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I FELT BEHIND MY EAR, found the little switch and turned it on. Jenny hadn’t activated my Tiny yet, but I figured I’d lie back and wait. It pays to sit still until it happens. I leaned back against the V-shaped pillow and stared at the light shade. I couldn’t help toying with the switch, and poking at the outline of the plastic disc, which lay flat beneath my skin. I’d been worried they’d have to drill through bone but when I’d expressed my concern to the technician he’d laughed. ‘The sensors are highly tuned,’ he’d said. ‘They pick it all up from outside the skull.’
The light shade was white, round, and smooth as a pickled onion. Seems everything’s getting smoother and rounder. Gone are the good old days when you could retire to your hotel after a long day at work and sink into a decent, squishy sofa. These days you sit down and slide right off. I glanced at the fridge – thought about the Indian Pale I had in there, the condensation misting the cold glass, the sound of released pressure as I popped open the top.
I felt the usual added strain on my mind as Jenny switched on my Tiny, and immediately closed my eyes and tried to focus on whatever it was I was supposed to be looking at. The little bugger’s eyes aren’t the best; the cameras don’t swivel properly. Ah, there we go. Jenny was holding my Tiny up in front of Nico.
‘Say hello to Grandpa,’ she said. The image rotated back and forth vigorously.
Nico gurgled something; it was hard to tell over the sound of whooshing air.
‘It’s your Grandpa!’ Jenny squealed. ‘Your Grandpa!’
‘Stop waggling me around!’ I called. I could hear my own voice coming from my Tiny’s speakers – the same, but not quite.
‘Sorry,’ she said, and the room suddenly stabilised. A monstrous baby’s hand reached towards my face and I braced against the hotel pillows.
‘That’s right,’ Jenny cooed. ‘He’s far, far away.’
Nico slapped the highchair tray with his palms, and Jenny pushed me right up into his snotty face.
‘Christ, that’s enough,’ I said, opening my eyes. The onion-shaped light shade was clearly visible through the now semi-opaque image of Nico. It looked like he had a third eye, right in the middle of his forehead. I stood up and inched towards the fridge, trying to concentrate on the hard lines of the hotel room. By the time I got back to the bed my head ached. I used a pillow to stifle the sound of the beer being opened, then lay back, closed my eyes again, and took a sip.
Jenny had propped my Tiny up on top of the kitchen bench back home, facing the sink, a chopping board, and a knife the length of a cricket pitch. Outside the window the sky was a deep blue. Sparrows and wax-eyes of pterodactyl proportions flew in and out of my vision. Jenny had bought the bird feeder a few years previously, had insisted I nail it to the fence. They made a hell of a mess, those birds, but Jenny loved to watch them. I could just make out the sound of cicadas. But I was cold. Damned cold, actually, like I was lying on snow.
‘Jenny, where on earth did you put my Tiny?’ I called.
She came back into view, carrying a bag of potatoes.
‘I’ve switched myself on,’ she said.
‘You’ve got to be joking.’
‘I told Rach I’d prepare some meals for Nico, which she can take home.’
‘Don’t be stupid. You’ll chop off one of your fingers. We don’t need to both be on. And why am I freezing here?’
I had a brief glimpse of the ceiling before she repositioned my Tiny.
‘Sorry. Frozen peas,’ she said. I presumed she’d pressed her hand against my Tiny’s back, since the cold became less.
‘Turn me on, Carl. You know I like to see where you are. I feel disconnected...’
I grumbled as I leaned over to the bedside drawer and pulled out her Tiny. About four inches tall, the thing had been made in her exact likeness. The brown eyes stared blankly. I carefully gripped the tiny left ankle between thumb and forefinger, starting to make the twist, then remembered the beer and quickly placed it on the floor where it couldn’t be spotted. I twisted the ankle and her Tiny’s eyes swivelled to look at my face.
‘You haven’t shaved today,’ Jenny said. Twice. The voice in my mind – heard by my Tiny on the other side of the world – and the voice coming from the speaker inside her Tiny’s chest. Sometimes the voices were in sync.
Her Tiny began to feel warm, and I placed it on the pillow, facing me.
‘I’ll shave tomorrow.’
‘You know it makes a difference.’
I had the usual dilemma. Did I close my eyes and watch what Jenny was doing back home, or did I keep them open and look at her Tiny? If I closed them, I’d have the relief of only one image to focus on, but her Tiny would be staring at my closed eyes, and Jenny didn’t like that. Really the whole system was flawed.
‘Rach is at a job interview.’
Her Tiny was looking at me so intently. The lips didn’t move, but the voice came out all the same.
‘What job?’
‘At the high school down the road from where she lives. They want someone to look after the plants. It’s a gardening job, really. It might involve a bit of heavy lifting, which I’m worried about, but it’s only fifteen hours. She wants to start Nico at day care a couple of days per week. She says she needs to get out of the house. I told her I’d look after him, but she’s dead set on day care.’
I became aware of a knocking noise and closed my eyes. Jenny was chopping the potatoes with her own eyes closed.
‘She’s not built for heavy lifting,’ she continued. Her grey-auburn hair was tied in a loose plait, her cuffs rolled up. ‘I told her she should do a course. She was so good at science when she was at school. She could do pharmacology, or study to be a radiologist.’
‘A radiologist?’
‘Sue’s niece did some courses at university, and she’s a radiologist now. Rach could do so much better than gardening.’
‘Let her work it out for herself.’
I opened my eyes and the thing was still looking at me. It didn’t smile. Didn’t move at all – no muscles, I suppose. I never properly learned the science of it. All I knew was that there were sensors on my Tiny’s body, and cameras in the eyes and what-have-you, and that somehow, through satellites I suppose, the information was sent to my brain. When Jenny touched my Tiny it was like being poked through a thick blanket. The newer models can smell, and have a better sense of physical touch – or so the pop-ups claim. It’s probably only a matter of time before they’re walking around, creating havoc of their own.
