some prejudices she would not drop.

  But as she looked out of the window she realised that her hate, like her love, was a lukewarm emotion; both would reach the same mundane sourness. They would never rise to any great heights for long. They were not searing. They were not solid or immovable. They were not overpowering legends that people would write songs about. They were not… And then she saw her statue again. The milk still dripped a little from his body (already rancid, it would stink even more as the open air got to it). But he had not moved. He still held his heroic posture no matter what was thrown at him. A body that said ‘just grin and bear it’.

  Jasvir could have smiled, but she just watched. Then she returned to her duties.

  Three hours later, and she was downstairs, draping an unnecessary jacket over her arm and waving goodbye to the security staff as she left. Left into a day that was beginning to surrender around her. The builders had packed away their equipment, leaving their work half-completed, and all the other office-workers had gone. Shop fronts were closing their metal eyelids. And the light was starting to brown – like a left apple core.

  Usually, this was her favourite part of the day. It was as though she had left the furnace of her office, and could revel in the almost orgasmic coolness of outdoors. There was no-one to watch her and there was a pleasant stillness at the heart of the city. The magic of things winding down.

  But again she saw her statue, looking more solitary than ever in the deserted square. And this was not usual. Normally, he would find a chance to ghost away in the evening. She would be absent from her desk for a minute, and he would take his opportunity to disappear; it was as though he was watching her (impossible though it seemed) for a sign of movement. Yet, now he had broken their routine (the game in which Jasvir had made herself complicit). He was still there. Still and still.

  Jasvir contemplated moving towards him and perhaps saying something, but that would be another rule broken. In all the months that he had been in the square, she had hurried past and avoided looking in his direction. She had never dropped anything in the tray (she didn’t know why) and had never got truly close to him. All her viewing was done from above. There had been no communication between them.

  But now, as she moved nearer, she could see the things she had missed from a distance or in her shuffling quickness to get to work. See, for example, that his tanned skin obscured both his race and his age; she could tell nothing from his features (in fact, they seemed to change greatly as she came closer or as she altered her view). He could have stood in any city in any country and passed as an almost-native. Jasvir tried to imagine it; all the parts of the world that had hurried around him whilst he had watched in absolute stillness. Absolute because she had never seen him blink.

  She came as close to him as she had ever done before (no more than a few metres separated them) and then felt the surge: the point-of-no-return. The possibilities flooded through her mind: maybe she was in love, maybe this statue was love, maybe love was not innate, maybe love was a shaped, worked thing, maybe love… maybe…

  She needed an excuse to talk to him (something he could not ignore), and then she saw the milk stains still on his clothing. Even the carton remained by his feet. Then Jasvir knew that she would apologise for Ryan, and that that apology would spread out, encompassing the builders and the disinterested tourists and the shoppers and the cruel city beyond. She would say sorry on behalf of everything.

  But her words only limped out. ‘Excuse me, my name is Jasvir Kaur. I work in the offices behind you, on the second floor, and I…’ They were not enough. They were trapped in politeness. She could not say…

  And then he moved. It was unnoticeable at first, but there was a definite shift; like the change between seasons, like something coming to life. But it was a slow movement, made with difficulty as though a great weight was upon him; the overpowering gravity of a hot day.

  And Jasvir stepped forward too with great difficulty, because she could see what he was doing. The statue had dropped his imaginary lance and was twisting to face her. When his actions were becoming absolutely clear, she stopped. Because, before her, he gently opened out his arms and invited an embrace. Then his mouth spread out into a practised, beatific smile. His eyes switched on. It seemed as though his whole being was changing for her, was channelling the sun’s power, and was trying to pull her in with the force of its pleading.

  But Jasvir did not run towards him. Neither did she smile or embrace in return. She was paralysed. All she could do was stand. Still. And watch. And watch. And let the concrete continue setting around her ankles.

  Percentages

  Steve Dearden

  Helen slams her briefcase on to the kitchen table, slaps down the court order for the unpaid council tax. ‘Jenny -’

  ‘I’m sorry Helen, I’ve just not had -’

  ‘Then run a city Jenny. You say you haven’t had time to pay the city, try running it.’

  An unpaid bill is not what I need to talk about.

  ‘No Helen, look -’

  ‘You know what I’ve been having meetings about all afternoon? Chewing gum. I thought we were supposed to manage the serious stuff: cars, acids, asbestos. Today? Chewing gum. The city’s paved with it.’

