Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat Read online

  “That paranoia again? Floyd, they don’t Relocate you for quitting a job.”

  “It isn’t paranoia. It’s fact.”

  “Is it? I’ve heard the same rumours, Floyd. But I choose not to believe them.”

  “Sure.” I wink at her. “Because you’re an angel. A sweet, rattle-brained angel.”

  “So you say. But I’m also right—besides, even if I’m not, you’d be the one to find a way out.”

  “You promise I’m that ingenious?”

  “You don’t take a great deal of store in yourself, do you, babe?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Let me put it straight up: if you don’t quit, the job will kill you. I think you know that as well as I do.”

  “Maybe. Probably, even.”

  “And if the job doesn’t kill you, maybe this will.” She holds one of the empty bottles aloft.

  “Now you sound like my sister.”

  “I’m not sure which one’ll get you first, but they’re one and the same. Cause and effect.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing?” I light up a cigarette.

  “You’re not serious.”

  “No, I guess I’m not. Though it would be better than Relocation.”

  I lie back to rest my head on her lap and she doesn’t seem to mind. She looks at me with those honey-coloured eyes of hers, then leans forward and kisses me. She squirms out from under me, thoughtfully stops me from cracking my skull on the floor, and lies down beside me, her face close to mine.

  “Floyd, it’s difficult for me to admit this, but I’m afraid.”

  “I know.”

  “And?”

  “So am I.”

  “Really?” The smallest of smiles curls the right side of her mouth, dimpling her cheek.

  “Really. God, yeah.” And so I am. For her. For the world. For where my next drink is coming from.

  “So what’ll we do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Babe, I was hoping you could give me something more reassuring than that.”

  “Hey, I’m trying.”

  “I know, I know.”

  I make out Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in black & white on the TV. Aces!

  “You ever see this flick?”

  Laurel rolls herself over. “Doesn’t look familiar. Why?”

  “It’s rather cool. They have one of those love-hate relationships that Hollywood did so well back then.”

  “Back when?”

  “In the 1930s.”

  “You’ve seen every bloody movie.” She laughs, and I’m grateful for it. “Does it have a happy ending?”

  “Yeah. These kinds of films always did.”

  She snuggles close. “I’m glad.”

  Laurel kisses my arm and we eventually fall asleep watching the film. Sometime in the middle of the night, I wake up from a nightmare. I give Laurel a peck on the lips as I make myself scarce.

  the parent crap

  I woke up to the bellow and holler of my mother. Goddamn.

  “Floyd!” she was bleating. “Floyd, wake up. It’s past midday. Floyd!”

  I jerked up, looking wildly about for the remote. Her face loomed on the TV screen, her high-decibel screech as severe and relentless as ever. And, as always, she’d bypassed telephone protocol and connected herself when I didn’t answer. I needed to remember to take that privilege away from her, but I knew she’d raise holy hell if I did. Ashita.

  “Floyd! Good afternoon!”

  “Huh—?”

  “I said good afternoon!”

  “Yeah, yeah—right you are. Hello, Iva.”

  “Lord, you look absolutely awful.”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “You’ve been drinking again.”

  I really couldn’t argue—there was a dead vodka bottle on my lap. I held it aloft in dumb reverie. “Just a nightcap. I’ve been having some problems getting a decent night’s sleep, and some pretty appalling dreams.”

  “I see.” And so she did. These conversations would be much easier without the view-screen. “Dorothy told me about Her—” (‘Her’ was my mother’s euphemistic way of mentioning Veronica, a pronoun she’d started to use religiously after V was Relocated) “—and I wanted to let you know I’m sorry.”

  “That’s really appreciated.”

  “But why I had to find this out from my daughter and not my son is beyond me. Why on earth didn’t you let me know? How could you be so hurtful? I’m your mother!”

  “Look, I’m sorry. It’s all been a little crazy and out of whack.”

