My Little Blue Dress (34 page)

“What was her name?”

“Mm?”

“Old woman's name. So I can call Directory Assistance to see if she exists.”

That's when it all got absurd.

Bruno didn't know my name, he explained, because I couldn't really speak.

That was ridiculous, Hayley told him.

No it wasn't, he replied.

Why?

She didn't have any bills lying around?

Nope. Bruno paid for everything. That's one of the reasons he may have seemed not to have very much money.

What about the memoir he mentioned? The one she finished prior to dying. That didn't have her name on it? Or in it?

Maybe. He hadn't read it.

But he did
have
it, the memoir.

Yes. Not on him, obviously, back in New York. In part, why didn't Hayley just quickly fuck off and do whatever she had to do with Mark Clark and then when she returned to New York there would be Bruno Maddox waiting for her with the old woman's memoir in hand ready to watch her eat an entire humble pie?

Actually, Hayley had a better idea. Why didn't she call her colleague Jane, get Jane to use the spare set of keys in Hayley's office drawer to access Hayley's apartment, retrieve the keys to
Bruno's
apartment, then go round and ascertain whether there was or was not an old woman's memoir lying around.

Because it . . . it probably wasn't there anymore. Owing to the author's advanced age, her publishers had insisted she give
them
a set of keys to the apartment so they could retrieve the manuscript on the appointed day, which happened to be today.

Oh really.

Yes.

That was an unorthodox arrangement, Hayley reckoned.

Bruno agreed. In fact, he couldn't agree more. It really was unorthodox. Unorthodox was a fantastic word for the arrangement. But it made sense if you thought about it. The publishers were keen to protect their investment. They'd dumped an entire million dollars on account of my having been born on the first day of the Twentieth Century.

How did Bruno know all this?

How? Because he'd found a copy of my publishing contract.

And the contract didn't have my name on it?

Didn't . . . oh, come on. Surely Hayley knew how contracts were written. The party of the first part, as defined in subsection twelve. The Author shall do this . . . the Author shall do that . . . Presumably my name was in there somewhere, just not on any of the pages he happened to have glanced at.

Did he still have it?

What?

The contract.

No. He'd left it on top of the manuscript for the publishers to collect. But look, this was all getting stupid. If Hayley genuinely didn't believe he'd been caring for an old woman all summer, then he would go to the bother of contacting the publishers, whose Chief Executive happened to be a good friend of Theo Bakula's and a really nice guy, incidentally, and get him to send a copy to England. Why didn't Hayley go fart around with Mark Clark for a few days and he'd meet her in central London at the end of the week, old woman's memoir in hand. At which point she could jettison Mark Clark and return to Bruno's side, no questions asked, no grudges borne.

Scotland.

What.

Clark's new job was in Scotland and they were flying there tomorrow.

Where in Scotland, exactly? wondered Bruno.

“Okay, I'm leaving.”

And she did this time. Effortlessly Hayley slid from the booth and slouched across to where Clark was. Clark was
pretty gracious about everything, refrained from even looking in Bruno's direction, let alone taunting him with any kind of hand gesture. Bruno watched as Clark extricated the baggage from the bowels of his rival booth. “You don't believe me,” he shouted at Hayley's back.

She ignored him, but he could see that she didn't, and that, Michelle, was troublesome to a man like Bruno Maddox. Had Hayley even
slightly
believed his story, well, then he would have been comfortable letting it slide. He could have gone about his business, never seen her again, secure in the knowledge that in her mind he remained an enigma. A complex, unknowable man. A mysterious stranger.

But this . . . intolerable. She was doing it again. Making assumptions about who he was; in this case that he was a shabby and predictable liar about whom many things were knowable, chief among them the fact that he would
not
in all likelihood be there the next morning at the airport to confront her with the entire text of an old woman's memoir.

“You don't believe me,” he called again as the pair of them set off. They turned, they both did, at which point Bruno Maddox literally reared up in his booth and without pausing for breath, without even pausing between words, informed young, pale Hayley Iskender at volume that everything was going to be okay because he had just remembered that Theo's publishing friend was also co-owner of a technology company specializing in handwriting recognition software and it was all going to be okay because Bruno was certain in his gut that by this point the old woman's memoir would surely have been run through a machine and converted into incredibly immaculate electronic text which Bruno would persuade the publishing man who was really nice to
transmit to him somehow over the airwaves and that he too, meaning Bruno Maddox, would also be at the airport tomorrow with the whole thing printed out and she was making an enormous mistake going off with Mark Clark but within twenty-four hours she was going to be rueing that mistake and begging him to take her back.

“Fine,” she said, not caring. “Nine thirty.”

 

The rest, of course, is history: the sinking back; the minutes of peaceful heroic reflection; the downing of the dregs of Hunter's now room-temperature binoculars as if they were the finest champagne; the quiet acceptance that this probably wouldn't happen; the pulse of self-disgust; the subtable fist pump and the vow to self that no, no it
would
in fact happen; the springing to feet; the thinking on feet; the helpful woman at the info desk; the bureau de change; the complimentary shuttle bus to the business traveler's lodge; the room rental; the forceful conversation with the reptiles in the 24-Hr Business Centre; the way they just folded; the laptop computer; the elevator; the shower; the magnificent emergence; the arrangement of the desk and armchair; the little bit of television; the passing out; the coming-to in Hell with darkness already falling, at least the cars had their lights on and a hideous low-wattage exterior screaming in through the soundproof window and Bruno unable to remember who or when or where he was except that he had once had a girl, a nice one, in fact the best, but that he didn't have her anymore and that meant he was going to go mad and die; the crying; the starting . . .

