They went and sat in the living room, on a flaccid green velour couch. He had the plastic food container in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other. He drank the juice faster than he would’ve liked to, so that he could put the glass down and not look like such a pillock. She got settled next to him on the couch. There was a faint halo of milk on her upper lip from a gulp she’d taken in the kitchen; she had her hands free. What did she need her hands free for? He leaned away from her, as casually as he could. It was a small couch, sagging in the middle, and her body was inches away from his.
She picked up a CD from its angora nest and fed it into the CD player. She pressed a couple of buttons with her slender fingers. A sound like the oldfashioned Microsoft bootup ‘wave’ came on, the pleasingly abstract sound that Windows used to have before they changed it to the current annoying little tune. But then the sound from the CD didn’t die off, it went on and on and on, the same tone, like a choir stuck on one note with no need to breathe. Gee handed him the CD cover. HU, it said.
‘HU,’ he murmured. ‘Never heard of them. Electronica?’
‘It’s lots of people singing together, maybe a hundred. Somewhere in America, I think. It’s the Sound of Sounds.’
‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Does anything else happen?’
‘No, it’s like this all the way. You just have to sort of sink into it.’
He slumped back into the couch, demonstrating goodwill. The voices from the sound system went ‘huuuuuuuuuu-uuuuuuuuuuuu.’
‘Where’d you get it?’ he asked, casting his gaze around the room in search of small grey rodents.
‘I bought it,’ she said. ‘It’s part of my training.’
‘Massage?’ As soon as he’d said it he blushed, in case she thought he meant sexual massage, like in a massage parlour.
‘No, it’s a spiritual thing.’
‘Right.’
‘Its part of Eckankar,’ she said. ‘My religion.’
‘Right.’
They sat together in silence, apart from the Americans going ‘hu’. Gee’s flat was warm and cosy and smelled good. Everything a mouse could want, probably. But the mouse was nowhere to be seen.
Eventually, Gee said:‘I hear you sometimes.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Through the ceiling.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I hear you when you get angry. You yell “fuck”.
’ He blushed again. ‘It’s my computer. It’s playing up. I’m having loads of problems with minidumps.’ ‘Minidumps?’
He grimaced. ‘They’re … uh … when there’s a serious error, and … It’s a sort of default thing. The system dumps itself into a swap file for later retrieval. But sometimes … ah … It’s too complicated to explain.’ He stared at his hands, holding the plastic food container. The odd thing was, he could’ve been a lot more articulate if he’d made the effort. He could’ve spoken like a computer instruction manual written by experts. It’s just that Gee’s femaleness put him off. It was as if the equation they made, his gender and hers put together, could only add up to a certain kind of conversational result. A negative number.
‘You shouldn’t have to get so mad at a machine, ever,’ she said. ‘It’s just a heap of wires and printed circuits. You’re a soul. A spark of God.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He wondered if he had what it took to wait around until the mouse decided to show itself. The longer he stayed here, the more chance there was that this freaky woman would try to sell him on her whacko religion. ‘Have you considered rat poison?’ he asked.
‘I told you, I don’t want the mouse killed.’
‘It’s a soul, right?’
‘It could be a person,’ she agreed, ‘on their spiritual journey towards divinity.’
‘But right now it’s taking a cheese break, right?’
She smiled. The goat’s milk traces were still on her upper lip. He wanted to wipe them off, not because they disgusted him but because he thought she probably wouldn’t want to be sitting around with goat’s milk on her face and she couldn’t see it herself and he was too shy to tell her.
‘Can I tell you a bit about Eckankar?’ she said.
He gave it a few seconds’ thought. ‘I’m not much into religion,’ he warned her. ‘I probably wouldn’t get it.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ she said. The room was warmer than it needed to be. She took off her cardigan and tossed it behind the couch. She had the most beautiful skin on her arms. It was lightly tanned, and in the lamplight he could see a very subtle down of pale golden hair on the tops of her forearms. She had thin wrists, exquisite. That was the word that came into his head, exquisite. Not a word that occurred to him often.
