One of Us Read online

  ‘Oh, hello,’ it said, into the quiet. ‘Thought you hadn’t heard me.’

  ‘What,’ I said, ‘the fuck do you want?’

  ‘It’s time to get up, Hap.’

  ‘I am up,’ I said. ‘I’m in a bar.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the clock, looking around. ‘So you are.’ It paused for a moment, before surging on. ‘But it’s still time to get up. You can snooze me once more if you want, but you really ought to be out and about by half past nine.’

  ‘Look, you little bastard,’ I said, ‘I am up. It’s a quarter past nine in the evening.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  ‘Yes it is. We’ve been through this.’

  ‘I have the time as nine-seventeen precisely—a.m.’ The clock angled itself so that I—and everyone else—could read its display clearly.

  ‘You’ve always got the time as a.m.,’ I shouted, standing to point at it. ‘That’s because you’re broken, you useless piece of shit.’

  ‘Hey, man,’ said one of the tourists at my table. ‘Little guy’s only trying to do his job. No call for language like that.’ There was a low rumble of agreement from nearby tables.

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed the clock, two square inches of injured innocence on two spindly little legs. ‘Just trying to do my job, that’s all. Let’s see how you like it if I don’t wake you up, huh? We know what happens then, don’t we?’

  ‘What?’ asked a woman at the other side of the room, her eyes sorrowful. ‘Does he mistreat you?’ With my jaw clamped firmly shut, I grabbed my cigarettes and lighter off the table and glared at the woman. She stared bravely back at me, and sniffed. ‘He looks the type.’

  ‘He hits me. He even throws me out the window.’ This was greeted by low mutters from some quarters, and I decided it was time to go. ‘…Of moving cars.’

  The crowd stirred angrily. I considered telling them that having a broken AM/PM indicator was the least of the clock’s problems, that it was also prone, on a whim, to wake me up at regular intervals through the small hours and thus lose me a night’s work, but decided it wasn’t worth it. Trust the little bastard to catch up with me in the one bar in the world where people apparently cared about defective appliances. I pulled my jacket on and started shouldering my way through the people around me. A pathway opened up, lined with sullen faces, and I slunk towards the door feeling incredibly embarrassed.

  ‘Wait, Hap! Wait for me!’

  At the sound of the clock’s little feet landing on the ground I picked up the pace and hurried out, past the pair of armed policemen moonlighting as guards in the short passageway outside. I clanged through the swing doors at the end, hoping one of them would whip back and catapult the machine back over the bar, and stomped out into the road.

  It didn’t work. The clock caught up with me, and ran by my side down the street with little puffing sounds of exertion. These were fake, I believed, little sampled lies. If it had managed to track me down from where I’d thrown it out the window (for the last time) in San Diego, a quick sprint was hardly going to wind it.

  ‘Thanks,’ I snarled. ‘Now everyone in that fucking bar knows my name.’ I swung a kick at it, but it dodged easily, feinting to one side and then scuttling back to face me.

  ‘But that’s nice,’ the clock said. ‘Maybe you’ll make some new friends. Not only am I a useful timepiece, but I can help you achieve your socializing goals by bridging the gulf between souls in this topsy-turvy world of ours. Please stop throwing me away. I can help you!’

  ‘No you can’t,’ I said, grinding to a halt. The night was dark, the street lit only by stuttering yellow lamps outside Ensenada’s various bars, food rooms and rat-hole motels, and I felt suddenly homesick and alone. I was in the wrong part of the wrong town, and I didn’t even know why I was there. Someone else’s guilt, my own paranoia, or just because it was where I always used to run. Maybe all three—and it didn’t really matter. I had to find Laura Reynolds, who might not even be here, before I got shafted for something I hadn’t done, but remembered doing. Try explaining that to a clock.

  ‘You’ve barely explored my organizer functions,’ the clock chimed, oblivious.

  ‘I’ve already got an organizer.’

