Outrageous Fortune

by Tim Scott

  “Multiskilled,” I added with a shrug. “You the guy that lost the F-51? I heard all about that.”

  “So everyone knows, huh? Maybe I didn’t pray enough to St. Basil, Patron Saint of Hassle…shit! I’ve been reading those encyclopedias too much! ‘St. Walter, Patron Saint of Knees. Saint Frank, Patron Saint of Machined Joinery,’” he rattled off. “My head is full of junk! My head is jammed full of all this junk they write. I’ve got to get out of here.” The doors flicked open and he ran unchecked out into the darkness.

  “Get out while you can!” he shouted, and his voice echoed back to us, half-drowned by the noise of his desperate, uneven footsteps, receding quickly into the distance of the tunnel.

  “I think I’ve got another joke for you,” said the elevator after a pause.

  “Save it,” I said, and we headed into the darkness ourselves—unsure where we were, or where we were going.

  22

  The tunnel was small, with a neat, curved ceiling and bathed in a very faint blue incandescence that only became apparent once our eyes had adjusted to it. The echo of our footsteps cracked off the walls like gunshots as we walked over the smooth marble floor, each wrapped in his own thoughts.

  After maybe ten minutes, we finally came to a small, shoulder-high door set in the end wall. By the side was a sign that read:

  THAT WHICH DOES NOT KILL US, MAKES US STRONGER. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844–1900). “The old boy smelled the coffee!” I looked carefully at Mat, but he just shrugged. I tried the door tentatively.

  It was open.

  Gingerly I stepped through, only to have my legs nearly taken off by a luggage cart pushed by a tall, sleek woman, dragging a small child who was crying uncontrollably about the sticky state an ice cream had made of his face. I blinked. We were on the concourse of a humongous thriving railway station. The door we had come out of was a small nondescript temporary thing, apparently knocked together by a builder a few years before. It was set in a hastily constructed wall of wooden sheets, filling an arched gap until a store proper was built in its place. The whole structure had been rigorously spray painted with graffiti, by someone calling himself “Gangster,” who had modestly scrawled in huge spidery letters: “I like ginger pussy,” and had optimistically added his Skin Media number. I couldn’t help noticing he had also written, “Also polished cedar set of garden furniture for sale—same number.”

  Trains were shuffling and groaning in and out of the platforms on the far side of the gigantic concourse, and above us a vast, vaulted, domed glass roof leapt off the cast-iron pillars, which studded the walls. Central Station. It had been years since I’d been here.

  “Door’s locked,” Mat said, rattling the handle behind me, and I nodded, not hugely surprised. I watched a vast plasi-screen above us showing a young girl gaily flipping through one of the volumes of St. Mark’s Encyclopedias and I sensed a great weight of evidence building that suggested the whole setup was actually, genuinely, for real.

  We headed for the exit and I felt quite humbled by the gigantic scale of the architecture and pulled up in the middle as passengers swarmed around us like bees. “Really, this is a very cool building, isn’t it?”

  “Lovely,” Mat said.

  “Makes me feel like we’re all plugged into some kind of spiritual EtherMat.”

  “Hello? What?”

  “I mean, don’t you think the pleasure you can get just from being in a place like this is a big hint there’s something else going on beneath the surface of life?”

  “To be honest, I have very little idea of what you’re talking about,” Mat said. “You’re definitely OK?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just talking vaguely romantic rubbish, only unusually I’m not drunk. How about we hit Inconvenient to sort that out?”

  23

  Inconvenient. I needed time to think and there was really only one place for that. We caught a bike taxi and made it there without any particular incident which, frankly, felt like a novelty. As we walked in, I clocked that there were less people in the bar than normal and that made me mildly apprehensive, but at least it was noisy.

  It might have been my imagination, but I felt I could detect a slightly somber mood among the customers, as though they were suffering some gigantic, collective hangover brought on by the violence that had engulfed the place the morning before. The decor was patched up pretty well, so it would have been hard to tell anything had happened, and I suppose it wasn’t so unusual for the bar to get trashed to some degree by angry customers who had not got served once all evening.