The Tinys arrived from the manufacturers in their boxes, naked. We hadn’t expected that. There’s nothing more sobering that seeing your silver pubic hairs copied in minute detail. Jenny immediately took to dressing them like little dolls. You can buy accessories from the company page. Last November she dressed my Tiny in a Halloween costume and surprised me by holding it up in front of the mirror. There I was, dressed like an English schoolboy, and there was nothing much I could do about it.
‘Jenny love,’ I cut in. She was still complaining about Rachel. ‘I’m meeting Michel soon – the Chief Financial Officer. He wants me to go over some figures with him.’
‘So late?’
‘He’s a very busy man. I should shower.’
‘Okay...’ She sighed, the noise at my end coming out like static. ‘Make sure you shave. And dress warmly, dear. You don’t want to catch another cold.’
‘I will. See you the same time tomorrow.’ I switched off the switch behind my ear and reached for her Tiny. I rubbed its back with my finger. I knew Jenny would still be in there, would be switched on right to the last second, but I couldn’t speak to the thing. As soon as I’d twisted its ankle I chucked it back in the drawer, and slammed the drawer shut.
*
I PULLED MY JACKET collar up against the wind. People all around me hurried from one shop awning to the next, their umbrellas held out like shields, scarves flapping. The cafe terraces were deserted, the tables and chairs packed away inside the steamy restaurant interiors. Several shops were still open, music blaring, their brightness floating on the wet street. An electronics store I passed had four drift screens all playing different music at once. One of the screens followed me halfway down the block before the boy in the shop called it back. Even while at work the boy had his e-vice turned on, its holographic screen and board shimmering in the rain. I’m damned if I know how kids walk around without bumping into each other, they’re always staring into their vices. Rach changed the settings on mine once, fiddled with the opacity, but then I could hardly see what was on the screen. I sometimes think I preferred that old plastic clunky thing we used to hold to our ear. You could look like crap, be half naked in bed, and you wouldn’t offend anyone by not turning on your visuals.
I turned right down Rue McGill and into Old Montreal. The spring rain had washed most of the snow away, but there was still the odd slushy brown pile slumped up against a shady corner. After two wrong turns I finally found myself on the narrow cobbled lane with the wooden sign hanging beneath the street lamp. Madame Bellarina’s, written in burgundy cursive. The black door and brick wall were featureless and scrubbed clean of moss or ivy. I turned the brass knob and wiped my feet on the door mat before pushing through into the interior.
A short hallway led to the brightly lit foyer. Ornately framed mirrors lined the walls, reflecting the central chandelier. Two young women reclining on a plush red chaise longue stopped mid-conversation and turned to me, smiling.
‘Bonsoir cher monsieur et bienvenue chez Madame Bellarina,’ one of them said, sidling up and taking my hand in hers. Her long, dark fringe rested just above her eyes. ‘Puis-je vous débarrasser de votre manteau?’
‘I speak English,’ I said.
‘My apologies,’ she said, revealing a large a gap between her teeth as she smiled. ‘Welcome to Madame Bellarina’s. May I take your coat? It is cold outside, but in here you will soon warm.’
She helped me shrug off my coat while the other woman positioned herself full length on the chaise longue, propped up on one elbow, watching me. She was blonde, probably naturally so, her hair falling as ringlets on her shoulders.
‘I’m here to see Madame Bellarina,’ I said.
‘Do you have an appointment?’ The first woman asked, hanging my coat on the stand. ‘Madame Bellarina is most often occupied. Would you like a drink? I am certain either Anna or I can make you perfectly comfortable.’
‘Please tell Madame Bellarina that Carl is here to see her. I don’t have an appointment, but she’ll see me.’
The woman slipped out through the door that led to the rest of the establishment, leaving me alone with the blonde. She didn’t sit up but patted the space on the seat in front of her body.
‘I’m good. Thanks.’
‘Your accent is cute,’ she said. She sounded Eastern European, and I wondered briefly if she was related to Madame Bellarina. ‘I have not seen you here before.’
‘I don’t come often.’
‘You like drink? I pour you something.’
‘I’m fine. Thank you.’ I shoved my thumbs into my trouser pockets and rocked on my heels. There was nothing to look at, except for mirrors.
The gap-tooth woman reappeared. ‘Madame Bellarina will see you. Please follow me.’
‘It’s okay. I know the way.’
The passageway was dim, lit with low wattage red bulbs – as, I knew, were the adjoining rooms. Thick, velvet drapes covered each of the doors, making the passageway feel narrower than it actually was. I had always wondered about those drapes, about their exact purpose, but had never had the nerve to ask. Madame Bellarina never talked about work. At the end of the hall was a slender spiral staircase, and at the top, Madame Bellarina’s private quarters. I hesitated halfway up the stairs, my hands sweating.
She opened the door before I had a chance to knock. A fire flickered in the grate and I walked straight towards it, reaching my hands out as if to warm them. I found it hard to look at her. I always did when I first arrived. I felt her move past me, towards the liquor cabinet. She smelled like cinnamon and orange with a hint of sandalwood. I heard the cabinet door open, and close. The sound of liquid filling glass. I jumped as she placed her hand on my shoulder, her fingers brushing my neck.
‘It has been a while, no?’ she asked, passing me the glass of port.
‘Yes.’ My voice was husky, and I cleared it, and took a sip. I stared down at the contents of the glass. ‘I’ve mostly been in Asia this year. China. And India.’
‘I have missed you.’
With her heels on she was as tall as me, but she took them off, one by one, and I watched her toes wriggle in the thick fur rug. Her nails were painted red, her toes slender and perfect. She grabbed my chin, and raised my eyes to her face.
‘What does India have that you cannot find here?’ Her thick black hair was pulled back, piled high upon her head, her dark eyes thickly outlined. She had told me once that during the Second World War her pregnant grandmother had jumped on a boat that took her unborn mother all the way across the Black Sea, to an isolated township in Russia. And on that same night she told me that her mother only lived to the young age of 18. I remember lying there, doing the maths, realising that despite all visible evidence Madame Bellarina must be at least seventy years old.
‘I don’t know,’ I muttered.
