The Other Lives Page 7

  The closest anyone can get to me is outside on the street, five stories below. It’s usually the paparazzi (those oily fat scamps — quite like them, to be honest), but sometimes the general public come to see me too, and you know how I feel about them. Gawkers, rubberneckers, voyeurs, cell phones in hand, each trying to get a glimpse of Elliot Childs moving around in his own habitat. Sometimes I wave and smile politely. Other times I toss the dregs of my green tea over the side at them. Oh, for those long-ago days when one could do the same with one’s latrine.

  So they come, these people. And he’s one of them. The ragged man is one of them. The relief floods through me like an opiate. It baffles me why I did not remember it at the time, but for the past month (two?) he has been there on the street outside my flat at 7:30 a.m. every morning, just another drab figure in the drizzle staring up at me in adoration, envy, or just plain awe.

  Or recognition. Deep, unnatural recognition.

  No. This is definitely where I’ve seen him before. This alone is why I recognised him in the taxi. Nothing more, nothing…

  But even as I think these words I feel the truth of them slipping away. My shot of relief is now running thin, nothing more than fumes, and the previous evening reminds me of itself, blackout-free, like a film script. Every event leads clearly to the next, every face I reeled from etched in my memory, every unsolicited dive, every pulse of that feeling that I was going to explode with overloaded life…

  My heart gains pace as I search the street, but it is empty. The ragged man is not here today, and I realise, with horror, how much I wish that he was.

  The woman from last night is standing behind me.

  ‘Good morning,’ she says.

  I turn, and I’m not ready for what happens next.

  For a split second I see her, hip cocked, awkward and barefoot with ruffled hair. But before I can open my mouth to speak, I am gone. I am gone and I am her.

  The dive is immediate — all senses arriving at once. I feel her flesh and the size of her skeleton. I smell the flat as if I have never smelled it before. I taste the rank traces of Pinot Grigio on her dry tongue, along with something else. The taste of…of…it’s the taste of Elliot Childs. And that same man stares back, mouth agape. I think her thoughts — her thoughts that are nothing like mine, but small and pointed and ready to explode like landmines. She is still a little drunk and excited, horny even…This place is amazing, not surprising I suppose, he must be minted, he’s not quite as attractive as he is on the telly, but then, I suppose, probably would again if he wants, although, judging by the look of him…

  At the sound of breaking glass, I’m back, myself again. I shake my head and look down at the splintered remains of my three hundred pound teacup at my feet. A patch of blood grows on my sock.

  ‘Shit,’ she says. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.’

  She comes to help. I hold out a hand.

  ‘No, I’m fine, I don’t need…’

  I meet her eyes again and I’m gone.

  …Jesus Christ I knew it he’s freaking out wonder what I did wrong blowjob that’s it I didn’t give him a fucking blowjob fucking wanker they’re all the same this is the absolute last time I fuck what’s he doing now does he even remember?…

  I have lost control. I am diving when I do not want to dive.

  Somehow I’m back and running. I cover my face as I pass her, avoiding her eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she cries. ‘Stop, let me help you, you’re bleeding.’

  ‘I’m fine, just don’t touch me.’

  ‘Bit late for that, isn’t it?’

  I find some paper towels in the kitchen and go to work on my foot. My heart rattles with panic.

  ‘I just…just need you to leave, please.’

  She stands in the middle of the room, arms crossed. I can tell she’s smirking.

  ‘What are you, fifteen?’

  ‘Please, I’m just…I just need to be on my own.’

  ‘It’s not even 8 o’clock.’

  She sidles over.

  ‘Anyway, I thought you might want to, you know…’

  The thought of it. The closeness. The inescapable closeness.

  I slap on a plaster, pull on my sock and push her away, heading for the bedroom.

  ‘Hey, what the hell is wrong with you?’

  I need to get out. I grab my phone and text Colin on the number he gave me last night. Then I pull on my shoes and grab my jacket.

  She leans on the doorframe, scowling.

  ‘Proper gentleman, aren’t you?’

