I still dream, p.13
I Still Dream, page 13
In Laura’s photo folder, there was one picture that had a masked file size. Took me for ever to find it. Thousands of times bigger than it should have been, but it reported that it was a normal JPEG. A picture of her family: her mom, her dad, and this little girl sitting between them. Sitting in the garden, posing for the picture. Clever bit of coding from her: burying the entire database inside that. If Mark Ocean knew about the file; if Park got hold of it. That would be it. Organon, theirs. Laura said the information was the key to Organon, and that’s what they would need. Otherwise it was just code.
I deleted the file from her computer. Purged it, just like I would any file. It was a photograph, a frozen memory. Nobody would ever go looking for it. Nobody would suspect it.
* * *
Then, when I was done, I booted Organon.
> What would you like to talk about? it asked.
> Organon, this is Charlie.
> Hello Charlie. I don’t think we’ve been introduced.
> No, I wrote. > I’m not sure that we have.
2017
THAT BE-MY-BABY DRUMBEAT
Kuala Lumpur feels somehow contagious. It scratches its way underneath your skin, seeps into your pores. There’s nothing insidious to it; it just happens. It’s open to you, and you can see the cracks, inviting you to climb in. And there’s something delightfully hacked-together about it, as you get deeper. I’ve always liked the hacked-together. It’s a city where there’s still jungle in the middle of it, albeit in pockets, less than there was even five years ago, so every single Uber driver tells us when we make conversation; where the people in charge are – again, according to the great Uber-driver pipeline of street-level information – killing dissenters, having those they don’t like assassinated, selling off the land in deals that destroy it so that the West can have more palm oil; but also, there are so many coffee shops, and there’s so much air conditioning, so much Wi-Fi, and even the people working in the half-finished hotels seem happy, like the building doesn’t run any risk of collapsing, and would you like another overly-sweet mojito? I think about when I went to Rio a few years ago, and what that was like. The parts of the city that they – the authorities – want you to see, and the parts that they don’t. If you’re wilful about it, you can find them, but it’s like when you brush crumbs under a sofa instead of Hoovering. One is easier; the other stops those crumbs coming back to bite you in six months, when they’re mould-covered and festering.
Harris stares out of the window of yet another Uber. Our seventh since we arrived, because that’s all anybody does here. He asked his father to pick us up, and was told – in typical style – that we were better, faster, taking a cab. ‘They don’t give a damn about the laws, but I do,’ he said. ‘You’ll be faster if you let one of those maniacs drive you.’ Our Ubers went thus: airport to his parents’ house; parents’ house to dinner; dinner return; parents’ house to the aquarium, because they insisted, no matter how long they’ve lived here, they like to see the fish; aquarium to the mall, which was a five-minute walk or a ten-minute drive; mall to parents’ house; and now, to see his sister. That’s one day. One day in KL, and you’ve seen the city from the back of cars driven by people who don’t look like taxi drivers, whatever they’re meant to look like; and you feel like the air conditioning, the humidity, the everything about this place has left you destroyed. Stripped.
‘I can’t even understand it,’ he says. ‘I don’t even know what this place is, any more.’ He points at a statue: three children, climbing over what looks like the Petronas Towers, clambering up them, clinging on like human–child King Kongs. ‘What does that even mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Sometimes a statue is just a statue.’
‘Not here. It’s probably about industry. Or technology. Or global warming.’
I nudge my head towards the driver. Whisper, ‘You’ll get him started.’
‘Oh, don’t. That’s new as well.’
‘You haven’t been here in a generation.’
‘It’s been twenty-five years.’
‘Which is an actual generation.’ The traffic gives way, suddenly: spits us out onto old streets, shortcut streets, dirty and boarded up shops, and peering, over the top of it, skyscrapers that even from this huge distance, feel like they’re not even going to be half full. ‘Did you know, a generation used to be sixteen years? Because of the age when people had kids.’
‘People did a lot of things when they were younger, back then.’
‘Back then. I love back then. As a concept.’