  Or all day.

  Or sometimes all week.

  I loved this place because it didn’t care. As far as Mat and I were concerned, The Most Inconvenient Bar in the World—here, on the top floor of the Thin Building—was the finest establishment in Santa Cruz. It was reassuring to be back, even if a stand-up comedian was droning away on a little stage, which slightly took the edge off the atmosphere.

  Stand-up comics are fine as long as they have something interesting to say, some personal take on life. Otherwise they are pointless and should by law be retrained as carpet layers or something. But as we approached the bar, I realized things were very far from normal. It was, maybe, only one row deep with customers, and at this rate we would get a drink within ten minutes. This was unheard of and deeply troubling.

  “Where is everyone?” I shouted to a tall, impeccably made-up woman with perfectly combed, straight long hair, who looked like she had spent the majority of her life riding horses and distrusted people.

  “Do I know you?” she asked coldly.

  “No,” I shouted after a pause, fighting the general hubbub and wondering why she had taken such umbrage.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” she said, with a tight smile, conveying so much distaste it was frankly impressive, and turned back to her friend—who was far smaller but equally pristine, as though she too had only just come out of a box.

  I sighed, half-looking for the cellophane packaging that had to be somewhere about, and suddenly wondered where all the normal people were. Somewhere in life there had been a sign saying: “Normal people this way” and I couldn’t help feeling I had just walked on by oblivious, along with so many of the people I now seemed to meet.

  Hemmed in by the comforting arrival of more customers, I twisted my head around and scanned the bar. Eli wasn’t serving, but we were going to get to the front soon anyway. The jukebox came to the end of its tether and just cut off halfway through a song, most likely upset that people were talking among themselves too much to really listen to it.

  It was touchy like that.

  Unfortunately, it meant the noise level dropped to such a level we could hear the comedian, even though he was tucked away at the far end.

  “Bees make all that honey, so wasps have decided to make marmalade!” he said. “Makes sense, doesn’t it? But seriously, the thing I don’t understand about bees is that on honey jars it says: ‘Product of more than one country.’ Now, I never knew bees got about like that!” He smiled, pausing to let this joke sink in.

  The guy in front of me, who was wearing so much leather an average Friesian cow might have mistaken him for his brother, turned, carrying four large, full glasses by some precarious, frictional means and, raising them above his head, cleared a path to get out. I snuck into his place and was at the bar in record time. I was both pleased and uneasy about this, and wondered if the management might throw me out if they noticed I had got served too quickly. Alternatively, I considered, I might have grounds for complaint because it hadn’t been inconvenient enough for me to get a drink. It was a gray area.

  “I mean seriously, do these bees fly themselves or use public transport?” the stand-up ground on, and I got the distinct impression he had said this all a zillion times before. “‘More than one country’? I mean how far do they go? Norway? Estonia? There’s something going on there we’re not being told about.” At that point, a small boy who looked about fifteen, supporting a w
ave of blond hair that must have seriously impaired his vision, asked me what I wanted.

  “Long Island Iced Teas. Two,” I shouted, automatically signaling with my fingers. “Wasn’t there some trouble in here yesterday?” I added, above the noise.

  “Nah,” he sniffed. “Some creeps on bikes are barred now though. There.” He lined up the drinks and waved the lead for my Jab-Tab. Mat proffered his arm and he grabbed it, connected up, and debited the money. “Have a power day.”

  We slipped back through the crowd, which had built up considerably, and I wondered if we had just caught the place between shifts of actors who were reputed to be hired to fill up the bar if it wasn’t busy enough. It was reassuring anyway, and I was glad no seats were free because I needed an air of comforting normality. We found a place to hole up in one reasonably quiet and dark corner, near a pretty girl standing pigeon-toed and nervous with her overweight hippie girlfriend. I stared out of the window to the city lights scattered below.

  “I should have rung Habakkuk.”

  “Stuff him,” Mat said. “I don’t like him much.”

  “Yeah—strange he hasn’t rung me. What do we do now?”

  “Let’s see. Caroline won’t help you. There’s a Belgian assassin after you. Four lunatic, porridge-making Riders are trying to kill you, or God, or both. Your girlfriend is furious, you still have no idea where your house is, and you don’t have any cigarettes.”

  “Yes, that’s about it.”

  “Good thing we’re in Inconvenient, or things might seem bad,” said Mat, taking a gulp from his glass.

  “They are bad, Mat.”

  “Bad-ish,” he hedged. “All right, they’re not ideal,” he said, seeing my expression. “What’s your hunch?”

  “My hunch is I’ve no fucking idea unless I am the centerpiece of this year’s Golden Festival of Colossal Grief. I can’t seem to get a toehold on anything. Maybe there is no answer. Maybe there’s no ending.”

  “There’s always an ending,” said Mat, gulping his drink. “Things just don’t always come in the order they should. Sometimes you get the end before the beginning.”

  “What are you on about, Mat?”

  “I’ve no idea. It was something I once read on the back of a cereal box.”

  “Problems are gifts,” said the large girl, turning. “I couldn’t help overhearing you have a problem, and you may not be looking at it in the right way. You might need to ask yourselves different questions.”

  “Such as?” said Mat, before I could politely tell her to fuck off.

  “What are the least important things that have happened to you?” she said, staring at me with a strange intensity that I think was intended to convey how mysteriously powerful she was. “In the last day?”

  “Least important?” I said, wondering if this girl was on drugs.

  “Yes. They’re the ones with the most significance. Tell me the events that have seemingly no importance. The more unimportant the better. And your friend here can help you list them in order of unimportance.”

  “Why?” I said, unable to keep the pain from my voice.

  “Trust me, it works. Gandhi used to do this when he was stuck,” she said, like that was final, unarguable proof. And before I could refuse, Mat had agreed for absolutely no reason that I could possibly imagine.

  Still, I reflected grudgingly, anything was worth a try. Even this. After all, I didn’t have a better plan. So I thought back resignedly as the nervous, pretty friend looked on, still standing awkwardly pigeon-toed. I dredged up anything I could think of that really had no significance at all, even though it seemed pointless. After five minutes she had written a list on a pad in great, sweeping, bulbous writing that looked as if all the letters had been inflated with an air hose.

  “Wow. You have done so well!” she beamed, in such an annoying way that it was all I could do to prevent myself being sick into the large, unappealing cleavage of her low-cut floral dress. “Here are the top three least significant events that hold the key to your gift. Number three, you overheard someone talking about buying some fish in Central Station. Number two, you had an itch when you woke up on his roof,” she said lowering her voice. “And number one, your bootlaces came untied as you left Zone Securities.”

  We paused, all craning over the list.

  “It’s helped, hasn’t it? I can see it in your aura.” She beamed a wide smile and I realized—that was it. There was no more.

  “No,” I said, with a forced grin. “It hasn’t helped.”

  “I know it has,” she sang, and turned to leave. “I can see it. I knew it would! Healing hands!” she said, holding the palms up toward us, then with a theatrical turn, walked away with her friend skipping after her.

  “What the fuck was all that about?” I said, after a perplexed pause.

  “Long shot,” said Mat.

  “Long shot? Mat, she was bonkers!”

  “I know. But everything is bonkers at the moment, so I thought the two might connect somehow. Chill out, Jonny. Everything’s worth a try.”

  “Surely we can do better than hoping for help from self-deluded, insecure, bonkers hippie people? There have got to be some clues in everything that’s happened. There just have to be.” And I stared out of the window, wondering whether I would see this moment from the future and smile, knowing it had turned out all right in the end. “I don’t understand why that Medi-Data pinned up in Caroline’s room showed a huge emotional peak while I was passed out in the bar the night before my house was stolen.”

  “Bad dream,” said Mat. “No. You don’t get dreams, do you?”

