If This Is Home Page 3

  When I eventually took possession of my faked papers – passport, social-security number, birth certificate – I thought again about Reeve and his lost love. The toss of the coin. The sun’s reflection. The eventual breaking of the spell. I held the documents in my hand. They were surprisingly light. I looked at my new name, my new date of birth. Had someone barged down the door and demanded ID, I wouldn’t have known what to say. The papers and the photos matched. This was the truth. I was Josef Pietr Novak. I was born in New Jersey, November 20th 1972. I could never have known Mark Wilkinson. I could never have known Bethany Wilder.

  With the papers stowed in my inside pocket, I took the subway to the East Village. The stationers smelled of toner cartridges and pencil shavings. It was library quiet. From a spinner by the door, I picked out a leather-bound notebook with an elasticated strap. At the counter I added a packet of pencils. The clerk smiled and bagged up the items. This was, I think, my first act as an American.

  I headed for a bar and sat at a table under the jukebox. In the window seat there were two guys sharing a pitcher of beer, talking about baseball. I lit a cigarette, sipped my drink and took out the notebook and a pencil. In my hand the pencil gave off a simple, schoolroom smell. I was still stuck like that when the guys finished their pitcher of beer. They looked back at me as they left the bar. One of them belched as he went through the door.

  The page was white and lined and I hovered over it. Eventually I wrote ‘My name is Josef Pietr Novak’. Then I put down the pencil and finished my drink. The bartender brought me another. I’d added another sentence by the time he’d placed it next to me. Once I’d finished that drink I’d neatly filled five pages. When I felt I’d made a misstep, I would erase it using the rubber on the top of the pencil. With care I constructed new memories. I was determined to be more resolute, more steely than Reeve. There would be no spinning coin, no dead presidents: I would not be nickel and dimed that way.

  I gave Joe – oh honest Joe! – romantic, intelligent, nomadic parents. They moved from New Jersey to the UK two years after Josef’s birth and travelled across mainland Europe. They became research fellows at a university in the north-west of England, where they stayed, and where their children developed slight Mancunian accents. Mine had stuck. The darkened curl of my hair, the nose too sharp and slightly beaky, pale skin, a high metabolism, burnt-sugar irises, English teeth: for these I thanked my father – Josef’s father – who everyone thought was the mirror of my adult looks.

  On the way to support the striking miners in 1984, Josef’s parents died in a car accident. Joe and his younger sister Maria – I had always wanted a sister – were taken in by their great-aunt, whom I based loosely on Jane Marple. Maria, I decided, became a marine biologist and emigrated to Norway.

  There were friends and lovers too. At sixteen Joe lost his virginity to Sally, a girl the image of a fifteen-year-old Deborah Harry. His close friends were his great-aunt’s neighbours – a pair of students who were older, but still enjoyed his company. Sarah and Victoria taught him about art and books. They showed him the best way to cook lamb. They made him feel more comfortable around people. When eventually he went to college – it broke his great-aunt’s heart – he met a guy called Philip, who was the first male friend he’d ever really had. His three years in Manchester were uneventful.

  I realized, as I added to the information over the months, that the humdrum was what gave a life quality, what gave it the ring of authenticity. So Joe’s first proper girlfriend, Katie, was a mousy girl who decided that their relationship could not survive the distance of university. He sometimes missed her, but there were no hard feelings. She had fallen pregnant in her final year of college and was married with a son. They did not speak any more.

  Joe was present at no cataclysmic events. He had been close to the Wall when it fell, but no closer than a million others. He’d stood next to Joey Ramone in a pub toilet in West London. He had once randomly come face to face with President Clinton while jogging in Central Park. Small tales of almost and nearly. The kind of stories we tell each other all of the time. I read them back, these inventions, and slowly they began to persuade. It was the truth.

  I annotated the notebook until it was perfect. In the evenings, as O’Neil chased women in bars and clubs, I would talk to their friends, watching their expressions for evidence of suspicion or doubt. O’Neil thought it was amusing at first – ‘It’s like some kind of witness-protection shit,’ he said one night – but, back then, he didn’t like calling me Joe when we were alone. He only called me that in public.