She knelt, and began undoing my shoelaces. The fire was becoming unbearably hot, and I loosened my tie with my free hand. I stood awkwardly on one leg, then the other, as she removed each of my shoes. As she straightened up I noticed that she was wearing the diamond earrings I had bought her. But the diamond necklace – that wasn’t from me.
I touched it. She brushed my hand away.
‘Do you have many suitors?’ I asked, feeling myself blush.
She leaned in, on tiptoes, and kissed me on the nose. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, taking my glass of port and placing it on the mantelpiece. ‘But you, Carl, are my favourite.’
*
JENNY SMELLED OF SOAP and washing powder. Before it started going grey her hair was the colour of Old English Breakfast, brewing in the pot. She’d grow it long, then cut it short, never entirely satisfied with it. Her eyes slanted down at the edges, giving her a melancholy look. I used to think that she was lovely. We met at a book fair, in Oamaru of all places. I was down for my grandfather’s funeral and she was helping her sister with a newborn baby. My nephew-to-be. She came out of the public bathroom with a piece of toilet paper stuck to her shoe, and I mentioned it to her. That was how it started. Both glad to get away from our families, we walked up and down Oamaru’s long main street about five times, past the fish and chip shops and the second-hand stores, the families buying cream-filled lamingtons on a Saturday afternoon. When I finally built up the courage to ask her back to my motel her cheeks flushed a deep pink. She told me she had to get back to her sister.
Back in Auckland, a month or so later, I tracked her down online and asked her out. She was doing a kite-making course in the evenings, and we took one of her colourful beasts up Mt Eden. It flew five seconds at most, then promptly crashed into a tree. Watching Jenny back at her kitchen table amidst pottles of glue and paint, the paintbrush held between her teeth as she readjusted the dragon’s goggling eyes, I fell in love with her. Like a painful blow to my chest.
Those memories have been coming back to me recently. The ones from before Rachel was born, before we bought the first house, before we had a mortgage. Before my work took me away. Back when Jenny was slim, beautiful and red-haired, and I truly believed I’d never love another woman.
Jenny was never elegant. Never breathtaking, enigmatic, or even carefree. She didn’t wear perfume. The one time I tried buying her something with diamonds on it, she donated it to the Salvation Army; she obviously had no idea how much it cost. She liked to buy plain terracotta flower pots, and painted them in bright stripes. She made a terrific pavlova. In the months leading up to Nico’s birth she knitted enough hats and booties to keep a nursery of little kiddies warm. And she always made a point of meeting me at the airport when I returned home. No matter what the time. Even when things weren’t good between us.
They say that when you lose someone you love you lose a part of yourself. Personally I think that’s sentimental bullshit. Jenny and I weren’t Siamese twins; we weren’t connected by the arm or hip; we didn’t share a psychic bond. If anything, I’ve gained something these past two years she’s been gone. A new piece to me that’s lodged firmly inside, which I can’t pick loose. Next to all those memories. It’s a pointy-edged chip of guilt. Relentless, painful guilt.
*
IT WAS DARK OUTSIDE, some early hour just before sunrise. Maybe after. It was hard to tell since the sky was full of clouds. I stood on Madame Bellarina’s private balcony, sipping slowly from the tall glass of water I’d poured myself from the crystal jug she keeps beside her bed. I felt like shit. In the alleyway below, a man on a forklift shifted crates into the back of the small grocery store. I could see his breath. My coat was still down in the lobby, but I had one of Madame Bellarina’s thick, woollen shawls wrapped around my shoulders. Cinnamon and sandalwood.
I eased myself into one of Madame Bellarina’s ornate iron chairs, put the glass on the table so I could better massage my throbbing temples. This was the kind of moment when I wished I’d never given up smoking. Jenny had always believed it was her badgering that had finally done it, and would savour her victory by pointing out smokers and commenting on how dirty their habit looked, expecting me to agree. In all actuality it was because they’d made it so damn hard for us. You can’t smoke in parks. You can’t smoke on the street. You can’t smoke within five metres of a child without a street cam picking it up. My hasty, self-conscious puff was interrupted too many times by my vice informing me of my instant fine, and so I eventually gave it up.
I was in trouble. Not catastrophically so, but still it was trouble. I had promised her a car. Last night. In the quiet before we slept, as I held her against my side and smelled her cinnamon hair and thought about the man who had given her the diamond necklace, I’d asked Madame Bellarina if there was anything I could get for her. Buy for her. She had rolled over and kissed my neck, and told me she needed a new car. But she’d been more specific than that. She’d had the exact car in mind, told me the exact street corner to meet her on during my lunch break.
I squeezed the bridge of my nose, screwing my eyes up tight. She knew my first name. She knew I worked for an international finance consultancy firm. She knew I had a wife and a grown daughter, and that I was from New Zealand. She knew I had money enough to buy her diamond earrings. I’d been careful to never tell her a lot about myself, but I bet it was more than I knew about her. Bellarina probably wasn’t even her name.
I’d catch a taxi back to the hotel, I decided, sleep a few hours, try to freshen up. I could make it into the office by 9.00 if I skipped breakfast and drank coffee instead. There was a fire escape leading down to the street from Madame Bellarina’s balcony. I’d freeze my nuts off looking for a taxi without my coat, but at least I wouldn’t have to stumble through the maze that was Madame Bellarina’s brothel in the dark. It was all doable. Everything was going to be all right. I would shuffle the accounts in some way. I’d hidden large expenditures before.
As I slipped back through the heavy velvet curtain into Madame Bellarina’s room and searched for my tie beneath her cream negligee, I wondered if it was okay to kiss a sleeping woman if she wasn’t your wife.
*
THE LIGHTS TURNED ON automatically when I entered my hotel room, and I immediately dimmed them. My throat felt as dry as a cardboard tube. In the bathroom I inspected myself in the mirror. Oh hell. I looked like a grey, wrinkly old fuck. I splashed some water at myself, but it didn’t much help.
As soon as I collapsed onto the bed and kicked off my shoes I heard her. Screaming. I could hear Jenny’s Tiny screaming from my bedside drawer.
I tugged the drawer open and pulled it out. It was warm in my hand.
‘Carl!’ Jenny’s voice shrieked at me. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling and calling for hours!’
