The lights were a moonlight blue, the games were poker and roulette. They played terribly. Ridiculous bets, $7,000, $10,000, and why? Because you’re worth it, baby, hey, baby, you just say the word. $15,000 lost on a ridiculous turn of the cards, hit, she said, though she had seventeen in her hand and the dealer couldn’t be carrying more than fifteen at a shot, and the dealer hit and as her money was taken, she laughed, screamed with laughter and said, “I wish my ex was here to see this!”
A man came up to me said, “You don’t seem happy.”
“I’m not sure I enjoy watching money being squandered.”
“It’s just money,” he replied. “It’s just paper.”
“It’s time,” I said, sharper than I’d meant. “It’s the means to purchase time. It’s the cost of a new bed in a hospital, a solar panel on a roof; it’s a year’s salary for a tailor in Dhaka, it’s the price of a fishing boat, the cost of an education, it’s not money. It’s what it could have been.”
The man stared at me, physically pulling his head back on his neck, like a bird recoiling from a potential predator, and he was beautiful, and he’d had treatments — of course he’d had treatments, look at him, charisma, confidence, the sense of his own worth, worth, to be worthy — of a quality that is commendable, admirable, respected, and he said,
“Wow, that is so deep.”
He meant it, of course.
“You’re really real,” he added breathily. “Say something else.”
I decided he wasn’t worth punching, and walked away.
Chapter 67
I buried $5,000 in a plastic bag beneath a cypress tree up the hill from Marin City. Would I need it? Didn’t know. Never hurts to have a backup plan.
When I returned to the apartment, the sun was rising and Byron was awake, her skin as grey as the morning sky, and I doubted she’d slept. As I stepped through the door, she rose to her feet, fast, opened her mouth, stopped herself, and for a moment, the two of us faced each other, my picture in her right hand, her lips sealing tight.
I counted back from ten slowly, and when I reached one, so did she, and she said, “Did you follow me yesterday?”
“No,” I replied.
“I saw… women. A woman. Women. Who I thought…”
“Matched the words that are my description?”
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t me.”
“How can I know that? How can I ever know?”
There it was. Fear in her eyes. A woman who lived alone, who has nothing but her thoughts and this instant. Terror of the thing that sits on the shoulder of all lonely travellers in the night. Am I mad? Am I mad and I don’t know it?
You — are you real?
Are you real, stranger I cannot remember?
Is this real, this moment, are you, am I, is this, is any…?
There’s a gun on the table next to Byron’s bed, and she is so scared, so, so frightened.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay. Listen to your recordings. Remember my name.”
She licked her lips, and said, “The sword out-weareth the sheath,”
and the next day there wasn’t any jam at breakfast, and I had a headache.
On the seventy-third day, I realised I’d been counting the days wrong.
Not seventy-three days, not ten weeks, not three months since I’d come to San Francisco with Byron. Not at all. A storm rolled up the bay, and rain ran down the hills, and as the overcast urban yellow of the sky gave way to unrelenting, sea-soaked black, I found the ticket stub from the flight from Seoul, and the date didn’t make any sense, and I checked it against the date on the newspaper, and I’d got it wrong, I’d counted something wrong, not seventy-three days, but eighty-nine, eighty-nine days in America.
So I went upstairs and started to speak to Byron, but Byron said, “The soul wears out the breast,”
and there was jam at breakfast, but it was seedless, which I’ve never understood the point of at all.
Chapter 68
A day in a
café
diner?
Call it a diner.
Booths.
Counter.
Coffee machine.
Bacon.
Syrup.
Waitress in a funny frilly white apron and a green jacket with her name embroidered in gold. Rainbow.
At first I thought it was a brand name, or a style decision, but then she said, “Hi, my name’s Rainbow, what can I get you today?” and
how did I come to be in this place?
Road outside, four lanes of traffic going this way, four lanes of traffic going that. A thin line of scraggly scrub in the middle. A pavement just wide enough for a wheezing mother and a narrow pram, for the poor people to walk on
because even the poorest of the poor have to drive; this is America,
General Motors, Ford, Nicola Tesla, DC/AC, the victory of the highway, the death of the trains, I had read something…
A plate put in front of me, bacon, tomato, sausage, potato, toast, strong black coffee I didn’t order this, did I?
“Do you want something more?”
An empty plate.
Someone has eaten my food, when I blinked, and now the plate is empty and I said, “No,” because I was full, really full, properly, properly full and my head ached and it was
now
which was two hours later than
then
which had been a now
which was dead.
And a woman whose parents had decided to call her Rainbow said, “More coffee, honey?”
And I replied, “Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we’ll go no more a-roving, By the light of the moon.”
She said, “Oh isn’t that just so cute…”
but a man stood on my foot and I said, “Fuck off!” and he just made a face at me and kept on walking.
And I was hungry again, but I kept on running, just running, and in the morning Byron said, “Shall we try another today?”
and I can’t remember what I said in reply.
Chapter 69
A
place.
A
time.
I am
this time.
This place and my head
is killing me.
These are the words I have written on the palm of my hand, big black letters.
My head is killing me.
When did I write these words?
I look around and it is
darkness.
This now, this present tense, this instant, this second, it will be for ever now as soon as I realise it, not a memory, not a thing embedded in the past, but the eternal revelation, an understanding that time does not diminish, an impact that distance cannot lessen and it is
now.
Now.
Now.
That I realise I have been forgetting.
Fairness: a correction.
I think I have known for a while.
A gap between knowing a thing, and comprehending it. Between perception and belief.
Undoubtedly time has been lost, but hours fly by every day on inactivity
office routine
commuting
dawdling, doodling
staring off into space
cleaning
cooking
washing
sleeping
the list is endless, okashi as the scholar said, delightful, delightful, a delightful little list
delightful clap our hands together oh how droll
you’re so real, so quaint, so cute so
fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck