Absolute Zero Cool Read online

  ‘Y’know, I think Karlsson liked who he was. I don’t think he’d have had any issues with what happened to Cassie.’

  ‘Because the guy was a sociopath.’ He shrugs. ‘Who wants to live like that?’ He leans in, drops the shades, pierces me with the Newman-blue eye. ‘You think I wouldn’t like a little Rosie to play with?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He sits back, slipping the shades back in place. ‘I’m not feeling it, if that’s what you’re asking. But they say men don’t become fathers until their baby is born, maybe even a while after.’

  ‘That was true for me, yeah.’

  ‘Look, all I’m asking for is one more go, see if I can’t make it out this time.’

  ‘Out of this limbo.’

  ‘Sure. Maybe if I was to get some kind of written permission from the old folks, so I’d have something to show Cassie when she found out about the euthanasia. That could help.’

  ‘It’d help you and Cassie, maybe. But it wouldn’t do much for the conflict in the story.’

  ‘That’s the other thing,’ he says. ‘I think you need a different kind of conflict. I mean, a hospital porter bumping off old people? You can get that stuff in the newspapers. Why would anyone want to read it in a book?’

  ‘I guess it’d depend on how interesting the killer is.’

  ‘Between you and me, you’re no Patricia Highsmith.’

  I allow that I’m not, although I remind him it’s comedy crime I write.

  ‘If you want my opinion,’ he says, ‘the conflicts that work best are between the reader and a character they like, okay, but who’s doing stuff they wouldn’t generally tolerate. Lear,’ he ticks them off on his fingers as he goes, ‘Raskolnikov, Hazel Motes, Long John Silver, Tom Ripley––’

  ‘I take your point.’

  ‘Your mistake,’ he says, ‘was to make Karlsson a total wackjob. No one who wasn’t a complete fruit could like him.’

  ‘Okay, so say I make you likeable. What then?’

  ‘We blow up the hospital.’

  After lunch, a picnic out on the decking, I tell Debs I’m half-thinking about having another go at the Karlsson story.

  ‘Who?’ she says.

  I tape Rosie’s nappy in place, snap the buttons on her baby-gro. ‘Karlsson, the hospital porter.’

  She frowns, remembering. ‘The guy who killed all the old people?’

  ‘I’m thinking of making it a comedy. But don’t worry, I’ll work on it in the evenings, once the other stuff is out of the way.’

  ‘Your father’s a space cadet,’ she tells Rosie. The child, warm and dry again, gurgles like a faulty faucet.

  ‘It’s just a redraft,’ I say. ‘Nothing major.’

  ‘I’ll redraft the marriage licence,’ Debs says. She tickles Rosie’s tummy. ‘But don’t worry, it’ll be nothing major.’

  I: winter

  The cancer counsellor waves a rolled-up newspaper to shoo us away from the windows so his clients won’t have to watch us smoking. We are their bolted horses.

  Some of my co-smokers drift away around the corner to where a breeze whips beneath the glass corridor connecting the hospital’s old and new buildings. There they huddle together, shivering. It’s a grey December day, sleet spattering the glass. The wind a cruel easterly.

  The cancer counsellor raps on the window, jerks his head and thumb. I flip him the bird.

  He opens the window and leans out, beckons me across. I stroll over. When I’m close enough, he mimes writing down the name on my plastic tag.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ I say. ‘You’re miming a disciplinary action?’

  This provokes him into taking out a pen and writing my name on the back of his hand. ‘You’re on report, Karlsson.’

  ‘Ingrate. If we didn’t smoke, you’d be out of a job.’

  His face reddens. He doesn’t like being reminded of his role as parasite. Not many do. ‘Between you and me,’ I say, ‘stress is the big killer.’

  He’s fuming as he closes the window. I try to make the connection between the patients’ cancer and my smoking but it can’t be done. There’s a fuzzy blurring of divisions, okay, and carcinogens either side of the wire. But I’m not finding the tangent point.

  My line for today comes from Henry G. Strauss: I have every sympathy with the American who was so horrified by what he had read of the effects of smoking that he gave up reading.