  “Well, if you want my opinion—” (here we go) “—I think that you’re lucky.” Her face now filled the whole screen, creating a menacing fish-eye effect that let me see up her nostrils. It was disturbing—like one of Terry Gilliam’s celluloid nightmares. “I think you’re very, very lucky,” she hammered home, her breath frosting the screen.

  “Lucky? How do you get lucky from all of this?” I could never resist taking her bait, even if I knew she’d start reeling me in.

  “Well, now there won’t be the medical bills to pay. You can start saving, so long as you don’t squander your money on all that liquor—and then you can move out of that hole you call an apartment. I could help you find a new place to live, one inside the Dome, closer to your family and more secure. A change of scenery will make a world of difference, Floyd. You need to start fresh.”

  “Right. Yeah.” I rose up from the couch, dislodging a bottle that dropped loudly to the floor. My mother frowned—at least, I think it was a frown. It was difficult to tell, what with the tight skin stretched across a forehead that refused to budge.

  My mother, like Dorothy, had undertaken a lot of cosmetic enhancements. There was her imperturbable forehead, the perma-makeup, the teeth like effervescent white slabs. She may have looked decades younger than she should have, younger than I looked, even, and more beautiful than the woman I remembered from my childhood—but that didn’t in any manner doll up the underlying personality that’d driven my father to his own alcoholic distraction.

  “You’ve got to think about the future.”

  “The future, huh? Got’cha.”

  “Oh, for god’s sake, what is wrong with you? If I were there I’d give you a good shake! You’re still a young man, and where there’s life, there’s hope.”

  “Don’t crowd me, mum.” Blah, blah, and more blah. I’d heard the rap before.

  “Take this opportunity. Don’t write yourself off!”

  “Are you talking about my job?”

  “Of course not—I’m referring to your—lifestyle, if that’s what you want to call it!”

  “Ah. I would’ve sworn you meant my work.” My mother was well aware that I worked at Seeker Branch—and while she abstractly knew I helped rid the world of Deviants she just didn’t have any clue what it was a Seeker actually did. Even if I went out on a limb and told her the details, I doubt she’d listen.

  She was a member of the unthinking and forever faithful upper-middle-class electorate that kept the candles burning, furnished the keys to the economy, and kept the current government in office. For her, the Bill of Deviations was just another unintelligible red-tape amendment to the Bill of Rights—an equally unfathomable document best left to legal types.

  Don’t get me wrong, she really believed getting Deviants off the streets made her ‘safer’, so she was for it, taxes and all. She attended neighbourhood watch and constabulary meetings to marinate herself in the perjuries the authorities oozed. To put it bluntly, she believed all the crap that the media propagated without question. That said, it didn’t mean she wanted her very own son slapping down Deviants—she still had delusional aspirations for my future career as a brilliant lawyer.

  “Can we talk about this later? I appreciate your call, but it’s really not a good time to start planning new dreams with silver linings and outboard motors, okay?”

  “Very well. Promise me you’ll at least think about it in the meantime.”

  “Can do.”

  “You’re not just saying that?”

  “No. Never.”

  “And you have to remember—we all did expect it to happen eventually.”

  “What?”

  “That she would pass away.” There was an interesting turn of expression. Veronica’s death was anything but the gentleness ‘passing away’ implied. “At least she doesn’t have to suffer the pain or the humiliation anymore. At last she’s found peace. Floyd, if you want my opinion, I really do think you should have opted for her voluntary euthanasia a long time ago. It would have been kinder. I told you that months ago.”

  “Don’t brag about it! Damn, Iva, Veronica was my wife not some ailing pet.” I hated when she started getting religious on me—it all sounded like condescending bullshit.

  My mother’s face stiffened a fraction more than was already the case and became hard like marble. “Exactly, son—past tense. Was. Legally, she ceased to be your spouse when she was Relocated. Her body was diseased. She would never have recovered. She would never have been the same, regardless. Tainted. I told you this years ago when it happened. Why don’t you ever listen to me?”

