Wildlife (16 page)

Anka Kudolski and Roger Hart are both perched in silence on two skull-shaped stools at the back of the Rib Cage. They are surrounded by gawping teenage avatars, some of which have been instructed to kneel in the direction of Roger and pray. On his way here from the
Cats
show, Roger was followed by hundreds of his adoring fans. They shouted questions about his condition in the real world. ‘In reality, El Rogerio,' they asked, ‘how close to death are you? When will you be only technology?' Roger didn't answer. He was a little bit annoyed by their company. His plan had been to expose them to a musical and, by so doing, lessen their adoration and fuck them off for the night, if not forever. He certainly had no desire for an audience when he met Anka for the first time. But that's what he's ended up with. Now neither he nor Anka has the nerve to speak.

It's Roger who eventually breaks the silence.

‘I actually came to apologise,' he says, the crowd shifting forwards as he speaks.

‘To me?' says Anka, unfolding her barely visible limbs. ‘Why?'

‘Because,' Roger continues. ‘Because just because you're on TV doesn't mean I've got the right to wank over you,
and I certainly shouldn't have blogged about it. But all that El Rogerio stuff was a lie. I mean, I did do it, I did wank over you, but only because you're pretty. Thin, but pretty. But since I started turning into technology I've realised I don't want to be horrible any more. The annoying thing is, this lot don't seem to mind.'

Roger gestures to the crowd, more and more of whom are knelt in prayer.

‘Who do they think you are?' asks Anka.

‘I don't know. Some sort of prophet. Since I told them I'm infested with technology they seem to think I'm the Second Coming –'

‘We don't,' interrupts a boy at the very front of the crowd, his graphic eyes lined with graphic make-up. ‘We don't think you're a prophet, El Rogerio. We think you're cool.'

Roger tuts and turns to Anka. ‘Right. They think I'm cool. But the important thing, Anka, is that you forgive me for the things I wrote about you.'

‘I do.'

‘Really?'

‘I definitely do.'

Neither Anka nor Roger realise that as they sit, watched by hundreds in Wow-Bang, they are, in reality, separated by just a couple of doors and about fifteen metres of space. They do not realise that they are neighbours in the real world. That the computers on which they nervously type are essentially sharing a power source in a crumbling Edwardian building in Manchester. But they do feel a warmth as each of them looks into the screen at the other in Wow-Bang. They feel a warmth, isolated and vulnerable as they are.

‘So I'm guessing you live in Manchester, if you saw the show, yeah?' Anka asks.

Roger nods. ‘But I haven't left the flat in months.'

‘We could meet up, maybe.'

‘We couldn't, sadly. I can barely move and I'm dying.'

‘Yeah, so am I if I'm honest. I'm probably starving to death.'

Roger leans in to Anka, trying to hide from the teenagers.

‘It's crap, isn't it?' he says. ‘You're growing up and it all seems OK. You're getting taller and taller and saying all sorts of things. In your late teens you get some cheap thrills wanking, buying booze or ordering food in restaurants without your parents. And then . . . and then you just plunge. Reality's like a siren, it drives you mad, and then you're full of technology and barely any feeling –'

‘Exactly,' interrupts Anka, ‘or you're dancing in front of a camera, pleased that men are rubbing their cocks hard, and you're not eating –'

‘I don't eat either. Apart from crisps.'

‘How come you never leave your flat?'

Roger and Anka are standing up now. They have formed a triangle with the wall so that the teenagers can't see their faces, which are now held closely together so that they can both make out the pixelated colours in each other's eyes.

‘I started blushing,' says Roger. ‘When I was outside I'd feel my face heating up to unbearable temperatures. It felt awful. I'd remove my glasses and stare at my reflection and see that it was all red. The worst thing was, it was a vicious circle. I'd be so shocked and ashamed of the blood inside my head that I would blush more. My career was in tatters. You only had to look at me to know that I was unsuccessful and had only the slimmest chance of ever being happy.
Then one day I logged onto the Internet as El Rogerio. I started writing. Now I can't stop.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘If I'm not writing, I'm only dying. It's hard enough being here.'

‘You know what I think?' says Anka, raising her skeletal fingers and touching the inexpensive skin tone of Roger's cheeks. ‘I think we're lonely.'

