IMBROGLIO
by Andrew McEwan
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Copyright 2011 Andrew McEwan
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Cover design by Andrew McEwan
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BEFORE ~ PREPONDERENCE: attending to his anger and dealing with sundry confusions, our hero finds himself in Purgatory suffering an identity crisis.
One: The Love Apple
The fat whore told jokes to relax her customers, laughing as she stretched her pink knickers, flesh marked, indented, a script elastic, moulded to her thighs and belly the impressions of too tight silk and cotton. Her pale flesh was mottled, the fine mesh of pubic hair ensconced in its niche like a squirrel’s arse hanging out of a silver birch, all leafless branches. The bra came off last.
Currently the muse of Michael Tomatoes…
He scratched her in pastel, smudged her outline, reading her skin through the pigment as he whorled his fingers, flat tones softened into contours. The whore had no name and no edges. He paid with portraits, images of her about her work and her apartment, a lavish den of nebulous curtains. Her clientele, both male and female, paid no heed to the artist, who they thought a curiosity, no few of them offering to purchase. But she kept all his work, regardless.
It was her little piece of fame. Theatre for the masses. They queued for miles outside her chamber, a long wriggling line of patrons condemned to this waiting, a promise at its end they could only guess at – should this be their first time. Michael had stood through twelve red-hued afternoons, each soaked with blood rain, before entering her phallic keep, the brittle wooden door shedding dust as he knocked, worm-eaten timbers adding to the under-floor mulch.
The was no answer. The door simply swung ajar. He was next in line and behind him was silence. First a stone waiting room, stone walls and stairs flaking wetly. No discernible light source. The keep’s dimensions - much as the whore’s - were at this juncture shadowy, unknown depths slithering with unknown pleasures, a peculiar, damp allure. He could taste sweet tea, the sensation crawling under his tongue, lifting it like the flap of a circus tent. All manner of wonders inside. Having paused to savour, Michael approached the spiral steps and climbed.
He was here for no reason he could fathom. Death had taken him, emptied and assessed him, read his envelope and posted him, a mailing of his soul to this intermediate place where many questions were asked (not least of which, why?) but few answers gained. That was the purpose of it, he supposed. It was Purgatory, and by definition…unexplained. Inexplicable? That fear abided, a remainder he had to purge. He had to find his courage, a bravery previously unknown, and having found it employ it as a tool, a means of escape into whatever preferential realm existed beyond the grave.
Michael was frightened. There was no sense of time here, just nights and days. No regularity. Thursday might follow Monday; there might be two Saturdays in a row, one cold and the other warm, February transmogrifying into July, sunshine from snow. The sky could be any colour. The earth too; the consistency of marshmallow or the hardness of concrete.
What had been his crime?
All he could remember was a girl. About six years old, dressed loosely, blonde hair flailing in ringlets as her head turned.
It was his last mortal thought.
Previously…
‘A bowling team for manic depressives?’
He nodded. ‘Why not? I mean, how many social activities are there open to people of a certain disorder?’
‘Hundreds – thousands,’ replied Redbear, christened such by Michael, whose reasoning in applying the epithet was forgotten. He had another name. Then so did everyone. Michael’s imagination had, not unusually, cart-wheeled. There could be no Indian blood; not Red Indian anyway. Redbear did possess an eastern nose, one that might conceivably belong to Vishnu. Thankfully, Redbear did not possess a white horse or a flaming sword.
The fact of his ruddy complexion, under the beard, the result of a debilitating bashfulness, was neither here nor there to the love apple. Red’s burly stature was to Michael, likewise, too obvious. He preferred complicated solutions, however much reality, in its long frock coat, complained.
‘It’s perfectly feasible,’ he found himself saying, no longer sure what he was taking about.
‘Bowling…’ Redbear provided, shaking his big head.
Yes!
‘I need a drink.’
Redbear always needed a drink. He drank every day, strolling in sweatpants and heavy cord jacket past Michael’s window between six-thirty and seven, returning minutes later from the corner shop with a white plastic carrier bag tight round the tubular containers of beer. Each evening, and mornings too, his sortie to the shop a Sisyphean act, a preamble to imbibing that was his sole exercise. Mind and body stuck to this routine, and each was tempered by it.
