“Oscar!” Miss Dalloway holds up a hand. “‘How poor are they that have not patience.’ All will be revealed soon enough.”
“Yes, Miss Dalloway. Sorry, Miss Dalloway.”
“I also have need of a trolley,” she tells Edgar, handing Mrs Shukhov’s Platinum to him. “That should be the first thing you obtain, and I suggest you use your own card to hire it. For the wire and the clock, however, you must use the Platinum.”
“And then run like hell,” says Edgar.
“Precisely. Your employee ID badge should give you a certain immunity from suspicion, but still your principle concern is going to be staying ahead of Security. Now that you’re aware of the possible consequences of this mission, are you still prepared to go? Speak now or for ever hold your peace.”
Edgar swallows hard and says, “I’m prepared to go.”
“Then bless you.” She strokes his head. “I have every confidence in you to succeed.”
“I won’t let you down, Miss Dalloway.”
“Well? What are you waiting for?”
“You want me to leave right away?”
“Stand not upon the order of your going, my darling, but go!”
28
The Seven Golden Cities of Cibola
: a collection of seven towns, a pueblo of the Zuñi Indians in what is now Zuñi, New Mexico, fabled by Fray Marcos de Niza to be the source of great riches, which prompted Francisco Vásquez de Coronado in 1540 to head an expedition of 1,300 men to conquer them – no riches were found.
12.45 p.m.
“F
RANK,
”
SAYS
M
R
Bloom, smiling and gesturing to the chair on the opposite side of the small table. “I took the liberty of ordering wine.”
“I don’t drink during the daytime,” says Frank, sitting down.
“Go on, give the cat a goldfish.” Mr Bloom makes to fill Frank’s glass from a wicker-bound bottle of Chianti. “It’s not bad. Not as raw as some of these Italian wines can get.”
Frank clamps a hand over firmly the rim of the glass. “No. Please.”
“Suit yourself.”
The restaurant is a mock trattoria on the Green Floor hoop, white-painted wrought-iron tables and matching chairs clustered beneath a wooden pergola densely interlaced with vine leaves. Mr Bloom’s rank has secured them a table directly next to the parapet. Some twenty metres below their elbows lies the Menagerie, one half of its canopy illuminated by a vast shaft of sunlight that descends almost vertically from the great dome, the rest in smoky shadow. The brightness in the atrium is so intense that several of the diners have resorted to wearing sunglasses.
The atrium resounds to the sound of six floors’ worth of activity. Around lunchtime, shoppers gravitate toward the hoops. Many of them have come to Days for the sole purpose of meeting for lunch, since the store provides a dining venue of unparalleled social cachet. Indeed, the first thing Mr Bloom does after refreshing his own glass is draw Frank’s attention to the celebrities at neighbouring tables. He indicates the famous model alone at a table, studiously not eating the Caesar salad in front of her; the pair of well-respected actors colluding conspiratorially over some project; and the
enfant terrible
fashion designer in the company of the movie director and the head of the huge PR company (the smell of a major deal being struck at the latter table is pungent even at a distance). Frank obligingly steals a sidelong glance as Mr Bloom points out each famous person, but he only vaguely recognises their faces and, frankly, doesn’t care who they are. To him they are merely customers.
“So,” says Mr Bloom, hoisting a menu aloft and flapping it open. As if to compensate for a lifetime of reticence, he has taken to making his post-Ghosthood gestures as grandiose as possible. “Let’s have a look what’s on offer today.”
Frank picks up his own menu and runs his eye down the handwritten list of available dishes, but his mind is not on food. “You order for both of us,” he says, setting the menu aside. He rests an elbow on the table, slots his chin into his cupped hand, and stares across the atrium to the parapet opposite, drumming his fingers against his lower lip.
Mr Bloom catches a waiter’s eye – something Frank cannot easily do – and summons him over. He orders minestrone soup, followed by fettuccine puttanesca.
“You don’t have a problem with peppers, do you?” he asks Frank.
Frank shakes his head.
The waiter departs.
A silence falls over the table.
“Well,” says Mr Bloom, “seeing as you’re not going to come straight to the point, I will. From our earlier, abortive conversations, I think I can pretty much guess what you have to say to me.”
