by S. L. Grey
‘I’m working of course,’ she says proudly.
‘And…’ God, I don’t know what else to say. ‘Um… are you well? Are you… happy?’
‘Happy, doll? Of course I’m happy. Happy as a clam in a tummy.’
‘But what are you…? Are you a prisoner here? I mean, are they keeping you here against your will?’
She laughs a deep, chesty Gertie laugh. ‘Course not, doll. Why would I want to be anywhere else? You’re a funny one with all your questions.’
‘What about your family?’
‘My family’s here, of course. We’re all a big family. Working together to make the world go round.’
‘What do you mean?’
Gertie places the tray table over my legs and whips off the stainless steel lid to reveal a bowl of mushroom risotto. My favourite. The room fills with the scent of herbs, white wine and chicken stock, and my stomach grumbles. But how can I possibly eat anything now?
‘Don’t let it go cold, doll,’ she says. ‘Scoff up every karking scrap.’
‘There’s no point.’
She sighs and rolls her eyes. ‘Why does there always have to be a point with you browns?’
‘They’re going to recycle me, Gertie.’
She looks at me blankly and scratches the back of her neck. Then she brightens again. ‘But it’s your favourite!’
‘I can’t…’
‘Please, doll,’ she says in a wheedling manner the old Gertie would never have used in a million years. ‘You don’t want to get me into scum, do you?’
She stares at me pleadingly and I pick up the fork and take a mouthful. It’s delicious and creamy – restaurant quality – and I find myself clearing the bowl.
Gertie nods approvingly. ‘That’s what I like to see. You’ll need your strength.’
‘What for? I’m only going to die, aren’t I?’
Gertie scratches her neck again and the blank look reappears, like a robot who’s suddenly lost power. She takes my empty bowl away, and now she has her back to me I can see the bloody, viscous hole in the back of her neck. I wait for the nausea and shock to hit. It doesn’t. She starts wheeling the trolley towards the door.
‘Gertie, wait!’ She might not remember me, but I suddenly don’t want her to leave me alone.
She pauses. ‘Still hungry, doll?’
‘No! I… I just…’ I just what? ‘Thanks,’ I finish lamely.
She smiles a doll’s empty smile. ‘That’s all right. You have a nice nap. See you when you’re older.’
And she’s gone.
I lie back on the pillows again and stare at the ceiling. I shut my eyes, breathe deeply and try to call up an image of Farrell’s face.
Bang. A door slams. I jerk awake, open my eyes and stare into blackness.
Oh God. Is this it?
Is it time?
I sit up, senses straining. I blink several times and my eyes gradually adjust to the darkness. I can make out the familiar shape of the television and the folded shadows of the curtains. Thank God. I’m still in my room. Someone’s turned off the lights, that’s all.
But that’s not all. Something’s different. Something’s wrong. There’s a smell, a sour smell. A mixture of unwashed bodies, shit and vomit.
I keep absolutely still, listening to the burr of the air conditioning, the thump of my pulse. Then I catch something else: a shuffling sound, followed by wet, laboured breathing.
I’m wide awake now, clammy fear rolling in my belly. Someone’s in here. Someone’s in my room! An image of that hunched thing snipping away with a pair of rusty scissors pops immediately into my mind.
‘Who’s there?’
Another snuffling breath.
A shadow shifts darkly in the corner of the room.
‘I said, who’s there?’
The dark shape uncoils and edges closer to the bed. My guts turn to water and suddenly I know that I don’t want to die, not like this. I need to get out of the bed, run out of the room, but my limbs won’t work, terror pinning my body to the sheets as effectively as if it were nailed down. I open my mouth to scream for help but nothing comes out. I will my hand to reach for the call button, and my fingers fumble to press it.
There’s a sudden blur of movement and a face looms out of the darkness towards me – a gaping toothless mouth, wild rolling eyes.
‘Run, run, run, why you no listen?’ a nasty grating voice screams in my ear and my cheeks are flecked with stinking spittle.
I try to roll away from the face, but it’s too close and the stench of stale sweat and filth makes me gag. It tugs at my gown, clammy hands grab me under my armpits and I feel myself sliding sideways, my head hanging into empty space. Oh God, it’s trying to drag me off the bed.
