by Meg Rosoff
He was about to pay his meagre bill and crawl into the street howling with psychic pain when he saw her pink bob, bob-bobbing along outside the window. Today she was disguised as a geisha in a brightly coloured kimono, short green felt culottes, white foundation, huge dark glasses and six-inch platform clogs. Over one shoulder hung a striped plastic portfolio.
She threw him a kiss through the window and entered the café. Justin slumped in his seat, embarrassed to have been kept waiting.
Agnes arrived at the table, amused. ‘Hello, Justin Case. I’m terribly sorry I’m late.’
‘Hello.’ He looked at the floor.
She stood very still until he looked up again, then slipped the glasses down her nose and stared straight into his eyes, smiling the smallest, most seductive of smiles. ‘I am extremely pleased to see you.’
‘I…’ he began, but found he couldn’t go on. He reached for Boy, and gathered the warm elastic skin of his dog’s neck in one hand.
I wonder if I’m in love, he thought. Or if she is? At his feet, Boy raised one eyebrow and gazed up at his master.
Justin waited as Agnes settled herself daintily into the seat opposite, waved a tiny handkerchief patterned with cherry blossom and ordered camomile tea with the demure, murmuring voice of a geisha. When she finally turned back to him, she reminded him of a blank-faced exotic bug. It made him nervous not to see her eyes.
She lifted the portfolio off the floor, laid it flat on the table between them, and leant in close. ‘I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to print these up. But…’ Here she paused for dramatic effect and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘It was worth the wait.’
Beneath the table, Boy rolled over on to one side, stretched ostentatiously, closed both eyes and began to snore. Agnes opened the portfolio, slid out a pile of proof sheets, placed them in front of Justin, and sat back in her chair.
He picked up the first.
The boy in the pictures was slim, almost scraggy. His hair was longish, his skin very pale. In a frame marked with an ‘x‘, he had his hands crammed into the front pockets of his jeans. His body was in profile and he appeared to have turned to look at the camera only an instant before. His expression was suspicious, anxious, slightly blurred.
It was a long moment before Justin realized he was looking at himself.
‘Well?’ said Agnes.
‘Well, what?’
‘Well, what do you think? Isn’t it amazing?’
Amazing wasn’t the word he would have chosen. He looked like someone else entirely. Someone pale, anxious and well-dressed. Considering his mission, it was thrilling. Considering everything else, it was deeply disturbing.
‘That’s not what I look like.’
She beamed at him, triumphant. ‘It wasn’t. Until I saw you.’
He thought about this.
‘So what will you do with them?’ he asked finally, riffling through the sheaf of proofs.
‘They’re not important. You are. I can’t believe I found you in deepest Luton.’
Justin winced.
‘Don’t look so frightened. You don’t actually have to do anything. You’re perfect the way you are.’
What way am I?
‘But before I take more pictures, there’s somewhere we need to go. When are you available?’
He was always available. He looked at Agnes. Did she want to have sex with him? Did he want to have sex with her?
‘Where are we going?’
‘London.’
London? You could hardly get more dangerous than that. Kigali maybe. Or Baghdad. He glanced up at Agnes, who was calmly flipping through her diary as if entering the heart of urban darkness were the sort of thing she did casually, without considering the consequences – the international terrorists, homicidal taxi drivers, care-in-the-community cases let loose to push unsuspecting out-of-towners under trains.
He shuddered.
‘How about nine a.m. Saturday week at the station?’
Having no diary and no previous engagements, Justin said yes.
14
Long before Einstein thought up his theory of relativity, any child could explain that some days passed slower than others and some weeks appeared to drag pretty much into eternity.
The ten days between Justin’s two meetings with Agnes moved with as much directional momentum as a satellite tumbling in deep space. There were times when he sat in class staring at the huge black-and-white institutional clock, drifted off into a long reverie about his tragic demise in the concrete jungle or his future sexual prospects, and awoke hours later to find the hands in exactly the same position as before. It defied the laws of something or other, something he might have known more about had he paid attention during physics. Instead, he settled into a stalled world devoid of linear motion and gave up all hope that the day he longed for and feared in equal measure would ever arrive.
