The Search Page 9

  He walked for a few blocks, past a grocery store – closed now – whose name he recognized from earlier on. If he was right, then Canal Street, at the edge of the Quarter, was only five minutes away – though in which direction he was not sure. A car slowed to let him cross the road. He gestured ‘thanks’ and stepped out from the sidewalk, trying to see the driver behind the dark windows. The car turned the corner after him. He trotted across the road, walked briskly to the next right. The instant he was out of sight of the car he sprinted thirty yards, hoping that by the time it turned the corner he would have disappeared around another. When headlights swept the walls and filled the street he resumed walking. Up ahead was another one-way street. He trotted as soon as he was round the corner and was relieved to see that the car did not follow him. In evading the car, though, he had lost all sense of direction. He didn’t even know the name of the street he was in, the area was totally deserted: no cars, no shops, no passers-by. He wondered if the driver had been deliberately nudging him in this direction so as to intercept him a few blocks later. He looked up and down the street and began running back to the crossroads.

  He was almost there when the street was again filled with the white lights of a car behind him. He heard the car accelerate. No longer attempting to disguise his urgency, he sprinted to the crossroads. He ran to another one-way street where a sign said closed – roadwork and this time the car trailed him into it. The street was so narrow that there was no sidewalk, just enough room for a car. After running thirty yards he could see no side streets between himself and the roadworks.

  He was trapped. He stopped running, breathing hard. The car stopped. High up in the gap between buildings was a glinting catwalk of sky. He heard the car revving behind him. Up ahead, flashing yellow lights and black-and-yellow tape indicated where the road had been dug up. He began running again, knowing he would never make it that far. The car revved harder. There was a screech of rubber and the street was filled with the roar of the car accelerating, bearing down on him. The roadworks were a hundred yards away. He stopped, turned. Began running straight at the approaching car, into the white glare of the headlights.

  The car was a wall of white lights and noise. He had to wait till the last possible moment, a split second before he was splashed all over the windshield, until –

  ‘– NOW!’

  The word exploded from his throat. He leapt as high as he could, forcing himself higher, tucking his feet under his body, the bonnet rushing beneath him, the windshield – at the height of his leap now and the roof slipping by beneath him and then just clipping his foot, destroying his balance and sending him tumbling down the sloping back of the car.

  He hit the floor hard, jarring his wrists, gouging lumps out of his palms and knees – but he’d made it, he’d made it. Not even winded. He looked up at the brake lights straining red as the car ricocheted from one wall to the next, trailing sparks and ploughing into the barriers and lights of the roadworks. With flashing hazard lights sprawled all around and one wheel still spinning in mid-air it looked as if both car and street had been ripped apart by a land-mine.

  Walker was trembling uncontrollably, his knee was throbbing and cut, his palms bleeding. He had an impulse to sit down in the street and let someone bandage his cuts. Hauling himself to his feet took more effort than the jump. His strength had left him. He forced himself to trot to the end of the street and turn left, back the way he had come. It was only after he had put several streets between himself and the crashed car that he slowed to a walk. He was shaking so much he had to stop and rest for several minutes but, now that his panic had subsided, it proved surprisingly easy to find his way back to Canal Street. On Canal he hailed a taxi and gave the name of his hotel, clenching himself tight to control his shaking for the duration of the journey.

  Seeing his ripped trousers, bloodied hands and ashen face, the hotel desk-clerk asked if he had been in an accident.

  ‘Not quite,’ he said, leaning on the lift button.

  ‘You need first-aid box?’

  ‘Could you bring it up?’

  ‘Si, si.’

  Back in his room he took off his shirt and shoes and filled a bath. His trousers were stuck to his knee, swollen, hurting. He eased himself into the stinging water and lay soaking before floating them off. There was a knock at the door – the clerk – and Walker called out to just leave the box on the bed, everything was fine, thank you.

  Luxuriating in the feel of hot water over his limbs, bruised but still intact, he went over the scene again and again: the car stalking him, the white charge of headlights, the flashing reflection of the windshield, the roof sliding beneath him, almost clearing it perfectly until he clipped his toe like an athlete hitting a hurdle and falling to the road in the wake of exhaust and noise. It was amazing that he had got away so lightly: grazes, gravel in his hands, a cut knee – but nothing, nothing really . . .

