"Sunday afternoons are quiet, so we can have a chat," said Moscow. "Everyone’s eating their dinner then."
We had been in the pub for half an hour when Johnson arrived, wearing patched 501s and a dirty T-shirt with a picture of a mole on the front of it. He came over to our table and began kicking morosely at the legs of Moscow’s chair. The little finger of his left hand was splinted and wrapped in a wad of bandage.
"This is Ed," Moscow told me, not looking at him.
"Fuck off, Moscow," Ed told her, not looking at me. He scratched his armpit and stared vaguely into the air above Moscow’s head. "I want my money back," he said. Neither of them could think of anything to add to this, and after a pause he wandered off.
"He’s always like that," Moscow said. "You don’t want to pay any attention." Later in the afternoon she said: "You’ll get on we’ll with Ed, though. You’ll like him. He’s a mad bastard."
"You say that about all the boys," I said.
In this case Moscow was right, because I had heard it not just from her, and later I would get proof of it anyway—if you can ever get proof of anything. Everyone said that Ed should be in a straightjacket. In the end, nothing could be arranged. Johnson was in a bad mood, and Moscow had to be up the Coast that week, on Canvey Island, to do some work on one of the cracking-plants there. There was always a lot of that kind of work, oil work, chemical work, on Canvey Island. "I haven’t time for him," Moscow explained as she got up to go. "I’ll see you later, anyway," she promised.
As soon as she was gone, Ed Johnson came back and sat down in front of me. He grinned. "Ever done anything worth doing in your whole life?" he asked me. "Anything real?"
The MAX editor was right: since coring got popular, the roads had been deserted. I left EC1 and whacked the 190 up through Hackney until I got the Lea Valley reservoirs on my right like a splatter of moonlit verglas. On empty roads the only mistakes that need concern you are your own; every bend becomes a dreamy interrogation of your own technique. Life should be more like that. I made good time. Ed lived just back from Montagu Road, in a quiet street behind the Jewish Cemetery. He shared his flat with a woman in her early thirties whose name was Caitlin. Caitlin had black hair and soft, honest brown eyes. She and I were old friends. We hugged briefly on the doorstep. She looked up and down the street and shivered.
"Come in," she said. "It’s cold."
"You should wear a jumper."
"I’ll tell him you’re here," she said. "Do you want some coffee?"
Caitlin had softened the edges of Ed’s life, but less perhaps than either of them had hoped. His taste was still very minimal—white paint, ash floors, one or two items of furniture from Heals. And there was still a competition Klein mounted on the living room wall, its polished aerospace alloys glittering in the halogen lights.
"Espresso," I said.
"I’m not giving you espresso at this time of night. You’ll explode."
"It was worth a try."
"Ed!" she called. "Ed! Mick’s here!"
He didn’t answer.
She shrugged at me, as if to say, "What can I do?" and went into the back room. I heard their voices but not what they were saying. After that she went upstairs. "Go in and see him," she suggested when she came down again three or four minutes later. "I told him you were here." She had pulled a Jigsaw sweater on over her Racing Green shirt and Levi’s, and fastened her hair back hastily with a dark brown velvet scrunchy.
"That looks nice," I said. "Do you want me to fetch him out?"
"I doubt he’ll come."
The back room was down a narrow corridor. Ed had turned it into a bleak combination of office and storage. The walls were done with one coat of what builders call "obliterating emulsion" and covered with metal shelves. Chipped diving tanks hollow with the ghosts of exotic gases were stacked by the filing cabinet. His BASE chute spilled half out of its pack, yards of cold nylon a vile but exciting rose color—a color which made you want to be hurtling downward face-first screaming with fear until you heard the canopy bang out behind you and you knew you weren’t going to die that day (although you might still break both legs). The cheap beige carpet was strewn with high-access mess—hanks of graying static rope; a yellow bucket stuffed with tools; Ed’s Petzl stop, harness and knocked-about CPTs. Everything was layered with dust. The radiators were turned off. There was a bed made up in one corner. Deep in the clutter on the cheap white desk stood a 5-gig Mac with a screen to design industry specs. It was spraying Ed’s face with icy blue light.
"Hi Ed."
"Hi Mick."
There was a long silence after that. Ed stared at the screen. I stared at his back. Just when I thought he had forgotten I was there, he said:
"Fuck off and talk to Caitlin a moment."
"I brought us some beer."
"That’s great."
"What are you running here?"
"It’s a game. I’m running a game, Mick."
Ed had lost weight since I last saw him. Though they retained their distinctive cabled structure, his forearms were a lot thinner. Without releasing him from anything it represented, the yoke of muscle had lifted from his shoulders. I had expected that. But I was surprised by how much flesh had melted off his face, leaving long vertical lines of sinew, fins of bone above the cheeks and at the corners of the jaw. His eyes were a long way back in his head. In a way it suited him. He would have seemed okay—a little tired perhaps; a little burned down, like someone who was working too hard—if it hadn’t been for the light from the display. Hunched in his chair with that splashing off him, he looked like a vampire. He looked like a junkie.
I peered over his shoulder.
"You were never into this shit," I said.
He grinned.
"Everyone’s into it now. Why not me? Wanking away and pretending it’s sex."
"Oh, come on."
He looked down at himself.
"It’s better than living," he said.
There was no answer to that.
I went and asked Caitlin, "Has he been doing this long?"
"Not long," she said. "Have some coffee."
We sat in the L-shaped living area drinking decaffeinated Java. The sofa was big enough for Caitlin to curl up in a corner of it like a cat. She had turned the overhead lights off, tucked her bare feet up under her. She was smoking a cigarette. "It’s been a bloody awful day," she warned me. "So don’t say a word." She grinned wryly, then we both looked up at the Klein for a minute or two. Some kind of ambient music was issuing faintly from the stereo speakers, full of South American bird calls and bouts of muted drumming. "Is he winning?" she asked.
"He didn’t tell me."
"You’re lucky. It’s all he ever tells me."
"Aren’t you worried?" I said.
She smiled.
"He’s still using a screen," she said. "He’s not plugging in."