I kick out, connecting with something soft. There’s a grunting sound and then a weight falls onto my chest, crushing the breath out of my lungs. I grope to find its eyes with my nails, then the room is flooded with light and suddenly the weight is gone and I can breathe again. I draw in jagged sobs of air and catch sight of a jumbled mass of grey rags skittering towards the corner of the room.
‘Not again!’ a woman’s exasperated voice says. It’s Nomsa. She strides in, hands on her hips. ‘I’m so sorry, Client Cassavetes.’
She’s followed by two burly orderlies who head straight for the thing in the corner. I pull my knees into my chest, eyes drawn to the twitching mass of grey dusty rags. Then I start to make sense of what I’m seeing. It’s a man. That man. He’s curled himself into a ball, and he’s shaking and sobbing and mumbling ‘Run, run, run, run, run,’ over and over again.
The two men wrestle him up and start manhandling him towards the door. The man’s face is as grey as his clothes and his head is lumpy and misshapen. He looks back at me once with jaundiced idiot eyes, and then he’s dragged from the room.
Nomsa sits down on the bed next to me and wipes my face with a cool flannel. The panic ebbs away, spent adrenaline leaving an iron taste in my mouth.
‘I apologise, Client Cassavetes. That should never have happened.’
‘What – who – is that?’
Nomsa smiles ruefully. ‘Just an interloping brown. We try to keep them upside but they will keep wandering down here. They’re like rats drawn to a rotten limb.’
I shudder. ‘I’ve seen him before. He was telling me to run.’
Nomsa taps the side of her head and rolls her eyes. ‘Brain malfunction. We’d recycle them but they jam the system.’
‘So he isn’t a patient – a client, I mean?’
‘No, no. He was once, of course. Very occasionally there’s a glitch in the system, and the modifications and spine shunts don’t take. Interlopers, we call them.’ She smiles reassuringly at me. ‘But don’t worry. That hasn’t happened for weeks.’
She smoothes the sheets and plumps the pillow behind my head. ‘Now. Otherwise, how was your nap?’
‘When are they going to do it?’ I blurt. ‘I just want it to be over.’
Liar!
‘It won’t be long now.’
‘And it really won’t hurt? When they… recycle me, I mean?’
She lets out a brief laugh that sounds genuine. ‘You’re a client. Why would you be recycled?’
A brief flare of hope. ‘But that’s why I came back here! I’m paying off Farrell’s debt.’
Nomsa clucks her tongue. ‘You’re back so that we can make you happy. We prefer it when our Clients come back to us by their own free will. It makes things less… tangled.’
‘I don’t understand.’ The numbness is completely gone, replaced by overwhelming relief and a lesser feeling of anxiety. Because if I’m not going to be recycled, what does that mean for Farrell? ‘But… I signed the form.’
‘What form, Client Cassavetes?’
Dammit. What was it called? ‘Um… the donor consent thingy.’
Nomsa tuts. ‘Don’t you worry about that, Client Cassavetes. That situation is all under control. Just a minor administrat
ive kark-up, if you’ll excuse my language.’
‘But what about Farrell? If I’m not… What will happen to him?’
What do you care? He was happy to send you to your death, wasn’t he?
But I do care.
‘He’ll be just fine,’ Nomsa says smoothly.
I can’t tell if she’s lying or not. ‘Really? You promise?’
‘Of course.’
‘And me? What’s going to happen to me now?’
‘Your current interplant was only partially successful. Quite frankly, it wasn’t intended for the rigours of upside life. The Administration has granted you an upgrade.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Would you like to see the proposed modification?’
I nod, still dazed with relief. I’m not going to die. I’m not going to die.
She digs in her pocket and pulls out an electronic screen. ‘This is what we propose. We have re-scanned your vitals and psychological statistics and have come up with a super-optimal interplant option that we just know will make you happy.’
‘And then… you’ll let me go?’
Nomsa rolls her eyes. ‘Client Cassavetes! You and I both know that you don’t want to go anywhere. There are countless options for you here with us.’
I think about what’s happened to Gertie – her bitterness and cynicism smoothed away; the horrible tentacled man on the advert and his blithe almost childish happiness; the nurses I’ve encountered here, all of whom seem content and at ease with themselves.