  ‘Please, just get out, will you?’

  I push past her.

  ‘Pff, whatever.’

  She stumbles about, finds her knickers and tries to get one leg in, but loses balance and whoops as she falls over the bed, laughing.

  ‘Silly me!’ she hoots.

  I leave the room and pace the floor outside as she chatters to herself and bumps into furniture. Just being in her presence now feels dangerous. It is as if she has a gravity that threatens to pull me into her.

  Just like last night. Just like…

  I reach into my jacket pocket and feel the photograph. I pull it out.

  ‘I dunno what your problem is, mate…oops! Sorry, something broke I think…’

  I look at the picture. I remember everything as I did the night before — the sun, the itching collar, the photographer, Please, Mr Jensen, it is very hot.

  ‘I thought we had fun. You seemed to be enjoying yourself…bollocks, where’s my sodding tights…’

  I need to go. I need to find someone, someone to talk to. Patti.

  ‘Let yourself out,’ I shout, and leave.

  WHO WE ARE IS NOT IMPORTANT

  OUTSIDE, THE LEXUS IS waiting in the rain. Patti’s office is five minutes’ drive. I get in.

  ‘Mr Childs,’ says Colin. I’m fumbling with my phone to call Patti. ‘I missed you last night. Did you get home OK?’

  ‘Laudale Street,’ I say as I slam the door. Patti picks up.

  ‘Elliot? Where the fuck have you been? I’ve called you about a hundred fucking times. What the hell happened last night? You can’t just walk out on me like that. I mean, the Americans found it amusing, thank God, but then, what, you go off and get pissed in front of half of London? Have you seen the papers? You’re all over them. It’s a fucking shit storm, Elliot, a fucking —’

  ‘Patti, I’m coming to your office.’

  ‘Right. Well, I’m just going into a meeting.’

  ‘Cancel it, I need to talk to you.’

  There’s a voice in the background.

  ‘Is that Elliot? Put him on speaker..’

  Patti again, voice smothered.

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Hunt?’ I say. ‘Patti, what’s he doing there?’

  There’s a pause, barely long enough to blink in, but it’s still a pause.

  ‘What do you think he’s doing here? He’s supposed to be on our show later and you’ve gone AWOL.’

  ‘Christ…’

  ‘Elliot, what’s going on?’

  ‘I’m almost there, just hold on.’

  I end the call and pocket my phone.

  ‘Laudale St, Mr Childs. Shall I stay here?’

  In the mirror, those two blue pools of light again. He turns to face me.

  ‘Are you quite all right, sir?’

  And I’m in.

  The strong smell and taste of mint masking recent coffee. He has a slight frame but big chest encasing a labouring heart. There’s a lightness to him, a certainty, his thoughts are weightless…

  …he looks ill, I should suggest the hospital…but then it’s probably self-inflicted…poor bloke, what leads him to abuse himself like this…I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t judge, Lord, but if I could give him this gift, I…

  I lurch back to myself, a devil exorcised from the pristine chambers of Colin’s mind, and for a second the day seems to lose its weight and hover, like a car soaring over a bridge. It
is quiet, and all I see is Colin’s rotund, equable face glowing before me.

  ‘Mr Childs, it is not my place and I do hope you don’t mind, but…whatever it is you’re going through, I can help you.’

  Slowly, he offers me his hand.

  ‘We’re all here to help each other, aren’t we? Mr Childs?’

  But I’m already out of the Lexus, stumbling across the pavement. The rain is in full flow again, dark clouds closing overhead. My insides are out of control. My breaths are beyond me, my heart adrift as I try to process the impossible: I have no control. No fucking control.

  ‘Hello, Mr Childs,’ says the security guard, Michael, a tall Nigerian with a face like a boulder. He grins, flashing white teeth. ‘I was not expecting to see you today.’

  Calm yourself, Elliot, I think. Just calm down, you can control this, it’s just…

  But Michael’s eyes are huge. I’m in.