I could hear her sobbing, the sound breaking up and crackling through the speakers; her Tiny’s face appeared as emotionless as usual. ‘I’ve been stuck, trapped in your drawer! Where have you been?’
‘I’ve been working all night, I just got back,’ I lied. ‘But what’s going on, Jenny? I switched you off after we last spoke. Why are you still turned on?’ It was then that I noticed that her Tiny’s left leg was mangled, misshapen.
‘You switched me off, but you switched me straight back on again! You jammed me in your drawer, Carl, and twisted the ankle. I think you broke the leg! My leg feels all tight, like there’s something tied around it. I can’t make the feeling go away. And I can’t turn myself off! I push my switch and nothing happens! I’m going crazy here. I couldn’t look after Nico properly, Rachel had to come and pick him up. I’ve got a terrible headache, I feel nauseous, I feel so sick. It’s been horribly dark, darkness covering everything. And why did you even put my Tiny in your drawer?’ Her voice rose several pitches. ‘I leave your Tiny out where I can see him at all times! I even take him in the car with me!’ Her voice broke and I heard more staticky sobbing.
I turned the Tiny over in my hands, trying to see if I could straighten the leg. It was well and truly broken. The ankle flopped from side to side uselessly.
‘It’s 6.30am over there!’ Jenny cried.
I realised I’d turned her Tiny to face my bedroom clock, and swore under my breath.
‘Were you...’ I heard her choke. ‘Were you drinking again, Carl?’
I stared into her Tiny’s brown eyes, and a small cement brick settled in my gut.
‘Michel had a bottle of Max Walker,’ I said.
‘Carl, how could you?’
‘I thought one wouldn’t hurt. But one became two, became three... I’m sorry, Jenny.’
She said nothing. I couldn’t even hear sniffling.
‘Jenny, love?’
Her voice was icy underneath the sound of her blocked nose. ‘I am not happy about this. You’ve let me down more than you can know. I needed you tonight. You weren’t there.’
*
JENNY HAD ALREADY CONTACTED the Tiny product representatives, had spent most of her evening on her vice being transferred from this person to that, but I gave them a try anyway. No one could be of any help. Until then they’d believed it impossible for someone to become locked to their Tiny. All it takes to end the connection is for one side to be turned off – by twisting the Tiny’s ankle, or by switching the ear switch off at source. Although it seemed plausible that the Tiny might get stuck in an ‘on’ position, no one could explain why Jenny’s ear switch wasn’t working. The unhelpful woman on the holo-screen advised me to send Jenny’s Tiny to them in the post, so that they could forward it on to be repaired.
‘Not happening,’ Jenny objected. ‘I’m not having half my consciousness trapped inside a courier box. The Tinys are manufactured in Sweden. It could take days, and it would be freezing inside the cargo hold of a plane. There’s no way we’re doing that.’
‘Then I’ll cut it open and crush the battery inside.’
‘But that will render the lifetime warranty void,’ Jenny told me. ‘I’d already asked them that.’
‘But isn’t it the best option?’
There was a knock at the door. Room service had come with the wake-up coffee I’d ordered, meaning it was 8.30 already. I walked out into the hallway and made a quick call to Michel, apologising that I’d be in a little later than usual. He’d cleared his entire schedule for the week I was in the city, and I knew he came in to the office early, so I hoped he wouldn’t be too annoyed. Halfway through the call a message popped up on the bottom left hand side of the holo-screen, from an unknown number. ‘I enjoyed your company last night’, it read. ‘See you at half 12. MB.’ I stared at it for a few seconds, stunned that she knew my number, stunned that she’d messaged me, and then realised with a shock that I’d left my business cards in the inner pocket of my coat. Now she knew as much as she needed to. Michel was looking at me as if he expected an answer to something he’d said. I apologised again and told him I’d be as quick as I could.
‘I’m going to have to go to work soon, love,’ I said, returning to the Tiny’s side. I picked it up and carefully removed its shirt from its miniature limbs, pulling the shirt over its head. I never usually undressed it, at least not when Jenny was switched on inside of it. The breasts were too familiar. The mole on her shoulder. The scar from the Caesarian. It didn’t seem right. I prodded at the chest and stomach.
‘What are you doing?’ Jenny coughed. ‘Stop it!’
‘I’m looking for the battery.’
‘No, Carl, don’t. Please don’t. They cost us a fortune, remember?’
I remembered, all right. Remembered standing in the lab with the green walls, and the green lino floor, being scanned from top to bottom by lab technicians in green lab coats. They were all young, glossy, shipped over from Australia and working out of a private hospital in Remuera. I was naked, standing dead still while glancing down at my grey chest hairs and shrivelled cock. Why did Jenny want to duplicate this old fart? A girl drew purple lines on my skin. She kept huffing on her wrist watch before pressing her hands against me. It took hours.
Those little dolls cost me more than a year of my annual salary. Jenny had insisted that we get them, had implied that our marriage was in jeopardy. It had seemed such a frivolous waste, an extravagant novelty, even though I’d never known Jenny to be extravagant or to frivolously waste anything. She even used the same teabags more than once to save money.
I got the money back, of course. And much more. The large settlement I received from the Tiny Corp once all this business ended will be enough to take care of Jenny for the rest of her life. I’m sure that more than a few of the Tiny hardware developers were fired over the incident; they could never explain what went wrong. I realised though, later, that I’d lied in court when I’d told them that Jenny’s switch had worked perfectly up until that one time when it didn’t. Because, in actual fact, we’d never tested it. I always turned her Tiny off first. I could never end the conversation fast enough.
‘Look, either I cut this open and smash the battery, or I post it to Sweden, right?’ I wanted to get to work. I wanted to think about the Madame Bellarina situation. I wanted to drink my coffee.
‘You could take it to Sweden,’ Jenny said quietly.
‘Jesus Christ, Jenny, are you serious?’
‘It’s much cheaper than getting a new Tiny. And you’d be with me on the plane. I wouldn’t be alone.’
‘I’ve got to get to work. We’ll talk about it when I get back this afternoon.’