But at what price?
‘Here,’ Nomsa says, handing me the screen. ‘Take a look.’
I stare into the screen, which displays a 3D revolving image of a woman’s naked body. It takes me a few seconds to figure out that it’s my naked body. I recognise my breasts, my hair, my neck… But the face… Oh God.
‘Do you approve?’ Nomsa says.
I wait for the Dr Meka voice to comment. She doesn’t. She’s gone. And anyway, there’s not much she could say.
I look up at Nomsa and smile. ‘It’s perfect.’ It is.
Nomsa smiles back at me. ‘In fact, I think you’ll find it’s better than perfect, it’s karking primo.’
I find myself laughing along with her and it’s then that the realisation hits me. The grey man was wrong. I’m meant to be here. I was always meant to be here.
There was never any reason for me to run, after all.
Chapter 29
FARRELL
I wake up with her body warm against mine. My arm’s flung over her side and I cup her small breast with my palm. Always a perfect handful. Light glares through the curtains and it sets the deep pain of a hangover groping inside my head. I squeeze my eyes shut and nuzzle my face into her hair. I run my fingers over her ribs. Dink dink dink.
‘This is great. It feels like we haven’t done this forever.’
She mumbles something, stretches her long, thin, smooth legs.
‘It’s nice to have you back, Kay.’
‘It’s Roxy, sweetie,’ she says in a bored tone.
I open my eyes again and the auburn of her hair resolves itself, my bedroom around it. Crumpled sheets, discarded clothes, a condom on the lampshade. The reek of stale whisky hits me as soon as I see the empty glasses and the overturned bottle on the nightstand.
‘You want to get us some coffee?’ I say. ‘Everything’s in the kitchen.’
She makes a show of yawning and stretching but gets up without complaining. I jam the pillow over my head and peek at her as she walks naked out of the room. I can see her ribs through the skin on her back; her scapulas jut out like stunted wings. There’s a small tattoo of a thorny rose right at the crack of her arse. Her hipbones swivel as she walks.
I gird myself and get up. Rinse the glasses in the basin and throw the bottle in the bathroom bin. There’s another half-bottle of Ardbeg on the dresser and I down a glassful. My capillaries rush open and let in some air. That’s the way.
I sit on the edge of the bed and look down at my naked body. My pecs look a bit saggy and I flex them to convince myself I can still make them tight. There’s a hint of a tyre around my stomach. I pump my abs a bit and it goes away. No permanent damage. If I just get back into my stride I can get back to normal, put it all behind me. I lift up my limp cock, pluck out a grey pube and the pain clarifies something. I’m not sure what. That I’m alive? The back of my head tingles, and I rub at it.
So what’s the sum total of this experience? My girlfriend’s dead. That’s the worst of it. Her father too, I suppose, but I couldn’t give a fuck about that. The world’s a better place without Glenn. And Lisa? A girl I met in the hospital while I was sick. She has her own issues. There was nothing I could have done to stop her going back, was there? It’s what she wanted. I didn’t know her. Who was I to stop her? Who was I to tell her what to do?
Rosen hasn’t called again. I guess it’s over. It feels over. Tomorrow’s Monday again. I’ll get into a decent working week, I’ll go to the gym every day, have some consensual adult time with good-looking girls like Roxy. I’ll up my game, try to bag a High Talent award. Bring beauty to the world. That’s meaningful work.
But my words sound unconvincing in my head. I suppose it’s just the shock of everything that happened. I’ve been unwell, not as resilient as I might have been. It’s understandable. Tomorrow, back to normal.
Roxy comes through with two mugs of coffee. ‘Here you go.’ Her little landing strip makes me want to do nothing more than tell her to put some clothes on. She looks far better in jeans and a push-up than naked. She needs some fucking accessories. A thin chain necklace that creates the illusion of cleavage. Long earrings. Hair up. Belly ring or fake tat to break that monotonous flat plain of her stomach. Despite myself, I think of Lisa.
Roxy goes round to Katya’s side of the bed and lounges back.
‘I think you’d better… I’ve got things to do now,’ I say, without looking at her. I try to make my voice sound nice. ‘I’ll see you at the shoot tomorrow, okay?’