  In early October I went to CBGBs. It was a dry and crisp afternoon, the sky a perfect spray-can blue. I sat at the bar and ordered Jack Daniel’s and Coke and read the notebook from cover to cover, then read it again. I put it in my satchel and took out a paper bag. I put the contents on the bar. A letter from Bethany. Her sketch of our friend Hannah. The inlay from a BASF C-90 mix-tape. And finally, the only photo of her I’d ever owned.

  It was an accident that I’d even got it. If she’d known, she would have taken it from me. It was out of focus, oddly composed. Her sharp features appeared softened. Her eyes were almost shut. She hated cameras so much that a photo of her was the most prized contraband. It quickly blistered under the flame of my lighter, as did the inlay, the letter and the portrait. I shovelled the ashy contents into a baggie and hailed a cab, rode it out to the Brooklyn Bridge. I stood there, the wind icy and burning my face. I opened the baggie and said goodbye. To Bethany Wilder. To Mark Wilkinson. To everything that had gone before. We floated on the breeze and settled on the East River. I cried for the last time. A few hours later, O’Neil met me for a drink. He looked at me long and hard. We clinked glasses.

  ‘Welcome to America, Joe,’ he said.

  *

  A dozen years later, over steaks at a restaurant just off Bleecker, O’Neil wore that same look as he told me about the Valhalla job: serious, proud almost. And though I refused immediately – I wasn’t leaving New York for nothing or nobody – I knew I’d say yes by the time the coffee came.

  ‘You know your problem, Joe?’ O’Neil said. ‘You don’t dream the big dreams. Your dreams are small. Pygmy dreams. Old-fashioned dreams. You need someone like me to give you the widescreen, you know? Push you from the shadows into the light.’

  I nodded and sipped at my drink.

  ‘Worst thing in the world is small dreams not coming true,’ he’d said tapping me on the arm and smiling. ‘I’m serious. Worse than AIDS and taxes combined.’

  The big dream he had was property. An old apartment building two blocks from our own place. His family were builders and labourers and so he knew about houses, what made them homes. His uncle had properties in Queens and in the Bronx. O’Neil had wanted the same in Brooklyn. Over the years it became more plausible, he had traded up here and there, saved his money where he could. O’Neil thought we’d probably make a million dollars from Vegas. When I laughed he looked at me as if I were crazy. He kept talking until the idea of the cash became infectious. A million dollars. I couldn’t give a shit about the money. But I wanted him to look that way for ever.

  *

  How’s that Bethany of yours? I heard it over and over, my father’s voice repeating as I scattered my possessions over the bedroom floor, trying to find the notebook. Eventually, I found it tucked inside the fold of my overnight case, presumably for safe keeping. In my hand it felt somehow lighter than I remembered, less substantial. I hesitated before unfastening the elastic strap. I opened it and saw that every page was exactly as it had been left, filled with my pencil handwriting. I flicked through the pages, the edges thin against my thumbnail.

  I read it from beginning to end, straight-backed at the small kitchen table. Then started again. The clock ticked. About halfway through the second reading, the ten-note refrain and my father’s voice began to fade.

  I saw myself walking back to our house from the bus stop. The darkening afternoon. The fields slowly becomi
ng housing estates. Our home, a red-brick terrace with purple curtains in the bottom windows. A three up, two down. Inside, the dark hallway. The staircase punctuated with watercolours of the local countryside. Fussily patterned carpets. An electric fire that always seemed to burn. A glass-fronted sideboard housing Doulton figurines. I could see the cooling house, walk through its rooms. I could touch its walls. I knew that it existed.

  I put back the notebook and opened the client files. I made notes, studied the photographs, went over the itineraries, but kept the photo of Brooks face down on the table. I was looking at its blank whiteness when there was a knock at the door. I didn’t move. O’Neil was soon standing in front of me.

  He was wearing a dark suit which flattered his bulk. His shirt was ash-grey and his tie coal-black. His hair had been swept into a slick ponytail and in his hand he carried a six-pack of Brooklyn lager.

