On the Floor (18 page)

John says something about Apache helicopters and I switch over to a local station where a game-show host is holding a microphone very close to a young girl's mouth. I press mute and walk into the bathroom. Maybe I should eat something. Maybe I'll feel more motivated when I get into the office or maybe I just couldn't give a shit about anything.
In the centre of my stomach I feel a sudden wrench and lean over just in time to puke a rancid slime into the bidet. I stagger back against the wall and slide down to sit on the floor, trying not to contract the raw muscles of my throat until the heaving subsides into a sobbing hiccup. I don't remember anything about the flight here except drinking on the plane with some guy relocating to Sydney for a job with FOX, some half-hearted argument about the war, an observation about how years of business travel has killed off any desire to see the world, the jaded airport lounges, the kerosene folded into your clothes, the stagnant cabin air, the petrified mucous membranes, the microwaved stink of bread rolls, the background roar, the sameness of your world. Looking at my watch, I calculate that I have napped for twenty-four minutes, which makes a steadily shrinking average of 302 minutes in each twenty-four-hour cycle since I started counting 180 days ago and I forecast that, at this accelerating rate of sleep decay, I will be constantly awake by the 1st of April.

Don't you ever sleep?
Stephen would mumble when I slipped into bed at 2 a.m. and lay beside him, remembering how when I was a child, the night used to make everything possible, all desires and imaginings unleashed like caged animals to roam around my childhood bedroom, demanding that I stay awake. I used to sleepwalk through schoolday afternoons in Double Chemistry, the tedious blackboarding of molecular structures that I had already built in my head, immersed in daydreams of being an astronaut on a pre-moon flight training, cocooned in a chewing-gum-white suit, a tricolour emblazoned below the stars and stripes, my hair cut short for the Mission, the controller talking to me through a radio mike. A self-contained unit in a sealed pod, the only last-minute question I have is how do I go to the loo, but I am too shy to ask, don't want them to think I am concerned about such trivia. It is, after all, such a wonderful and weightless suit and I can already see the photo on the front page of the
Irish Times
. The Controller runs through some last-minute detail about record-keeping and the search-and-rescue sequence in the sea. But I am keen to be off and making
history for Ireland, to find some as yet undiscovered organism on the moon. I have spent my final earthbound night talking to my parents across a fence (no closer than fifteen feet in case I contract some hibernating virus and take it with me into space, jeopardising my health, the Mission, and the entire Universe). My mother clutches a tissue and says how lovely I look in my suit and to be sure and ring as soon as I arrive. On the TV broadcast I appear to be waving specifically at her while my dad grapples with his lifelong struggle to find something meaningful to say. Kieran shouts that he can't wait till I get back and don't forget his moon rock. I want desperately to touch my brother's fingers through the wire, to bring him with me, to share the capsule hours.

There is a faint tinkle outside as if a trolley is passing. I go back into the bedroom and press the TV remote. A shrill Cantonese shrieks from the studio audience so I return to CNN. As I step into the shower, John's voice echoes off the tiled walls. The French have given up a last-ditch attempt to negotiate a way out and here in Baghdad they're preparing for war.

I stare at the curve of the bedside phone – I should fulfil my promise to Aunt Joan and call my father, offer hollow support down the line. I picture him crossing the chequered lino in the hall, but I am not ready to summon up the past. The day after Christmas I found him bent double on the nearside of my rental car.

Was this on it when you picked it up?
He tapped a scratch on the wheel arch.

I didn't check
. I stubbed out my cigarette on the sodden footpath.
Sure they'll charge you for that if you can't prove it, Geraldine
, he shook his head at the waste, the squandering.
It's only money
, I shrugged.

He leaned a hand on his knee and straightened up,
Lord above, it's easy come easy go with you
.

Oh, pack it in, Dad
, I looked up at the greyness that pressed down on us.

Did you call your mother to say goodbye?