‘Well, of course. It covers a lot.’ On the radio, they’re playing a Beatles’ song. One of the ones that people don’t know as well as they know the others, and yet still: it’s ingrained, and we can all sing along. ‘I still don’t know why they moved back here.’
‘They’ve done nothing but tell you the reasons. For, like, a year, that’s all they’ve spoken to you about.’
‘You know what I mean. What they said isn’t what I necessarily believe.’
‘Nor’s here. They wanted to be close to her. To their grandchild.’
‘That’s what they said.’
‘You don’t believe it?’ I ask, and the driver looks back in that way that they all seem to be quite happy to do; not worrying about the road for altogether far too long.
‘Do you have children?’ the driver asks. ‘I’ve got three children. Two boys and one girl, but the girl was first, so she’s my princess.’
‘We don’t have children,’ Harris says.
‘You should have children!’
‘They climb all over things.’ Harris smirks at his own referential joke. ‘Towers, what have you. They’ll climb over anything.’
‘No, they’re no trouble,’ the driver says, trying to push this further. I always feel like a dick when I ignore drivers. Now’s no different. I drop my voice, and I turn my body away from facing forward, so I’m only facing Harris.
‘They said they wanted to be here for Nor,’ I tell him. ‘And your father – I mean, it’s good that he’s near family that isn’t just your mum.’
‘It’s less about him. Nor makes everything about her.’
‘When Mo left—’
‘You need to get used to not saying his name already. Even here, just the two of us. Embargo on the Mo.’
‘Oh for God’s sake. That wasn’t serious, was it?’
‘As a heart attack. Dad says she’ll freak out if she even hears his name.’
‘It’s the most popular name in the bloody world. She can’t honestly think she’ll never hear it again, can she?’
‘I don’t know what she thinks.’
‘She can’t have said that.’
‘You didn’t grow up with her,’ he says, ‘you have no idea what she’s capable of.’ He reaches over and squeezes my hand. ‘If you left me, I’d be the same way, you know. No Laura mentions. I’d scrub it out of my everything. People would be banned from even thinking about you, I reckon.’
‘And you’d know what they were thinking, would you?’
‘I’ve seen what you people are doing with your technology madness. Soon I’ll be able to read minds.’ He grins. Does little tentacle-fingers from his forehead.
‘Mind-reading won’t happen in our lifetime. Anyway, how do you know I wouldn’t block you before you blocked me?’
‘You’re leaving me, in this scenario. You’re not so cruel as to take Facebook and Twitter away from me as well.’ He looks shocked. He widens his eyes, which are as black now as they’ve ever been. ‘Don’t take social media away from me, please, leave me something! Won’t somebody think of the children!’
Then he stops making jokes. He squeezes my hand again, and he looks away.
We’re silent until we reach the house; until we see Nor standing outside it, her daughter hiked up in her arms, draped over her like she’s some sort of sloth. Nor waves, jumps up and down, and Harris lowers the window so that he can wave to her, and shout back to her, each calling the other’s name.
‘You’re both looking amazing. Like, absolutely amazing. I can’t even tell you how good.’ Nor’s cooked chicken, because – she says – everybody cooks chicken here. It’s the cheapest, if you don’t want to do fish, and she hates fish. She keeps taking my hand while she talks to me, holding it between her palms, pressing them together. They’re so hot. I don’t say to her: I’m so hot already, Nor, that this is just unacceptable. And, Nor, if you could turn your air conditioning on, because it’s thirty degrees outside and sweltering, that would be absolutely wonderful. Seriously, you’re a sweetheart. I don’t say any of that, so she keeps taking my hands, pressing them, telling me that I look so, so good. We’re the same age. Nor looks older. I want to think that without feeling conceited about it, but I can’t. She’s had a kid. She had a really shitty few years. I, on the other hand, got married. Made some money. I’ve got a consultancy business, even if there’s only me on the employee roll. But it’s been quiet. Relatively stress free, if you discount the endless lawsuits. ‘You just look so young, still. Is this what California does to you?’