‘ECK is the Divine Spirit, the current of life that flows through all living things,’ she said, not particularly dramatically, more as if she was telling him about a great restaurant she’d discovered. ‘Eckankar unifies a person’s soul with Light and Sound, which are twin aspects of the Holy or Divine Spirit. Our souls are eternal and on a spiritual journey of reincarnation to discover our true selves.’
‘I’m with you so far,’ he said, gazing around the room.
‘The Light of God,’ she said, ‘appears in many ways. Sometimes it manifests as a sound. Sometimes it’s like a flash of white or blue light.’
‘Um … That must be brilliant.’
She laughed, a giggly, bronchial laugh. He wondered if she was high on something.
‘It is brilliant,’ she said. ‘Through ECK teachings, people can learn from their past lives and understand their Karma. There’s not really any such thing as sin, but we can be in error, and error can hold us back from the next level. The Spiritual Eye aids us on our soul journeys and in understanding our dreams. Do you have dreams, Manny?’
‘Uh … Yeah. Sometimes.’
‘What was the last dream you had? Can you remember it?’
‘Uh …’ He blushed. ‘I can’t remember.’
‘Dreams can be a kind of astral projection,’ Gee went on, raking her fingers through her hair. ‘We leave our bodies and travel to different places and meet different spiritual beings. These beings help us escape the cycle of error and realise ourselves. Dreams are journeys of discovery. And dreams are windows.’
He turned to her, glum. ‘Look, I …. I think this is all … It doesn’t mean anything to me.’
‘It didn’t mean anything to me, either, six months ago. I was just like you.’
He snorted. A creature less like him was impossible to imagine. She was sitting so close to him he could smell her femaleness. The brocaded texture of her bra and the swell of her breasts were both visible through her T-shirt. Her wrists were maybe two-thirds the size of his. Her neck was smooth and delicate. He wanted to lie in her arms and come between her legs. He wanted to smash the jewel case of her damn ‘HU’ CD over her head. If there was a God, He would definitely be instructing the mouse to chew right through the electrical cord of the sound system, just to make those annoying Americans shut the fuck up.
‘It’s an American religion, right?’ said Manny, after a deep breath.
‘The spiritual home of Eckankar is the Temple of ECK in Chanhassen, Minnesota.’
‘I could’ve guessed.’ Manny thought of his internet buddy Varez, also located in Minnesota. How close was Duluth to Chanwhatsit, he wondered? Maybe Varez knew some of these Ecky people in his neighbourhood. Maybe the whole area was crawling with them, singing ‘hu’ in the checkout queues at the supermarket, at the chip shop, the bus stop, everywhere. Although maybe Minnesota didn’t have buses. Or chip shops.
‘It’s all about spiritual unfoldment,’ Gee was saying. ‘As you unfold spiritually, you learn to express the love of God through doing things for others.’
‘Well, I’m here to do something for you,’ he reminded her. ‘And I’m not interested in ECK.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, lowering her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to hassle you. ECK’s not like that. It’s for people who are rea
dy.’
‘Well, I’m ready for—’ He was about to make a wisecrack about a mouse, when lo and fucking behold, the mouse himself walked out from behind a stack of books and just sat there, in plain view, right in the middle of the room. Manny and Gee both froze.
The mouse seemed cool with this. He was the calmest mouse Manny had ever seen. His tiny eyes focused first on the man, then on the woman. He wasn’t even panting. Other than that, he was a standard, unexceptional mouse, with grey fur, pink feet and a tail. He was maybe five inches long, tail included. Gee was hyperventilating at the sight of him. Her bosom shook from the thud of her heartbeat.
Slowly, without taking his eyes off the rodent, Manny lowered himself to the floor. On his knees, he crawled across the carpet, holding the upside-down plastic container aloft in one hand. The mouse turned away from him, apparently unconcerned. Maybe the daft little fucker was stoned on some weird herbal tea he’d made the mistake of nibbling at.
With a swift, smooth motion, Manny brought the plastic container down. The mouse was trapped neatly underneath, with just a bit of tail sticking out.