Roger locates the Bashful Grin Code from among his facial expressions and executes it, saying, ‘I think we're lonely, too.'

The two of them turn to face the large crowd of teenagers. They watch as heads rise from their praying positions and faces open. Lidless graphic eyes that seem to stare through everything at nothing. Lips that can't taste. Shitless bodies that will never feel a thing.

Roger is trying to work out how he can disperse this crowd of admirers. He's wondering what he could say. He notices, suddenly, that Anka is holding his hand in hers. She must have programmed them into this position without him noticing. He smiles. Suddenly ecstatic. It only takes a second. Life is shit unless people are holding you or stroking you. Roger feels like the small featherless bird that lives inside his heart might be coming back to life, trying to open its sealed-up eyes.

‘Leave me alone,' he shouts, wishing this wasn't Wow-Bang but the real world instead. Wishing he could strengthen his grip on Anka's hand as he shouts at the crowd of teenagers, all their bodies dug like dirt into angles of fashion. ‘Please,' he shouts, hands in the air. ‘I'm running out of time. Leave us alone!'

Just as the crowd of teenagers begins to smile in protest
and to grumble with too black lips, ‘But you're so cool,' there is a commotion at the entrance of the Rib Cage. A man with a naked, neutered, dickless body and the head of an Alsatian dog storms across the dance floor. He's enormous. He's muscular. He's barking loudly over the American pop metal causing the little graphic people to turn in aimless circles, panicking, attempting to teleport away. ‘Dead Animal!' they scream. ‘Dead Animal!'

In the commotion, Roger turns to Anka, placing his hands around her straw-thin waist. ‘I've still got a bit of warmth inside me. Do you like musicals?'

‘No,' she replies, half an eye on the blood that drips then disappears from the Alsatian's jaw. ‘I hate musicals, Roger. But I have a little bit of warmth left, too. I've been such a dickhead lately.'

‘I've been a dickhead, too. We've got things in common. Haven't we?'

‘We have,' says Anka, remembering the black carrot that haunts her fridge and how she had answered her phone to herself. ‘You and me do have things in common!'

Roger laughs. His lips parting quickly in what is a commendable imitation of happiness. He is leaning in to kiss her. He is craving that senseless moment when his red, programmed lips will meet with hers.

Too late. The Alsatian detonates his virus and Roger finds himself ripped back painfully into the real world. Suddenly Manchester. In his flat, his lukewarm flat, Roger watches as his and Anka's avatars freeze and dismantle on the computer screen, lips just inches from each other. He cries out. With his real voice Roger cries out. ‘But I was making a connection!' he screams, at the ceiling. Screams at the god who crouches on the ceiling making
hoax calls on a shit-hot mobile. ‘I was making a connection, you wanker! Anka!'

Roger tries to get up from his office chair but his huge, heavy legs won't budge. His stomach bleeps and he punches it in anger, causing it to whirr. ‘Fucking bullshit,' he mutters, tears in his voice. ‘Anka!' he screams again in abject frustration, before settling painfully in his chair to reboot his computer.

‘Roger?' comes a voice from the distance, somewhere beyond the door. ‘Roger, is that you?'

Both Ankas had heard a voice calling out their name. They had heard the cry and turned to each other, staring at themselves like the normal stare at their reflection. One Anka is terrifyingly thin and the other Anka is a healthy, responsible weight. The problem is that neither of them can agree who is the skinny one and who is the healthy one. They argued about it all last night. Similarly, neither can agree as to which of them is the
real
Anka. Since they spoke on the phone and moved in together they have both staked a claim to being the genuine, authentic Anka Kudolski. Neither ever agrees with the other. But as they turned away from the crashed computer screen, they both agreed that someone was calling out their name. Neither had any idea who it could be. Certainly they know none of their neighbours and they're only on second-name terms with the caretaker. ‘It's Roger,' said one Anka. ‘It could be, I suppose,' said the other. ‘Think about it. He said he liked musicals.' There was a silence as both Ankas put two and two together, made four and then crept towards the door.

‘Answer me, Roger,' says an Anka, out in the corridor now, staring uncertainly at the flat opposite hers. ‘Is that you?'

