It was around that time Ched and I started talking again — not often, but enough. I’d be entering or leaving the House of Locks, the phone would ring, and it would be Ched. He described his current existence as a cycle of drills and chores, and was so tired he’d fall asleep mid-sentence. It was good to speak to him, not just because it was him but because he didn’t know the first thing about the incident that had rocked my household. When I gave him a brief outline he said: “Oh, you know the apology Füst’s preparing is going to be a song, right? And that song is going to become an anthem of repentance. It’s probably going to be called ‘Dress Made of Needles.’”
“Nice — I’ll go down to the betting shop tomorrow.”
There was something else I wanted to talk about while I had him on the line. When I answered his phone calls he needed half a second to adjust his greeting, and it sounded as if he was disappointed that I was the one who’d answered. Well, disappointed is too strong a word. It was more as if I wasn’t his first preference. Which was fine, except that I’m the only other person who has keys to his house. His mum’s been trying to get a set for years without success.
“So what’s going on? You met someone?”
“Not sure,” he said. “I… think so.”
“And this person has keys?”
After a lot more questioning he eventually confessed that he hadn’t given a set of keys to anybody else and had never actually met this woman in person, but was fairly sure that she had keys because she sometimes answered the phone when he called. When he said that I adjusted my position so that I was able to watch all the open doors and I said: “That’s wonderful, Ched. I’m really happy for you.”
“Don’t overreact,” he said. “She’s a nice voice at the moment, nothing more. Like one of the ones that sing. Except that she just talks.”
“Did you ask her how she got in?”
“Of course.”
“Well, what did she say?”
“She encouraged me to think of a better question.”
I glared at Boudicca; no wonder she’d been filling out lately. “Maybe she feeds your fish too.”
“Haha, maybe. But while we’re talking about this, could you do me a favor? I don’t think she wants to be seen, so if you let yourself in and happen to notice that she’s around just leave immediately, OK?”
“OK, Ched. No problem.”
Just another day in the lives of two boys from Bezin. Still, I checked every room in Ched’s wing of the house before I left. His alarm system’s in working order and none of his valuables have moved. For now.
—
CHED’S PHONE GIRLFRIEND earned me the first direct smile I’d got from Aisha in weeks. “You stupid boys,” she said, lovingly. A string of text messages appeared on her phone and her smile vanished as if it had never been.
“Brace yourself,” Noor shouted from the next room. “It’s Matyas Füst’s apology.”
Day wasn’t ready to leave her bubble bath—“Oh no, no apology for me, thank you,” so Aisha grabbed a couple of foam stress balls, jumped onto Noor’s lap, and said: “Go.” We watched and listened to Matyas Füst singing a song about a girl who walked the earth in a dress made of needles that she couldn’t remove without maiming herself. People with good intentions kept trying to pull the needles out and give her something soft and warm to wear instead, but the needles pricked their fingers so much that they gave up. Then the girl met a bad man who drove the needles in deeper. Not with a hammer, but with his hands, for the thrill of joining his own torture to hers. Luckily, luckily the bad man managed to bleed out before he could kill her — it turned out his bones were magnetic(?). I might have misunderstood that part of the song, but whatever it was about his bones, they drew the needles from her and into him, he died in the utmost agony, the end. I kept waiting for Füst to wink, but he didn’t.
“My favorite thing about this song is the way it starts out all about her and ends up all about him,” Noor said, as we refreshed the page and fat red love hearts accumulated in the comments beneath the video.
Matyas understands
This is exactly how I’m feeling today
Thank you Matyas
Think we can all agree he shouldn’t have done it in the first place but now he’s done the decent thing
We forgive u
All I could say was: “Amazing.”
How did it go from “Füst should apologize to the woman he beat up” to “Füst should apologize to his fiancée” to “Füst should apologize to us”?
Aisha spoke through the stress ball she’d stuffed into her mouth, removed it, and started again: “Maybe this is a piece of conceptual art? Like something out of one of Matyas’s favorite films. Couldn’t YouTube woman be an artist who’s worked out a concept that uses the media to show us something about fame and its… its magic touch? So what if that touch is a punch? She’s famous now. Maybe she’s trying to get us thinking about the different ways people get famous. By excelling at something, or by suffering publicly. Maybe what that eyewitness saw was a performance? What if she already had an agreement with Matyas that he would beat her up for the concept? Doesn’t it seem like there’s no way to avoid getting punched by someone or other? Doesn’t matter who you are, it’s just a fact of life. So isn’t it a little better if you get to choose who punches you? You know, I think if I could pick I would have chosen him too.”
She was doing well until Noor, who’d stopped me from countering every single one of her speculations, said: “Ah, darling. Would you?” Then she buried her head in her dad’s jumper and howled. We couldn’t tell if it was heartbreak, rage, mirth, or simply the difficulty she was having unimagining Mr. Matyas Füst.
—
THE REHABILITATION of Matyas Füst was in full swing. His compulsory course of therapy was over, but he was continuing of his own accord. His fiancée quietly moved back into his house and he was doing a fuckload of charity work. The charity work was the last straw for me. Before I explain the part I may or may not have played in another man’s complete mental and physical breakdown I just have to quickly praise myself here. Yes, I have to be the one to do it; nobody else even understood how patient I was with Aisha’s mourning process in the midst of every other grief-worthy event going on in the world. Aisha herself was in a hurry to attain indifference to “the Füst matter” but you can’t rush these things. The cackling with which Aisha greeted YouTube woman’s simple and dignified acceptance of Matyas Füst’s apology, that cackling was not ideal. Words were better, a little less opaque, so I was patient with her outbursts. More patient than Jesus himself!
The first I knew of my contribution to the charity of Matyas Füst’s choice was an e-mail that arrived while I was pursuing quotes from satisfied customers. The e-mail thanked me for my ten-thousand-pound auction bid — the winning bid! — and expressed hope that my daughter Aisha would enjoy the private concert that Matyas Füst would accordingly perform for her. Ten thousand of my strong and painstakingly saved pounds, Matyas Füst, that was all I was able to compute. Oh, and I saw red arrows between the two. Ten thousand pounds to Matyas Füst. I had some sort of interlude after that, running between my keyboard and the nearest wall, flapping my hands and choking. Tyche came into my office, glanced at my computer screen, threw a glass of water in my face, and left. That got me to sit back down, at least. Five minutes later Aisha Skyped me from her school computer lab. I accepted the call, put my face right up to the camera, and bellowed her name until she resorted to typing: