Between the Bridge and the River (9 page)

“I’ve already had a bloody crisis,” snapped Fraser as he sat at the table, a little embarrassed to see he was wearing tight red panties and a peephole bra. “I’ve lost my job.”

“I’m talking about a bigger crisis. A psychic event.”

That’s all I fucking need, Fraser thought.

“Nice outfit,” smiled Jung, with a wink to a foot soldier from the army of Attila the Hun who had limped out of the café to serve them a generous salver of corpulent and glistening raw eel.

At the other side of the cobbled square was a magnificent Gothic cathedral. Unseen by Fraser and Jung, a man was trying, and failing, to open its large wooden doors by sticking his fingers in the giant keyholes and pulling. The man was deeply distressed, crying, his heart breaking on every exhale, tugging at the doors until his fingers started bleeding. He was so intent on his task that he noticed nothing and no one around him. He didn’t even know what country he was in.

This was George, who was asleep in seat 16A of Coach 13 of the 1915
Eurostar
. Waterloo to Gare du Nord.

GEORGE HAD TRAVELED ENOUGH TO KNOW
that no town has its most interesting neighborhoods near its large railway stations, so when he got off the
Eurostar
at Gare du Nord, he thought about taking a taxi somewhere, but he knew he’d end up asking for something predictable like Notre Dame or the Eiffel Tower and he’d probably be ripped off by the driver, who would be able to tell he was from out of town by his Scottish high-school French.

He looked around the big station and saw a sign for the Metro. The Parisian underground rail system. He walked down to a ticket booth, bought a zone one fare that would allow him to go anywhere in central Paris, then walked to the platform. He got on a number four train and got off at the first stop he had heard of, St. Germain.

Directly opposite the St. Germain Metro entrance in the bustling, noisy square by the old church is a delightful café called Les Deux Magots (The Two Bigwigs), a busy bistro made famous by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, who used to go there a lot for the delicious omelettes and furious debates on existentialism. Both of which are still available.

George sat at a tiny circular table outside. He sipped his coffee and nibbled his croque and watched people go by. He felt wonderful.

This is what dying too early is all about, he thought, feeling international and tragic all at the same time. For the first time in his life he knew he had become interesting. He had done something wildly interesting in that he had abandoned his dull, bovine wife in Scotland, he had left no note or clue to his whereabouts—that was interesting. He hadn’t even told anyone he had cancer. Now he sat in a famous French bistro contemplating death and about to start smoking again. He was so interesting he could hardly stand it. He liked himself. It was a feeling he hadn’t had in years. He couldn’t remember when, if ever, he felt so fucking good.

He had bought a pack of Gaulois at the train station when he arrived, realizing that the health issue was no longer a problem for him. He had smoked Benson & Hedges at university but gave up when he got married. Sheila said it made the house smell like a saloon, and given that both his parents had smoked and had died of cancer, she said, he might want to pay attention to that.

Strangely enough it was not his parents’ deaths that stopped him smoking, even though they were both fairly horrific and came within eighteen months of each other. It was Chippy Thomson, for some reason, that was the one that got to him. It was about two years after his mother’s death. He had defended Chippy Thomson, a petty thief who was facing prison time for stealing two bags of frozen shrimp from the rear entrance of the Loon Fung Chinese restaurant on Sauchiehall Street. The crime itself was not considered particularly heinous but the court asked for seventy-four previous similar convictions to be brought into account. Chippy had cornered the illegal frozen shrimp market in Glasgow, and Dorothy Nardini, the public prosecutor, a bad-tempered middle-aged woman who had a secret penchant for watching rough gay anal-penetration videos, felt that this “mollusk Mafioso” (the term she actually used in court) be taught a lesson.

George’s defense was that Chippy was dying of lung cancer (which he was) and that sending him to jail would be inhumane given the circumstances. The judge agreed. Chippy walked only to be arrested within two days for possession of stolen cod.

During the proceedings George had been obliged to interview Chippy, who had been remanded in custody at Barlinnie Prison. The prison itself is a big, dark Gothic Victorian nightmare, and the little smoky interview rooms where the prisoners meet their lawyers are hideously depressing and institutional. George half listened to Chippy’s pathetic lies about extenuating circumstances and his rubbish about being an old soldier, but more than that, he watched him.

