In Too Deep (19 page)

I'm in New York to meet some buyers. I work for an electronics firm, American-owned, Irish-based. I know nothing about the inner turmoil of our products beyond what I have learned by heart from crib-sheets, all that scientific jargon as gibberish to my mind as the workings of a human heart or a long-lost tribal language, but for some reason I have become quite a successful sales rep, or successful by my own apathetic standards. Jen says that it probably has something to do with the fact that I don't come across as pushy. It is true that a lot of salesmen take a Nazi approach to moving product, all aggressive muscle-flexing and overpowering spiel. My buyers consider my offer and then find themselves leaning in to ask for my own opinion, as if I am a close and trusted friend. Even people I've met for the first time just an hour before tend to pick up on some peculiar but sating vibe. They instinctively understand that I am not out to con them. Maybe they see that I don't really care whether they buy or not. Jen says that my beard makes me look a little like a cocker spaniel. I've never been able to make that connection, but perhaps she is on to something. People, generally, are fond of dogs. Whatever the reasons, I'm surprisingly good at the work I do, though I could just as soon be working at digging ditches or painting walls. For the past couple of years, all the talk on the factory floor has been that the company is on the verge of closing down their Irish operation and moving lock, stock and barrel to Asia. Over there, they can produce the goods at a fraction of the price, apparently. Well, business is all about profit margins, but I've stopped worrying. They'll do what's best for them, and I can do without the grief of yet another stomach ulcer.

New York is a city that appeals to me. There are a few others around the world that I enjoy, but New York is high on my list of favourites. I love the claustrophobia of the streets, the vibrancy of packed sidewalks and traffic jams. Where I come from we don't have buildings like these. On this particular occasion, I find myself here for a week, but I have made this trip several times before and the routine of my visits rarely deviates. My business can usually be managed by late morning and culminates in an expenses-covered lunch at some exorbitantly overpriced bistro that leaves you soul-hungry even after three immaculately designed courses. The buyers eat and drink, and Asian, African or American, they smile a lot and ask me questions about Ireland that have nothing at all to do with the matter at hand. I tell them about the joys of lake-fishing and what the weather is like, advise them on the best time of year to visit and the places and sights that really should be seen. These men – they are almost always men – are uniformly middle-aged, balding, overweight and weary-looking in a thick-boned way. They are my own future set in fleshy stone, unless I shake up my destiny. I listen as they talk with enthusiasm about things like Guinness and Irish music, and some of them can even quote a few lines of Yeats, perhaps ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree' or ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus'. And to a man they insist that they'll be making that trip shortly, next year probably, or the year after for certain, but I know that they'll never visit. It does no harm to dream, as long as you don't take it too much to heart. After lunch, we stand and shake hands, and the deal is closed in word-of-mouth assurance, only the details remaining to be tied up at the paperwork stage that is the lawyers' domain. We shake hands and they drift away, feeling with a delirious tinge of embarrassment that they have just forged a new friendship, leaving me free with the rest of the day to be filled as I choose. A week of afternoons to be spent wandering around Greenwich Village trying to imagine how it must have been for Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas, or sipping an espresso at the red-and-white check-patterned street-side table of some restaurant in shrinking Little Italy. I enjoy the colours and the noise of Chinatown, and spinning back and forth across the Hudson on the Staten Island ferry, leaning against the railing and filling up with the view of a sun-drenched skyline. The Statue of Liberty looks smaller than I had always imagined, and each time I see it I feel a quiver of surprise. You'd think that by now my expectations would have reined themselves in, but there it is, that same quiver of surprise, every single time. And by the first fall of darkness, I have worked up a sizeable thirst.

At the moment, Jenny is also away from home. She works as a research assistant to a noted pharmacology professor, a crusty old letch named Alsop who, some years ago, gained certain recognition in the field by happening across one of those rare and precious eureka moments. The idea, whatever it was, saw him lauded with the sort of honour that has ever since put him in great demand on the lecturing circuit, and he is currently fixed to a three-month visiting tenure at Hokkaido University, teaching some new theory of pharmacokinetics. So it is that Jen, as an integral part of his team, a staff of four who clamour to fulfil his every scientific whim, finds herself there, too. Well, she's always had a travelling bone and there may be some truth in the old saying about absence making the heart grow fonder. ‘Which fonder?' I always say, when she brings that up. ‘You can have Peter if you want him, but give me Jane any day.
'
I always had a thing for Barbarella. We've made it this far though, seven years, so she might have a point.

