The Crying Machine. Greg Chivers

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      ‘Evolution is faster than Fat Saul.’

      ‘Options, man. Options. All I’m saying is, you don’t have many of them.’ He’s got that big dopey grin on his face, and he’s nodding at me like he’s waiting for me to agree. It kills me when he’s right.

      ‘Look, it’s late, it’s been a messed up day, and I can’t even think right now. If it’ll make you happy, tomorrow I’ll go to the Mission, see if she’s there. If I find her, we can have a conversation. If I don’t … well, we’ll work something else out. Sound good?’

      ‘Hey, I’m just trying to help you here, but yeah, that makes sense.’ He sucks his teeth and grimaces, which tells me whatever comes next is going to be a pain in the ass. ‘Seeing as you’re going out, can you pick something up for me?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I’m running a little low on whisky. You got some in last week, didn’t you?’

      ‘Can you get it yourself? It’s just in the stash: in the tunnels in the usual place.’

      His face breaks into a sheepish grin. It looks kind of ridiculous on a guy his size. ‘C’mon, man, you know I don’t like to go down there. Gethsemane always freaks me out. There are people buried in that place, like actual dead bodies.’

      ‘OK, OK, I’ll do it. You’re pathetic, you know that? It’s just a freaking bomb shelter. It’s been empty a hundred years.’

      ‘Love you, man.’

      ‘Yeah, whatever. Bye.’

      It should be a ten-minute walk to the Mission from my apartment, but Yusuf’s detour takes up the hour after breakfast, and the streets are filling up by the time I get going. The route takes you to the north edge of the Old City, where the walls crumpled like paper and the only time people talk about reconstruction it’s the punchline in a bad joke. Harsh morning light shows up the worst of it. Broken glass shines like teeth in the windows of skeleton buildings. Sagging wires just above head height carry stolen electricity to a few of the squats, but at night it’s mostly dark around here.

      The Mission’s the least shitty thing in the neighbourhood, which isn’t saying much. All the cripples and the kanj-heads are outside, cluttering up the doorway or sliding off like woodlice to wherever it is they hide in daytime. They watch quietly, trying to figure out if I’m a mark, losing interest as soon as they realize I’m not here to empty my wallet. Eventually one of them points me in the right direction.

      At first the robe throws me off, but the brown ghost pushing a mop around the crummy dining hall is her. All that cloth hides her legs so it looks like she’s floating across the yellow patches of floor between the tables where the bums eat their dinner.

      ‘Hey, Cinderella …’ She looks up. ‘Spare me a few minutes of your valuable time?’

      She fixes her eyes on the mop; they follow the shiny streak it leaves on the floor. It smells like a hospital in here. ‘Last time we spoke, you said you didn’t need a girlfriend. I think we’re on the same page.’

      The mop goes into the stained metal bucket like a drowning man and unleashes another burst of detergent stink. I grab the handle. She looks at me like she’s a second away from reaching for a blade. There’s something funny about her eyes, like they’re set too deep. She pulls the stick away from me and the head makes a big wet slap as it hits the floor. She’s strong.

      The thing about being in my business is that you learn pretty quick not to take the brush-off: from girls, from gangsters, doesn’t matter. If you need something, you go after it. Also, like Yusuf said, options are something I don’t have right now.

      ‘Fat Saul wants his orange back.’ The hood of the robe falls back, away from her face, as she looks up at me, eyes wide with suspicion, maybe fear. She wants to ask how I know, but she’s not saying, which is good; keeping your mouth shut is an under-appreciated prerequisite for this business. Some people never learn it. The mop stops and settles into a thin pool of grimy water as she leans on it, listening. ‘Are you even earning any money here?’ We both know the answer to that question but still, the point needed to be made. ‘One week, two thousand shekels, and don’t worry, it’s nothing nasty.’

      The money gets her attention, like I knew it would. I can see she’s still thinking about it when the mop starts moving again. How clean does a floor need to be? It’s only bums that eat here. ‘Don’t they ever give you time off in this place? Listen, I can see you’re busy with some important work right now, but when you’re done, come see me down at Yusuf’s tonight. We can have a proper conversation. I’ll be there ’til seven o’clock.’

      The place is empty apart from the regulars when I get in. Yusuf’s watching war porn on the news feeds. One look is enough to tell you tourist season won’t be happening any time soon – Machine crackdowns on insurgents in France and Norway, Sino-Sovs still getting pushed back on the Kazakh front. He finally drags his eyes off the screen when the picture cuts from footage to a talking head.

      ‘Hey, Levi! Did you—’

      ‘Don’t say it! I know what you’re gonna say and I don’t need to hear it. It’s under control. That’s all you need to know!’

      ‘I was just going to ask if you got the whisky.’

      ‘Yes! Yes, I got your whisky, OK? And yes, I went to the Mission. I did exactly as you said. There, OK, I said it. Happy now?’ I know he’s just pushing my buttons and I shouldn’t give him the satisfaction but sometimes I can’t help it. I mean, it’s one thing to give the guy a little excitement in his life when he’s stuck behind the bar all day, but you’d have to be a saint to put up with his I-told-you-so shit.

      ‘So …’

      ‘She’s coming.’

      ‘When?’

      ‘Tonight.’

      ‘I guess we’ll see.’

      ‘Yeah, I guess we will.’

      By the time she walks in, its twenty to eight and Yusuf’s already collected on the little bet we made about whether she’d show. The robe’s gone, and she looks different, dark blond hair combed back like a man’s, I guess so she gets less attention, but she’s wearing those weird tight clothes again. Maybe they’re not so strange if you’re from Europe. I don’t know – we used to get tourists, now we get refugees, but she doesn’t look like either.

      ‘Good to see you, babe, but you know, punctuality is important in this line of work.’

      ‘Yeah, sorry about that. I brought you an orange.’

      There’s an orange on the table and I don’t know where it came from. I didn’t even see her fingers move. In those clothes there’s nowhere she could hide one of Fat Saul’s big Jaffas. This could still be a good day for Levi Peres.

       6.

       Silas СКАЧАТЬ