  “I do now. I’ve had loads of dreams the last two days. A lot of reassuring ones, and some about Jack. Nothing too nightmarish, except one about Habakkuk. With Jack, it’s like there’s something in me yammering to get out, to be set free. I don’t see why Jack should come into this, though. That was years ago. Yet it’s like a buried memory has been rattled free of its moorings and is clanging around my subconscious. Do you think a dream like that would show up as a crazy disturbance on the Medi-Data?”

  “Wouldn’t have thought so or Medi staff would be rushed off their feet by every nightmare going,” said Mat as the jukebox started up again, having been finally cajoled into believing people would listen to it.

  “So something fucked me up when I was asleep, like I caught a Grief Virus.”

  “A what?”

  “A Grief Virus. Why not? Maybe someone’s written a Grief Virus. I’ve caught that bloody golfing ad virus. Maybe someone’s taken it to a new level and has written a Grief Virus that fucks up your life if you catch it, by attracting random grief.”

  “That’s bonkers, Jonny. A virus ad is just a hologram that attaches physically to the warmth of your body and gets triggered randomly by temperature. It’s a physical thing. A Grief Virus would be totally nebulous.”

  “Yeah—and those Riders have an agenda of their own.”

  “What about that dream with Habakkuk?”

  “That? Stress about work, I think.” And I briefly recounted the dream in the crevasse when Habakkuk was leering at me.

  “Maybe you need to see him.”

  “Why?” I said, thinking he was the last person I wanted to see, with the possible exception of Mr. Morris, my old fascist geography teacher.

  “You start dreaming again, and the only nightmare you have is about Habakkuk. And in the dream, you’re certain he knows something.”

  “Suppose so. Didn’t see anything in it.”

  “So, it’s one of the least important things that’s happened to you?” said Mat, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Christ. You’re not telling me that bonkers gypsy woman was right in some small way?”

  Mat shrugged.

  “No,” I said. “No, no, no. Surely, there’s more chance of me spontaneously exploding?” I said, draining my glass. “Ahhhhh!” I added, with a scream.

  “Jonny?” Mat said.

  “Ahhhh! Fuck!
Ahh!” I said, half-collapsing as a searing bolt of pain whacked into my arm and buckled my knees. I sank like a tranquilized duck onto the stained carpet. I knew people were staring at me, but I was almost paralyzed.

  “What is it? Jonny?”

  “Skin Media’s boiling,” I managed to say, as another huge painful vibration traveled down my arm and nearly shook my head off. “What’s happening?” I touched the thing, only to find it unexpectedly activate.

  “Geesh!” squealed the phone, springing to life. “What was that all about? Where have I been?”

  “Easy, phone. Don’t mouth off,” I said. “You’ve had a little problem.”

  “I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all!”

  “OK, easy now,” I said, beginning to recover some sort of feeling in my arm.

  “Hey. I’ve a call! Now that’s more like it!” it suddenly chirped. “Fabulous-a! Doo-dah! Here’s your call, buddy!”

  “Jonny? You OK?” came Teb’s voice over the Skin Media. “Jonny?”

  “Yeah. Teb,” I said, “what did you do? Remotely pour boiling oil down my veins?”

  “Right. Bit of a shock huh? Sorry. It’s fixed though. Want to know how I did it?”

  “No, Teb. No. Definitely not. But it’s fixed all right. My phone is definitely its old annoying self again.”

  “OK. There’s a fresh load of doughnuts just been delivered over here. I’m not supposed to eat them all, so I was hoping you’d come back. I’ve only eaten five so far—OK, six, if you count the other one. Thing is, your Jab-Tab is…scheeee!”

  “Teb?” But all we could hear was a dull roar, interspersed with static, then some sharp shout of: “Get over here!” from Teb’s breathless voice, before the line abruptly cut dead.

  “Call terminated,” said the phone. “And may I say what a pleasure it is to take your calls once again? Yes sir! Can’t wait for some more!”

  “Shut up! What happened there, Mat?”

  “Don’t know. Chill out, OK?” he said, seeing the look on my face. “Teb’s going to be cool, but let’s see if we can flag a GaFFA off the roof, yeah?”