A Certain Chemistry (41 page)

She looked down coolly at my hand on her. I let it fall away.

“Aye—it’s all about
you
and how
you
feel, so it is. Okay, as you’re clearly the
real
issue here, let’s say a few words about
you,
then, shall we? You’re self-obsessed. Your feet stink. And you’re shite in bed. Worst of all, though, you’re a coward. I’ve listened to
years
of you ranting on pompously about fame, and how it’s empty and stupid and you’re so clever and well adjusted to be above all that nonsense, and poor, poor old misguided Hugh and ‘Who in the world
cares
about a photo of Russell Crowe buying lip balm?’
Years
of you saying how you want to keep in the background. Well . . . it’s bollocks. Because I’ve seen you reading the Review section of the
Guardian
every bloody week with your jaw muscles twitching, and then going off into your room and being in a foul mood for the rest of the day. Hmm . . . and why
is
it that every time an author is interviewed on the telly you
have
to watch, and yet every time you sit there snorting ‘Wanker’ all the way through it? Why
is
that, Tom? It’s because you want the fame and recognition so badly it knots up your insides . . . but you’re too fucking
scared
to even try for it. You’re frightened to death of the bad reviews and the failures and people not liking you. So what do you do? You write things you can claim or disown as it suits you. Hedge your bets. Never get the credit you want, but never risk the humiliation either. You’re always outside the medals, but at least you’re not last, eh? ‘Respected within the industry.’
Second fucking rate by your own design
.”

I thought I was going to throw up. I was definitely going to cry—I could feel my lips trembling, and I opened my eyes wider in an attempt to give the tears more room so they’d stay inside my lids rather than spill down my cheeks. I tried to hold my voice steady, but it wobbled in all directions.

“So, what you’re saying is it’s all part of the same thing? That I won’t take the chance—the all-or-nothing big risk—with relationships either?”

“Jesus!
No
. There you go again.
That,
Tom, would be how you’d write yourself. That’d be your character motivation in the TV miniseries. You, in reality, aren’t that fucking deep. You just want to have your cake and eat it—that’s it. But
please
try to fucking grasp that I’m not attempting to explain your psychology here. I’m simply rubbishing you. Because you betrayed me by going off with some tart, and so
I get to do that
. Do you understand? You look like a fool when you run. You’re nowhere
near
as clever as you think you are. Every time I watched the cycling I wished that you had an arse even
half
as good as any one of the riders up there. You’re completely fucking useless, Tom.”

“Sara . . . I just wanted—”

“You wanted to get away with it. And I bet you thought you could—because that’s how you’d already written it for yourself in your head. And now you think that an idiot proposal, some piss-weak ‘big scene’ idea out of some piss-weak romantic movie and a bag of fudge will make everything all right. On the basis of that self-serving delusion, you come here and embarrass me in front of the people I work with. For the final time, Tom: I don’t want you anymore.
Go
. . .
away
. . .
from me
.”

I searched her face, and came back empty-handed. She looked at me and there wasn’t even hatred there. What was there was even more painful: I was simply no one special. I nearly stumbled as I turned round—my legs suddenly seemed to have been fitted with all the wrong joints—but I somehow managed to stay on my feet and walk unsteadily out into the street.

I was still sick to my stomach, but now I was also dizzy. Disorientated and confused. I must have appeared like a drunk. I had no idea whatsoever where I was going, and my steps were awkward and arrhythmic. I didn’t appear to know exactly where the ground was, my feet banging into it unexpectedly soon or judging it to be two inches higher than was actually the case. There was no time—it didn’t exist where I was. There was just a nauseous, roaring instant extended forever. To tell the truth, I felt like I was dying.

Then, from behind me, a hand touched my shoulder.

The relief that Sara had relented at least enough to come after me exploded inside my body. It was a leap from the cripplingly unbearable to the ringingly wondrous in the space of a single heartbeat. A wave of euphoria rushed through every part of me, instantaneously snatching my face into a grin, unbinding my lungs, and giving me new skin. I spun round to look at her.

The biggest-hatted Ecuadorian looked back at me a little uncomfortably. Behind him trailed the others; they’d obviously been following me down the street, like we were a train.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We played, though. We played as we agreed.”

“Yes,” I replied quietly.

“So . . .” He raised his eyebrows.

“So, what? Oh . . . right. Your money.”