‘What? You can’t just leave me here. I’m feeling utterly wretched.’
‘I know, love. But what do you expect me to do about it?’
Jenny started to vomit loudly.
*
THE OFFICE THEY’D ALLOCATED me for my visit was on the 92nd floor, but I realised I was very close to being unpardonably late so asked the elevator to take me straight to the top.
‘Express,’ I added.
‘Mot de passe est requis; password is required,’ the female elevator voice declared softly.
‘Oh damn, what was it now?’ I patted my trouser pockets out of habit, as if a password might be sitting at the bottom of one. The old-style black and white analogue clock hanging in the foyer showed the time as 9.27. ‘Oh Christ, just take me up. No, no! I know, it’s 7. 2. 2. 3.’
The doors closed, and I felt the sudden upward movement in my stomach and knees. Once beyond the first few floors the exterior fell away, and through the floor-to-ceiling elevator window I watched the ground dropping swiftly from my feet as the panoramic view of Fleuve Saint-Laurent widened.
Montreal transforms during springtime from dirty grey to vibrant green. The snow recedes, revealing a hidden treasure trove of trash and frozen dog shit, and the leaves unfurl. When I was in my early forties I spent a stint there during winter. It was bloody cold – cold enough for my eyeballs to freeze on the outside, causing me to stumble around the salty streets in a steamy blur, but giving me plenty of excuses to drink the mulled wine that the pub around the corner from my hotel made in huge quantities. I’d drink the wine while watching people circle the park outside, teenagers holding hands, expert skaters. At the time, Jenny was having trouble with Rach, who was going through that ‘emo’ stage that was all the rage with the teenagers back then. Cropped black hair, grimy thumb-holes in her sleeves, all that. Jenny would call me, tearfully re-enacting their latest row in detail. There was nothing I could do about it.
Nearing the top floor, I opened my suit jacket just enough to see Jenny’s Tiny resting in the inner pocket.
‘I want out of here,’ she said. She must have perceived the change in light.
‘I’ve told you,’ I sighed. ‘You can’t come out. What happens up here is confidential, between myself and the Chief Financial Officer. It’s not exactly the kind of thing I can bring my wife along to. Now be quiet. Once I’ve said g’day to him I’ll tell him I need to go get my papers, and I’ll leave you in my office.’
The elevator door opened. The receptionist, Paulette or Pauline or some name like that, threw off her headpiece when she saw me, and sprang from her seat. She immediately hurried me down the corridor and, to my dismay, led me past Michel’s office to the main boardroom. As she knocked politely on the door I racked my brain, trying to figure out what Michel had told me on the phone that morning. Michel opened the door, looking more than a little peeved.
‘I’m very sorry I’m late,’ I said. ‘There’s been a bit of an emergency.’
Behind Michel twelve people sat around the long mahogany table. Their expressions were the familiar practiced neutral, except for the woman sitting nearest to the door, who turned around and smiled maliciously.
‘An emergency?’ Michel stepped aside to let me in. ‘I hope not serious.’
The table was set with water jugs and tall glasses; each of the twelve people had a holo portfolio hovering in front of them. I now noticed the tall blonde woman sitting at the far head of the table, and instantly recognised her as Jane Frank, their CEO. She was notorious for leaving her New York office and dropping in unannounced. It was said that wherever she went, at least one person was fired. I reached up and covered the bulge in my jacket. ‘Michel, can I please speak to you privately?’
Michel closed the door behind us. Like me he was in his sixties, but with a full head of brown hair. No doubt taking stimulators. He tried to look concerned. ‘What is the problem?’
I hesitated, then pulled out Jenny’s Tiny. Being caught at this meeting with my wife in my pocket would not only have destroyed the relationship I’d built with this company, and all those who rubbed sticky shoulders beneath the same wide umbrella, but it would also have meant an early retirement for me. With no golden handshake. Michel looked at the Tiny, confused for a few seconds, then his eyes widened.
‘So you’re the man who kept my husband out all night?’ Jenny’s voice punctured the silence.
‘This is my wife, Jenny,’ I said, quickly. I could feel my face growing hot and red. I’d never admitted to any of my colleagues that my wife and I had Tinys. Although they were marketed towards married couples they had the reputation of being the next step up from phone sex. And Jenny’s Tiny, with its simple chequered shirt and grey-auburn hair, looked like the doll you’d keep in the doll house’s laundry. The cleaning lady. With a mop and bucket. ‘She’s trapped in her Tiny,’ I said, trying to sound like this was a normal, common incident, like chipping your tooth or rupturing your Achilles tendon. ‘The ankle is broken, see? For whatever reason, she can’t turn herself off. It’s quite a mystery. She didn’t want to be left alone when I went to work. She’s feeling pretty terrible.’
Michel, eyes still wide, shook his head vehemently, unable to speak. ‘Then leave it with the receptionist,’ he finally exploded. ‘Or somewhere else! I’m shocked. I don’t know what to say.’ He shook his head again, and blinked several times. ‘I’m astonished by your inability to realise how important this meeting is. We have waited over thirty minutes. If my wife is sick I do not bring her to work with me!’
‘Okay, okay,’ I clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. This is an unusual situation and I haven’t dealt with it very well.’
‘If you hadn’t kept Carl up all night we might have dealt with it sooner,’ Jenny’s Tiny said coldly. ‘He shouldn’t even be drinking, you know. He’s a diabetic.’
Michel shot me a glance, and opened the door. I closed my eyes, inwardly thanking his good Quebecois heart for abiding by that unspoken code that keeps travelling professionals all over the world out of the deepest trouble with their spouses. But then Michel changed his mind and turned back.
‘I was not drinking with your husband last night,’ he said. ‘I was at my wife’s mother’s house until nine, at which point I heard wind of our visitor today and went home to prepare for today’s meeting.’ He very nearly slammed the door as he went back inside, leaving me clutching Jenny’s Tiny, which didn’t say another word.
*
WHEN THE MEETING HAD finished, and Jane Frank had left for lunch without firing anyone yet, Michel shook my hand. He laughed and slapped me on the back. I was in deep shit. He knew it, I knew it.