I shook my head.
What's the point in calling when all she does is hold the phone and won't say anything?
And I turned towards him just in time
to catch his face fold into that familiar look of resigned acceptance of the bad things life has thrown his way and the heartless disappointment of a daughter who has never been sufficient compensation for the losses he has sustained. And I longed, as so often before, to just push him over, a good sharp bang to the head on the drive might get him to focus on all that is in front of him instead of all that is behind. Instead we hugged weakly and I sank into the car seat, slammed the door, fumbling with the keys, head down so he wouldn't see the stupid tears that were welling. I pulled out and waved blindly, heading down the road with the Mullens' half-Alsatian tracking my front wheel at a trot. I watched him break into a run until he stopped, suddenly hitting the outer limit of his world at the corner to the main road.

As I rounded the junction he was standing perfectly still, staring straight after me, his dappled body receding in my rear-view mirror until he turned and padded home. And I vowed as I do every year: last time I go back for Christmas. Last time I stand in the crowded departure lounge at Heathrow with all the scattered children of Eire – vets in Canada, doctors in Ethiopia, barmen in Boston, nurses in New York, drop-outs in Thailand, bankers in London, all of us headed back to the transit lounge that is Ireland and all that we had fled.

Even on maximum pressure the water makes no impact so I tilt my head backwards, imagine I am walking in the park with Rex, a downpour streaming over my face. In the partly steamed mirror I see my own mortality wrapped in a thick white towel. ‘A simple answer to a simple question, Geri,' I tell my reflected face, ‘that's all.' I wait for the familiar wash of a reassuring professionalism but the wave thrashes and pools around my feet. I need to shift this dead weight and kick-start my way out of this malaise into the real world where business needs to be done. I should have a drink. I should have something else but I forgot the Diazepam.

A high-frequency scream crescendos in my ear, like the shrill
insistence of a distant alarm clock counting out some non-specific warning as I fumble for a detonator switch. Maybe I have tinnitus. Maybe this tightness in my chest is some form of adult asthma; maybe my body is crumbling and as I reach for the toothbrush I wobble on my heels as if my capacity to balance is slipping away. Come on, Geri, it's a day like any other. Back in my prehistory there used to be an engaging staccato of variety, the possibility of a day not going as planned. But now I have a nose for human targets with a definable range of manipulable needs. I know the sales routine so well that I can switch to autopilot and still effect an upbeat delivery. Trading favour for favour, that's why I exist, and let's face it, it's not really anybody's money. I am a heat-seeking missile, sniffing out the millions that need to find a way home to Steiner's, laying mines for the second-rate competition. I come from a long line of white-shoe firms, we don't do shit deals. Favour for favour.

A simple answer to a simple question. This special mission should be a cakewalk, I can do it with my eyes closed. This jangled brittleness is just the distortion of fatigue. The sabre rattling in the Middle East is just white noise. I try to visualise how it will go: I will follow Felix's lead to the boardroom, where he will order me some green tea. He will express his regret that my trip is too short for dinner at some newly discovered restaurant so that he can watch me struggle with local delicacies that he knows I despise. He will ask me what I read on the plane and I will say Descartes'
Meditations
and he will smile faintly,
Ah yes, the demon of deception
. If he asks me to comment on the downfall of Cartesianism, my answer will be four sentences long and directly to the point.

And then I will tell him why I am here. I picture myself departing an hour later, mission accomplished, with a confident smile and the simple question answered. Then I will call the Grope, pause for effect and tell him I've got what he wants.

There's a moment of dressing confusion when I wonder if my clothes belong to someone else: the linen skirt hangs insipidly around my
hips, the shirt's soft lilac reflects an embedded blue in my skin and the slingback slips off my right ankle as I close the door behind me and step onto the deep pile of blue and rust. The lift doors chime open onto two suits, who break off from their conversation to acknowledge this exiled camaraderie between white briefcases far from home at such a precarious moment in history. Perhaps we are crusaders, or maybe there was just no one begging us to stay.

