Forecast (9 page)

 

Dear Ms Willoughby,
Nelson types in his email response.
On behalf of Wholesome Food and Beverage, I want to thank you for your valuable communication. You can scarcely imagine how grateful we are that this appalling lapse in our vigilant hygiene standards has been brought to our attention.

It is owing to the sense of civic responsibility of customers like you that we are able to crack down on these rare lapses in our rigorous monitoring system.

We hope you will accept our gift of five-dozen vacuum-packed cupcakes as recompense for your inconvenience. We are also sending balloons and sparklers for your birthday girl.

 

Nelson keeps on his desktop a folder of replies that he'd love to send, is often tempted to send, that he sometimes actually types into the response space while letting his cursor hover above ‘reply'. Then his eye falls on the UPS box of his folded party clothing and he clicks ‘delete' instead of ‘send'. He does not want to jeopardise his toehold on peace. He is grateful for flexitime and home-based work, although he is required, one day per month, to report to the regional office for actual meetings with a manager and with his fellow PR associates at Wholesome Foods. On the night before these meetings, Nelson does not sleep and he does not go out. On every other night, he walks to the park and keeps vigil.

In between Wholesome emails and the mandatory management meetings and the vigils, Nelson designs computer games. They are labyrinthine. He posts his games on strategic sites and is famous – anonymously so – for his signature invitation, his mating call:
Will you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly,
and thousands of people do and are addicted. Chat rooms multiply,
bloggers blog. Players (they do not call themselves flies, but flyers) are lured and obsessed and trapped. The mysterious Spider Game is all the rage.

Who is Spider? the eTabloids ask. Can this cyber-maze be solved?

Beata Beatrix
is at the hub of the web, but no one has reached her so far.

 

Paul keeps calling and leaving messages on Nelson's voicemail. He keeps pressing the buzzer in the lobby now that Nelson has been discharged and works from home. Nelson ignores these intrusions, but Paul is persistent and clever. He bribes the doorman with a bottle of Scotch. He raps with staccato impatience on Nelson's door.

Through the peephole, Nelson sees him distorted and monstrous.

‘We want you back,' Paul says, when Nelson unhooks the security chain. He looks around the studio apartment with distaste. ‘You could work from here, you know, if that's what you want. Do you really want this? Or we can give you a corner office.'

There is a trick that Nelson has mastered. When discords buzz, he closes his eyes and pictures the pale woman at her window. Her hair is like a zone
of tawny fire and when he breathes in, warmth fills him. He senses that there is a halo around him, but he suspects that Paul cannot see it.

Paul paces and waves his arms. ‘We could make arrangements. We could double what we were paying you, you were undervalued, that's clear. It was dumb dumb dumb of us, but believe me, ExecuTech wants you back. You're worth your weight in the proverbial f-ing gold and we know that now.'

‘Thank you,' Nelson says.

‘At least you can talk again. I'll pay you triple what Wholesome is paying you.'

‘Thank you. But they are paying me more than enough.'

Paul makes a sound like a roar. He punches a wall. His presence is splintering the calm that emanates, right through the bookcase divider, from
Beata Beatrix
herself. Nelson wishes that Paul would leave.

‘Paying you more than enough? What the fuck does that mean?'

Nelson closes his eyes. He summons up the tree in the park.

‘Quadruple,' Paul says. ‘Okay, you win, name your price.' He paces and touches things as he passes: the lamp from Goodwill, the desk from an attic, the book on Pre-Raphaelite art that Nelson
has recently bought,
The Collected Poems of Keats
, the boxes of books, other boxes. ‘What's this?' Paul feels entitled to open a UPS box, any box, regardless of recipient name on the label. ‘Jesus, man, are these the clothes …? This is creepy.' He eyeballs Nelson who concentrates on the blessed Beatrice and closes his eyes. He focuses on a cyber-block, on creating a wall for Paul to slam into. He is not sure he could survive Paul's invasion of the space behind the bookcase divider. ‘You know what this shows, don't you, Nelson? For God's sake, look at me when I'm talking to you.'

Nelson opens his eyes. Unblinking, he meets Paul's gaze.

‘Not like that, dammit,' Paul says. ‘Why haven't you put these away? That's a rhetorical question, by the way, since the answer's so obvious and so creepy. You know what you want.'

