Death & the City Book Two (25 page)

Breaking a reality for a normal person, as seen in divorce cases, often means walking on eggshells for everyone around them. For someone with a personality disorder, where a number of realities are running parallel, they can be interchangeable, with each being a safety-net for another. It can be a while before anything is actually diagnosed. Particularly as one of the ongoing 'fantasies' may be actual reality, at least for the individual.

I remember my Godmother 'Miss Haversham' who I lived with between the ages of seven and fifteen (while my real mum liberated dangerous wildlife in Canada), was a dreadful gossip, inventing a foreign boyfriend for me so she had something to compete with at Women's Institute afternoon tea-times. She would update me on what she'd told everyone, so that I had to play along if we were ever out shopping and bumped into one of them. Maintaining my own perception of reality parallel to her fantasy convictions was almost as challenging. I recall having a big re-consideration of what constituted sanity at the time. I tried telling the Vicar about my Godmother's fantasy world, and he just said she was entitled to a little fun and attention if there was no harm in it. I don't think he'd have said the same if he saw the massive strop she had, when I refused to have my picture taken with her 'Community Service' gardener so she could pretend he was my fiancé. My reason was that he was on Community Service for burglary, stealing mainly lawnmowers from the sheds of the Women's Institute. They'd recognise him, and she'd be made a fool of. She sulked for a week, threatened to take an overdose, was put on Prozac, and next time one of her tea parties came around, I heard afterwards that apparently my imaginary 'betrothed' had disappeared while rowing across the Bering Strait, and she never mentioned my love-life again. Fortunately she now had the enormous subject of depression and medication to use as her attention-seeking tool, and I was mostly forgotten. Except at those times when I did bump into the tea-and-scone Raffia Mafia, and they gave me sympathetic looks and asked if there was ever any news of Vladimir or whatever she'd named my fictional romantic hero. I'm sure he was straight out of one of those books she kept under the bed. The kind of books Elaine described when I was telling her about Warren.

Dog meat paste, I think on autopilot, and hope I don't have to speak to Warren alone any time soon. Particularly if he's heard the same about Flynn, and thinks
I
might also be looking to increase my own shoe fund on the side. There wouldn't be enough of me left to fill a tin of dog meat, let alone a nice pair of shoes.

Pondering for a moment, I consider doing a search for hit-man blogs, and decide against it. I don't know if I'm worried I'll find someone pretending to be me, or find Connor blogging about what it's like trying to get me into bed. Some stuff I guess I'd rather not know about. I'm sure head office are way ahead of me on that one. I'm pretty sure Phil Preston was a blogger, the big fat gay wingman guy I popped in The Dog Star recently. He was into Double Life internet virtual reality stuff and all that. I'm sure he said he owned a virtual sex shop for the Double Life alternate reality game. He tweaked his Twaddle updates more than any self-publicizing celebrity. He probably had some anonymous blog out there in cyberspace, about the exploits of a gay overweight contract killer into macho contact sports and reading modern philosophy, probably called something like
Migration Of The Lone Killer Whale
. Something I'd think was contrived and pretentious if I saw it on an Otterstone's bookshelf. I'm a bastard to please in bookshops. Probably because there's not much out there for me to identify with. Escapism is all very well, but there needs to be an element of yourself in the story to make the escapism feel possible. The words 'target demographic' have a lot to answer for. I'm outnumbered as an individual by office workers, who read on trains commuting to work. Lucky them.

If I wrote anything, would it be literature or pulp? Sometimes I think it wouldn't matter - the cover art would define it more than what was written in it. Gun equals crime thriller. Fangs and cleavage equal vampire horror. Deserted alley or pathway at dusk equals mystery. Pastel colours and stylized fashion-plate graphics equal chick lit. Big author name equals celebrity writer. Big title, equals catchy blockbuster title. It's a designer product, at the end of the day. As much a fashion accessory as a form of consumer entertainment. But, like me, people are visually stimulated – the same as my thoughts were regarding the interior of the police station when I arrived. Something has to be on the outside to give a taster or indication of what's on the inside. Whether it's uniform, style, hygiene, or method. When there's no indication of contents or purpose, like the police station walls, it's like Pandora's Box. Down to basic curiosity, trust, and risk.

People trust what's sold to them. When it's packaged in a specific style, they gravitate towards the most appealing idea of what's entailed in the packaging, based on what is being suggested initially. Including the appearance of other people. Canem probably had some basic social fishing skills to work out what intrigued Alice, and reeled her in with enough of a story for her to fill in any blanks herself, with her own fundamental fantasies and beliefs about the world. Just like she'd unwittingly bought a book about the sex trade, based on a misleading cover claiming to be a supernatural spy detective novel. Guys can learn those pick-up skills in any NLP book or website, or read about how stories impress girls, and how to catch girls out by using their own prompts in conversation, usually punctuated by controlled methods of contact - such as assessing or admiring jewellery being an excuse to hold hands, or to stare intently at a cleavage. Unless you're like Doorman Harry, and you just need to announce that you're the man who thought up the QWERTY keyboard based on the order of the Hungarian International Standardised Alphabet, and that Mr. Gates had to pay you royalties when designating the Windows shortcut keys, and it's free lap-dances all the way. He didn't sound like that type, but Canem could potentially have fast-tracked Alice into his harem, by simply wearing dark glasses and saying something along the lines of, he was in charge of Area 51 security, during his alleged FBI service.

I'm quite surprised Connor didn't think of that one as a chat-up line. Was too busy shooting harmless goats out of a helicopter.