  ‘You okay?’ he said. ‘I just saw Edith.’

  He sat down opposite me at the table, opened two bottles and passed one to me.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Just nadgered, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re what?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just tired … what did Edith say?’

  O’Neil took his cigarettes from his pocket and lit one. He took a pull on his beer. Until recently, he’d come round a little earlier, before showering and changing. But now he was always dressed up and edging into character. I’d much preferred it when he wore his shorts and oversized T-shirts, the grey fronds wiring through his long curls. He’d started dying his hair too. Said that the grey was holding up the sales.

  ‘Nothing. Just that she’s worried about you is all.’

  ‘Edith’s always worrying. I’ve never known anyone worry so much. I’m fine. Honestly.’

  O’Neil put up his hands – don’t shoot – and cracked his long smile. He looked hot and somehow relieved. There was sweat on his top lip. I lit a cigarette and then took a sip from my beer.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You reckon you’ve got a good bunch? One of mine looks good for the pent.’

  ‘I don’t want to jinx it,’ I said.

  O’Neil told me about his primary lead, a man called Hardy: his job, his weakness for coke and overweight hookers. He talked quickly and precisely, but I couldn’t concentrate. I looked at the cigarette burning in my hand, the beer bottle on the table top next to the photographs. O’Neil said something about derivatives, about the Grand Canyon, about helicopter pilots, but all I could see was Edith.

  Edith and him together. The hidden smoke on Edith’s breath, the concern on O’Neil’s face, the hair dye and lateness for drinks. The images spun like a reel and then fell perfectly into place. I saw him with his face between Edith’s legs, the splay of limbs as they embraced. I put the cigarette to my lips and shook my head. But the image was lodged: a jerky, shrouded, uncensored sight.

  ‘Hello?’ O’Neil said, snapping his fingers. ‘Anyone home?’

  ‘So you’re fucking,’ I said. ‘I take it that’s what this all means. You and Edith. That’s what I was supposed to ask you about, right? ’

  O’Neil stuttered. I smoked my cigarette and closed one of my eyes. There was silence and then his phone rang. He clicked it off and shook his head.

  O’Neil looked at his hands. He had big hands, like a goalkeeper or concert pianist. For a while he stayed that way, looking at his hands and almost speaking. I watched him loosen his hair, then tie it back into a tighter ponytail. The light glowed behind the blinded windows, and still neither of us spoke.

  I expected him to say that it just happened. I could hear him explaining: ‘We didn’t mean for anything to happen, but one thing just led to another …’ And then: ‘We were going to tell you, but it never seemed the right time.’ And then: ‘We know this is weird and sudden, but we love each other.’

  But he said none of those things; instead there was only an insistent quiet. After a minute or so he drained his bottle and rubbed his hand across his mouth.

  ‘We’re going to stay here,’ he said. ‘Both of us.’

  *

  ‘You’ll like this one,’ I say, handing her the book. Bethany is on the bed wearing a T-shirt and jeans. She looks up, curious as to what’s inside the paper bag. She opens it and it’s the Adventure New York Guide, written by the improbably named John M. Fakes. It’s a gaudy yellow volume with a photograph of the Manhattan skyline on the front. It claims to contain all you need to know and more. It is woefully out of date, written at the fag end of the seventies, and its advice is very much of its time.

  ‘Turn to page seventy-three,’ I say. Bethany reads out M. Fakes’ enthusiastic descriptions of New York’s ‘swingers scene’.

  ‘Sounds to me like old Fakes is a bit of perv,’ Bethany says turning back to the front cover, then throwing the book to the floor.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ I say.

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘But can’t we talk about something else?’

  ‘Like what?’ I say.

  ‘I don’t know, anything. Nothing about New York. Tell me why you love me.’

  I look down and run my hand through her hair.

  ‘I love you because you share the same dreams. Because when I’m with you, I feel like a different person.’ I say this ironically, though it’s the truth.

  ‘You’ll have to do better than that,’ she says. ‘Not exactly imaginative, is it?’

