Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

And so I handed over one hundred dollars, on the understanding that ‘fair exchange is no robbery’ and ‘a trouble shared was indeed a trouble halved’.

And then it occurred to me that I had indeed been talking the toot with myself. Which was novel enough, and cheered me up slightly, though not very much.

And then I unfolded the map the young black gentleman had ‘given’ to me. And discovered it to be a flyer for some rap band appearing that night in a nearby club.

And I was about to hail the young gentleman, who was leaving the Donut Diner, and inform him of his regrettable error when the feisty waitress took me by the arm, advised me against it and then pulled out a map from her apron and handed it to me.

‘You’re not from around these parts, are you, stranger?’ she asked me.

‘Well, curiously,’ I said, ‘I’ve been living in New York for the last thirty years. But I haven’t been out and about much lately.’

‘Are you someone famous?’ she asked me. ‘Only I think I recognise your face from somewhere.’

‘I’m the public face of a very private grief,’ I told her. As some women find enigmatic men fascinating, and take them back to their homes for extended periods of sexual activity.

‘Yeah, right,’ she said and went straight back to her work.

And then I unfolded the map she had given me. And lo, it was a map of the New York underground railway system. And lo, when I held my map up against it and got it round the right way and everything, the two were an all but perfect match. And I carefully traced the railway lines with my finger, noting that my fingernails dearly needed cutting, and I concluded that the location of the entrance to the Lost City of Begrem had to be right there, beneath that particular station.

And I peered at the name of that particular station. And the words on the map read Mornington Crescent East (discontinued usage).

Mornington Crescent! I was amazed. Discontinued usage? That would mean closed, I supposed.

And I folded up my map and stuck it back into my pocket. And I folded up the waitress’s map and kept that, too. And I got a bit of a smile going then (even though I wasn’t that happy) because I did now have the location of the entrance to a lost city of gold. So I had pretty much cracked everything that needed to be cracked and so must be on the home straight and about to storm across the finishing line as an outright winner. So to speak and things of that nature generally.

I’d just have another cup of coffee, and another donut, because I couldn’t be sure when I’d be eating later. Then I’d saunter on over to Mornington Crescent East, gain access to its murky depths and hit the lost city of gold. Job done.

And you really would have thought that it would have been as simple as that, wouldn’t you?

So I ordered more coffee and a further donut. And then I ducked very low to avoid the coffee pot that was swung at the back of my head.

Which I did because I heard the thoughts of the waitress. And these went, ‘It’s that psycho-terrorist, and if I smash his brains in now, I can claim the reward and put the money towards a Butlins holiday at Bognor in England.’

Which made me feel rather glad that I had developed those extraordinary sensitivities whilst I’d lain in my God-awful coma. And I didn’t hit the waitress, because hitting women is wrong, but I did make my getaway from that Donut Diner, leaving my latest coffee undrunk and half a donut uneaten. Which was a waste, really, but what was I to do?

And I ran once more through the streets of New York, ducking and diving and dodging. And the late-afternoon sun shone down darkly, casting long shadows of the New Yorkers, some singles, some doubles, and I ducked, dived and dodged.

And presently after much asking and, I confess, some degree of misdirection and requests for alms upon the part of native New Yorkers, I found myself standing outside Mornington Crescent East (discontinued usage) Underground Station. It was ancient, run-down, fly-blown, plastered over with posters. And above it, soaring up into the sky, was a mighty office block of a building. And upon this a mighty sign of a sign that read ‘THE BIG APPLE CORPORATION’. Which rang a distant bell with me, as this was the corporation that Mr Ishmael was supposedly the managing director of.

‘It figures,’ I said to myself. ‘Right here, over this station.’

And a New York bum approached me and enquired whether I might be of a mind to transfer some of my own funds into his possession. He was a rather splendid bum, as it happened, smelling strongly of Thunderbird wine and bodily odours and sporting the wildest hair and beard and the shabbiest clothes I’ve ever seen. What a wretch. It made me feel most superior to encounter such a degraded specimen of humanity.

‘Come on, buddy,’ he said to me. ‘We bums have to look after each other, right?’

‘What?’

‘Knights of the Road, buddy,’ he said. ‘Hobo Chang Ba and all that kind of a carry on.’

‘Hit the road, buddy,’ I told him, ‘or fear the wrath that comes in the shape of a trusty Smith & Wesson.’

‘God damn company man,’ he said. And he spat, as they do, those bums.

‘Company man?’ I said. ‘What of this?’

‘I saw you looking up there at the BAC. I used to work there. I was big in advertising, would have made CEO but for the takeover.’

‘Go on,’ I said. ‘I’m listening.’

‘The company was bought up. A hostile takeover. And not by another advertising company, oh no. Do you know who took over the BAC?’

‘No,’ I said and I shook my head. To indicate that I didn’t.

‘The CIA,’ said the bum. ‘That Keith Crossbar had me sacked. Threw me personally out of my office on the very top floor. Said, “This will do me nicely,” and out I went. He had me thrown down the lift shaft. But luckily the lift was coming up from the floor below so I only broke my back and spent ten years in a coma.’

‘Right,’ I said. And who could say ‘right’ much better than me?

‘Fifty dollars will do me,’ said the bum.

‘Take a hundred,’ I said. And peeled one out of my pocket.

‘God bless you, buddy,’ said the bum. ‘And if there’s anything I can do in return, don’t hesitate to mention it and we can negotiate a price.’

‘There is one thing,’ I said. ‘This here station.’

‘The Subway?’ he said.

‘Oh, that’s what they’re called. The Subway, yes. As a Knight of the Road, I’ll just bet you’d know a way of getting in here. Right?’

And I watched as the colour drained from his dirt-besmirched face. And he threw up his hands and he waved them at me and he grew most animated.

‘You don’t want to go in there, mister,’ he said, dropping the less formal ‘buddy’. ‘Terrible things go on in there. Terrible things. They say a train got walled-up in there in Victorian times and that the descendants of the trapped victims of the walling-up have become cannibals and-’

‘Have to stop you there,’ I told him, ‘but thanks all the same. Farewell.’

And on the understanding that no further largesse was to be granted him, he shuffled away, mumbling words to the effect that he would kill again and that it was God who told him to do it.

And I realised exactly how much I had missed New York while I had been all banged-up in my hospital bed. And I realised that perhaps it wasn’t really that much at all.

And I viewed once more the abandoned Subway station and wondered exactly how I was to gain entry to it. And then what exactly I would do when I had. I really needed some kind of a plan. Or some kind of a something. And I stroked my chin and shuffled my feet and wondered just what it would be. And glancing, as if by chance, across the street, I noticed a shop with a great big sign above it. And this sign read ACME Subterranean Expedition Outfitters and Forcible-Entry Specialists.