A quarter of a second later it did.
Justin awoke on the morning of their meeting, pulled an ancient green anorak over his new clothes, inserted himself back into the swiftly moving stream of ordinary time, and set off to meet Agnes.
Luton was not a big town, and it took less than fifteen minutes to walk to the station. As he walked, he fantasized about their day, rehearsed once again in his head for what had become, in the intervening period, a series of profoundly erotic possibilities. This line of thought forestalled more familiar and disturbing ones, the ones that involved being kidnapped by Estonian mafiosi, blown up by animal rights activists, repeatedly stabbed by a bus driver with a grudge. Each of the last ten nights he had floated off into a semi-dream world in which Agnes couldn’t keep her hands off him; each night their interaction became more elaborate, more erotically complex. At some point reality and fantasy switched places so that his dream life became more vivid than his real one.
But now, in the harsh light of day, doubts crept in. Could the lure of sex overcome his fear of danger? And what exactly were his prospects in that quarter? Agnes seemed to like him well enough, but how much was that? A little? A lot? Enough to have sex with him on a train?
He imagined meeting her on the platform, imagined her red-eyed and flustered, imagined her face brightening at his arrival, imagined them alone in the small, old-fashioned compartment, the train half-empty. She would confess her unhappiness. In his mind, casual affection became suppressed passion; she would admit lying awake all night, unable to sleep, burning with desire for… for…
He stopped at a corner, waited for the traffic to notice him, and crossed.
She’d be suddenly shy.
A bomb would… no!
He imagined himself masterful, seductive. She would look at him in a certain pleading way and at that moment no words would be necessary. Her mouth would soften and her eyes widen, and she would lift her hand to his cheek, and then he would kiss her, softly at first and then passionately, harder than she might have expected from someone young and inexperienced like him, kiss her until she pulled away and begged, Justin, don’t. But he wouldn’t listen, and she wouldn’t really want him to, and one thing would lead to another and then he would be pulling open the buttons of her shirt, pushing up her skirt, sliding his hand up between her thighs to feel the soft warm curve of her, her, you know.
He jostled a young woman, sending her mobile phone crashing to the pavement. ‘Excuse me,’ he muttered as she glared at him. He hurried on, head down.
Agnes would look at him hungrily, moan in his arms, Oh god, Justin, stop, we can’t, you’re too young! but they would not stop. He could feel her lips on his ear, whispering in a voice strangely coarse:
Oooh, Justin, ram it to me hard –
WHACK.
And then he was on the ground, disorientated and half-conscious. For a moment he felt no pain at all, but a few seconds later it made its appearance, radiating outwards from his forehead, now so intense it made his stomach heave. He had to lie down to stop himself pitching headlong on the wildly spinning ground.
&nbs
p; Oh god, he thought feebly, that voice!
A crowd began to gather. Boy whimpered and rested his muzzle in the crook of Justin’s neck.
Justin thought: a sniper. I’ve been shot.
He struggled to a sitting position, feeling for the sticky wetness oozing from a bullet hole in his forehead. Someone’s hands were behind him, on his shoulders, supporting him gently. He forced his eyes to focus, desperately sweeping the crowd for the hit man, the smoking gun tossed away in the gutter.
There was nothing. No blood. No bullet hole. No murder weapon. Nothing, except…
A lamp post.
He had walked into an iron lamp post. The impact had nearly knocked his face through the back of his head.
An old lady prodded him with her walking stick. ‘What’s the matter, moron, you blind?’
Behind Justin a younger girl, soft-featured and sturdy, with thick brown hair and the same eyes as Peter, supported him until he could sit up on his own. She stood for a moment, head slightly cocked, listening to the silent whirr of confusion that emanated from his brain like a badly played song.
