Zadie Smith - NW

• • •

From Felix’s pocket a digital orchestra played a piece of classical music from an aftershave advert from his childhood. He answered it joyfully, but his love sounded stressed and skipped the hellos. “Did you go see Ricky?” “Nah, sorry — forgot. I’ll call him.” “How you gonna call him? I ain’t got his number — have you?” “When I go back I’ll go past.” “Downstairs called. The leak’s gone through the floor.” “I’ll go see him, chill.” “Where are you?” “At my dad’s.” “You show him? What did he say? Tell him I can order some more copies off the Internet. Actually let me chat to him.” “Yeah, man. He’s looking through it. He’s into it. Told a lot of stories — you know how he is. Trip down memory lane, innit. Listen, I gotta go.” “Put Lloyd on—” An ambulance passed Felix on the street. “I’m on the balcony — he’s in the bathroom. Listen, I’ll call you back in a bit. I gotta go.” “You gotta go! I gotta work.” “True!” The conversation descended into baby talk, and then briefly turned explicit. Grace was fond of proclaiming her “nastiness,” although in bed she was tame, almost prudish, and in their six months together Felix had not quite managed to unite the girl on the phone and the one in his arms. “I love you, baby,” she said, and Felix repeated it passionately, trying to return himself to that moment of optimism before he’d answered the phone. Weird to think she was only a few streets from him, at this moment. Her manager in the background said something about a booking for twelve at two — she was gone again without saying good-bye. Like a ghost on your shoulder and then vanished, the everyday miracle. He remembered when you turned the dial with your finger. Sometimes lines crossed and four ghosts spoke. And now Felix Jr. and his nieces spoke to videos of each other. You wait long enough, the films come true — and everybody acts like it’s nothing. Still, he was glad he got to see the future. Touch and go for a while. A comic book reader, sci-fi fan, it had always been obvious, to Felix, that the future would suit him. Hollywood had nothing on Felix when it came to imagining the future. He didn’t even have to go to the movies anymore, he could just walk down the street like this and see the whole damn spectacular just playing in his mind. Script by Felix Cooper. Directed by Felix Cooper. Starring Felix Cooper.

Anflex, my darling, how will you be getting home?

Particle transfer. See you in a second, my dear Gracian. In a nano-second.

Shit like that. Just rolling in his brain. Sometimes he went and told a whole film in words to Grace, and she was totally into it, and it wasn’t just because she loved him: the fact was that the films in Felix’s mind were blatantly better than anything people paid good money to see. Now Felix collided with a real live young man leaving a glass-walled video emporium, walking backward through the double doors while waving good-bye to his friends, still wrestling with their joysticks. Felix touched the guy gently on the elbows, and the stranger, with equal care, reached back and held Felix where his waist met his back; they both laughed lightly and apologized, called each other “Boss” before separating quickly, the stranger striding back toward Eros, and Felix onwards to Soho.

• • •

On her street he reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and typed: On yr St. U free? The answer came back: Door open.

He had not stood on this street for three months. His phone buzzed again: Five mins please. Why not pick up cigs?

This addition was annoying: it put him back in the wrong position. He made his way over to the unventilated corner shop and spent a hot ten minutes in the queue, trying to finesse the brief speech he thought he had decided on, realizing in fact that he had decided on very little. Why did he need to come down here and say anything at all? She didn’t matter anymore. News of her irrelevance should reach Soho without any effort on his part; she should just walk out of her front door and sniff it in the air. “Don’t need this,” said the woman at the counter. She handed him back fifty pence. Someone behind him sighed; he moved aside quickly with the shame of a Londoner who has inconvenienced, even for a moment, another Londoner. The box of fags was in his pocket. Here was the change in his hand. He couldn’t remember anything about the transaction. He was sweating like a fool.

Outside he tried to calm himself and realign with the exuberant mood in the street. The sun was an incitement, collapsing day into night. Young bluds had stripped to their bare chests as if in a nightclub already. The white boys wore flip-flops and cargo shorts and drank import beers from the bottle. A small gang danced mildly in the doorway of G.A.Y, on autopilot from the night before. Felix chuckled into his chest and leaned against a lamppost to roll a fag. He had the sense that someone was watching and taking it all down (“Felix was a solid bloke, with his heart in the right place, who liked to watch the world go by”) but when that fancy was finished there was nothing else for him to do. A car with tinted windows rolled by. It took a moment to put together the fearful child in the passing reflection with what he knew of his own face. He looked up and over to her door. It was open; two of the girls stood on the doorstep chatting amiably with the Somali drivers, one doorway along. Felix squared his shoulders, put a cheerful limp in his walk. (“Sometimes you got to do what you got to do!”) But there was no kind of smile you could bring to these girls that would make them go easy on you. Chantelle was cutting her eyes at him when he was still twenty yards away. By the time he reached her she had already, as far as she was concerned, dispensed with greetings; she got a grip of his thin hooded top between two fingers, examined its material briefly and then released it again, like a filthy thing picked up off the floor.

“You look summery. Jesus Christ. Mr. Sunshine.”

“This ain’t hot to me tho. I’m skinny — I need the layers.”

“Long time,” said the white one with the sour face, Cherry.

“Been busy.”

“Wouldn’t bother with Her Majesty upstairs, if I were you: get better down here.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Felix, and showed his gold teeth, but he had never been sure if upstairs truly was a separate world. Her Majesty upstairs swore it was. They used to argue about it. It didn’t matter now.

“Can I go?”

They were both big girls and it was their evergreen joke not to move for him, he had to squeeze between them. Felix led with his bony shoulders.

“Like a chicken bone!”

“Pure rib!”

Cherry pinched his backside — three floors up he could still hear cackling. He rounded the last banister. Classical violins were going at it, you could hear taps running hard in the bathroom. At the threshold he was wreathed in steam.

“Felix? Darling, is that you? Door’s open! Is Karenin out there? Bring the bastard in.”

Karenin was on the mat. Felix gathered him sloppily into his arms. The cat’s huge weight kept displacing itself: it wasn’t possible to hold up its backside, belly and neck at the same time, something always fell through the gap. He whispered into its ear—“All right, K”—and stepped inside. This same fat cat in his arms, the yellowing old playbills and photos on the wall, the boxes full of sheet music for a non-existent piano, sold to a pawnshop before even Felix’s time. The old-school everything. He knew it all too well. The grimy sameness, the way nothing was ever refreshed. She called them antiques. Another way of saying there’s no more money. Five years! He dropped the cat down on the chaise: spring-less, the seat sunk to receive it. How did he ever come to know this place? Unknowing it would just be the restoring of things to their natural, healthy state.