‘I do,' Nelson says quietly. ‘I do know what I want, and I already have it.'

‘Believe me, you don't. Oh man, you are
so
sick and the cure is so simple, but you can't face what you really want.'

Every night, in fact, Nelson faces what he wants. From the back of the bookcase divider, she fixes him with her enigmatic gaze. ‘I've got what I want,' he repeats.

‘What've you got? Agoraphobia? Is that
what you want? Being trapped like a rat in this shithole?'

‘I am not agoraphobic,' Nelson says. ‘I just prefer my apartment and my computer but I do go out.'

‘No you don't. I've had someone keeping watch every day.'

‘I walk at night.'

‘Nelson,' Paul says, with patient exasperation. ‘You need to get laid. Believe me, that's what you want. Do you think we don't know why you freaked out? Why you pranced around the party buck naked as the day you were born? You need to get laid. You need a woman.'

‘I have a woman.'

‘
What
?!' Paul laughs. ‘You mean you're getting some?'

‘Our relationship,' Nelson says with dignity, ‘is not just about sex.'

‘Holy shit,' Paul says. ‘You sly old fox!' Then he frowns. ‘She doesn't work for Wholesome by any chance?'

‘No,' Nelson says. ‘She does not.'

‘Pardon my asking, but is this something you're paying for? Because, you know, we could make a deal. Confidentially, between you and me, we have girls on the payroll, so to speak, if that's what you need.'

Nelson says coldly, ‘I'm not interested in relationships of that sort.'

‘You're not paying her?'

Nelson does not deign to answer this question.

‘Well, shit,' Paul says. ‘Who'd have thought? I mean, no offence, but you Nerd Squad guys are not exactly …'

Nelson raises his eyebrows.
Not exactly what?
his eyebrows ask.

‘Well, you know … Not exactly Brad Pitt.' Paul laughs again, an angry bark. ‘More like an unattractive Woody Allen, no offence. Hey, that was a joke.'

‘Accepted as a joke,' Nelson says.

‘You're not that bad. As a matter of fact, you don't look half as hopeless as Woody Allen.'

‘Apparently Woody Allen has to beat off women with a stick.'

‘Too-shay. OK, you got me there, though I'm damned if I know how he does it. There's no way it's just brains, no way. One of life's great mysteries.' Paul paces and touches. Nelson makes a mental note to wipe where Paul has touched. ‘I guess there's always the mystery weapon, eh? Which is not fighting fair. Totally below the belt, so to speak.' Paul laughs at his own joke, but stops suddenly and stares at Nelson's crotch. ‘Come to think of it, you did show us what else you got.
Big surprise, I gotta admit.' Paul peers at the bed behind the divider. ‘You do it here or at her place?'

‘Can I ask you, with all due respect, to leave?'

‘I know she's a plant,' Paul says. ‘If you're not paying her, then I know Wholesome is. What's her fucking name then?'

Her name is Beatrice, Nelson does not say. Instead he says: ‘She's not for sale.'

 

Nelson has become aware that Paul is visiting someone in the building where Beatrice lives. Not that he has seen Paul there. What he recognises is Paul's car parked on the street, first on a Friday night, then on a Saturday, the first time about an hour past midnight. Usually Nelson arrives at his watching post around 10 p.m. and keeps vigil until Beatrice turns out her light, but on the Friday when he first noticed Paul's car, he was late. He'd been answering emails overtime, placating Wholesome's astonishingly belligerent customer-whiners, and then he'd felt so jangled and so demeaned that he'd found it necessary to work on his spider game, adding cul-de-sacs and worm holes, monitoring the number of hits, the thousands of gamesters derailed. He'd lost track of time.

He knows that Paul is a gamester addict. He knows that Paul has signed on.

Now he leans against his tree.

It's too late for Beatrice. Her room is dark, or should be dark, but there must be a small bedside lamp.

And then he sees Paul's car.

He waits until the bedside lamp is turned off, but he does not see Paul leave. He decides to wait.

Apparently he falls asleep, his back against the tree. When he opens his eyes it is morning, he is aching from head to foot, and Paul's car is no longer there.

