Absolute Zero Cool (5 page)

Cassie, six inches could have saved the Six Million.

Cassie, they say Hitler once enjoyed the company of Jews.

How then can they speak so blithely of fate, destiny and procreative sex?

Damn the future, Cassie; dam it up. Give me handjobs, blowjobs and anal sex. Offer me your armpits, you wanton fuckers. Let us lacerate the sides of virgins with gaping wounds and fuck so hard we shake God from His heaven. Let us feast on snot, blood, pus and sperm; only save your tears for vinegar, to serve to martyrs who thirst.

•

‘That’s a love letter?’ he says.

‘It’s a Karlsson love letter.’

‘Doesn’t know much about women, does he?’

Debs opens the patio door and pokes her head out. ‘Hey, Hem-ingway,’ she calls, ‘your daughter’s got a poopy nappy. Chop-chop.’

I wave to her. ‘Gotta go,’ I tell Billy. ‘Family day. We’re taking a spin out to Drumcliffe for lunch, it’s time Rosie visited Yeats’s grave.’

He drops the shades, gives me a one-eyed wink. ‘Cast a cold eye,’ he says. It’s hard to say if he means his Newman-blue or the sucked-out prune.

I hold up the Sermo Vulgus excerpt. ‘So what do you want to do with it?’

‘I don’t like it as a love letter,’ he says.

‘I can kill it if you want.’

‘See if we can’t work it in somewhere else,’ he says. ‘Somewhere it doesn’t have anything to do with Cassie.’

‘Will do. See you tomorrow.’

‘On Saturday?’

‘Oh, right. Monday so.’

‘Cool,’ he says. ‘I could do with a sleep-in tomorrow anyway. All these early mornings are killing me.’

‘Try having a kid,’ I say. ‘You’ll know all about early mornings then.’

He glances at me then, something hawkish in his eye.

‘That’d be up to you, really,’ he says, ‘wouldn’t it?’

‘You want Cassie to get pregnant?’

‘I think it might be good for us.’

‘She’s on the pill, though, isn’t she?’

‘She is now. Maybe you could swap her pills for folic acid or something.’

‘Without letting her know?’

‘Sometimes you have to do the wrong thing for the right reason,’ he says. ‘Isn’t that what the best stories are about anyway?’

•

Buddhist monks have this thing going on where they construct complex mosaics comprised of thousands of precisely delineated sections of coloured dust. It can take years. When they’re finished they sweep the whole thing into a corner and start again.

I appreciate this perversity while I mop the tiles in the hospital corridors. By the time you reach the far end of the corridor, people have trampled all over the point from whence you came. Ashes unto ashes, dust unto dust. The priests say this so as not to scare the horses. It would be more correct to say ashes from ashes, dust from dust.

It would be even more correct to say nothing at all and let people decide for themselves.

People bring mud into the hospital on their shoes. They carry in dust, dog-shit, germs, saliva, acid rain, carbon monoxide and blackened chewing gum. But they’re not allowed to smoke in the overflow car park.

I ask about the possibility of wearing a facemask while I’m mopping, so I won’t inhale the second-hand pestilence of human perambulation. Because I am a porter this is regarded as facetious insubordination. Only surgeons get to wear facemasks, although the official line is that this is for the patient’s benefit as opposed to that of any surgeon concerned about the invisible dangers wafting up out of a diseased and freshly sliced human being.

A man is standing in the middle of the tiles, so I have to mop around him. His shoulders are slack. There’s a looseness to his stance that suggests his elastic has stretched a little too far this time.

‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘Could I ask you to move to one side, please?’

But he turns to face me. His eyes are huge, round and too dry. He says, hoarsely, ‘My daughter just died.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say. This would be hypocritical if it weren’t true, but I find his words offensive. I wonder why people always seem to think their pain is interesting. I wonder why people only share their pain these days. If the guy was standing in the middle of the carpet munching on a bag of toffees, it would never occur to him to offer a toffee to the guy vacuuming the carpet.

