The Fictional Man (19 page)

She walked away and carried on with her working day, telling nobody what she’d stumbled on. Midway through the afternoon, she took a twenty-minute break to cry helplessly on the toilet, but aside from that she completed all her tasks with almost robotic efficiency. “Great work today, Iyla,” Justine had told her on the way out.

She drove home to find her husband in his study, telling her what a productive day he’d had, how he’d put the third chapter of
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe: A Kurt Power Novel
to bed. She decided she wasn’t going to get a better opening line than that.

“You kept changing your story. I remember that. First you said there was nothing going on, then that it had happened only the once, that that was the first and last time... then that she’d forced you, tricked you somehow...“ Iyla made a face. “And every time it was like you really believed it. Like this was the new reality for you. It felt like all you were was just a – a collection of stories you told yourself.”

Eventually, after arguing and crying and shouting their way through most of the night, they’d arrived at a version of the truth they could live with – that Justine was needy, clingy, a stalker who’d inveigled her way into Niles’ life, who he was sick of, who he never wanted to see again. It wasn’t much of a story, but by that stage Iyla was too tired and heartsick for further revisions. It would have to do.

Iyla asked Niles to end it, but he procrastinated. He’d end it the next day. Or the one after that.
Jam tomorrow,
as her father would say.

It turned out Iyla couldn’t get through many more days with Justine telling her what good work she was doing, and asking how her husband was, so she ended up pulling the pin out of the grenade herself and then walking away. Freshly unemployed, with Justine’s insults and half-baked justifications ringing in her ears and her belongings in a cardboard box on the seat behind her, she’d driven the car round to Bob Benton’s place.

“W
HY
?” N
ILES ASKED
, numb.

Iyla looked at him for a moment. “What do you want me to say? I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t stand seeing your face again. And most of the people I’d have trusted to cry on in a situation like that were back in San Francisco. Everyone else was either a work friend or the kind of person who’d have...” She made another face. “‘Of course he was going to cheat again, you’re an idiot.’ That kind of thing. I needed someone who wasn’t going to judge, someone who was going to be...”

She stared into space for a moment, then finished her coffee. Niles stared stonily at her. He hadn’t touched his.

“I needed a good person, essentially.” She put her mug down carefully on the coaster in front of her. “And Bob – you’ve got to admit – is a very good person.” She smiled wanly. “It’s how he’s made.”

Niles said nothing. He remembered how he’d spent most of that evening talking to Justine on the phone, trying to talk her down. He’d been too busy with that to call Iyla, and then when she’d finally got home, at close to midnight, shaking and staring into space, he hadn’t bothered asking where she’d been or what she’d been doing. He remembered that all he’d wanted to know was what he could do to make everything like it was. Before she’d found out. He wished he hadn’t bothered with that, now.

He considered standing up, walking out of there, leaving them to it. Instead, he just sat.

I
YLA AND
B
OB
had got on like a house on fire since the moment they’d met, at that New Year’s party. When she found out he was a Fictional – he’d mentioned the episode of
CSI
in passing and she’d ended up googling it, and him – it was actually a surprise. Most Fictionals seemed to cling doggedly to the personalities they’d stepped out of the tube with, but Bob had always seemed more vibrant, more willing to embrace and accept change. He was the only Fictional she knew of who’d quit of his own accord rather than being cancelled, for example – there was easily another season or two in
The New Adventures,
but he’d sided with the writing team in stopping while they were ahead. Then there was the beard, the attempts to find a career for himself – to define himself – rather than just grubbing a living on the convention circuit. Little things, like learning to cook or dance salsa. Things that weren’t in his ‘character.’

It wasn’t that Bob wanted to be a human being. It’s that he already felt he was human. And he didn’t see why he had to limit himself to what he’d been born with.

Bob listened to this with a blush, looking away. “Good writing,” he muttered to himself.