No wonder he walks into things, she thought.
Then she leant down, gave Boy a pat, smoothed her skirt over grazed, chubby knees and slipped into a pocket of the crowd. She wondered when their paths would cross again.
Back on the pavement, time slowed to a wow-wowing 15 rpm as Justin accepted the arm of a stocky middle-aged woman with a buggy, stood up shakily and, with his dog at his side, resumed his journey.
15
At the station he described the incident to Agnes. She examined the lump on his head. ‘You didn’t just accidentally walk into a lamp post?’
‘Yes, of course I did.’ Justin was impatient. ‘But it wasn’t just me, I felt him, he was directing me. I heard his voice.’
‘What did he say?’
Justin avoided her eyes. ‘I don’t remember. But it was horrible. Like he was jeering at me.’
‘You sure it wasn’t just some kid walking nearby?’
‘You think I’m suffering from aural hallucinations?’ His throbbing head made him cross.
‘Don’t put words in my mouth.’
The train pulled up to the platform with a screech.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘This is us.’
The train was too crowded for them to sit together and Justin felt relieved. It wasn’t the moment for a seduction. Not with a purple lump the size of a baby’s fist growing out of his forehead.
He gazed through the window at the desultory stretch of countryside that lay between Luton and London. From across the carriage he could hear the click click click of Agnes’s camera.
I spy a Barratt House. I spy a mad cow. I spy a field full of pesticides. I spy a bird with a broken wing. I spy…
He spied a bedraggled old donkey standing motionless in a chewed-over held, its back swayed, its head drooping. To his horror, he felt his eyes fill with tears.
In the reflection of the window he could see a girl staring at him.
He turned to the seat diagonally across and glanced nervously at its occupant. She had short thick legs, a short thick torso, pale blonde hair and large pixie ears. She had unfolded a map of London and stretched it out on the huge rucksack that leant on her knee. She smiled at him.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to Justin in heavily accented English. ‘Do you know how I will be finding Victoria Station?’
He took the map she offered and studied it carefully. He had no better idea how to get around London than she had, but felt a host’s obligation to offer assistance.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ he said at last, handing it back.
‘Maybe together we can be finding it, yes?’ She looked up at him through pale, thin lashes.
‘I’m with my friend,’ Justin explained weakly, pointing at Agnes.
The girl craned her neck to get a look at the competition. Agnes smiled encouragingly and photographed them both. The girl turned back to Justin, disappointed.
‘Oh well. Next time maybe?’
Justin nodded as they pulled into the station. He jumped up and squeezed past the transfer passengers with their huge suitcases, catching up with Agnes on the platform.
‘So,’ she said. ‘Who’s your girlfriend?’
‘You mean Frodo?’
‘Don’t be cruel. She fancied you. It’s working.’
‘What’s working?’
‘Your transformation. Soon they’ll be flocking to you like–’
‘Like what? Vultures? Vampires? Penguins?’
She headed for the station exit. ‘This way. It’s not far, we can walk from here.’
‘Where are we going?
In answer, she took his hand and quickened her pace.
Agnes led Justin through the maze of grim, dingy streets around the station, until they came to a narrow opening between two houses. A sign on the crumbling brick wall read Stable Lane. It was the perfect setting for a toothless muscle-bound villain with piano wire to garrotte them both and eviscerate the bodies, leaving a mass of tangled guts spilling out on to the cold ground.
‘This is it,’ Agnes said, stopping at the door of a gloomy building, unmarked except for a flickering orange neon OO in the first-floor window, the remnants of a sign originally advertising ROOMS. Agnes rang the bell, waited for the soft buzz, and pushed the door open.
Inside was a narrow staircase. They climbed to a landing and Justin followed Agnes through a heavy iron door, which opened into a large, low-ceilinged room wallpapered in dark silk. The room was dense with colour and pattern and hung with massive gilded mirrors that fooled the eye into thinking it extended infinitely in every direction. On the wide, polished oak floor lay oriental carpets; on the carpets stood racks of clothing. Light from hundreds of little halogen bulbs twinkled in the ceiling like stars.
