Absolute Zero Cool (24 page)

‘Oh. We’re still talking about the files?’

His jaw clenches. ‘That’s right. We’re still talking about the missing files.’

‘Well, in that case, I suppose the moral of the story is that sometimes, even with a barrel full of good apples, things still get ruined.’

He stands up and walks to the window and stares out across the car park with his hands in his pockets. His shoulders have tensed into a straight line. ‘Karlsson, between you and me, I’ve been fairly relaxed for the last while. I happen to believe that adults should be treated like adults. For your own sake, don’t give me a reason to get on your case. I’ll come down like a ton of bricks.’

I stand up too. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Joe.’

He turns. ‘Oh, I’ll keep them alright. Never you fear.’

‘What do you want to do, take it outside? You want to go mano-a-mano because I don’t know who took the dodgy files?’

He holds up his hand with the thumb and forefinger pressed together. ‘Karlsson, you’re this close to an official warning.’

‘Joe, the history of conflict suggests that it’s not what you’re prepared to do that defines the outcome, it’s what you’re not prepared to lose.’

He nods. His jaw is set. ‘Okay, you’ve just bought yourself an official warning.’

‘See, now I’m curious. Seriously – what are you not prepared to lose?’

‘One more word and you’re suspended.’

I dig in my pocket and take out the Zippo, clink-chunk the lid. ‘Joe, one more word and your daughter receives precisely one face-full of lighter fluid.’ He frowns. I say, ‘Your address is 27, The Paddock, Springview Crescent. Her school is St Bernadette’s Primary. Violin lessons every Thursday afternoon, swimming class on Saturday morning.’

He stares. His jaw now hangs slackly. His eyes are the premature grey of an imminent blizzard. ‘Joe,’ I say, ‘just out of curiosity – what are you not prepared to lose?’

‘Get out,’ he says hoarsely. ‘Get out of my fucking office.’

‘You’re the boss.’ I turn at the door. ‘If I hear anything more about the missing files, I’ll be sure to let you know.’

My line for today is, I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away. (Cormac McCarthy, Outer Dark)

My name is Jennifer. I am eleven years old and I live in Dublin. I would like to own a pony but my mother says I am too young to take care of it properly.

My favourite stars are Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Katy Perry. My favourite colour is pink but I tell people it is violet. My friends at school are Melinda, Sinead and Barbara, although Sinead is my best friend because she told me last Christmas that I am her best friend.

My chat-room friends are Tara, Joanne, Yasmin, Siobhan and Kylie. We like ponies, boys, and shopping for clothes on Saturday afternoons. Yasmin says she buys a new top every Saturday, but I don’t believe her.

I have a very strong suspicion that Yasmin might be a liar.

Tonight Yasmin says she is going to meet Shane from Westlife when he comes home to Sligo for the big concert at Lissadell. She says Shane is her favourite because she likes the way she feels inside when he sings. She asks if I have ever been to a Westlife concert. I say yes, I have, but I’d like to go again. I tell her my mother won’t take me, she says once is enough.

Yasmin says I can go with her to meet Shane if I really want to. She says her mother works with Shane’s sister, so if I want Yasmin to bring me along, she will. But I have to keep it a three-times secret. Otherwise everyone will want to meet Shane.

I say I don’t know. Dublin is a long way away from Sligo.

Yasmin says it’s easy to take the train. She says once you get on the train, it takes you all the way to Sligo. She says she will meet me at the station with her mother.

I say I don’t know. I say I’ll have to think about it. I say I wouldn’t be able to stay out all night, because if my mother found out I’d be grounded for a whole year.

Yasmin says there is a train that will take me home afterwards. She says that her mother will bring me back to the station afterwards and put me on the train.

I say I’ll think about it. Yasmin asks if I’m a chicken. I say no. She says, well then.

I say I’ll let her know soon. I ask how much the train ticket will cost. Yasmin says not to worry about it, she’ll pay.

Yasmin has no fucking idea, etc.

The brain is the laziest organ in the body. It is never more content than when allowing ideas to circulate along established orbits. It is a creature of habit that loves grooves, ruts and well-worn furrows, and excels at conjuring up the cheap tricks and delusions that reduce the necessity for forging new paths through the trackless universe of the imagination.

Thus, this: love.

Thus, this: the mental recoil and revolt when the theory of blowing up a hospital is mooted.

Thus, this: the brain’s counter-mooting of familiar concepts such as judgement, punishment and eternal damnation.

But the brain is both slave and master. It needs to be chained, whipped and brought to heel, by itself. If the brain discovers itself to be a weak master, it will not respect itself in the morning. The brain craves discipline, authority and decisive decision making.

I am, therefore I think. I decide, therefore I am. I act, therefore I will be.

Herostratus, can you hear me now?

My line for today is, Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/ I took the one less travelled by (Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken’)

On the way home from work I duck into The Book Nest, a small but perfectly formed bookshop facing the river, and pick up copies of
Jean de Florette
,
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
and
Love in the Time of Cholera
. Once home, I ring Cassie.

‘Hey, K.’

‘Hey,’ I say. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Good, yeah.’

She sounds cautiously friendly. There is no reason she should not. All things considered, and one blazing row apart, our parting was amicable. Plus, we shared and still share the grief of miscarriage.

There is also a very good chance that Cassie feels the pangs of guilt most women feel when a relationship fails, no matter whose fault it was, the subconscious guilt of extinguishing all those babies who might have been.

‘So what’s up?’ she says.