  ‘But I’m better! Just tell me your appointments, and I’ll remind you with any one of twenty-five charming alarm sounds. Never forget an anniversary! Never be late for that important meeting! Never…’

  This time the kick connected, and with a fading yelp the clock sailed clean over a line of stores selling identical rows of cheap rugs and plaster busts of ET. By the time I was fifty yards down the street the mariachi band was at full tilt again behind me, the businessman’s voice soaring clear and true above it, the voice of a man who knew who he was and where he lived and what he was going home to.

  I’d arrived in Mexico late the previous evening. That, at least, was when I’d woken to find myself in a car I didn’t recognize, stationary but with the engine still running, by the side of a patchy road. I switched the ignition off and got out gingerly, feeling as if someone had hammered an intriguing pattern of very cold nails into my left temple. Then I peered around into the darkness, trying to work out where I was.

  The answer soon presented itself, in the shape of the sharply defined geography surrounding me. A steep rock face rose behind the car, and on the other side of the road the hill disappeared abruptly—the only vegetation bushes and gnarled grey trees that seemed to be making a big point of just what a hard time they were having. The air was warm and smelled of dust, and with no city glow the stars were bright in the blackness above.

  I was on the old interior road that leads down the Baja from Tijuana to Ensenada, twisting through the dark country up along the hills. There was a time when it was the only road in those parts, but now it’s not lit, in bad repair, and nobody with any sense drives this way any more.

  Now that I was out of the car I was able to recognize it as mine, and to dimly remember climbing into it in LA much earlier in the day. But this realization faded in and out, like a signal from a television station where the power is unreliable. Other memories were trying to shoulder it aside, clamouring for their time in the spotlight. They were artificially sharp and distinct, and trying to hide this by melding with my own recollections; but they couldn’t, because the memories weren’t mine and they had no real homes to go to. All they could do was overlay what was already there, like a double exposure, sometimes at the front, sometimes merely tickling like a word on the tip of your tongue.

  I walked back to the car and fumbled in the glove compartment, hoping to find something else I knew was mine. I immediately discovered a lot of cigarettes, including an opened pack, but they weren’t my brand. I smoke Camel Lights, always have: these were Kim. Nonetheless it was likely that I’d bought them, because the opened pack still had the cellophane round the bottom half. It’s a habit of mine to leave it there, which has given my best friend Deck hours of fun taking it off and sneaking it onto the top half of the pack when I’m in the john. The memory of his trademark cackle as I yanked and snarled at a pack after such an incident suddenly bloomed in my mind, grounding me for a moment in who I was.

  I screwed up my eyes tightly, and when I opened them again felt a little better.

  The passenger seat was strewn with twists of foil and a number of cracked vials, and it didn’t take me long to work out why. A long time ago, in a past life, I used to deal a drug called Fresh. Fresh removes the ennui which comes from custom and acquaintance, and presents everything to you, every sight, emotion and experience, as if it’s happening for the first time. Part of how it does this is by masking your memories, to stop them grabbing new experience and turning it into just the same old thing. Evidently I’d been trying to replicate this effect with a cocktail of other recreational pharmaceuticals, and had ended up blacking out. On an unlit mountain road, in Mexico, at night.

  Great going.

  But it had evidently worked, because for the time being I wa
s back. I started the car and pulled carefully back onto the road, after a quick mental check to make sure I was pointing in the right direction. Then I tore the filter off a Kim, lit her up, and headed South.

  I only passed one other car along the way, which was good, because it meant I could drive down the middle of the road and stay as far as possible from the precipitous drops which line half the route. This left me free to do a kind of internal inventory, and to start panicking about that instead. Most of the last six hours were missing, along with a number of words and facts. I could recall where I lived, for example—on the tenth floor of The Falkland, one of Griffith’s livelier apartment blocks—but not the room number. It simply wasn’t available to me. Presumably I’d remember by sight: I hoped so, because all my stuff was in there and otherwise I’d have nothing to wear.