Frank continues to stare across the atrium. Mr Bloom pauses, then goes on. “I’m sure this isn’t a decision you’ve reached lightly, Frank, and I’m sure you’re quite determined that nothing I can say is going to make you change your mind. So you’ll no doubt be relieved to hear that I’m not going to try. All I’m going to say is that Days will miss you. No emotional blackmail here, the honest-to-goodness truth. You are an excellent store detective. It’ll be a shame to see you go.”
Again, no reaction from Frank, but Mr Bloom is used to the ways of Ghosts. He knows he is not wasting his breath.
“Is it the use of guns that bothers you?”
A shake of the head so infinitesimal that only another Ghost would spot it.
“Ah. Usually it’s the use of guns. It gets to some Ghosts after a while. Got to me. The idea of causing pain and injury to others, and worse than pain and injury. Mostly I could justify it to myself. Shoplifters know the risks they’re taking, and if they don’t then they deserve what comes to them. But every once in a while...” Mr Bloom scratches his foretuft with his little finger. “When I told you earlier about losing my touch, Frank, I didn’t tell you why it happened. I’m not sure if this is the reason, but... well, it
seemed
to be the reason at the time. You remember when I shot that kid?”
“I’m sorry, no.”
“No reason why you should. We don’t go around boasting about these things, do we? He couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. Skinny as a lizard. He stole a comic, and I nabbed him, but he was a slippery devil, twisted right out of my grasp, leaving me holding the big baggy coat he was wearing. A guard hadn’t yet arrived, and I knew the kid would have no trouble outrunning me, so, of course, out came the gun. I shouted a warning. He didn’t react. I fired. I was aiming to wing him, but he was so thin, not an ounce of meat on him... He was just a kid, but I shot him all the same, without hesitation, because that’s what I was trained to do. The bullet tore out half his ribcage. I still have nightmares about it. I’ve killed five shoplifters, wounded half a dozen others, and every time I’ve told myself I was just doing my job. Just doing my job. But when I think about that kid’s face and the horrible wheezy gargling he made as he bled to death right there on the carpet, right there at my feet... Well, ‘just doing my job’ doesn’t begin to cover it, does it?”
For a moment Mr Bloom looks older than he is, the pain of the memory casting a haggard, spectral shadow over his face. His private remorse has been dredged up, at great personal cost, as a bargaining chip –
I’ve given you this much, now you give me something in return
– but Frank, unskilled in the wheeling and dealing of human relationships, isn’t clear how to respond.
“I’ve never killed anyone,” he says, without turning his head.
Mr Bloom nods slowly. “I know. In fact, you’ve hardly ever drawn your gun. The mark of a good Ghost.”
“Usually it takes nothing more than tact and firmness to deal with a shoplifter.”
“There you go. That’s what I’m getting at. You were
born
for the job, Frank.”
“That’s a good thing?”
“It’s not a bad thing for a man to be doing the work that best suits him.”
“To be born to do a job that requires you to have no personality, to blend into the background and be ignored – that’s a good thing?”
The bitter edge in Frank’s normally mild voice is not lost on Mr Bloom. “Congruity,” Mr Bloom says carefully, “need only be an art. It doesn’t have to become a personality trait.”
“But what if that’s unavoidable?” Frank at long last looks directly at Mr Bloom, bringing the full sad weight of his gravestone-grey gaze to bear on his superior. “What if it’s impossible to prevent the one leaking across into the other, the art becoming the personality trait, the job becoming the man? Remember Falconer? And Eames?”
“They were exceptional cases, Frank.”
“But what does it take to become an exceptional case? How much or how little of a push do you need to go over the edge?”
Just then the minestrone soup arrives, vegetable-packed and steaming, in earthenware bowls with Days logos hand-painted around the inside of the rim. The waiter also brings them foccaccia bread in a napkin-lined basket. Mr Bloom tucks in immediately. Frank leans back in his chair and resumes his finger-drumming, this time on the lip of the table.
“So what do you intend to do with yourself?” Mr Bloom asks between slurps of soup. “If you resign?”
“Travel.”
“Where to?”
“America.”
Mr Bloom splutters into his spoon. “America, Frank? Why in God’s name America?”
“Because it’s big. You can get lost in it.”