I trooped down the corridor towards reception, full of dread, half hoping that after an entire night awake back in New Zealand Jenny had succumbed to exhaustion and was now fast asleep. But no luck there. Paulette-Pauline had propped Jenny’s Tiny up on a chair against the window, facing the full light of the midday sun and a ninety-eight-storey drop through clear glass.
‘She never said one word,’ Paulette-Pauline said, picking up Jenny’s Tiny in a familiar way and stroking its head. ‘She’s so amazingly life-like. So soft.’
I took the Tiny from her swiftly, and put it in my jacket’s inner pocket.
‘I’ve seen them in the pop-ups, but didn’t think I’d ever touch one,’ Paulette-Pauline continued, staring at my chest. ‘They’re for beautiful movie stars. The famous and the rich. You’re both so lucky!’
As the elevator took me back down to ground level I checked my vice. I had two missed calls from Madam Bellarina’s number.
*
‘I JUST DIDN’T WANT you to know I was drinking by myself.’
I’d caught a taxi back to the hotel. Jenny’s Tiny was lying on my pillow, its eyes fixed on the onion-shaped light bulb on the ceiling.
‘I’ve been drinking a bit lately. God, more than just a bit. I don’t know what’s happened. It’s because I’m away too much. I’m finding things difficult at the moment. Jenny, please forgive me. I’m just a lonely old bugger with a drinking problem.’
‘Last night, did you think you were meeting Michel?’ Jenny’s voice was emotionless as her Tiny’s face.
I hesitated. ‘No... I told you I was meeting him, because... well, because otherwise you’d have found out I was just going off to sit in a bar alone. Watching ice hockey on their drift screens, drinking till the cleaners came along and they booted me out.’
‘So you lied to me.’
‘No, I—’
‘Admit it, Carl. You talked to me for only five minutes then lied to me so you could go out drinking. Only five minutes of your time, that’s all I’m worth to you. I’m at home, working, keeping the house tidy, looking after our grandson, worrying about our daughter, trying to keep a brave face while my husband is away for months at a time, but you think it’s acceptable to flip me off after five minutes because you feel like a beer.’
I hung my head, though her Tiny still wasn’t looking at me. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on with me. I need to come home where you can keep an eye on me.’
She made a doubtful snorting noise.
I felt my vice vibrating in my pocket, informing me of an incoming call.
‘Jenny. Love. I know I’ve screwed up here, big time. I want to try and make it up to you. It’s our anniversary next week. Forty years, did you remember?’
Silence.
‘Well, I’ve been meaning to buy you something special. I didn’t want to tell you, I wanted it to be a surprise.’ The vice started vibrating again. ‘But I’d like to go get it for you, now, so I can bring it back to show you. We could both do with some time to breathe and cool down. Please, it will mean a lot to me. It must be, what, 7am back home? You need sleep. I’ll lie your Tiny down in my bed, nice and warm, and cover its eyes with something. You’ll feel much better after a rest.’
‘I’d feel much better if I could trust my husband!’ The Tiny’s glassy eyes swivelled madly until they finally found me. ‘If I could trust him not to lie to me, not to flip me off so he could go watch fucking ice hockey at some fucking bar! If that was even what you were doing.’
‘I’m sorry! But you must agree you could do with the rest...’
‘Oh no you don’t, Carl. You’re not leaving me again for some other stranger to pick me up and fondle me. You’re not leaving my sight unless you want this marriage to end right this minute.’ I heard her wheezing through the Tiny’s speakers – she sounded like she was in pain, or maybe she was crying. ‘And book a flight to Sweden! You owe me that if nothing else.’
‘Shh, okay, okay,’ I reached over and patted the Tiny’s head. If it had been the real Jenny sitting there she would have recoiled. ‘We’ll go to Sweden.’
I turned away so that my back faced her, and switched my vice to active. I opened the holo-board only, hoping that from her angle Jenny wouldn’t notice the shimmer. I sent a hasty message to Madam Bellarina, telling her that I still intended to meet her, I just wasn’t sure when.
*
THERE’S SOMETHING STRANGE that happens inside your conscience when you cheat on your partner. You take the bit of the lie that’s true and focus on that until all the rest of the story seems inconsequential, just superfluous detail. You admit to yourself some lesser crime, something you know you shouldn’t have done, and then you wallow in the shame of it. You roll around in that shame until you’re covered in it. And only when you’re covered, dripping, and stinking with the smell of it do you feel justified, like you’ve somehow paid your dues. And then you move on.
The real crime, the big, fat, ugly, thorny fact of my infidelity, I easily ignored. It was too massive and dark to see while I was shining a torch with practiced precision on the petty detail in the foreground. I drank. See, that was the problem. That was always the problem. Because, I reasoned with myself, if I didn’t drink none of the rest of it would ever happen.
Jenny caught me only once. It nearly ruined us, and I made a pact with myself afterwards to never again have an affair with a woman inside New Zealand. At the time I’d recently secured a senior position in a new Wellington-based firm. I was only thirty-five and my salary had suddenly doubled. I commuted, while Jenny stayed in Auckland with Rach, and tried to sell the house.
I was out after work with my new colleagues. One of their sisters was an artist, and it was her exhibition opening that night. We were all dragged along. The art was average, but the booze was free. That’s the good thing about art exhibitions: they never fully disappoint. I’d been there an hour and had had just about enough of staring at pastel-coloured squares on sand-textured backdrops when a woman in emerald stockings and knee-high scarlet boots walked through the door. Her blonde hair was pulled up into a beehive, and her leopard print blouse was pulled tight above her black mini-skirt. Needless to say, I stayed longer and downed at least another three free wines. Her kitchen floor tiles dug deep grooves into my buttocks that night.
Her name was Jasmine. She was interesting, charismatic, and sexy as hell. She ran a bed and breakfast in Roseneath, overlooking Oriental Bay. She’d eat her toast and morning coffee naked on her porch. I saw her too many times. After a year she called Jenny.