  I could remember Laura Reynolds’ name, and what she’d done to me. She’d evidently been with me for some of the journey down, in spirit at least: it must have been her who bought the cigarettes, though me who opened the pack. I didn’t really know what she looked like, only how she appeared to herself, and I had no idea where she was. I’d probably had a good reason for heading for Ensenada, or at least a reason of some kind—assuming, of course, that it had been me who made the decision. Either way, now I was here it seemed I might as well go on.

  I made good time, only having to stop once, while a herd of coffee machines crossed the road in front of me. I read somewhere that they often make their way down to Mexico. I can’t see why that would be so, but there was certainly a hell of a lot of them. They came down off the hill in silence, trooped across the road in a protective huddle, and then headed off down the slope in an orderly line, searching for a home, or food, or maybe even some coffee beans.

  I reached Ensenada just after midnight, and slept in the car on the outskirts of town. I dreamed of a silver sedan and men with lights behind their heads, but the message was confused and frantic, fear dancing through an internal landscape lined with doors that wouldn’t open.

  When I woke up more of my head was back in place, and I got it together to contact Stratten, patching the call through my hacker’s network so it looked like it came from LA. I said I had a migraine and wouldn’t be able to work for a couple days. I don’t think he believed me, but he didn’t call me on it. I spent the rest of the day fruitlessly searching taco stands and crumbling hotels, or driving aimlessly down rotting streets. By the evening this had led me to an inescapable conclusion.

  She wasn’t here.

  From Housson’s I headed straight for the street where I’d left the car. In late afternoon this particular area behind the tourist drag had seemed charmingly authentic. By mid-evening it resembled a do-it-yourself mugging emporium. Knots of alarming locals stood and stared as I passed, their feet wet from the pools of beer, urine or blood which flowed from each of the bars, but I made it back to the car in one piece. It was parked down a cul-de-sac, away from prying eyes, and it was only as I pulled my keys from out of my pocket that I realized shadows were moving on the other side of the street. The light was too patchy for me to tell who it might be, but I didn’t want to meet them either way. I’m like that. Not very sociable.

  Three men were soon distinguishable, heading towards me. They weren’t hurrying, but that wasn’t reassuring. Particularly when the glint of a tarnished button confirmed what I already suspected. Cops. Or the local equivalent, which was even worse. Could be they were just out walking their wallets, shaking down the bars; could be they’d just spotted a tourista and wanted to shake me down instead.

  Or it could be that their colleagues outside Housson’s had passed word to them that someone suspicious had just been hounded out of the bar by a lunatic timepiece, someone whose name had been clearly articulated. There was no reason that name should mean anything to anyone, not unless stuff had happened back in LA that I didn’t know about, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I quietly opened the car door and waited, listening to the sound of their boots scuffing on the ragged road surface.

  ‘Hi,’ I said steadily. ‘What can I do for you guys?’

  They didn’t reply, but merely looked me up and down, as is the wont of such people. The third cop hung back a little, casting a glance at the licence plate of my car.

  ‘It’s mine,’ I said. ‘The papers are in the glove compartment.’

  Too late I remembered what was next to the papers and under a map. A gun. It was mine, licensed, legal—with a serial number and everything—but it would still be a very bad thing to have them find. The Baja Peninsula isn’t bandit territory, but it’s heading that way. Twenty years ago it had looked as if fleeing Hong Kong money might claw it up into respectability, but the cash had kept on moving, and now the dark country was taking over again, seeping down from the hills and turning the eyes of the people inwards. The cops are very keen that it’s them pointing the guns at people, not the other way round.

  ‘Mr Thompson?’ the middle cop said. I tightened my grip on the door.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. There was no point in lying. Any part of my body had it stamped there in amino acids. ‘How’d you guess? I just look like a Thompson, or what?’

  ‘Someone who sounds like you just had a little trouble in Housson’s,’ he said, something that wasn’t really a smile moving his lips. ‘With a clock.’

  ‘Well you know how it is.’ I shrugged. ‘They get on your nerves occasionally.’

