Halting State Read online

  “Okay, I guess.” His shoulders droop. “Where do we begin?”

  “Well. Now we’re on the record”—you pause to tell the button on the phone to save a time-stamp—“in your own words, would you mind explaining to me exactly what is it that your company does and what went wrong today?”

  ELAINE: Death or Coffee

  It’s a Friday morning in a North London suburb, and you haven’t won the lottery yet, and nobody’s drafted you for the King’s Musketeers, so it’s off to work you go. (Actually, you don’t buy lottery tickets in the first place. You ran the figures back when you were seventeen and, wishful thinking or no, you’re not that stupid. But that’s not the point, is it?) It’s a Friday morning, you’re on the job, and Chris left an email on your mobile about a 10 A.M. crisis meeting. Crisis, what crisis? There was none on the horizon when you left work yesterday evening. Hopefully it’s just HMRC querying the executive bizjet account consolidation file again.

  You check out your shoulder in the bathroom mirror. That’s quite some bruise Mike landed on you at the club. The pint and a half of Budvar in the Frog and Tourettes afterwards let you sleep without noticing it, but it’s stiffening up now, and you’re going to have to work that shoulder carefully for the next few days. So it’s the black blouse and the grey suit today. Which will need washing by the end of the week because the Tube seats are filthy these days. TfL can’t afford to clean them because they’re in crunch mode, buying their way out of their Infraco PPPs to avoid bankruptcy. The mess defederalization has left the country in has really come home to roost this decade: What the cooked books give, the cooked books taketh away. Isn’t that the way the world works?

  Breakfast is a hastily munched Kellogg’s bar washed down with a glass of organic apple juice. You grab the latest copy of Accounting, Auditing and Accountability and stuff it in your briefcase, along with the usual: pen, iPod, your father’s antique pocket calculator, and a dog-eared copy of Tobler’s manual of sword-fighting that you borrowed from Matthew. You visit the bathroom briefly for a smear of lipstick and eyeliner, then you’re out the door.

  Early May used to be the chilly tail-end of spring, according to Mum. And it certainly used to be cooler. Now the savage summer kicks in weeks earlier, and everyone who can afford it is fitting air-conditioning. (Which in turn is doing no good for the country’s ECB stability pact compliance—no, cut that out! They’re not paying you to daydream fiscal policy risk analyses on the commute time, are they?)

  Harrow is its usual sweaty, smelly self, cramped and cluttered with cars that seem to get bigger every year, in a weird race with the price of petrol: Look who can afford to fill the bigger Chelsea tractor. It’s already five to eight, and the Tube’s in full-on rush hour mode. You manage to elbow your way into a carriage at West Harrow and, miracle of miracles, there’s a seat edge to perch on all the way to Baker Street (by which time the temperature has got to be pushing thirty degrees and there’s a solid wall of bodies between you and the door—good thing you’re not claustrophobic). Then it’s another half hour on the Hammersmith and City line, rattling and breathlessly hot all the way across London to Whitechapel, and finally fifteen minutes strap-hanging on the DLR south towards Wapping, through the weirdly cyberpunk landscape of geodesic glass dildo-shaped skyscrapers alternating with decaying left-over Olympic infrastructure and cookie-cutter housing developments. You’ve got it timed down to the nearest minute, and it still takes you ninety, minimum, to do the door-to-door. Count the working days lost—you spend fifteen hours a week commuting, seven hundred and fifty hours a year draining down the sump hole of the capital’s crap transport infrastructure. If you could afford to move east you would, but the bits you can afford are all doomed: You’ve seen the flood maps for the Thames Gateway suburbs and know which insurance firms are whistling past the graveyard…

  Because you’re dead good at your job. Now if only you had a life, too, eh?

  The office opens its doors and swallows you off the street. Once upon a time it started life as an unassuming Georgian town house; but today, the garden is overgrown with Foster Associates geodesics, the roof is covered in solar tiles, and the door scanned your RFIDs and worked out who you were while you were still halfway up the street. The HQ of Dietrich-Brunner Associates is probably worth more than some Third World countries. You hole up in the ladies’ for a minute to freshen up, then it’s up the lift to the third floor, where the junior associates swelter under the low eaves.

