The End Of Mr. Y (25 page)

There’s some business guy walking towards me, holding a newspaper over his head to stop the

snowflakes touching his bald patch. Hey, idiot! Have you ever sucked someone’s cock? I have. Then again, it’s more common than people think. He’s probably done it, too.

(A door hovers over the man, but I hesitate; then Wolf looks away and it’s gone.)

I want something to hurt. I want physical pain, not this mental shit. This would be an excellent time to go to the dentist. Hello, Herr Doktor. Do whatever you want…

I could headbutt a lamppost. I could try to find some queer-bashing football hooligan to kick me in the head while I lie on the ground in the recovery and/or foetal position. I’m walking towards the Westgate Tower, the tight arsehole at the centre of this city. I used that description once, and whoever I was talking to was shocked. ‘But have you never watched a bus try to squeeze through it?’ I said. ‘They all look like they need lubricant.’ Ha. If I want to get in a fight, I’m on the wrong side of town. I could go back towards home and then hang around near the kebab shop and wait for a gang of ‘youths’. What would I do? All I’d have to do is stare at one of them. I wouldn’t even need to call him a poof. You know who I really want to get beaten up by? I want to get fucked-up by faggots who’ll fist you afterwards. I want something to hurt more than this hurts.

Console? Console?

Still nothing. And all Wolf’s looking at is the pavement.

We walk onwards, towards St Dunstan’s. Eventually we come to a door I’ve never noticed before. Well, I’ve simultaneously never noticed it and at the same time I realise I come here quite often. It leads downstairs to an underground wine bar. And I sit there until closing time, drinking Jack Daniel’s, eyeing up every guy who walks past me. I think that one of them will react. One of them will want to fight me or fuck me, but I might as well be invisible. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m invisible. At last orders I go up to the bar for three more drinks.

‘Am I visible?’ I say to the bartender. ‘Can you see me?’

The wankers throw me out. And I’m not drunk enough yet. I go to the hotel. The manager tonight is this ex-bouncer called Wesley.

‘Hey – you’re not on tonight,’ he says to me.

‘Drink,’ I say. ‘I only want a drink.’

My insides are volcano-hot. I need to do something about it. I think about explaining this to Wesley, but he simply says, ‘OK. Just a couple, though, mate.’

Melissa’s playing the piano tonight. I sit in the booth right next to it and eyeball her enough to make her play three wrong notes in a bar. Well, I think they were wrong. The whole world seems the wrong way up now. Why am I here? Oh, yes. That bastard Robert. Perhaps when I get home he’ll be waiting there for me with a little suitcase, dabbing at his eyes with a balled-up handkerchief.

In my dreams. Or, as Ariel says, in another universe – maybe the one in which I am also rich. That’s the other thing: after tonight I will be so broke. I wonder if she’ll lend me money? No. Didn’t she say that she spent it all on that book? Could I steal the book? She said it was one of the rarest books in the world … What would I do? Go in there for a drink before bed and leave the door on the catch as I leave. Then I could go back in and …

You bastard, Wolfgang. You’re her friend.

The piano’s so shiny it looks as if it might just walk out of here on its four legs. Am I going to throw up? Steady, steady. I’ll go for a piss. That’ll help.

I’m on my own in the fluorescent toilets, pissing into the ceramic urinal, when this guy walks in. He’d probably look more attractive in a photo-fit than in real life. Maybe he is a photofit. His huge eyebrows don’t seem to go with his tiny slug-pellet eyes. Or maybe it’s the nose that seems slapped on, or as if someone just punched him. He comes and stands next to me and takes his cock out, but he doesn’t start to piss. He glances at me; down at my cock, and then up to my eyes. I look at his

cock. He looks at my cock again. Is this some sort of secret code? Before I know what’s happening, we’re in one of the cubicles. I’m down on my knees on the slimy, tiled floor as he fucks the inside of my mouth. All I can taste is cold piss.

When it’s over he calls me a bitch, and then leaves. I think of Donatello’s
David
again, and that’s when I cry, after I’ve thrown up in the toilet behind me: Jack Daniel’s laced with sperm and only the memory of coffee. Women are easier than this. I’ll find a woman who will help me. I’ll … Oh, God. I don’t ever feel like having sex again in my life. But you can’t get anything without sex, or the promise of sex (unless I’ve got that wrong and I actually mean violence, but I’m a little drunk).

Maybe I’ll try hanging myself, at least for some sympathy. Is it easy to get it wrong?

