A Short Affair

by Simon Oldfield

  I rub my legs, they’re sair fae aw the walking, and I lean my heed back against the chair and close my eyes, hoping fir just a memory in my legs; in my chest.

  Just a memory o breathing, the way I breathed before.

  FEATHERS THICK WITH OIL

  Craig Burnett

  Artwork by Murray O’Grady

  FEATHERS THICK WITH OIL

  Craig Burnett

  Walking between gates eight and nine, I see a slender woman in a charcoal-grey suit pick up her case and spin around with it, like a hammer thrower about to release her missile. After a few turns of increasing speed she straightens her arms. She’s still gripping the case, which is now orbiting her at head height. To keep her balance, the woman sticks her backside out and throws her shoulders forward, setting her body in the shape of a question mark, albeit one revolving a couple of times a second. Sickly yellow light bounces off her patent leather heels. She growls, dredging the sound from the back of her throat. This is going to end very badly indeed.

  The case is a Samsonite Neopulse. I think so, anyway – at the speed it’s flashing past me I can’t really tell. I squeeze the handle of my own Neopulse and smile. A great case, the Neopulse. Sturdy. You’ll know this if you’ve ever had one clattered against your shins or dropped on your foot by a fellow passenger. ‘That’s a solid case,’ you’ll have told yourself, as the pain fades away. Pain is only temporary, even in airports. That’s something I tell myself before every flight, so that I don’t turn into the woman in the charcoal-grey suit.

  The case – I’m sure it’s a Neopulse, you can tell by the metallic-black finish – clears a circle roughly three metres across. The growl has moved up the woman’s throat now, turning into a raw, animal scream. The people on the edge of the circle are frozen, terrified that any movement will cause the case to slip from the woman’s hands and fly into the crowd. I’m stood a little further away, next to an elderly man with thick glasses and carefully swept hair. He’s wearing a lemon-yellow polo shirt tucked into beige chinos, and mumbling ‘oh my, oh my’, which seems a fair appraisal of the situation. The whole thing has been going on for less than five seconds, but the absolute certainty of imminent disaster means I already feel voyeuristic.

  The man looks about seventy, the same age as most of my patients. Please don’t misunderstand what I mean by patients. I don’t tap on ribcages, or coax children into showing me their inflamed tonsils. I don’t break bad news, I don’t ask if you have any questions, I don’t leave you alone for a moment so it can all sink in. I fly to European cities and persuade hospital boards and health ministries to buy truckloads of Haxatin, an arthritis pill roughly the size and colour of a child’s tooth. Haxatin’s popularity means I take more than 150 flights a year, which is wearing for both me and my luggage. But robust defences (my vigorous gym and yoga routine, the Neopulse’s 100 per cent Makrolon polycarbonate shell) see us through. The mantra helps, of course.

  Everyone near the woman is staring, from cleaners to business travellers like myself. This woman is one of us, I suppose. We business travellers share a quiet camaraderie, one that belies our reputation. We respect each other for moving through airports with crisp, clean precision, slipping quickly from scanner to passport check, unencumbered by impulse buys of perfume or premium Swiss chocolate. We are self-sufficient, but this doesn’t stop us admiring self-sufficiency in others. I notice my peers shuffle a little further away from the spinning woman and her Neopulse. The Neopulse is not just tough, but lightweight too. If this woman releases hers, my peers are thinking, it’s going to soar. Their wariness prompts me to step back too. We look out for each other, us business travellers, in a funny kind of way.

  But we break sometimes, just as you do. I couldn’t tell you what sparked the raging pirouette of the woman in front of me, but I will say that even premium luggage cannot sweeten the bitterness of frequent air travel. Not completely, anyway. So, yes, we can find ourselves slapping, spitting, swinging fists outside just-closed departure gates. But more often we simply want to scream, to fill the dead air of cavernous departure halls with our anger and frustration. That’s how I understand this woman’s behaviour – a violent occupation of space, a declaration of free will after years of dutifully obeying instructions about shoes and belts and laptops.