  ‘H-’

  ‘Then drain covers: people suing us because they’ve been -�
�

  I have something to tell Helen. ‘I -’

  ‘Now we have to have a team to check whether-’

  I have perfected the art of listening just enough to say ‘Yes’ occasionally, ‘No’ in the right place, to bob my head, purse my lips attentively while thinking about the things I would say if Helen let me get a word in. But tonight I’m biting my thumb knuckle and wondering if Cyd will keep in touch.

  Cyd’s one of our banking assistants, coasting between her degree and working out what it is she wants to do with the rest of her life. She’s the brightest brain in the branch. On her first morning we discovered we both remembered places by taste rather than scenery or buildings: Cranachan Kilmartin. Hetton dill lamb. Live cockles in Carnac. Rouen Gewurztraminer, an ice pile of snails, mussels, cockles, oysters, langoustine. Bruges chips with mayonnaise. St Petersburg ice cream. Anjuna bel puri, Vancouver bo nhung dam. We both had parents whose sacred texts were Elizabeth David, Claudia Roden, Jane Grigson, so as kids beans on toast, egg and chips were exotic; things you only got at other kid’s houses. I looked forward to family camping holidays: Angel Delight, Fray Bentos pies, Chunky Chicken.

  Cyd says ‘Fray Bentos? Chunky Chicken?’ like she’s turning over bits of wreckage. I haven’t dared tell her the menu of the first restaurant where I worked in the seventies: prawn cocktails, whitebait, melon with an orange slice and a cherry on sticks, steak diannes, trout and almonds, ice creams, fruit salad meringue for pud. And I have not told Helen how I watch for Cyd putting her pens in her pot, closing down her computer, how ‘accidental’ meetings on the way to the station have become a drink most nights.

  Helen’s well into her unloading, now it’s all the things being the Chief Exec of a city means she’s responsible for, market traders, teachers, taxis, paedophiles, rivers, soil, ‘we’re even policing the bloody air now.’

  One time, standing in the packed carriage home, I was telling Cyd how all those family holidays - the tents, campsites, lakes, forests, beaches, towns - all blend into a memory of sticky car seats on the back of hot legs, a scratchy impatience in the small of my back.

  She said ‘A scratchy impatience in the small of your back?’

  In the Arts Bar once I was telling her about my first job in a real restaurant, how I loved the way we ordered, took delivery, gathered, turned out, prepared, arranged taste, colour, shape, sent plates out on a waiter’s arm into the buzz of covers.

  She said ‘The buzz of covers?’ Her smile like hot breath on my arm.

  Another time, in one of those bars where the kitchen seems three floors or even blocks away and the menu is a slim card and the waitress all about drinks, Cyd asked me why I had left restaurants to work in a bank. I was shouting against the sound system, shredding my voice, my lips on her ear ‘Realised…that kinda life…slavery…too many hours…too hot…grind. Loved it…but.’ I held up my hand. ‘Burnt too bad to grip…look.’ Did the finger yap yap talking thing that shows how I still can’t close my palm even after twenty years. ‘The owner then…wonderful man…gave me a chance…kept me on…taught me the books.’

  Cyd holds my hand, prods the scar tissue with her thumb.

  On the train later, sitting at Platform 2a waiting for a crew. ‘That guy taught me to see the bumps and holes in budgets, cashflows.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I went into banking, specialised in restaurant, bar accounts, people moved their accounts because of me, it was fantastic, I was one of them. I could make the bank work for them.’

  ‘Could?’

  ‘Yes could. In a way that I can’t now.’

  Cyd said ‘The trouble with you love, is everything you say’s in the past tense.’ A scratchy impatience in the small of your back. A buzz of covers. Everything you say is in the past tense. I love the way Cyd says things in a way that means afterwards I have to shake out our conversations and, opening my fingers slightly, blow in my palm.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ Helen gets a Sauvignon from the fridge. ‘Today Prescott’s office told me that by next Tuesday. Next. Tuesday. They want a policy on how we manage seven hundred and fifteen thousand people’s weight.’

  I would like to reach Helen, to stop her flow. She holds the unopened wine in one hand, her forehead in the other. ‘This morning – an absurd investment seminar for Thai business men, I was thinking fuck, I even have a foreign policy now.’

  I take the bottle, find the corkscrew, try to tune out but only half succeed, she’s on about, ‘support…support…support… support…support’ stuff about business, pregnancy, refugees, employment. I pour her wine. ‘We support so much I feel like the scaffolding you see packed into gutted buildings holding up the fronts: brain support.’