  After you drop your briefcase you head straight for the coffee station. It’s turning half nine, and there’s a queue of thirsty associates, ordered by pecking order, waiting for Jessica or Esmé or whoever it is from Admin to quit fiddling with the cartridge and get out the way. A bunch of the associates are glassed-up and fiddling with spreadsheets or in ludic colloquia, but you didn’t think to strap your office to your face before you headed for your fix, which leaves you open to the kind of petty irritation that comes with being forced to stand and queue with no distractions. Your spirits droop: Then they droop further when you notice Adam Elliot (or he notices you). He’s the wrong kind of distraction. But something tells you that a couple of the other associates are logging everything. Certainly Margaret Harrison, up front in the queue, has her associate partner specs on but isn’t doing the in-meeting hand-dance. So maybe he’ll keep his needling to himself for once.

  “Hi, Xena!” he chirps, “Killed any commuters today?” You try to ignore him: Being rude wouldn’t be constructive, and constructive counts for a lot around here. Adam fancies himself as a big swinging dick in risk analytics: Leave out the “big” and “swinging” and he’s right. But he won’t let go. “How did your quest turn out?”

  You know there’s no advantage to be gained by murdering idiots—it doesn’t teach the idiot anything and it might give onlookers the idea that you take them seriously—but you haven’t had your double ristretto yet, so you muster up the coldest stare you can find and say as steadily as you can: “My private life is none of your business, Adam.” A minor imp of the perverse prompts you to add, “If you keep passing unwelcome comments, I’m going to have to consider logging these incidents for future action.”

  “Hey, that’s not nice! I’m only kidding.” He turns passive-aggressive puppy-dog eyes on you. “You know it’s just fun, don’t you?”

  “Why should she know that?” Margaret interrupts sharply. That gets his attention: She’s fortyish, formidable, and probably due to make full partner any month now. She sounds annoyed. “Go pick on someone your own size, Mr. Elliot. Or at least someone with a compatible sense of humour.”

  “But I was just—”

  “Making an idiot of yourself in front of the peanut gallery. Do yourself a favour? Find yourself something constructive to do with your time.” You cross your arms, and Adam slinks away empty-handed. If you ever decide to go postal in the workplace, you’ll be sure to start by showing him your first-class letter-opener: In the meantime, though, Margaret deserves some thanks. “What was that about?” she asks you.

  You feel your cheeks heating. “Adam’s got some ideas about me, and he likes to needle.”

  “Really?” She raises an eyebrow. “I’d never have guessed. What about, exactly? I may be able to help.”

  Oh bugger. This is exactly what you didn’t want to happen, but there’s no polite way to put her off. “In my copious free time”—you make sure the ironic emphasis is obvious: if there’s one thing that shows disloyalty to the partnership, it’s spending your energy outside of work on something that isn’t constructive—“I have a hobby. I used to be into gaming, but I drifted sideways into historic re-enactment.”

  “Gaming?” She raises an eyebrow. “Historic re-enactment?”

  “Live-action real-time role-playing. Then sideways into mediaeval German sword-fighting,” you clarify. This is the point at which most people’s eyes glaze over, which is the reaction you’re hoping for. But Margaret doesn’t take the offered bait.

 
“Gaming? That’s interesting. Would you have played”—she pauses to twitch at a user interface that’s invisible to you—“Dungeons and Dragons at some point?”

  Whoops. “Not really. I was heavily involved in SPOOKS at one time, but…” The woman from Admin finishes fiddling, there’s a clunk and clatter from the machine, and the queue moves forward. Margaret seems to have sacrificed her place at the head just so she can interrogate you. “It tried to eat my life, so I cut right back.”

  “That’s useful to know.”

  “It’s old news!” The queue moves forward in lockstep again as Eddie from Phone Support gets into place with a cup holder for the black gang downstairs.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound patronizing, I really meant it may be useful—are you on the facial Chris called?”

  You nod.