  I had a similar experience queuing for a latte at Amsterdam Schiphol. The moment it was over – a little girl left cradling the remains of her doll, shocked Korean backpackers wiping frothed milk from their guidebooks – the mantra struck me for the very first time. It was a revelation, a transformation. ‘Pain is only temporary!’ I shouted joyfully. Then I shouted again, louder, beaming: ‘Pain. Is. Only. Temporary.’ It still warms me, knowing my moment of rebirth was shared by that little girl, by the backpackers, by the stewardess cowering under a nearby table. Maybe they’re using my mantra today. I like to think so.

  Rebirth is a theme of the promotional material I carry in my own Neopulse. The leaflets it holds speak rousingly of new dawns and lifted worries, without promising anything too specific. This language – great foghorn blasts of optimism, unburdened by detail – is one I learned on the job, more or less teaching myself. Pharmaceuticals are not a priority for my firm. We mainly trade in cleaning products, synthetic cattle feed, and a thick green slime used in the manufacture of skin lotion, make-up remover and instant noodles. Haxatin was originally sold by its inventor, a global drug company whose products are probably sitting in your kitchen cabinet right now. But then this company realised Haxatin, which had barely scraped through its clinical trials, was having disquieting effects on the people who consumed it. Their blood was thinner than before, and streaks of it began to leave their bodies in unnerving and unpredictable ways.

  The company behind Haxatin thought it prudent to withdraw it from the market. But they faced a problem. To suddenly deprive people of the drug would raise embarrassing questions, for its creators and for the doctors and health-board functionaries that had already ordered billions of tablets. The answer was a corporate sleight of hand that began with Haxatin’s inventor quietly selling the rights to the drug to a holding company in Belize. Weeks later the Belize firm was swallowed up by Aristotle Healthcare, a £28 million company run (in a certain legalistic sense) from an empty office above a used-car showroom in Panama City. Aristotle Healthcare awarded the European sales licence for Haxatin to my employer, in a deal brokered by a retired Thai politician and a Danish investment trust. So now, as well as selling detergents and green slime, we ensure a steady supply of Haxatin across the continent. The whole thing will unravel sooner or later, of course, but the mess it leaves behind will be complicated enough for everyone involved to plausibly claim ignorance and blame someone else. In the end, the only person questioned face-to-face will be 33-year-old single mother and used-car dealer Maria Nunez, who knows nothing about pharmaceuticals but can offer you a sensational price on a 2005 Toyota Camry.

  This shift in supplier is really a formality for our customers, who know full well it’s a result of Haxatin’s failings. The meetings I arrange could easily take place over the phone. But no emailed factsheet or legal document would reassure these nervous officials like I do. I am an actual flesh-and-blood person, one who will look them in the eye and tell them it’s all going to be fine, just fine. I am a guiding hand at the crook of their elbow, a soothing whisper in their ear. I am bait. The meetings tend to be brief – sometimes customers wince at the grubbiness of the pantomime, and the collective amnesia it demands. But most play it straight, nodding thoughtfully and smiling or frowning at appropriate moments. Some even enjoy it. I think they like being taken back to a happier time, before murky water was lapping at their ankles.

  I told someone about Haxatin, about its grubbiness and my part in that grubbiness, on the 0715 Lufthansa to Hamburg last week. I get truthy with people I meet on planes, particularly when I’ve had a few drinks. I think it’s because you’re sat next to each other, but facing forward. This seating arrangement
reminds me of a confession booth, or what I’ve seen of confession booths on TV. Anyway, I told my neighbour how I’d drifted from the oil business to the cigarette business to the Haxatin business, stoically taking on jobs that would make others retch. She nodded uncomfortably, worried I had noticed her disapproval. Of course I had noticed. But once you’ve encountered enough disapproval you build up a protective layer against it, like the dead skin on your soles of your feet. You find this sensation odd at first, then fascinating, so fascinating you poke the skin just to see how it feels, or rather how it doesn’t feel. The conversation with my neighbour didn’t last long. After talking about Haxatin, there seemed little else to say. So we sat in silence for the flight’s final hour, two decades of oil-covered birds and scarred lungs and dangerously thin blood hovering between us. We were descending into Hamburg when she mumbled that we all need to get by in an imperfect world, which was very sweet of her. And as we unbuckled our seatbelts, she said: ‘Just as long as you help the people around you, I suppose.’

