Tim Maughan - Infinite Detail

Alan glances at Mary’s pastel scrawl, and then straight at her, like it hurts his eyes. “It could be him, yes. I guess… just… I’m sorry. What does this mean? If it is him, does this mean you’ve seen him?”

“Does it mean he’s dead?”

Mary takes a breath, tries to smile. This is always the hardest part. Harder even than showing them.

“I ain’t completely sure what it means myself, to be truthful.” She fidgets nervously with one of her oversized hoop earrings. “Sometimes I see people, out in the street. Nobody else can see them. They’re not fully there… just… half there.”

“Like ghosts? You see ghosts?”

“Diane, please—”

“Let her answer! Are they ghosts?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe. I guess that depends on what you believe a ghost is. All I know is that they were here that night, and they’re not always dead. I think you have to be dead to have a ghost.”

“Not dead?” There’s an echo of hope in Diane’s voice.

“Not always, no. If I see someone, out in the street, then I come back here and I draw them. Put the picture up here, in the shop. Sometimes they come in, the people I’ve drawn, or someone that knows they’re alive—and then I give them the picture. For free. These pictures here, they’re all waiting to be collected.”

“So… that’s it?” There’s an edge of anger to Alan’s voice, just faint, hidden below the frustration and loss, like he’s about had enough. “We have to wait, to see if he just happens to pass by and pick up his picture? That’s the only way you know if he’s alive or not?”

“Alan—”

“No,” Mary says. “It’s not the only way.”

Tyrone puts the moneythat the old guy gave him in a scratched black metal box. It had been hard work getting it out of him, which isn’t a surprise really—twenty quid ain’t no joke, man—but Tyrone knew he’d fold and agree to it. Just had to see the way he looked at his old lady. Like he’d do anything to make her happy, even if it was only for a few moments, and involved him spending a month’s wages on some heavily dubious bullshit. He watches Mary lead the couple—holding hands now, like small children—out into the pale daylight.

He takes the knife, its handle bandaged with black tape, out of the box and chucks the jungle tape he’d been playing in there, just to be sure. Five snags, no breaks. Yet. Irreplaceable. More valuable than the two tenners he just dropped in there, to him at least. He locks the box and places it on a high shelf, pockets the key, tucks the knife into the back of his jeans. Turns around to check the shop, sees Janet standing there, still. Staring at the uncollected faces. The dead ones.

“Janet. Yo, Janet. C’mon girl. Gotta go. I’m locking up.”

Janet turns slowly, thousand-yard stare. “Sorry, Tyrone, I didn’t realize.” He holds the door open for her as she exits, flips the cardboard sign to CLOSED, and secures the locks and bolts.

“It’s a’ight, Janet. Is just a quick thing. We’ll be open again later.”

It’s bright outside, and he finds himself squinting against white sunshine. It’s pretty quiet out, still early. Airborne reggae vibes drift across the street from somewhere, pulses and tones, like the jungle tape stripped of its urgency. Sheltering his eyes, he can see Mary leading her two punters down the street, down the main drag of Stokes Croft itself, toward the open gates. He’d better catch up, she’s moving fast. Mary doesn’t like to hang around when she’s doing her thing.

“Is she gonna show ’em?” Janet asks him.

“Yeah. She is.”

Janet’s little face lights up. “Maybe she’ll show me Mark again, afterwards?”

Tyrone looks at her. “You got twenty quid, Janet?”

Janet stares at him, glances down at her impossibly full IKEA bag, and then back at him. “No.”

“Then she ain’t gonna show you nothing. Look, I gotta go with her, make sure she’s okay, all right? I’ll catch you later, yeah?”

Tyrone doesn’t wait for her to answer, just picks up the pace, closing the distance between him and Mary without looking like he’s hurrying. It’s been raining overnight and the pictures have washed off some of the walls as usual, running across the pavements and into the drains at the curb in crisscrossing tracks of dull translucent color, so it looks like the buildings themselves are bleeding out, melting. He half expects that if he traces the drying paint flows back he’ll find the empty, see-through wireframe of a building, drained of all pigment.

But he’s not got time. The last thing he needs would be Grids turning up when Mary looks like she’s wandering around the Croft on her own. He checks up ahead; she’s stopped now, about twenty feet short of the gates, the two punters still holding hands, their bemusement and discomfort openly betrayed by their body language even at this distance. When he’s about ten feet away from them he slows, stops. Best to give them some space, at least the illusion of privacy.

From out of the shadows of the buildings on the far side of the street he sees a hulking figure moving toward him, slowly. Ozone gives him a half nod and a fist bump as they meet in the middle of the road, his other hand resting on the dull metal and plastic of the counterfeit Kalashnikov rifle that dangles from his neck. Tyrone looks at the huge aging gun, thinks of the tape-wrapped kitchen knife stuck in the back of his jeans, and remembers exactly where he stands in the pecking order.

“Easy, Ty.”

“How’s things, O?”

Ozone shrugs. “Yeah, good. On gate duty, innit.”

“Anything exciting? You shot anyone this morning?”

Ozone laughs, rolls of fat under his neck rippling. “Nah. Nobody comes down here anymore, man, you know how it is. Not anyone wanting any trouble. Saw them two come through earlier, though.” He half nods at Mary’s punters. “Lord and Lady Marks and Spencer.”

Tyrone snorts. “Yeah, they come just to see Mary.” He slips into a sketchy, exaggerated posh accent. “All the way from Bath, don’t you know.”

“No shit. No wonder they looked fucking terrified when they saw me.”

“To be fair, fam, you a scary-looking fucker even without that thing.”

Ozone smiles, a blend of amusement and pride. “True.”

Sweat patches spread from Ozone’s armpits, turning the already grayed cotton of his once-white T-shirt even darker. Tyrone’s sure he can see them moving, growing, as he stands there.

“You all right, man? You look hot.”

“Yeah.” Ozone wipes sweat from his shaved head with his forearm. “This weather, man. Done with it.”

“Don’t say that. Gotta stay like this till after the weekend, man, at least. Carnival, innit.”

Ozone sucks his teeth. “Fuck that. Can rain all weekend, far as I care. Then maybe no one will turn up.”

“Fam!”

Ozone laughs, ripples his neck, gently taps the gun with two fingers. He glances over at Mary again. “How long she gonna be, man? You know she got big visitors today?”

“Oh yeah. Like Grids will let me forget.”

Three facesstare at Mary, the first two full of fear, embarrassment, awkward impatience.

The third, scrawled on the paper in her hand, is seemingly blank of emotion.

Mary stares at it, traces her own badly daubed lines until she has a full image of it in her mind. Focuses, blinks.

Above her the sky starts to darken, mid-morning sun settling into evening gloom. Buildings morph and shift, subtle changes to both their 3D architecture and 2D surfaces. She always tries to avoid looking at the buildings, the displacement is too disorienting, plus if she focuses on them too much they all go kinda weird, like they’re not really there, not really solid, like they’re made up of some patchwork collage of old photos, the lighting and coloring on them never quite fitting together, so much so that she finds herself questioning what’s real and what’s not even more than usual, and she’s trained herself to stop doing that. Best not to know.