We took the limo back into town. The driver dropped us near the center and, wearing a morning suit and with four Ecuadorian musicians shuffling in a solemn line behind me, I went off to find a cash machine.

“Thanks,” said the leader as I handed him the wad of notes that meant I probably wouldn’t be able to withdraw any more money for the rest of the week. “If you ever need us again . . .”

I gave him a look, and he hurried away with his companions.

Nothing in Edinburgh seemed right. I swung my head to look all about me, and things appeared misshapen, or dirty, or not quite the color they should have been. Most of all, though, I didn’t seem a part of any of it any longer. The city was going on everywhere, but it flowed around me as if I were a foreign body in its bloodstream. I headed off downhill, purely because it
was
downhill. There was no energy left in me; I was empty—wrung out. A few shops ahead I spotted a café and, when I reached it, I fell in through the door and flopped down at the nearest table. There was absolutely no part of me that had the will to move another step.

I pulled out a cigarette and lit it. I took a long drag and then stared, fascinated, at the glowing end creeping along the paper. A waitress’s stomach appeared in my field of view and, after a moment considering it without point, meaning, or conclusion, I looked up at her face.

“What can I get you?” Her pen was waiting on her pad.

I knocked my cigarette on the ashtray. “Don’t serve mashed bananas and tuna in gravy, do you?”

She looked down at me with an “Ugh” expression on her face.

“No,” I said, turning my attention back to the ashtray. “No—I didn’t think so.”

VIII

Hey,
I’m no great thinker, but even
I
could see that was going to end badly. But, like I said, that was why I showed you the thing in the first place. You get me? I picked Tom and Sara and Georgina for a couple of reasons. One reason I picked them was that there was no particular reason to pick them, right? The names, the time, the jobs, the superficial details of stuff that happened—the paint job—all that might belong to them, but really, they could have been anyone, anywhere. The story, if you know what I mean, the
story
is pretty much fixed; all they can do is use their own handwriting to put it down. Tom might feel like he’s hurting ’cause he’s lost Sara, but he’s just hurting ’cause that’s what happens to anyone at this point. The chemicals he’s been getting are close to cocaine or nicotine not just ’cause they induce the same kind of pleasure, but ’cause they’re addictive like them too. Really, I’m not kidding you here; these things aren’t all that different. It’s no wonder that now he’s feeling just like someone who’s going cold turkey. And, yeah, it’s my doing, again. I wanted you people to keep things going, and that meant not only making it good to get together but making it bad to be apart. Carrot and stick, you see what I’m saying?

But he’s not missing
Sara;
he’s just missing his partner. All that stuff about people being meant for each other or—what is it some of you say? “Somewhere, there’s one person for everyone—it’s just down to the two of them finding each other.”
What?
I ask you, is that any way to run a species? Your “special person” is simply a person who’s available. Just one person for each other person? You’d die out. The fact is, the reason your partner is beside you right now hasn’t got anything to do with destiny and paired souls—it’s just ’cause they were around. They were around, a few smells and features were close enough to fit you, and the way your head works meant that you came to believe that they were “special.” You see that, right? I mean, if you think about it for just a moment even, you’re bound to realize I’m being straight with you here.

George is famous. Dick Cheney is famous too. You think Tom would have been attracted to Dick Cheney, if they’d met? I know it’s against your nature, okay, but don’t complicate things. Things are simple. Mostly, you just pair off by attractiveness—I figured this was as good a way to do it as any. All the things that strongly influence a friendship—similar interests, personal beliefs, intelligence, yadda, yadda, yadda—are
completely
outweighed when men and women pair up in relationships by how similar they are in the good-looks stakes. I can’t count the number of your scientists who’ve done experiments that have shown this. One guy at UCLA even did this study and found that the
closer
matched pairs were in physical attractiveness, the
more likely
they were to have “fallen more deeply in love.” Ha! Am I
good,
or what? Another one of these study things found there was a
really
high hit rate when people tried to match husbands and wives together from their wedding pictures based on
nothing
but how close they were when ranked by looks. I mean—come
on
—I don’t even need to tell you all about this, do I? It can’t be like you haven’t noticed it, right?

I’m not saying you don’t feel anything, but you feel it ’cause of oxytocin and vasopressin and endorphins and ’cause that’s the game plan, not ’cause of anything mystic. There
isn’t
anything mystic. When a junkie wants his fix, he
really
wants his fix—it’s
real
. But whatever he tells himself, you can see it’s just the drug pulling the strings, right? I know it’s tough to step outside on this one, but it’s the same thing here—it’s just different drugs.