Anyway, that's it, Michelle. That's your lot. I've told you everything. As promised. Everything.

Except that there's a dead bird on the concrete, unreachable balcony. And a black-and-white photo of some blurry ferns in a bent tin frame that in a different world, a different world, might warrant further investigation. And an unmissable heap of quivering young man with a bleeding finger and a back that hurts so much it actually feels
unbelievably pleasurable
. Oh, and there on the floor is the notepaper. Look, it's right there. The notepaper with all the provisional titles on it.

A Backwards Glance

Me, Looking Backwards

Me: A Life

Me and My Big Life

This Is My Life

Crazy Little Thing Called Life

Things My Mother Told Me

My Mother's Little Enameled Music Box Thing

My Father's Leather Apron

My Little Blue Dress

Memories

Reflections

The View from Here

It All Went by So Fast!

That's All Folks!

What?? You're Telling Me That's It? But . . . But I Was Only Just Getting Started!

Reflected Memories

Wow. Really takes me back seeing that. Seems like ages ago that a hysterical young man with his heart in the right place scribbled all that down, circled the middle one,
committed himself to becoming Queen of the May in a miniature little village, then just dove in.
Ages,
Michelle. Incidentally, do you have the time?

28 AUG--8:32
A
.
M
.

Thanks.

Wow.

So still doable then. Business Centre's just downstairs, ready to go with the good old laser printer.

The airport's shockingly close as well, Michelle.
Frighteningly
close. Five minutes. If that. More like four.

This book's a pile of feces, though, obviously. Is that a problem? That it's a glistening pile of implausible feces, steaming in the thick morning light?

No.

Not at all.

It isn't like Hayley's actually going to sit down and
read
the thing. The existence of a massive pile of paper, text on each page, chapter headings referring to decades, would probably suffice, for as long as it took her to ditch Mark Clark, whom she doesn't really like . . .

Actually, no.

You're not thinking, Michelle. Look at the boy. Look at how he looks. He's got blood on him, Michelle. Blood blood blood blood blood.

Plus he's visibly insane. Just think. He'd come galumphing through the crowd with his hair all everywhere and his skin all sick and gray like that, knocking people over, papers flying . . . . She'd know, right away, what he's done.

But maybe that would touch her. I mean, how could it
not? That he . . .
he,
Bruno Maddox, who can't ever do
anything
 . . . stayed up all night and did all this? That's called Evidence of Deep Emotion, Michelle. Or something. She'd be
touched
. She'd be
moved
. She'd
relent,
and then . . .

Then it would all start up again.

Which would be bad.

The last thing he needs is a fresh start. It would all start up again . . . and then it would all go wrong again. Because you can't become a better person in a single night any more than you can fake an old woman's memoir in a single night. Just can't be done.

So Hayley, you are not reading this. These words? That I am writing? You are not reading them.

Or if you are it's because it's now years from now and you just ran into Bruno Maddox at some party or something, fuck knows where, and conversation turned inevitably to yesterday morning and you both had a good laugh and when the laughter died down he told you about tonight, about this, about how much, in a way, he conceivably cared. Then printed you out a copy.

But you are not reading this now, Hayley Iskender.

Not this morning.

Because this morning it is time for bed.

The wheel has turned full circle.

The cows have come home to roost.

The chickens have . . .

Sorry, What's that, Michelle?

Oh.

Yes, I know I know I know.

All of a sudden this is reading like the end of a book: the short sentences, the one-line paragraphs, the bittersweet stench.

I'm sorry.

What do you want me to do?

There's nothing.

It's out of my hands.

All I can do is say, Bye.

Take care of yourself.

Thanks for bein' lasses wi' me.

*
Damon Trent and the Faceless Nun of Abercrombie
. Currently out of print.

*
Lunch these days is at half past eleven to maximize my digestion time before dinner, which is these days being served at four in the afternoon so that I can be bathroomed and in bed by
five
, so that Bruno doesn't have to deal with me again until he gets back from Hayley's around ninish the next morning.

*
Not that every man-jack of the several hundred geniuses at Bunley Downs wasn't creative. They were. But there was also a separate Creative Department, comprising the twenty or thirty most sociable geniuses, whose job it was to think up ideas en masse rather than everyone just holing themselves up in their studies and pursuing their private obsessions.

*
Before you get too excited, reader, I should tell you that
come hither,
written entirely lowercase, is the title of a fairly popular general interest magazine for young ladies in their teens and twenties.

*
I know about Magma incidentally. I've seen it on television. It's a volcano-themed nightclub on 21st St. with a rock-texture interior, pumice stone ashtrays, a Krakatoa Lounge, and walls inlaid with vast networks of see-through plastic tubing through which liquid representing molten rock can be seen to be gushing. Now are you ready to have your mind blown? Once again? Every inch of Magma is colored a cool, bright
white
, reader, down to the last drop of squirting milky lava. If you will, that's sort of the “joke” of the place.