  •

  ‘That’s not very different from the first draft,’ Billy says. We’re out on the decking again, another beautiful morning. I’m hoping the good weather holds because I’m not sure I want to invite him inside.

  ‘I think it works,’ I say. ‘I mean, you’re going to have to be at least a little bit weird, otherwise no one’ll believe it when you decide to blow up the hospital.’

  ‘Fair go. But I don’t know if I should flip him the bird. It’s a bit, what, gratuitous? If it was me I’d be a bit more subtle than that.’

  ‘I’ll take it under consideration,’ I say, making a note.

  ‘What’s next?’ he says.

  ‘You shave the skinny guy for his hernia operation.’

  ‘Roll it there, Collette.’

  •

  Today I shave a skinny guy, Tiernan, for a hernia procedure. The latex gloves are cold but he doesn’t seem to notice. I believe he’s trying to pretend another man isn’t fiddling around in his crotch.

  Instead he tells me that a friend of his knows someone who died under anaesthetic. Tiernan says he doesn’t want to die not knowing he’s dying. What he’s really saying is, he doesn’t want to die. What he’s really saying is, he has no one to confide in except the guy who shaves strangers’ genitals.

  ‘I do shaves,’ I say. ‘I push wheelchairs and lift the heavy stuff when the male nurses are busy. If you want a priest I’ll see what I can do. But it’s only a hernia op. Catch yourself on.’

  He’s shocked. I swab away the last of the cheap shaving foam. ‘You think you have problems?’ I say. ‘I have to look at dicks all day. Want to swap jobs?’

  He works in a travel agency and spends his day emailing pornography to friends who pretend to appreciate what he understands to be irony.

  ‘You don’t want to die?’ I say. ‘Then do something. If you do something you won’t mind dying so much. Paint a picture. Have a kid. Then let it go. Dying isn’t so different from just letting go.’

  But he isn’t listening. He’s back thinking about this guy his friend knew, the one who died without knowing he was dying. I get a bang out of that. If there’s one thing dead people know, it’s that they’re dead. And if that’s anything like the way the living know they’re alive, it’s not such a big deal.

  He watches me peel off the latex gloves.

  ‘Pay attention,’ I say. ‘You might need to draw on this performance some day. You’d be surprised at how many people learn to live without dignity. Statistically speaking, you’ve every chance of becoming one of those people.’

  The matron arrives. I wonder if they teach bustling at matron school. She throws back Tiernan’s robe. Matrons don’t usually check on hernia preps but I shaved the wrong side a couple of weeks ago.

  ‘How are you feeling, Mr Tiernan?’ she says. She says this so we can both pretend she isn’t checking my work.

  ‘I’m parched for a drink,’ the guy says.

  ‘It won’t be long now,’ she says. ‘It’ll soon be over.’ She speaks to me without looking in my direction. ‘Karlsson, I’d like you to take Mr Tiernan down to theatre at three forty-five.’

  ‘Let’s hope nothing funny happens on the way,’ I say. But she’s not listening.

  •

  He lounges back in the chair, tapping his lower lip with the butt of a pencil.

  ‘You’re still calling me Karlsson,’ he says.

  ‘Technically speaking,’ I say, ‘it’s the other characters who call you Karlsson.’

  ‘So have them call me Billy.’

>   ‘I could do that, yeah. Except if you become Billy, you’re not Karlsson anymore.’

  ‘I’m not Karlsson anymore.’

  ‘Not to me, or you. But if the other characters start calling you Billy, they’ll expect to see someone who looks like a Billy. And I’d have to go through the whole bloody thing changing your appearance every time it’s mentioned. Your hair, your eyes, the way you walk . . .’

  ‘Are we doing this,’ he says, ‘or are we doing this?’

  I’m none too keen on his tone.

  ‘No disrespect, Billy, but I’m doing you a favour here. Okay? And if we’re going to do this on top of my own stuff, we can’t be farting around worrying about every tiny detail.

