At the Edge of the Game (8 page)

‘Thanks, bud,’
says the guard. ‘Where’s Len?’

‘He’s not in
today.’

‘No? Sick, is
he?’

‘Not sure,’ I
say, moving on. I have no stomach for this sort of exchange right now.

Squint at the
map, turn a corner to a security gate. Yer man opens it for me from the office.
Rattle forward a few paces.

Some sort of
distorted squawk comes from somewhere. The wind is loud. Not really sure what
it was. Push the cart ahead, through this insult of a climate, towards D-6
across the way.

Another loud
squawk. I stop, look around.

‘HEY!’

It’s an
intercom, sticking up out of the ground beside the security gate. I leave the
cart where it is and trudge over, lean to the grille.

‘Hello?’

‘YOU IGNORING
ME, BUD, ARE YA?’

‘No.’

‘DIDN’T YA HEAR
ME CALLING YA?’

‘No.’

‘BRING A STACK
OF INTER-OFFICE ENVELOPES NEXT TIME, RIGHT? LEN ALWAYS KNOWS TO BRING EM.’

‘Okay.’

Push into the
gale, tack across the road to D-6. Just another couple of drops there. So it
goes, building after building, just minor little adjuncts to the main plant.
The run is actually even easier than mine. All done and on the way back in
twenty minutes. You’d swear from talking to Len that he has it really tough.

‘You’re back,’
says Candy in the warmth of the bright mailroom. ‘Good.’

The stuff I’ve
brought back, I drop into various bins, which adds amusingly to Al’s burden.
Now time to get back to the x-ray machine.

‘No, do the
franking now,’ says Candy. ‘Al, have you shown him yet?’

With a throw of
eyes to the ceiling he takes me to the far corner where the franking machine
is. Slams the Outgoing bin on the counter, picks up a letter. ‘Stick it in
here. Standard postage, right? See the table here? Tells you the prices and the
codes. Type it here. Press Go. Letter goes through. Franked. Throw it in here.
Got it?’

‘Yeah,’ I say,
just to annoy him. Won’t allow him the satisfaction of having confused me.

But the franking
is quick. Half an hour and it’s done. I head out on my own run, then get back
to the x-ray machine. When that’s done, I do Len’s next run.

Finally, Candy
surveys the room. ‘Very good, lads. We’re back on track. Head away for lunch.’

Al looks fit to
explode. He’s been on non-stop sorting since dawn, broken only by his own three
runs. He flings away the letters he has in his hands, stalks out.

As he disappears
down the corridor, she turns to me: ‘You did very well this morning. Keep it
up.’

‘Thanks,’ I say.
I pick up my coat. There’s a shop down at the end of the industrial estate road
where I will buy a sandwich.

‘By the way,
don’t forget to do your time card this afternoon and put it in the post.’

‘Oh yeah. I
won’t.’

‘Ask Al if
you’re not clear on anything to do with it.’

Yeah, I’m sure
he would be most helpful.

Walk to the shop
through the drear of concrete and grime. Stand in a slow, dejected queue to get
my food slab. Back up the dirty, noisy road again. Eat it perched on the
mail-sorting counter, sipping a plastic cup of profoundly bad tea from the
Avatan machine. Then, Al and Candy back from wherever they were, it’s back to
the toil again, and not in any way refreshed either.

Another four
hours of this.

More external
mail comes in. Another pile of letters to be sorted by Al. Another fifteen or
so packages to be x-rayed by me.

But here – what
is this? The first package is showing up on the monitor with something weird.
Something with what looks like circuitry and wiring. I stare at it for a long
time, then look over at Candy and Al. Open my mouth to say something, change my
mind, stare at the monitor again. This is very much what I imagine a bomb would
look like. Starting to sweat here. Silly irrational fear.

‘Uh – Candy? Can
you take a look at this?’

Candy takes a
look, calls Al over. ‘What do you think?’

‘Dunno, Candy,’ he
says.