  It had been Carver in the car, he was convinced of that. He reached a hand out of the water and touched the chain Rachel had given to him. Smiling to himself, he thought of Kelly standing in the midst of devastation, naked except for the stone around his neck and his indestructible shorts. He felt elated, partly by the mere fact of survival, partly by the reappearance of Carver which was as reassuring as it was threatening. It meant he was still in the race, still on course.

  He hauled himself out of the bath and reached for the towel. He climbed into bed, easing his knee gingerly between the sheets.

  Tomorrow, first thing, he would head to Despond.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  He arrived there at midday, his knee stiff and tender from the cramped confines of the coach. It turned out to be a grim desert town lacking any distinguishing characteristics – which made it all the more puzzling that not only had Malory come here but he had spent longer here than any of the other places he had been. There was nothing to detain even the most thorough visitor, but almost everyone Walker asked had some recollection of Malory. Slightly bemused by the suggestion that he might have left town, they said he was sure to be around some place – as if he had just stepped outside to get a bite to eat and would be back in a few moments. The prospect of being so close to Malory should have excited him but Walker felt oddly deflated, as if he hardly cared.

  Each night he ate at the bus station diner and then went back to his motel room and watched TV. One evening a guy gnawing ribs at the bar suggested he try a rooming house over in the east of the city – Malory was living there, last he’d heard. Walker resolved to head over there the next morning but when it came to it he could not face the prospect of the long journey across town, seizing on the dull ache in his knee as an excuse. Later that week, when he did drag himself over, nobody at the boarding house had ever heard of a guy called Malory. He hung around a few more days and decided it was pointless to spend any more time there: Malory had left, he was certain of that. Tomorrow he would do the same.

  The next morning, however, he found he had no urge to leave and once again dawdled the day away. By evening he was furious with himself for having squandered yet another day and made up his mind to leave town first thing in the morning. The following day he loitered his time away until the evening when – as on each of the nights to follow – he was seized with a feverish determination to leave. His resolution was always particularly acute after a few drinks; then it seemed inconceivable that so much time had already gone by like this. What was so difficult about leaving? All he had to do was pack up his stuff and turn up at the bus station. Nothing could have been easier. Tomorrow he would leave. So intense was his desire to be up and on the move that he had trouble getting to sleep. His thoughts paced the room as he hatched wild schemes to make up for the time he had wasted in Despond. It took hours to get to sleep and by the time he woke the bus had already left. Every night he was filled with resolution and every morning he was devoid of energy. A couple of times he woke early, looked at his watch and saw that if he got up now he could catch the bus but, on
each occasion, he felt so drowsy, so worn out by his mental exertions of the night before, that he was unable to face the effort of getting out of bed into the greyish cold. Instead he turned over, loving the fart-warmth of his bed, and slept on until the sun had climbed into the lunchtime sky.

  When he did get up it was with a feeling of contentment which turned to disappointment in the afternoon and which, by the evening, had mounted to a frantic urge to leave. The longer this went on the worse it became: the more urgently he wanted to leave at night the less inclined he felt to do so in the morning.

  As time went by even the normal chores of the day came to seem burdensome. The more time he had the less he did with it. During his first few days in town he had done exercises but soon the thought of a sit-up exhausted him. He began to lose track of time. He no longer changed his sheets, stopped washing his clothes. For food he had relied on fruit and biscuits and all-day breakfasts at the diner, but now he dropped the fruit and made do with biscuits and breakfasts. Since he gnawed biscuits throughout the day he could see little point in cleaning his teeth. Why bother when he would be munching biscuits again in five minutes? The same with shaving: what was the point when you’d have to do it again in a day’s time? Some days he lay in bed all morning, thinking how satisfying it would be to be a junkie, to have that sense of purpose each day, knowing you had to score. In another way he was glad to be spared the effort: even going to the shops was an exertion he dreaded. Sometimes he sat for upwards of an hour, needing to piss but unable to force himself out of the chair and into the dismal bathroom. He took to sleeping in the afternoons – far and away, he decided, the best part of the day. He loved waking up and – for a few moments – not knowing where or who he was. Then his head gradually enclosed itself around his thoughts and, still clinging to the fond memory of sleep, he became slowly aware of the first faint rumblings of what by the evening would be a bearable despair.

