Clear (21 page)

‘You
don’t
realise that,’ she says eventually. ‘Oh dear.’

‘Effect?’ I eventually mutter. ‘
What
effect?’

‘To piss Solomon off,’ she sighs. ‘To out-
sauce
the King of Sass. To out-smart the Infernal Smart-Arse. To out-
Jabb
er the damn
Hut
.’

(Was Jabba especially
talkative?
I don’t remember the narrative featuring a sub-plot about how extortionate his
phone
bills were.)

Before I can really respond to this bombshell, she adds, ‘Of course I have no concrete reasons for even believing that Blaine
is
a Jew.’

Wha
?

‘Yeah.
Very
funny,’ I mumble.

‘Well why should he be?’ she demands.

‘Because he
must
.’

‘But if he’s
Jewish
,’ she muses, ‘then why does he have a huge tattoo of a crucified
Christ
on his back?’

‘As a
homage
to Dali’s original painting,’ I say. ‘He admires Dali’s
work
.’

‘That’s just silly, Adair,’ she snorts, ‘and you know it.’

‘He’s a
Jew
!’

‘Why?’

I’m clutching my head, derangedly. ‘Because that’s what makes
sense
. That’s how it all adds up. Because I
like
him Jewish. I understand him better as a Jew,
and
the hostility he’s generating.’

‘Well that’s your problem,’ she snaps.

‘My problem,’ I hiss, ‘was spending five and a half hours, in mortal turmoil, reading Primo bloody Levi, on
your
instigation…’

‘
God
, you’re a lightweight,’ she says. ‘Shame on you. You have all the moral fibre of a feather.’

I grab the Blaine book. ‘But you were
right
about the Kafka,’ I witter: ‘And here’s another thing…On the back page of his autobiography there’s this small black-and-white photograph of Blaine, in a short-sleeved shirt, and on the soft flesh inside of his left arm are a series of numbers…’

I inspect the photograph again. ‘174517. Six digits. A tattoo. Like the ones they were given in Auschwitz.’

I lean over and grab the Levi and start flipping through it. My eye alights, rapidly, at the bottom of page 33. An italicised number.

‘The exact-
same
tattoo Levi was given.’ I gape, ‘The
same
digits. I mean he wouldn’t
dare
do that if he
wasn’t
a Jew, would he?’

‘Must be a direct reference to the Levi,’ she begins to speculate, ‘or some kind of clue…’ (At last, at
last
, I’ve drawn her in), but then her subtle thought processes are interrupted by a persistent beeping on the line.
‘Urgh,’
she mutters. ‘Call Waiting…’

And cuts me off.

Thanks.

Charmed
.

Hang on. That was
my
phone. A message.

I play it back.

‘It was
you
, wasn’t it?’ an unfamiliar female voice growls accusingly. ‘I simply can’t believe that you’re doing this. It’s obscene. It’s so incredibly
wrong
. She’s confused. She’s not properly herself. She’s vulnerable. She’s
sick
. And if you have even an
inch
of decency you’ll leave her the fuck
alone
.’

Click
.

The Vaselines, ‘Jesus Don’t Want Me For A Sunbeam’

Classic
eighties Indie shlock.

God
, I really, really love that track.

And it
is
a ridiculous name, now you actually come to mention it.

I replay the message to Solomon when he returns (extra-late) from some fantastic party at the Egyptian Embassy.

‘She must be ill,’ he says matter of factly, pulling off his jacket.

‘Who?’

He rolls his eyes. ‘Let’s put all the
clues
together, shall we? Number One: the headaches.’

‘Migraines,’ I correct him.

‘Number
Two
,’ he persists, ‘the fact that she’s on first-name terms with a porter at Guys, when she doesn’t actually
work
there…’

Ah yes. The hospital porter. Of
course
.

‘Number Three: her diet. She’s made healthy eating into an
art
form: low fat, low yeast
et cetera
.’

‘But that’s exactly what
Jalisa
said,’ I interject.

Solomon scowls. ‘You just spoke with Jalisa?’

‘The other
evening
,’ I counter deftly. ‘And you utterly ridiculed her for it.’

He merely shrugs. ‘Number Four: she’s plainly psychotic. She sits alone on a wall all night, surrounded by Tupperware, her eyes pinned, unswervingly, on to the recumbent torso of an International Illusionist (when any
sensible
person would simply invest in cable). She sniffs strangers’ shoes. She likes flashing her
pudenda
…’ He pauses (as if saving the best until last). ‘And she listens, voluntarily, to
Premier Christian Radio
.’

‘In short…’ He lets the dogs out into the backyard for a late-night piss. ‘This nutcase is quite
spectacular
girlfriend material.’

Hmmn.

‘You think I should cool things down a little?’

‘No. I think you should set up
home
together. I hear the embankment’s very congenial at this time of year.’

Ah
.

‘Drop her like a hot brick.’ He opens the door and whistles. ‘Avoid the magician. Date that dumpy girl from work instead. The ginger girl with a silly name. She’s infinitely more suitable…’ He pauses. ‘More at your level.’

My level?

The dogs.

One

TWO

Three

–trot demurely back inside again.

My
level?

What’s he actually
mean
by that?

