I look exactly like my profile picture, but my face is easier to forget than a date and time you’ve saved onto your smartphone. People usually have to blurt something out, to cover the embarrassment of not having remembered me, or recognised my face.
“I mean, you look really good,” the gentlemen will add. “Like… much better in reality.”
Toilet breaks are the destruction of a good date. Men who, after a mere twenty minutes, need to empty their bladders are no use to me. In the three minutes they spend in the gents, their memories fade, and by the time they emerge, even the most ardent of lovers will have forgotten my features, and the vast majority will have forgotten they were even on a date.
Equally, men who are tedious are easily got rid of. Three minutes in the ladies, and by the time I emerge the gentleman will probably be paying the bill and texting his mates.
Hi, he says, in town having a quiet drink by myself. You guys around?
The mind fills in gaps, invents excuses.
“I’m a good man,” said Inspector Luca Evard, the day he found out. “I don’t forget the people I’ve slept with; that’s not who I am.”
Just because you have forgotten me, does that mean I am not real?
Now.
You forget.
Now.
I am real.
Reality: the conjectured state of things as they actually exist.
I breathe, and in the time the air takes to leave my lungs, I vanish from the minds of men, and cease to exist for anyone except myself.
Chapter 20
The cruise ship docked at Sharm el-Sheikh just before dawn, edging towards the quay as the sun came up. I put on make-up to hide the tiredness round my eyes and crossed the border on my Australian passport, hid amongst the tourists. Egyptian Arabic is very different from the standard and Sudanese dialects I spoke, and though I could pick up a fair amount, replying with fluency proved difficult. Even had I been able to speak, the locals weren’t very interested in conversation.
“You want see pyramids? I take you! You want buy icon? I have all the icon you ever want, ancient goods, good goods, you come, you see! You want taxi? You want restaurant? You want see Nile? You want tour? I know best, very very best!”
Only one local woman in the resort seemed willing to engage with me, switching to Syrian Arabic in response to my accent and saying, “You’re not a tourist?”
“Social worker,” I replied, “with Médecins Sans Frontières.”
“Ah! You working in Egypt?”
“Sudan.”
“Terrible place; you are a good woman to go out there.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Terrible place — the people! — just terrible.”
“Egypt isn’t without its problems.”
“Sure, but at least here your problem is only the government.”
“Can I buy you a coffee?” I asked. “I’d like to hear more about that.”
“I’d love to,” she replied, “but someone might think you are a journalist.”
Rebuffed, I tried talking to the tourists, focusing on anyone travelling alone. Sharm is hotels, palm trees, swimming pools and restaurants, each more expensive than the next. Once, the crystal blue waters and salt lagoon attracted Americans and Germans. In recent years the clients were changing, and the surface of the water shimmered with a slick of suntan oil. I watched a Russian father throw his weeping son into the sea, shouting, “Swim, swim, swim!” while the boy bobbed and gurgled and half drowned in his desperation to please. I saw Brazilian daughters sniff at the food served to them on crystal platters and exclaim, “No good, too many calories!” sending it back to the kitchen.
“Liquid foods only,” explained a Portuguese princess. “I have to watch my weight.”
I slept during the worst of the heat, recovering from my stowaway time on the ship, and at sunset went looking for company. Crossing the town in British weather would have taken less than an hour. In the Egyptian boil, I had to stop every ten minutes to cower in shade. Even my hair felt hot to the touch.
At night I log into the darknet, looking for Byron14.
Byron14 is not there.
Another day spent pacing the town, bored now, bored with the sun, bored with indolence, bored with being on the run.
“I lost five stone through Perfection!” said a British woman I swam with in the salt lagoon. “I’m at seven hundred and fifty thousand points, and it automated my online shop because I was buying too many fatty foods, put me on a seasonal diet of greens and nuts, isn’t it wonderful?”
I looked at her, a perfect body, the perfect shape, the perfect curves, the perfect teeth, the perfect hair, the perfect smile, and realised I hated everything about her, and everything about me, and everything about this place, and snapped, “When was the last time you fucking thought for yourself?” and swam away from her as fast as I could, and dived underwater to hide the shame of my imperfect self, and stayed down until I could no longer hold my breath.
In an ice-cream parlour at night, I logged into the darknet, waiting for Byron14 to call. When he appeared, it was one in the morning, and the party was still going strong in the nightclub next door.
Byron14: Are you safe?
_why: How did you know about mugurski71?
Byron14: I know his work.
A photo, the man in the café in Muscat, taken another time, another place. He looked old in this picture, his shoulders down, head turned to one side, like a man who’d forgotten where he put his wallet — not like the stranger with a gun who’d come to claim my prize.
_why: That’s him. Who is he?
Byron14: Security for Prometheus.
_why: Why is he after me?
Byron14: His employer feels that you humiliated him by stealing from his guests. Your actions compromised a deal; he somewhat hastily pledged to find you, and return the diamonds, as proof of his company’s strength.
_why: How do you know this?
Byron14: I monitor Prometheus.
_why: Why?
Byron14: That is my business. How did you get access to the 106?
_why: Who are the 106?
Byron14: My questions mean you no harm.
_why: I simply don’t understand them. I was after diamonds; that’s all.
Byron14: Was it?
I licked melting pistachio ice cream from the back of a spoon, watched the beautiful and the wealthy ambling by.
_why: A woman died. She was my friend. She wanted to be perfect, and being perfect disgusted her. It pleased me to make perfect people afraid. I liked taking what they had.
Then, Do you want to buy some diamonds? Cut price, for favours given.
Byron14: Perhaps. Do you have Perfection?
A moment.
I sit back, and find to my surprise that I am already counting, looking out of the window. I count sports cars (three) and cars whose weight on their wheels suggest reinforced bodies and bullet-proof glass (two). I count beautiful young things in shoes ladder-high, and handbags with a value of more than two hundred British pounds. I count leaves on the carefully planted palm trees, and the number of street lamps I can see. An immaculate white four-wheel-drive passes by, briefly pulling my attention. At its back, on a trailer, is a large white yacht, its hull and cabin adorned with stickers proclaiming, “Free Palestine”. I realise I am laughing, and people are watching me, and so I stop, and return to the keyboard. Byron14 is waiting.