Being (26 page)

I looked at her. ‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, avoiding my eyes. ‘I’ll think of something…’

‘You’re not going to try selling me out again, are you?’

Her head snapped round. ‘What?’

‘Joke,’ I said, smiling.

She glared at me. ‘There’s nothing
funny
about this, Robert. We’re in the shit. There’s nothing to
smile
about.’

I shrugged. ‘We’re still alive, aren’t we?’

‘Yeah, for now…’

‘We’ve got food, shelter, a nice place to live. The weather’s good… Christmas is coming.’ I grinned at her. ‘It could be a lot worse.’

‘It could be a lot better too.’ Her face was still grim, but her voice had lightened a little. She didn’t sound quite so forlorn.

‘What are you missing?’ I asked her.

‘What do you mean?’

‘From before… I mean, what did you have before that you haven’t got now?’

‘Money,’ she said.

‘Apart from that.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know… I had my cars, my flat, my work. I had a
life.’

‘What about friends?’

‘I had
friends,’
she said defensively. ‘I knew
lots
of people…’

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, all right… they weren’t exactly friends. But it
was hard… doing what I did. I couldn’t let anyone get too close. And I didn’t want to anyway… not after Curtis.’ She drank some more wine, puffed on her cigarette, then leaned down and put it out in the ashtray. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she sighed. ‘It wasn’t really much of a life.’ She looked at me. ‘But neither is this.’

‘It’s better than being dead.’

She stared at me for a moment, her face empty and still, then her mouth started twitching, her eyes lit up and she began to laugh. It was a good laugh – giggly and uncontrollable, like the carefree laughter of a child – and it made me feel good to hear it.

As I lay in bed that night, thinking about all the stuff we’d been talking about, I still couldn’t understand why I didn’t feel too bad about things. Eddi was right – there
wasn’t
anything to smile about. I was on the run, I was an outlaw, I wasn’t human. That wasn’t good. I didn’t know what I was, and I might never find out. That wasn’t good either. And Eddi? Yes, I liked her, and I liked being with her, and that
was
good. But I still didn’t trust her. I might have been smiling when I’d asked her if she was going to sell me out, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have my doubts.

Because I did.

They were there all the time:

Why was she with me?

What did I mean to her?

Did she think I was worth something?

Maybe she
was
going to sell me out to Ryan, or blackmail him.

Or maybe she was going to sell my story to the
newspapers –
GOVERNMENT EXPOSED IN ROBO-KID EXPERIMENT HORROR
. Or,
THE MACHINE WHO LOVED ME: MY NIGHTS OF PASSION WITH A TEENAGE ANDROID
.

Or maybe… maybe she
worked
for Ryan. She’d been with him from the start. She was part of the whole damn thing. And now she was just studying me, observing me, analysing me. Testing me – my behaviour, my reactions. She wasn’t searching for information
about
Ryan every night, she was reporting back to him. Telling him what I’d done and what I’d said… how much I’d eaten, how often I’d smiled. And one day the observation period would end and I’d go to sleep at night and wake up the next morning with a gun in my face…

It was possible, wasn’t it?

Everything was possible.

It was even just possible that she simply
liked
being with me.

On the Thursday before Christmas Day, I woke up around ten o’clock, put on a dressing gown and shuffled out to the bathroom. When I came back, Eddi was waiting for me in the front room. She was fully dressed, which at ten o’clock in the morning was unusual for her, and she seemed a bit anxious.

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘You’re up early.’

‘Yeah…’

‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’ She put her hands in her pockets. ‘Listen, Robert… you know we were talking about making some money…?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, I’ve been thinking about it. And I know how I can make some.’

‘How?’

‘I know some people… well, I don’t actually
know
them, but I know where they are. I’m going to see them today.’

‘What people? What do they do?’

‘They’re dealers.’

‘Drug dealers?’

‘Yeah, they’re kind of middlemen. They don’t sell in small quantities, but they’re not quite wholesalers either. They’re sort of somewhere in between. They’ll give me a decent price and I should be able to make a good profit.’

‘Hold on a minute minute –’

‘If I don’t do it now, Robert, we won’t have enough cash left to make it worthwhile.’

I stared at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this before?’