Two a.m. I’m frenziedly tapping away on my keyboard, surfing the www.

Maybe he’s right. Maybe she’s ill. Maybe she’s
very
ill. The headaches. The constant hospital visits. The porter. The wildly overprotective ‘sister’ figure…

Kidney
failure.

Must be.

She’s on dialysis.

I key frantically into Google.

Dialysis
…

Ping
!

The Kidney
Dialysis
Foundation.
Now
we’re talking…

So it transpires that the kidneys are a pair of bean-shaped organs located to the rear of the abdomen (6cm wide, 11cm long, 3cm thick, weighing in at 160 grams). They’re made up of one million nephrons (and the nephrons are made up of a million
other
things. But let’s not get into all that,
eh
?).

The kidney’s main
function
is to remove toxins, waste and excess water from the body, but it also maintains the balance of salts and releases a variety of hormones…(Perhaps
this
could explain the mood swings?).

Symptoms
of a kidney disorder…

Uh
…A burning sensation passing water (Right.
Okay
). Blood in the urine (Yeah.
Whatever
). Puffy eyes (Her eyes
are
sometimes puffy, actually). Swelling of the hands, feet and abdomen…

What?!

(No
wonder
the boots didn’t fit. No
wonder
she felt ‘confined’. No wonder her waist’s so thick…)

…and, breathlessness.

(
Breathlessness
! The
panic
attack!)

I read–at some length–about special diets (yup, yup, yup). Then about how regular dialysis can involve a patient visiting hospital for, on average, three hours approximately every four days.

That’s it.

Enough.

The girl’s a goner.

Her
kidneys
are fucked.

Thank
God
I found this out now.

That poor,
sick
creature. So brave. So alone. So proud. So beautiful. So mixed-up. So
bloated
.

I lie in bed and plan how I’m going to dedicate every available
minute
from here on in to researching her condition, raising awareness, being helpful and encouraging and gentle and
indispensable
.

I even consider donating a kidney of my own…play this fantastic little film backwards and forwards in my head for a while–the white hospital robe, the brave smile, the hospital trolley, the incredibly sexy nurse, the powerful anaesthetic…

Drive the pigs to market.

Wake up with the birds, unbelievably refreshed.

Think about that sexy nurse for a few minutes.

Then get up, get dressed, go out and buy an i-Pod.

This is
serious
.

It takes me a whole
ten
days to transfer the most vital constituents of my record and CD collections on to this marvellous piece of ‘cutting edge’ technology.

I mean to have it
all
, right there, at your fingertips,
whenever
you want it.

Hoo-wee
.

On the tenth day, Bly drops by.

‘It’s been two weeks,’ she says, holding her bag nervously in both hands as she stands behind the kitchen table and stares at the dogs (who are sitting in a neat row on the other side, and staring straight back at her).

My level, he said.
My
level.

‘In dog psychology,’ I tell her, ‘the stare is generally associated with aggressive behaviour. Try and blink a little.’

She stops staring.

‘There’s subterranean rumblings at the office,’ she says, gazing up at the ceiling (like Damon Albarn at the peak of his Britpop mania), ‘about giving you the old heave-ho.’

‘But I’ve had the
flu
,’ I whine.

‘I know. That’s what
I
said. But the flu isn’t really in vogue right now–for the flu to work, conceptually,
everyone
needs to be catching it–and two weeks is…
well
…two
weeks
.’

She pulls out a chair.

‘Make yourself at home,’ I say.

‘Thanks.’

She sits down. She tucks a tuft of flaming hair behind a small, white ear. She clears her throat. ‘So…’ she says, then pauses, worriedly. ‘Why on
earth
are you looking at me like that?’

‘You’re actually quite a show-stopper,’ I murmur (Well, underneath all that defensive blubber).

She blushes, ‘Don’t be
stupid
’, and starts messing around with the pepper dispenser.

‘Pretty
face
,’ I qualify.

Her eyes tighten. ‘What’s
that
supposed to mean?’

‘That you’ve got a pretty face, I guess.’

‘You think I’m overweight? Is that it?’

‘No. I just think you’ve got a pretty
face
.’

(Jesus Christ. What’s it take to make a compliment
work
in this town?)

She rolls her eyes.

‘But how heavy
are
you?’

‘Why?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘I’m a size fourteen. That’s an average size.’

‘Yeah. Of
course
. In the West.’

Her brows shoot up (Nice brows. Personality-ful. Brows like Julianne Moore’s after a month in the wilderness sans tweezers).

‘What d’you mean, “In the
West
?”’

‘I mean that it wouldn’t be your “average” size in, say, Algeria.’

‘In Algeria my size would be an irrelevance,’ she snipes, ‘because I’d be dressed head-to-toe in bloody purdah.’

I choose not to argue this point with her, but merely smile, sympathetically.

‘You’re actually quite
skinny
,’ she snaps, ‘for a man.’

Then she pauses. ‘
And
short.’

Then she pauses again. ‘And your
hair
…’

But she runs out of steam at this point.

(‘High styled’, springs to mind, ‘beautifully coiffured’, perhaps, ‘brave’, even.)

‘Five foot nine
is
average,’ I murmur.