‘The lid, gimme the lid,’ said Manny. Gee handed it to him. Careful not to lift the tub more than he absolutely had to, Manny began to slide the lid under. The mouse huddled in one corner until the last possible instant and then hopped onto the interior of the lid, allowing Manny to slide it the last few inches into place. He snapped the container shut. Mission accomplished. One Mouse Jalfrezi.
‘What do you want me to do with it?’ he asked Gee. His voice shook a little from the excitement of having done so well. His hand wanted to tremble but he kept it still. ‘Throw it out the window, I guess,’ she said. ‘Out the window?’ He was disappointed in her. She had been so concerned for the animal’s welfare. His image of her was all bound up with kindness.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I’m only on the second floor. There’s grass in the back yard. Mice are built different from humans; they’re light, with different bones. You could throw one off a skyscraper and as long as there was grass below, it would survive. Second floor is nothing to a mouse.’
She had her arms folded across her chest, a bit defensive. He tried to decide if she was trying to hide the fact that she knew bugger-all about the aerodynamic properties of mice, or if she was just scared the rodent might jump out of its plastic prison and nip into her clothing.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Which window?’
She led him into her bedroom, which was a duplicate of his: exactly the same dimensions, layout, everything. Well, not everything. The bed was a double, leaving very little room to manoeuvre. Piles of clothes lay on the floor, handbags, supermarket bags, hairbrushes, books. He trod gingerly, afraid to step on fragile things, embarrassed to be here at all.
‘My bedroom window is directly above the thickest part of the garden,’ she explained. She drew the blinds, opened the shutter.
‘Don’t drop it back in here, whatever you do,’ she said, as he lifted the container up. He stretched his arm out into the night air. The rear façade of another apartment building, on the far side of the communal garden, had lights on in several of its windows. In one of these windows, a young man and woman stood watching. They waved to Manny as he unclasped the plastic container and let its furry little burden fall out into the dark.
‘Done,’ he said, and drew his arm back in. She pulled on a sash and the blinds closed again, giving them privacy in the bedroom.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘No problem,’ he said.
Adrenalin was still flowing through him. He felt the need to do something masculine and demonstrative, something additional to what he’d already done. With a casual flick of the wrist, he tossed the plastic container onto the bed. The bed was a rumpled, exotic affair with three or four quilts in clashing colours and textures. It looked very comfortable. A cotton nightdress was draped over one of the pillows. The other pillow had an open book laid on it, half-finished and face down.
‘Well, thanks again,’ said Gee, and walked out of the room. She waited until he’d followed her out before reaching her hand back inside to switch off the light.
In the living room, the Americans were still chanting ‘HU’.
‘You don’t find it a wee bit annoying?’ he asked her. ‘I mean, after a while?’
‘Find what annoying?’ She seemed deeply pensive all of a sudden, focused on some deeply private part of herself. ‘The Yanks singing “HU”.’ ‘I’ve got it programmed to repeat, actually.’ ‘Oh.’ He hadn’t picked her as the sort of person who could program a CD player.
‘HU is an ancient name for God,’ she explained, and yawned, showing all her grey fillings and a cute pink tongue. ‘Sorry, I’m really sleepy. I start work at six in the morning, so this is way past my bedtime.’
‘Don’t let me keep you up,’ he said. ‘It’s OK, I’ll crash soon.’ She pottered around the living room, collecting empty mugs and glasses. She had a way of clasping them with her fingers so she could hold three in each hand. ‘Excuse the mess,’ she said. ‘You should see my flat,’ he said.
‘Maybe I will one day,’ she said. ‘As long as there’s no mice in it.’ And with a touch of her big toe she turned the sound system off. The worshipful voices disappeared abruptly. ‘Thank God for that,’ said Manny.
Gee fronted up to him one last time, her expression darkened by disappointment. Or anger, maybe. There was a hefty weight of stoneware and glass dangling in her hands, and if she lost her rag and smashed the lot against his skull, he would be in big trouble.