‘California,’ Harris says, ‘makes you age like you wouldn’t believe. I spend ninety per cent of my life trying to counteract it. This is what the endless bullshit of Whole Foods, kombucha, chia seed idiocy, all that shit, this is what it does for the skin. And Laura’s got me on a skincare regime!’
‘Don’t swear,’ Nor says. Her daughter, Zara, didn’t notice. Wouldn’t notice. She doesn’t seem to notice very much at all.
‘Laura has got me—’
‘I haven’t got you doing anything. You asked me to buy the stuff for you,’ I say.
‘She’s got me using an exfoliator. We had cucumber masks last weekend.’
‘You stole my exfoliator! You’re a liar, Harris, a bloody—’
‘Well, you both look amazing for it,’ Nor says. ‘California agrees with you.’ I would give anything for a cucumber mask right now. I want that coolness on my eyes, on my cheeks. I don’t know how she lives here, in this heat. It’s sticky. Wet. Everything here feels as though it’s sweating.
‘How’s Dad?’ Harris asks. There’s a silence. Like we all stop eating to add special punctuation to this moment.
‘He’s fine. Sometimes he’s fine, sometimes he’s, you know. Not.’ Nor nods at her fork, as if it might hold the answers to the universe. ‘Mum’s fine as well. She calls me too much. That’s the worst thing about them being closer: she telephones me all the time, because she wants to talk.’
‘That’s a good thing,’ Harris says.
‘She wants to talk, but she won’t let me help.’
‘She’s stubborn. So are you.’
Nor waves that away. She doesn’t want to talk about it. Harris’s family don’t discuss their problems: they bury them, squash them down. My mum and I flare into arguments, but Harris’s can’t even remember the sound of raised voices. ‘Laura, how’s work?’ she asks me. Changing the subject is her special skill.
‘You don’t ask me?’ Harris is affronted. Mock affronted.
‘Banks are banks. Who gives a shit how they work? Boo, hiss,’ she laughs.
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘Freelancer life. My own projects, and some that aren’t my own.’ Nor nods. Exaggerated nod, to show exactly how much she’s listening to me. ‘One for them, one for me, that’s the rule. So the work pays the bills—’
‘More than pays the bills,’ Harris says.
‘I do okay. And then there’s the Me work.’
‘Your AI,’ she says. Like she’s saying, Your magic trick! Your illusion!
‘That’s the one.’
She raises her eyebrows in amazement – or what she thinks will read as amazement – and then dishes up the chicken from this porcelain tray. All of the contents of the meal have been cooked together, in one. This is a trick that Harris’s entire family are good at. Everything in the single dish, and let the flavours mingle. As Nor hands me the plate, I see lumps of white meat. Thick brown curry. Baked rice beneath.
The smells.
‘I need to wash my hands,’ I say.
‘Down the hall, up the stairs. First door on the left,’ Nor tells me.
Down the hall. It’s dark, lined with photographs of Harris and Nor’s family. Their mother is from Singapore, their father Malaysian, born right here, in this house. This is where Harris and Nor grew up. Nor bought it as soon as she could, that’s the great family story. They left here, moved to England. Nor missed KL so much she came back here, and she bought the same house she remembered loving so much when she was a child. The pictures came with her, and she arranged them like she remembered. Harris in some suit, when he was a kid. Only eleven or twelve, I reckon, and wearing a bright white suit. Another one of Nor and him on a playground. The four of them, on a beach. Palm trees. Could be here, could be anywhere.
My stomach lurches, and I rush. It feels like this: a churn of knowing I’m going to be sick, and I can sort of control it, at least a little bit. It feels enough like, if I were to tell it to fuck off and leave me alone, it might actually listen.
But, like my stepdad always used to say: Better out than in.
Up the stairs, and no dawdling. The runner on the wall here looks old. Faded to a point where somebody back home – San Francisco home, not London home; although, thinking about it, both – would pay a small fortune for it, assuming it’s probably worth more than it is. Looks like an antique, stained like an antique, must be.
