Altered States (10 page)

Let me take this opportunity to tell you about the retail phenomenon that is BlueJay. It is not a standard bar or restaurant. It is a whole new concept in the genre of ... well, there is no genre – that’s the point. BlueJay is a cross between a bar, a restaurant and a clothes-store. The idea is that you get the chance to browse and buy the latest fashionable apparel whilst enjoying your food and drink – or waiting for it to arrive.

Items of clothing for sale are deposited about the place in a seemingly random, but actually extremely strategic, fashion. The staff are all dressed in purchasable garments too. And each time they nip out-back to fetch your curly fries they are preened and styled like catwalk models – which they mostly are. It is well understood that nothing will sell a product better than draping it over someone unfeasibly attractive, or draping someone unfeasible attractive over it – whichever is geometrically more plausible.

The clothes for sale are those brands deemed suitable for the clientele. Not the ridiculously expensive made-to-measure shit; just whatever are the coolest off-the-shelf brands at the time. The kind where someone on an average wage would only have to forgo a single week’s pay for a pair of boxer shorts. That kind of level.

This concept of plying vain fashion victims with alcohol to the point of intoxication and then offering them the opportunity to buy overpriced branded items is genius; and you have to hand it to the smug marketing bastards who dreamt up the idea.

BlueJay, New Meadows, was the original, established only about five years ago. It proved so successful that there are now a couple of dozen stores open or opening across the major cities of America.

I made my way into the establishment, studying the environment and its denizens as I moved. At the tables some people watched foot-tall holograms of themselves meandering amongst beer glasses and plates of nachos, sporting the latest catwalk styles. This was a pretty nifty piece of kit new to this flagship BlueJay store, and was creating quite a stir with the punters. I noticed how the holograms all looked particularly more stunning – usually about seven or eight pounds more stunning – than their real-world counterparts, and decided that if I wished to try something on I’d use a method less open to silicon-minded interpretation.

I cut my way through the crowd, heading for the large circular bar at the centre of the room;
the best place to take a reasonable stab at not looking too conspicuous by myself.
The bar itself was rather like those you find at a sushi restaurant in that it had a conveyor belt running inside it. Only, instead of cold rice and raw fish, it proffered trendy urban kickers and neatly pleated chinos. You had to be real careful where you waved your credit card in these places.

I grabbed a stool at the bar and got myself a drink and some cigarettes. I don’t actually smoke, by the way. Well, I do in the strictest sense of the word, in that I occasionally suck air through smouldering sticks of dried tobacco. But it’s not through pursuit of pleasure, and that’s the difference. And I’m not just some latent addict in denial. I genuinely hate the things. They make me feel nauseous, and that’s not a sensation I wish to pay for. Nevertheless, I feel that my role and my associated image necessitates that I light up from time to time. Especially in places like New Meadows; especially when I’m on the hunt for bad guys. It just seems right.

BlueJay was getting busier with the evening crowd. I could hear them but I wasn’t paying particular attention. My beer was company enough for the moment. As such, I was slightly irked, not to mention surprised, when a young semi-transparent lady rose up beside my beverage. An extension to their holographic mannequin technology I presumed.

‘
Hi,’ she said in a song-like tone. She had a tight dark bob showing off large heart-shaped earrings and was dressed in a pink cat suit. ‘Don’t forget to treat your loved-one this Valentine day. Be sure to visit our promotional display in the West Wing to check out our exclusive designer range of lingerie from only the best names in ladies’ fashion. Thank you for visiting and happy Valentine.’ The six-inch saleswomen gave a theatrical wink and faded out classily with a slight wibble to her edges.

‘
Fuck off,’ I said politely and brought the glass to my lips before any more bar-top peddlers decided to try their luck.

I took a second to reflect on my plan: scope out the place for my mark and then ... decide what to do next. Okay, maybe not a
whole
second. The plan was in quite a nascent form, but I didn’t let its brevity trouble me.

BlueJay was large. It sprawled across two floors, with several bars and many different nooks for its clientele to hang out in. There were at least a couple of hundred people currently enjoying its services. This would make it impossible to study everyone, but overall it made things easier. I could blend in here whilst trying to identify the man Jackson Burch was supposed to be meeting. And if I didn’t succeed, I could employ a far more fiendish method to determine which of the many revellers he was: I could text him and ask where he was sitting.

I scanned the local vicinity. Most people were in mixed groups or couples; most were late twenties/early thirties. I was happy to rule out all of these. Although, I wasn’t really sure who I
was
looking for. Certainly a little older; say, in his forties. Maybe on his own but quite likely with one or two other guys. At least one of the other guys was liable to be large and thuggish. The main man though, I wasn’t so sure about. He certainly didn’t have a plum in his mouth, from his accent, but he insisted on meeting in BlueJay so he wasn’t allergic to sophistication. Despite his gruff brogue he was likely to be quite a slick operator.

As I was studying the locals, my attention was drawn to a mild hubbub which erupted next to me. Two guys took stools just around from where I was sitting, ushered there by an overly-hospitable gentleman wearing a black suit with a gold name badge on the lapel. I assumed the latter was the manager of BlueJay – or a senior employee of some kind anyway. He introduced the two men to one of the stunning female members of the bar staff, and encouraged her to ply them with free drinks. Then the manager left, all smiles and flattery. I checked out the two guys. One of them looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. I hate that. I’m pretty good with faces. I remember lots of them, but I don’t always know who they go with. I closed my eyes in concentration, tapping my fingers on the bar-top in an it’s-on-the-tip-of-my-brain kind of way. Eventually, it returned to me. He was a pro-baseball player; a hitter for the local team. I had seen him on the news recently. I guess that counted him as a minor celebrity in these parts, deserved of free drinks for the honour of his patronage.