‘There’s some stuff I’ve found, I didn’t want to chuck it in case you wanted it back.’

‘What kind of stuff?’

‘There’s a few CDs. And some of your book club books.’

‘That’s okay, you keep them.’

‘There’s something else.’

‘What? K, if you still have photos of––’

‘No, it’s nothing like that. It’s tapes of you singing.’

‘Singing? Me?’

‘Sure. You sing in your sleep.’

‘In my sleep?’

‘No one else ever told you that?’

‘Singing what?’

‘I don’t know, it’s hard to tell.’

She considers this. ‘You taped me singing in my sleep?’

‘I thought you might want a record of it.’

‘And how come you’re only telling me about it now?’

‘For the reason you’re pissed off. It’s an invasion of privacy.’

‘Too fecking right it is.’

‘Which is why I’m giving them back. Or should I just destroy them?’

‘No,’ she sighs, ‘don’t destroy them.’

‘Okay. I’ll leave them here for pick-up. You still have your key, right?’

‘Yeah. I suppose I should give that back.’

‘Not unless you want to.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’d mean I’d have to find another key-holder.’

‘You want me to be your key-holder?’

‘Not if it’s going to be a problem. Otherwise, yeah. Why not?’

‘No reason.’ A telling pause. ‘Listen, K? I’d rather meet in town. Would you mind?’

‘No problem. By the way, you might like to know – I’m dumping that novel. I thought about it and you’re right, I don’t have the right to write about you like that.’

‘That’s your decision, K. It has nothing to do with me anymore.’

‘I know that. I’m not trying to woo you back or anything. I’m just saying, if you want the manuscript and the discs, you can have them.’

‘Just burn them, K.’

‘Will do. So where do you want to meet?’

We arrange a time and place: F—’s, next Saturday, early afternoon. This is to ensure there is no opportunity for drunkenness and irresponsible nostalgia. We agree to be on our best behaviour for the duration of the meeting. We arrange our lives with the care of an old spinster retying a red satin bow around a bundle of yellowing letters, and then hide our lives away at the bottom of our battered hope chests.

‘K? Any weird shit and I’ll walk. Okay?’

‘If it’ll help, I’ll learn sign language. It’s just too much effort to be weird in sign language.’

She snorts, says goodbye, hangs up. I spend the evening practising her signature by turning it upside down and copying out the meaningless squiggle. When I am confident I have it right I sign her name on the fly-leaf of Jean de Florette, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Love in the Time of Cholera.

My line for today is, People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. (Logan Pearsall Smith)

The old man, the ex-mechanic, dies. This is despite his express wish to the contrary. This is as sad as it is inevitable, although its inevitability should go some way towards alleviating the sadness. The old man simply arrived at a point in space and time where irrational hope intersected with irreversible logic.

On the way to the funeral, to cheer myself up, I go into a bookies and place a bet on my not dying.

The woman behind the counter is nonplussed but intrigued. ‘Ever?’

‘What kind of odds can you give me?’

‘None. There are no odds. There can’t be.’

‘Why not?’

‘Everyone dies is why not.’

‘You’re saying it’s impossible for me not to die.’

‘Correct.’

‘Have you any idea of what the odds were against my being born in the first place?’

‘Better than those against you’re not dying, that’s for sure.’

‘You think?’

‘Everything dies.’

‘Okay. But not everything lives in the first place. The odds against my being born were hundreds of trillions to one. And that’s a conservative estimate.’

She thinks about this. ‘How would you collect? I mean, just say you never died. How would you collect?’

‘You won’t have to worry about that. You’ll be dead.’

We decide on a one-euro bet at odds of a billion-to-one. ‘Best of luck,’ she says, signing off with a flourish.

At the cemetery the rain is a drizzled blessing. The old man’s family drift towards the exit. Most people don’t stick around for the final act. The fat lady sings a siren’s song.

The gravedigger leans against a convenient tombstone, smoking and staring me down. He is mid-thirties, tall and lean, unshaven. I smoke and stare back.

He nods at the hole. ‘I have to wait until you go before I can start filling him in.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I dunno. It’s traditional.’

‘You think the old man would mind me watching him being filled in?’

‘How would I know?’

‘Put yourself in his shoes. Take a guess.’

He takes a drag off his cigarette. ‘If it was me, yeah, I’d mind. If it was me, I’d rather be left alone.’

‘He used to be a mechanic,’ I say. ‘Played centre-back on the team that won the double in 1961. In the last six months he had the grand total of three hospital visits, and he liked to eat peach yoghurt and Dairy Milk chocolate. They think it was gangrene killed him.’

By way of empathy, the gravedigger places a thumb against one nostril and snorts the other nostril clear. ‘I’ve work to do,’ he says.

‘There’s a meteor on the way,’ I say, ‘it’s called Asteroid 1950 DA. It’s still eight hundred years away. But it’s coming.’

That grabs him. ‘Like in the film?’ he says.

I nod. ‘Check this out. NASA put a probe on a meteor, a different one, travelling at twice the speed of a bullet three hundred million miles away. They wanted to know what it was made of.’

‘And?’ he says. ‘What was it made of?’

‘No idea. What I’m saying is, they can put a probe on a meteor travelling at twice the speed of a bullet three hundred million miles away, but they can’t know for sure it was gangrene killed an old man.’

He takes a vicious drag on his cigarette, tucks it into a corner of his mouth and picks up his spade. ‘That gangrene’s some cunt alright.’

He shovels dirt into the hole. It lands with a metallic-sounding clatter.