Skippy Dies (28 page)

Her eyes wander ceilingward, as she makes a play of scaring up a thought; then, leaning forward, she confides in a whisper,
‘I don’t think you’re in love with your girlfriend any more.’

This stings, but he keeps smiling. ‘You can see into my heart now?’

‘You’re easy to read,’ she says, tracing a fingertip over his face. ‘It’s all right here.’

‘Well, maybe I can see into your heart too,’ he retorts.

‘Oh yeah? What do you see there?’

‘I can see you want me to kiss you.’

She laughs coyly, and swings her legs off the desk. ‘That’s not what you see,’ she says. She retreats to the far side of the
room, smoothing down her dress. Then, in an amicable, impersonal voice, like a television interviewer putting a fresh question
to her guest, she says, ‘Tell me why you left the stock market to become a teacher. Did you suddenly feel the urge to do something
meaningful? Had you become disillusioned with the pursuit of wealth?’

Howard understands that this is a hoop he must jump through; he has erred, and this conversation, artificial as it is, is
now the only possible route back to what those lips seemed to promise a few seconds ago. He takes a moment to draw breath,
consider his tactics, then, keeping his position by the desk, responds in the same pleasantly neutral tone, ‘It was more that
the pursuit of wealth became disillusioned with me.’

‘Burnout,’ she says expressionlessly.

Howard shrugs. He is realizing that this is still too sensitive for him to be ironic and off hand about.

‘It happens,’ she says. ‘It’s a stressful job. It’s not for everybody.’

‘The people whose money it was weren’t so philosophical.’

‘Is that why they call you Howard the Coward?’

‘No.’

‘Was it something to do with what happened in Dalkey Quarry?’ Her eyes narrow in on him predatorily. ‘The bungee jump? Where
your friend got hurt?’

He just smiles.

‘Were you the one who was supposed to jump, is that it?’ She turns away, and continues, in the same bland TV interviewer voice,
‘Haunted by your reputation, you failed at your job in London and came home, resolving to live a worthy but risk-free life.
And so you became a history teacher.’ She leans up against the door, her eyes gleaming at him through the shadows. ‘Where
you always know the ending, and nothing’s ever going to jump out at you. Like walking through a set from an incredible epic
that finished shooting years and years ago.’

It flashes through his mind that she might hate him; this doesn’t seem an impediment to what they are about here. ‘Different
jobs suit different people,’ he says amiably. ‘You thought about being a teacher once.’

‘I thought about being a lot of things,’ she agrees. ‘But I never had any vocation. You have to actively want to be a teacher.
You don’t have to actively want to be a consultant, because they pay you so much. They provide the motivation for you. It’s
much easier.’

‘And yet here you are.’

She laughs. ‘Yeah, well… I needed a change. Change is stimulating, don’t you agree?’ She has folded her hands behind her back,
and angles her chin away from him. He takes a step towards her, as towards a dark precipice; his movements seem automatic,
as if he is a character he is reading about in a story. ‘Didn’t someone say once,’ she continues, ‘that being bored is the
one unforgivable sin?’

‘I think it was being boring.’

‘Same difference,’ she says, resting her head back against the door. ‘The world is so huge, so many things to do and see…
And for us, in the West, with more money and power and freedom than any other people in
history
…’ She shakes her head. ‘To be bored is really a crime. It’s an insult to everyone who doesn’t have money and power and freedom.’
She looks at him again. ‘Don’t you think we have a duty to do whatever it takes not to be bored?’

The last of these words are uttered into, and the rest of her philosophy lost inside, Howard’s mouth. Her body twines around
him; he pushes her against the blackboard, her pelvis mashing into his, the words
WARMING DESERTIFICATION FLOODING EXTINCTION
smeared into illegibility by her back. She bites his lips, her hands glide up his chest to grip his shoulders; she exhales
involuntarily, a deep grunt, surprisingly masculine, as the heel of his hand grinds momentarily between her legs, then propels
him backwards until he hits the teacher’s desk. He climbs up on it, she climbs onto him. Outside, the storm has finally blossomed:
it roars, howls, thrashes against the window like something out of the Palaeozoic, or an epic movie; and as the demonic machinery
of hands, mouths, hips takes over, Howard, perhaps not quite at the level of consciousness, but some substratum just below
it, finds himself back again, as he has been on so many days and nights, at the edge of a windswept rockface, in a half-ring
of shadowed faces, a hand holding out to him a slip of paper on which is written his own name, like a scales weighing up his
soul –

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/goodmorningtomorrow.htm

We’re very pleased to have
PROFESSOR HIDEO TAMASHI
of Stanford University with us to answer your questions on parallel universes and the stranger-than-fiction world of M-theory…

What happens is nothing for a little bit and then everything starts moving in slow motion e.g. when you step forward it takes
for ever for your foot to touch the ground again and it feels like you might keep on continuing upwards and not come down
at all like being on the moon! One great leap for man! you shout. Lori is behind you, she is laughing and laughing, everything
has become very funny, the names of the chocolate bars stacked beside the checkout in Texaco, a man with a big nose walking
his dog that also has a big nose, even the knackers in the village that stare at you in your costumes, it’s like you’ve stepped
out of a spacecraft from thousands of years in the future and you are walking around
looking at arrow-heads and woolly mammoths. The feeling is like having a fuzzy forcefield round you that keeps you warm and
also makes you laugh and you wonder is it the pills or the inhaler or is it her because she’s there? Or is this really happening?