Jenny says that this new stuff, this latest pharmacokinetics angle, is either crackpot or brilliant, but that as it is still only at the strictly theoretical stage it may take years before anyone can pass a definitive judgement one way or the other. That's nice work if you can get it. I've met Alsop a few times, but have never been able to warm to the man. His pale, hyperthyroid eyes seem to dart everywhere, and his tiny red mouth is scarred with a perpetual and very unsettling smile. When that smile widens a little into laughter, he shows off the smallest teeth that I have ever seen, two perfectly uniform rows with each tooth separated an exact hair's breadth from the next. Ordinarily, I'd be slow to let Jen go anywhere with the likes of him, but of course that's not up to me. The one time I did make mention of my concerns, she spelt out the situation so that there could be no misunderstanding. Now, whenever I think of Jeremiah Alsop, the image that fixes in my mind is of that bloated face mangled into the utmost expression of agony, his plump and brilliant fingers cradling his suddenly-traumatised groin area. Jenny has a kick like a leaping cannon. Anyway, she assured me, feeling suddenly and unusually considerate to my feelings, the professor's fondness is for the Asian look, particularly the porcelain perfections of nineteen-year-old Japanese girls. Not so stupid then, your average genius. And he is gifted too, apparently, at weeding out potential groupies from even the most demure of lecture hall situations. No wonder the old boy smiles so much.

‘Goodbye, Sean,
'
Jen says, into my ear, her tone thickened again. She is ebbing back into sleep. ‘Call me tonight.'

Our chat ends sooner than I would like, and there are still some things I want to say, want her to say, but I'm not that surprised. She's always been curt. Not really the romantic type, my wife. It does strike me with some disquiet that we can end calls without professing our love for one another, but then we've never been the sort of couple who go in for swooning talk. I think it is her scientific breeding that discourages it, that makes her see such expressions as frivolous. And all the time, through a lot of what little has been said, we seemed to have been sharing the line with somebody busy with the chore of sweeping up a yard of fallen leaves. The constant background rustle has made me feel as though I am part of a game, or of some experiment. That rustling could have been a third party, if a particularly bronchial one. Well, why not? Just because I'm paranoid and all that. Actually, I quite enjoy the notion that I could be some glistening thread in a great dripping web of intrigue, but a large slice of that pleasure comes from knowing that such a possibility would be unlikely in the extreme. The sad truth is that I have nothing of particular interest to hide, no closets full of rattling skeletons. I'm an open book, in that all my indiscretions are already out there, on full show.

After the connection is lost, I continue to talk. Just for a minute or two, so that I can at least feel like I've had the last word. It's a sham, of course, but so what? We all need little lies in our lives, I think, otherwise we wouldn't be even a fraction of the people we want to be.

‘So, let me just get this straight in my head, Jen. What you're saying is that there really might be more than one of me out there. Is that it?'

She can't answer, of course, but Christ, that is a mind-blowing thought. The odds are with her, too, the combinations of feature shapes and eye colours are obviously limited. Nothing is infinite, not time, not even space. There are people who scoop lottery jackpots by covering every possible draw. Couldn't it be that I am one of those rare, lucky individuals who find themselves without even looking? I turn my gaze out onto the lobby while the idea sifts through my mind. The day's white light feels as heavy as before, reaching for corners that are, quite honestly, none of its business. Almost by accident, I notice that the mosaic-tiled floor boasts a well-crafted image of a mermaid as its centrepiece. Something dries up inside of me. The bird in my stomach has flown, to be replaced by a closing fist. I shift my body and open my shoulders as much as the narrow confines of the phone-box will allow, but this inner discomfort remains. The mermaid's face is vague but predictably beautiful, her pale hair cascades in wild water-dragged tendrils, and I see that she is well-endowed and just about decent, thanks in the main to a few scales and a couple of well-positioned clamshells. I have always been one of those men who favour a little mystery when it comes to the fairer sex, and the shells are a nice touch, better somehow than having the entire feast on a platter. Some of those Renaissance artists could have learned a lesson from this mosaic, especially the funny ones.

My chest feels as though it is contracting. Maybe I am shrinking. I stare out onto the lobby and feel sure that this is another moment of special significance. Mermaids are full of symbolic meaning. The colours aren't particularly striking, worn pallid, no doubt, from decades of trampling feet, but even so, I can't understand why I haven't noticed her before. Her, the mermaid. For the better part of a week now I have carried myself back and forth through this lobby, a dozen times a day at least, and all that time she has lain there, right under my nose. Maybe waiting for acknowledgement. I realise that I am thinking about naming her, but stop short of that. Wicked things that way lie.

‘Goodbye, Jen,' I say, when I have given enough ground to a floor-full of tiles. ‘I'll call you later and we can straighten out everything then.' But my voice barely tumbles from my mouth in wisps. On impulse, I add a kissing sound, not at all like me, really, but a small placating gesture that feels right, that feels like it might do a little something towards sating the appetites of the gods or the vibrations that have been devouring my day. Or maybe this kiss is just a last, probably futile, attempt to make myself feel like less of an asshole than I almost certainly am for waking up my wife at five in the morning with a situation that is mine alone. I need two stabs at replacing the receiver on its hook. Then, more out of habit than hope, I rattle the change slot, but find it empty, as always. In all my years of checking, I have never lucked out with so much as a single coin. It is just something that I do. Some people take their hands out of their pockets to cross the road, some people always dress from right side to left. Getting out of the phone-box isn't easy, because I am all turned around.