  ‘What you need to do,’ I say, ‘is think of yourself as an actor. Yeah? Make like the story’s a Mike Leigh movie, or one of those Dogme flicks, and you’re contributing to Karlsson as he goes along, inventing dialogue for him, little tics and quirks. Making him you, eventually, but being subtle about it. How’s that sound?’

  He takes a while to consider.

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’ll give it a whirl.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. Listen,’ I say, ‘I’m thinking of leaving out the Pope-Camus stuff.’

  ‘What Pope-Camus stuff?’

  ‘The goalkeepers bit.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I forget that one,’ he says. ‘What’d I say there?’

  •

  Albert Camus and Pope John Paul II were both goalkeepers in their youth. I like to imagine them at either end of a stadium, punting the ball back and forth while hooligans riot on the terraces.

  As former goalies, Camus and Pope John Paul II may or may not have sniggered knowingly when they read about James Joyce’s ambition to be both keeper and crucifier of his nation’s conscience.

  As for me, I was born. Later I learned to read, then write. Since then it’s been mostly books. Books and masturbation.

  Writing and masturbation have in common temporary relief and the illusion of achievement. Many great writers have been avid onanists, and many avid onanists have been great writers. Often the only difference, as a point of refinement, is whether the wanking or writing comes first.

  Me, I write some, I tug some, I go to bed. Only a barbarian would wank first, then write.

  My line for today comes from the Danish novelist, Isak Dinesen: I write a little every day, without hope and without despair.

  •

  Jonathan Williams is a jovial Welshman, albeit one who is a dead ringer for every kindly English professor you’ve ever seen in a Hollywood movie.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘I didn’t give the Karlsson story to anyone.’ His voice booms down the phone. ‘I wouldn’t do that without your permission.’

  ‘Not even for a reader’s report?’

  ‘Not so far as I recall. And I believe I would have remembered,’ he laughs, ‘a reader’s report on that particular gem.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Why?’ he says. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Not a problem per se.’ I tell him I’ve taken a sabbatical, six weeks at the artists’ retreat, and about Billy’s idea of bringing Karlsson to life. ‘I’m just wondering where he got his hands on the story.’

  ‘I’m afraid I have no idea,’ he says, ‘but he certainly didn’t get it from me.’

  Jonathan is no longer my agent, but being a gentleman he asks how things are going. I tell him my editor at Harcourt is banging on about the deadline.

  ‘Forget about him,’ he urges. ‘Get it right, that’s the most important thing. In ten years’ time, no one will care if you got it in by deadline or not.’

  Sage words.

  He says, ‘If you don’t mind me asking . . .’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Did you apply for Arts Council funding, towards the cost of the artists’ retreat?’

  ‘I did, yeah, but no joy. Apparently comedy crime doesn’t qualify.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you used the Karlsson story as part of your application,’ he says.

  ‘I did, actually. They needed to see a couple of samples of my work, and Karlsson was just lying there doing nothing.’

  ‘That’s probably it,’ he says. ‘Someone at the Arts Council read the story and passed it on to your friend Billy. Utterly unethical, of course, but there you are.’

  ‘And there’s no way of finding out who might have read it?’

  ‘Probably not. Those assessments are anonymous, so there’s no chance of canvassing. But I can make some discreet enquiries, if you’d like.’

  ‘No, you’re grand.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he says. ‘The rights issue, I mean. If there’s any doubt at any point down the line, I’ll tell anyone who wants to know I read it in its original form and you’re the sole author.’

  ‘Thanks, Jonathan.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. Oh, and be sure to tell Anna I was asking for her when you see her next. Lovely woman, isn’t she?’

  Anna MacKerrig, daughter to Lord Lawrence MacKerrig, whose Scots-Presbyterian sense of noblesse oblige was fundamental to the establishing of the Sligo artists’ retreat some twenty years ago.

  ‘I haven’t actually met her yet,’ I say, ‘but I’ll certainly pass that on when I see her.’

  ‘Very good. Well, I’ll talk to— Oh, I knew there was a reason I rang.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The Big O,’ he says. ‘An Italian publisher has made an offer. The money is little more than a token gesture, of course, but . . .’