I didn’t know the guy he was with. Maybe another team player, or his agent. I’m not really into these American sports. I know enough trivia to get me by in casual conversation with a native. Although, to be honest, you don’t have to know much. Get talking to a guy who’s into his sports and he’ll do all the running.

The hitter was loud and obnoxious as might be expected of someone earning a house-a-week in endorsements alone. His companion was fielding the batter’s every word with well-practised sycophancy. They were interesting subjects, it was true, but they weren’t my men – so to speak. So I did my best to divert my attention away from them.

And I would have succeeded if it weren’t for what happened next.

The manager returned with a woman who he introduced to the men; and all hope of keeping my mind on the job was lost. The woman was extremely distracting, but not in the way you are thinking. Not that she wasn’t pretty, or whatever, but that’s not the point.

That is a long way from the point.

She was tall and immaculately turned out. Everyone in here was smartly dressed, like they were moving on to classy nightclubs after. But she was dressed like she was moving on to a classy movie premiere after.

She was wearing a wine-coloured dress and black high heels. She had Latin features and coffee-coloured skin. Her dark hair was swept back revealing pixie-like ears, from which long slender earrings hung almost to her shoulders.

But all these superficial aesthetics were meaningless and irrelevant; rendered so by the magnitude of one single quality. A quality that she exhibited to the world with undiluted openness. Yet one the world did not care to notice.

No one knew how special she was. I was confident of this fact because there was only one person on this planet that could possibly understand the uniqueness of this woman; who could comprehend her significance.

And that person had just spat his drink across the bar-top.

But to understand why
she
was so special ... you have to know more about
me
.

You have to know who I am; where I came from.

You have to know what I can
do
.

I have to take you back to the very start. To where it all began.

Reading and Writing

Finding a Path

When I was a kid, growing up in England, I naturally assumed that I was going to be a superhero. It’s a fairly natural belief for young boys. It is the only way to make sense of the world at that age. It just doesn’t seem logical that you will grow up to be one of those normal adult creatures, with mundane things like cars and jobs and back pockets. Indeed, discovering that tea-towel capes are not sufficient for human flight is almost a rite of passage for young boys.

But, I wasn’t
that
dumb. I knew I wasn’t a superhero
yet
– not till I was at least sixteen. I hadn’t put a great deal of thought into what my super power might be. Just so long as I was tough I wasn’t too worried.

As the years went by I grew to suspect that life wasn’t going to pan out quite as anticipated, which was a bit of an annoying revelation. But as with
most
childhood revelations there was a long period of uncertainty that dulled any pain that might ensue. The reality of my superhero future gradually drifted out of my consciousness, hitching a lift on Santa’s sleigh.

Growing up, it seems, is just a whittling away of fantasies to the bones of everyday life; and the next phase of my whittling was that of super-delusions into more feasible aims. Feasible only in the sense that they were not prohibited by the laws of nature.

At the age of fourteen I decided I was going to be successful and maybe a little bit famous. I was either going to be an accomplished sports star, a wealthy entrepreneur or a respected academic. Some people choose singer, doctor, writer, et cetera, but these were my top three. I wasn’t sure which one yet. I assumed this would just become apparent to me when the time was right.

Of course, it doesn’t quite work like that. By about seventeen I figured this much out. To be the next great baseball player, I’d already left it about twelve years too late to start being any good at it. So, the first of my top three whistled past without me even getting a swing at it.

Strike one.

On starting university I quickly realised I wasn’t going to be a world-famous scientist either. I’m quite a smart guy, but to be an academic you need to be quite, well, academic. I found my physics degree pretty easy, but it didn’t turn me on – not beyond the five hours of labs and lectures a day. After that, I found other things to interest me. I’ll let you decide if that was National Geographic supplements or national drinking competitions. Either way, no Nobel prize for physics heading my way.

Strike two.

Entrepreneur it had to be. That was my last shot. I had this mate at university. Well, not really a mate. He just hung around with us and we put up with him because we had an inkling he’d be useful to know one day. This proved to be the case in our second year, when he set up a bunch of adult web-cams in his halls of residence and enlisted local sixth-form schoolgirls to staff them. He made an absolute mint – and two girls pregnant. I’m not saying his particular display of business acumen was commendable, or indeed ethical, but it did show balls – on more than one count – and it made me realise I didn’t have the tenacity to be a truly successful entrepreneur.

Strike three.

Out.

Time to worry. Incredibly, it was starting to look like I wasn’t actually going to grow up to be a mega-rich superstar. It was starting to look like I was the kind of guy who wouldn’t have a story to tell.

I have a story to tell.

My epiphany came in my third year at university, high on caffeine and checking out a girl in Starbucks.

But let me rewind briefly, because the path to this moment of clarity began the day before when I had been on the hunt for something in my room. Being a student and having only been in my current room for about three months – oh and not being a girl – about ninety per cent of my belongings were still in boxes under my bed. I dug one out in my search, and as I was rifling through its contents I came across an old book that I’d had since I was a kid. Now, I don’t do superstition in general, but occasionally you can get caught up in one by accident. When you do, you can’t escape it – and it has a very real effect. If you come to believe that you have a lucky pair of underpants then you will feel more confident wearing them, and be more likely to succeed at whatever it is you want to be lucky at doing in your underpants – umm, if you see what I mean. But on the flip side there is a much greater effect. If you
forget
your lucky underpants – or rabbit’s foot, or horseshoe, or whatever – it will play on your mind so much that you
will
be less successful.