 

Nelson has begun to think improper thoughts. His dreams have gone viral. More and more frequently he wakes in the park, drenched with dew. His dreams embarrass him. He would never, in real life, do the things that he does in his sleep. For example: one night, in the building lobby, he presses the buzzer for Apartment 3C, and when Beatrice asks, ‘Who is it?' he answers, ‘It's Dante.' Another night, he says, ‘It's Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I want to paint you.'

Both times, she says the same thing: ‘Come on up. I've been waiting for you.'

When she opens the door, she is wearing the loose green gown. She lets its slide from her shoulders and poses herself on the bed. Nelson paints her.

Sometimes he paints her green, sometimes gold. Always he uses oils.

Sometimes the oils are flavored and he licks them from her breasts.

Sometimes he does other things.

Sometimes he goes astray in his own computer game.

Sometimes, however, he is wide awake and knows that he is. In the 7-Eleven, for instance, at the edge of the park, one Sunday morning: he is buying a quart of milk and the
New York Times
, chatting with the acne-peppered kid at the cash register as the boy is making change, and suddenly there she is. Nelson is paralysed. She is moving between the aisles, putting orange juice and muesli in her basket.

Beatrice smiles, a smile that could move the planets and the stars, and she says something, but to Nelson her voice is simply thunder.

The kid at the cash register also says something, both to Beatrice and to Nelson. Nelson cannot translate what he says. Nelson pays, or hopes he pays. He gropes his way, leaning against shelves, to the door. His heart is thumping, his sense of balance
cataclysmically out of whack. On the sidewalk outside, he gulps air. All strength has left him, he can barely walk, so he staggers to the nearest subway stop and descends to the root-raddled dark. As it happens, the train that roars into the platform is the A train, terminus Brooklyn, wrong direction. Nelson gets on because what, after all, does it matter? Hell is anywhere, and so is heaven.

She smiled at me
.

It is dark, and hours later, when he gets back to his apartment, but the woman in the painting is still smiling. The smile, like that of the Mona Lisa, is secret and knowing and warm.

 

‘Okay,' Paul says, nudging him with a boot. ‘Now I've got your number, you creep.'

Nelson wakes in the park, his clothes damp, his body aching, his shoulders against his favourite tree.

‘Turns out you're a garden-variety stalker. Bit of a joke, don't you think? Wholesome's stalking you, I'm stalking Wholesome, and you're chasing tail in a very unwholesome way.'

‘A thing of beauty,' Nelson says, ‘cannot be dragged in the mud.'

‘Oh please. Spare me, you pervert.'

 

Nelson receives an email from Paul, the subject heading of which reads
Got your number.
The message reads:
We could trade, you know. As I've said before: Name your price.

There are two attachments. Nelson hesitates. He shuts down his computer and sits on his bed and lets the painting of Beatrice calm him. Then he returns to his desk and goes online.

One by one, he opens Paul's attachments.

The first photograph is technically sophisticated, taken at night. The viewpoint seems to be from Nelson's tree in the park. Beatrice is at her open window, the moon reflected in the upper panes of glass. Her lips are parted but her eyes are not closed. She is reaching out for someone in the dark.

The second attachment is an interior shot: Beatrice languid and naked on her bed.

So, Nelson tells himself, resigned. This is the way of things. Get used to it. This is the sort of camera angle available to Paul.

Nelson knows he should delete these attachments, but he opens them over and over again.

 

At first, Nelson begins the data manipulation in his sleep. Photoshopping, rearranging, blurring memory and desire, airbrushing in and out, all this is second nature. He can do this with his eyes shut. He has won awards.

Then he begins to do it by day for consolation and private pleasure.

He takes Paul's jpeg of Beatrice in her boudoir and adds himself: first as shadowy (but benevolent) watcher; then as bedside admirer holding her hand, then as lover. He sets up tripod and digital camera in his own apartment and takes multiple snapshots of himself. He experiments with fitting his face onto other bodies: Brad Pitt's body; George Clooney's; Hugh Jackman's. He arranges himself on the bed beside Beatrice, one hand draped over her right breast. After much thought and indecision, he emails one of these jpegs to Paul. He types in the subject heading:
Name my price? We could trade? Really?
In the message he writes:
No trade necessary. Haven't you noticed? It's Woody Allen who always gets the girl, but you'll never understand why. Explanation attached.