  There was no point in arguing with her. Early on, I’d tried to cling to the hope that with the right treatment V could’ve recuperated—even when the possibility was washed down, scraped away, and dismembered. Truth was, the whole time I knew deep down that I was lying to myself. Hospitals didn’t exist to heal or rehabilitate. I caught myself scratching the inside of my right elbow—a nervous habit of mine whenever I spoke to my mother—and forced myself to stop.

  “Okay, Iva, I’ve got to get going.”

  “Perhaps you could see somebody. I contacted the local constabulary and they told me that DevCare has a helpline for people like you, to assist you in getting over the loss. I’ve got their number right here.”

  “It’s cool, ma. I’ll cope.” DevCare. Hah! I’d met those creeps before, through work, and they were the last people I wanted to ‘chat’ with. They were more interested in finding signs of Deviancy in the bereaved than providing actual help.

  “Alright then. Let me know if you change your mind. And you’ll be fine?”

  “Positively. Thanks.”

  “Very well. I have to go—I have a public forum to attend this afternoon. But one more thing before I hang up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Please don’t call me ‘ma’, Floyd. You know how much that grates on me.”

  With that, she was gone and the volume on the TV lifted again. There was a news program on and something was being said about some Deviant riot somewhere. I started surfing the channels. More news. Ads. Cricket. Commercials. News. Infomercial. Music videos. Indoor golf. Ads. Ads. Soccer. Inane soap opera. Reality TV. A sienna-coloured mountain goat standing atop a bluff. Ads. Music videos. Ads. Commercials. Weather.

  A mountain goat? I backtracked, but couldn’t find the beast. Instead I found the latest stock market buzz, the news, indoor lawn bowling, ads, some other sport I didn’t recognize, a handicraft show, a cooking program, an infomercial, and still more ads.

  Where in blazes were all the movies?

  close your head

  The Express Light-Rail Tram rocketed along its single track and weaved effortlessly under the glowing neon billboards between darkened buildings, over the twisted frames of cable transmission towers, through floodlit stations, beside tall apartment blocks, above swelling canals. Along the route were supplementary luminescent ads designed to be easily deciphered at approximately one hundred and forty kilometres an hour. They also served to block out some of the miserable view of the city, which was a bit of a plus.

  Trails of water spattered across the tram windows, rolled rapid-fire along the glass, and disappeared again into the night. The rain was a constant in this world, along with Deviancy and bad advertising. This was South Yarra District—one of the seedier, more destitute sectors of the walled-in city. Well over three hundred thousand people lived in state-organized chaos within a five square kilometre area—separated from the inner urban area by literally hundreds of checkpoints and secured buffer zones. As a Seeker, I was one of the merry few who had full access to the entire city, for better or—more fittingly—worse.

  For a short while as the express line dipped down I could briefly make out a row of massive, canary-yellow concrete pylons that stretched for a couple of kilometres and provided support for a set of fifty-storey high Housing Commission funded apartment buildings. Then we were ascending quickly and swept past the windows of dim lounge rooms and kitchenettes, past the bleak lives of the multitude of grey aimless people locked away in those empty little boxes. Don’t get me wrong, I was one of them—though I lived in a better box in a slightly nicer part of the city.

  Of course the shuttle tram never stopped here. It ventured into the district only as a short cut—the route was controversial when it was built, as it was completely detached from the neighbourhoods it passed through. If you focused on the flurry of ads it was possible to completely ignore the extreme poverty, deprivation, and degradation that lay beyond. I was certain most passengers who caught the ride did just that. I used to.

  The shuttle was jammed with the elite, all doing their best to emulate shop-store animitronic mannequins—reading newspapers, tapping away on Mitt-Mates, or tuning out on personal idInteracts—anything to avoid being social. They were all decked out in designer suits and ensemble outfits, but that was just for starters—I could see the augmentations in their stature, their faces, their hair, their white, glistening teeth. The price tag for the amount of cosmetic enhancement in my carriage alone would’ve afforded your own private Idaho in the Pacific somewhere, if that were still possible—or how about swank apartments for a tenement’s worth of the South Yarra residents we were whizzing by?

