Read Black Chalk for Free Online Page B

as they talked. Something about abortion, puns, satsumas. Chad couldn’t stop thinking about what he had witnessed at the Game Soc stall.
    ‘Well, the college bar’s closed so how about the Churchill Arms?’ said Jack.
    ‘Let’s go,’ said Jolyon.
    ‘No, wait,’ said Chad. ‘I just want to visit one last stall.’
    *   *   *
    IX(i)    I am still abuzz from my time spent outside. (I will try to forget the ugliness of its ending.) I now feel so fresh in my mind that I barely require mnemonics to perform my afternoon routine. I use these precious hours not only for writing but also in preparation for less lucid days.
    I go to the cake tin in the kitchen and dole out three weeks’ worth of pills. (I have only a limited supply of ice-cube trays in which to keep daily doses.) I delight in unlocking child-safe lids and tearing open new boxes. I ease pills from their foil-covered trays with my thumbs, a diversion as pleasurable as playing pop with a fresh sheet of bubble wrap.
    I have accumulated an impressive pharmaceutical collection. Diazepam, lorazepam, Codipar, diclofenac, Vicodin, dihydrocodeine, OxyContin, Percocet …
    I adore the strange names of these drugs. I think the exoticism forms part of the appeal, like the philatelist’s enjoyment of stamps issued in strange and distant lands.
    Of the many collectors’ stratagems I have devised over the last fourteen years, simple blackmail has often proved the most effective. A naive doctor, an older gentleman, usually. Doctor Proctor is nearing the end of his career rainbow, his retirement gold awaits. You lead him gently into overprescription and soon you have him where you want him. Your requests increase, new varieties, everything in greater bulk. He says this is not possible, you start throwing names at him. Medical councils, local politicians, newspapers. Being a journalist, you tell him, you can always claim you were carrying out a sting. He is already in over his head, the risk is all his.
    Your collection grows.
    *   *   *
    IX(ii)    I stop typing to take in a lungful of world, to breathe in its scents as I stand by my window. And that’s when I see something wonderful. Small and fading in the southern evening sky, I catch the returning airplane’s loops and swoops just a moment before they start to melt away. HELLO NEW YORK, reads the sky. And then a few seconds later, when its first-written letters have faded, O NEW YORK.
    I clap my hands and the air in my soul turns bright.
    And while I have been describing to you this propitious sight, its cryptic significance has dawned on me. Yes, I must stop taking my pills. I am in serious training, the outside world is my medicine now. I must wean myself off them.
    And I promise. I won’t forget. Starting tomorrow.
    *   *   *
    X    They were arranged in height order with the tallest at the left. He wore a single-breasted jacket, woollen and greeny-grey, and beneath this a crisp white shirt with only the topmost button unfastened. The shirt was tucked into jeans with a snowy fade to them, half a decade or more out of date. Tallest’s haircut was short and neat, the hair parted to one side. He wore spectacles with large teardrop lenses like those of an aviator’s sunglasses. He had about him the air of a young London accountant dressed for a weekend in the Cotswolds. Twenty-five but going on fifty.
    The other two were similarly dressed with jeans and tucked-in shirts but without jackets or glasses. Middle had black hair both on top of his head and sprouting from his nose like frayed electric cables. Shortest was a fading blond. They looked like science postgrads, serious types when they weren’t quoting from Douglas Adams or Monty Python.
    Chad was normally so nervous but now he was leading from the front, first up to the stall and planting his palms with intent. Jack had seemed ready to say something but Chad snatched away the opportunity. ‘I have a proposition for you,’ he said,