  “Good, I thought so. Look, all I know is that it has something to do with the Tiger Investments account. Chris said to be on the lookout for gamers because we’ll need them, God only knows why. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why your name came up.”

  “Looking for gamers?” For the Tiger Investments account? Even through the haze of embarrassment—that bastard Adam has been talking behind the bike shed—it sounds bizarre. “That’s what the crisis group call is about?”

  The queue ratchets forward again, bringing her to the front. She smiles patronizingly. “Look, terribly sorry, must fly. See you in half an hour?”

  You force a brittle smile in return. You’ve got a feeling you’re going to need that caffeine.

  JACK: Revenge of the Mummy Lobe

  You have been in police cells precisely twice in your life—there was that total disaster when you were fifteen, then going back even earlier there was that time when you were a wee thing and Gav and Nick got you to moon the Lord Mayor when he was up for opening the new drop-in centre. Gav and Nick could run faster than you, which is why—you now realize, with perfect twenty/twenty hindsight—they suckered you in. Both times you were too young to really figure out how bad the situation was. It’s somewhat less obvious to you how you ended up being booked into an Amsterdam cop shop at zero dark o’clock last night, largely because you were too addled on skunk and strong Continental beer to know which way was up—but by morning you have made up your mind that despite their laid-back reputation, Dutch police cells are no more fun than English ones. Especially with a hang-over.

  If you hadn’t been arrested, you’d have ended up spending Friday and Saturday nights in a cramped room at the Bulldog—a hosteller’s inn notorious for its remarkably low prices and dubious furnishings. Instead, you spend the night in a cell with a foam mattress, a light bulb, and a stainless steel sink-and-toilet combination by way of furniture. It’s actually bigger than the room at the Bulldog, and the stains on the mattress are probably not much worse, but there’s no soap, no Internet, and no munchies to distract you from obsessively worrying about your miserable fate. Because, you know, you’re doomed. This is the second time you’ve been arrested in your entire life, and your stress levels are so high that were a bunch of black-robed inquisitors to file chanting into your cell and lead you down a stony tunnel lined with manacled skeletons to a cavern furnished with an electric chair, it would come as a relief. You don’t have a clue what to expect, so when the door rattles and opens, you nearly jump out of your skin.

  “Mr. Reed. Please come with me.” It’s a different cop, built like a rugby jock, and looking extremely bored.

  “Um, where?”

  You must look confused, because he speaks very slowly and loudly, as if to a half-witted foreigner: “Step out of the cell and proceed to the end of the corridor, until I tell you to stop.”

  “But my—” You glance down at your feet, then shrug. They took your shoes, your belt, your jacket, and your mobie, then made you sign a form: And now some rules-obsessed part of your hindbrain is yammering up a fuss about going out without your shoes on. It’s probably the same lobe of your brain that makes sure your fly’s zipped up and your nose wiped—the mummy lobe. “Okay.” You force yourself to take a slippery sock-footed step forward, then another. Your head throbs in time to your heartbeat, and your mouth tastes of dead rodents. Now you notice it, the mummy lobe is nattering at you about brushing your teeth…

  There’s an office room with a desk in it, and a Politie sergeant, and a bunch of indiscreet cameras in luminous yellow enclosures labelled EVIDENCE in English and Dutch. (They must get a lot of tourists here.) Not to mention a shoe-box containing your mobile, your jacket, your belt, and your shoes. “Mr. Reed. Please sit down.”

  You sit.

  “Did you, on the evening of the twentieth, throw any items at the window of the antique shop at 308 Prinsengracht?”

  You frown, trying to remember. The mummy lobe is about to say “I don’t think so, but I might be wrong” but you catch it in time, and what comes out is a strangled “No!”

  The cop nods to himself and makes a note on his tablet. “Did you take the armchair that the owners of 306 Prinsengracht had placed by the side of the road for a municipal waste pick-up and move it so that it was outside the antique shop at 308 Prinsengracht?”

  That’s an easier one. You don’t remember anything about the armchair before you woke up in it. “No.”

  Another squiggle on the tablet. The cop frowns. “Do you remember anything about last night? Anything at all?”

