The basic common subliminal signal to consciousness is perceived by the subject as a warning that something is behind her. Over time she may develop hostility towards something or someone with whom she is in current dispute. It is only possible to predict an outcome by close analysis: individual personality traits determine consequent reactions. She may withdraw or she may react with aggression.
It’s just before dawn when I half-wake to the sounds of muffled activity outside the door of my room in the Kensington George Hotel. I lie there for a while, staring at the ceiling and trying to think through the confusion of yesterday and what’s happened in the gap between then and that day nearly three months ago in the Cellar Bar at the Bryant.
I turn over onto my side and extend my arm, stretching out and flexing my fingers, like a junkie getting ready for a hit. A tiny ballerina is dancing on my fingertips to no music. I drag myself over to the desk by the window and open my laptop. As I start to type I can feel her breath in my fingers like a prospect of the cold.
She plays the long game once too often and loses. Her possessions are laid out on a table in plastic bags: a pack of menthol cigarettes, Kleenex, some crumpled banknotes, change, a green clipper, a London subway ticket, keys, a watch with a broken face. There’s a dress, also encased in plastic, neatly folded, and shoes, bright red court shoes with patent leather uppers, ankle-straps and elegant heels.
Early evening, the evening of the night she dies, she gets out of the car in Holland Park and enters the restaurant on the man’s arm – the new dress, the shoes – smiling. I wait for the lights to change then I turn into a side street and park up. Then I’m walking in the rain to find a payphone. There’s no answer. I feel something like a panic. She has to be there. It can’t be her in a dress like that, those shoes, the laughter and the smiles, without me. She must be asleep.
The phone keeps ringing.
___________________________________
The night clerk has left coffee and rolls on a tray outside my door with a morning paper. I pour a cup and sink back on the bed. I stretch out my arm again. The tiny ballerina is in the palm of my hand now, pirouetting along my lifeline, her head held high and her eyes smiling. I watch her for a while then I clench my fist.
I don’t want to know about the future; I want to know about the end of the past. I know the beginning: it starts with the meaning of profanity. In the beginning is the word and the word is profane and black and forbidden.
I turn over onto my side and extend my arm, stretching out and flexing my fingers, like a junkie getting ready for a hit. A tiny ballerina is dancing on my fingertips to no music. I drag myself over to the desk by the window and open my laptop. As I start to type I can feel her breath in my fingers like a prospect of the cold.
She plays the long game once too often and loses. Her possessions are laid out on a table in plastic bags: a pack of menthol cigarettes, Kleenex, some crumpled banknotes, change, a green clipper, a London subway ticket, keys, a watch with a broken face. There’s a dress, also encased in plastic, neatly folded, and shoes, bright red court shoes with patent leather uppers, ankle-straps and elegant heels.
Early evening, the evening of the night she dies, she gets out of the car in Holland Park and enters the restaurant on the man’s arm – the new dress, the shoes – smiling. I wait for the lights to change then I turn into a side street and park up. Then I’m walking in the rain to find a payphone. There’s no answer. I feel something like a panic. She has to be there. It can’t be her in a dress like that, those shoes, the laughter and the smiles, without me. She must be asleep.
The phone keeps ringing.
___________________________________
The night clerk has left coffee and rolls on a tray outside my door with a morning paper. I pour a cup and sink back on the bed. I stretch out my arm again. The tiny ballerina is in the palm of my hand now, pirouetting along my lifeline, her head held high and her eyes smiling. I watch her for a while then I clench my fist.
I don’t want to know about the future; I want to know about the end of the past. I know the beginning: it starts with the meaning of profanity. In the beginning is the word and the word is profane and black and forbidden.
I’ve lost three months of my life and I can’t get them back. Where was I? What was I doing? What was being done to me? Who is Gerald Anthony Cox? Is he me? Is that where I was, in his body, in his life? And is he still out there somewhere, living, walking around without me?
My refection in the mirror as I shave at first bewilders me. The eyes are mine, the same eyes that had stared back at me as a boy. Sure, they’re set now in an older face, but it’s recognisably the same face.
My refection in the mirror as I shave at first bewilders me. The eyes are mine, the same eyes that had stared back at me as a boy. Sure, they’re set now in an older face, but it’s recognisably the same face.
But then I realise that it’s not the face itself that puzzles me and estranges me from my own image; it’s the scar. The razor traces it’s barely visible course from cheekbone to corner of lip. I have absolutely no knowledge of how I came by that scar.
