How many times have I dreamed of computers? I’d keep a dream diary, but even that might be used to help nail me one day. I imagine reporters printing the screwier ones, and prison analysts discussing the porn ones in supermarket aisles. I wonder who had the first computer dream, where and when? I wonder if computers ever dream of humans.
Horn-rimmed Llewellyn. I’d only met him yesterday, and here the cunt was already gatecrashing my subconscious.
Fuck. The minute hand clicks again. The second hand glides around, reeling in my life surely as a kite string when it’s time to go home. Fuck. I’m eating into my morning time safety margin. Another morning feeling as shattered as I felt the night before. My face feels cracked and ready to fall off in Easter-egg bits. And to cap it all I’m going down with another bout of ’flu, I swear it. Hong fucking Kong and I spend half my life walking around feeling like a steamed dumpling. Easter must be around now. Come on, Neal, you can make it as far as the shower. A hot shower will do the trick. Bollocks. Some speed would do the trick, but it’s all snorted away.
I haul myself out of bed, stepping on a cold waffle and a plate. Fuck! She’s coming today, I think, she’ll clean it up. At least there’ll be some food waiting when I get back. Something Chinese, but at least I won’t have to face another waffle.
Into the living room. There was a message for me on the answer machine. Luckily I’d remembered to switch on the Sleepeasy mode before I’d gone to bed, otherwise I’d have got even less sleep than I did. I swiped all the crap on the sofa onto the floor, jabbed the ‘Play’ button, and lay on the sofa...
‘Rise and shine, Neal! This is Avril. Thanks for disappearing last night. Remember you’ve got the meeting with Mr Wae’s lawyers at 9.30, and Theo wants a full briefing beforehand, so you’d better get here by 8.45 sharp. Get the coffee perkin’. See you soon.’
Avril. Nice name, silly slag.
Don’t get too comfortable there, Neal. One, two, three, up! I said ‘up!’ Into the kitchen, chuck the old filter into the overflowing bin, fuck, it’s gone everywhere, ho-hum sorry, maid, fresh filter, fresh coffee, more than the recommended dosage thank you very much, click ‘on’. Trickle your thickest juice there for your Uncle Neal my baby, that’s the way. I’ve forgotten. Open the fridge. Half a lemon, three bottles of gin, a pint of milk that expired over a month ago, dried kidney beans, and... waffles. God is still in heaven, I still have some waffles left. Waffle in toaster. Back to bedroom, Neal. There’ll be a white shirt hanging in the closet, where she hung them up every Sunday, every one the skin of a gwai lo, shagged and fleeced. I’ll be so fucking angry if she’s yanked them off the hangers again... She’ll do anything for attention.
No, it’s okay. Hanging in a neat row. Boxer shorts, trousers, slung over the chair where you left them last night. The cheap, tubular, chair. I miss the Queen Anne one. It was the one thing in this apartment older than me. One more bit of Katy gone. Grab a vest, a shirt, your jacket, something’s missing — belt. Where’s my belt?
‘Okay. Very fucking funny. Where’s my belt?’
The air conditioner droned from the living room.
‘I’m going into the living room right now. Unless I find my belt on the arm of the sofa, I am going to go fucking ballistic.’
I went into the living room. I found my belt on the arm of the sofa.
‘Just as fucking well.’
I remembered that I had got dressed without my shower. I stunk, and there was a meeting with what’s-his-face from the Taiwan Consortium this morning.
‘You plonker, Neal,’ and nobody disagreed. When you call yourself a plonker nobody ever disagrees with you. The shower would cost me the rest of my safety margin. Unless the morning routine — ‘routine’ — went like clockwork, I would miss that crucial ferry, and have to start fabulating some impressive excuses.
I clicked off the air-conditioner. ‘It’s only fucking May. You want to freeze me to death? Who would you have to drive round the bend then, hey?’
In the bathroom I found she’d been up to her usual tricks with the soap bottle. Katy always bought those pump-action containers of liquid soap, and so did the maid, which was all well and good until she discovered what fun it was to hammer the pump up and down. It was all over the walls, in the toilet bowl, on the floor of the shower cubicle, probably — yes — under where I’d just lain my shirt. Smeared trails everywhere like jerked-off semen.
‘Very fucking amusing. Are you going to clean up this mess?’
Funny, she never touched any of the toiletries that Katy had left behind. It was only ever my stuff. Why didn’t I just chuck that woman-stuff out? I still had a box of tampons in the cabinet. Two boxes. Heavy flow, light flow. The maid never touched the tampons — I couldn’t understand why. Maybe it’s a Chinese thing, like the babies not wearing nappies, and just crapping through that bum-flap wherever and whenever. The maid suffered no qualms about working through the talcum powder, skin moisturisers and bath pearls, though. Why should she feel any qualms, if she didn’t about anything else?
The shower deluged my head. Soak, shampoo, rub, rinse, conditioner, finger up a smearage of the pumped-out body soap, lather, rinse. I gave myself a full two minutes. Bathe now, pay later.
Towelling myself dry, I suck in my gut, but it doesn’t make much difference these days. Neal, when did that thing start growing on you? Stress is supposed to make you lose weight. Doubtless it does, but a dietary credit of ninety per cent waffles, fruit pastilles, cigarettes and whisky must outweigh the stress debit. You look pregnant. ‘Ow!’ I flinch. If Katy had got pregnant... would anything be different? Would you have got out while you could, or would you have more to worry about? Is it possible to worry more than I do and not... not just die from it? I don’t know.
Something was burning! Fuck, the iron!
No, I hadn’t switched the iron on. That’s waffle-smoke. Fucking great. No fucking breakfast. Take your time, Neal, it’s a waffle past redemption. A Waffle Too Far. When is a waffle not a waffle? When it’s a piece of fucking charcoal, that’s when. I’d just have to heap the sugar into the coffee, I suppose. Liquid breakfast. Into the living room. A trickle of black was coming under the door, and I thought it was blood. Whose blood? Her blood? Nothing would surprise me in this apartment any more. Then I saw it was dark brown. Fucking great. I’d used two filters instead of one, and we know what happens when you do that, don’t we, Neal?
Into the kitchen. Off with the coffee machine, off with the toaster, off with his head. Fancy a nice glass of water for breakfast, Neal? Why thank you, Neal. No clean glasses. Okay, a bowl of water. Splendid. ‘Bon appetit, Neal.’ I surveyed my culinary empire. It looked like Keith Moon had been a house-guest for a month. No it didn’t. Keith Moon would leave it cleaner than this. Sorry, Maidie. I’ll make it up to you later. ‘You’ll fucking well make sure I will, won’t you?’
Put on your tie and get to work, Neal. Mustn’t keep the slitty-eyed moneymakers waiting any longer than you probably will. What a morning, I hadn’t even looked out of the window to see what the weather was doing. I looked on my pager: dry and cloudy. No umbrella, then. That Asian non-weather. I’ve forgotten. I already knew the view: bare hillside, dulled by mist, and the lethargic sea.
I clicked off the air-conditioner. Again. I leave the alarm clock radio on for her, like my mum used to for the dog. From the bedroom I hear the business news in Cantonese. I don’t know if she likes it. Sometimes she switches it off, sometimes she doesn’t, sometimes she re-tunes it.