‘It’s a pretty
big deal, calling an alert, you realise that?’

What’s this? I’m
not calling anything. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We’ll have to
evacuate the building immediately and let Security come in to sort this out.’

‘But – ‘ I look
again at the monitor. It’s really does look like a bomb. Going on what I’ve
seen on TV, anyway.

 ‘Oh, for
Christ’s sake. Right, you two, get out of the building.’

She makes the
call as we get our coats. Moments later the alarm goes off.

Dozens of us
stand at the end of the car park in the driving sleet, looking like penguins
huddling against an Antarctic storm. Have to stand shivering next to Al, who
ignores me. There’s Candy, over there, talking of a fella with a walkie-talkie
and a clipboard. Security jeeps and the site ambulance arrive.

The alarm
finally stops.

‘Right,’ shouts
yer man with the clipboard. ‘All clear. You can go back inside.’

There’s an
immediate bad-tempered rush for the warmth of indoors. I try to skip past
Candy, but she nabs me.

‘George. There’s
something you’ve got to sign here.’

‘What do you
mean?’

‘You’re the one
who made the call. You’ve got to sign for it. Standard procedure.’

I sign. What
choice do I have?

‘What was it
anyway?’ I ask the security man.

‘Dictation
machine and headset. Next time, think before you get the building evacuated,
all right? You’re a temp here, aren’t you?’

‘What’s that got
to do with it?’

‘Just think next
time, okay?’

Back inside, Al
is looking very smug. ‘Alright, George?’

Just ignore him,
that’s the only approach. I resume my position at the x-ray machine.

‘No, I’ll do the
rest of them,’ says Candy. ‘You help Al with the sorting.’

So, humiliation
compounded, I trudge over and pick up a pile of envelopes.

Bradley… where
is Bradley? I scan up and down the wall. Should be able to remember this one.
Just can’t. The wind’s been taken out of my sails completely. Al snaps the
envelope out of my hand, shoves it into the Bradley pigeon hole. He starts
whistling.

‘By the way,’ he
says, ‘you need to do your time card.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ I
have it in my pocket.

‘Just write in 8
on each row, Monday to Friday. Stick it in an envelope, address it to the
agency and frank it.’

‘Thanks.’

I run it through
the franking machine and put it in the Outgoing bin.

One more mail
run today, and then it’s home for a precious couple of days of rest. Darkness
is closing in outside now. Cars splash by on the wet roadway as I shove the
covered cart over to D-3.

‘You the lad
that called the alert?’ the D-3 security guard says.

Jesus. ‘Why?’

‘Listen, you’d
want to watch it here, mate. You’re only a temp, you know.’ There’s a cleaning
woman in the corridor running a machine over the floor. ‘Tracey! Here’s the
fella who called the alert.’

‘God love ya,’
she says.

I move on.

This is the
lightest run of the week. Not a lot to drop, and almost nothing to pick up. I
take the time on the top floor to take a look at the view. The lights are
coming on in Dublin city. For miles the vista is one of grim industrial
development. Vast majority of those buildings are shut down these days. Avatan
is a shining light of corporate vitality in an economic wasteland. Will west
Dublin ever again fill with workers, become choked with traffic and fumes,
break the skyline with columns of smoke and steam or hanging tall cranes? Further
off to the south, beyond these dead zones and the foothill habitations, are the
rising forest and gorse slopes, today white-on-dark with the persisting sleet
or snow driven in turbulent shock out of the dense roof of tumbling cloud. The
higher peaks are beyond view. There’s a sliver of sea to be seen over to the
east, identifiable by a few gliding lights in the deeper dark. Below in the car
park, the first drivers are departing for home. I long to be in mine. I grip
the cart handles and get moving.

Ten minutes of
sorting in the mailroom when I get back. Then, at last, Candy turns off her
computer, gets her coat.

‘See you on
Monday, lads.’

