So make for me a bed of fear,
That I may lie upon it,
And wring from troubled, restless sleep
Cold sweat and wicked dreams.
I often dream of bad fish, salmon covered in white fungus mites, oily rivers, sluggish black water, hag fish, snake fish, wispy eels. I dream of hurting bad people, of gouging eyes and stabbing, and when I wake up bathed in sweat, the dreams themselves vanish, leaving only a ring of scum where the dark water once stood, which sometimes lingers for hours.
This morning I tried to splash through the last of the dreams as they drained away, to reach happier ground before I started my day, but they found me some time after Meg left for school, and they were angry that I’d tried to give them the slip.
I mooched and didn’t write, didn’t sort out my taxes and didn’t wash up. Then I didn’t catch a bus into the city and sat in traffic, watching a cab meter click slowly upwards while we didn’t go anywhere.
By the time I reached the city I was hot and angry, stupid-looking, soft-looking, normal-looking; one of a thousand other goons all feeling the scratch of sweat and bus exhaust on our worthless necks: worthless lives made more worthless by the fact that we’re here, encased in this, this throbbing, angry, embarrassment of a metropolis, ‘marks of weakness, marks of woe’.
I pick a tower block at random, push through the glass doors and ask a heavily-built Indian receptionist for directions. Then I walk down the street to another tower and repeat the process, then again, each time getting closer, each time hating more and more the pea gravel and egg plant reception areas, the shiny marbled man-made stone and dirty air-con vents, the humming termite mounds of dirt and waste and heat and the whole shitty show.
Eventually my lift pings open on the 21st floor and a simpering desk-boy breaks off his smutty conversation long enough to point his cheap ballpoint at a door left ajar, emitting the familiar sounds of fashion in its larval stage: click, pop, whirr, chatter.
I breeze on in and start my apologies. I am fifteen minutes late, the busses coming form the beach were all full, the traffic was terrible… At $500 an hour the least I could do is be on time. But they don’t care. I am ignored. I am shown to a chair and clipped, powdered and ruffled. My eyebrows are plucked, my ears are shaved, my bags are bronzed. It isn’t until I’m suited in pin stripes and gleaming like a basted roast that anyone takes any notice of me at all. Then I am shown another chair in the center of a ring of lights and busy little people, facing a floor to ceiling window overlooking a hundred other termite mounds. Outside the ring of lights and busy people is another ring of people who aren’t very busy at all. They lounge like sea lions and natter absentmindedly about expensive phones and coffee beans, fine wines and exclusive resorts. These are the bloated ones, the executives.
In front of my chair is a desk, on it is a blank computer screen, a pad and pen and a phone. I am told what is expected of me, shown a drawing of a man doing what I’m expected to do. He’s sitting at a desk, looking important, talking to four other business types on a split computer screen. Once they’re sure I know what they want of me I’m ignored again, so I dutifully sit and read my book while busy little people busy themselves around me. They don’t speak to me, I don’t speak to them. I am a unit which hasn’t been activated yet. I am expected to remain dormant and passive until it’s my turn to shine.
Outside I do my job very well, I am the very picture of passivity, but on the inside I am alert and watchful. I am listening with glee to the conversations of the executives, and I am very, very critical.
“I left my Blackberry charger in the hotel.” One heavily groomed is man is bleating.
“Oh what a coincidence,” an agent is crooning at an art director, “my parents own a vineyard on that road, they have that exact same coffee machine in their pool house.”
I sit and listen, and although the book I’m reading is very good, I’m reading very little of it, so immersed am I in the worthless lives in the window and the worthless lives in the room. And then SHA-BLAM! It’s my turn and all eyes are on me. I know what I have to do, now is the time to do it. Someone darts out of the shadows and fixes the ripples in my suit. Someone else darts out and flicks my hair into a state of near perfection. The photographer’s assistant checks the lights, the photographer looks through the lens, tells me he’s ready and pops off a shot. There is silence as the image is squeezed onto the screen of a nearby Mac. Then the whole show pauses again for half an hour as lights are moved and things are pulled and tugged until SHA-ZAM! It’s my turn to make it happen and I turn on like a Christmas tree. My hair is touched, my bulges are debulged, the lights are checked, the stage is set and then… nothing happens for another half an hour.
By now the execs aren’t fun to hate and the view from the window is soul destroying. I want to cross my legs but I’m scared of crumpling my suit. Thank god for Philip K. Dick, thank god for age and experience and 500 bucks an hour, only a third of which I’ll see after agent’s cuts and taxman cuts and all the other little cuts, a third which will be about a week’s wages on the building site. I look down at my hands, creamed and pampered though they are the calluses stick out a mile, my knuckles are fat and scarred. I smile down at them, they wink back at me, our little secret.
And then, KA-POW! It’s me again and this time it’s for real. For half an hour I earn my money. I shine like I’m supposed to. I put on funny voices and the busy people laugh. I talk to imaginary business men and the execs think it’s priceless.
“Buy, buy, buy, Kevin!” I yell at the blank screen on my desk, mimicking a handsome business man. “Buy caves, fucker, lots of caves. The worlds fucked and we’re moving back to the stone age.”
“Charles!” I yell, “We’re doomed! Business is booming! Throw yourself out of the window!”
They love it. I look great. So animated. Brilliant.
“The ice caps are melting,” I point at the screen with my expensive pen and furrow my brow, oozing mean and moody sex appeal. “We’ve raped the planet and now we’re all going to hell!”
My audience guffaws. It doesn’t matter what the model is saying, there’s no sound on a stills shoot, silly, just look how good looking he is! Look at the fire in his eyes! This will sell us a million units for sure. This is dynamite!
When we break for coffee I slip out of my chair and my character and hide behind a rack of clothes, next to a distinctly normal-looking stylist. She looks me flatly in the eyes for a second before asking: “Are you the funny one?”
I’m not sure what to say. I look back at her, looking for clues, but I can see none.
“Not always.” I say, a little defensively. “Are you the dead-pan one?”
“No.” She says. Suddenly she looks very tired.
“Are you the tired one?” I ask her, warmth in my voice now.
“Yes.” She nods, and her eyes smile at me. We sit in silence for a while then, enjoying our shared hiding place. Then it’s time for me to shine a little more. Sha-blam.
…
I leave and shake a lot of hands, not ignored any more, and smile at the bus driver who smiles back. People where filing past her like sheep, acting as if she didn’t exist. She looks tired too.
The bus is full and all the sheep look tired and angry. Outside I smile and keep a calm bearing. Inside I’m imagining what the world will be like when all the humans are gone. Peace, perfect peace.