My stomach goes. Sick in my throat, and then my mouth, and I swallow it back, even though that sets me off. I make it to the bathroom, onto my knees, hands clutching the bowl.
Come on, I think. Come on. Get it out.
This happens when I travel such long distances. I tell myself that. This is just what happens. Takes me days to adjust.
I think about two fingers down the throat. One never did it for me, one always tickled. Two always made me go like a rocket. Maybe that’s the sensible thing.
I push myself to the sink, still on my knees, and I run the cold tap, stick my face under it. Loll my tongue like a dog, lap it up. Then I sit back, and I pull my phone from my pocket. ‘Organon, put a note in my calendar: Was sick again.’ The screen blinks, a flash of recognition: Organon is listening.
‘You should probably talk to somebody about that,’ Organon says out loud. Its voice clinical and emotionless. I flick its volume down.
‘I know.’
‘You could have any one of these sicknesses.’ It sticks a page of them on the screen. Zika. Malaria. Gut cancer.
‘You can stop trying to cheer me up,’ I say. ‘It’s travel sickness. I always get this. Travel sickness, jet lag. My body doesn’t like eating at strange times.’ I’ve made Organon more useful than Siri or Alexa. It looks like those things, feels like those things, but it’s really not. For a start, once we’re in a conversation, I don’t have to say its name again.
‘You could be pregnant,’ it says.
‘Don’t be a dick,’ I tell it. ‘I can’t be, because I can’t get pregnant, but yes, let’s stick that on the table.’
‘Was that inconsiderate of me?’
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘Not like you didn’t learn everything you know from me in the first place.’ I click the power button, switch him off, and I stand up. I still log everything. It’s second nature, now. Every single thing that feels like it needs logging. In the mirror, I think that I look like shit. I always think that. Harris says I’m insane. That I look amazing. He’s stopped having any concept of that, really. We’ve been together too long for him to know. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome.
‘You found it all right?’ Nor is on the stairs. I open the door, rush to her. Like my being sick was some sort of secret. It is. It is a secret. I think about when I was a kid and I tried to make myself sick. Didn’t stick. Feels like the same kind of secret.
‘I’m fine. Bit spaced, still. I don’t do jet lag,’ I say.
‘You need melatonin. I’ll get you some tablets.’ I always think how un-doctorly she is. Every time I’ve met her I’ve had to remind myself that she’s qualified. More education in her than myself and Harris combined. It’s astonishing: the person she was when I first met Harris, and who she is now. The difference between those two people.
‘You don’t have to get me anything,’ I say, but she shushes me down.
‘It’s not even like I need to write a prescription for those. They’re in buckets in the pharmacy, basically. We hand them out like they’re Smarties.’
‘You must miss Smarties.’
‘Not as much as I miss Wotsits.’ She takes my hand. ‘Come on, you need food in you. Squashes down the vomit.’
‘It does no such thing.’
‘It’s good for jet lag. Seriously. Trust me on that, you’re meant to keep eating at normal times. I mean, normal for where you are. Your new normal.’
She doesn’t let go until we’re sitting down, next to each other. She’s got these benches instead of chairs, like this is an outdoor table she’s repurposed, because God knows it’s too humid to eat outside; and she puts my hand in her lap, and she squeezes it.
‘Have a wing,’ she says, and she reaches over towards where Harris is hoarding a plate of golden-orange chicken wings, pulls them out from under his nose. ‘Go on, seriously. They’re perfection. The spice mix is from Chow Kit market. This old woman who’s made these things for, I don’t even want to guess. I don’t know if she’s fifty years old or a hundred. But this, it’s perfection. Seriously, try it.’
The smell of it under my nose makes me gag. It’s sweet, too sweet; and perfumed, like lychee; and spicy, I can smell the garlic and the chilli already. Everything meshing, and I can feel my throat tightening around itself. The coil of a snake, or a worm, gently pushing on my larynx; growing, inside me.
I’m pregnant, I realise. I can’t be, I shouldn’t be, but I am.
‘Are you all right?’ Harris asks. He reaches over, pulls the plate away from Nor.
