Gavin Corbett - Green Glowing Skull

He grabbed Rickard’s hand again, went to say something, but stopped himself.

‘Who are you? What is your name?’ said Rickard. ‘And for how long have you been following me?’

‘Can I give you one piece of advice the same as I give any Irishman in the big city?’

He put his weight on one elbow and leaned in to Rickard. Then the seriousness and sincerity that this pose suggested dissipated as he said in a mechanical and idle way, ‘Get out before too long and don’t become the poor old tragic proverbial.’

And then, as if snapping to:

‘But don’t leave too early.’

‘Why?’

‘Hmm?’

‘What proverb are you talking about?’

‘You have a destiny you must fulfil. The Free ’n’ Easy Tones. But tell the boys there’s help here if they need it. It’s never too late to get out.’

His eyes liquefied out of focus again, and he returned to the fully supine position, making small effortful gasps at each degree.

Rickard remained on his haunches, puzzling over the man’s words. Nearby, a game of boules was in progress. Its participants had not at any stage intimated by their behaviour that they were aware of the mummery nearby. He thought about leaving the man in their custody.

‘What have you done with it?! I can’t be seen!’

The man was back up on an elbow, pulling strings of glue from his face.

‘You were overheating,’ said Rickard. ‘You needed the air on your skin.’

‘What have you done with my fecking face?’

Half of the man’s face lay in the gravel, the sticky side lumpy with grit.

‘What are you trying to do to me?’ he said. ‘I’ll be a goner.’

He rolled to his knees and got to his feet, went this way and that way, then paused at a rubbish bin. Head and arms lowered together. He came back to Rickard his face a collage of bottle tops, strips of foil, banana peel, cheese, refried beans, sunflower-seed shells and Chew-butter Cracknell packaging. As he spoke, items of rubbish dropped off his face.

‘Must hurry away now, but please give the boys my best wishes. Thanks for the name. I’ll look out now for your Free ’n’ Easy Tones. Goodbye, and mind the pipes.’

He shambled off, like a kidnap victim in a sack.

Strange to consider, but Rickard had only just begun to enjoy the familiarity of their scene: their messy, un-American, un-modern, little congress under the plane trees.

He stood up, feeling no small amount of pain in the backs of his creaking knees, and wandered over towards a belvedere, of tubular aluminium and plastic sheeting, behind the library. It was surrounded by circles of chairs that were made of cast iron so that they would make effective tethering posts for dogs. He pulled out a chair, falling into it, then rotated it so that he could look into the square and away from the dogs because their eyes seemed so demonically human. The sun had disappeared behind a building but was visible as a pale purple-tinged kidney on the surface of the Puffball dome. The sky was cold pointillated green, like a test for colour blindness. The words ‘fastness’ and ‘alcazar’ came to his mind again.

‘The Earls, the Earls, are on their way

To take back love and land!

Toledo steel to win the day!

That day will be so grand!’

He supposed an ‘alcazar’ was a type of ‘bastille’, and he thought of how the word ‘bastille’, once a symbol of tyranny, had come to represent a reversal for the good. But then the word ‘fastness’ sounded like ‘vastness’ — an immeasurable largeness, slippery like the air. Several empty chairs away the homeless man was thrashing a chair with the rubber-foam chest plate he had ransacked from the north-of-Ireland man. When he was satisfied that it was soft enough to sit on he laid it on the seat.

‘Fucken ’roids been givin’ me hell lately.’

Two scenarios played out in Rickard’s head. The first was that this man, finding communication difficult and frustrating, and seeing fifty things where most people only saw one, would finally beat Rickard to death with his rubber cushion. Nobody would notice in this monetised public space except for the schnauzers and labradoodles, but they would only notice because they wanted to lap up Rickard’s blood. The hobo would then urinate on the work he had made.

The second scenario was that the north-of-Ireland man would shamble back and beat Rickard to death, making a martyr but being the wrong perpetrator, and making the martyrdom meaningless but proving everything right.

***

He vowed to call her before his martyrdom and make her sorry.

(‘Toni. Toni. Do you hear that now? Listen. That’s Manhattan. That’s New York.’

The silence at the end of the line went on for ever, over which time Rickard could hear his own whimper back at him, and a blanket of hum.

She confirmed:

‘It’s just noise.’

Her voice had a smell. Of tobacco, and of other men’s breaths. And sometimes of those boxes of cheesy breadsticks that she ate. He imagined her with a box of those in front of her now. Perhaps crumbs down the front of a T-shirt with ‘LepreCon ’96 Gaming Symposium’ printed on it. Crumbs on her shorts.

‘Listen to you,’ she said.

The enamel frames of her glasses clinked against the receiver. She sighed through her nostrils.

‘Am I taking up your time?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

Silence above the hum for a moment.

‘I can’t believe you can’t hear that.’

‘What am I supposed to be hearing?’

‘Toni …’

‘How much is this costing?’

‘Toni, do you ever think of coming to New York?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’d be scared of running into you.’

‘That would never happen. It’s too big.’

‘Pfff.’

More silence.

‘So how are you getting on over there?’ she said. ‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a singer.’

She laughed, perhaps.

‘Like Pius in The Severe Dalliance ?’

‘Yes.’

Silence.

Then Rickard said:

‘Do you ever think of The Severe Dalliance ?’

With tiredness: ‘Yes, I do.’

‘And not even that would make you want to come?’

‘No.’

‘What do you do with yourself? Do you still eat breadsticks?’

‘I’ve given up wheat.’

‘And … you never think of leaving that dreary place and coming here?’

‘No. I’m perfectly happy where I am.’

‘I don’t believe that. How could you be?’

‘I’m like you, I have a rich inner life. Except mine makes me happy.’

‘Oh.’

Perhaps Toni understood Rickard’s inner life better than he did. This was a possibility.

‘All that gaming stuff and science fiction makes you happy?’ he said.

‘Yes. In an escapist way. But there’s more to my inner life than you know about.’

Rickard shoed at a patty of dirty chewing gum.

‘Secrets?’

‘Pfff. Things I’ve developed since you left. Writing.’

‘You’ve been writing a book?’

‘No. Ideas, just. Fan fiction.’

‘Oh! You’re not one of those morons I’ve seen on that website, are you?’

‘My work is different from other people’s. I don’t stick to the tropes.’

Tropes: now she was in ‘LepreCon ’96 Gaming Symposium’ mode. Her eyes would be scrunched shut at this point.

‘What?’ he said.

‘A lot of that fan fiction is embarrassing. Mine’s more like a personal diary. Or an autobiography. That’s how it feels.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘I’m not afraid to show my hand. Sometimes I pop up in these stories that I write with other people’s characters in them and I point out the essential artifice. And it feels like autobiography.’