Nick Harkaway - The Gone-Away World

I could seek an introduction, but since I’ve given the impression that I already know Dick Washburn, that might confuse people and lead to the same unfortunate awakenings as option one. Fortunately, I am devious. The problem of how to say hi to a powerful, confident executive you have never met but whom you are supposed to know is a very difficult one. I have considered from all angles and decided that there is almost no way to do it which doesn’t make you look smaller than he does. Having this problem both sucks and blows. Thus, I have arranged for it to be Dick Washburn’s problem.

This is the room, from above. It is irregular but roughly oval. It is lined with tables and chairs for receiving. Later tonight it will be cool and dark, and smell of cigars and spilled mojitos. The carpet will hold the marks of a hundred pairs of elegant shoes, and the lead crystal glasses will carry traces of designer lipstick and executive DNA. The writing desk, pressed into service by the entrance to the breakfast room, will still have perfume on it, because the woman with the penetrating laugh is leaning all the way forward to adjust her interlocutor’s tie and (her mother taught her this when she was seventeen) she sprays scent into her cleavage before she goes out. Right now, though, the room is bustling and alive. If you speeded it up, you would see twisting patterns like clouds and pressure lines, and at the very centre of the biggest one is Richard Washburn, Esquire. His presence defines the play of forces in the room; the flutter of his wings causes tremors by the bar and tidal waves at the chaise longue in front of the patio doors. On most nights Richard Washburn is the eye of the storm. But today he is not alone. There is something wrong, a perturbation in the smooth carriage of his life. Another weather centre, a zone of high pressure, small but very hot, is moving across the shag-pile floor. Perhaps it’s a tornado. Perhaps it’s the beginning of a hurricane. Will it bounce off him, or swallow him up? Most likely it will swell his power, increase his domain, but it just might be a danger to him. Whatever, he cannot ignore it. Which is why he is, even now, moving through the throng towards me. He sticks out his hand and prepares to say hi in a big, dominant way.

And then Dick Washburn’s eyes widen. I can feel the change too; I know roughly what’s happened before I turn round. If my presence here is like a tropical storm closing in on Dick’s island paradise of warm weather and regular rainfall, this is like the arrival of Moses at the Red Sea. The flow of wind and water slows, then stops altogether. A momentous thing has happened. And behind me there is a strange, familiar noise. It is the sound of shoes with little metal cleats tapping on the wood boards of the hallway.

“Hi, Humbert,” Dickwash says a bit squeakily. “So glad you could come.” I wonder if Humbert Pestle has ever shown up to one of these soirées before. I wonder why he is here now. Maybe Dickwash is up for promotion. Maybe Humbert’s about to eat him alive.

“Richard,” Humbert Pestle says jovially, “I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. But I’m taking you away from your guest.” Not guests, plural, just me. Humbert Pestle sticks out a muscular hand. The other one (the possible prosthetic) is tucked, genial old-fart style, into his trouser pocket. This makes him uneven and a bit rumpled, but his clothes are so perfect (no doubt Royce Allen cut and stitched every bit himself, from the purest milk-washed brontosaurus foreskin) that he just looks terribly relaxed. Which he is.

“I’m Pestle, call me Humbert—”

I recognise the line from his briefing at Harrisburg, and give him the next bit: “Pestle like mortar . . .”

He stares for a moment then says, “Mortar like in a wall—”

“And ain’t that ever a regrettable name?”

Now I have Humbert Pestle’s full attention, and the power of his gaze, when he switches it on, is like a weight on my chest. There is absolute quiet, except for someone, somewhere in the room, who chooses this moment to finish a sentence with the words “ludicrous cocksucker!” and then goes very quiet and hides behind an urn. I’d feel sympathetic, but I’m busy exuding bonhomie and harmless, cheeky, up-and-coming pencilneckhood.

Dick Washburn changes colour a few times, and looks as if he may faint. I remember belatedly that Humbert Pestle is an Übermann, a major player. He probably doesn’t hear his own material parroted back at him, ever. Probably the last guy who did that is now a janitor, with only one eye, and speaks in a series of burps because Pestle-call-me-Humbert tore out his larynx. Breathe. Check the exits. Too much mouth too soon, and now it’s over. But Humbert Pestle lets out a huge bark of laughter and claps me on the back. “You’re damn right,” he says. “You are absolutely right.” His craggy eyes peer at me, sparkling.

“I need a drink, young Richard, so why don’t you show me to the bar? And then I need a proper introduction to this gentleman because he reminds me of a kid I used to know—with an awful name.” Still chuckling, he leads the pencilneck away as if this were his house and his party, and when he reaches the bar, with its tiled surround, his shoes make that weird little tink, tonk, which I take to mean Daniel Prang’s signature footware has shed its cleat, as Royce Allen told me it would.

“Balls of steel, man,” says Tom Link.

“Epic,” agrees Roy Massaman. They make that annoying sun-god worship gesture you used to see in movies about California, hands up in the air, bowing at the belly. I look away, hoping to see something I can pretend to find interesting and thus leave them behind. I am looking clear across into the garden, where Dick Washburn’s swimming pool is lit with dark pink underwater lights. I have never seen that before. Granted, I haven’t seen a private pool in twenty years either, but somehow I just assumed it was a natural law: pool lighting is plain, or blueish. The pool has deep purple shadows and looks like a venue for insane flirting and trysting rather than actual swimming. Doing your laps in it would be a bit prim, sort of like wearing an anorak to a toga party. The garden doors are—for the moment—closed, but there’s enough steam coming off the water that it’s apparently at a pretty good heat, and there are those elongated metal mushrooms with gas burners in them making it warm out there, so sooner or later, when the drink is flowing, the daring and the beautiful will presumably strip down and jump in. And at the very edge of the pool, on the far side from the house, is the ghostly figure of Dr. Andromas, sitting cross-legged on the diving board.

Just discovering him like that, in plain sight, scares the shit out of me. There’s nothing supernatural about his being here. He has come in over the wall. Presumably he has followed me here. And he’s on my side (or I’m on his, perhaps) but still, Dr. Andromas is just wrong. He is the most unnatural man I have ever met. Also, if he chooses to come in here and advertise our previous acquaintance, my best-laid plans will look a bit like chopped liver. No one else has noticed him yet (I can tell because there is no screaming) but the moment Sippy Roehunter decides it’s time to show the board members what she’s got, or Dan deLine gets a hankering to bare his musculature for the benefit of the Jorgmund Ladies’ Lacrosse Team, it will be hard for anyone to ignore a top-hatted H. G. Wells–looking lunatic sitting in the lotus position on the edge of Dick Washburn’s giant pink sex pool. I will him to disappear. It doesn’t work. I grind my teeth. This doesn’t help either.

“You okay?” Tom Link is concerned.

“I’m fine. New bite plate. Leaves me a bit rocky in the evenings.” Cosmetic dentistry excuse, all men together. Link nods. Damn those orthodontic torturers and their perfect smiles. Andromas appears to be fishing for imaginary fish. Or maybe real ones, who knows? But he’s using an imaginary rod.