Cloud Atlas

“I always keep on top of the invoicing, Mr. Cavendish, do I not?”

Desperation makes me wheedle. “This is the age of ready credit!”

“This is the age of credit limits, Mr. Cavendish.”

I retired to my office, poured myself a whiskey, and slooshed down my dicky-ticker pills before tracing Captain Cook’s last voyage on my antique globe. Mrs. Latham brought in the mail and left without a word. Bills, junk, moral muggings from charity fund-raisers, and a package addressed “FAO The Visionary Editor of Knuckle Sandwich,” containing a MS titled Half-Lives—lousy name for a work of fiction—and subtitled The First Luisa Rey Mystery. Lousier and lousier. Its lady author, one dubiously named Hilary V. Hush, began her covering letter with the following: “When I was nine my mom took me to Lourdes to pray for my bed-wetting to be cured. Imagine my surprise when not Saint Bernadette but Alain-Fournier appeared in a vision that night.”

Nutcase ahoy. I threw the letter away into my “Urgent Business” tray and switched on my spanking new fat-gigabyte computer for a game of Minesweeper. After getting blown up twice I telephoned Sotheby’s to offer Charles Dickens’s own, original, authentic writing desk for auction with a reserve price of sixty thousand. A charming evaluator named Kirpal Singh commiserated that the novelist’s desk was already accounted for by the Dickens House museum and hoped I’d not been fleeced too painfully. I confess, I do lose track of my little elaborations. Next I called Elliot McCluskie and asked after his delightful kiddies. “Fine, thank you.” He asked after my delightful business. I asked for a loan of eighty thousand pounds. He began with a thoughtful “Right?.?.?.” I lowered my ceiling to sixty. Elliot pointed out that my performance-linked credit stream still had a twelve-month flow horizon before resizing could be feasibly optioned. Oh, I miss the days when they’d laugh like a hyena, tell you to go to hell, and hang up. I traced Magellan’s voyage across my globe and longed for a century when a fresh beginning was no further than the next clipper out of Dept-ford. My pride already in tatters, I gave Madame X a bell. She was having her A.M. soak. I explained the gravity of my situation. She laughed like a hyena, told me to go to hell, and hung up. I spun my globe. I spun my globe.

Mrs. Latham eyeballed me like a hawk watching a bunny as I stepped outside. “No, not a loan shark, Mr. Cavendish. It just isn’t worth it.”

“Never fear, Mrs. Latham, I’m just going to pay a call on the one man in this world who believes in me, fair weather or foul.” In the lift I reminded my reflection, “Blood is thicker than water,” before spiking my palm on the spoke of my telescopic umbrella.

“Oh, Satan’s gonads, not you. Look, just get lost and leave us in peace.” My brother glared across his swimming pool as I stepped down his patio. Denholme’s never swum in his pool, as far as I know, but he does all the chlorinating and whatnot every week just the same, even in blustery drizzle. He trawled for leaves with a big net on a pole. “I’m not lending you a ruddy farthing until you pay back the last lot. Why must I forever be giving you handouts? No. Don’t answer.” Denholme scooped a fistful of soggy leaves from the net. “Just get back in your taxi and bugger off. I’ll only ask you nicely once.”

“How’s Georgette?” I brushed aphids off his shriveled rose petals.

“Georgette’s going bonkers surely and steadily, not that you ever evince an ounce of genuine interest when you don’t want money.”

I watched a worm return to soil and wished I was it. “Denny, I’ve had a minor run-in with the wrong sort. If I can’t get my hands on sixty thousand pounds, I’m going to take an awful beating.”

“Get them to video it for us.”

“I’m not joking, Denholme.”

“Nor am I! So, you’re shoddy at being duplicitous. What of it? Why is this my problem?”

“We’re brothers! Don’t you have a conscience?”

“I sat on the board of a merchant bank for thirty years.”

An amputated sycamore tree shed once green foliage like desperate men shed once steadfast resolutions. “Help, Denny. Please. Thirty grand would be a start.”

I had pushed too hard. “Damn it to hell, Tim, my bank crashed! We were bled dry by those bloodsuckers at Lloyd’s! The days when I had that kind of spondulics at my beck and call are gone, gone, gone! Our house is mortgaged, twice over! I’m the mighty fallen, you’re the minuscule fallen. Anyway, you’ve got this ruddy book flying out of every bookshop in the known world!”

My face said what I had no words for.

“Oh, Christ, you idiot. What’s the repayment schedule?”

I looked at my watch. “Three o’clock this afternoon.”

“Forget it.” Denholme put down his net. “File for bankruptcy. Reynard’ll do the papers for you, he’s a good man. A hard bullet to bite, I should know, but it’ll get your creditors off your back. The law is clear—”

“Law? The only experience my creditors have of the law is squatting over a can in an overcrowded cell.”

“Then go to ground.”

“These people are very, very well connected with the ground.”

“Not beyond the M25 they aren’t, I bet. Stay with friends.”

Friends? I crossed off those to whom I owed money, the dead, the disappeared-down-time’s-rabbit-hole, and I was left with?.?.?.

Denholme made his final offer. “I can’t lend you money. I don’t have any. But I’m owed a favor or two by a comfortable place where you could possibly lie low for a while.”

Temple of the Rat King. Ark of the Soot God. Sphincter of Hades. Yes, King’s Cross Station, where, according to Knuckle Sandwich, a blow job costs only five quid—any of the furthest-left three cubicles in the men’s lavvy downstairs, twenty-four hours a day. I called Mrs. Latham to explain I would be in Prague for a three-week meeting with Vaclav Havel, a lie whose consequences stuck with me like herpes. Mrs. Latham wished me bon voyage. She could handle the Hogginses. Mrs. Latham could handle the Ten Plagues of Egypt. I don’t deserve her, I know it. I often wonder why she’s stayed at Cavendish Publishing. It isn’t for what I pay her.

I navigated the array of ticket types on the ticket machine: Day Return with Railcard Off Peak, Cheap Day Single Without Railcard on Peak, and on, and on, but which, oh, which do I need? A menacing finger tapped my shoulder and I jumped a mile—it was only a little old lady advising me that returns are cheaper than singles. I assumed she was doolally but, stone the ruddy crows, ’twas so. I slid in a banknote with our monarch’s head up, then down, then front first, then back first, but each time the machine spat it out.

So I joined the queue for a human ticket seller. Thirty-one people were ahead of me, yes, I counted every one. The ticket sellers drifted in and out from their counters much as the fancy took them. A looped advertisement on a screen urged me to invest in a stair-lift. Finally, finally, my turn was up: “Hello, I need a ticket to Hull.”

The ticket woman toyed with her chunky ethnic rings. “Leaving when?”

“As soon as possible.”

“As in ‘today’?”

“?‘Today’ usually means ‘as soon as possible,’ yes.”

“I ain’t sellin’ you a ticket for today. That’s them winders over there. This winder is advance tickets only.”

“But the red flashing sign told me to come to your counter.”

“Couldn’t have done. Move along, now. You’re holding up the queue.”

“No, that sign ruddy well did send me to this counter! I’ve been queuing for twenty minutes!”

She looked interested for the first time. “You want me to change the rules for your benefit?”

Anger sparked in Timothy Cavendish like forks in microwaves. “I want you to evolve problem-solving intelligence and sell me a ticket to Hull!”

“I ain’t standing for being addressed in that tone.”

“I’m the ruddy customer! I won’t be addressed like that!