  ‘I couldn’t afford such a thing,’ the middle cop said. ‘Mine still runs on batteries.’

  ‘Probably works properly, then,’ I said, trying to be comradely. ‘And you don’t have to feed it.’

  ‘What are you doing in Ensenada?’ the second policeman asked abruptly.

  ‘Holiday,’ I said. ‘Few days off work.’

  ‘What work?’

  ‘Bar work.’ Used to be true. I’ve done most things at one time or another. If they wanted to test me on pouring beer and making change they were welcome to it.

  They all nodded together. Little, uninterested nods. The fact that this was all so chummy should have made me more relaxed. It didn’t. It made me feel tense. No-one had asked me for money. No-one had asked for my papers. No-one was hunting through the cavities of my car for drugs.

  So what were they doing? I hadn’t done anything, after all. Not really.

  Then I heard it. Very quietly at first, the sound of a car approaching in another street. Nothing exceptional about that, of course: I’m familiar with the internal combustion engine and its role in contemporary society. But I couldn’t help noticing that the cop in the middle, the one who appeared to be leading this crew, glanced towards the end of the block. I followed his eyes.

  Initially there was nothing to see except tourist couples walking hand in hand across the intersection, their blurred voices calling as they pointed out souvenirs to each other. For a moment I had a flash of the first time I came to Ensenada, many years ago. I remembered realizing that every bangle and every rug, every copyright infringement and Day of the Dead vignette, had been stamped out somewhere in a factory and that no-one here was selling anything unique or genuine. Realizing that, and not caring. Spending days eating fish tacos at two for a dollar, loaded high with fixings and chilli, down by the fish market where the world’s most disreputable pelicans fought for scraps in a flurry of brown feathers. Cruising in the late afternoon, Country on the car stereo and Indian kids on every street corner, selling subcontracted chiclets to support their mothers’ habits. And nights of shadows and distant shouting, patterns of light on water and wood fires in run-down chalets; cold breezes on the rocks at the waterfront, the warmth of someone who loved me.

  That’s why I used to come back here. To remember those times, and the person I was when they happened.

  But the car which slowly moved into position wasn’t a beat-up old Ford, and there was no-one in it that I knew. It was a squad car, and that’s what the cops around me had been waiting for. It was a trap, either be
cause they knew who I was, or because it was a slow night and they just felt like it. Either way, it was time to go.

  I braced my hands against the car door and whipped it out quickly, catching two of the cops in the stomach and sending them stumbling painfully backwards. The remaining cop scrabbled for his holster but I swung a kick at his hands, smacking into his wrist and sending the gun skittering along the pavement. It had been a big night for kicking. Lucky I kept in practice.

  The cops in the car down the end saw what was happening, and the vehicle leapt up the street towards me. I jammed the key in the ignition and had my own car moving before I’d even shut the door. There were shouts from the cops behind as I yanked the car round in a tight bend, scattering grit like a line of machine-gun fire, heading straight for the police vehicle.

  I kept the car on course, flooring the pedal, but I knew I was going to have to turn. You don’t play chicken with the Mexican police. They tend to win. I caught glimpses of tourists watching as I hammered down the road, their mouths falling open as they realized there was local colour in prospect and that the colour was likely to be red.

  In the front, the faces of two cops stared back at me through their windshield as they got closer and closer. The passenger looked a little nervous, but one glance at the driver told me what I already knew. If there was going to be a domesticated egg-producing squawker in this confrontation, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be him.

  At the last minute I yanked the wheel to the right and went caroming off down a side street, narrowly avoiding rolling the car into a storefront. People scattered in all directions as I cursed my luck and tried to work out what I was going to do next. Behind me I heard the scream of tyres as the cops performed an inaccurate U-turn, cracking a few parked cars in the process. I hope everyone had the proper insurance. It’s a false economy not to, you know, and there’s a place about fifty yards from the border where you almost believe that what you’re being sold is worth something. I forget the name, but check it out.