High-Rise (22 page)

Laing listened to the sounds of the cat's teeth. The apartment was silent, and the noise of his own excited breathing was magnified to an uncanny extent. Would he soon be the last person alive in the high-rise? He thought of himself in this enormous building, free to roam its floors and concrete galleries, to climb its silent elevator shafts, to sit by himself in turn on every one of its thousand balconies. This dream, longed for since his arrival at the high-rise, suddenly unnerved him, almost as if, at last alone here, he had heard footsteps in the next room and come face to face with himself.

He turned up the volume of the television set. A racetrack commentator's voice emerged from the speaker, a gabble of names that sounded like a demented inventory, a list of unrelated objects being recruited to repopulate the high-rise in an emergency transfusion of identity.

"What-? Where's the programme?" Eleanor raised her head, peering disjointedly at the television set. Her left hand scrabbled around for the dictation pad and pencil. "What's he saying?"

Laing slipped his arms under her. He intended to carry her, but her thin body was surprisingly heavy. He was weaker than he had thought. "Can you walk? I'll come back later for the set."

She shrugged vaguely, swaying against Laing like a drunk in a bar accepting a dubious proposition from an old acquaintance. Sitting beside him on the edge of the bed, she leaned an arm on his shoulder, inspecting him with a shrewd eye. She tapped Laing aggressively on the arm. "All right. First thing, though, find some batteries."

"Of course." Her show of wilfulness was pleasantly encouraging. As she watched from the bed he pulled a suitcase from the wardrobe and began to fill it with her clothes.

So Laing took Eleanor Powell and her portable television set back to his apartment. He arranged her on a mattress in the living-room, and spent his days hunting the abandoned apartments for food, water and batteries. The reappearance of television in his life convinced Laing that everything in the high-rise was becoming normal again. When Steele moved on to the richer pastures above, Laing declined his offer to join him. Already Laing had decided to separate himself and his two women from everyone else. He needed to be alone with Alice and Eleanor, to be as aggressive and self-reliant, as passive and submissive as he wished. He had little idea at this early stage of what role he would play with these two women, but whatever he chose he would have to play out within his own walls.

Laing knew that he was far happier now than ever before, despite all the hazards of his life, the likelihood that he would die at any time from hunger or assault. He was satisfied by his self-reliance, his ability to cope with the tasks of survival-foraging, keeping his wits about him, guarding his two women from any marauder who might want to use them for similar purposes. Above all, he was pleased with his good sense in giving rein to those impulses that involved him with Eleanor and his sister, perversities created by the limitless possibilities of the high-rise.

As if nervous of disturbing the interior of the apartment building, the morning sun explored the half-shuttered skylight of the 40th-floor stairwell, slipped between the broken panes and fell obliquely down the steps. Shivering in the cold air five floors below, Richard Wilder watched the sunlight approach him. He sat on the steps, leaning against a dining-room table which formed part of a massive barricade blocking the staircase. After crouching here all night, Wilder was frozen. The higher up the building he moved, the colder it became, and at times he had been tempted to retreat to the floors below. He looked down at the animal crouching beside him-a black poodle, he guessed it had once been-envying its shaggy coat. His own body was almost naked, and he rubbed at the lipstick smeared across his chest and shoulders, trying to insulate himself with this sweet grease.

The dog's eyes were fixed on the landing above. Its ears pricked as it detected the sounds, inaudible to Wilder, of someone moving behind the barricade. During their ten days together the two had formed a successful hunting team, and Wilder was reluctant to urge the dog to attack before it was ready.

The threadbare remains of Wilder's trousers, cut away at the knees, were stained with blood and wine. A ragged beard covered his heavy face, partly concealing an open wound on his jaw. He looked derelict and exhausted, but in fact his body was as strongly muscled as ever. His broad chest was covered with a hatchwork of painted lines, a vivid display that spread across his shoulders and back. At intervals he inspected the design, which he had painted the previous afternoon with a lipstick he had found in an abandoned apartment. What had begun as a drink-fuddled game had soon taken on a serious ritual character. The markings, apart from frightening the few other people he might come across, gave him a potent sense of identity. As well, they celebrated his long and now virtually successful ascent of the high-rise. Determined to look his best when he finally stepped on to the roof, Wilder licked his scarred fingers, massaging himself with one hand and freshening up his design with the other.