  ‘I have something I have –’

  ‘This lunch time I got back to the office to find I’m two Heads of Service down. Two, not three this week, so it’s an improvement.’

  Helen has finished her wine already. I refill the deep glass that if she is not careful her grip will shatter. I want to tell her how today my boss Tony said, ‘I’m taking you for a drink.’ Not like, would you like a drink, or you need a drink, or I’d like to buy you a drink, but like we need to talk. Or more like you need a talking to.

  Tony is all skinny wrists and fingers, he probably has an intricate relationship with his flannel but is powerful now the bank has refocused. He says things like let me ask you this before telling you. Says before he lies to me let me look you in the eye and say, ‘I don’t want to lose you, account holders rate you highly…’ pulls his cuffs as if he is arming them, ‘…but I am beginning to wonder whether you’d rather be on their payroll than ours.’

  I say ‘Customers.’

  ‘Yeh yeh.’

  ‘Customers not account holders.’

  He had come to observe me meeting one of my oldest customers – and as soon as we were on the street afterwards, Tony was waving his bony little hands. ‘I can’t believe you talked so much about bars and restaurants and so little about banking. I have to say this to you Jen, your targets are not about how popular you are, but new accounts and getting existings to switch to Business First, Premier Plus. You offered him a loan on his existing account!’

  ‘It’s the cheapest way for him to borrow.’

  He said ‘I’m taking you for a drink.’ Then later in the Arts ‘I expect you’re dry white,’ and although that was actually what I wanted I said ‘No, red’. So he ordered two small reds, chose a table at the end of the bar, laced his knuckles ‘I want to say this in a way that we will both understand. There is no room on my team for people who don’t give a hundred and ten per cent.’

  When the waitress brought our wine he thanked her like she had handed him a thin knife with which to stab himself in the throat. ‘Look I am sure HR have solutions for this kind of thing, but we don’t have the time they seem to need to do anything these days, we’re already six months into the year and your targets haven’t left base so either we see marked improvement right away or we talk about…I dunno, you could redeploy but not at this level.’ He had already taken away most of the things that made me love my job, I couldn’t bear hearing him take away the job itself, his mouth moving like the corners of words stung his lips.

  I thought just for a second about putting my side - the value of my relationships with customers – trust - how they confide in me more than they should a bank manager, admit their dreams. But all I could think of was how I see, how I taste this city in a way Tony never will - while he sleeps the suppliers who bank with me take carcasses, strip, bone, joint, tie, they simmer trimmings to stocks, bake, pipe, mould, and while Tony sits in his nose-to-tailed rush-hour Jag, deliveries are well underway, veg, fish, fruit, wines through the morning, then the first customers, some before places are quite set up, in from shopping, out of town, work, people meeting, friends, business, holes in credit cards, change lighter from tips, turfing the last of them out to take stock, restock, send out to replace things there’s been a run on, before
the evening the staff meal, almost the best cooking of the day, then the early birds through to roosting stragglers and if we’re lucky last orders somewhere, placing orders for the next day to the night birds on our mobiles.

  Our mobiles? Cyd would say ‘Our mobiles?’

  I realised I was sitting looking at Tony how Cyd would have sat back at an angle, pulling her chin. I wanted to lean over and squeeze my fingers under his kneecap. ‘What does a hundred and ten per cent mean?’

  Tony sat up like I had squeezed him. ‘Having everything, not relaxing.’

  ‘A hundred and ten per cent? Come on Tony, you’re a banker.’

  ‘One ten per cent means are you sure everything really does mean everything? Are you sure your competitor hasn’t something you haven’t thought of? Are you sure he isn’t about to have something that makes your everything not everything?’

  ‘Tony, show me a hundred and ten per cent.’

  Tony reached across to the bar for a large empty wine glass, he poured his small red into it, then took my small red, poured that in too. ‘You have no wine, you are looking at mine, I have it. Capisco?’

  Little Tony saying capisco made me laugh, made me want to push a small hole in his forehead with my fingernail, like his little ‘o’ mouth.

  That’s when I did it. I need to tell Helen what I did.

  ‘Helen listen, for God’s sake listen.’

  ‘I’m sorry love, it’s not the council tax, though I am mad about that. You know the press will have me if that comes to anything. Pay it, I’ll pay it now, where’s the chequebook, look I love my job I love this place but sometimes I just…tonight coming home…’