Zadie Smith: NW

You don’t look too good at all.

I don’t know what I’m doing here.

Arguing with your mans innit.

Yes. How—

You don’t look like you got no real problems. Come join me. I’m flying.

Now she noticed his pupils, huge and glassy, and so she tried to put herself in the old role. It would be something to replace this absence of sensation, this nothing. She placed a hand on his shoulder. The fabric of his hoodie was stiff, unclean.

You’re flying?

He made a sound in the back of his throat like a gasp. It caught at some phlegm, and he coughed a long time.

It’s either fly or give it up tonight. You heading to your mum’s?

No. North.

North?

Tried to get the tube at Kilburn. The road’s blocked off.

Is it. Come on let’s walk. This ain’t the place I want to be right now. Spent nuff time in this place.

They stood in the center of Caldwell’s basin. Five blocks connected by walkways and bridges and staircases, and lifts that were to be avoided almost as soon as they were built. Smith, Hobbes, Bentham, Locke, Russell. Here is the door, here is the window. And repeat, and repeat. Some of the residents had placed pretty pots of geraniums and African violets on their balconies. Others had their windows fixed with brown tape, grubby net curtains, no door number, no bell. Opposite, on the long concrete balcony that runs the length of Bentham, a fat white boy stood with a telescope on a stand, pointed down, into the car park instead of up at the moon. Nathan looked at him and stayed looking. The boy shrunk the telescope, collected the stand under his arm and hurried indoors. The smell of weed was everywhere.

Long time, Keisha.

Long time.

You got a cigarette?

Natalie put her hands on her body to demonstrate a lack of pockets. Nathan stopped where he was and pulled a loose cigarette from his own back pocket. He split it down the middle with a long thumbnail, yellow and thick, with a wide crack running down its center. Tobacco spilled into his hands. Dry black creases crossed both palms. He reached into his jeans and came back with a large packet of orange Rizlas and a little baggy, held between his teeth.

Which one was you again?

Locke. You?

He nodded toward Russell.

Stand there.

Nathan got Natalie by the shoulders and moved her until she stood directly in front of him. There was some relief in becoming an object. Without making any errors she could serve as a useful buffer between the breeze and these two Rizlas being set carefully in an L construction.

Wait up one more minute. Oi: you crying?

Light passed over them and a mechanical roar; a helicopter flying low.

Yes. Sorry.

Come on Keisha now. Your man’s not that harsh. He’ll take you back.

He shouldn’t.

People shouldn’t do a lot of things they do. Ok, done.

He held out the joint, face upturned to the night sky.

No. I need to be clear in my head.

Don’t pretend you’re a nice girl Keisha. I known you from time. Know your family. Cheryl. Suit yourself.

He put the joint behind his ear.

Ain’t just weed in there you know. Few surprises in there. Try it. We’ll go plot somewhere quiet. This is it now.

He started walking. Natalie followed. Walking was what she did now. As she walked she tried to place the people back there, in the house, into the present current of her thought. But her relation with each person was now unrecognizable to her, and her imagination — due to a long process of neglect, almost as long as her life — did not have the generative power to muster an alternative future for itself. All she could envision was suburban shame, choking everything. She thought to the left and thought to the right but there was no exit. Though, perhaps, Jayden? Again she stalled. Though perhaps Jayden what?

What time is it, Keisha?

I don’t know.

Should have gone from here time ago. Sometimes I don’t get myself. Who’s chaining me? No one. Should have gone Dalston. Too late now.

From behind a parked black taxi a boy of nine or so emerged, riding a bike without hands and with great slowness and skill. Trailing him were two more boys no older than six, and a girl of about four. They had the long faces and sloe-eyes Natalie thought of as Somalian, and their boredom was familiar to her, she remembered it. The girl kicked a dented can over and over. One of the boys had a long branch he held loosely in his hand letting it collide with whatever got in its way. They glared as they passed, and spoke their language. The stick strayed into Nathan’s path. He only had to look at it for the boy to slowly raise it above their heads and away.

What are we doing? Nathan? What are we doing?

Traipsing. North.

Oh.

That’s where you want to go, right?

Yes.

There is a connection between boredom and the desire for chaos. Despite many disguises and bluffs perhaps she had never stopped wanting chaos.

Got any tunes Keisha?

What?

We should go back to your yard, get some tunes. LOCKE!

He shouted and pointed at it, as if by naming it he had brought the block into existence.

Keisha name some Locke people.

Leah Hanwell. John-Michael. Tina Haynes. Rodney Banks.

The effort of naming made Natalie sit down exactly where she was. She lay back and put her head on the ground until the moon was all she was looking at and all that she thought.

I seen Rodney — time ago, in Wembley. Got a dry cleaners there now. Done well. He’s safe, though, Rodney, still humble. He chatted with me. Some people act like they don’t know you. Get up, Keisha.

Natalie got up on her elbows to look at him. She had not lain on pavement in decades.

Come on get up. Chat to me. Like usual. Go on, man.

For the second time tonight she crossed her wrists and felt herself lifted up as if she were barely there, almost nothing.

Leah. She was obsessed with you. Obsessed.

I seen her. Other things, though. Good with numbers.

Leah?

I was, man! I was good! You remember. Most people don’t know me from then. You remember. Got them gold stars all day long.

You were good with everything. That’s how I remember it. You had a trial.

’Zackly. Queen’s Park Rangers. Everyone says they had a trial. I had a real trial.

I know you did. Your mum told my mum.

Bad tendons. I played on. No-one told me. Lot of things would be different, Keisha. Lot of things. That’s how it is. That’s it. I don’t like to think about them days, to be truthful. At the end of the day I’m just out here on the street, grinding. Bustin’ a gut, day in day out. Tryna get paid. I done some bad things Keisha I’m not gonna lie. But you know that ain’t really me. You know me from back in the day.

He swiped at three beer cans and sent them clattering into the grass. They’d reached the end of nostalgia. Here the boundary wall had been partially destroyed — it looked like someone had torn it apart with their hands, brick by brick. They crossed the street, past the basketball court. Four shadowed figures stood in the far corner, the tips of their cigarettes glowing in the dark. Nathan raised a hand to the men. They raised a hand back.

Stop here. I’m gonna smoke this.

Ok me too.

He leaned into the high iron gates of the cemetery, looking in. He took the pre-rolled from behind his ear and they passed the joint back and forth and blew smoke through the bars. The something else mixed in with the tobacco had a bitter taste. Natalie’s lower lip went numb. The top of her head came off. Her mouth grew rigid and slow. It became laborious to translate thought into sound or to know what thoughts could be made into sound.

Fall back fall back fall back. Keisha, fall back.

What?

Move up.