‘She was eight years old,’ he says.

‘Think of her as a mosaic,’ I say. ‘Think of your daughter as an amazingly complex mosaic who had become as beautiful as it was possible to be. Imagine that she’s been swept to one side so that she can begin to be formed into another beautiful mosaic. Maybe it’s already started. Go upstairs to the maternity ward, you might even see her smile, that twinkle in her eye. Get there while the new mother is still fretting about how long it should take the maternal bond to kick in and maybe you’ll get lucky. But she might be a boy this time, so think outside the box. And can I ask you to step to one side, please? I’ve had an official warning.’

He stares at me, uncomprehending. Then the round dry eyes begin to water. Tears roll down his pudgy cheeks. He shudders, gasps, and then he seems to fold in half. He bawls.

‘Nothing lasts forever,’ I say. ‘These days even agony has a sell-by date.’

But he’s not listening.

Cassie rings and asks me to rent a DVD on the way home. We snuggle up on the couch, sip some wine, smoke a joint, watch the movie.

‘You know what’s really scary?’ Cassie says. ‘That a shark could take stuff personally.’

‘Apart from a wayward meteor,’ I agree, ‘being stalked by a shark is the worst of all possible news.’

‘Like, really hating you.’

‘See, that’s where Jaws falls down. Sharks are older than hate.’

She frowns. I say, ‘Hate is unique to mankind, which has been knocking about for roughly a million years. The shark’s been around for four hundred million years.’

Cassie is stoned and thus intrigued. ‘No shit,’ she says.

‘Seriously. And it’s hardly changed in all that time.’

‘How do they know?’

‘Subterranean architecture.’

‘There’s actual buildings?’ She sniggers. ‘Like, shark museums?’

‘The fossil record.’

I tell her that the true history of the planet is a gallery in stone. From the fossil record to the Parthenon’s columns, the perfect math of the pyramids to the geometry at Cuzco, the molten rock that trapped Pompeii to the cuneiform etched in the base of pillars. ‘If you want to be remembered, Cass, work with stone. Moses didn’t come down off Sinai with commandments daubed on papyrus.’

‘True.’

‘Think of all the great civilisations. They’re cast in stone, their prejudice and their buildings. The Coliseum. The Sphinx. Newgrange. The Acropolis. Angkor Wat. Macchu Picchu. Knossos. Stone upon stone upon stone.’

‘That’s amazing,’ Cassie says, rolling her eyes as she gets up. ‘I’m making a decaff. Want one?’

‘It’s only a matter of time before sharks learn to build bridges,’ I warn. But the kettle is boiling and she can’t hear me. Besides, she’s not listening.

•

‘That’s better,’ he says. ‘Although it’s not exactly Jane Austen, is it?’

‘Maybe it’d sound more like Jane Austen,’ I say, ‘if it was supposed to sound like Jane Austen.’

‘Hey, no offence meant.’

‘Listen, I’ve been thinking. If Karlsson is changing, the way you want him to, then his relationship with Cassie is bound to be different too. Right?’

‘That’s what I’m kind of hoping for, yeah.’

‘So maybe you should write all the Cassie stuff,’ I say.

‘Really? You wouldn’t mind?’

‘Not in the slightest. Go for it.’

‘I might just do that. Listen,’ he says, encouraged by the olive branch, ‘I’ve been thinking too, about the hospital.’

‘What about it?’

‘Things have got a lot worse since you wrote the first draft. Super-bugs, the two-tier health system, all this . . . They’re misdiagnosing ultra-sounds now, you know that?’

‘So I hear.’

One thing I’m impressed with is Billy’s dedication to character. He appears to be genuinely angry about what’s happening to the health service, its entirely appropriate death by a thousand cuts. Except, as Billy says, they’re using a machete instead of a scalpel.

If they continue to follow their own logic and momentum, he reckons, then by the end of the EU’s austerity programme they’ll be funnelling patients in one end of a rented Japanese whaling ship and feeding the resulting product to those subsisting on what’s left of the dole.