‘Please,' adds the other Anka in an identical voice. Both Ankas are suddenly nervous about meeting a person. Since they were reunited, they have stayed indoors.

In his flat, Roger is staring at the door and then staring back at his computer screen. He's wondering whether it's finally happened. It must have done, he thinks. My brain can't distinguish reality from reality. Am I still in Wow-Bang? Fuck knows. Who cares? I care, thinks Roger. I haven't used my voice to communicate in a year.

‘It's me, Roger. It's me, Anka,' says the voice beyond his front door. When he hears that name, Roger's belly makes an embarrassing noise, like a loud electronic fart. How can it be? wonders Roger, like we all wonder when the empty carousel of coincidence is spinning around us.

‘Anka?' Roger shouts, neck twisted, anxious in his office chair. ‘Anka, is it really you?'

‘Yes!' shout both Ankas in unison. ‘Come to me, Roger. Let me in.'

Bugger me, thinks Roger Hart. One day you're crapping a motherboard and the next you're falling onto the floor, dragging yourself wilfully in the direction of happiness.

‘Open the door, Roger.'

I'm trying, thinks Roger, gripping the hard carpet with his fingernails and pulling himself frantically towards the front door. But his legs are so heavy. It feels like they're full of cement and not computer technology, it's like trying to lift a fridge.

‘Just hold on . . . I'm coming.'

On the other side of the door the two Ankas are staring at each other. Both look nervous. They offer each other stark, open eyes. Identical thoughts pop like washing-up
liquid bubbles inside their heads. What are we going to say? How will we begin to explain?

‘You should go and hide,' whispers one Anka.

‘Me?' says the other, pointing at her protruded collarbone. ‘Why should I go? You're the anorexic.'

‘You are, you mean. You're just a skeleton.'

‘Bollocks. I'm a good weight. Look at yourself. It's painful to see.'

The two Ankas hiss at each other. How did this happen? they both think. I was fine. I was eating. I'd recovered. Sure, I was working hard, burning calories, but I was eating. Suddenly, a memory hits them both like a snowball to the ear. The memory of going into Subway for lunch. The memory of asking for a fistful of watercress and being told abruptly that Subway is a sandwich shop. The memory of saying, ‘Then I'll get something later on, and in any case I only eat organic food nowadays, I only eat seafood, only eat nuts, rye bread, popcorn, water, black coffee, zero dairy, I'm a vegan at the moment, you know the shit they put in food, I'm going to grow my own leeks, become a farmer, a self-sufficient superstar, I'm thinking about trying to get a recipe book published and, the thing is, I ate before I came out. I did, honestly. I ate a shitload just before I came here. It's ridiculous really and that's the truth. It is. That's the truth.'

‘Bollocks,' says one Anka, shutting her eyes then covering them with a hand.

‘I know,' says the other.

‘We haven't been eating at all lately, have we?'

‘We ate an egg. We sucked on monkey nuts. But other than that, nothing.'

Knelt down in the corridor next to Roger's door,
both Ankas hold hands and share their worried eyes. On the other side of the door Roger is making slow progress. He's looking at the different coloured lights that blink beneath the skin of his hands. Blue ones. Red ones. Yellow. Will she mind? he's thinking. Will Anka find it foul that my bronze wires have grown so long from my nose that my lips can hardly be seen? She might think it looks weird. Or worse, ugly. She might not be attracted to the thick black cables growing from my ears, or the mouse that's growing out the back of my head. She might not find me sexy. Nothing new there. But she knows, Roger recalls. I told her all about it. She understands. We both felt a warmth. We made a connection. We are both alone and desperate, desperate!

‘I'm almost there, Anka. Hold on.'

Roger is almost there. He is lying like a dead seal beneath the door. He's panting with exhaustion. Every piece of equipment is muttering inside him, desperately processing. He's staring up at the lock. It's like staring at the clouds. I won't be able to reach it. He rolls onto his back, breathing at the ceiling, wondering what the best plan is. How will I get beyond the door? To Anka. To sex. To a human moment.

‘Roger?'

‘Yeah, I'm here.'

‘Before you open the door, there's something I need to tell you.'