I think if Rach had been just a few years older Jenny would have left me. Instead she dragged my great-grandmother’s antique hope chest into the middle of our lawn and built a fire inside it. She was good with fires, and it was winter at the time. She screwed up the balls of newspaper and packed them tightly inside, then took our hatchet and chopped a small stack of kindling. After she’d lit the paper, she waited calmly for the fire to grow hot before she added the firewood. Rach had run up into her room, and peered like a ghost from her window. My shirts, ties, books, childhood paintings, chessboards, tennis racket, bicycle helmet, wallet, favourite mug, every belonging I seemed to own, were one by one sacrificed to the flames. Jenny had drilled holes through the denser objects to make sure they burned. I just watched. I knew by then that Jenny wasn’t going to leave me, realised that this was my punishment, so I felt miserable – yet relaxed. For probably two whole years after that Jenny wouldn’t let me touch her.
Six years later, Rach read the wrong email and blackmailed me. She was sixteen. I bought her a second-hand Honda, and then two months later paid for a weekend holiday to Sydney for her and her best friend. I told her that if she brought it up a third time her inheritance would go to Oxfam. Jenny, unaware of the deal that had been struck, was furious. She told me that I was just encouraging Rach’s difficult behaviour by spoiling her.
*
‘NO, I DON’T WANT YOUR postal address!’ I snapped. I could feel my blood pressure rising. For all the tens of thousands of dollars I’d spent on those damn Tinys, you’d have thought they could have spent some of it training their call centre staff. I took a deep breath. ‘I am coming myself, delivering it to you by hand. And I need it fixed immediately. Whatever the cost.’
‘If you are local, sir, then I’ll be pleased to order a courier—’
‘No, I am not local! Jesus Christ, don’t you people keep a record of your calls? My name is Carl Edmond. Both my wife and I have called you numerous times within the last 24 hours. My wife’s Tiny has malfunctioned. She is trapped inside the stupid thing and is severely distressed. Now please, tell me where I can take her Tiny to be repaired. I will be arriving first thing tomorrow morning, and will be leaving by late afternoon.’
Eventually, when a physical address had been sent through to my vice, I called Michel. He wasn’t overly impressed by my timing, but didn’t make an issue of it. To my relief, Jenny perked up a bit. She told me she’d made herself a cup of green tea and she was lying in our bed back home with the curtains drawn. It was another beautiful early autumn morning. She could hear the school kids walking to school. The mail lady had just dropped letters through the door. I asked her again if she’d like me to cover her Tiny’s eyes, but she told me she wouldn’t like the heaviness on her face. It would be suffocating.
I was slowly stroking her Tiny’s little forehead and speaking to her softly about the baby squirrels I’d seen hopping through the trees on Mont Royal, when the hotel phone rang.
‘Just a moment, love,’ I told her, and tapped it to my vice, opening the holo-screen. The hotel receptionist’s well-shaven face appeared.
‘Mr Edmond, you have a call. Will you take it now?’
‘Sure,’ I answered, believing it must be someone from the Auckland office. I searched inside my pocket for my headphones.
The screen disappeared, which surprised me. Most people consider it rude to turn off your visuals.
‘Hello Carl.’
Madam Bellarina’s voice poured into the room like mercury. I jumped from the bed like I’d been bitten, yanked my headphones from my pocket and slammed them into the side of my vice. Shit, holy hell. Heart thundering, I strode to the bathroom and closed the door.
‘You can’t call me here!’ I hissed. ‘I’ve told you I’ll meet you later. Tomorrow – no, the next day, it’ll have to be. There’s been an emergency back home, quite serious. Look, I’ve really got to go.’
‘My girls have been very busy today,’ she said. ‘They called every hotel in town until they found you.’
‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Just not right now.’
‘You missed our date.’
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘But I’ve had one hell of a day. And now I have to fly to Sweden tomorrow morning, because my wife is sick—’
‘Mr Carl Edmond, CA BCom (Hon),’ she cut me off. ‘I am not a prostitute. If I was, I would charge you for your visits. For your many visits, all of which I have welcomed. I have good friends who will be very unhappy to hear of a man who came uninvited to my home, used me, then skulked away like a thief without saying goodbye. My good friends have good friends all over the world.’
‘What? You know it’s not like that! I... I care for you, Madam Bellarina. I didn’t use you.’ I felt out of breath. The bathroom light was too bright. It didn’t make sense; I’d always left Madam Bellarina before she awoke. I’d never wanted to impose on her, never wanted the awkward breakfast conversations.
‘I’m going to buy you that car,’ I said. ‘I was always going to. Look, I’ll leave right now! I’ll meet you at the car yard in thirty minutes.’
‘Idiot man. I am already on my way to you.’
The quality of the sound changed and I knew she’d disconnected the conversation.
I stood, sagging against the bathroom sink. She was on her way. There. To my hotel room. To Jenny. I looked into the mirror and shook my head at the reflection. What a loser. A joke. A pathetic, slithering thing. A mosquito maggot wiggling whitely in a pond. A tape worm.
I ignored Jenny’s silent Tiny on my pillow, and sat down on the hotel’s hard, slippery couch to pull on my shoes. I hoped that between my three personal credit cards and my work card I could cover the cost of a car. I squeezed my temples between my palms, trying not to groan out loud. Surely Madam Bellarina would understand my position. I couldn’t buy the newest, most expensive car with no warning. I stood up, shakily, and grabbed my briefcase.
‘Jenny,’ I said.
‘Fuck off.’
‘Look, I need to go out for an hour.’ I said, looking down at the little doll that looked like my wife. ‘I need to do this, trust me. But then I’ll be back, and I’ll explain. It’s not as it seems.’
There was a knock at the door.
I felt the blood drain instantly from my face. My hands went numb and I dropped my briefcase.
And then I panicked.
I went straight to the room’s kitchenette and flung open the solitary kitchen drawer. Hotel kitchenettes are notorious for being under-equipped, but this was the first time I’d actually cared. In the drawer I found both types of bottle opener – beer and wine – but the sharpest knife I could find was a butter knife. I grabbed both the knife and the wine bottle opener, and hurried over to the bed.
‘What are you doing?’ Jenny cried, as I snatched her from my pillow. ‘You’re squeezing me too tight!’