Feeling mischievous, he’d tailed the slow man one damp April, the sun yet in the sky but the temperature minimal, all heat waylaid by buccaneers or otherwise robbed of substance. He wished to see the athlete in training, the batons collected from the Pakistani against a backdrop of cable TV, strains of the subcontinent thin and reedy, coloured beyond any digital revolution and yet somehow contained in a black box of glass and plastic. Michael knew there to be wires within, a colour code of their own aiding this other magic. Redbear was oblivious, possessed of incredible focus. Michael stood outside the shop, peering past the ads and over the freezer, round the shelves and through the moments it took to enact a much practised transaction. What kind of beer? Which brand? These things weren’t important. Time itself would see this as a cultural imperative, like Morris dancing.
Redbear, eventually suspicious of the close presence at his back, paused on pavement and turned his head.
‘Nice day,’ said Michael, shivering. ‘What’s in the bag, fat boy?’
Brows knitted.
‘Don’t tell me. Let me guess. It’s a first aid kit for dipsomaniacs, right? It’s fluid contentment, energy for a soul depleted of battery acid, the golden blood of angels crushed and mixed with Fairy Liquid. It’s…’
‘LCL.’
‘What?’
‘Lager,’ he translated gruffly. ‘Low carbohydrate.’
‘Oh.’ Michael did well to hide his disappointment.
It was feigned anyway.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Redbear asked, now turned entirely, square and large before his stalker.
‘Me? I live here.’ He pointed.
And so began a beautiful friendship…
‘How many people do you need?’
‘Four, I think.’
‘Do you know four manic depressives?’
‘Well, there’s us two.’
‘Sorry, Tom, I don’t fall into that category. I’d be disqualified. I understand they’re pretty strict in the run up to tournaments.’
‘Well, you can lie, can’t you? You don’t have to sit a test.’
‘You don’t?’
‘Not that I know of.’ He was having doubts. It was a ridiculous idea. He’d had a dream about it. Bowling, that is.
‘Pity. I’m good at tests. Even if I don’t know anything I can always pass a test. It’s a gift, I suppose. I have a degree in mechanical engineering, but I don’t know the first thing about mechanics, or engineering for that matter.’
‘There’s a girl I know.’
‘You know a girl?’
‘Yes – you know.’
‘I do.’
‘That girl I met, or who met me.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Vanessa.’
‘Nice?’
‘Of course she’s nice. A little…’ He stroked his chin, puzzled, unsure how to describe her; how he felt about her,
even. He stuck his fingers in his ears and pulled a face. ‘…maybe.’
‘Who?’
‘Vanessa. You know. I introduced you.’
He hadn’t.
‘You did?’
‘Yes – you remember…’
He didn’t.
‘Right.’ Nodding, flushed.
‘You talked about marbles. You argued tactics and compared thumb flicks.’
‘Oh, that Vanessa,’ said Redbear, peering at Michael like he was a talking fish, some fantastical undersea sport’s pundit whose commentary was ludicrous and whose tips were not to be trusted.
This was getting them nowhere. Michael decided to leave Redbear out of his bowling plans entirely.
But Vanessa wasn’t interested either.
Strangely, the day before, she had expressed an interest in catalogue shopping.
Michael set about finding a connection.
Mail order bowling balls? Too simplistic.
He sat carving a piece of wood, pine whose origins were Scandinavian and whose brief tenure in the earth had not ended in a life-giving flurry of cones but at the insistence of large mechanical pincers; thence to the mill, its brethren pulped, perhaps the stuff of great literature, more likely packaging, newspaper or toilet-roll. It had made it up a notch, splintered into a line of fencing or even floorboards, chosen for its straightness, its lack of knots, an uncomplicated mass of fibres, unseasoned yet true, soft and yielding under the shear force of Michael’s Stanley knife, red-hued, with which he cut and fashioned. His sculpture was tactile, rounded, curves rolling into curves as he cut, turning the wood in his palm and slicing on occasion his fingers; thus the Elastoplasts.
He liked blue ones best.
It was a lack of concentration, he conceded, wincing with pain at a cut. Patched, he continued, one finger outstretched as if splinted. The wood’s shape seduced, revealing itself in ways he understood. He felt an empathy with what was made, an intimacy of form and knife slips. It was like watching a woman undress, he supposed, only much, much slower, the curve of breast and hip manifesting, shrinking from a greater whole, the outer layers peeled away to leave the suppleness of belly and thigh, gentle under his hands. He could spend hours like this, immersed in a woody foreplay he directed, but over which he had no real control. The sculpture was itself, in and of itself, separate from its maker’s design. The sculptor was the tool. In tandem, a relationship of body parts, they came together in moments of frisson and mutual respect.
