‘I guess maybe I liked it before I was thirteen. I don’t remember exactly. But in my head I’ve convinced myself now I can’t even stand the smell.’
‘So let’s order one,’ said Jolyon. ‘What better way to exorcise a demon than to tear him apart with your teeth? I promise you’ll like it. And if you don’t, I will personally trek to the kebab van and buy anything you like. With extra chilli sauce.’
VI(iv) They sat around the coffee table and ate from the box. Neither of them said anything until the last slice was gone. When he was done, Chad fell back into his chair and placed his hands upon his belly. ‘That was great. I feel great,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Jolyon.’
VII
VII(i) A new day. I stand at my window looking down along Seventh, as restless as a barn-sour horse. It feels as if I am poring over the pages of an atlas. The sun topples into the room, further urging me to leave this dank hermit’s cave.
In five weeks’ time we play again, our fourteen-year hiatus will be over. Did I really think I could escape? And if I can’t escape, if I have to play, I must be ready. Because if I can’t even face the outside world, what chance do I stand against the Game?
So yes, I will go out now in broad daylight. For three years I have left this apartment only in narrow daylight, the thinnest hours of the morning. Fleeting 6 a.m. trips every two or three weeks to drop garbage in the trash and walk to a small bodega at the corner of my block. Enough to satisfy my needs. Not so many needs. Thin needs. Milk and coffee. Bread and tea. Tea to remind me of England, Lipton in brash yellow boxes, impossible to brew strong unless you use two bags but the double expense feels excessive. Jif peanut butter. Cans of chilli, boxes of rice. Confectioner’s sugar which I eat by the spoonful to help me through occasional energy emergencies. If you suck it just right, the dust in your mouth turns to smooth sugar frosting. And whisky as well, my one extravagance – although of course whisky cannot be bought from a bodega. Or anywhere else at six in the morning. But for the twenty-first-century hermit, the world of online shopping caters conveniently to almost every need. And yet I keep a thin oar in the water of life – I continue to visit the bodega because if it ever feels safe to emerge from this cave, I must be ready to face the real world.
I look down at the street where cars drive by, half of them taxicabs, sliding and stopping as the traffic lights perform their duties in long lazy blinks. A flurry of pigeons blows past the window, whoosh, then wheels to the left and settles on the lip of a roof.
Yes, this is what the world has always looked like. Wet, dry. Bright, dark. Blue, grey.
I find this enormously reassuring. Yes, I’m going to do it. The hermit is going outside.
VII(ii) I leave the apartment in something of a trance. For three years my only human encounters have been with delivery men beyond the crack of my front door or at the counter in the bodega. The thought of more contact than this makes me edgy, so I hum my inspirational music, the boxer beginning his training. I imagine the tooth clenched in my fist, strength and warmth radiate through me. And then at the bottom of my building’s front steps, I turn not right toward my bodega but left with a skip toward the unknown, the forgotten.
I remember now what a city of light and shadows New York becomes when the sun beats down and the tall buildings toss out their cool grey capes. I move from darkness to heat, then back into shade, smiling as the sunshine tickles my arms.
And then arrives my first test of strength, people walking toward me, she in her forties with a shaved head and dressed in pink hospital scrubs, he wearing denim overalls above a Hawaiian-print shirt. He weighs in at maybe two-twenty with a bulldog jaw and cropped black hair. He looks like a children’s entertainer who could knock out your teeth.
Oh deh bay-bee, Frank, deh baby, she says, you should have seen deh baby. (Frank is nodding, he can imagine the baby just so.) Oh but the clothes on him, Frank. She whistles. Not like we and you and me, Frank. This baby they dress beaudy-full.
I repeat her words within and mentally confirm what she said. We and you and me, yes, what a wonderful slip of the tongue. The real world has welcomed me back right away. I am not twenty steps from my apartment building and already I have swallowed the first vitamins of my new training regime. We and you and me. The imperfections of the world, its daily beauty. Yes, I can face this. I can do it.
I walk on toward a building covered in scaffolding. Underneath the poles and planks, the ground lies flooded brown with a liquid like old blood, the sidewalk stained where yesterday’s rainwater has fallen rusty from the girders. And I love everything I see. The rust, the angular graffiti, the water as it drips brightly through sunbeams. All around me life swirls with a fresh beauty, three years of darkness extinguished in the light. This is love rekindled, the world my old flame.
I keep walking and beyond the end of the block I see swathes of green, the cool greens of plants and shade and filtered sunlight. Yes, I remember now, the park is here.
I wait impatiently to cross the street, I long to roam beneath the trees in the wine-bottle light. The sign at the corner reads Avenue A. The world pours in.
I look up past the street sign and spot three letters in the distant blue, H and E and L. A small airplane is skywriting, scratching the air with its smoke, with its loops and its swoops. Two more white letters are drawn in contrails across the shallow southern sky. I stop where I am and stare in amazement. H E L L O. Next comes an N and I applaud myself when I realise the airplane must be spelling out the message HELLO NEW YORK. I feel victoriously happy – an E forms in the sky – not only am I newly acquainted with the world but alert again to its futures.
I stand and I wait but nothing more arrives. Disappointed, I guess to myself that the pilot, in error, has drawn out his letters too large. Just like me he is simply in training, he must have run out of fuel and returned to base.
And then I nearly fall to the ground as my legs become weak. H E L L O N E, reads the sky. HELL ONE.
I run back to my apartment as fast as I can.
VII(iii) What a terrible omen. HELL ONE, like the zip code of my life. Or the title of its first episode, maybe. A movie featuring me fourteen years ago, my life in the Game, and in five weeks’ time, look out for the sequel. Hell Two: The Game Strikes Back.
But I will go outside again. Tomorrow. Yes, I’m fine now. Baby steps, several minutes. Long enough for me to remember how much there is in the world to recommend it, enough for me to gain a little strength. And my tormentor was only an airplane running low on fuel, that’s all, nothing more.
To calm myself while I write this all down, I make a cup of tea which I am currently finishing. And to hell with the expense – I used two bags so that the tea tastes good and strong. The tea soothes me, makes me think of England. Small hands around a mug, itchy warm in wintertime.
And then I start to laugh. I laugh for the first time in years as I picture myself running from words in the sky. Eyes wide and my beard and pale limbs flailing wildly. Not exactly a poster boy for the advantages of the hermetic lifestyle.
And when I stop laughing I realise that humour is a wonderful thing, a very good omen with regard to my comeback. In five weeks’ time I have no doubt I will have rediscovered the better parts of me. I can win this thing, I truly believe I can.
So as part of my training regime I must head outside into the world every day. There are delights as well as demons beyond my four walls. And soon I will slip back, free and willing, into the warm and numb beauty of American life.