Touch (34 page)

Then there was…

“Passport, please.”

I beamed at the man behind the counter. Newark airport specialised in immigration officers whose every scowl seemed to say that, even if they couldn’t stop you entering the United States, they sure as hell weren’t going to make it easy.

I pushed the wallet that contained my tickets across the counter towards him, and as he reached down, lips already narrowing in the expectation of disappointment, I caught his wrist

and said, “Welcome to New York.”

Coyle caught his balance on the counter before him while I made a show of flicking through the little pouch of documents on the desk. “The Americans have a poker up their arse with security. Do you have a communicable disease?”

Coyle pressed his forehead against the palms of his hands, steadying himself in body and mind. “What?”

“I’m supposed to ask questions. Do you have a communicable disease?”

“Only you.”

“Harsh. Have you ever been arrested for a crime of moral turpitude? You know, I’m not sure I know what moral turpitude is, and I’ve been around.”

“I’ve never been arrested,” he replied carefully. “Is that your American accent?”

“I’m aiming for New Jersey.”

“It’s bad.”

“I’m still warming up. It’s as much about syntax as it is inflection. I’m on duty right now, so I probably won’t be calling you dude or asking about the game because I’m the kind of man who takes pride in my uniform. Have you ever been or are you now involved in espionage or sabotage, or in terrorist activities, or in genocide? I think we can put a big yes down for all of the above.”

“You planning on ratting me out to the US authorities?”

“I thought about it for a fanciful moment,” I replied, pushing the travel documents back across the desk. “I also thought about walking you through the ‘something to declare’ aisle singing the North Korean national anthem, but I doubted anyone would find it funny. Here. You’re nearly through.”

For a few minutes a hot flush of panic overcame me as, prowling the conveyor belts, I sought but could not find Coyle.

Then I saw him, sitting with his back pressed against the wall, legs splayed across the floor, his hand pressed tightly against the place in his shoulder where the bandages were growing old, his face grey, his breathing steady. I squatted down beside him, wobbling in my high heels, and said, “You all right?”

He half-turned to look at me and saw, for a second, not me but my stewardess uniform, my little hat, my painted lips, and said, “I’m fine, I’m…” then he hesitated, his eyes narrowing. “Are you you?” I held out a long-nailed hand to pull him to his feet. “I think you should know,” he breathed, “that I’ve felt better.”

“It’s OK. I’ll get you somewhere safe.”

“Why can’t you just get yourself there?”

“The fewer bodies I take off course, the fewer alarms I’ll set ringing, the better I can protect you.”

“You’re doing this to protect me?”

“God knows,” I replied, my fingers tightening around his cold arm, “I’m not doing it for your silky flesh.”

Coyle had not lied.

I’d felt much, much better.

My fingers were icy cold as I shuffled into my seat on the train.

My stomach felt hot and empty, my shoulder throbbed with a dull heartbeat of its own. I staggered into the stainless-steel toilet on the stained steel train and as we bounced and rattled our way north pulled back my shirt to inspect the bandages. They seemed clean enough, but when I prodded around the area of the wound, pain shimmered down my spine, and I prodded no more.

Then I was

“Hi.” As Coyle swayed before me I pushed the room key into his hand and said, “You’re on the top floor. Take the lift. I’ve booked us in for one night.”

He blinked up at me as I beamed from behind the reception desk, looked down at the room key pressed into his hand and, without a word, turned and began the shuffle towards the bank of brass-doored lifts. I waited until he was gone, called a porter over and followed.

The hotel was grand – more so than I’d grown accustomed to. The room came with a leather-clad bed, armchairs, en-suite bathroom of polished chrome, three layers of unwieldy curtain and a TV larger than a slumbering hippo. By the time I arrived, no luggage in hand, Coyle was already lying on the bed, feet hanging off the end, arms wrapped round his middle.

“Coyle?” He half-opened an eye to peer up at me. “You’re going to be OK,” I said. “I’ll go out, find someone rich, get you more painkillers, more dressings.”

“Who are you now?”

“I don’t know. I’ll get you what you need.”

“I’ve never been shot before.”

“I have. I know how you feel. You’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know that. You never stick around long enough to find out.”

“I’ll be back in a bit.”

“And who will you be when you come back?”

“Someone else. Someone new. Me.”

