I felt I should say something more. “Look, I can just go, once . . .”
“Are you human?”
The question caught us off guard. “What?”
“Are you human?” she asked.
“Yes.” Mostly.
“Oh. Then, I mean, what happens now? Like in films, and on TV, there’s rules, like amnesia and stuff. I mean, is there . . .?”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“OK. Uh, I can’t afford counselling; so, if you could just . . .”
“I can go,” I said.
She gave up, seemed to shrink into her dressing gown, became, for a second, aged. I wondered how old she was: a young voice from a lined face, dark hair greying at the edges. “Look,” she said, “you seem like a nice guy. I mean, you saved my life, so I figure, you can’t be all shit, unless this is some cunning plan of yours to be like a rapist or something, in which case I figure . . .
“I mean, what I’m saying is that I get up at six-thirty every morning to go to work and come back at six-thirty every evening and make pasta for supper and watch the telly and go to bed at ten-thirty and on the weekends I clean up and see some mates and my kid is . . . and you know, sometimes there’s guys and that’s nice and I get support from the council and there’s like so much fucking paperwork you would not believe and it’s just . . . it’s ordinary, get it? Five hours ago, it was just . . .”
“Ordinary?” I suggested.
“Just tell me it was a coincidence. A thing came up from the sewers, and it was just luck, right?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Bad luck, to be exact, but still just luck. There was no reason for you to be there, no reason for it to be there. It just happened. Sometimes things do just happen.”
“You don’t sound like you believe that.”
I shrugged. “I guess sooner or later the rationale is, I just happen to be crossing the road when a car comes and knocks me down, and he’s only there and I’m only there for a world of reasons an infinity apart and because it was going to happen to someone, so why not me?”
“Why were you there?”
“We wanted fish and chips.”
“How come you can do things?”
“It’s just a point of view. I’m a sorcerer. It’s just a way of seeing things differently. That’s all.”
“Sorcerer.”
“Yup.”
“Like, big beards and stuff.”
“Times have changed. You can always tell you’re being sold a bad product if it comes attached to a pentangle star. New times — new magics. Different symbols.”
“Symbols? Like spells?”
“Sort of.”
“Show me.”
“You don’t want to—”
“Show me!”
So I did. I got a piece of paper and drew a sign of power, a protective ward. She looked at it, unimpressed. “It’s the Underground sign.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, God. You are a whack-job.”
“You’re not listening. Life
“You make it sound . . .”
“Ordinary?”
“Boring.”
“It’s not boring. Keep away from it.”
And she looked at me, at us, she looked us in the eye, and wasn’t scared. She took our hand. Clean fingers, dry from soap. She said, “Do you have a home?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“I lost certain things.”
“Where do you live?”
“I move around.”
“Do you have a job?”
“Sometimes. It’s not very glamorous.”
“Do you pay income tax?”
“No. I did, though, before . . . I did pay tax.”
“What’s your favourite food?”
We licked our lips. “Too many choices.”
“Where did you last go on holiday?”
Hard to remember. A world ago, a different meaning. “Istanbul.”
“What’s your favourite colour?”
“Blue.”
“Worst bus route.”
“91, Crouch End to Trafalgar Square. It gets stuck up at Euston, crawls round King’s Cross, takes for ever — faster to walk.”
“Favourite . . .” she drawled, “. . . favourite ice cream flavour.”
“Too many choices.”
“Everyone has a favourite flavour.”
“Strawberry. Although it depends on how sunny it is.”
“All-time best memory.”
“Living,” we said instinctively, and was surprised to hear our own words.
“Tad tossy,” she replied.
“There’s a story.”
“Worst memory.”
“Dying,” I said.
“And you’re not smiling.”
“No.”
“You know what — not going there.”
“Probably for the best.”
“Matthew,” she said firmly, “will you stay here tonight?”
She slept in the bed; I slept on the floor.
She didn’t sleep. At three in the morning she got up and pronounced, “Buggerit.”
We watched TV, wrapped in duvets. You haven’t seen bad until you’ve seen 3 a.m. TV. It made
The boy got the girl, the girl got the boy, they sailed away beneath the Golden Gate Bridge as fireworks went off in the background. I thumbed the DVD player off with the remote control, watched a bit more telly, and
