Fury

She was on her feet, her fingers flying at the laptop, soliciting its aid. Perspiration beaded her lip. The seventh veil falls away, Solanka thought. Fully clothed as Mila was in her daytime sportswear, she stood naked before him at last. Furia. This was the self she had never fully shown, Mila as Fury, the world-swallower, the self as pure transformative energy. In this incarnation she was simultaneously terrifying and wonderful. He could never resist a woman when she flowed at him this way, letting her riverine abundance overwhelm him. This is what he looked for in women: to be overpowered, outmatched. This Gangetic, Mississippian inexorability, whose dwindling, he sadly knew, was what had gone wrong in his marriage. Overwhelming doesn’t last for ever. No matter how astonishing the initial contact, in the end the beloved astonishes us less. She merely whelms and, even further down the road, underwhelms. But to give up on his need for excess, for the immense thing, the thing that made him feel like a surfer in the snow, riding the crest of an avalanche’s leading edge! To say good-bye to that need would also be to accept that he was, in the matter of desire, agreeing to be dead. And when the living agree with themselves to be dead, the dark fury begins. The dark fury of life, refusing to die before its allotted time.

He reached out for Mila. She knocked his arm aside. Her eyes were shining: she had recovered from him already and was resurrected as a queen. “This is what we can be to each other now, Malik. Take it or leave it. If you say no, I don’t want to talk to you ever again. But if you come aboard, we’ll work our butts off for you and there’ll be no hard feelings from me. This new world is my life, Malik, it’s the thing of my time, growing as I grow, learning as I learn, becoming as I become. It’s where I feel most alive. There, inside the electricity. I told you: you need to learn how to play. Serious play, that’s my thing. That’s the heart of what’s happening, and I know how to do it, and if you can give me the material I need to work with, well, baby, for me that’s better than what was waiting under the cushion on your lap. Nice as that was, don’t get me wrong. Nice as that undoubtedly was. Okay, I’m done. Don’t answer. Go home. Think about it. Let us make the full presentation. It’s a big decision. Take it slow. Make it when you’re ready. But make it soon.”

The computer screen burst into life. Images raced toward him like bazaar traders. This was technology as hustler, peddling its wares, Solanka thought; or, as if in a darkened nightclub, gyrating for him. Laptop as lapdancer. The auxiliary sound system poured high-definition noise over him like golden rain. “I don’t need to think about it,” he told her. “Let’s do it. Let’s go.”

14

Eleanor rang, and Solankas emotional bar went up another notch. “You know how to generate love, Malik,” his wife told him. “You just don’t know what to do with it once it’s there.” But still no anger in that mellifluous voice. “I was thinking, it was so wonderful being loved by you. I was missing you, I suppose, so I’m glad I found you in. I see us everywhere I go, isn’t it stupid, I see us having so many good times. Your son is so special. Everyone who sees him thinks so. Morgen thinks he’s the best ever, and you know what Morgen thinks of kids. But he loves Asmaan to bits. Everyone does. And you know, he’s always asking, ‘What would Daddy say? What would Daddy think? ‘You’re very much in his thoughts. And in mine. So I was only wanting to say, both of us are sending you so much love.”

Asmaan took the phone. “I want to talk to Daddy. Hello, Daddy. I’ve got a stuffed-up nose. That’s why I was crying. That’s why Olive isn’t here.” That’s why was because. Because Olive isn’t here. Olive was the mother’s helper, whom Asmaan adored. “I did a picture for you, Daddy. It’s for Mummy and you. I’ll show it to you. It has red and yellow and white. I did a picture for Grandpa. Grandpa’s dead. That’s why he was ill for a long while. Grandma isn’t dead yet. She’s okay. Maybe she’ll die tomorrow. I’m going to be a stoolboy, Daddy. That’s why I’m going to a good stool soon. I’m not going tomorrow! No. Another day. It’s a nursery stool, anyway. Not a big one. That’s why I have to be bigger for the big one. I’m not going there today! Hmm. Have you got a pa-resent, Daddy? Maybe there’s a big ephelant inside it. Could be! Probably it’s a big ephelant. Well: ‘bye!”

At dawn he woke alone in bed, roused by an agony of floorboards on the floor above. Somebody certainly was an early riser up there. All Solanka’s senses seemed to be on red alert. His hearing had grown so u

Here at the outset of the third mille

Yes, but the medication was a mist. It was a fog you swallowed that curled around your mind. The medication was a shelf and you had to sit on it while the world went on around you. It was a translucent shower curtain, like the one in Psycho. Things grew opaque; no, no, that wasn’t right. What became opaque was you. Solanka’s scorn for this age of doctors resurfaced. You wanted to be taller? All you had to do was go to the tall doctor and let him put metal extensions into your long bones. For thi