‘Yeah,’ she says. She gets up, picks her clothes off the floor and pads into the bathroom. She comes out, smiling at me like from a billboard, all hello-stranger-you-don’t-know-me-but-I-want-to-come-home-with-you. ‘See ya tamorrow, Farrell,’ she says, as if she’s an American.
I get up, fill my coffee with whisky and slouch back down on the bed, staring at my toes for a while. I’m not used to feeling so listless. I pick up my phone to check MindRead, but as it’s loading I press cancel. It just seems too much effort. If Katya was here, I’d have some of her blow. The thought crosses my mind that she may have left some in the dresser drawer, but I can’t be bothered to dig through her underwear. I can’t be bothered to be energetic, even if it’s from coke. I just want to be… nothing for a while.
So I drink some more, run a bath, pass out in the tub, then get up feeling cold and waterlogged.
At lunchtime I get into Katya’s Mini and go for a drive. I take the top down and the hot sun warms me up. I pretend I don’t know where I’m going, but I end up on the kerb outside Glenn’s house. Katya’s house. June’s house now, I suppose. There was a story in the paper yesterday: ‘Joburg Businessman Missing: R37m owing in taxes, says SARS’. The security guard – that grumpy woman Rosen tasered all those aeons ago – glares at me from her post. She jumps to attention as the gate starts sliding open. I put the Mini in gear and ready myself to pull away. The nose of Marina’s BMW emerges, engine gunning as it pulls into the traffic. I catch a glimpse of two figures in the front seats: Marina and June? June will be okay with Marina. The only normal person in that whole family.
I need another drink so I drive straight to the Highgate Mall. I head to JB’s – the only restaurant in the centre with a decent selection of Scotch – and sit at the bar, staring at myself in the mirror behind the row of elegantly downlit bottles. Katya used to love shopping in this mall. The shop assistants would struggle to keep their tongues in their mouths as we came in, lad
en with bags. I could almost hear the cartoon ka-ching as cash-register signs went up in their eyes. Here’s a real shopper who’s not going to try on everything and stretch it and fuck us around. Thing is, Katya was built like a mannequin. The size fours slipped over her and gathered around her collarbones and nipples and hipbones just as the designers intended. God, she was a pleasure to watch.
A barman materialises and takes away an empty glass. Oops, not sure when that happened. He pours me another double and I notice he’s missing half of his ring finger. Probably robbed for his wedding ring or something.
So now, back to normal.
I still can’t help thinking of Lisa, though. Could they seriously have harvested parts from her? No, I’m sure she’s fine. But thirty-six pounds is a lot to take.
She wanted to go. She wouldn’t let me stop her. I tried. What was I supposed to do?
If I just forget about her, I can get my life back.
There’s nothing I could have done about Lisa.
I really want to concentrate on my work, really raise the bar. You know, get creative. Be the next Peter Lindbergh. Or even better, Steven Meisel. Leave something behind when I die.
The barman with the half-finger has given me a triple now. I’m struggling to read the labels on the bottles across from me, and the memory of being blind for those few days in the hospital shocks me out of my fugue.
I’d better go home. Sober up, get ready for work. Get ready for my new start.
I leave some bills on the bar and walk out. Did the bar stool fall over behind me? I don’t look back. It takes all my concentration to walk forward, find the correct exit, pay the parking ticket, find the car, fumble the key in the ignition and gun out of the garage. When the machine accepts my ticket and the boom comes up, and when I drive out from the covered parking and into the hot sunlight, I feel a strange flush of relief and I realise it’s all going to be okay.
I kept on telling Lisa it would be okay, but the only destiny I can control is my own.
I get into the lane to turn right into Main Road, grab my sunglasses from the cubby, and put them on as the car hums me to my new life, edging into the intersection. I am free. I am in charge of my own destiny. I take a deep breath, feeling the freshness, feeling the sunlight detoxing my body. The light changes and I turn left and the Mini is smashed side-on by a four-ton delivery van. My seatbelt keeps me in my seat as I am rolled and then wedged under the front of the truck. The Mini is scraped along the tarmac under the hood of the truck, and, as the car is crushed further under the van, I get closer and closer to the road. I feel the heat of the sparks. I smell petrol and oil and shit. I taste copper in my mouth.