When Iyla had gone to see him – after nearly crashing on the freeway from crying and driving – he’d made her coffee and listened to her story, offering her tissues and reassurances and no judgements. She’d confided her fear of confessing to her friends, of their rolled eyes and I-told-you-sos. “It’s not on you,” he’d said, and held onto her, without it being any more than that... and she honestly forgot that he wasn’t real.

“He wasn’t making up a story he could live in,” she said, “that was the thing. He didn’t have a little version of the moment playing in his head where he was the hero. He didn’t need to. He was just
there
.” She shook her head. “For me, in that moment, he wasn’t imaginary. He was less fictional than you were.”

She’d kissed him, on impulse, a mixture of petty revenge –
I can cheat too,
she wasn’t above that
–
and a deeper attraction. And he’d kissed her back. And a few minutes later they were on his couch. And neither of them were thinking of body pillows or cartoon horses or social taboos or anything else. Neither of them cared.

It was only later, when she was lying in his arms and she suddenly realised that those arms had been grown in a
tank
– that the man she’d just slept with wasn’t even real or human, that he’d been grown for a TV show, and what would her parents think, and what if someone found out, and what about the papers, and all the rest of it – that she’d got up, pulled her clothes on, made her excuses and gotten the fuck out of there. She could tell he was just as freaked out, just as terrified of himself, she could see it in his eyes, but all it had meant to her then was that he wouldn’t tell anyone about the awful thing they’d just done. All she felt was a sick sense of relief.

A couple of days later, after she’d thrown up a couple of times, after she’d agreed with Niles that of
course
they’d try to save the marriage – it wasn’t like she had a leg to stand on any more, was it? – she’d risked calling Bob on the phone, arranging to meet in a downtown coffee shop like a pair of Russian spies, so they could talk about what had happened. Iyla had been planning to tell him that the best thing would be for them to never see or speak to each other again – she expected he’d agree to that readily enough – but when he’d walked in, with his hang-dog face and his gentle eyes, she hadn’t seen a Fictional, some imaginary thing that had been grown in a lab.

She just saw... Bob.

The second time, neither of them had forgotten anything. They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew it was wrong.

But it was a right kind of wrong.

“Y
OU DON’T HAVE
to go into details,” Niles said, icily. “I’m feeling ill enough as it is.”

Iyla raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really? Do you feel like you’re at work and you just walked in on me fucking your boss? That kind of ill?”

Bob winced. “Iyla –”

“No, don’t you dare, Bob. Don’t you dare take his fucking side.” She scowled angrily at Bob. “He’s not ‘a nice enough guy deep down,’ he’s a fucking asshole and I shouldn’t ever have had anything to do with him.”

It hung in the air. Bob looked at Niles with a pained expression. Niles stared daggers back at him.

“So,” he said sarcastically, “I’m a nice
enough
guy. But you have to go deep down. Those really are the kind of sentiments you want from your best friend. That and fucking your wife.”

“I’m not your wife.” Iyla stared him down. “I never should have been your wife. From the way you were carrying on, I never
was
your wife. All I ever was to you was the closest thing to hand, the thing for you when you couldn’t find anything newer, or younger, or just different.”

“That’s not true,” Niles muttered, flushing red. “I loved you. I
married
you, for God’s sake.”

“Right,” Iyla said. “And then you got bored.”

Bob fidgeted, staring at the carpet, his hands in his lap. Niles couldn’t stand to look at him. “So how long were you and him... he and you...”

He couldn’t even finish the sentence.

I
T HAD LASTED
three months. The sneaking around was what killed it, in the end.

It wasn’t just that they had to hide it from Niles. If that had been the end of it, she’d have just come out and told him – she’d have had a party, with cake and a band. HAPPY ADULTERY, NILES.

But it wasn’t just him. It was everyone.

Iyla wasn’t stupid, and neither was Bob. She knew that if anything came out about what they were doing – once, twice a week, during the stolen moments when they were absolutely sure they were safe – it was over for them. She’d seen it happen in 2000, when Ethan Hunt had had that fling with his co-star and they’d been all but hounded off the face of the Earth. Where were they living now? Somewhere in Argentina?