“So is Days big, and people are getting lost in here all the time. Honestly, Frank – America? I know it’s supposed to be a wonderful place, the land of opportunity and all that, but if it’s really so great, how come everyone who lives there is seeing a psychiatrist?”
“That’s an exaggeration, Donald.”
Mr Bloom dismisses the objection with a wave of his spoon. “Whichever way you look at it, Frank, Americans are a strange lot.”
That annoys Frank. What does Mr Bloom know about America? What does he know about anywhere that isn’t Days?
“America is just a starting point,” he says, working hard to restrain his irritation. “Ultimately it doesn’t bother me where I go, as long as it’s somewhere that isn’t here. I’m in my early fifties, and I haven’t once travelled beyond the outskirts of this city. Isn’t that pathetic? I’ve covered thousands of kilometres in my career, maybe millions, I’ve walked around the world several times over, and yet all I’ve seen is this city and the interior of this store.”
“It’s not pathetic, Frank. You’re a dedicated employee. We all know how hard it is to tear ourselves away from Days. Take me, for instance. I’ve been meaning to visit my sister and her family in Vancouver for years. I haven’t seen my niece since they emigrated. She was fourteen then, she’ll be a grown woman now. I’d love to pop over and see them, but I can never seem to find the time. The job always gets in the way. There’s always too much unfinished business, too much to be done.”
“But that’s precisely what keeps us here, Donald. We keep convincing ourselves that the job needs us and that we need the job and that our loyalty and dedication will eventually be rewarded somehow, I don’t know how. But it’s an excuse; it’s pure cowardice and nothing more. Believe me, I know. For years I thought there was nothing on this earth worth having more than a job at Days, but lately I’ve come to realise that it can’t compensate for what I’ve lost by working here. I’ve lost things that normal people take for granted – friends, a social life, a family. I want to start clawing back everything this store has taken from me before it’s too late, and I want to start as soon as possible.”
Should he tell Mr Bloom that he has also lost the ability to see his own reflection? Probably not a good idea. He wants to be seen to be leaving for rational, considered reasons. The same goes for the imaginary wraiths who long to claim him as their own. These things must remain his secret.
“Well, fine,” says Mr Bloom. “Far be it from me to stop you. I assume you have a ticket already booked. Take a holiday then. Jet off to the States. Have a rest. Relax. You deserve the time off. Come to think of it, that’s probably the best thing you can do. A change of scenery, a chance to breathe some different air...” Mr Bloom nods to himself and spoons more soup into his mouth. He seems to have convinced himself that all Frank wants is to take a break, although he could be hoping that if he believes this misconception to be the truth hard enough, then, by a kind of emotional osmosis, Frank will come to believe it too.
“Going away and coming back won’t change anything, Donald. I have to leave, full stop. I have to resign. To quit.”
There. He has finally said the word. Finally it has come tripping from his lips.
Quit
. Oddly, though, he feels none of the exhilaration he was expecting to feel. He had hopes that that one small word would carry on its narrow shoulders the whole burden of his concerns, and that in sallying forth from his mouth it would leave him lighter and freer, a purged man. But the anticipated relief is not there; just a permanent residual clutter, the dusty, cobwebbed accumulation of a career’s worth of unspoken frustrations.
Mr Bloom says nothing, merely goes on drinking his minestrone, while around their table other conversations rattle back and forth, their echoes rolling across the atrium. When his bowl is empty, he grabs a hunk of focaccia bread and uses it to mop up the remnants of soup. “So what are you going to do for money? Have you thought about that?”
“Transient jobs. Find work for a little while, save up, move on.”
“Easier said than done.”
“I’ll manage.”
“A man your age should be looking forward to a comfortable retirement, Frank, not a life of dishwashing and floor-cleaning and fast-food serving. You really haven’t thought this through properly, have you? How about Ghost Training? Did you consider that possibility? You could become a teacher. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”
“I want to have a life beyond Days.”
“Don’t we all, Frank, don’t we all?” Mr Bloom’s smile is, Frank feels, a touch patronising. “But like you say, this place owns us. Everything we have, everything we are, belongs to the store. We may not like it, but that’s what we signed on for. And if you want to abandon all that, that’s your prerogative, but bear in mind that without Days you’ll be nobody.”