The park gates are closed so you jump over the wall and go down to the lake and sit on the swings there, you hoosh some more
of Ruprecht’s Ventalin, it feels so weird like doing a reverse sneeze! Then you push Lori on the swing then she pushes you
because otherwise it wouldn’t be fair she says then it starts to rain again and you both jam into one swing under one umbrella
a black one that you found thrown into the bushes right outside the Sports Hall am I squashing you? she says it’s okay you
say. Lori’s phone starts ringing, she takes it out and presses Ignore. It stops then immediately it starts again. Who is it?
No one she says, she switches it off and then she digs around in her pockets and says we should try these too. All around
the rain going ksssshhhhhhhhccchhhhhhhhhhhhboooom.

What are they?

They’re called Ritalin?

What do they do?

I don’t know.

Though she’s got a whole pocket full of them. So you take one then two then three then you don’t know but your head is going
frrrrssshhhh every time you turn it like skis turning on snow like every time you blink it becomes this long voyage eighty
days around the world and every time you open your eyes it’s like in a different place only with Lori beside you every time
you keep floating off into space and she keeps bringing you back let’s have a rolling race she says but the grass is wet but
anyway you roll down the hill you win no I win she says okay we both win you stand up but your head does not stop spinning
you pull bits of grass off each other her hand stops in your hair your hand stops in her hair

and then you both run, you run and run, and then you are outside Ed’s, you go inside and buy doughnuts and Cokes and sit down
across the table from each other. What happens is that Lori
is the most beautiful girl in the world, she is the most beautiful anything anywhere, more beautiful than the most beautiful
painting, more beautiful than oceans sunsets dolphins glaciers. You want to tell her this but she is already trying not to
giggle. Do you believe in flying saucers? she says. You go, Yes.

Because there is one… hovering… right… above… your… head… then she drops the doughnut on your head and you throw it at her
and she throws it back at you and now you are throwing all your doughnuts at each other

Oh no they are invading Earth!

Resistance is useless!

and then the Chinese guy comes over and starts shouting and you realize everyone is looking at you and there are doughnuts
everywhere but then outside the storm has stopped and patches of clear sky appear, great big holes of dark blue in the clouds
like someone is tearing wrapping paper off a Christmas present and Lori says let’s go for a walk so you walk up the road to
the dual carriageway. Cars zip by you and electricity too invisibly to light up each of the lights and houses. Lori keeps
trying to tell you this story about a friend of hers but then forgetting where she is and going back to the start. This is
the best night of your life. Outside LA Nites bouncers in black jackets stare hard at IDs or bend down to kiss girls with
stringy tops and thin legs. Up above the clouds are mostly gone, you notice one star twinkling right at you, when you see
a star suddenly get bright like that it means it’s a satellite and it’s located you with its tracker beam. Lori goes, So what’s
with that costume anyway and you start telling her about
Hopeland
and Princess Hope and the three Demons Fire Ice and the one no one’s ever seen and you’re this guy Djed who’s trying to find
the magic weapons and save the Realm.

O-
kay
… she says. Do you like video games you say. No, she says. Hmm maybe shut up about that stuff for a little while. What about
your costume? you ask her. Oh this is just something my mum picked up for me in New York? It’s the dress
BETHani
wore to the Grammies. Wow, you mean the actual one she wore? She
gives you a look like Hello? Um, no? It’s just like a Marc Jacobs dress that costs eight hundred dollars. Oh right. Shit,
Skippy, stop being such a spa! Do you like
BETHani
? she says. Yes, you say. I
love
her, Lori says. You look quite like her, you say. Do you think so? Lori seems pleased. Definitely, you say, although
BETHani
is blonde and sort of a ho and Lori is five million times hotter. Some of my friends say that, she is saying. But my mom
won’t let me bleach my hair. What are your parents like? Are they on your case the whole time? Um. Out of nowhere the Game
shrieks up at you! Well, sometimes. I don’t see them that often, because I’m boarding? Oh, right. That must be pretty shit,
being stuck in school the whole time. Like what do you do for fun? Well, there’s this guy Ruprecht. You start telling her
about Ruprecht and his inventions. She likes this, she thinks it’s funny. Okay so, crazy room-mate, she counts on her fingers,
weird video games… do you ever do anything
normal
? Hmm. Do you? Swimming? you say. Oh yeah? Yeah and you tell her about the swim team and the races and the trophy you won.
You won a trophy? she says. Yeah at this meet down in the country and after mid-term there’s another meet somewhere else.
That’s amazing, she says. That’s so cool. Yeah but I’m thinking of quitting. Really, why would you want to quit? You shrug.
Because I hate it. Suddenly you notice the sky is dark blue and waving and rushing and streaming like water, what’s wrong
with it? Wait a second it’s you, you dope – quick turn your face in the other direction so she can’t see. But she doesn’t
see, instead she says, I would love to be good at something like that. You brush your cheeks clear so you can turn to look
at her. Why? Just to be really good at something, she says, I just think it would feel great. You’re thinking, Why would she
want to be good at something when she is
her
? When she is the most perfect thing that exists? But instead you say, You’re good at frisbee.