The next few minutes are confusing. Wesley – I’m sure it is him – comes in just as I’m unbolting the cubicle. He drags me down the corridor into the kitchen, where I manage to put my elbow in an ice- cream tub full of prawn cocktail before he presses my face down onto the stainless-steel counter. ‘Don’t you ever do that in my fucking hotel again, you fucking faggot,’ Wesley says. I genuinely have no idea what he’s talking about. I don’t think he’s firing me. I think this is the equivalent of the first formal warning. Something hurts: my arm behind my back. ‘Fight back, pussy,’ he says, jerking me backwards by the collar.

I laugh, forgetting pussy in this context does not mean ‘cute cat’.

‘Are you laughing at me?’

I spin, see a fist, and then everything goes black.

Console
? Nothing.

On the way home I try to get run over. I even walk through the Westgate Tower, on the road, muttering ‘Arsehole, arsehole’, but the traffic just slows behind me, as though this is a funeral procession rather than just a drunk who needs a kicking. In the park I try abusing a couple of kids on a bench, but they just look upset and run away. I think I might have forgotten where I live, but then I’m there, and there’s my bicycle.

I spit on the ground twice before walking in. Two guys in a black car give me dirty looks before driving off and parking around the corner. Maybe they’re going to get out and come and beat me up. Do I still want that? But nothing happens: it just looks as if they’ve gone to sleep.

Sleep. That’s quite a good idea. Maybe I’ll just go to sleep and not wake up. I wonder if Ariel has sleeping pills? Unlikely. Shall I go and see her now? Am I in a state? Objectively, would I seem ‘a state’ if I were to knock on someone’s door now? Actually, I don’t think I’ve got the energy to even get up the stairs. It looks quite comfortable on the concrete. I think I’ll just …

‘Oh. Um … I’m sorry.’

Who said that? Oh … Some guy is walking down the stairs. Wow! Check out the cheekbones. But – ouch. He’s all bruised. Has Ariel been to bed with him? I’d go to bed with him, if I were her. He looks like she would, if she were a tall man with dark hair. It’s a man-Ariel, a he-Ariel. Why is he here? Is he actually Ariel in disguise? Why would she be in disguise and putting on a different accent? He’s sorry. He’s sorry because I’m just settling down to sleep where he wants to put his feet. I don’t understand what’s going on. This is too complicated. I think I’ll just go home to bed. ‘Excusez-moi,’ I say, in French, to fool him. I start to get up.

‘Do you need a hand?’ he says.

‘Nein, danke.’

Yeah. I’m multilingual. Now, that’s funny.

(My mind isn’t in a much better state than Wolf’s and it’s as if the drink has affected me, too. But I’m still thinking
Adam. What’s Adam doing here?
)

‘Are you Ariel’s neighbour?’

‘Sí,’ I say, laughing. ‘Ja.’

He runs a hand through his messy hair and sighs.

‘I have to find her.’

‘She lives up … in the clouds.’ I meant to say ‘upstairs’. This is so funny.

‘I know where she lives. She’s not answering the door.’ ‘She’s out … with the bastards … with the wank, work …’ ‘With the what?’

‘Dinner. With people from the office. Or was that yesterday? I’m sorry … I’m a little drunk. You see, something queer and most tragic occurred this evening and …’

‘Look, I’m sorry, mate. If you can’t help me, then don’t. But don’t waste my fucking time, OK? This is pretty serious. Her life is in danger, if that means anything to you.’

‘Danger? From a cock?’

‘What? For fuck’s sake, pull yourself together.’

‘Danger. Danger! Ariel’s in danger? We must help her. Where are the grenades?’ ‘Oh, never mind.’

‘I’m sorry I’m like this. Please, let me help. She’s my friend, you know.’

The other man sighs. ‘There are two men, all right? One is wearing a black suit and one is wearing a grey suit. They both have fair hair, like yours, or a bit lighter. One of them has a little goatee beard.’ This guy’s gesticulating at me as if he could conjure up these men by drawing them in the air. ‘I think they’re driving a black saloon. Have you seen them?’

‘Who? Are they here? No. I don’t know. There’s a black car…’ ‘Where?’

‘What?’

‘You said something about a black car.’ ‘Did I? I’m sorry. I can’t remember.’

‘Look, I think these men have guns. They’re very dangerous. They’ve been to a bookshop and got information about Ariel. She bought a book that they want – that’s as much as I’ve been able to work out.’