Breathless, having paused to do push-ups, Michael levered himself in the direction of the fridge. His damaged finger throbbed. He pressed it against a cold bottle of milk as he drank.
Shirts, he realized. Shirts and slacks and shoes, socks too. There was a certain looseness of clothing in bowling alleys. The shoes were provided, but the remainder of the ensemble was constructed from your own wardrobe. Skirts were impractical; too long and you tripped over them, too short and they rode up (and you don’t want to fall on your arse in a mini…). Too baggy and they got in the way of your swing. In had to be trousers; not jeans, either. Pants. The shirt was important, theorized Michael, on grounds of movement; you didn’t want chafing or static. The material had to be right. Natural fibres. For coolness, cotton. T-shirts were okay, only lacking finesse. If you wanted to be taken seriously then a short-sleeved number, open at the neck, with a single breast pocket and no tails was in order. Just don’t tuck the thing in! he mentally remonstrated, before phoning Vanessa with the news, only garbling it and coming over all phlegmy.
‘I’m going to a wedding,’ she told him. ‘Not a tournament.’
‘A wedding? Whose wedding?’
‘You don’t know them – an old girl-friend’s.’
‘Can I come to the reception?’ he begged, he hoped, not pathetically. The milk residue in his throat was constricting.
‘I was going to ask you…’
‘Yeah?’
‘…the next time I saw you.’
Not knowing when that might be, Michael’s wounds remained open. He bled on the carpet from a finger corrupted, internally from a heart that threw itself against his ribcage if he drank too much coffee.
‘Saturday night,’ said Vanessa, surname Cardui.
And everything was hunky-dory.
Then, just as despair turned to good humour, there was a knock at the door.
It was TNT. Would he take a delivery for number 59?
Sure…a parcel, brown and square, for a Mr Unger-Farmer. Practically no weight to it, Michael found, giving the brown cube a shake. His curiosity was inflamed, but he was too polite to do anything intrusive. Who knew what might be inside? Certainly he wanted to find out. Tampering with people’s mail was, however, illegal. He wondered if he could have it X-rayed. Perhaps a trip to the airport or the A&E…
He thought about calling Vanessa again. Dismissing the idea – she’d think it ludicrous, this obsession with the unknown, his fixation with the lighter than air contents of a neighbour’s parcel – he put the box down, address side facing up, and went to make a cup of tea.
Seconds later Michael was back in the hallway, staring attentively at the postage stamps adhered to the brown surface, stamps stamped with inky letters and numbers, smudged and unreadable. There appeared to be several different dates and place names. The stamps themselves bore the likenesses of reptiles, iguanas and alligators against a backdrop of rock, water and tree. The currency symbols were largely obscured, making it impossible to discern a country of origin, although in the corner of one the Queen’s head was visible. And the address label, he noticed, was only the latest in a series, each pasted atop the last in a strata of glue and destination, a map of words the delivery driver himself adhered too. He tried to imagine how many pairs of hands there had been in the box’s journey; how many eyes, human and computer, had scanned its superficies, reading languages binary and alphabetical. The parcel had been a long time catching up with Mr Unger-Farmer, he surmised. Or were the previous addressees different?
No. 59. There was an enormous, treacherous hedge, the kind that swallowed entire lost tribe/hidden treasure expeditions. He could knock. But later. The driver would have posted a card describing the delivery’s whereabouts. Mr Unger-Farmer would come and collect it.
Michael was suddenly frightened. He stepped away from the box. He returned to his kettle. He ought to wipe it of fingerprints, deny ever having received it, leave it outside, in the rubbish, move house, somehow retrieve the card from Mr Unger-Farmer’s and take great pains in destroying the evidence. He ought to forget all about it and take a holiday. Didn’t he have an exhibition in the offing? Yes! So concentrate on that; finalize.
‘Easy for you to say,’ he commented.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Nothing, nothing…just a paranoiac frenzy.
He drowned a teabag. It bobbed and spun, but the water was cold.
