Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

‘Uh-igh,’ comes the unconvincing reply.

‘Is that the plug from the TV?’

‘I was trying to make myself electric,’ Remington explains in a small voice.

‘Can’t you even take care of him for five minutes?’ Clizia rails. ‘How can I go out, if I can’t trust you to watch him?’

‘He was chewing a plug, that’s all,’ Paul protests. ‘It’s not like he had his fingers in the socket.’

‘Is like the less you do, the lazier you get,’ she says.

‘You’ll be late for your game,’ he says shortly.

‘Huh,’ she says. She goes to the door, where, rather desultorily, she slings over her shoulder the worn nylon sports bag. ‘I am leaving,’ she says.

‘Okay, fine.’

But she doesn’t leave; instead she hovers by the door, examining us where we sit at the table. ‘Vot are you doink?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Chasing again the waitresses?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Daddy’s writing a story!’ Remington sings from the floor.

‘A story?’ She looks from me to her husband and back.

‘You didn’t tell her?’ I say to Paul.

‘Tell me vot?’

Paul flurries a hand impatiently. ‘It’s nothing. We ran into my old editor last week and we’re trying to put together a proposal for him. It probably won’t come to anything.’

‘He was very interested in seeing something new,’ I tell her.

‘Oh,’ she says. She looks surprised.

‘Have a good game,’ Paul says.

‘Yes,’ she says. Her imperious façade seems to waver, then she gathers herself.

‘Bye, Mama,’ the little boy calls. The door closes, and we hear her clop away down the hall.

‘Why didn’t you tell her you met Dodson?’ I ask.

‘Oh God, Claude, she’s been through that wringer so many times, what’s the point of putting her through it again? When we don’t even have anything concrete?’

‘So let’s make something concrete,’ I exhort him. ‘I think we dismissed the alienated banker too quickly. Think about it: the reasons you want to throw it away, aren’t those in fact its strengths? He’s boring, his life is boring, isn’t that the point? Isn’t that what makes his story true? He’s the modern man, he lives to work, he has everything anyone could want — or rather, he has enough money to buy anything anyone could want — yet his life is empty. And then he meets this beautiful waitress —’

The key turns in the door. Clizia, grimacing, comes limping into the apartment.

Paul jumps up, hurries to assist her. ‘What happened?’

‘Ach, I come out of building, my foot slip on kerb.’ She sinks into a chair, massages her ankle. ‘Ugh, all these stairs, I think I never make it.’

‘You should have called me,’ Paul reproves her, bringing some ice from the kitchen. ‘You think it’s sprained?’

She sighs stoically. ‘I’m sure is fine. Maybe I rest him for a little while.’ She casts a sidelong glance at the notebook on the table. ‘How is story going?’

‘Oh Christ, don’t ask,’ Paul says.

‘It’s actually going quite well,’ I tell her.

‘You should use this green crayon, Daddy,’ Remington says, proffering a box. ‘It’s a better colour for stories.’

‘Have you had your bath yet?’ Clizia says.

‘I don’t need a bath.’

Paul protests that she should stay off her feet, but Clizia insists that she already feels better now that she has taken her boots off. She leads Remington towards the bathroom.

‘But I want to show Daddy the other good crayons,’ he says.

‘Daddy’s working,’ she replies, and the ghost of a smile crosses her lips.

It takes all evening, but at last I persuade him to give the banker another shot. We draw up a list of supporting characters; he promises he will call me early next week, when he has a rough idea of the plot, the basic mechanisms by which our Everyman is brought together with the woman who will transform him.

Ish is back in the office the following afternoon. She is in good humour, cracking jokes, flirting with clients, apparently with no idea that her fate hangs in the balance. But she’s the only one. Bankers, beneath the façade of reason, are as superstitious as sailors, with a preternatural sensitivity to bad luck. Her colleagues might not know what exactly she’s done, but they can tell something’s up, and the whole Research Department gives her a wide berth. Eyes track her from behind every terminal, then vanish as she draws near; when face-to-face contact is unavoidable, they try to keep at least one dividing wall between them, and wince anticipatorily, as if a bolt of lightning might descend and incinerate her at any moment.

But the lightning bolt doesn’t come — not that afternoon, nor the next morning. As we slip into afternoon with no word from the Uncanny Valley I begin to allow myself to hope. Maybe Rachael changed her mind? Or maybe I imagined the whole thing? Maybe she doesn’t know about the email to Blankly, maybe Jurgen was just making a general inquiry?

‘Hey, Claude, you’re on TV!’

I look up. There I am on the plaza, explaining to a journalist why it is a very good thing that the government is giving the last of its money to a failed bank.

‘I never noticed how big your head was before,’ Jocelyn Lockhart says.

‘Or your fucking accent,’ Gary McCrum says. ‘It’s so French .’

‘Oh shit,’ Ish says. She is looking into her computer; it’s as if I can hear her go pale. She turns to me with eyes like moons and says in a hoarse whisper, ‘Just got a mail from Rachael. She wants me to come up for a chat.’

‘Oh?’ I try to sound casual.

‘What do you think it means?’

‘Hmm,’ I stroke my chin. ‘Well, probably, she just wants to see how you are. Talk about life generally. You know. A chat.’

‘That woman’s never had a chat in her life,’ Ish says. Her face is like a ghost’s; the fake tan somehow makes her look paler still. ‘Christ — you reckon it’s about the email? Am I going to get canned?’

‘Of course not,’ I say firmly. ‘You are a valued member of the team.’

‘Oh God,’ she says, and covers her face with her hands.

As soon as the lift door closes over her I run to the department head’s office.

‘I don’t fucking know, Claude,’ Liam English says. ‘She dropped the fucking ball in a major way. We’re in the middle of not one but two giant takeovers, and she’s writing the CEO letters , like my fucking eight-year-old asking Santa Claus to save the rainforest?’ He tugs furiously on his electronic cigarette, sends coils of vapour ghosting over his head. ‘It’s not just the fucking impudence of it. We’ve borrowed up to our tits to pull these deals off. We don’t want anything happening that’d give our backers the heebie-jeebies. And here’s Ish, trying to get us to carry the can for global fucking warming! What if the press got hold of that email? Bank Drowns Primitive Island Race — how’s that going to fucking look?’

‘Isn’t it possible that helping Kokomoko could bring some good publicity?’ I plead. ‘You know, banks have had a lot of bad press, but here’s one doing something positive? Ready to act ethically?’

Liam sits back in his chair, looks at me square in the eye until I feel my will buckle and collapse. As I return to my desk, I catch Kevin tracking me: calculating what’s just happened, how much it’s damaged me, the best means of taking advantage.

‘Fax for you, Claude,’ Kimberlee says, clipping in from Reception.

I take the paper from her hand. There is no text; it is a solid block of blackness. ‘What is this?’

‘That’s how it came out,’ she says, shrugging. ‘But with your name on the top.’