  At this point the mummy lobe makes a bid for freedom and control over your larynx, and instead of saying “Where’s my lawyer?” you hear yourself saying, “No, not until I woke up in that chair. I was in the Arendsnest earlier in the evening and we had a bit to drink, then we moved on, and things got vague. Then I woke up chained to the street sign.”

  “When you say ‘we,’ who were you drinking with?”

  “I was with Mitch and Budgie. Tom couldn’t make it, he was on paternity leave—”

  “Alright.” The cop makes another mark on his tablet, then pushes it aside and gives you a Look. You quail: Your balls try to climb into your throat. “Mr. Reed. You appear to have been the victim of a prank that got out of hand. Your DNA was not found on the stone that broke the shop window, or on the window itself, and camera footage shows three other persons carrying you and the chair before handcuffing you to the street furniture. So you are not suspected of vandalism or theft. However, let me be clear with you: That level of drunkenness is a public order offence, and I believe we have sufficient evidence to obtain a conviction. Because it’s a minor charge and you are a non-resident EU citizen, if you agree to plead guilty to ‘Dronken orde/veiligheid verstoren op openbare weg,’ a drunk and disorderly public order offence on the public highway, for which there is a fine of two hundred and fifty euros, I can release you immediately. If you choose to deny the offence you have the right to a trial before the sub-district court.” He leans back and crosses his arms.

  That’s pretty harsh for the Amsterdam Politie, but you’d heard they were having a crack-down: just your bad luck to be caught in it. “What are the consequences if I plead guilty?” you ask.

  “As this is an administrative offence, there will be no subsequent proceedings or criminal record if you agree to the fine.” He looks bored. “It’s your decision.”

  The offer, it’s a no-brainer. Pay 250 and that’s the end of it—it’s not as if they’re going to put you on a sex offender’s register or send you to prison or something. The alternative is to face the uncharted waters of finding a lawyer and going to court, where they’ll probably find you guilty as charged and send the black-robed chanting inquisitors to lead you down a stony tunnel lined with manacled skeletons to a cavern furnished with an electric chair, just for wasting their time. “And face it,” the mummy lobe reminds you, “you were drunk, weren’t you?”

  You nod, then wince as your forehead reminds you about the hangover. “Do you take PayPal?”

  “Of course.” The cop gestures at the box on the table. “You will receive an email with instructi
ons for pleading guilty.” He pauses. “You should remember that failing to plead by email and not attending a court session are much more serious offences than public drunkenness, and the Scottish police will prosecute you on our behalf.”

  That you don’t need. “Okay. I’ll pay the fine,” you say hastily.

  “That concludes this interview. You may leave when you are ready,” says the cop—and he stands and walks out the door, leaving you staring after him with one shoe in your hand and the other on your left foot.

  “Don’t forget to tie your shoelaces,” chides the mummy lobe. “Remember, it’s a serious offence!”

  You emerge from the Politie station blinking robotically, like an animatronic ground-hog with a short circuit. The hang-over has intensified so much that you’re trying not to move your head in case it falls off. Waves of pain throb in stereo from either temple, and your skin feels two degrees too hot and two sizes too small. It’s a bright Saturday morning, and the light isn’t making your eyes hurt so much as giving them the chien andalou treatment, slashing razor blades of pain through the puffy red-rimmed windows of your soul. It cools down a little once you get your glasses on and the overlays up, but all of this is as nothing compared to the my-fly’s-undone sensation you get when you carefully look over your shoulder at the front of the station. It is to angst as déjà vu is to memory. If you’d only not let Mitch and Budgie—

  Do what?

  You shake your head and whimper quietly, then cast around for a tram stop. A plan is hatching. You’re going to sneak into your room, sink a couple of ibuprofen and a can of Red Bull as you throw your shit in your bag, then you’re going to tiptoe out and hot-foot it all the way to Schiphol and throw yourself aboard the first flight home. Damn the expense. Your phone’s already trawling the travel sites for bargains: Once home, you will break into your neighbours’ house while they’re at work, find their cat, and somehow persuade the beast to bury your head in its litter tray. That should cure the hang-over, or at least put it in perspective: and then—