Alan Glynn - The Dark Fields aka Limitless

‘Well, there’s something I’ve got to do later, but I’m going home now.’

‘OK.’

The next short while was taken up with goodbyes and see you laters .

Ginny drifted over to the door, waved at me, smiled, and then left.

On our way down to the Orpheus Room a couple of minutes later, I had to shake off an acute sense of disappointment and refocus my attention on the business at hand.

My bid for the apartment in the Celestial Building was accepted the following day, and I found myself signing all of the documents the day after that again. Van Loon’s letter had silenced any enquiry into my tax affairs, and with the financing arrangements equally discreet, I have to say I had a very easy time of it. Less easy was deciding how I wanted the place to look. I called a couple of interior designers and visited some furniture showrooms and read various glossy magazines, but I remained undecided and fell into an obsessive cycle of plan and counter-plan, colour scheme and counter-colour scheme. Did I want it all spare and industrial, for example, with gunmetal-grey surfaces and modular storage units – or exotic and busy , with Louis XV chairs, Japanese silk screens and red lacquer tables?

When Gennady arrived at the apartment on Tenth Street that Friday morning, I had already started packing some of my stuff into boxes.

I should have expected trouble, of course, but I hadn’t been letting myself think about it.

He came in the door, saw what was happening and lost his temper almost immediately. He kicked a couple of boxes over and said that was it . ‘I’ve had enough of you and your two-faced guinea shit .’

He was wearing a baggy, cream-coloured suit with a swirling pink and yellow tie. His hair was slicked back and he had steel-rimmed, reflective sunglasses resting on the tip of his nose.

‘I mean, what the fuck is going on here?’

‘Take it easy, Gennady. I’m just moving to a new apartment.’

‘ Where? ’

This was going to be the hard bit. Once he understood where I was moving to, he’d never be happy to go on with the arrangement as it was. I’d paid off all of the loan by that stage, so essentially the arrangement between us was me dealing him twelve MDT pills a week. I didn’t want to go on with this arrangement either, of course, but clearly there’d be a difference of opinion about the nature of any changes we might make.

‘A place in the West Thirties, on Twelfth Avenue.’

He kicked another box.

‘When are you moving?’

‘Early next week.’

The new place wasn’t ready in terms of décor and furnishings, but since it had a shower and phonelines and cable, and since I didn’t mind eating delivery food for a while – and since I really wanted to get out of Tenth Street – I was prepared to just move into it straightaway, as it was.

Gennady was now breathing through his nose.

‘Look,’ I said to him, ‘you’ve got my social security number and my credit-card details. It’s not like you’ll be losing track of where I am. Besides it’s only across town and up a bit.’

‘You think I’m worried about losing track of you?’ He threw a hand up in the air dismissively. ‘I’m tired of this …’ – he pointed to the floor – ‘… coming here . What I want is to meet your dealer. I want to buy this shit in bulk .’

I shook my head and clicked my tongue.

‘Sorry, Gennady, that’s just not going to be possible.’

He stood still for a second, but then lunged forward and punched me in the chest. I fell backwards, over a full box of books, arms outstretched, and whacked my head on the floor.

It took me a few moments to sit up, and a few more to rub my head and look around in bewilderment, and then to get up on my feet again. I thought of a hundred things to say to him, but didn’t bother with any of them.

He had his hand out.

‘Come on, where are they?’

I stumbled over to the desk and got the pills from a drawer. I went back and handed them to him. He swallowed one of the pills and then spent the next couple of minutes carefully transferring the rest of them from the little plastic container I’d given him to his silver pillbox. When he’d finished doing this, he discarded the plastic container and put the pillbox into the breast pocket of his jacket.

‘You shouldn’t take more than one of those a day,’ I said.

‘I don’t.’ Then he looked at his watch, and sighed impatiently. ‘I’m in a hurry. Write down the address of this new place.’

I went over to the desk again, still rubbing the back of my head. When I found a piece of paper and a pen, I considered giving him a false address, but then thought what would the point be – he did have all my details.

‘Let’s go. I’ve got a meeting in fifteen minutes.’

I wrote down the address and handed him the piece of paper.

‘A meeting ?’ I said, with a hint of sarcasm in my voice.

‘Yeah,’ he smirked, obviously missing the sarcasm, ‘I’m setting up an import-export company. Or trying to. But there’s so many fucking laws and regulations in this country. You know how much shit you have to go through just to get a licence?’

I shook my head, and then asked him, ‘What are you going to be importing? Or exporting?’

He paused, leant forward a little and whispered, ‘I don’t know, you know… stuff .’

‘Stuff?’

‘Hey, what do you want, this is a complicated scam I’m working on – you think I’m going to tell a cocksucker like you about it?’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘OK, Eddie,’ he said, ‘so listen. I’m giving you until next week. Set up a time with this person and we’ll meet. I’ll cut you in for a commission. But fuck with me, and I’ll rip your heart out with these two hands and fry it up in a skillet. Do you understand me?’

I stared at him. ‘Yes.’

His fist came from out of nowhere, like a torpedo, and landed in my solar plexus. I doubled up in pain and staggered backwards again, just avoiding the box of books.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, did you say yes ? My mistake.’

As he was walking down the stairs, I could still hear him laughing.

When I was able to breathe normally again, I went over to the couch and lowered myself on to it. I stretched out and stared up at the ceiling. For some time now, Gennady’s personality had been threatening to spiral out of control. I was going to have to do something about it, and soon – because once he saw the apartment in the Celestial Building there’d be nothing I could do. Not any more. It’d be too late. He’d want in. He’d want everything.

He’d ruin everything.

However, a bit later – when I thought matters through more fully – I came to the conclusion that the real crisis wasn’t with Gennady at all. The real crisis had to do with the fact that my supply of MDT was haemorrhaging – and at an alarming rate. Over the past month or so, I’d been dipping into it several times a week, indiscriminately, without ever bothering to count how many pills were left – thinking each time that I’d count them the next time. But I never did. I never got around to it. I was too caught up in things, too caught up in the relentless drumbeat inside my own head – the MCL-Abraxas deal, the Celestial Building, Ginny Van Loon …

I went into the bedroom. I opened the closet, took out the big brown envelope and emptied its contents on to the bed. I counted the pills. There were only about two hundred and fifty of them left. At the current rate of consumption – plus Gennady’s regular supply – they’d all be gone in a couple of months. Even if I eliminated Gennady from the equation, that would still only add a few more weeks to the total. So ultimately… a few weeks, a few months – what difference did it make?