  Each day the sun came up and the sky blued over and darkened again until sunrise the next day. Walker rarely thought of Malory. The whole idea of trying to find him seemed a waste of time and energy he didn’t have. Besides, he realized, rummaging through his stuff one afternoon, he had lost the documents Malory was supposed to sign. Not that he cared one way or the other. And Carver? He’d probably bump into him in a bar somewhere in town. They’d get drunk together, play pool and talk about what a lot of fucking bollocks it had all been.

  Occasionally he picked up the dictaphone and listened to the soundings he had taken so that the motel room was filled with the faint noise of other rooms. Several times he turned on the machine, thinking it might be worth recording his current condition. Unable to think of anything to say, he muttered, ‘Fuck it,’ and clicked it off. He lay where he was and pulled out the photo of Rachel. He had spent whole days like this in prison, staring at the image of a woman, numb with longing. He looked at her hair, her eyes. Reached for the phone and dialled her number. The machine did not click on. After eight rings the tone became bleak. In case she was just coming through the door he let it ring another ten times, hoping that when she got back she could tell that he had called, furniture and walls preserving his message. Then he just let it ring, the phone pressed to his head like a pistol, her picture in his hands.

  Eventually even the drunken, nocturnal desire to leave began to evaporate – and this, oddly, was what prompted him to leave: the knowledge that if he stayed any longer he would never escape. He knew he would have to go tomorrow. It was his last chance. That night he had a troubled sleep, full of images of regret and things he had left behind: women, jobs, homes, things he’d never had in the first place. He woke early, the sun still struggling to clear his window sill. The bus would arrive in thirty minutes. Everything was as he hoped – except he did not want to leave. It was not that he had no desire to leave: no, he actually wanted to stay, that was what he wanted. He liked it here, it wasn’t such a bad place.

  By mid-afternoon he was wretched with despair and that night he hit the bar early. He sat next to a guy who had been living in Despond for the last fifteen years. He had just been passing through but, gradually, had taken a kind of liking to the place. There were plenty worse places.

  Walker bought two more beers and clunked glasses with the guy. Looking at him he understood how unhappy marriages could last tens of years, how people survived amputations and debilitating illness. He thought of rushing back to his room, packing his bag and just walking out of town. No sooner had he formulated it than he recognized the ludicrousness of the scheme. There were weeks of desert in every direction. That was the thing about this place, it was impossible to take yourself by surprise; always you thought of an action before doing it and then, immediately, there ensued a reason for not doing it. He was distracted from this reverie by the old man nudging his arm.

  ‘Ready for another,’ he said. Walker looked at the old man, saw himself reflected in his eyes. He shook his head, slugged back the rest of his drink and left.

  He needed to collect his belongings from his room but was almost frightened to set foot in there. He gathered up his things quickly but even in those few seconds he could feel the urge to lie down and sleep. What was the point in spending the night outside in the cold? He could stay here – not sleep, just sit up until daybreak. Shaking these thoughts from his head he moved into the bathroom to get the last of his belongings. Glimpsed his bearded face in the mirror, shattered it with his fist and closed his palm around a shard until the pain cut through his lethargy.

  Outside he looked up at the desert sky where the stars hung in the same places night after night. He stood at the bus stop, already chilled to the bone. A few people came out of the diner but after a while there was no more movement and the town appeared deserted except for buildings and sky. He squatted down on the sidewalk but that was too cold so he stood through the long night, too tired to move, too cold to sleep.

  It took weeks to get light. First the darkness diminished, then the sky became grey and the shapes of things came alive. Trees appeared against the orange-blue light. It was no warmer but the day was finally arriving. The diner opened and he thought he would go inside for a coffee – and immediately drove the thought from his mind.

  Eventually he heard the bus rumble into town, a slow curl of dust in its wake. Four people got off. He was the only person waiting to board. The driver looked at him with surprise when he asked for a ticket to wherever the bus was going.

  ‘That’ll be Bad Axe.’

  ‘Bad Axe is perfect.’