_____________________________________
Another morning, neither past nor present. A man lies on a dirty pink candlewick coverlet on a bed in the Amokhan Hotel in Finsbury Park. Rain patters on the window glass. The heater has burned all night and the room is stifling. At some point in the night he has undressed.
_____________________________________
Another morning, neither past nor present. A man lies on a dirty pink candlewick coverlet on a bed in the Amokhan Hotel in Finsbury Park. Rain patters on the window glass. The heater has burned all night and the room is stifling. At some point in the night he has undressed.
He slides his hand anxiously down the greasy wall and feels beneath the mattress. His wallet and passport are still there. He checks the wallet’s contents for his cash, credit cards and driver’s licence, then he sits up on the side of the bed, takes a cigarette from the pack on the bedside table and lights it with a green plastic lighter.
There is a piece of paper tucked under the ashtray. It’s a note from the girl. He's to meet her in Stepney at four-thirty.
On the other side of the wall a man and woman argue. There is a smell like rotten meat frying in rancid butter doctored with cheap perfume. The man feels sick. There are people moving about on the stairs and in the hallway, not going anywhere, just moving about as if enjoying the sounds the creaking floorboards make beneath their feet.
The bathroom is across the hall. Someone has been running a bath for what seems like eternity. He remembers the key man telling him the night before that the water runs slowly.
On the other side of the wall a man and woman argue. There is a smell like rotten meat frying in rancid butter doctored with cheap perfume. The man feels sick. There are people moving about on the stairs and in the hallway, not going anywhere, just moving about as if enjoying the sounds the creaking floorboards make beneath their feet.
The bathroom is across the hall. Someone has been running a bath for what seems like eternity. He remembers the key man telling him the night before that the water runs slowly.
They're waiting for a plumber.
He imagines the bath gradually filling up with slowly congealing blood in tepid, rust-coloured water and his stomach starts to heave and he's going to be sick but he don’t want to leave the room, doesn’t want to see the people in the hallway or be forced to converse with the prospective bather-in-blood or look at the blood and dirty water in the bath.
He lights another cigarette.
The girl tells him that Lucian is a man who needs a place to keep secrets. That’s why he needs Ruth. And she tells him about the gun. Is it real or just a cheap lie at cocaine twilight, a safe deceit between short time lovers? He shrugs, playing cool. She can’t possibly know he's looking for a weapon. Thanks for the confidence, honey, but so?
You have to play the game, have to keep the psychological advantage. It’s the tenacity of gangsters. He knows she might be lying but he has make her believe she’s fooled him. Lies can be magic. Lies are gifts from gangster heaven. Besides, perhaps she’s telling the truth.
The sickness is gone. He lies back on the bed, decides to meet her. If there is a gun he needs to have it. He falls asleep feeling its smooth metal in his hand.
The man dreams about Ruth. It’s Sunday morning. She and Daniel are dressing for church, the sun streaming through the bedroom window, catching suspended dust particles that shimmer like sequins.
It’s a special day, a Christening. Daniel in a black three-piece mohair suit struggles with a collar stud in the full length mirror on the closet door, sucking his teeth. Ruth is in Lucian’s room, the room she keeps just for him, with a white sheepskin rug thrown back and a loose floorboard prised up.
She’s wearing a floral patterned dress the colour of cheap wall paper, holding the gun out in front with both hands, gnarled, old lady’s fingers curling like plant-stems around the butt and the trigger.
There’s a flash and the atmosphere in the apartment implodes, a smell of cordite and blue-grey smoke thickens the air.
A corpse is stretched out in the Sunday morning hallway with the top of its head gone and a halo of blood and bone and yellow brain-mess oozing, expanding outward from what is left of the head.
The man wakes up with a sense of having been cheated.
____________________________________
There is a dark blue Octavia at the top of the rank in Seven Sisters Road. The driver, a big Nigerian in a loose fitting brightly patterned shirt and sunglasses too big even for his huge face, sits in the back listening to a jazz CD with the bass cranked up too high for the speakers.
The man feels he's intruding but the driver smiles and gets into the driver’s seat and opens the passenger door. The car reeks of palm-oil commingled with something else he can’t quite place.
The girl tells him that Lucian is a man who needs a place to keep secrets. That’s why he needs Ruth. And she tells him about the gun. Is it real or just a cheap lie at cocaine twilight, a safe deceit between short time lovers? He shrugs, playing cool. She can’t possibly know he's looking for a weapon. Thanks for the confidence, honey, but so?