We tend to think of revelations as great Godly gestures, something to do with burning bushes or parting seas, and almost always with the face of Charlton Heston somewhere in the immediate vicinity. I try showering, but I can't escape the sense that twice in one day, twice in little over one hour, actually, I have suffered revelations that are no less worthy than one of Cecil B. DeMille's patented Technicolor visions. Mine may have lacked a little panoramic scale, they didn't boast any particularly propaganda-rich catchphrases, and I don't expect that people will queue around the block to watch them play out on some multiplex's biggest screen, but to me they are atom bombs, hot and truthful enough to fuse bone to stone. Twenty minutes after retreating to my room I am back in the lobby again. The elevators in these New York hotels seem turbo charged. They leave me tasting a backwash of lunch, even through the fumes of toothpaste. I step through the elevator doors and pause, to take full stock. The white light has dimmed; outside, the rain has finally begun to fall. Through the far revolving doors I can see the street, grey and busy.

This whole lobby area feels full of answers. I glance around, hoping or perhaps dreading that something might just trigger the right questions in my mind, but logging the details isn't as easy as it seems. My thoughts scatter in too many directions, and apart from a couple of vaguely impressionable paintings on the walnut-panelled walls, and a sort-of-pretty-looking desk clerk who stands tapping at the keyboard of a computer and relentlessly tossing her short, bobbed, jet-black hair, there is no further imparting of secrets.

Thinking has given me a thirst. It is not terrible, not yet, anyway, but I know about the twists and turns of slow build-ups. Some people have all the willpower in the world; it seems obvious that someone else must have snagged my share of those goods. The traditional Chinese theory of yin and yang makes natural sense to me; at least, I can appreciate its appeal. Balance is such a lovely notion, even when I happen to find myself on the falling end. Anyway, the point is that when I am thirsty, I drink. The hotel bar lies just to the left of the concierge's desk. Even from the vicinity of the elevator, I can see the curve of the counter through a murky burgundy-draped doorway, and a white-shirted young student-type bobs and weaves in and out of view, busy with the nothing chores of dealing beer-mats and decking the mostly empty tables with little bowls of pretzels and trail-mix. The bar offers an enticing gloom, a place to sit for a few hours and swallow a lot of thoughts, and I am on the verge of surrendering myself to those lazy, wicked charms when my ears pick up the bristles of a stereophonic jazz horn. I once suffered badly at the hands of an obsessive – Elizabeth, my previous – and now I have a severe aversion to jazz. Honestly, I'm talking genuine allergic reaction. It hardly matters, as far as I can see, whether my pain is physically or mentally induced; all I know is that it is real. When I think of all the nights that I spent listening and pretending, maybe even trying, to enjoy that shapeless pap while she sat curled up beside me on the couch, her head twisted to one side, her eyes rolled back into her head and her snake's tongue clacking some incomprehensible time to a gibberish chunk of bebop or a wailing snatch of Herbie Hancock funk, I think that I really must have been head over heels. Stupid in love. So when I hear the first peels of horn, the natural reaction is for my flesh to hackle. Every dribble of blood in my veins wants to run for the hills, and yet, out of some inexplicably masochistic perversion, I march myself across the mermaid and closer to the doorway. My way of fish-hooking my own eyes, I suppose, or flaying my body raw. I get to within perhaps ten feet of the bar when a bass-line walks by, some ugly, hunchbacked Mingus-inspired atrocity that makes me feel sick as a punch in the throat, though even I, jazz bigot that I am, must admit that the drum work is nice, even inspired. Gentle background brush-playing, soothing rather than aggressive, just going on, the sort of fit percussive sound that might be found on a Tony Bennett album. But the horn wears me down, blowing something vaguely familiar. I can't quite place whose lips are puckered with the effort, so it can't be one of the bigger boys. Then the bartender looms into view again, a definite student-type, all right, and he notices me standing in the doorway and smiles. I just make a face, flap my hand at nothing and mutter something about a rain-check. Then I beat the quickest walking-paced retreat that I can possibly manage. The mosaic tiles prove an impressively good conductor, though, and the Mingus-mimic chases me all the way to the revolving doors. I'm sure, in my hasty efforts at escape, that I catch the mermaid smiling, and even worse, the smile feels familiar. But then, isn't that what mermaids are supposed to do, lure unsuspecting victims onto the rocks, in from the open sea to where disaster lies waiting? I tell myself that the smile is nothing more than the simple power of suggestion and I charge outside.