Which kind of brings me to the second reason I picked Tom: it’s because we got to see a little of the aftermath. I’m kind of hoping that by understanding Tom’s misery—how it came about and what it is—you’ll understand your own when it happens. And that understanding it will make it be not so bad. I know I screwed up—I’ve told you that, and I’m not trying to avoid anything here—but maybe it’ll be a bit better if you realize that this is all nothing but, you know, molecules and opportunity.

Okay, okay, sure—I’ve simplified stuff. Who wouldn’t? Makes my head ache just thinking about all the biochemistry and the whatever—the neurology—and the variations and all that. But, overall, it’s always pretty much the same. And, all the time, however complex the mixture might be,
there’s no pixie dust in it,
you know what I’m saying? Like that guy said . . . what was he called? Whatever, it doesn’t matter, he said— Ryle! That was his name. Cheesh—I’m losing it, I really am. Anyways, like I was saying, however much you’re going to say it’s complicated and you can’t get some big computer to work out all the interactions and all that, however complex it is . . . there’s no “ghost in the machine,” okay?

I’m hoping that’ll give you some comfort. I really should have guessed that, the way you are, you’d see meaning and magic in love—because you like to see meaning and magic in yourselves and you believe love is the most human thing there is—the thing that makes you what you are. I never intended that, but I should have guessed it. So, I came here to tell you straight how things really work. To make amends for my oversight. So that the next time you feel like crap ’cause of all this stuff, you can say, “Sure, I feel like crap. But it’s just molecules—I’m not being crushed by, you know,
destiny
or anything.” It’ll still hurt, but you’ll have perspective, right? Stick your hand in a flame and it hurts like crazy—but you don’t take it
personal,
right? You don’t let it break your spirit.

So, Tom and Sara didn’t work out. That’s a shame. I like things to work out; I was really cut up about the Neanderthals, for example. But they’ll get over it. They weren’t meant to be together—or
not
meant to be together—they just met and
were
together for a while. Molecules and opportunity. That’s the way you’ve got to look at these things. I hope you understand now, and it’ll help you all, and, you know, that my explaining everything here makes up for the way I took my eye off the ball a little with this one.

You all take good care of yourselves, okay?

IX

Look,
I don’t think you’re being very fair with me here. I’m getting all these, you know, bad vibes, and that’s not right. Not when I’ve leveled with you like I have. And, what’s more important, by thinking I should intervene in some way, you’re not taking on board all the stuff I’ve been telling you. I picked Tom and Sara ’cause they fell apart, and I wanted some guys who fell apart. So you could see how they fell apart and how in—oh, I don’t know . . . in a
cosmic
sense, or whatever—it didn’t really matter. And now you’re giving me this attitude like
I
caused it. Well, okay, yeah, I did cause it—but only ’cause of a few flaws in my design. It wasn’t deliberate. And I wasn’t going after Tom and Sara
specifically,
was I? What do you think? I’m General Motors or something? You want me to recall the whole human race, after all this time, ’cause of this?

Get out of here.

You’re never grateful, are you, you people? And even if I was to do something about Tom and Sara—which I’m not saying I’m going to, right?—even if I was, what good does that do? They’re just two people; it won’t change anything overall. You know what I think? I think this is just a way of you avoiding things. You’re focusing on them so you can ignore the real issue here.

And, anyways, I don’t do that kind of thing. I set things up, is what I do. Start things running and let them go. I’m a hands-off kind of God. I don’t mess around with the day-to-day business. It’s kind of a rule, in fact.

So.

I . . .

Awww . . . right. Okay, then. If it makes you happy—and
just this once
—I’ll give things a nudge or two. But I’m not going to force everything just to suit you, okay? I’ll arrange some stuff . . . see what happens. That’s all. The rest goes off as it goes off, okay? And you better not tell anyone I got involved on a personal level, got it? What do you think all those people killed by mudslides and falling masonry would say if they found out I’d intervened on a personal level like this? Those people whine like you wouldn’t believe as it is.

So. Okay. Wait there. I’ll see what I can do. And you know that PEA thing I screwed you with? Well, I’m doing this as payback for it—
capite?
After this, we’re even.

Two Years Later