  ‘No, that’s grand, we’ll take it. It’d be nice to see it in Italian.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it just?’ He chuckles. ‘Maybe the advance will pay for a weekend in Rome.’

  Maybe. If I swim there.

  ‘Talk soon,’ he says, and is gone again.

  ‘Y’know,’ Billy says, ‘I don’t think I should want to be a writer. I can see why you had it in there, to suggest Karlsson has some kind of depth. But now . . .’

  ‘You’ve changed your mind since you’ve met me.’

  I’m joking, but he nods. ‘What I’m thinking,’ he says, ‘is that Karlsson wanting to be a writer, to be creative, that’ll clash with him wanting to blow up the hospital.’

  ‘The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.’

  ‘Hmmmm,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure, if we want people to like me, that I should be throwing out nihilist sound bites. All that Year Zero stuff doesn’t play too well in the ’burbs.’

  ‘How about this?’ I say. ‘You want to be a writer at the start, except all you get are rejection letters. Then you get sour and decide to blow up the hospital.’

  ‘Too narcissistic,’ he says. ‘Only a writer could be that self-absorbed.’

  ‘But blowing up a hospital, that’s not narcissistic at all.’

  ‘It’s an attention-grabber, sure. But you’re the one who left me so’s I need to do something drastic.’

  ‘Leave me out of it, Billy. The hospital’s your idea.’

  ‘I didn’t start out like this, man. If you’d have asked me way back when, I’d have told you my dream was to skipper a charter yacht in the Greek islands.’

  ‘A hospital porter? Skippering yachts in the Aegean?’

  His eyes narrow. ‘What,’ he says, ‘the plebs aren’t allowed to dream?’

  ‘The plebs can dream whatever they want, Billy, but this isn’t Mills and fucking Boon. Maybe if your dream was plausible, y’know . . .’

  ‘A plausible dream?’

  ‘Call it an achievable fantasy. Like, you can want whatever you want, and good luck in the cup, but if it doesn’t play ball with the story’s logic then it doesn’t go in.’

  ‘That’s a bit limiting, isn’t it?’

  ‘You can’t have unicorns in outer space, Billy.’

  He grins. ‘You could if they had specially designed helmets.’

  ‘Fine. You want unicorns on Mars, hospital porters skippering yachts, we can do it all. Bu
t no one’s going to buy it.’

  ‘What you’re saying is, you’re not good enough to make it convincing.’ A faint shrug. ‘Maybe that’s why you’re still slotting your fiction in around your day job, taking sabbaticals for rewrites.’

  ‘Maybe it is. So maybe we should forget this whole thing so I can go back to actually enjoying what I write.’

  He gets up. ‘Let’s take a break,’ he says. ‘We’re obviously not going to get anything constructive done today.’ He rolls a cigarette from my makings, lights up. ‘One more thing,’ he says, exhaling. ‘You can’t go threatening to pull the plug. You’re either doing this or you’re not, and if you’re not fully committed then it isn’t going to work. The start should be the easy bit. If you’re finding it hard going now, it’ll be a nightmare when we get into the endgame.’

  He’s right, but somehow apologising feels a step too far.

  ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I won’t be here tomorrow. We’re taking Rosie to see Debs’s parents.’

  ‘No worries.’

  ‘I won’t be back until Sunday evening.’

  ‘See you Monday morning, so.’

  ‘Monday, yeah.’

  Debs is standing inside the chalet’s patio doors with Rosie humped over her shoulder, patting the little girl’s back to bring up wind. I put the manuscript and coffee mugs on the counter and hunch down to meet Rosie’s gaze, but she’s glassy-eyed, blissed out after a long feed.

  ‘Y’know,’ Debs says, ‘it’s just as well no one else can see what I can see. I’d hate for anyone to think my husband was a mentaller who needs to put in a couple of hours talking to his characters to get set up for the day.’

  ‘Want me to take her?’

  ‘Good timing.’ She hands Rosie across, sniffing her as she goes. ‘I think she has nappy issues. And change her baby-gro, will you? Put her little kimono outfit on.’

  ‘The white one?’

  ‘No, the pink one, the one your mother bought her. She’s cute in pink.’