‘Because I knew you wouldn’t like it and you’d probably try to stop me.’

‘I
don’t
like it. It’s a stupid idea. What if you get caught?’

‘I won’t. I’ve done it before. I know what I’m doing.’

‘Yeah, but what about –’

‘I’m not going to listen to you, Robert. If you say another word, I’m just going to walk out the door. I’m doing this – OK? I’ve made up my mind and that’s all there is to it. Now, do you want to know where I’m going and when I’ll be back, or do you want me to just walk out the door?’

I looked at her, not knowing quite what I was feeling. I suppose I was angry with her for not telling me. And maybe I was a bit upset that she hadn’t asked me if I wanted to go with her. But mostly, I think, I was just scared that she wouldn’t come back.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked her quietly.

‘Granada. It’s about forty miles north of here.’

I nodded. ‘Are you going on the bike?’

‘Yeah, it shouldn’t take too long. I just need to find the right people, then make the deal. With a bit of luck, I might even get back tonight. If not, it’ll probably be some time tomorrow.’

‘What should I do if you’re not back by tomorrow?’

‘Nothing. If it looks like it’s going to take more than a few days, I’ll get a message to the Garcias.’ She smiled at me. ‘I’ll be back before Christmas, I promise – all right?’

I shrugged.

‘One more thing,’ she said. ‘If anything happens while I’m away… I mean, if anyone comes nosing around or anything, there’s a gun in the bottom drawer of my bedside cabinet.’

‘What?’

‘A pistol. It’s fully loaded, the safety catch is on. All you have to do is turn the safety to “off” and it’s ready to fire.’

I stared at her. ‘You’ve got a
pistol
in your bedside cabinet?’

‘I got it when I first came out here,’ she explained. ‘I was on my own. I thought it’d be a good idea…’

‘You could have
told
me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because…’

‘Because what?’

I shook my head. ‘You just should have told me, that’s all.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m telling you now. It’s there if you need it.’

‘Thanks,’ I said sarcastically.

She stood there for a moment, looking at me as if I was a spoilt child, then she picked up her coat from the settee and started to leave. I watched her go, suddenly feeling stupid. I was stupid, she was stupid. This was stupid.

‘Eddi?’ I called out.

She stopped at the door and turned round.

I smiled at her. ‘Be careful.’

She smiled back. ‘You too.’

‘Hasta luego.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘See you later, Robert.’

She opened the door and went out.

It felt really strange, being on my own again. I hadn’t been on my own for a long time and I’d kind of forgotten how it felt. And I still couldn’t remember now. Because things were different now. I was different. So being on my own felt different. And as I walked across the empty flat towards Eddi’s bedroom, it suddenly dawned on me that whatever I was now, and whatever that meant, I’d never know again how it was to
not
be like this. Whatever I was now, that’s what I was.

Eddi’s pistol was exactly where she’d told me it’d be – in the bottom drawer of her bedside cabinet. It was an automatic, just like Ryan’s, only this one had a slightly longer barrel and an ivory grip. I thumbed a little catch and the magazine slid out. Sixteen bullets. I replaced the magazine –
snick
- and stared at the gun in my hand.

Why hadn’t she told me she had it?

And why tell me now?

Why?

I sat down on her bed and looked round the room, wondering what else she might be hiding from me. I’d only been in Eddi’s room a couple of times before, and even then I’d never stayed long, so it felt quite odd to be sitting there on my own, casually looking around at her
things. This was her space, her private place. It wasn’t meant to be seen by anyone else.

The room was a mess. Clothes were piled all over the floor, the bed was unmade. There were empty wine bottles and cigarette packets, overflowing ashtrays, a dressing table strewn with make-up things. The air smelled of stale smoke and nightmares.

I opened the top drawer of the bedside cabinet. Inside it was a little bag of grass, a packet of cigarette papers and a Bible. I took out the Bible, flipped through the pages, then put it back in the drawer.

‘Paradise,’ I muttered.

And for a sickening little moment, I thought I was still there. The Paradise Hotel, the hotel room, the pistol, the Bible, the endoscopy video in the VCR… I was still there. I’d never left. I was still drunk, still bleeding, still sitting on the bed, still staring at those unbelievable images on the screen…

‘Shit,’ I said, shaking the thoughts from my head.