  ‘It’s the best I can do.’

  ‘It’s selfish is what it is.’

  ‘Selfish?’

  ‘You love me because I make you feel good? I’d call that pretty selfish.’

  ‘I love you because you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Better,’ she said. ‘But still only four out of ten.’

  ‘So why do you love me, then?’ I say. Her father calls up the stairs. The phone is for her.

  *

  That first day you arrive in Las Vegas you see the fat asses of the clients, their thighs chafing, bleeding maybe, sitting with their supersize cups of quarters and silver dollars, playing three slots at once, their grins slapped on, wearing their leisure suits loose, sucking on long drinks, some smoking cigarettes, some talking but mostly just pressing the buttons, pulling the levers, and hoping. Hoping most of all. Las Vegas, you realize, runs not on money, but on the perniciousness of hope.

  After a week, you no longer feel sorry for these people, their buffet dinners, their occasional wins, their banter with the croupiers. They are happy despite their losses; happy because there is always hope. If there’s a difference between the people on the Strip and the people who live in its shadows, it’s one of haves and have-nots. Those who have hope and those who do not. It’s this hope that ultimately will leave you ripped, hollow-shelled, bow-headed. Watching hope, and those that have it, destroys you.

  ‘You’re thinking too much,’ O’Neil said when I once shared this with him. ‘You think about things like that here and you really will go crazy. It’s like blackjack: you start thinking about odds and shit like that you’re gonna start to lose. Don’t think about it. Let’s just do our jobs and get the fuck out of here, okay? We’ll be loaded. Properly loaded.’

  He laughed then and I smiled and raised a drink to him. To his laughter. I’d stopped thinking about all that stuff, just, perhaps, as O’Neil was beginning to think too much himself.

  *

  He was still talking.

  ‘… Why not stay? What’s in New York that’s so great anyways? Here we can make real money. Make it and spend it. We could get a place in the old town, drive Cadillacs, have Olympic-sized swimming pools. We can’t do any of that in New York, Joe. But here’ – he came over to me with the face he’d worn back at the steak restaurant; the imploring love of money – ‘we could go into business together. The three of us. Edith’s got this great idea for a place over the other side of town—’

  ‘The three of us, O’Neil? The fucking three of us?’

  O’Neil
nodded, looked at the floor, held his hands behind him.

  ‘I know you’re upset, but …’

  But it was his upset that was palpable. He wiped his hand against his mouth and nose.

  ‘I must’ve been crazy even thinking you’d understand. I said to Edith, “He’ll just go fucking nuclear when we tell him.” And she just kept saying that you’d understand. I knew you wouldn’t.’

  He rocked slightly. It was like old times, late at night, drink-fuelled nightmares.

  ‘Of course I understand, O’Neil.’ I put my hands on his biceps. ‘I’m happy for you. I really am.’

  His face shifted into a smile, his hands touching my cheeks.

  ‘But do we have to stay here?’ I said. ‘Can’t you both just come home?’

  O’Neil shook his head. ‘I love you, Joe,’ he said. ‘Love you like a brother, love you like my own brother. But things change. People change. You should stay. I want you to stay. It’ll be good for you, for us, don’t you think?’

  ‘So you’re all wise now?’ I said. ‘Fucking Edie’s given you all the answers, has it?’

  He pushed me away, a brief flash in his eyes suggesting he could send me sprawling over the floor without the smallest effort.

  ‘Don’t even start on insulting Edith. There’s no need, okay? She just made me see things different, is all. About my brother, about you—’

  ‘You told her about your brother? Fucking hell, O’Neil, you didn’t even—’

  O’Neil banged his fist on the table.

  ‘I can’t do this any longer. Not while you’re like this.’ He moved towards the door and then stopped.

  ‘I’m sorry, okay?’ I said.

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ he said. ‘And for fuck’s sake try to relax before the sit, otherwise you’re going to freak everyone out.’

  He nodded towards me and I nodded back.

  ‘You remember when we went to get tattoos,’ I said as he opened the door. He turned and there was the merest hint of a smile.