‘I’ll pay for a new Tiny,’ I gasped, setting the Tiny on the bench and tearing off the little Tiny clothes. ‘This is ridiculous. You can’t stay in there. I’m going to get you out.’
There was another knock on the door, louder this time.
‘Hang on!’ I screamed. ‘Just give me one damned minute!’
I hesitated, my hand hovering over the knife and bottle opener. Should I saw, or should I puncture? I chose the bottle opener because it looked sharpest. I prodded at the Tiny’s chest, trying to feel for the battery. Jenny was crying.
‘I’ll do it quickly,’ I said. Sweat dripped from my nose on to the bench beside the Tiny’s head. When I lifted the bottle opener into Jenny’s view, she screamed. A long, drawn-out static hiss.
I raised my fist, then slammed it down, smashing the point of the bottle opener into the Tiny’s chest as hard as I could. The Tiny’s skin, tough as leather, didn’t even dent. I could hear Jenny gasping and coughing, probably rolling about in pain on the other side of the world, while the Tiny lay motionless on the bench. Swearing, I stepped backwards and nearly fell over my briefcase.
I still can’t explain why I did what I did next. Why, in that moment, my mind flew to such a solution. In the court hearing I told them it had been Jenny’s idea. The whole thing. They had all the recordings from when she’d called the Tiny helpline, they knew how desperate she’d been to get out of the damn thing. I actually wasn’t going to lie, but Rach convinced me. She said we could do with the money.
I upended the contents of my briefcase, and snatched up my small roll of cellotape. It was ancient, gone yellow, barely ever used. I savagely attacked it with my nails until I found the where the tape began, and then I took Jenny’s Tiny and I rolled it, rolled it, rolled it until the entire body and head were covered. I was panting. My hands shook. But she was covered. Silent. Blind.
I opened the door. It was the hotel attendant who had brought me my coffee. He handed me a large bouquet of flowers, then held out his hand expectantly. I shut the door.
The card on the flowers read, ‘To Jenny. We all hope for your speedy recovery. Michel and Team.’
I dropped the flowers on to the bench next to Jenny’s mummified Tiny and left. On the elevator down I sent a message to Madam Bellarina’s number, informing her that I’d meet her outside the hotel. As I passed through the hotel’s foyer I saw her, standing next to a taxi outside. She looked old and haggard in the daylight.
*
TWO HOURS LATER AND a good deal poorer than I’d have liked to have been, I sat on the toilet in my hotel room and slowly unwound the cellotape from Jenny’s Tiny. Through the thick yellow cocoon she looked like a sleeping pixie, her features smudged, hard to define. The cellotape’s colour reminded me of a condom. When I was down to the last few winds the tape stuck in the Tiny’s hair, and I had to tug hard to get it off.
‘Jenny?’ I asked, hoping like hell that she wouldn’t reply.
And, she didn’t. I prodded the Tiny’s chest hard, but not a sound. She was gone.
The Tiny was still disconcertingly warm. I reminded myself that it wasn’t Jenny that made it warm, it was the fact that it was turned on.
I thought of calling Jenny, or at least sending a message to her vice, but decided against it. I’d be home in four days. Four days till the shit hit that fan, four days to prepare myself. I wondered which vessel she’d choose to burn my things in this time. I cringed, thinking that my newest golf set was likely to cop it first; titanium-infused steel wouldn’t deter Jenny. I made the decision to take some time off work, take her somewhere nice. We went to Fiji for our twentieth anniversary, stayed in a resort run by a local village. I couldn’t remember the resort’s name, or even the name of the village, but figured it probably still existed.
*
I AVOIDED RACH’S CALLS for two days. Either she was calling to chastise me, and perhaps blackmail me – I wouldn’t have put it past her to suddenly bring up my older crime, 24 years later – or she was calling to inform me that all of my possessions had been expertly destroyed. I even imagined her there with Jenny, the flames illuminating their faces orange, cackling as they once more reduced my life to ash. But eventually she sent me a text message.
‘Mum is in a coma,’ is all it said.
I flew straight home. I waited outside the terminal for twenty minutes before I finally made my way to the taxi stand. I’d told Rach my flight details; I thought she might come. When I arrived at the hospital she was there, swollen eyed. She’d spread a colourful blanket over the hospital bed, and Nico was curled up on top of it, beside Jenny’s knees, sleeping. I gave Rach a hug but I wanted her and Nico to leave. I wanted to be alone with my wife. I pulled another chair in from the hallway and sat, silent. Watching Jenny’s chest rise and fall.
In those first few weeks the doctors thought Jenny might soon come out of the coma. She still had flecks of paint beneath her nails. She still smelled of soap and washing powder. Her grey-auburn hair spilled across the pillow. Her brown eyes were closed, but seemed like they could open at any time. Life-sized eyelids. Life-sized lips. When I arrived back at our house, the night after I’d come home to Auckland, I found my Tiny in the bed, next to where she’d been lying. It was wearing pyjamas.
I held Jenny’s dry hand, while doctors rolled in and out, giving me conflicting hypotheses about what had happened. Some believed that although her body hadn’t suffered any physical damage the brain had believed that it had, and so had shut itself down. Others, as far as I could tell, believed that sheer fright had made her mind turn off.
‘What did you expect?’ one nurse asked me. She was overweight and her shoes made sucking noises on the floor. ‘Putting things into your head? Transmitting images into your mind? It’s not natural. I’m surprised things like this don’t happen more often.’
*
FOURTEEN MONTHS AFTER her admittance to hospital, I won the settlement and had Jenny installed in a luxury suite overlooking the Parnell Rose Gardens, where she now lies in plush comfort on a king-sized bed, receiving therapeutic, aromatic massages each morning.
The day she was transferred there I was due to fly to Sydney, and before I left I propped up my Tiny next to her hospital bed, against a blue vase. I should have bought her some flowers, but I didn’t think.
That was two years ago. And so far, there’s been no change to her condition. Her nurses humour me by always keeping the battery charged on my Tiny, always keeping it switched on at Jenny’s end. I switch myself on most nights, to check on her.