  I remember these words when finally, inevitably, the woman with the Neopulse releases her grip and flings her luggage upwards. It glides serenely away from her, trajectory smoothed by the first-class aerodynamics of the case’s Makrolon polycarbonate shell. The woman’s face is flushed, her hair has fallen loose and she is sucking the air up in great ragged gulps. At its highest point the case nudges the strip lights above, and the sickly yellow glow coating us all shivers just a little. As the case starts to drop I see exactly where it’s headed – into the 70-year-old man to my right, who’s still rooted to the floor. He seems to be travelling alone. Maybe he takes Haxatin. I picture him crumpled on the floor, his dangerously thin blood washing over the Neopulse’s Makrolon polycarbonate shell. I know exactly what to do.

  I step in front of the 70-year-old, ready to absorb the impact of the case hurtling towards us, and as I do my heart soars. ‘Help the people around you.’ It’s so simple, so brilliantly simple. This could be my new mantra. I could share it on flights, in departure halls, while queuing for my latte. Why should I limit myself to one rebirth? To quote the promotional leaflets stuffed inside my own Neopulse, ‘The day to start your new life is TODAY.’ The pills those leaflets promote might be imperfect, or even a ‘lethal timebomb’, in the words of one regulator, but that shouldn’t detract from the underlying truth of the message. The machinations of the pharmaceutical industry are not the leaflets’ fault. The leaflets are pieces on a chess board, just like me. Until today.

  But as I stare at the looming case, my faith in rebirth wavers. Because the Neopulse really is moving incredibly fast. I grab the 70-year-old’s polo shirt and dive to the left. As the case whistles a couple of inches past our shoulders, I tell myself that not standing in its path is less overtly heroic than my plan of a few seconds ago. And so, in a sense, an even more heroic course of action. We fall to the floor, me on top of him, and I take the chance to whisper my new mantra in his ear. He’s trying to talk; his mouth is flapping, but he can’t seem to form any words. I turn and see the case a few metres away. It’s lying open – I’m surprised the owner hasn’t engaged the Neopulse’s integrated three-digit TSA lock, one of the features that really elevates it above its competitors. Next to the case is a small boy. He is shaping his mouth to scream, but just like the man underneath me, he can’t coax any sound out. On the scuffed floor in front of him are what at first glance look like dozens of Haxatin tablets, but are more likely his teeth.

  HEART’S LAST PASS

  Douglas W. Milliken

  Artwork by Pio Abad

  HEART’S LAST PASS

  Douglas W. Milliken

  The plan hadn’t ever been to be in Syracuse at all. Somewhere in Nebraska between nowhere and Lincoln – amid the gliding crop-dusters and their pale mists of drifting poison, along the razor-straight slash of I-80 East – the rides just sort of dried up for me. I was wind-tortured and dark-eyed and strung out in countless small ways and not one blameless soul wanted me inside their car, and though the prospect scared me like some grasping dreamtime horror, I really had no other choice than to try my luck stowing away on freight trains (or staying: I could have just stayed). I did what I thought I needed to do because an urgency was pushing me hard from behind, away from the West’s dead plunge into the Pacific and back east to the Atlantic and to you. I took a risk and hopped a train and somehow made it to Chicago, although once there the crust-punk kids I fell in with told me I’d done everything wrong. I shouldn’t have legs left, they said. I should’ve been beaten senseless by bulls. There was a book they showed me, made on a photocopier and bound with staples, written by some anonymous train-hopping prophet of their generation. His method was a sort of religion. His way was the only true way. On the next train, I followed their lead, but I didn’t really see any difference between what I’d intuited and what they had to show me. Which maybe proves just how wrong I was. We rode across Ohio and a little bit of Pennsylvania into New York State and had to change trains in Syracuse. If we stayed on our train, we’d end up in Montreal, which I guess would’ve been fine for my friends but not so fine for me. Our stowaway car jostled to a stop and we escaped into a railyard that looked halfway haunted by itself. Busted-up train pieces and piled railroad ties, rusting chunks of metal and compressed-fuel tanks and garbage. We bunkered down in the woods until dark. About midnight, we spotted our eastbound train rolling in real slow amid the creosote-stinking gloom. We gathered our stuff and trotted up to the tracks and easily tossed ourselves aboard. The train appeared to be mostly empty cargo cars. We settled in and slid shut the door and a few minutes later, content with our easy berth, we slept.