‘Oh, that. Well, Ariel won’t sell the book. Never.’ ‘What book is it?’

Don’t tell him, Wolf. Don’t tell him.

‘It’s a … Oh. There’s a voice in my head saying I can’t tell you.’ ‘What is the book?’

I shake my head. ‘No. Sorry. Herr Doktor’s orders.’

I can’t understand all the voices in my head. One’s telling me not to explain but another one’s telling me that I should go and get the book now. And – ouch – not even sell it myself, but give it to the nice man when he asks for it …

A doorway, kind of churchy, flickers around Adam’s body. ‘Switch!’ I command. ‘Switch!’ I have to find out what’s been going on. I start to blur, just as I have done before, but instead of blurring into Adam’s head I seem to be falling, but not downwards. Before I can work out what’s happening, or how it’s possible to fall in a direction other than down, I land just outside the music shop. I’m back in the Troposphere, lying on the tarmac, looking up at the flickering neon signs and a black, starless sky. It’s as if someone’s switched everything off: the throbbing of Wolf’s head, the smell of damp in the concrete passageway, the cold, the traffic sounds from the street outside the flats. As before, it’s almost completely silent in the Troposphere. There are no noises at all: no birds, no traffic, no people. The only sound I’ve ever heard in the Troposphere is the sound of my own footsteps. Did the lifts make a sound? I can’t even remember.

I have to get out of here now and find Adam.

Why would men with guns be looking for the book? I don’t know Adam very well, but it was clear that he believed what he was saying and that he was trying to help me. Has he led the men to me – the men in the car? Or am I somehow dreaming all this? I’m bothered by what Adam said about the girl in the bookshop. He obviously didn’t know what had happened, or why, but I can work it out.

It’s logical: if you want
The End of Mr. Y
, you keep searching for it; I know that. These guys must have Googled it and found an intriguing new link – a girl saying she sold it in a secondhand bookshop. So they find the shop, go there, and ask her about whom she sold it to. She remembers nothing, I’m guessing, except that I’m a young woman doing a PhD at the university. So what happens next? The men go on the university website and search for ‘Lumas’. And they find it there under my research interests on the ‘Staff’ pages. And they realise I’m the one who bought the book. So they come looking for me … And I’m not hard to find. No one based in a university is hard to find. You could come at it from all sorts of different angles, and there I’d be: Ariel Manto – my alias, my pen name, the name I gave myself when I was only eighteen and I didn’t want to be me any more. Ariel Manto. Research interests: Derrida, Science and Literature, Thomas E. Lumas.

The Ariel part is real at least. And yes, it was the poetry, not the play.

The syrupy stillness of the Troposphere won’t let me panic, so I calmly get up off the pavement and turn towards the exit, part of me just wanting to just stay here, where they can’t get me. A city all to myself seems better than men with guns. But then I think of myself as I must be in the real world, so zonked out on my sofa that I can’t even hear the door. Come on, Ariel. Get out and run. Talk to Adam and do whatever you have to do, but if there are men with guns involved, you’d better run.

Get out and run. Get out and run. Get out and …

There’s a tinkling behind me.

And a creaking: a long, high-pitched arc of a sound. I turn around. This is all wrong. I should be on my own in here. I should be …

It’s a door. It’s a door opening. The door to the music shop. Oh, fuck. And one – no, two – two men are coming out, walking into the Troposphere like aliens walking off a spaceship. They’re just as Adam described: one man in a grey suit and one in black. They both have blond hair. But there’s something slightly cartoonish about them. As if they’ve been chroma-keyed onto the background.

They’ve got – huh? – children with them as well. Two young boys, both with the same blond hair as the men, perhaps lighter.

‘There she is,’ says one of the men, the grey suit, his mouth not quite moving at the same time that his words come out. ‘She’s already figured out how to get in.’

American accent. Shit. Can I run, and lose them in the alleyways? Something tells me this isn’t a good course of action.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ says the other one. ‘We can deal with this one fairly easily.’ Then he says to me: ‘Get out of the way. Come on. This isn’t anything to worry about. We’re just going to let the kids fuck you up a bit; find out where you put the book. It won’t hurt while they’re doing it.’

The kids dance forwards like two marionettes. Their skin is the refrigerator-pink of raw meat. One is dressed in a cowboy suit; the other is wearing a blue cape.

‘Let us in,’ sing-songs one of them, like he’s an extra in a Dickens adaptation.