‘Maybe you should go for a recce,’ he says, nodding up at the hospital on the hill, ‘spend a day with me. We’ll get you a porter’s uniform, you can just stroll around soaking it up.’

‘Won’t anyone object?’

‘Not if you keep your head down. I mean, don’t go wandering into theatre to try out brain surgery or anything.’

‘No, I mean . . . You’re still, uh, working there?’

‘Sure.’ He pats his pockets, comes up with his plastic ID. ‘Card-carrying union member, c’est moi.’

I’d been wondering where he goes after our early morning sessions, how he fills his days. But by the looks of things, redrafting the Karlsson character is the least of Billy’s commitment to the cause.

‘I don’t want to invade your space, Billy.’

‘Not a problem. I think you’d find it really useful.’

‘Yeah, okay. When?’

‘Tomorrow morning. I start at nine, but if you get there about eight-thirty, the porters generally have a quick toke before they get into it.’

•

I stroll past the nurses’ station on the third floor carrying a mop and bucket. The trick is to hide a full dustpan the night before and empty the sweepings into a bucket of water first thing the next day. This is good for an entire morning’s aimless wandering.

The ward sister calls to me from the station, beckons me across. I put the bucket down with a workmanlike clank and march over.

‘Karlsson,’ she says, ‘would you mind tucking in your shirt?’

She’s an attractive woman for forty-plus, still working the hair, the eyebrows.

‘Mopping’s hot work,’ I say, wiping my dry brow with the back of my hand. ‘This place is like a sauna.’

‘I appreciate that,’ she says, ‘but we need to maintain standards.’

What she means is, we’re flying on elastic bands and bent paper clips here, so don’t give anyone a reason to think about what’s really going on. The rabbit hole lurks in the gap between a belt and an untucked shirt. A straight line exists between a flapping shirt-tail and a class action suit for negligence. An untucked shirt is a hook for the weight of public opinion and crumbling facades can least afford a slovenly dress code.

I reach around to tuck the shirt tidy. Her eyes flare. She glances up and down the corridor. ‘Not here,’ she hisses. ‘Can’t you go to the bathroom to do it?’

‘Sure thing.’

I walk away. She calls me back and points. ‘The bucket, Karlsson.’

‘Right.’

This sluices five whole minutes off the map.

I slouch down the hall to the men’s room, lock the cubicle door, open the window and smoke half a jay. Then I go on the nod. A pounding on the cubicle door wakes me. It’s my supervisor. He sniffs the air suspiciously.

‘You were supposed to be up on the fifth floor twenty minutes ago,’ he says. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Orders,’ I say. ‘The ward sister told me to fix my shirt.’

His eyes narrow. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘But get up to the fifth floor. You’re late already.’

I climb the stairs, untuck my shirt and push through the double doors onto the fifth floor. The ward sister calls me over to the nurses’ station. I put my bucket down with a workmanlike clank and wipe my dry brow with the back of my hand.

‘What can I help you with today?’ I say.

•

‘Well?’ he says.

We’re in the stairwell between the fourth and fifth floors.

‘I don’t remember you being this polite to people in the first draft,’ I say.

‘Softly-softly catchee monkey,’ he says, tapping the side of his nose. A door opens above us. ‘We shouldn’t be seen together,’ he says, picking up his bucket. ‘Meet me in the car park at five, I’ll give you a lift home.’

Karlsson rode a motorcycle. Billy rides a moped. He reckons it’s easier on gas, more environmentally friendly.

‘Don’t I need a helmet?’ I say, climbing on behind him.

‘Not unless we crash.’ He revs up and we take off but there’s a bottleneck at the eastern exit. A two-car collision, a Passat wedged at a right angle in a crumpled Fiesta, nose buried deep into the driver’s side. There’s a cop trying to direct traffic. My first thought is for my lack of helmet but the cop has better things to do.