the portfolio, slid out a pile of proof sheets, placed them in front of Justin, and sat back in her chair.
He picked up the first.
The boy in the pictures was slim, almost scraggy. His hair was longish, his skin very pale. In a frame marked with an ‘x‘, he had his hands crammed into the front pockets of his jeans. His body was in profile and he appeared to have turned to look at the camera only an instant before. His expression was suspicious, anxious, slightly blurred.
It was a long moment before Justin realized he was looking at himself.
‘Well?’ said Agnes.
‘Well, what?’
‘Well, what do you think ? Isn’t it amazing?’
Amazing wasn’t the word he would have chosen. He looked like someone else entirely. Someone pale, anxious and well-dressed. Considering his mission, it was thrilling. Considering everything else, it was deeply disturbing.
‘That’s not what I look like.’
She beamed at him, triumphant. ‘It wasn’t. Until I saw you.’
He thought about this.
‘So what will you do with them?’ he asked finally, riffling through the sheaf of proofs.
‘They’re not important. You are. I can’t believe I found you in deepest Luton.’
Justin winced.
‘Don’t look so frightened. You don’t actually have to do anything. You’re perfect the way you are.’
What way am I?
‘But before I take more pictures, there’s somewhere we need to go. When are you available?’
He was always available. He looked at Agnes. Did she want to have sex with him? Did he want to have sex with her?
‘Where are we going?’
‘London.’
London? You could hardly get more dangerous than that. Kigali maybe. Or Baghdad. He glanced up at Agnes, who was calmly flipping through her diary as if entering the heart of urban darkness were the sort of thing she did casually, without considering the consequences – the international terrorists, homicidal taxi drivers, care-in-the-community cases let loose to push unsuspecting out-of-towners under trains.
He shuddered.
‘How about nine a.m. Saturday week at the station?’
Having no diary and no previous engagements, Justin said yes.
14
Long before Einstein thought up his theory of relativity, any child could explain that some days passed slower than others and some weeks appeared to drag pretty much into eternity.
The ten days between Justin’s two meetings with Agnes moved with as much directional momentum as a satellite tumbling in deep space. There were times when he sat in class staring at the huge black-and-white institutional clock, drifted off into a long reverie about his tragic demise in the concrete jungle or his future sexual prospects, and awoke hours later to find the hands in exactly the same position as before. It defied the laws of something or other, something he might have known more about had he paid attention during physics. Instead, he settled into a stalled world devoid of linear motion and gave up all hope that the day he longed for and feared in equal measure would ever arrive.
A quarter of a second later it did.
Justin awoke on the morning of their meeting, pulledan ancient green anorak over his new clothes, inserted himself back into the swiftly moving stream of ordinary time, and set off to meet Agnes.
Luton was not a big town, and it took less than fifteen minutes to walk to the station. As he walked, he fantasized about their day, rehearsed once again in his head for what had become, in the intervening period, a series of profoundly erotic possibilities. This line of thought forestalled more familiar and disturbing ones, the ones that involved being kidnapped by Estonian mafiosi, blown up by animal rights activists, repeatedly stabbed by a bus driver with a grudge. Each of the last ten nights he had floated off into a semi-dream world in which Agnes couldn’t keep her hands off him; each night their interaction became more elaborate, more erotically complex. At some point reality and fantasy switched places so that his
He picked up the first.
The boy in the pictures was slim, almost scraggy. His hair was longish, his skin very pale. In a frame marked with an ‘x‘, he had his hands crammed into the front pockets of his jeans. His body was in profile and he appeared to have turned to look at the camera only an instant before. His expression was suspicious, anxious, slightly blurred.
It was a long moment before Justin realized he was looking at himself.
‘Well?’ said Agnes.
‘Well, what?’
‘Well, what do you think ? Isn’t it amazing?’
Amazing wasn’t the word he would have chosen. He looked like someone else entirely. Someone pale, anxious and well-dressed. Considering his mission, it was thrilling. Considering everything else, it was deeply disturbing.
‘That’s not what I look like.’
She beamed at him, triumphant. ‘It wasn’t. Until I saw you.’
He thought about this.
‘So what will you do with them?’ he asked finally, riffling through the sheaf of proofs.
‘They’re not important. You are. I can’t believe I found you in deepest Luton.’
Justin winced.
‘Don’t look so frightened. You don’t actually have to do anything. You’re perfect the way you are.’
What way am I?
‘But before I take more pictures, there’s somewhere we need to go. When are you available?’
He was always available. He looked at Agnes. Did she want to have sex with him? Did he want to have sex with her?
‘Where are we going?’
‘London.’
London? You could hardly get more dangerous than that. Kigali maybe. Or Baghdad. He glanced up at Agnes, who was calmly flipping through her diary as if entering the heart of urban darkness were the sort of thing she did casually, without considering the consequences – the international terrorists, homicidal taxi drivers, care-in-the-community cases let loose to push unsuspecting out-of-towners under trains.
He shuddered.
‘How about nine a.m. Saturday week at the station?’
Having no diary and no previous engagements, Justin said yes.
14
Long before Einstein thought up his theory of relativity, any child could explain that some days passed slower than others and some weeks appeared to drag pretty much into eternity.
The ten days between Justin’s two meetings with Agnes moved with as much directional momentum as a satellite tumbling in deep space. There were times when he sat in class staring at the huge black-and-white institutional clock, drifted off into a long reverie about his tragic demise in the concrete jungle or his future sexual prospects, and awoke hours later to find the hands in exactly the same position as before. It defied the laws of something or other, something he might have known more about had he paid attention during physics. Instead, he settled into a stalled world devoid of linear motion and gave up all hope that the day he longed for and feared in equal measure would ever arrive.
A quarter of a second later it did.
Justin awoke on the morning of their meeting, pulledan ancient green anorak over his new clothes, inserted himself back into the swiftly moving stream of ordinary time, and set off to meet Agnes.
Luton was not a big town, and it took less than fifteen minutes to walk to the station. As he walked, he fantasized about their day, rehearsed once again in his head for what had become, in the intervening period, a series of profoundly erotic possibilities. This line of thought forestalled more familiar and disturbing ones, the ones that involved being kidnapped by Estonian mafiosi, blown up by animal rights activists, repeatedly stabbed by a bus driver with a grudge. Each of the last ten nights he had floated off into a semi-dream world in which Agnes couldn’t keep her hands off him; each night their interaction became more elaborate, more erotically complex. At some point reality and fantasy switched places so that his
Similar Books
Hotel Iris
Yōko Ogawa
Chasing Rhodes (Rock Falls #1)
Anne Jolin
The Promise
Ann Weisgarber
Dragonlinks
Paul Collins
Forging the Darksword
Margaret Weis
Kaylee's Keeper
Maren Smith
Broken Sleep
Bruce Bauman