I took the key to the room, stuffed it into the soil of a potted plant by the elevator, rode to the ground floor.

I shook the hand of the first man I saw emerge from the hotel restaurant, and as the porter blinked blearily before me slipped him a ten-dollar tip, thanked him politely and headed out into the New York streets.

The cold comes with bone-cracking intensity. Without pausing to let the skin register its distress, the Manhattan winter drives straight through to the heart, seeming to the unprotected wanderer that they are freezing from the inside out, though this cannot be the case. The wind off the water rushes up the streets, racing the yellow cab driver to his destination, swirls round the tower blocks, blasts you sideways at the crossroads, picks up newspaper and claws at your hair. Pharmacies in New York are as far removed from their French counterparts as frozen Alaska from Hawaiian beaches. Gone are the clinical whiteness, long counters and careful shelves; instead arise walls of advertisements and pledges, price slashes and guarantees that this cream can make your hair grow or this spray-on tan is the only path to sexual satisfaction. Squeeze through the laden shelves of shampoo and razors, emery boards and nail paint, and stand before a tiny desk where the clerk’s eyes seem to say, if you cannot buy yourself a cure, then you are incurable.

I bought bandages, painkillers, the necessaries of first aid. I toyed with hopping into the clerk and grabbing an armful of antibiotics, just in case – but no. Unlike Coyle, my body would not stay put while I ransacked the shelves, so I would be patient until needs must.

I tried jogging through the streets of Manhattan, but my portly frame and aching knees were having none of it, so I waddled as fast as I could, face flushed and lungs heavy, back to the hotel.

The key to Coyle’s room was still buried in the potted plant by the elevator door. I dug it out, shook the dirt off, let myself in.

Coyle lay where I had left him, blanket pulled up to his chin, shivering on the bed. I shook him gently by the leg, whispered, “Coyle.”

His eyes opened slowly – dizziness giving way to startled fear at the sight of a stranger’s face. “Kepler?” His voice was dry, tongue slow.

“I’ve got more meds. Do you need water?”

“Yes… please.”

I fetched a plastic cup from the bathroom, held his head as he levered up to drink, murmured, sip – small sips. Not too fast.

When he was done, I said, I need to look at your dressing now.

Do what you have to, he replied.

A restless night.

Coyle slept, buried beneath the many sheets of the hotel bed.

I sat on the armchair opposite and didn’t sleep a wink. Watching. Sometimes he woke, and I gave him water and painkillers, and pulled the blanket back about his chin and waited for him to sleep again. Sometimes he murmured half-heard whispers of deeds done and regrets remembered. I sat with my head in my hands and didn’t watch the TV, didn’t read a book, but listened and waited.

I found it hard to remember when I had last slept.

Struggled to recall where I was, how I had come to be there. The room was Bratislava or Belgrade or Berlin, and I was…

a man who loved…

a woman who said…

something.

I looked in my wallet, found a name, found I didn’t care. I had no interest in my face or my nature. I was someone, from somewhere, who happened to be myself. For whatever that was worth.

Dawn was a grey tinge around the edge of the curtains, a sucking out of colour from the room.

Coyle lay still, breathing steadily, heartbeat level. I washed my face in the polished sink, left the key to the room again in the pot by the elevator and went out to find New York’s rush hour.

The Subway.

On the express you slide along the plastic seats with the deceleration of the train. The escalators
clack
irritatingly as you descend; the ticket barriers have a nasty bite as they open and close around you.

I rode the rush-hour train and, when the crowd was substantial enough, I

jumped

and jumped

and jumped again

moving without motion

leaving my body far behind.

Coyle was awake when I returned to the hotel, watching the news.

The news was loud, opinionated and local. In the land of the free you are free to say whatever you want, regardless of whether you have anything to say.

I was the porter again, and as I shuffled in with a tray of fruit and croissants, I said, “I can’t stay in this boy long – how are you feeling?”

Coyle’s fingers unconsciously fumbled at the dressing over his shoulder. “Crap. But not too crap.”

“Feel like food?”

“I’ll give it a go.”

He gave it a go and asked for more.

I said, “I really need to let this body get on with its work.”

“I need to make a phone call.”

“Who to?”

“A friend.”

“What kind of friend?” His eyes slipped up sideways at me, a sharp stare. Back off. I pulled my flat cap off my head, scratched at the dark hair nestled beneath, a thin shower of dandruff from my fingertips. “OK. You trusted me, I guess I owe you that. But please don’t do anything reckless.”

