I remembered parties where Helen would talk to Amy and Graham would come into the kitchen to talk to me, and they’d both say the equivalent of the same thing:
I said, ‘Getting on your case?’
‘Exactly. I mean, I have work to do. She wants to play house.’
‘Want me to get out of your hair?’
‘No, it’s okay.’ He clicked the mouse again. ‘I can talk while I work. I just can’t Ikea. Or at least I won’t.’
He typed in a few words, his fingers as lightning fast as ever.
‘Just give me a minute. On top of all the work I have to do, I’m also trying to download the new Will Robinson single from Liberty. To keep her happy.’
‘That would keep anyone happy.’
‘Well, obviously. So just give me a minute.’
‘Okay.’
I looked around while he worked. The study was incredibly old- fashioned, especially given the industry he worked in. As a contrast to the spare, metallic feel of the rest of the flat, this room was decked out in dark wood, with crammed bookcases lining three of the walls, while the other was taken up by the console he was working at. The books themselves were old – classics mostly – with modern reference texts and manuals dotted around, their vibrant spines standing out. You could buy bookcases like these from lifestyle catalogues – I think there were about twenty or so on the market – and save yourself the bother of collecting and reading a lifetime’s supply of literature: you just ordered the bookcase and it came ready-stocked, making your study look authentic and used. I could have been on a ship, or in a Victorian drawing-room.
In the centre of the room was an old table with battered, bowed legs. A series of printed paper sheets was spread upon it, with more paper slipping out of the printer hatch in the wall no doubt soon to join it. This was Gray’s job: professional web gopher. He was one of the most respected information-ferrets in the business, employed by a number of well-known companies and individuals to hunt down details of rival products, research projects, other individuals and then produce easy-to-read reports on what he’d found.
And he was good at his job. The approach he had to the internet was one of Zen interconnectedness. All the information is linked together in a web, he figured, and every little bit of information affects all the others. According to chaos theory, a butterfly flapping its wings can eventually affect weather systems on the other side of the planet. Graham had taken this to heart, and he’d applied the science of it to the web, at first by trial and error and then – as he learned more – by developing systems and approaches. Nowadays, with the internet, he was that butterfly. He flapped his wings in significant little ways that only he understood, and the information he wanted came blowing in from the east. One day, he told me, he was going to write a book and become enormously rich.
After a minute or two, Helen brought a mug of coffee in and passed it to me, along with a cork coaster. I smiled and said thanks, and she left. Graham looked a little resentful.
‘I guess I don’t get one, then?’
‘Guess not.’ I tasted it. ‘It’s good, too.’
‘Of course, it’s good,’ he said, turning back to the screen. ‘What are you trying to imply about my coffee? And what can I actually do for you on this fine morning?’
‘Status report?’ I asked. ‘Just the usual.’
‘Pull up a pew.’
I edged my seat a little closer, so that I could see the screen more clearly. We did this most weekends, and every time I got a feeling of excitement as I moved in next to him. He was reassuring. With Graham on my side, it felt like I stood a chance.
‘What have you got for me?’
‘Maybe nothing,’ he said, shrugging.
He clicked the mouse, searching for something on-screen.
‘But maybe something.’
There was a playground near where Graham and I grew up, formed in a concrete bubble on the edge of this park which wasn’t really a park at all – just grassland, really, with a couple of chalk-white pitch shapes stained thoughtlessly into it, and the ring of a path for older people to stroll around in summer. There was a maze of trees and bushes which people from the nearby pubs would lose themselves in on an evening, in order to fuck drunkenly. In fact, I lost my virginity there one night to some random girl, shivering and cold. The playground was at the top. Every morning, the park keeper would come, and you’d hear the steady swish-sweep as he pushed the previous night’s debris over towards the waiting sanitary truck. The needles, broken beer bottles, empty pill boxes and used condoms. A few children would play there during the day, depending on the weather, and then in the evening it would be ours again.
I had my first beer there, too, and smoked my first joint. We shared the place out between about thirty of us, mixed in every way – from age and race to gender and sexual preference. It was a weird thing. That lasted for about two years, all told. Nobody had used it before and, as far as I know, nobody’s used it ever since. Our generation blew in like a tornado: like the life of the party, spinning through and dancing with people at random, whirling from one partner to the next before spilling out of the back door. And that was it. The park keeper swept up for the last time, and then the next day there was nothing for him to sweep.
I’d been back there twice since then.
The first was after a phone call from Helen.
I remember the way he looked when I got there: this hunched black shadow perched at the top of the slide. I could hear him slugging spirits back from a litre bottle, but other than that it was almost eerily silent. It was as though the playground hadn’t been used for decades. I got him down from the slide, and we sat on the climbing- frame instead, sharing memories and sour shots of Kentucky bourbon. He never told me what was wrong, but he didn’t need to. When I suggested this terrible, taboo thing – that he left her – he didn’t even get angry: he just shook his head and said it wasn’t that easy and I didn’t understand.
And then, I guess, he saw a few ghosts in the corner of the playground – his shared mortgage; his joint bank account; his coagulated pool of mixed friends – because he threw the bottle over in that direction, and it smashed against the wall.
The second time was the opposite of the first, except that I wasn’t drinking that night, and I was already on the climbing-frame when he found me: perched there, hugging my knees, looking up at the sky. It was surprisingly bright that night – a shade of light blue with the contrast turned slightly down – and it felt open. I was figuring that everybody had the same sky, and so I was sending thoughts up into it, hoping that they’d somehow make their way to Amy.
There was a desperation to it. It felt like if I stopped thinking these things then I’d start crying, but if I continued then they might come true. In the end, neither thing happened. Strong emotions that you think will destroy you never do. It always
We didn’t say much. We didn’t have anything to drink, and by that point our relationship was becoming slightly strained. His days with Helen were getting longer at dawn and dusk, and his nights with me were dwindling away. We just sat there for a while, and then, after a bit of time had passed, he clapped me on the shoulder like the good friend he’d once been.
