“‘Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not a truth.’”
She laughed — a surprisingly childish sound, and immediately pushed her hands over her mouth to silence the unlooked-for sound. Removing them slowly, she said at last, “I was made to read the Meditations at school, and hated them.”
“But you quote from them now?”
“Something stuck from the exam. You?”
“I read it a few years ago.”
“Anthropology?”
“Long flight, I think.”
“Marcus Aurelius,” she mused, “born April AD 121, died…”
“AD 180, Vienna — Vindabona, yes?”
“Succeeded by Commodus…”
“… a disaster emperor…”
“Assassinated 192, maybe in the bath but the sources are dubious, the statues cast down; the senate declared him posthumously an enemy of the state…”
“A gladiator, loved to fight.”
“The beginning of the end, Gibbon said. The bit of that book where the history got interesting,” she replied, and stopped, so suddenly that I nearly stumbled over her grip on my arm, an anchor holding my body in place even as my feet tried to walk on by. “It isn’t… perfect… to have knowledge,” she stammered, the joy stripped away. “Perfect people aren’t knowledgeable, they aren’t… wise. That’s what my brother says. Knowledge is for show-offs and people who don’t get out of the house enough, we’ve got Google, Wikipedia. Knowledge is a place where sexy should be. Clever is sexy, the sociopath genius, the smartest man in the room, but that’s clever that doesn’t need to work, that’s not investing in knowledge, spending time at work, that’s just… being brilliant. Being brilliant is sexy, not working hard. Sexy sells. That’s what Rafe always says: sexy sells.”
The two of us, frozen in the middle of the street, arm in arm. Men stared as they walked by, heads turning though their bodies kept on moving, necks swivelling to gawp, wondering at our story. She was crying, silently, holding my arm, crying. I let her cry a while, held her close, felt her snot and tears on my shoulder, wanted to cry myself, why is that, when I hear a child cry on the train it makes me sad, see a stranger weep and feel tears come to my eyes, a weakness, perhaps, a place where emotion hasn’t become accustomed to the extremities of feeling.
“Filipa,” I breathed, as she pulled away, rubbing at her face with her sleeve. “What is Perfection?”
“It’s the end of the world,” she replied. “It’s the end of everything.”
I opened my mouth to say something, to ask, anything, offer, anything, but one of her security men stepped close, a tissue held in one hand, a mobile phone in the other, murmured, “Ms Pereyra, are you okay?”
His accent was American, his eyes didn’t meet mine. She ignored the tissue, kept pulling at her face with her sleeve, and he said again, “You okay, ma’am?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I’m fine.”
“They’re missing you at the party.”
My eyebrows wanted to rise in scorn, but I was professional, I was a thief, and this man was an enemy entering my domain.
She nodded, sniffed, smiled at the man, sniffed again, then smiled at me. “Sorry,” she mumbled. And again, “Sorry. You are… if it were up to me, I would… but my brother is very… I hope your paper goes well.”
“Thank you.”
A pause, nodding at nothing much, security waiting, phone on, connected to someone unseen. Filipa nodded again, half turned, then turned back, and pulled a bracelet from her wrist. It was silver, a thin band turned into a seamless Möbius strip. She held my right hand in her left, pushed the bracelet over my fingers, nodded with satisfaction at the shape of it around my wrist, said, “Thank you for a lovely evening.”
I opened my mouth to say no, it wasn’t… that wasn’t… but thought again, wondered what the words were that would be best for now, and said simply, “Thank you.”
She looked at me, and I looked at her, and she smiled, and let the security man lead her away.
Chapter 44
What is perfection, what does “perfect” even mean?
Perfect: as good as can possibly be.
Free from fault or defect.
Searches on the internet, trawls through books, history.
Look for the words “perfect woman” and you find bodies. Diagrams, explaining that the perfect face belongs to an actress with smoky eyes; the perfect hair comes from a princess; the perfect waist is barely narrow enough to support the generous breasts that balance on it; legs disproportionately long, smile that says “take me”. Photoshopped features combining the faces of movie stars and models, pop idols and celebrities. Who is the perfect woman? According to the internet, she is a blonde white girl with bulimia; no other characteristics are specified.
And the perfect man? He has a wide range of interests, is polite and courteous at all times, handsome and sexually considerate, intelligent, preferably funny, has a high income and his own home, mortgage free.
A Möbius strip. Take a strip of paper, give it a half twist once, tape it together, creating a surface that is non-orientable, the top is always the bottom, the bottom is always the top. Discovered in 1858, but mathematically not fully defined in equation form until 2007, hard to model a thing that goes on for ever, a closed loop without end.
The silver, warmed by Filipa, now warm around my wrist. I run my fingers round it for ever.
What was Perfection?
Maybe Filipa was right. Maybe it was the end of the world.
I went looking for the 106 Club.
Surveillance is easy, when the world forgets you.
Watching the Pereyra-Conroy building from a parked hire car, I began to chart and catalogue the lives of the 106 Club members who lived inside, and no one stopped me.
A woman getting into a chauffeur-driven car to attend a party may notice the girl on the other side of the street and be surprised, but if she then forgets, surprise is as far as her feelings go.
A security guard, helping Rafe into his limousine, notices me as he closes the door, and considers me suspicious, but not yet a threat, not on the first observation. When he returns in the evening, he experiences the same thought process again, and again it is the first time he has seen me, and so again he does not raise an alarm.
I picked pockets, stole bags, broke into apartments. I cloned mobile phones, accessed email accounts, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds.
I shadowed men to work, women to parties, I stole their names, the names of their cleaners, their tailors, their drivers, their friends.
In the morning I ran, in the evening I visited temples, bars, clubs, lectures, plays, and in the intervening hours, I studied the 106 Club.
On the seventh day of observation, armed with foreknowledge gleaned from purloined mobile phones, I followed a party of four 106 men from the apartment to an invitation-only party in Azabu.
It advertised itself as “Sugarbabes and Sugarboys”, and access was determined by one of two things — by a declaration of an annual income of over $110,000 with financial documents to back up the statement, or by writing a personal application stating why you, the invitee, were so keen to meet your sugardaddy.
Hi! I wrote. My name’s Rachel Donovan, I’m 24 years old, and I love people. I love meeting people, I love caring for people, I love listening to their stories and jokes, I love learning about the jobs they have and the things they love. If I could spend my life just meeting people and seeing the world, that would be my heaven.
With this introduction, I attached a picture of myself in a revealing red dress, smiling, all teeth, for the camera.