‘Singing HU,’ she said wearily, ‘lifts you into a higher state of awareness. But only if you’re open to it. I have days when I’m not, and then I can’t stand to hear it. Which lets me know I’m in a dangerously bad state, and I should be singing HU even more. But sometimes … sleep’s important too.
’ ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Goodnight, then.’ And he got the hell out of there before she had a chance to pull anything else on him.
Back in his own flat, Manny found it difficult to calm down. The front door was shut behind him, but he didn’t feel private. After all, anybody could ring his doorbell any time they liked; they could knock at his door if they were so inclined; this had never occurred to Manny before. He was used to feeling the building around him like a suit of armour or a giant phone cubicle or something – a structure that contained only him inside it. Now he was forced to reconsider it as a network of dwellings, a honeycomb of competing lives.
Also, because his place was architecturally identical to Gee’s, he had a hallucinatory sensation that he was still down there. As though he were wandering around in her flat but it had been filled with his stuff, or as though his own flat had been subtly altered, Photoshopped, Micrografixed, to resemble hers. His computer table, with the PC equipment stacked on top of it, seemed insubstantial, as if all this stuff had been beamed in from another galaxy and was just a glowing illusion, a hologram. He reached out to touch his monitor. It was solid and warm.
He sat down on his swivel chair. He took his accustomed position in front of the screen, whose glassy surface had gone black from lack of intervention. He touched the mouse gently and the screen sprang back to life, a gallery of icons.
He checked for emails. More offers of penis enlargement, miraculous credit, cheap drugs. Oh yes, and a response from Varez. Very detailed instructions as to how to fix the minidumps. The guy clearly had an ultra-methodical mind. ‘Follow the instructions in the first section. If the problem is not resolved, proceed to the next section.’ Not exactly a buddy-buddy tone, but lucid.
Manny followed the instructions faithfully, resizing the swap file to a smaller amount of RAM, rebooting, then restoring the swap file’s original RAM. Time would tell if this made any difference. If it didn’t, there were the more radical options of deleting the Minidump Files, deleting the Sysdata.xml File, or even disabling the Automatic Restart.
‘Any more questions, just ask,’ said Varez.
OK, thought Manny, How about: Can a mouse really be chucked off a skyscraper without being hurt when it hits the ground?
He clicked and clicked, feeling horny and irritable and bloated and hungry. The Runner menu blossomed onto his screen like the opening shot of a movie. Lena stood immobile, all alone in an Eastern-European-style street with cathedrals and monuments silhouetted against the polluted sky. Her Slavic features were impassive. She had all her clothes on: a long red raincoat, shiny like PVC, a black roll-neck sweater, knee-length boots. Winter had come to Lena-land.
READY 2 PLAY?
He closed his eyes, pinched them with his forefingers. In his mind’s visual display, a tiny mouse was falling through space, gathering speed as it fell. Splat. Mouse brains on a slab of concrete. A star-shaped pattern of blood surrounding a little furry body. What else could you expect, for fuck’s sake?
He clicked to indicate he was ready to play. He tried to visualise the ground underneath Gee’s window, under his own window. He couldn’t recall ever having seen any grass down there. On his PC screen, a sudden flash of motion alerted him to danger. Lena had been run over by a tank. She was fully clothed, with realistic tyre-marks on her raincoat. Her current health status was, according to the digital counter, zero.
In disgust, he pressed the exit icon and got up. He rummaged around in the kitchen cabinet for a torch. Amazingly, in amongst the useless crap – the spare bags for vacuum cleaners, the candles, spare bits of sink – he found a small torch complete with batteries. Providence of this kind seemed beyond rational explanation.
He put on some shoes and a windcheater, gripped his torch like a weapon, and went out into the night.
It was true what Gee had said. The area behind the flats, under his window and hers, was covered in grass. Mown not that long ago (God knows by who) but still soft and springy, and smelling damply green in the dark. A lush vegetal carpet, an organic mouse mattress. He could go back inside now.
But he didn’t. He had come this far and he wasn’t going back until he’d made sure. A falling body wasn’t like a leaf fluttering to the ground, it was flesh and bone. Manny had felt the weight of that little creature when he’d let it go.