  Cherries on the tongue and the remnants of a recent cigarette still loitering in his throat. A huge body, tight muscles and packed fat. I get a shock of gravity at the sudden change in weight. I hear music, a jangling hymn from one earbud still in place. I see me — Elliot Childs, drawn and sweaty in the office reception, gawping back at him, and then my thoughts burst into dust and become his. They are colourful thoughts, nauseatingly huge, that rise and fall in endless, crashing seas.

  …As I expected these celebrities they’re all heroin addicts and thieves too I expect I think this might be a problem right now perhaps I should call Douglas in case I need to engage…

  ‘Elliot!’

  I’m back, Elliot, cowering from Michael’s moon-sized eyes. Footsteps clatter on the marble steps leading up from the reception. Patti is tottering down towards me, arms out and fingers splayed.

  Christ, no, not Patti…

  ‘Good God, you look fucking awful!’

  I stagger back.

  ‘Patti, no, please.’

  But it’s too late. Eye contact. I hurtle in.

  There’s an incredible shift of gravity as I feel Patti’s stick frame replace the thick bones of Michael. I taste what she tastes; strong coffee and muffin — raspberry — and something else too I can’t place. I’m distracted by a sharp tang in her left nostril, a sour fizz halfway between banknote and Chardonnay. Cocaine. Patti hardly touches the stuff, certainly not this early in the morning, not unless we’ve been…oh, that’s what the other taste is. So the question is now not what, but who? She descends the steps, small breasts bobbing in an expensive bra that’s not been refastened properly and brushing the silk of her blouse…and…

  …thoughts like the inside of a stone kitchen looking out on a summer’s day. It is safe inside Patti, she thinks in a safe and cherished place, albeit somewhat muddled now by the Charlie…what do I do what do I do what do I do he’s come to you you should be glad about that because maybe he’s finally opening up could that be it could have chosen a better fucking time or is this no this is something worse he looks like shit oh fuck he’s green he’s going to throw up and in front of Hunt too…

  ‘Elliot?’ says another voice, dark and menacing.

  I slip back on jelly legs as gravity spins its dials. Hunt is standing behind Patti with his hands in his pockets. His face is full of question, but there’s something else there too, a shade of malice, of threat…

  No flaking out, Elliot.

  …and before I know it I’m clawing inside that mind like a palace of icebergs and sinkholes, blue and clear and measured.

  Well now, this is a problem. This changes things somewhat. I’m going to have to…

  I can’t take it. I can’t I can’t I can’t and I’m out of there, falling back through the door and flying down the steps.

  Colin’s Lexus is still outside, parked next to a gleaming Bentley with dark windows that I had not seen when we arrived. Hunt’s? I think, as I hit the pavement. Stooping against the driver’s door and smoking a thin brown cigarette is a tall man in a black suit. Across his weathered, pointed face is a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, which he drops as I pass. He has hawklike eyes.

  I prepare for another onslaught of alien thought, but there’s nothing. I’m him, I know I am, because I can see me looking back in pale, sweaty terror. But where others have thoughts, this man has empty space; thought-shaped holes like caverns within caverns, and for a second, as our eyes lock and the momentum of Elliot Childs carries his body past, I feel marvellously free and lean, as if I have shed all mammalian weight. In fact I don’t feel like a mammal at all. I feel like a reptile, with just one drive glimmering deep inside—a cool and primal thing I don’t have time to understand because before I know it I have passed him and now I’m sprinting down the busy street that’s full of…to my absolute horror…people.

  I run with my head down, ignoring the voices muttering as I pass. A bike squeaks ahead and I look up to see a postwoman. I stagger to a halt and her brakes squeal.

  ‘Sorry mate.’ She grins.

  Ash, tea, belly, medium frame, me looking back, haggard, shirt untucked, eyes blank, drooling, thoughts like packed freight trains on a neat interchange, mathematical in structure and the glowing memory of a child, like lemon in spring sunlight, permeating everything with happiness, but there’s a ruin somewhere that reeks of a time when things weren’t quite what they should be; cheap spirits and warm wine and smoke and disaster and…get away!

  ‘…You all right?’