‘See ya, Candy.’
Al gets how own mouldy old blue anorak and scarf, takes off without a word to
me.

I switch off the
mailroom lights, close the door. At last. Free.

The bus windows
are fogged with human breath. Up front the wipers are on full, sweeping away
layer after layer of sticking sleet. There’s a hold-up – again – at the Red
Cow. I wipe a patch clear on the window to see the police and army transports
heading up the hard shoulder. Whatever’s going on ahead must be fairly serious.
If the driver saw fit to turn the radio to the news, we might get some idea,
but instead it’s some horrible old pop station. The fella sitting beside me
sticks his nose further into his paperback, totally uninterested in happenings
outside. An old hand. Probably seen it all before dozens of times at this
junction, this strategically vital nexus so beset by terrorist sabotage.

I phone Helen. ‘I’m
going to be a bit late, I’d say. We’re stuck at the Red Cow. Nothing’s moving
either way.’

‘Oh, right. I
won’t put the dinner on yet, then.’

‘Has there been
anything on the news about it?’

‘I haven’t seen
anything,’ she says, evincing no inclination to check for me.

I try to settle
back into the corner of this uncomfortable seat – almost an impossibility. The
tiredness of the day is starting to hit me now, made all the worse by the
carbon dioxide level in this overheated bus. Feel like gravity has doubled. I
close my eyes, try to tune out the noise and the jabbing of the seat back into
my vertebrae. Red flashing of passing police chopper penetrates my retinas. I
open my eyes but already the aircraft is gone. I can only hear it now. Hot
breeze hits my face, gusting through the window ajar. White-painted bars run
across to prevent one from falling out, to smash on the hard black pavement
below. The end of the day, the sun now below the horizon, the hot, violet,
dusty afterglow its last vestige before true night. The city lights are truly
as nothing compared to the emerging galaxies above. They shine through the thin
veil of high-altitude wisps, seem almost radiatively intense enough to burn
them away themselves; an illusion, of course. Beside this old leather couch is
a table on which I have my Oceanus wine. I take a sip. It does not taste like
wine at all – more like the taste of fresh bread. I take another sip. Now it
tastes of aniseed, but has the scent of pipe tobacco. Sour, blue smoke is
rising out of it. I take the glass into the kitchen, empty it into the sink. I
check the label on the bottle –

OCEANUS

From the
vineyards of Queen Gerana

I try to
remember where we got this bottle, but it will not come to mind. I cannot
remember pouring it; nor can I remember what I was doing before I sat on the
couch. I return to the living room. There is no couch, no table. We’ve never
had a leather couch.

Fear stirs in
me. I need to sit down. I go to the dinner table by the balcony doors, sit
down, hold my head in my hands. In the building across the street, lights are
coming on in the windows. People are arriving home from their jobs. Where do
they all work, out in the expanses of the Far City and beyond? My consciousness
is a burning light, but my selfness is a floating wisp that eludes every
attempt to grasp it. Do I have to work? Do I have a job somewhere in the Far
City? Perhaps I commute to the Near City every day, or even to the Cylinder.
How would one go about doing that? Maybe I have a car.

I call for Helen,
but she’s not here, not anywhere.

I wake up on the
floor, emerging from a euphoric hallucination, the details of which are gone as
soon as I open my eyes. I lost consciousness in an attack of intense panic. My
body is cold, quaking. I’ve hit my forehead against something. I push myself across
the floor and sit against the wall, watching the room take shape again around
me. Minutes go by as things solidify. Finally I feel strong enough to stand. I
push myself out onto the balcony to get some fresh air. This, like the wine, or
whatever it was, carries the scent of cinnamon, blown from the unlit, sloping
scrublands of the African Wall.

I could jump
over the railing, right here and now. Call the bluff of the universe. One
moment - then resolution.

The floor jolts.
I look around. The bus is moving, swerving through lights, stopping at my stop,
close to the Avatan main gate.

Christ, here we
go again. Another five days of this.