  Walker made his way to the back of the bus. There were few other passengers – a couple with rucksacks, an old Mexican woman, a man with a cane. He stretched out in the back seat, sun slanting in through one of the side windows. He wanted to sleep but wanted also to savour this view of the city which so few had shared. Most buildings were flat and pale brown, enlivened only by the neon signs of shops that paled in the gathering sunlight. He was struck by the sprawling extent of the town, by the number of homes that each year encroached a little further into the desert. He found it hard to believe that he had been there – how long? It hardly mattered – however long he had been there he was lucky it was coming to an end. Everything came down to luck. The search was a matter of luck, a test of luck – and luck was a test of character. You could gauge yourself by the quality of your luck. Luck was everything. He breathed a sigh of relief as the bus pulled past a half-built office block, a fence that would never be creosoted.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Walker shaved and cleaned his teeth in the station washrooms at Bad Axe. He felt sluggish but the lassitude that had overwhelmed him in Despond had evaporated and he was thinking once again about the search, anxious to make up for the time he had wasted. In the information office the word Horizon came into his mind – out of nowhere, for no reason. Spores were blown around by the wind and plants sprang up where they happened to settle. Maybe words and ideas were a kind of spore: they were in the air and sometimes they settled on you. Feel
ing foolish he asked the woman at the desk if there was a place called Horizon nearby.

  ‘A bus leaves in twenty minutes,’ she said, unstartled, un-smiling.

  As he paid for the ticket he told himself this decision was based on a hunch, on intuition, but he knew this was not true. Intuition suggested an instinctive version of thought, but really he was proceeding by impulse, by whim, impatient to get moving again.

  When he arrived there he thought it was not a city but one building in the city. Then, as he began to get a sense of the scale of the place, he realized that although there were no roads or streets, corridors and hallways served as thoroughfares, vast ballrooms as parks, rooms as houses. Here and there he found windows but all he could see from them, except for the damp courtyard many yards below, were the walls and windows of the rest of the building, the rest of the city. He opened doors which led to more rooms. Sometimes these were huge with high ceilings, empty except for a dark table, chairs, chandeliers. Other rooms were small with armchairs and a fireplace. A few were carpeted but most had floors of polished wood that clanged and echoed underfoot. When he stopped walking he heard other footsteps but, in the vast interiors and winding corridors, he wondered if these were the echoes of his own steps. He walked into a room with a great gilt-edged mirror, enormous as a painting of a battle or biblical scene. The mirror made the room unfathomably huge, empty of everything except its own reflected image and his tiny figure in one corner. From there he moved into a room with an oil painting over the fireplace. It showed a vast room, not dissimilar to many of those he had passed through. As he walked on through the city he saw more paintings, always of interiors. Whenever he came across a painting he hoped it might be a landscape but there was never a hint of the outdoors. He resisted any feeling of panic but gradually the sense of being trapped by the vastness of his surroundings began to alarm him. Generally, you were either lost in a wilderness – a desert or an ocean – or trapped in a confined space – a dungeon. Here Walker was simultaneously trapped in a dungeon and lost in the vastness of his confines. It would have been possible to climb out of a window and down one of the thin drain-pipes that clung to the walls like rope but there was no point – they led only to the courtyard that was like an open-air dungeon. Leaning out of some windows and craning upwards he could see a colourless patch of sky but most did not afford even this prospect. Instead they simply opened on to another room. He could go where he pleased but wherever he went he came to more rooms. Like this one, empty except for a long conference table and thin black chairs. On the table was a decanter of red wine, glasses. The austerity and scale of the room made him feel like he had come for a meeting with an all-powerful bureaucrat. He poured a glass of wine, the slight tinkling of the glass magnified many times over by the acoustic vastness. Held the glass up to the light and watched the red liquid flare like a volcano erupting under the sea. He pulled a chair out and sipped the wine. It was inconceivable that a city like this – or building or whatever this place was – could go on for much longer. Even assuming it was the size of London he could still cross it in . . . how long? A couple of days? That was two days without food – there was water and wine, but so far he had seen nothing to eat – yet the prospect was daunting rather than frightening. The only thing to do was keep walking. On impulse, as he was leaving, he picked up the decanter of wine and hurled it at a wall. Knowing he could trash the place was somehow reassuring and a few moments later he carved his initials in a big oak table. Then, for no reason, he added FUCK OFF in jagged ugly letters. This act of childish vandalism cheered him up considerably and he walked out of the room with his hands in his pockets, smiling. Soon he felt sleepy from the wine and lay down on an embroidered sofa. It was difficult to sleep with nothing to cover him, so he yanked down one of the curtains and curled up beneath it.