I am interested to know how much you — I, that is, the I that will be you, when I have forgotten — remember of all this. Soon I shall be you experiencing this letter, and what then? Will I remember the Empire State, will I remember chocolate and vanilla cheesecake, the Guggenheim and the way he slid down the plastic seats of the express as we rode through Manhattan? What do you see?
I see the Empire State, New York spread beneath me. I remember the way the cheesecake clung to my fork, sticky, white and dark chocolate marbled together. I remember riding the express train, but no one slid along the plastic seats, and no one was by my side.
Do you remember feeling? Do you remember laughter? Do you remember joy, hope, fear?
I remember… I remember laughing in the Guggenheim, though now I cannot remember what I was laughing at.
I am frightened now. I am frightened that when he fades from my memory, a piece of me will die too. The feelings, the things I have learned, the ideas I have had today, so many ideas, so many feelings, they will die with my memory. I fear that loss. But more, a terror that I must share with my future self. I fear what this means for me. If you forget the joy of this day, then what joy you give to others will also be forgotten, and your life has no consequence, no meaning, no worth. I am a shadow, blasted away by the sun, a meaningless occlusion of light that fades with the day.
Remember. God, please God, please, remember. Remember him. Remember me.
I will put my pen down now.
He will walk away.
He is going.
He is going.
Remember.
There the letter stopped, and he was gone.
Chapter 23
Many years later, I walked up to the customs post at Sharm el-Sheikh airport, stood in a queue of nine people, counted my steps, concentrated on my toes until I could feel each individual end, could define the shape of every part of my feet. They didn’t pat me down as I went through security, and they didn’t bother to check my luggage. In duty-free territory, I bought bad international coffee and a bad international magazine, and waited for my gate to be called.
Colourful pictures, words on a page.
Revealed!! Celebrities without their make-up!
How was Daring Duncan’s first night as a stripper? The full story!
Roisin and Abby’s Feud: Now It’s Personal.
I flicked through without paying much attention, eyes still circling the hall.
This season’s must-haves: get the A-list look.
“She says she loves me, but why’s she so frigid in bed?”
Perfection 106: the insider report.
I stop. Flick back a few pages. Look more closely.
A series of pictures: beautiful people in beautiful clothes. Not a gram of fat between them, no grey hair, no wrinkles, only perfect, cosmetic smiles. Champagne from glasses with twisting spines; gold at the women’s necks, gold in the cufflinks of the tuxedos.
The world’s all the rage for Perfection, the new life-enhancing, you-enhancing app from Prometheus. But only a very few ever earn enough points to be invited to join the 1×106 club. We meet the exclusive few who’ve made their lives truly perfect…
A bewildering tapestry of names and faces. She used to be a PA, but now she’s head of her own media firm. He used to work in the invoicing department of a stationery shop, but now he’s a management consultant, and fabulous. He used to weigh twenty-two stone and was scared of meeting new people, but having earned 1×106 points through Perfection his life has been transformed and he’s just got engaged to the runner-up of Miss Colombia 2009.
She loves her yacht.
He loves his house.
He met his wife through Perfection, the perfect woman, he hadn’t known what perfect meant until he saw her.
“I thought my life was going to waste,” she explains, “but now I realise that I can be perfect too.”
I lay the magazine down as my flight is called, walk to the gate, diamonds temporarily forgotten, the worst of the job done. From here, things should be easy.
A premium-class seat near the door; not quite first, not quite economy. Padding and iced water in a plastic cup. The air stewardess who directs me to my chair wears stunningly red lipstick.
Standard uniform requirements for female cabin crew:
• 5'2" to 6'1" in height, with body weight that is proportional to this height.
• Regulation skirt, not trousers.
• Hair in one of fourteen regulation styles. If worn in French plait, end of plait not to exceed 1.3 inches.
• Powder and lipstick to be worn as a minimum requirement for make-up.
• Handbag must be carried over the right shoulder.
• Hat to be worn at all times, over the right eye.
The seat next to mine is empty. I pull on my seatbelt, tugging it a little too tight around my middle, lean back in my chair.
The door closes, a clunk as we’re sealed from the outside world.
I half close my eyes.
A man sits next to me.
He wears a linen suit, a white cotton shirt, glasses balanced on the top of his head. His watch has a thick leather strap, but the face is constructed so you can see the gears turning beneath, a skeleton watch, £450 at a pinch, more indulgent than his shoes (£60) or his haircut (£15) — a thing that perhaps carries meaning for him. I wonder if I should steal it, but decide the strap is too wide, it won’t fit, and besides I’m not in the mood.
I glance up at his face, and he is known to me, and he is mugurski71, pulling the flight magazine from the chair back in front of him, flicking through, eyebrows drawn, face crinkled, considering Black Sea holidays and resorts on the Aegean.
I look away.
Can he remember my face?
Impossible: we haven’t met, he has no picture in his hand to compare against my features.
Yet equally impossible: coincidence. _why and mugurski71 do not meet by chance, not like this.
The plane begins to taxi to the runway. The cabin crew perform safety checks, seatbelts, lockers. With perfect painted smiles they indicate the emergency exit here, there, air masks, lifejackets, stay calm, save yourself, then the kids.
I pretend to read my magazine, he pretends to read his.
How has he found me?
“The money.”
He spoke so calmly, eyes turned still to the pages in his lap — Detox to perfection with our 5* holistic getaway — that I wasn’t entirely sure he’d spoken at all.
Then he spoke again.
“I followed the money. Once we concluded you had stowed away on the cruise ship, I sent people ahead to watch the ports, see who disembarked, who checked into what. The day the ship arrived in Sharm el-Sheikh, an Australian passport cleared customs, which wasn’t on the ship’s manifest. We found you as you checked out, but you used the same account for both the hotel and the flight to Istanbul. I had to run to make this flight, which is undignified. My name is Gauguin.”
He held out one hand, club-fingered and pale, his eyes still not rising from the magazine. I declined to shake it.