There was nothing else for it…
Driving, he allowed his mind to wander unfettered. The urban landscape was unchanged from the previous day; suspicious in itself, given the dissimilarity between the two time frames, one present, the other past. Maybe it was his memory, and yesterday had been different, his brain now filling in the gaps, so all appeared, in retrospect, familiar. Maybe today was unreal, those differences so far unseen, not consciously witnessed. He would have to make a special effort. He couldn’t be arsed, however; just let it slip by.
The sun was shining. People, strangers, moved through his vision with a deliberacy suggestive of known direction. They had a purpose, it seemed, an objective, be it groceries or friends, other people of their acquaintance or vegetables with whom to share a few pre-digestive hours, an intimacy of preparation to be experienced by Vanessa’s girl-friend, her marriage following a recipe card. First came the ingredients; a groom for main course. He was cut and tenderized, seasoned and arranged in an ovenproof dish surrounded by family and close friends. They woul
d cook together. They would be served together, before going their separate ways. The chef, as bride, would pick and choose. And if she overcooked him, or he failed to rise, she could always get a take-away.
Michael laughed as he drove. They forced him to, the women with children, the men with women, the children off on their own. The boys jauntily walking, making much of smoking cigarettes and the girls…okay, sometimes the girls made him sigh. The girls were too real. They failed to form an amalgam. Uniquely individual, each demanded his full attention, resulting in a headache and a dark, looming cloud. In the sunshine they were beautiful, ageless…the women too; one and the same, they graced the pavement in groups, chatting, smiling, or alone, lost in thoughts Michael could never know. Sitting at traffic-lights he watched a woman of about eighty slide in zip-up shoes, heavy overcoat weighing her shoulders despite the warmth, pulling a wheeled shopping-bag. She must have run once. She must have been a foot taller, lithe and sprightly, pigtails flying, smiling those same smiles he could see in younger faces, lost from her wrinkled mien, but not forgotten. They were still there, locked in head and chest. They were still hers, smiles she shared. He imagined her youth, long gone. How must it have been? Hers loves. Her losses. She’d outlived both. She had more memories than storage space. She needed an upgrade.
The insistence of car horns brought him back. He had no real wish to return. He was happier in that other place. Reality crowded his brain.
He drove.
Past houses and buses and pedestrians, cars parked and parking, undergrowth and verges competing for space with lamp-posts and last night’s pizza boxes, the pizzas themselves regurgitated farther down the road, a series of roughly circular splashes not dissimilar in design to the Mexican meatball and cheesy pepperoni ensembles they’d previously been. In death as in life, thought Michael Tomatoes, looking left and right, checking his mirrors, creeping out of a junction. An aerial shot of the reconstituted pizza’s distribution would prove interesting. He’d search for patterns, desiring to know the route of each alcohol-fuelled craving, the identity and condition of the person or persons who had traded money for mouthfuls of stringy Parmesan and defrosted vegetables, the speed and accuracy of the eating and the time it took for the reverse procedure. That aerial shot might look like a graph, or the result of strafing by a flock of oversize, extremely pissed-off Technicolor seagulls. He came to the mini roundabout and slowed.
He was two streets from home and his finger had again started bleeding.
The fat whore turned over. Sleeping? No, never that, she crushed her lover, suffocating him in folds. The man’s limbs twitched, although whether in pain or pleasure the artist was unsure. Perhaps deliberate oxygen starvation was his heightened desire, the twitches ecstatic, the resistance token, his muffled sounds less audible, more fitful as the seconds passed.
Blue light spilled through the keep’s slotted windows, source unknown. The blue of gaslight, oddly cold.
There was a breeze, also tempered, not blowing so much as sliding, easing its gaseous body through drapes and cushions, manifestly lowering the temperature.
Michael paused.
He caught the whore’s eye.
Impossible to tell what, if anything, she was thinking. The man was still beneath her now, his stiffened arms coloured the same pale hue as the light, his temperature that of the invading air; his body as its, thin and cold.
‘What do you make of it?’ she asked, surprising him.
‘I’ve been here too short a time,’ he replied.
‘But you must have some thoughts,’ the whore chided, rising. ‘For instance: might he have been alive?’
She meant the corpse, he realized.
‘Is that possible?’
‘Who knows – it’s not impossible; but to remain alive here…that’s like trying to juggle with ice cubes. Even if you use gloves, sooner or later they melt.’
Two: The Sugarfly