  And I’m back, staring wildly, blood pounding, feeling as if I have just been molested.

  I push past her, turn the corner and cross the road. A horn blares and I spring back as a bus passes. I catch the driver’s furious glare.

  Sweet orange, a sour pill, fat arms and waist, a terrible shake of loneliness duelling with the memory of a sketch show, always on his own, a brown sofa, chipped mugs of milk and another takeaway, sex with his brother’s wife, that sketch about a man on stilts…

  The bus passes and I’m back again. People are moving about. A crowd is forming. Keep your eyes on the floor, I tell myself. This will all pass. You just need to get home now. Don’t make eye contact…

  ‘Oy, watch out!’

  My shoulder hits something and I feel breath on my cheek. I’ve hit an adolescent, male, baseball cap and jeans drooping beneath his buttocks. He gives me a confident shove to put some distance between us.

  Eye contact.

  Marijuana, skunk, egg, taut body, thoughts like dry flashes, thumps and spikes, frowning things but they weren’t always so, he has cultivated them, bred them to be different, a year or two ago they were merry-go-rounds of dancing lights, but now a spear of sexual desire penetrates everything and I know exactly what he did with a girl a year older than him the night before; I know exactly how her mouth felt on him, and the chewing gum inside it against the ridge of his phallus, and the thud of the music outside the room, and the slipperiness of her, and…

  ‘Look where you’re going, yeah?’

  I run on, breathing hard. A car horn sounds. I don’t look, but I hear the driver shouting from her open window.

  ‘Fucking idiot!’ she yells.

  Egg again, and shampoo, underweight, a middle-class life, thoughts and deeds hoarded into compartments, each one justified, each one accounted for, nothing to keep her awake, even down to the missing money, the dead dog, and the way she looks at her teenage son’s friend…get out, get out, get out…

  ‘Stay off the fucking road!’

  The crowd has followed me, growing, snapping, flashing, pointing, laughing.

  I look around and their lives hit me in unison like a swollen tide.

  A green ornament on a television set and who’s this now…the face of a young boy jumper too small plastic aeroplane in his hands and a chocolate-smeared mouth if he could just now what’s wrong with this cunt…a face that won’t be understood that tries to be good but he just can’t control himself and her sister says she should leave him but what the fuck is he looking at…sauce on the plate won’t come off but I
like going there so what’s wrong if you dirty bastard what’s he perving at…

  A jumble of different consciousnesses and all the smells, fears, wants, regrets and battles that come along with them. I can barely pick them apart. The mess of their existence sticks to my senses like chewing gum in hair. I am being pulled in a hundred directions, and in each of those directions countless other ones too. I feel like I could go deeper, that if I don’t kick I’ll be dragged down like quicksand and that is something I absolutely do not want. Because I’ll never get back. If I let myself go, I’ll never get back.

  Phone flashes erupt all around, above the excited chatter of the spectacle. Others are held up to record.

  I push through and run, but they pursue me, a true crowd now with its own momentum and desire — no longer individuals. They could tear me apart and never consider themselves accountable.

  I duck down a thin side street and sprint for the end. My followers are slow to change direction and become stuck in the entrance, giving me a few seconds head start. I head for the main road. It’s a river of rain and my feet are soaked. As I near the end I can hear them behind me, a multitude of voices now combined into a single roar, the flashing cameras like the sparkling hide of some terrible, lumbering beast. I reach the end and decide to bolt through traffic, but before I can step off the pavement, a van pulls up in front of me. I stagger to a halt and slam my hands against the driver door. The window rolls down and two faces look up at me.

  The first is female, but I don’t see her properly, because there in the passenger seat, peering at me with eyes that say…you, you, you…is the ragged man. I am about to run when the girl speaks.

  ‘I know what’s happening to you. If you want answers, get in.’

  The van’s side door opens. I look over my shoulder at the approaching mass. Then I turn back and jump in. The woman floors the accelerator and pulls out as someone shuts the door, swinging across three lanes of traffic and speeding over the middle of a roundabout.