Justin felt as if he’d stepped into an old-fashioned Easter egg. The place smelled of something exotic and expensive, like the hold of a ship en route from the West Indies. Clove, he thought. Frankincense. Cinnamon.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the tiny lights reflected and multiplied in the mirrors. Now he could see members of a strange species of female creature swivelling around the room, some in jeans and platform heels, some in brightly coloured suits or dresses, but all oddly tall and oddly self-possessed, their hair exaggerated, their legs unnaturally long. They had staring eyes and fat engorged lips. They giggled and gossiped, but their expressions froze into masks of disdain when they noticed Justin.
‘Models,’ whispered Agnes. ‘They appeared the day this place opened. Like ants at a picnic. No one knows how they do it.’
Oh god, Justin thought, fashion again. Why not something simple, like Sanskrit or statistics?
Agnes took his arm and led him across the room. Standing at a long wooden worktable, face averted, was a tall endomorph with a perfect oblong head and the meditative air of a Tibetan monk. He wore softly tailored black trousers and a thick charcoal cardigan unravelled at all its edges so that individual strands of wool reached nearly to the floor. Guessing at his country of origin Justin chose a handful: Japan, France, India. When the man turned towards them, Justin saw that his eyes were hard and sharp as broken glass.
‘Hello, Ivan,’ Agnes said.
The man kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Welcome, as always, dear girl.’ Dipping his head, he indicated the customers with a narrowing of his eyes. ‘Please excuse the mess.’
Agnes suppressed a smile. ‘Yes, of course. You appear to be thriving.’
‘I make a living.’ Despite his exotic appearance, Ivan’s English was precise and without accent.
Agnes stepped closer, lowered her voice and inclined her head in Justin’s direction. ‘Ivan, look at this boy I found.’
Justin winced. This boy I found. Like an old glove on the pavement.
‘Well?’ Her voice was soft. ‘What do you think?’
Ivan looked, examining Justin with the clinical detachment
of someone who has seen far too many exceptional faces. He raised an elegant tapered finger to his own forehead and looked questioningly at Agnes.
‘The bump is temporary,’ she whispered.
He turned back to Justin and shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. And then again, ‘Yes.’
Justin huddled into his anorak and began to back away.
Placing a firm hand on his shoulder, Agnes stopped him. ‘Ivan, this is my friend Justin Case.’
‘Welcome.’ With grim formality, Ivan bowed slightly to Justin. ‘To what do I owe the honour?’
‘He needs… finishing.’
Ivan nodded. ‘Yes, of course.’ He stifled a yawn.
‘Ivan’s got a wonderful eye,’ Agnes whispered.
Justin imagined an all-seeing eyeball shoved deep in the man’s trouser pocket, damp and slimy like a squid.
Across the room, a girl appeared from a dressing room in a layered owl-shaped dress that failed completely to enhance her emaciated beauty. Her friend beamed approval.
Justin stared.
‘So,’ Ivan said to Agnes, studying Justin and rolling a black button between his fingers. ‘Not a suit. A coat, perhaps?’
‘Whatever you think. Something impressive. I’m photographing him.’
Ivan frowned. ‘I might have something.’
He disappeared, returning a few minutes later carrying a long, ice-grey shearling coat with black buttons. He held it draped carelessly over one arm, and smacked it a few times. Small clouds of dust rose from it; Ivan’s hand left a slightly paler mark on the surface of the suede.
‘The cut is too narrow to suit anyone who might possibly afford it,’ he said. ‘Men with money are rarely slim.’
Justin stared at the coat. It looked like the illegitimate issue of a yak and a football.
Ivan caught his expression and shrugged. ‘Take it or not.’
‘It’ll be completely different on,’ said Agnes, taking the coat and holding it for Justin.
