The Gift of Joy, page 2
“As a matter of fact…” Her breath was coming in ragged heaves, the result of either anticipation or nerves… or both. He waited for her to continue, but the sentence seemed to have stalled permanently.
“You’ve not done anything like this before, have you?” It didn’t take a genius to work that out.
She shook her head.
“Relax.” He lifted a hand to caress her cheek. “You’re supposed to be enjoying yourself.”
She laughed – a nervous hiccup of released tension. “I’m sorry. It’s just so… I mean, now that I’m actually here…”
He laid his hands on her shoulders. “It’s okay. Take your time.”
She buried her head against his chest and for a moment they were hugging each other. He drank in her scent, which was delicate and evocative rather than over-powering; suggestive of wild meadow flowers without being cloyingly floral. He held her until she loosened her hold, before slowly stepping back. “I take it your friend Anna has told you what I do?” In response he received a confirmatory nod, with that short, shallow motion of hers – like a bird pecking for seed. “And since you came looking for me, I presume there’s something specific you’re after.”
“Yes.” Again she hesitated, but this time had obviously found the courage to complete her sentence. “This is embarrassing, but… the President.”
“The President,” he repeated. Not again. Why did women find that damned man so attractive?
Something of his disappointment must have shown in his voice. “Is that a problem?”
“No, not a problem at all,” he assured her, while reminding himself that the customer was always right. He had just hoped for something a little more original from her, a little more challenging. He excused himself, saying, “It’ll take me a few minutes to prepare.” With that he slipped into the other room – the only other room his apartment boasted – a small cupboard-like space that would just accommodate a single bed but which he used as a changing room and for storage.
He took out a slim valise from a drawer and flipped it open. It looked like an old-style laptop pc, but was in fact something a great deal more specialised. His home might have been shabby, with its antiquated heating system, but this was state of the art and he was proud of it.
Sitting down on the room’s only chair, he took the narrow headband from its slot in the case. ‘Metal with memory’ – as soon as it was unclipped, the band sprang unfailingly into shape, fitting snugly around his head. He fumbled for the thin wire that hung down one side and attached it to the jack-point tucked discretely behind his left ear.
“I thought it was all you,” the girl said from the doorway. “I didn’t realise you used a machine.”
Swallowing his annoyance at her uninvited appearance and managing to smile, if a little indulgently, he said, “It is ‘all me’. We’re a very rare breed,” he added, suddenly wanting to impress upon her just how lucky she was. “All this does is carry information,” he tapped the headband. “The more detail I receive, the closer I can get to the original. You want the President, you’ll get the President. His own mother wouldn’t know the difference.”
“But would his wife?” she quipped, which suggested a welcome return of spirit.
“Modesty forbids me to comment. Now, if you don’t mind…” His eyes ushered her away.
“Oh, sorry,” and the doorway was empty once more. He would have shut the door had there been one; something which was at the top of a long list of things he must get around to sorting out one of these days.
He took a deep breath and set about composing himself, focusing on his body and the flow of information from the headpiece, analysing the discrepancies. The small, apparently innocuous laptop he was now attached to carried detailed particulars on nearly a thousand individuals. They were all public figures. The data bank had been up-to-date at the time he… acquired it – stole always struck him as such an uncouth word. Sadly that had been some three or four years ago and the number of profiles that remained current were ever-dwindling as time went by.
George Arnold Kelly’s election to the highest office had been a welcome stroke of good fortune. Already a prominent figure, the charismatic politician’s personal details had been mapped and stored long before. It was this information that now flowed into Conrad’s brain: the man’s height, weight, build and aspect, broken down to a stream of minutiae; hundreds of bits of information regarding skin pigmentation, bone and muscle density, weight distribution, hair colour, spine curvature and every other element that combined to produce Kelly’s physical appearance. The data was self-modifying. The system monitored news reports and other media sources, updating its details as time progressed, adjusting to the changing appearance of the individuals whose specifics it contained.
Conrad started to change. The President was a little taller than him: his height adjusted accordingly. Everybody’s spine is designed to accommodate a degree of movement – the average person is fractionally shorter at the end of the day than at the beginning, simply as a result of gravity compressing the vertebrae together. Conrad’s body took this to an extreme, with his spine being a lot more flexible and adaptable than most people’s. This was also a process over which he could exercise conscious control. Cartilage and muscle swelled to extend the spine, drawing substance from the stomach, which shrank to mimic Kelly’s board-flat physique; elastic skin stretched to accommodate the additional height, with internal organs settling to the slightly altered body shape. His hair grew out a fraction and he boosted the levels of melanin, darkening its colour to the appropriate shade. Hundreds of tiny alterations swiftly accumulated, a transformation comfortably accommodated by his deliberately baggy clothes.
To have made each subtle change individually would have taken hours, which was where his link to the data base came in. It fed the intricate details directly to his subconscious, which instigated the necessary metamorphosis as a programmed sequence of steps rather than a random series of adjustments. In moments the transformation was complete. There was only one physical feature that he then consciously amended; and no lady had yet complained about that particular part of the body being made larger than the president’s original; not that size mattered, or so they claimed.