He watched Chippy smoke.

Chippy knew he was dying from inhaling the crap in cigarettes yet he smoked them constantly, he sucked in the poison with an alarming greed and passion that was inconsistent with everything else about him. Chippy was a sneaky little crook but the Tobacco Lords outfoxed him.

George determined there and then that he wasn’t going to die like Chippy, sucking on a cancer stick like it was his mother’s tit. George had not learned at that point that how and when he died was not necessarily his business. He gave up smoking after the interview. Chippy died in prison two months later. George secretly paid for the funeral. He told Sheila he lost the money betting on Betamax Pete, who came second to last in the 3:30 at Kempton Park. She didn’t talk to him for a week.

She would have gone really nuts if she’d known the truth. Betting on the wrong horse is one thing, flogging a dead one is quite another.

George failed to realize at the time that paying for the funeral of an old villain he hardly knew and lying about it to his wife is actually rather interesting.

The waiter took George’s plate and brought him another coffee. George took a sip, then he unwrapped the soft blue packet and drew out the unfiltered cigarette. He rolled it in his fingers, he smelled it, he put an end in his mouth. Heaven.

He cursed himself for not remembering to buy matches or a lighter.

He looked round for the waiter, who had disappeared.

Because of what happened immediately after, and because he didn’t watch French TV or read French newspapers, George never knew that the waiter, Jean Luc DuCan, a thirty-eight-year-old former male
prostitute from Marseilles, had at that moment actually disappeared and was never seen by anyone again. The French police launched a national manhunt in the hopes of solving this mystery but to no avail. To this day, the strange occurrence is fodder for furious and witty debate among the chic, wrinkly, chattering speculators of late-night discussion programs on French television.

But George never knew this. As he turned his head he came face-to-face with the woman who was sitting at the next table.

Claudette Bruchard.

DING AND SHAKE AND DING AND SHAKE
and ding and shake and rattle rattle rattle bump. American Airlines Flight 112 Glasgow to Miami was heading into C.A.T.—Clear Air Turbulence.

Fraser was drinking mint tea in Tangier with a giant, hook-nosed Semitic carpet salesman who had skin the exact tone and consistency of Fraser’s old schoolbag. The Arab had the unexpected name of Davy. Davy was explaining to Fraser that he was a Bedouin who spent half the year in the Sahara with his family and half the year in Tangier in his uncle’s carpet store selling handmade rugs to American tourists. He said business had been very bad since the whole jihad thing and that he thought that fundamentalism was the scourge of decent people who were trying to live a good life and make an honest living. Fraser was surprised to find that Davy saw no difference between Christian fundamentalism and Islamic fundamentalism except that the Christians seemed to be rather more effective at killing large groups of people.

Fraser explained that the Christians weren’t killing anyone. Davy asked who dropped the bombs on Iraq. Fraser explained it was the Coalition. Davy asked who the Coalition was, Fraser said it was a group of Western democracies, Davy asked who ran the democracies, Fraser said the governments. Davy asked who ran the governments
and Fraser said the people. Davy asked what people and Fraser shut up and drank his tea.

Davy asked if Fraser would like some hashish. Fraser said okay, that would be nice. Davy put a little lump of sweaty Afghani black on a pin and set it alight using a
God Bless America
souvenir Zippo lighter that had a picture of an eagle with a Stars and Stripes flag in its talons.

Fraser noticed Davy’s dirty fingernails.

Davy collected the smoke from the burning hash in an upturned glass vial shaped like a lightbulb. Fraser took a giant inhale of the hash and found it tasted and smelled like stale air, old farts, and microwaved bacon.

He was awake. Back in the plane.

At that same moment, in an old VW bus in the Northern Sahara, Mohammed Fisal awoke with a start and drew back the little purple curtain next to his bunk. It was still dark and the stars were crammed into the clear desert night sky. It never stopped being beautiful out here. Mohammed had been dreaming about smoking hashish in his uncle’s shop in Tangier. He had been trying to stop smoking and he kept dreaming about it. He scratched his pubes—the sand always made him itch at night—and got up and walked over to the little portable fridge and got himself an ice-cold Orangina.