He held the dog's leash in a strong grip and watched the landing ten steps above him. The sun, continuing its laboured descent of the stairwell, at last reached him and began to warm his skin. Wilder looked up at the skylight sixty feet above his head. The rectangle of white sky became more and more unreal as it drew closer, like the artificial ceiling of a film set.

The dog quivered, edging its paws forwards. Only a few yards from them, someone was straightening part of the barricade. Wilder waited patiently, moving the dog up one step. For all the savage-like ferocity of his appearance, Wilder's behaviour was a model of restraint. Having come this far, he had no intention of being caught unawares. He peered through a crack in the dining-table. Behind the barricade someone pulled back a small mahogany writing-desk that served as a concealed door. Through this gap appeared an almost bald woman of about seventy. Her tough face peered into the stairwell. After a wary pause, she stepped through the gap to the landing rail, a champagne bucket in one hand. She was dressed in the remnants of an expensive evening gown, which exposed the mottled white skin of her muscular arms and shoulders.

Wilder watched her with respect. He had tangled with these crones more than once, and was well aware that they were capable of a surprising turn of speed. Without moving, he waited as she leaned over the landing rail and emptied the slops from the champagne bucket. The cold grease spattered Wilder and the dog, but neither made any response. Wilder carefully wiped the cinecamera lying on the step beside him. Its lenses had been fractured during the skirmishes and assaults that had brought him to the roof of the high-rise, but the camera's role was now wholly emblematic. He felt the same identification with the camera that he did with the dog. However, for all his affection and loyalty towards the animal, the dog would soon be leaving him-they would both be present at a celebratory dinner when they reached the roof, he reflected with a touch of gallows-humour, but the poodle would be in the pot.

Thinking of this supper to come-his first decent meal for weeks-Wilder watched the old woman muttering about. He wiped his beard, and cautiously raised himself from his knees. He pulled the dog's lead, a length of electric cord, and hissed between his broken teeth.

As if on cue, the dog whimpered. It stood up, shivering, and climbed two steps. In full view of the old woman it crouched down and began to whine plaintively. The old woman retreated swiftly behind her barricade. Within seconds a heavy carving-knife materialized in her hand. Her canny eyes peered down at the dog cringing on the steps below her. As it rolled on to its side and exposed its loins her eyes were riveted on its fleshy stomach and shoulders.

As the dog whimpered again, Wilder watched from behind the dining-table. This moment never failed to amuse him. In fact, the higher he climbed the building, the greater its potential for humour. He still held the lead, which trailed behind the dog down the steps, but was careful to leave it loose. The old woman, unable to take her eyes off the dog, stepped through the gap in the barricade. She whistled through the gap in her false teeth, and beckoned the dog forward.

"Poor pet. You're lost, aren't you, beauty? Come on, up here..."

Barely able to contain his glee at the spectacle of this bald-headed crone fawning with exaggerated pathos over the dog, Wilder leaned against the table, laughing soundlessly to himself. At any moment she would be in for a shock, his heavy boot on her neck.

Behind the barricade a second figure appeared. A young woman of about thirty, probably the daughter, peered over the old woman's shoulder. Her suede jacket was unbuttoned to reveal a pair of grimy breasts, but her hair was elaborately wound into a mass of rollers, as if she were preparing parts of her body for some formal gala to which the rest of herself had not been invited.

The two women stared down at the dog, their faces expressionless. As the daughter waited with the carving-knife the mother edged down the steps. Muttering reassuringly, she patted the poodle on the head and bent down to take the lead.

As her strong fingers closed around the cord Wilder leapt forward. The dog sprang to life, hurled itself up the steps and sank its teeth into the old woman's arm. With surprising agility, she darted through the gap in the barricade, the dog clamped to her arm. Barely in time, Wilder followed her, kicking back the writing-desk before the daughter could lock it into place. He dragged the poodle from the old woman's bloodied arm, seized her by the neck and flung her sideways across a stack of cardboard cartons. She lay there stunned, like a dishevelled duchess surprised to find herself drunk at a ball. As Wilder turned away, wrestling with the dog, the daughter ran towards him. She had thrown the carving-knife aside. In one hand she held her hair curlers, in the other a silver handbag pistol. Wilder sidestepped out of her way, knocked the pistol from her hand and clubbed her backwards across the barricade.