“More reckless than stealing a porter’s body for an hour?”

“Like I said, sometimes people are grateful to find the hours have passed. I’ll go for a walk in someone discreet.”

I went for a walk in someone discreet.

A woman, whose thick grey hair and overhanging eyelids proclaimed her to be old, but whose skin beneath my shirt was soft and pink, and whose arms, as I flexed them inside my sleeves, were sturdy and ready to work.

I walked the tourist’s shuffle, for only tourists ever really walk in New York.

I walked to Washington Square and stood beneath the white arch raised by city forefathers who loathed imperialism but had a soft spot for its ego. In the grand central circle buskers competed with the pigeons and each other for the attention of passers-by. The last time I visited the square, I had turned the corner to find four hundred zombies, faces melting, skins grey, butcher’s knives impaled through their skulls and sticking out of their spines, chatting about the weather. One zombie, his throat a bloody mess of latex and food colouring, had fallen behind the crowd, and stood beneath an oak tree on his mobile phone asking, where now? Which left do I take?

Now the sky was grey and the grass crackled underfoot, and only the bravest had ventured out from the university buildings that framed the square. One or two, in defiance of the threatening sky, hunched over the chess tables that marked the end of the would-be “chess district” of the city, complete with venerable shops and men who knew the difference between a Vienna and a king’s gambit. One offered to play me for twenty-five dollars. I patted my pockets and was surprised to discover I had nearly three hundred stuffed into a soft leather wallet. I sat down to play – sure, why not?

I don’t know how good you are, said my opponent. I won’t gamble. It’s money for the game, that’s all.

That’s fine, I replied. I’m only here to pass the time.

He said his name was Simon, and he lived at the Salvation Army shelter.

“I used to be an interior designer,” he explained, tearing into my pieces like a lion with a lamb. “But the recession came, and now I do whatever jobs I can.”

Like chess?

“I make maybe eighty bucks a day on the boards. Less now it’s cold. Sometimes folk don’t pay up, and the police don’t do nothing about that, cos it’s gambling and technically illegal, but they don’t care so long as no drugs are being dealt under the table.”

“Is there nothing you can do?”

“Against them who won’t pay? Nah. Folk who think they’re good don’t always take well to losing.”

“What happens when you lose?”

“I pay; wouldn’t come back here if I didn’t.”

“How often do you lose?”

He sucked breath judiciously between his teeth, then let it out all at once, cheeks puffing. “Not so often that it ain’t worth the risk.”

I nodded and struggled to stay alive in the face of his attacks. He moved carefully, without raising his head from the board. The ends of the fingers on his left hand were lightly calloused; those on his right were not. His eyes were grey and heavy, his skin was deep coffee, his hair was turning white at the roots long before its time. I said, what’s it like at the Salvation Army shelter?

It’s a roof, he replied. They’re strict, but it’s a roof.

He beat me, but only just, and I shook his hand, felt the coldness in his fingertips, and though he was beautiful – so very beautiful – I had no desire to be him for even a day. I left fifty dollars on the table and went on my way.

I dropped my body where I had found it and went via

a woman with bum compressed achingly into her tight, bright skirt,

a policeman with the taste of nicotine gum in his mouth,

a courier with headphones turned up far too high beneath his helmet,

the cleaning woman who changed the sheets in every room, wedding ring too tight on her right hand

back to Coyle.

I knocked on the door of the room, called, “Service!”

To my surprise, Coyle answered, his face washed, his hair combed, some semblance of civility on his face. “Already?”

“Yes, already,” I replied, tucking my trolley of white towels against the wall and pushing past him into the room. “I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but this body is dying for a pee.”

He was sitting on the end of the bed, legs swinging down to the floor, hands clasped, head bowed, when I returned.

“Did you have a good walk?” he asked.

“Sure. Saw some of the sights, took in a bit of atmosphere. Did you make your phone call?”

“Yes.”

“And? Should I be expecting armed vengeance to come crashing out of the cupboard any moment now?”

“No. I told you. I called a friend.”

“And who is this friend?”

“She’ll help us meet the sponsor.”

“And this sponsor will have answers for us? For you?”

“Yes. I think so.”

I shrugged. “Fine then. Who now?”