He stepped back into the room.
“My God,” she said, raising a hand to her mouth.
“Thank you, but I wasn’t aiming quite that high; just the President.”
“You even sound like him.”
“Of course.” Why were people always surprised by that? “Voice is largely shaped by physical characteristics, after all.”
He was before her now, a hand lifting to undo the top button of her blouse, her bosom rising and falling in exaggerated fashion. They kissed, her mouth surprisingly cool while her breath carried the suggestion of mint. Her blouse peeled away beneath his hands, revealing shoulders that were near-white in their paleness and finely sculpted in contour, like some elegant mountain ridge coated in virgin snow, inevitably drawing the eye downward to follow the sweep of its slope, which in this case developed into full, pert breasts. Each was crowned by small areolas and nipples that stood dark and proud against alabaster skin. As he bent to cup them, kissing first one, then the other, he found himself engulfed by her subtle, pheromone-laced scent. His finger tips traced the smooth perfection of her skin – a bewitching paradox of paleness and warmth.
Clothing flaked off like blistered paint shedding at the gentlest rub and by the time they tumbled onto the bed, both were naked.
To Conrad this was a job; such encounters were what he did for a living. Generally he found himself emotionally uninvolved, mentally able to step back from the physical act and view his performance and that of his client in detached, analytical fashion. Not this time. Joy proved an active and imaginative lover, taking the lead as often as she was led, and she was so beautiful. He found himself swept up in the act of love-making, rediscovering that most precious ingredient of sex: passion.
Completion arrived far more swiftly than he was used to.
They disentangled, lying together on the bed. She favoured him with a timid, awkward smile. “Thank you.”
She was thanking him?
The second time was gentler, but no less satisfying. He was more in control on this occasion, paying greater attention to her pleasure – something he had not been entirely conscious of first time around.
Far more than the stipulated hour had passed when she eventually left. “Can I come back some time?” she asked at the door as they kissed a chaste farewell.
It was all very touching, yet he knew full-well that whatever memories she carried back into her every-day life would not involve making love with him, but with President George Kelly.
He switched on a light – evening had arrived at some point while they were in bed, bringing its customary baggage of twilight – that transient state of almost-darkness – like some traveller who has partially unpacked their luggage but made it perfectly clear that there is plenty more to come.
He sat in a room made suddenly empty by Joy’s departure, imagining he could detect the lingering ghost of her scent and realising that he wanted to be somewhere else… anywhere else.
With that directionless decision his only guide he finished dressing, grabbed wallet and keys and fled the claustrophobia of his home, his life.
Where to? Not back to Lacey’s, that much was certain. Too great a chance of being collared by some demanding client or other, which was the last thing he wanted. Besides, Lacey’s would probably mean Roach and would definitely mean My-Ling. The only company he craved just then was his own.
So he walked in the opposite direction, letting his feet carry him wherever they would. He passed unheeding through streets that were sluggishly stirring – cafés and bars welcoming the first influx of evening trade as work ended and relaxation began. He soon found himself in a district dominated by neon: pulsing banners of garish light that tore chunks out of the gathering gloom, as strip joints, gaming halls, narcotics dens and assorted clubs vied with each other for the attention of every passer-by.
He moved through as swiftly as he could, like some well-oiled body slicing through water, allowing the surroundings to wash over him without touching or sticking. Finally he was at the river – all clustered bars whose tables and chairs spewed out onto paved courtyards and crowded walkways. An ornate iron-framed footbridge spanned the water, attracting such places at either end with the irresistible force of a magnet. A ragtag assortment of skiffs, punts, rowboats and canoes bobbed at their moorings beneath, seeming vaguely sinister in the spilled light that washed over them.
He spurned the bridge as thoroughly as the bars and instead turned to the right, striding along a narrow boardwalk, the river to one side and the dark walls of over-priced waterfront apartments on the other. The crowds thinned almost at once and the staccato thud of his footsteps became audible – a hollow, muffled drum that somehow fell short of his expectations as to how shoes on wood should sound, but which suited his mood precisely.
The boardwalk ended and he was moving across grass; still beside the river but alone now – all others evidently sucked into the neon and noise behind him like moths to a flame. The grass in turn gave way to concrete as he crossed a road – one which stopped abruptly just short of the water’s edge, as if inviting anyone so inclined to drive pell-mell off the edge and end it all in a watery grave.
After the road came a wasteland, a junkyard of abandoned cars, broken glass, battered crates and discarded machines; the mechanical effluent of an industrial society. It might have been a wasteland but it was far from deserted. If his adopted status in Slate were towards the bottom of the social pile, then those who lived here were firmly entrenched in its lowest basement; their lives as derelict as the surroundings.
This was a dangerous place to be, particularly at night. A flickering glow told of a lit fire somewhere out of sight, while concentration brought the faintest suggestion of voices, either barely heard or wholly imagined. The calculating eyes that watched him from the shadows were unquestionably real, and glimpses of movement between the car corpses bore further testament to the fact that he was not alone.