She’d never be able to get another job – any employer, in any city, any
country,
would be one Google search away from all the sordid details. They’d have reporters stalking them day and night, wanting salacious quotes and photos, making up their own when they didn’t get them.

And for the rest of their lives, they’d never really know if it wasn’t all about to come crashing down. If something turned up on the internet in 2030 it would – unless public attitudes had changed completely by then – be just as damaging as if it appeared the next day. Their relationship wasn’t just a bomb waiting to go off – it was one with a half-life of fifty or sixty years.

After three months, the stress of it all was too much – they were both tired of living with the constant tension. It was time to do what they should have done from the start and get out of each other’s lives for good. And they nearly did.

During all the sneaking around, Bob had been at the house a couple of times when Niles had come home unexpectedly – thankfully while they were both still clothed. They’d played it off as Iyla teaching Bob to cook Indian food – the kind of lie Niles would readily believe – and the three of them had ended up sitting down for dinner and trying what Bob had made. The dinners had been full of little overcompensations – Iyla acting withdrawn, not speaking to Bob or looking at him, while Bob engaged Niles in endless conversation, letting him run his mouth off about Kurt Power or the
London Review
or anything else. When Niles had started calling Bob on the phone, asking if he fancied a pint, Bob hadn’t felt able to refuse without it looking suspicious – even after the affair with Iyla was long over.

After a while, though, Bob had begun to honestly warm to Niles. He seemed to be making an honest effort to improve himself, to save his relationship, to be a better person. He had a hell of a blind spot when it came to self-criticism, Bob would be the first to admit, but... there was something there. You had to dig for it a little, but underneath it all he felt sure there was a good person waiting to get out.

Bob didn’t want to abandon him.

“H
OW NICE OF
you,” Niles said, coldly.

“Niles...” Bob sighed, shaking his head. “This doesn’t change anything. You’re still my best friend. I... I
like
you. I mean, I had to kind of...
grow
to like you... but...” He started again. “Look, I honestly never meant for you to find out about Iyla like this. I never meant for you to find out at
all.
I just... I just needed someone to talk to, that’s all. Someone else.”

Niles stared at Bob for a long moment. Then he stood up. He couldn’t take this anymore. He had to get out before he threw up.

Bob looked nervous, he noticed. Almost afraid. “Niles?”

The author paused on the way to the door, then turned and stared down the trembling clone sitting in front of him, the inhuman thing his wife had whored herself out to while they still slept in the same bed. Slowly, he clenched his fist. Then he drew it back and – no.

No, don’t narrate it.

Do it.

Niles leaned forward and punched Bob as hard as he could in the face.

He felt the nose bone crack, and his knuckle shift painfully, and he saw a gush of blood spurt from Bob’s nose and into his thick moustache and beard, and then Bob was clutching his face and Iyla was on her feet and screaming at him to get out, to get out of her house now – telling him she’d call the police.

“No you won’t, because then everyone’ll know
you fucked a Pinocchio
–” That was as far as he got before Bob’s fist hit him in the belly hard enough to drive the wind from him. As he went down, Niles found himself oddly thankful Bob hadn’t reverted to type and given him a sock on the jaw. It would have cracked in two like a stick of rock.

“You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve, you piece of shit!” Iyla screamed at him. She was crying again, angry tears rolling down her face. “You’re accusing
me
of fucking someone imaginary?
After what you did?
” She lashed out at him with a foot as he scrambled away, getting to his feet, trying to run for the door as best he could. She knew. Somehow, she knew about Liz. She knew he was just as bad as she was. Two Pinocchio-lovers together.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bob holding her back, stopping her from kicking him again. Good old Bob, he thought bitterly. What a friend. Then he was out of the door and scrabbling in his pocket for his car keys.

It was only once he’d pulled onto the freeway – while he was thinking desperately about whether she’d hold off on exposing him because of her own position, or whether she’d simply bring the fires of mutually assured destruction down upon them all – he realised that she couldn’t possibly have meant Liz when she’d said that.