You have to play the game, have to keep the psychological advantage. It’s the tenacity of gangsters. He knows she might be lying but he has make her believe she’s fooled him. Lies can be magic. Lies are gifts from gangster heaven. Besides, perhaps she’s telling the truth.
The sickness is gone. He lies back on the bed, decides to meet her. If there is a gun he needs to have it. He falls asleep feeling its smooth metal in his hand.
The man dreams about Ruth. It’s Sunday morning. She and Daniel are dressing for church, the sun streaming through the bedroom window, catching suspended dust particles that shimmer like sequins.
It’s a special day, a Christening. Daniel in a black three-piece mohair suit struggles with a collar stud in the full length mirror on the closet door, sucking his teeth. Ruth is in Lucian’s room, the room she keeps just for him, with a white sheepskin rug thrown back and a loose floorboard prised up.
She’s wearing a floral patterned dress the colour of cheap wall paper, holding the gun out in front with both hands, gnarled, old lady’s fingers curling like plant-stems around the butt and the trigger.
There’s a flash and the atmosphere in the apartment implodes, a smell of cordite and blue-grey smoke thickens the air.
A corpse is stretched out in the Sunday morning hallway with the top of its head gone and a halo of blood and bone and yellow brain-mess oozing, expanding outward from what is left of the head.
The man wakes up with a sense of having been cheated.
____________________________________
There is a dark blue Octavia at the top of the rank in Seven Sisters Road. The driver, a big Nigerian in a loose fitting brightly patterned shirt and sunglasses too big even for his huge face, sits in the back listening to a jazz CD with the bass cranked up too high for the speakers.
The man feels he's intruding but the driver smiles and gets into the driver’s seat and opens the passenger door. The car reeks of palm-oil commingled with something else he can’t quite place.
The smell threatens to reprise his nausea.
He traps it and seals it in a pressurised jar labelled unmentionable fetors.
Then he tells the cabbie to take him to Stepney Green and the car rolls away.
Holloway Road, Upper Street, The Angel, Old Street Underground, some back streets, blank faces in doorways, shuttered-up shop fronts, bagel bakeries, curry houses, back into traffic, turning into Whitechapel Road, past the Blind Beggar, where Ronnie Kray shot Jack Cornel.
He traps it and seals it in a pressurised jar labelled unmentionable fetors.
Then he tells the cabbie to take him to Stepney Green and the car rolls away.
Holloway Road, Upper Street, The Angel, Old Street Underground, some back streets, blank faces in doorways, shuttered-up shop fronts, bagel bakeries, curry houses, back into traffic, turning into Whitechapel Road, past the Blind Beggar, where Ronnie Kray shot Jack Cornel.
Mosque coming up on the right, history, a funeral cortege through Bethnal Green, it’s not a good day, all days are the same here, always that way, days of rain and guys hanging around, waiting for money that nobody has.
A cinema on that vacant lot, Scarface, Al Pacino, romance memories out of nothing and nowhere, movie gangsters, wet kisses and warm breasts cupped in anxious hands beneath a loose blouse, fantasies in the dark on summer afternoons collapsing into reality on the fetid streets like flowers on a bamboo blade. Stepney Green Underground.
London is a city of stations, each one at the centre of a small village. The east end. Decay is everywhere, it’s in the air they breathe and it stinks.
The Ocean Estate begins on the eastern corner of the intersection of the Mile End Road and Whitehorse Lane, just across the street from the station, its outer wall a phantom grey colossus ten levels high with windows so small you don’t realise they’re there at all until you cross the street.
A worn grass verge and some rusting, latticed metal fencing protects the sidewalk from it, forty years of keeping the dogs off the highway.
He takes a dive into the Global lounge. It’s changed, used to be a spit and sawdust pit, now it’s gone all continental bar, with video screens and an espresso machine. He orders a large Irish and it’s gone quicker than he can pay for it and collect his change.
_____________________________________
The phone rings. I put the razor back on the shelf and rinse the lather from my face.
The phone keeps ringing.
Slowly I dry myself. Then I squeeze some after shave moisturising balm into the palm of my hand, just the right amount, not too much, and apply it carefully to my face and neck, massaging it well into the fading scar.
The phone keeps ringing.
I step out of the bathroom and approach it slowly, like a man stalking a tiger that he hopes to hell will turn and run. I pick up the receiver.
‘Mr Hilltown?’