Boldly he strode between the wreckage, his very presence a statement, his attitude a challenge. He was inviting someone to notice him and respond, would welcome the opportunity to vent his seething frustration through the channel of physical violence.
Nothing happened. Perhaps those watching were unnerved by his self-assurance, perhaps they sensed in him something of what he once had been: a killer.
His return home was equally uneventful. Turning away from the river he left the scrap-land behind, walking through streets of boarded-up houses, sporadically defaced with fluorescent graffiti in a brazen cacophony of night-glow colours, as if in pale imitation of the neon nightlife that thrived just up-river. The streets here were empty, apart from the occasional burnt-out car and a single black shape that slunk belly-low across the road ahead of him at one point, to melt away between decaying houses. Conrad never had liked cats. He respected them as hunters; but never liked.
A few blocks further and the quality of the neighbourhood improved perceptibly, moving up from wrecked to vaguely habitable. The few cars he saw here were at least moving. A little further and he passed his first pedestrians since leaving the boardwalk – a young couple on their way home or doing goodness knew what. Such encounters grew increasingly frequent as the streets became better lit.
Then he was home, having burned off a little of the aggression and frustration that afflicted him and reaffirmed just what an awful dump Slate really was. Whatever demons that walk of Brownian motion had been intended to exorcise were still hanging around, but at least they were a little more muted for now.
He poured himself another whiskey, sat down and tried hard not to reflect on emptiness – the emptiness of the apartment, and of his life… which were soon to be joined by the emptiness of the bottle.
*
He woke to the awareness of another presence in the room… on the bed.
“Did you enjoy her, your little white doll?” My-Ling whispered in his ear. “Did you screw her good?”
The whiskey must have hit him harder than he realised; he had not even heard her come in.
“Tell me,” her voice commanded from somewhere in the darkness above.
The mattress moved as she changed position and he felt the bed clothes drawn down from his body.
“Tell me everything,” she said, an instant before kissing his navel, an instant before the tip of her tongue traced a line downward to his groin.
His earlier gloom banished at least for the moment, he closed his eyes and went with the flow.
*
It was the next day that disaster struck.
He awoke to find My-Ling already gone – they lived their own lives. His schedule for the day was pretty full. He had a late morning booking with a regular, an elderly married woman with a fixation for a particular sports star. She had been coming to see him for over a year and never varied, never wanted him to be anybody different. His lunchtime was another matter. Young, single and not-unattractive, she always wanted someone different. As things turned out, he was destined never to discover who had taken her fancy this week. For the first time he could recall, Conrad was forced to cancel an appointment.
It was all due to what happened during the first appointment; or rather, what failed to happen.
Impotence. Not something he had ever experienced before, nor something he was prepared for.
Having to refund a disgruntled client and knowing he had just waved goodbye to a regular source of income only made matters worse. Left alone, he attempted to resurrect the situation, but without success. And so he felt obliged to cancel the rest of the day rather than risk the ignominy of further failure. Even My-Ling, summoned hastily back from work by a desperate phone call, proved unable to elicit a response.
The afternoon found them both closeted in the apartment and him behaving like a bear with a sore head. There were doctors he could see – a quack My-Ling swore by who worked miracles with acupuncture and a closet of mysterious potions based on traditional oriental medicines – but he was not yet ready to share news of his misfortune with anyone else and met the suggestion with a snarl and a curse. It was with evident relief that My-Ling made her excuses and left to cover the evening shift at Lacey’s. In truth he was just as glad to see her go, since this allowed him to wallow in self-pity uninterrupted.
With the approach of evening the apartment walls seemed to close in once again. He headed out, wondering whether this sense of claustrophobia in his own home was becoming an obsession.
Consciously avoiding Lacey’s, he started to retrace his route of the previous evening. This time, instead of hurrying through the nightlife district he stopped at a half-empty bar, chosen at random. The first beer had barely been tasted when he was approached by an overtly glamorous girl – flashy red sequinned dress and too much lip gloss. At least, he initially assumed it was a girl. Closer inspection caused him to revise the assessment. The timbre of voice seemed just a fraction wrong to his practiced ear and the posture just a little too masculine. He made it clear he was not interested, at which point a testosterone-packed bouncer made it equally clear that his custom was no longer welcomed.
The next place proved less particular, content to leave him in peace. It was an ideal spot in which to sit and think. Sit and brood, if he were being entirely honest.
When he first came to Slate it had been an escape, an attempt to establish his own life and assert his independence; a desperate bid to preserve his sanity. He had other abilities beyond the mimicry; things he was trained to do for which there would always be a market. The trick had been to earn a living in a way that would draw the least attention – hired assassins tended to create a stir. On the other hand, accepting money to sleep with an endless variety of women seemed likely to make fewer ripples and was too tempting a proposition to resist. Of course, his new profession proved far less glamorous than it promised and the thrill of novelty soon paled. More often than not the women who sought him out were unattractive and uninspiring. Rarely did he encounter such things as beauty and passion – it was more likely to be halitosis, body odour and a fawning lust for some micro-celebrity.