  I remember, I dreamed of the unceasing wind of Nebraska, ripping down across the sky to rake the land like a million pissed-off crows. There was dust in my mouth and snakes in the grass. No evidence of any human anywhere. When we awoke some indeterminate time later, it was impossibly dark outside and raining hard. The train had stopped moving. All this, I was told, was bad.

  ‘If they find us, you realise,’ Vale kept saying in a hoarse stage whisper, ‘we are totally fucked.’ He twirled the ratty fetlock knotting off his chin to add gravity to his point. Vale’s tendency when sober was to repeat obvious things as if they were imperceptible truths, things only he could see that we were idiots not to see. He was lordly in his condescensions. But get a few drinks in the kid, and he’d soften right up like Play-Doh in the rain.

  Our other companion, Molly, threw him a little pint bottle of MD 20/20 and told him to shut the fuck up. To this day, Molly remains one of the toughest dudes I’ve ever met. Only about five and a half feet tall, Molly had long black hair and Indian eyes and these beautiful full hips and breasts. It was very confusing to me. Most folks would assume he’s a girl, and maybe but for his perfect sweeping black handlebar moustaches, they’d be right. I mean, I’m pretty well convinced that Molly had a vagina. But that didn’t make him any less of a man. Perhaps, in some ways, it made him more so. Probably not. Regardless, I was drawn magnetically to Molly and also scared of him and had learned to follow his lead. We passed the bottle of booze around – in the dark, I couldn’t be sure of its colour, but it tasted like antifreeze green – and everyone relaxed into our predicament. The rain fell and the train didn’t move. We waited.

  In my youth, I picked up a wise tip about developing a nervous gesture that would not read as nervous. Like having a pipe to chew on and fuss with, or like an old man wiping his rheumy eyes with a hankie. Give yourself something to do, is the idea, when you’ve really got nothing else to do. So while we slumped there doing nothing in the train car, I popped out my partial plate and with a rag from my pocket wiped the metalwork clean. It’s unlikely you’ve forgotten how I lost my top front teeth when I was a kid, during one of the most glorious games of H-O-R-S-E ever recorded. But a lot later, after you’d already cut me loose, I lost one of the neighbouring teeth when my mouth caught the tip of an aluminium baseball bat. That time was categorically
non-sports-related. All I can say about that is, man, don’t ever go to Florida. The only good I found while there was a newfound fondness for my teeth, real or otherwise. I rubbed the gunk off my palate and popped the piece back in.

  ‘I wish I still had my uke,’ Vale lamented.

  ‘Shut up about your uke already,’ Molly said.

  Vale’s ukulele had fallen off the last train somewhere near Erie, Pennsylvania. It fell off because Molly made it fall.

  Given how long we’d slept, Molly assumed we were stopped somewhere out near Albany or maybe further west across the Massachusetts line. I took this as good news: I was that much closer to being home with you and Melanie, that much closer to reclaiming what I’d lost, to putting my life back together. It would be hard work fitting back all the far-flung pieces. But I had faith that I could do it. I could make this work. Vale took out a deck of cards and shuffled. Molly passed his bottle around again.

  Our fear was that, with the train stopped, rail workers might be checking the cars or something, that somehow someone might find us, so we played our game of poker as quietly as we could. Molly slid open the train car’s door so that we’d have a little light. The rain eased up, then got harder. In a while, we were drunk and didn’t care about making noise. Molly took off some clothes. I squirmed. Then Vale leaned out the cracked-open door to take a piss but instead started yelling.