He opened the little lightbulb-shaped bottle and drank the fizzy mixture of orange juice and sparkling water. He gulped the whole bottle down and then gasped with delight.

“God is great,” he cried out loud.

Fraser lifted the little window blind and looked out into the clear sky. The cabin lights had been dimmed and most of the passengers were asleep, including the sexy professional woman next to him.

A few seats over a man was watching a tiny television, his face lit from beneath. He looked slightly demonic. The plane banged and rattled a little more.

Fraser felt a rush of fear. He knew that turbulence was not dangerous but he just couldn’t believe it.

He looked around. No one seemed nervous. He knew it would be no good taking any more Xanax, since the turbulence would have
passed before he got any good out of it and he would arrive in America bombed and incoherent, not a good look for customs. The turbulence increased, the plane lurched up and then down, glasses rattling in the stewards’ little area. The seat-belt light dinged on. Colin’s unpleasant nasal drawl came over the P.A.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has switched on the seat-belt sign. Please return to your seat and fasten your seat belt securely.”

Fraser looked around for signs of unease in other passengers or in the cabin crew. There were none. A few sleepy passengers shifted in their seats and Colin and the Harpy came through the cabin making sure everyone was wearing their seat belt.

The turbulence took a real turn for the worse. The plane seemed to almost dive for two or three seconds before bouncing on some giant invisible trampoline.

Passengers paid more attention. People sat up. The woman sitting next to Fraser continued to sleep. Fraser felt angry at her, he was jealous.

The captain came on the P.A., talking in that lazy, relaxed drawl they use to try to make people feel secure.

“Hey, folks, as you can probably tell, we’re running into a little bit of choppy air here, not in any way a safety problem, all perfectly normal, but I’m gonna ask you to make sure you’re seated with the belt on and put your seat in the upright position. Cabin crew, take your seats as well, please. We’re gonna bump around here for a few minutes but we’ll get you back in the smooth stuff just as soon as we can.”

The P.A. clicked off. Fraser was really terrified now. The cabin crew took away drinks and made sure everyone was sitting upright and had their belts on. They looked efficient but not scared in any way.

The plane continued to pitch and sway alarmingly. The cabin crew took their seats. The woman next to Fraser still slept, even though Colin had made her put the seat back in the upright position.

Fraser’s heart was pounding, his palms sweating, a lump in his throat. Tears formed in his eyes. He stuck his face to the window looking for clouds. Normally, if he could see the source of turbulence, it somehow made it easier to bear, but now the sky was clear and starry as the Sahara at midnight.

He hated that something he couldn’t see had the power of life or death over him. It terrified him.

Another bang. The plane bounced down hard and then shook up again. Fraser looked over at Colin and the Harpy, who were strapped into their jump seats. They were looking at something in
Peephole
magazine. They didn’t even seem to notice the impending disaster.

Fraser was almost out of his skin. The cabin crew appeared to him the way normal people appear to Holy Ones.

He looked out the window again at the deadly air.

He prayed, from the pit of his soul, from the core of his being, he prayed. Muttering the words to the airtight Plexiglas porthole, his hermetically sealed, high-altitude confessional.

“God please help me, God please help me. I know I’ve been bad, I’ve been wicked and evil and wrong and bad and please help me God. I promise with all my heart to be good. I promise to be good. Please get me out of this and I’ll do your work. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll change please stop this please stop it
please please please please
. . .”

He continued to mutter the word
please
quietly as the turbulence threw the plane around the sky. It was part of Fraser’s arrogance that he thought the turbulence affecting a plane carrying two hundred people was actually put there by a Supreme Being to directly threaten him. The God of Fraser’s understanding, at this point of his journey, would bring down a planeload of innocent people just because Fraser liked to get drunk and fuck. Fraser’s concept of God was still really that of his childhood. That God was a bad-tempered sociopath who you could placate with sycophancy and ritual. This would change later.