I’m unsure at first how to answer. Mr Hilltown? Is it a question? Or is the voice telling me or asking me who I am or demanding that I should summon Mr Hilltown to the telephone if I’m not him?
‘Mr Hiltown?’
I’m paralysed. I don’t know how to respond to the voice, the sound, the question, request, demand or whatever it is.
Whatever else is in doubt, the one thing I am searingly sure of is that I have lost my ability to separate what is real from what is imaginary or counterfeit.
And I have no idea how I got that scar.
‘Hello, Mr Hilltown? Are you there, sir?'
As a boy I am small, I remember that, and I remember our house and my father’s special room with its terra-cotta walls and the paintings and I remember feeling instinctively that humans are incidental there, that it does not exist for them but for the others, the people in the paintings: the cobbler in his scarlet fez, the veiled women haggling with a rug seller in the souk, kif smokers drowsing at their pipes, the beautiful dark haired girl gazing out from the cliffs high above the beach at Merkala, I remember them all in searing detail but I can’t remember how I got that scar and I can’t remember how to respond to my own name.
Fakirs and snake-charmers and holy men, all that remains of my father is in that house, it’s a shrine to him, a vault for his treasures. A prison for his seed?
‘Mr Hiltown?’
‘Yes?’ at last I manage to say, a single word that betrays me.
‘Ah, good morning, sir, your driver, a Mr Silverstein?' Pause. I say nothing. 'He’s waiting for you in the lobby.’
I remember Ted Silverstein.
London is a city of stations, each one at the centre of a small village. The east end. Decay is everywhere, it’s in the air they breathe and it stinks.
The Ocean Estate begins on the eastern corner of the intersection of the Mile End Road and Whitehorse Lane, just across the street from the station, its outer wall a phantom grey colossus ten levels high with windows so small you don’t realise they’re there at all until you cross the street.
A worn grass verge and some rusting, latticed metal fencing protects the sidewalk from it, forty years of keeping the dogs off the highway.
He takes a dive into the Global lounge. It’s changed, used to be a spit and sawdust pit, now it’s gone all continental bar, with video screens and an espresso machine. He orders a large Irish and it’s gone quicker than he can pay for it and collect his change.
_____________________________________
The phone rings. I put the razor back on the shelf and rinse the lather from my face.
The phone keeps ringing.
Slowly I dry myself. Then I squeeze some after shave moisturising balm into the palm of my hand, just the right amount, not too much, and apply it carefully to my face and neck, massaging it well into the fading scar.
The phone keeps ringing.
I step out of the bathroom and approach it slowly, like a man stalking a tiger that he hopes to hell will turn and run. I pick up the receiver.
‘Mr Hilltown?’
I’m unsure at first how to answer. Mr Hilltown? Is it a question? Or is the voice telling me or asking me who I am or demanding that I should summon Mr Hilltown to the telephone if I’m not him?
‘Mr Hiltown?’
I’m paralysed. I don’t know how to respond to the voice, the sound, the question, request, demand or whatever it is.
Whatever else is in doubt, the one thing I am searingly sure of is that I have lost my ability to separate what is real from what is imaginary or counterfeit.
And I have no idea how I got that scar.
‘Hello, Mr Hilltown? Are you there, sir?'
As a boy I am small, I remember that, and I remember our house and my father’s special room with its terra-cotta walls and the paintings and I remember feeling instinctively that humans are incidental there, that it does not exist for them but for the others, the people in the paintings: the cobbler in his scarlet fez, the veiled women haggling with a rug seller in the souk, kif smokers drowsing at their pipes, the beautiful dark haired girl gazing out from the cliffs high above the beach at Merkala, I remember them all in searing detail but I can’t remember how I got that scar and I can’t remember how to respond to my own name.
Fakirs and snake-charmers and holy men, all that remains of my father is in that house, it’s a shrine to him, a vault for his treasures. A prison for his seed?
‘Mr Hiltown?’
‘Yes?’ at last I manage to say, a single word that betrays me.
‘Ah, good morning, sir, your driver, a Mr Silverstein?' Pause. I say nothing. 'He’s waiting for you in the lobby.’
I remember Ted Silverstein.
1 comment:
Way awesome.
If I may suggest: The one about "Lies are Magic" is one of those rare paragraphs which can't be beat. Others are as good but none will be written better, not ever.
Yep. I liked that one a lot. I envision it fit splendidly on your printed copy's dust sleeve. It will compel people to read your fine book.
Proud of you dude!
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