I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to
go
there. If I started thinking about what was inside me, I’d start thinking about cutting myself open again and I didn’t want to do that.

I rubbed my eyes, put the pistol back in the drawer and started searching the room.

I didn’t
like
doing it – poking around through Eddi’s things – but I knew that I had to. If I didn’t, my fears and doubts about her would just keep growing, eating away at me like a cancer. Why
was
she still with me? What
did
I mean to her? Had she
really
gone to Granada?

I had to know.

I had to
try
looking for answers.

I just
had
to…

I nearly changed my mind. As I crouched down beside her dressing table and started rummaging around through the drawers, the
cheapness
of what I was doing lurched up inside me and filled me with a dirty shiver of guilt. It was a cold and sickening feeling, and it was almost enough to make me stop.

Almost, but not quite.

I closed my eyes, shook off the shiver and carried on searching.

I didn’t find anything in her bedroom. No secrets, no mysteries, no shocks, no answers. I didn’t find anything anywhere else either. Bathroom, kitchen, front room… drawers, cupboards, cabinets. I looked everywhere. Nothing. The only place I didn’t look was her laptop. Not that I didn’t try. But when I opened it up and turned it on, the first thing it did was ask me for a password. I thought about taking a guess, but I knew it was pointless. Eddi wasn’t stupid enough to use a password that I could guess. And I was pretty sure that if I started putting in loads of wrong passwords, the computer would tell her about it the next time she logged on. And then I’d have a lot of explaining to do…

So I just gave up.

Now that I’d done what I had to do, but still hadn’t found any answers, I wasn’t sure how to feel. Should I feel good because I hadn’t found anything bad, or should
I feel bad because I hadn’t found anything good?

Or should I just feel ashamed of myself?

Or scared?

Or stupid?

Or lonely?

As I sat by the window and watched the night come down, I tried not to feel anything.

Around seven in the evening, I went out to get something to eat. I didn’t feel like going to El Corazón on my own, so I thought I’d just get something from the shop and take it back to the flat – bread and cheese, bacon, ham… something like that. The shop was at the church end of San Miguel, so it didn’t take long to get there. It was a dark little place, cool and shady, and it sold just about everything you could ever want – food, drink, cigarettes, stamps, postcards, beach balls, newspapers, toys. It was owned and run by the Valdez family, and when I went in, Señor Valdez himself was sitting behind the till, writing something on the back of an envelope.

‘Buenas tardes, John
,’ he said, looking up.
‘¿Qué tal
?’

‘Bien, gracias
,’ I told him.

‘Bueno
.’ He smiled.
‘¿Qué deseas?’

I asked him in my clumsy Spanish for some bread, ham and cheese
(pan, jamón y queso).
He scuttled around the shop, picking it all out for me and packing it into a paper bag, then I paid him and left.

It was a nice clear evening, the sky bright with stars, and it felt good to be out and about. So instead of heading straight back to the flat, I decided to take the long way round – down San Miguel, across the church square, then
up through the narrow side streets to the other end of San Miguel.

I’d been in Tejeda for almost a month now and the locals had got used to seeing me around. Most of them seemed to know my name – John Martin – but they didn’t seem too bothered about knowing anything else about me. No one ever asked me what I was doing here, or who I really was, or where I was from. I suppose they just assumed I was with Eddi, or Maria as she was known to them. And that was fine with me.

As I ambled along that night, chewing on a crust of bread, I was constantly nodding at passers-by, exchanging a few words, smiling and waving at the old men and women who sat in their doorways watching the world go by. It felt good. Like I belonged here.

And I’d never felt that about anywhere before.

Just as I was leaving the square, a voice called out from behind me.

‘Hey!’ it said.

It was a man’s voice, not harsh or loud, but full of confidence. It was the kind of voice that’s used to telling people what to do. I froze for a moment, and in that moment everything suddenly came back to me – what I was, what I was doing… hiding, running, living a lie… I hadn’t forgotten any of it, I’d just let it sink down into a place where it wasn’t killing me all the time. But now it was back, the cold reality of it all: nothing was normal, nothing was safe, everything was a fragile sham.