I stand on the steps of the Mandarin Hotel adjusting to the humidity and the sweet smell of harbour-side decay, change my mind about the cab and swing left in the direction of the office, already exhausted. This is predictable, although I don't really believe in jet lag. Down a side alley, beneath the spattered shade of a disintegrating candy-striped awning, a man sits motionless under a stained cape while a barber's scissors hack furiously along the flat plane of his skull. A tiny bundle of slippered old woman spits noisily on the ground beside them as she rustles in the rips of a plastic bag. Above their heads, air-con units clutter the alley walls like giant bird boxes, exhaling into the breathless stink. And beyond, the neon chaos of steep shadowed shopping streets ascends sharply into a sudden glimpse of the vast Peak that overwhelms the city.

I walk very slowly to keep the sweat below crisis levels. Turn and rise into the covered footbridge that crosses Connaught Road. A light breeze sticks hair to my lipstick and I emerge just as the sun hits the varnished brown of the granite on Exchange Square One. Each of the forty storeys is marked by tinfoil strips of wraparound glass that reflect the portholed windows of the opposite building, angled precisely into the adjoining space like a giant meccano board. I swear that each time I visit, the gap between the office blocks gets smaller as the whole island sneaks ever closer to its future parent: China.

Steiner's fledgling office is alive and ticking, a little community of expatriate profit. A couple of FX guys are haggling with the phones,
the basket boys are in position like toy soldiers with their virgin shirts and matching haircuts. I slip into an empty chair and they break away briefly from the magnetism of their screens to flash their orthodentistry at me for a welcoming nanosecond. Sitting opposite these guys is like watching a wildlife programme about mammals you didn't know existed. My borrowed desk space on the little trading floor has a miniature phone board but no Reuters so I wander over to the mini-kitchen and make coffee, looking out at the harbour view towards the Ocean Centre and the New Territories.

I wonder about Pie Man and Rex and if he is off his food and if Al will remember to video
Twin Peaks
for me.

‘I'm sorry, did I wake you?'

‘No, no,' Pie Man stifles a yawn.

‘Are you still in bed?' There is a scuffle as he rustles the receiver from one space to another.

‘No. I must have dropped off last night.' I picture him slumped in front of the TV underneath a sea of sweet wrappers.

‘I was just thinking about Rex.'

‘He's good, he's right here beside me.'

‘I was wondering if he was eating all right.'

‘He's been gobbling it all up. Actually I gave him a treat.'

‘Oh yeah?'

‘Just a little treat.'

‘What?'

‘A Kit Kat.'

‘You gave him a Kit Kat? Are you fucking crazy? Chocolate is poisonous to dogs.' There is a sound of interference or maybe static. Then silence and a sucking sound as if he is working his lips.

‘I, eh, didn't know.'

‘Jesus. Is he all right?'

‘He's asleep. D'you, eh, want me to wake him up?'

‘No.' Though really I do want to speak to Rex but not with Pie Man listening in.

‘I'm sorry, Geri. I had no idea—'

‘I know you didn't. I should have said.'

‘I'm really sorry.'

‘Don't worry. And, hey, don't think I don't appreciate it, what you are doing.'

‘That's OK.'

‘So what else is he up to?'

‘He ate my cereal that I left on a chair.'

‘You have to put food on tables. I mean, Rex knows tables, but sometimes chairs—'

‘OK.'

‘So did you let him off the lead?'

‘Yes. He – did his
thing
– you know, on the footpath. A woman who saw gave me a filthy look. But I just couldn't do the bag.'

It's all turning into dog hell. ‘Well, I'll be back tomorrow morning.'

‘Actually, Geri, having Rex here has made me think about getting a puppy,' he says.

‘Well, I wouldn't rush into it.'

‘You think it's a bad idea?'

‘No, I just – it's a lot of responsibility. And dog walkers are expensive. And then if you were going away for the weekend or something—'

‘I don't go away much. Ever really.'

‘And dogs get lonely.'

‘So why do you have Rex then?'

‘Because I already have him. Because—'

‘Because you had St—' and he stops himself.

‘What?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Go on say it.
Say it
.'

‘I was going to say that you had Rex because you had Stephen.'