As the two women sat panting on the floor, Wilder looked down at the pistol at his feet, little more than a child's bright toy. He picked it up and began to inspect his new domain. He was standing in the entrance to the 35th-floor swimming-pool. The tank of foetid water, filled with debris, reflected the garbage-sacks heaped around the tiled verge. A small den had been built inside a stationary elevator in the lobby. Beside a burnt-out fire an elderly man-a former tax-consultant, Wilder seemed to recall-lay asleep, apparently unaware of the spasm of violence that had taken place. A chimney flue, fashioned from two lengths of balcony drainage pipe, exited over his head through the roof of the elevator.

Still holding the pistol, Wilder watched the two women. The mother sat among the cardboard cartons, matter-of-factly bandaging her arm with a strip torn from her silk dress. The daughter squatted on the floor by the barricade, rubbing the bruise on her mouth and patting the head of Wilder's poodle.

Wilder peered up the staircase to the 36th floor. The skirmish had excited him, and he was tempted to press on all the way to the roof. However, he had not eaten for more than a day, and the smell of animal fat hung in the air around the fire by the entrance to the den.

Wilder beckoned the young woman towards him. Her bland, rather bovine face was vaguely familiar. Had she once been the wife of a film-company executive? She climbed to her feet and walked up to him, staring with interest at the emblems painted across his chest and shoulders, and at his exposed genitals. Pocketing the pistol, Wilder pulled her towards the den. They stepped over the old man and entered the elevator. Curtains hung from the walls, and two mattresses covered the floor. Holding the young woman to him, an arm around her shoulders, Wilder sat down against the rear wall of the elevator. He gazed across the lobby at the yellow water of the swimming-pool. Several of the changing cubicles had been converted into small, single-tenant cabins, but they were all now abandoned. Two bodies, he noted, floated in the pool, barely distinguishable from the other debris, the kitchen garbage and pieces of furniture.

Wilder helped himself to the last of the small cat that had been barbecued above the fire. His teeth pulled at the stringy meat, the still warm fat almost intoxicating him as he sucked at the skewer.

The young woman leaned affably against him, content to have Wilder's strong arm around her shoulders. The fresh smell of her body surprised him-the higher up the apartment building he moved the cleaner were the women. Wilder looked down at her unmarked face, as open and amiable as a domestic animal's. She seemed to have been totally untouched by events within the high-rise, as if waiting in some kind of insulated chamber for Wilder to appear. He tried to speak to her, but found himself grunting, unable to form the words with his broken teeth and scarred tongue.

Pleasantly high on the meat, he lay back comfortably against the young woman, playing with the silver handbag pistol. Without thinking, he opened the front of her suede jacket and loosened her breasts. He placed his hands over the small nipples and settled himself against her. He felt drowsy, murmuring to the young woman while she stroked the painted stripes on his chest and shoulders, her fingers moving endlessly across his skin as if writing a message to him.

Lying back in this comfortable lakeside pavilion Wilder rested during the early afternoon. The young woman sat beside him, her breasts against his face, nursing this huge, nearly naked man with his painted body and exposed loins. Her mother and father pottered about in the lobby. Now and then the old woman in her evening gown pulled a piece of furniture at random from the barricade and chopped it into kindling with the carving knife.

Wilder ignored them, conscious only of the young woman's body and the huge pillars that carried the apartment building upwards to the roof. Through the windows around the swimming-pool he could see the towers of the four high-rise blocks nearby, suspended like rectilinear clouds within the afternoon sky. The warmth within the elevator, which seemed to emanate from the young woman's breasts, had drained all will and energy from him. Her calm face gazed down at Wilder reassuringly. She had accepted him as she would any marauding hunter. First she would try to kill him, but failing this give him food and her body, breast-feed him back to a state of childishness and even, perhaps, feel affection for him. Then, the moment he was asleep, cut his throat. The synopsis of the ideal marriage.