  Maybe it was the old paranoia, but I felt like the observant ones were eyeing me back. I hadn’t shaved for days, my off-the-rack suit was falling apart at the seams—blame the acid rain for that, not me—and my coat was faded and disheveled. The button on my shirt collar was missing, I’d discarded my tie, and my battered old hat was parked on my left knee. My coat and hat could’ve done with a healthy dry-cleaning several times over, and they probably reeked of alcohol and stale cigarettes, but then again, so did I. I didn’t mind messing with upper crust heads in this low-key, repellent kind of way.

  I had with me a bunch of photos I’d picked up from my sister Dorothy. I don’t know why she offered them to me, or why I accepted them. I took them out of a yellow Hylax plasti-pack and sifted through: happy snaps of me and V, some of Veronica’s parents, and one of V with her arms around Dorothy and my mother, Iva—though I barely recognized my own family as they were still their old pre-enhancement selves. That must’ve been taken about five years ago.

  The surprising thing about this particular picture is how happy all three women looked together. V wasn’t sick then, after all. She wasn’t yet tainted, as my mother had so plainly put it. In many ways it was difficult to believe that it’d been over three years since V was snatched out from under my nose and Relocated—first briefly to a departmental Sanitation Facility and then, once diagnosed and processed, to the underground Hospital annex where she’d been locked away, deprived of the basic human rights the rest of us struggled to retain, and in the depths of which she’d eventually died.

  I couldn’t ever hope to conceive how ultimately degrading that process was, nor coerce myself to relate to you the horror stories I’d heard about systematic maltreatment, dehumanization, and relentless abuse. Suffice to say that Veronica had suffered through imprisonment without contact with the outside world, friends, or family—aside from those early visits I’d made—let alone sight of the sky, or even the rain. Not that she was really missing much.

  My mind drifted and I could see a grainy, staccato vision of Veronica, like she was shot through an archaic hand-held 8mm camera, walking beside me, her face turning towards me with that scratchy smile, those green eyes.

  Stop it. Think about something else.

  I leaned against the window and tried to zone everything out.

  I was back out in the torrential rain at Bush Street, in Abbotsford District. Oh well. To work, Holmes. Activities. Remember? Your job. No choice. Etcetera.

  I considered my options and looked about at the ruined streetscape. Everything seemed a bit off. Another Seeker in this same situation might begin with a circuitous reconnaissance. I preferred to stay right here, in this pseudo-Harry Lime alcove, lurking in the shadows out of harm’s way and minding my own store. I could be here all night—though the thought smacked me round a bit. Even were I paid by the hour I wouldn’t exactly cherish this part of the job.

  I was also pining away for a cigarette, but lighting up here and now would’ve been prize buffoon material—not only would it offer up a flashlight warning to any prying eyes out there, but it’d be snuffed out in an instant by the spray from the dismal rain. My face was dripping with the stuff and my coat dragged down on me like the pockets had an anvil apiece. So much for waterproof lining. But the cigarette and the coat weren’t my only concerns. Knowing what the rain did to my clothing, I could only fear what it did to my skin and innards. I’d need to scrub my face when I got home—even before downing that essential tumbler of vodka.

  The area was dead silent, or, as silent as it got—the rain served as eternal background noise as it washed across concrete, metal, asphalt, and plastic awnings then gushed and gurgled into an overflowing drain somewhere close by. It was eclipsed only by the occasional sound of thunder reverberating from building to building. It got so you barely noticed it.

  My hands, stuffed inside my coat pockets alongside the anvils, were busy picking at the stitching therein when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye—somewhere down to the left. I shot a glance in that direction but there was nothing now. Maybe just a rat. Or possibly even that chronically misplaced cat from The Third Man. I hadn’t actually seen either a cat or a rat in an age, apart from Laurel’s pride and joy, Thursby—who was never, ever, allowed out of her apartment.