Read The Gap of Time for Free Online

shrink.”
    “No? We did.”
    “We needed parents.”
    “That’s my point. I’m going home.”
    “Where’s his mother?”
    “She’s there—look, I know you find it odd that I had a child with a woman I don’t live with or love, but we know what we’re doing.”
    “So why is Zel not talking?”
    “That’s pretty low, Leo.”
    Leo looked away. He said, “We have an investors’ meeting tomorrow.”
    Zeno said, “There are different ways of doing family. OK?”
    “Is it really so easy and civilised?” said Leo.
    “Marriage is one option of many,” said Xeno.
    “Along with adultery and divorce.”
    “What’s with you?”
    “I’m pissed off with you for dumping the meeting.”
    “My son is more important than a meeting.”
    “You calling me a bad father?”
    “No—you just called me a bad father. Can we stop this? We had horrible families. Every generation gets the chance to do it better.”
    “You sound like a mindfulness DVD.”
    “And you sound like a workaholic psychopath.”
    “At least I’m normal. I’m not gay pretending to be straight or straight pretending to be gay and I don’t use my child like a human shield.”
    “That’s enough!” Xeno picked up his bag and turned to leave. Leo wanted him to leave and he wanted him to stay. It was always the same.
    “Xeno! Go if you want to but don’t make an excuse. That’s all I’m saying. You can never put it like it is, can you? You slide sideways every time.”
    Xeno dumped down his bag on the white sofa and turned back to Leo.
    “You want to look at the game? I made some changes. Let’s take an hour right now and go through it.”
    Xeno started unstrapping his bag to get his laptop. Leo went to the fountain and took a long drink of water. “You put some balls in it? The investors felt like it was love and peace and flower power in la-la land.”
    “You don’t get points by killing a hooker, it’s true.”
    Xeno clicked into the game. “This is not ready and I don’t want to be held to it but I’ve devised something different. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for years, on and off—my Big Game.”
    “What you do sells. Stick to it. The soft games don’t sell.”
    “So I can’t experiment because you can’t see the ££££ signs?”
    “Cut the artist and his philosophy—just show me the game.”
    Xeno dropped down a moving screen of cities, their icons recognisable at once—Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate, the Harbour Bridge, the Empire State…
    “You can choose one of nine cities—London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Barcelona, New York, Hong Kong, Sydney, Shanghai. I’m sick of vertiginous cliffs and cloaks. Dystopian bombed-out landscapes. Trolls. Testosterone. Stolen cars. There are no cars in the game.”
    “No cars? Who’s buying a game with no cars?”
    “The city is occupied by Dark Angels. You can be on the side of the Angels or you can be part of the Resistance. The Angels have two, four or six wings. Some of the wings have eyes. Angels have two dicks.”
    “Now you’re talking,” said Leo. “So all the Angels are male?”
    “No. But they have a double dick.”
    “So who do they fuck?”
    “Whoever they can. It makes no difference; they’re sterile. Angels are made, not born—like vampires, I guess.”
    “And the Resistance?”
    “Mortals. Some with special powers depending on what they can win. If you fight with an Angel and win, you get stronger, the Angel weakens.”
    “What’s the story?”
    “The story is this: the most important thing in the world is lost. The Dark Angels don’t want you to find it. The only hope for the city is that the Resistance finds it before the Angels do—and destroys it forever.”
    “What is it?”
    Xeno shrugged. “You have to find that out too. There are decoys, feints, herrings of every colour including red. But I think it’s a baby.”
    “A fuckin’ baby?”
    “It’s been done before, I know. That one was called