For some reason, abstractly, I wonder whether any women are out there with the shiny patent stiletto on the other foot, mistakenly thinking they're innocently saucy escorts, or call-girls, when actually they're part of a pillow-talk spy ring. Well, if they're blogging about it on the internet and giving head office all that interesting bedside reading, technically they all are. Wouldn't be the first time a Cherzia posted her hit-man shag-buddy's intentions on her Facebuddy account…

Ash nudges me and points at the camera view. Alice is scratching her unseen fungal rash, self-censorship evaporated.

"She's at the limit of what she can factually speak of," Ash reports. "All she's got otherwise is Canem's word for it. And she knows it, too."

"The scratching is her scraping the bottom of the barrel, then?" I ask. "Scratching for the answers?"

"Clutching at straws, same kind of thing," James agrees, sipping his tea cautiously, having let it stand a few minutes as warned.

"Sounds like her social life, hoping to shag a Scarecrow," I observe, in a very unladylike response. They look at me. "Trust me. I spoke to her in the toilets. I reckon she got close enough to get a bit of a rash, but nothing else. Women like her only obsess that much over guys they haven't slept with yet."

"Yeah, the guy with the gunshot wound," Ash muses. "He's not asked for her, or even about her, since he's been in hospital."

Which in fact makes it worse than I thought. Some part of me feels pity for all the self-deluding types. Talking a good love story to themselves, and anyone impressionable that they might encounter. But not in actual relation to the object of their affections. My phone vibrates in my pocket and I take it out to read the text, as it turns out, from Connor.
Hey trouble. Stop thinking about me. Xx

I wasn't, but possibly was about to, by empathising with the girl in the interview room about doomed infatuations. It almost irks me that I don't have enough proof that things aren't predictably doomed with Connor. It makes life unpredictable, and I don't identify with that. Strangely, I identify more with the girl being interviewed, than the owner of the body I'm standing up in at the moment, considering the last couple of weeks.

I let out an involuntary heavy sigh, not sure whether to think of a reply or not, as I put my phone away. Ash reacts, kicking his wheeled chair away from me like something out of a cartoon.

"Careful," he says, scooting back to his original position, and straightening his hair with exaggerated gestures. "Nearly blew my quiff over."

I catch James's eye, and am immediately reminded that I'm in a room with some practising body-language experts. But I'm used to being watched. They can draw their own conclusions, same as everyone else does. I realise I've just missed an opportunity to rant about Connor being arrogant and taking me for granted, sending me that text. But another part of me is saying, maybe I should take it as a compliment. Or maybe I just can't think of a cocky enough answer.

I'm in the middle of feeling as though I'm having a post-modern view of myself from the outside, in the interview room. There but for the grace of God go I, that kind of thing. Not in her circumstances, but in her psychological state. It's weird that I'm not feeling my usual indignance towards Connor's attitude. I'm too caught up in identifying with a much more recognisable version of myself. The delusional part. Obsessing about ways of fixing it, when up until recently, I felt that side of me was no longer an ongoing concern of mine.

I'm finding that I kind of miss being deluded, instead of appreciating reality. Delusion has its own system of comforting storylines and logic. Reality has logic, but it's fractal. Infinite outcomes branch out from infinite potential for occurrence. A story-based delusion is contained, limited to stereotype, plot and assumption, with limits, even when it masquerades as reality. He loves me, he loves me not. Delusion is the comfort blanket for those not currently caught in the grip of a secure and stable relationship. Without the fantasy that one might exist, or be just around the corner, what is there?

I put myself in her shoes, psychologically speaking. Supposing I were in her place? Thinking my job was real, that my contacts were real, when I was basically part of some crime thriller fantasy escort service, expected to do the nasty like the other lady runners and their sperm-jacking habits. It would turn out to be a final fantasy euthanasia club.
Going Out With A Bang
, it should be called. Hookers for the terminally sentenced. Or maybe it would be Connor's fantasy, which given that his life is all fantasy anyway, sounds even more believable. Two assassins partner up and inevitably the chemistry happens. The Bond Girl Fantasy Club. I'd be the only Bond Girl who never put out, in that case.

It's a Schrodinger's Cat moment. Look at the outside of the box containing her reality, and at any one point, is Alice a call-girl, or a spy detective? Now she's in the police interview room and they're quizzing her for information, is she the true-to-life inside informant she always believed she was? Have her circumstances turned inside out, so that her espionage fantasy is now the reality on the outside, and her boastful pillow-talk-gathering games the guilty secret on the inside? How does she view herself now? What will her lifeline turn out to be - another job, another faked storyline to her life - another misjudged relationship?

I know I'm personalising my analysis far too much, because my brain believes I've been there, in her position, in her psychological state. Not in her circumstances, so of course her brain has other factors and hormones acting on it than mine. But I know I've caught myself out in the grip of a fantasy needing validation before, like she's still holding Canem's cheap Post Office print machine business card as if it's The Holy Grail. Knowing also that what she's most wishing for, is for the dead man himself to stroll in with a suit, a badge and dark glasses, proving his identity as bona fide FBI Detective. Or at least, her interpretation of the Hollywood version. If Wesley Snipes is the Hollywood hit-man, Danny Glover or Morgan Freeman would be Alice's Hollywood FBI man.

James is half watching her now, half watching me read myself into her.

"What?" I say to him, less indignantly than curiously. I'm interested to hear his translation of the subtext of my response.

"What would you say was the most useful thing for her to start believing in right now?" James asks me.

"Useful for us, or for her?" I query.

"Would be good if there was something to serve both."

I shake my head slowly.

"You're talking about something with universal meaning, to delineate a set of automatic trust principles between her and us. You won't find it while she's stuck at the Mad Hatter's Conspiracy Theory Tea Party with our Officer Dibble," I say. "She's not going to find religion from where she's sitting right now. In other cultures it might work. In ours we don't have that sort of foundation stone laid for us when we're born any more. It's all
Cinderella
,
and
Sleeping Beauty
, and similar hallucinations."