Read The Red Men for Free Online Page B

tessellation of panes at the grey Thames.
    ‘Tomorrow all this will be part of our normality,’ she said. She took the glass of wine and glugged it back.
    ‘The future always seems strange, at first,’ said Raymond. He put his arm around her. She shrugged it off, then thought better of it.

 
     
     
     
4 A N E VENING WITH D R E ASY
     
     
     
     
    Raymond Chase stared at the enormous east screen and the live images of an office city bounded by water. This was where the red men lived. Glass skyscrapers ascended then
descended in height like the pipes of a church organ. High walkways joined these slender structures to residential developments. Either side of the island, frozen tidal waves of steel formed an
enormous parenthesis. Beyond the office city, glassy repetition filled in the areas yet to be imagined. In contemplation of the gleaming spires of this island, time passed as in a dream.
    The subscribers were complaining and the red men were playing up. Raymond struggled to hold his temper. The first sign of trouble was violent tutting, the second a rapid snort followed by a
noisy exhalation through compressed lips. He kicked at his desk and wrestled noisily with his chair, demonstrating to his colleagues how impossible it was for him to get comfortable. This display
of frustration ended with an out-of-the-blue obscenity barked at such volume that the management had to intervene.
    ‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ he demanded, a question for which no one had a polite answer.
    Morton Eakins wearily asked him to take five minutes to go outside and calm down.
    Raymond Chase’s father had died suddenly in the first month of his employment. He took a Tuesday off to go to the funeral, a Wednesday of compassionate leave, then back to work again on
Thursday. These two days aside, he had barely thought about his father’s death; that such a terrible thing could have happened at the very moment Raymond was turning his life around with a
job, a flat, a girlfriend and regular vigorous intercourse only confirmed his suspicion that fate was his enemy. The best way to defeat fate was to ignore it, and hide from its tragic twists and
turns. So he was yet to mourn his father. The emotional frustration was unbearable. Slamming his chair into the desk, Raymond snatched his jacket from the rack and left the floor.
    I met him at a railing overlooking the Thames. He was smoking furiously, had dropped a few pounds to reach his relationship weight, and was once again the small tough Jew. Florence remained in
the paddock of customer service, handling his workload while he simmered down. I asked him about Florence to remind him of why he had to stay in control.
    Raymond said, ‘Every now and again at her workstation, Florence does these extravagant stretches. She pushes her breasts forward, straining her blouse. Then her arms jut out and she is
momentarily crucified with ecstasy. Her top rides up, exposing her midriff. She closes her eyes under this inner caress and when she opens them she catches me watching her and smiles. “I feel
so stiff,” she says. “Yeah,” I say, “I know exactly what you mean.”’
    The advice Raymond and Florence gave to subscribers was peppered with in-jokes. On explaining to a subscriber why a red man was not allowed to grow wings and fly around the virtual city, Raymond
would say, ‘I’m sorry sir, but you are being re-dick-you-less.’ Florence would laugh, not so much at the joke as at the recognition that they were both still free.
    Florence liked to dish it out to Monad’s rich customers.
    ‘Don’t get angry with me. It’s your personality. We merely simulate it.’
    Raymond preferred to riff and show off. Back on the floor for client services, Raymond beckoned me over. He picked up the call of an angry punter. He covered the mike of his headset with one
hand while ushering me into a chair. He put the subscriber on speakerphone.
    ‘My red man is nothing like me,’ complained