Zero History

ear lobby, do some work on my laptop. He came back to check on me, of course. Saw
the video, we got talking. I explained I was a friend of yours.” He smiled. “Is that
whiskey?”
“Want some?”
“Can’t. Painkillers. Thought you might. You’re looking a bit pale.”
“Garreth …”
“Yes?”
“Missed you.” It sounded incredibly stupid.
“Mutual.” He wasn’t smiling now. “Knew I’d fucked up, really. When the Lotus hit me,
actually.”
“You shouldn’t have jumped.”
He shook his head. “Shouldn’t have left.” He went slowly to the bed, supporting
himself with the four-footed cane. Turned, as slowly, and carefully sat. “Himself,” he
said, “sends regards.”
She had no idea how old the old man was. She would have thought seventy, at least.
“How is he?”
“None too happy with me. I’m not likely to be that operational again for him. I think he
sees the tricks are over, for both of us.”
She poured herself a half-inch of whiskey, in a highball glass. “I never understood
exactly what motivated him,” she said.
“Some sort of seething Swiftian rage,” he said, “that he can only express through
perverse, fiendishly complex exploits, resembling Surrealist gestes.” He smiled.
“And that was one, in Vancouver?”
“That was a good one. And I met you.”
“And then you went off to do another, before the election?”
“Night of the election, actually. But that was different. We were simply making certain
that something didn’t happen, that time.”
The whiskey burnt the back of her throat. Made her eyes water. She sat down, gingerly,
beside him, fearing that she might hurt him if she made the mattress move.
He put his arm around her waist. “I feel like a schoolboy at the theater,” he said. “With
a date who can’t stand whiskey.”
“Your hair’s longer,” she said, touching it.
“Grows out in hospital. Quite a few procedures. Yet to murder a physiotherapist, but
then I’ve not had my last chance.” He took the glass from her, sniffed at it. “Deep shit,
your Heidi said. Harsh woman. Tell me: how deep?”
“I don’t know. I was in a truck tonight, in the City, leaving a meeting with Bigend, and
a car cut us off. Our driver went into a passage, sort of alley, and I think we were meant
to, because another car drove in at the other end, and drove right up to us. That driver
had a balaclava, pulled down. We were trapped between the two cars.”
“What happened?”