3
there is always hope
The faded graffiti held little consequence to most passersby. The words – scrawled hastily on the side of a cracked and ruddy brick wall – only attracted the attention of the few observant folk who tried to count themselves in some way separate from the hustling bustling multitudes. Eyes glazed and unfocused, all concentration directed to the melodic pounding in her eardrums, Rosie walked briskly past them.
A short balding man on the street in front of her dragoned a voluminous cloud of cigarette smoke in her direction. He lowered his cigarette to his side, and tapped it expertly with his index finger, sending a puff of ash all over Rosie’s right leg and boot. She took no notice of his rudeness. Without so much as flaring her nostrils, she stepped on through the city.
She was walking home after another unsatisfying day. She’d been in such a hurry to leave Fugtz, the high-end clothing shop where she worked, that she had snubbed a woman who had desperately wanted to purchase an absurdly expensive belt. The woman (who, Rosie thought, wore too many nouveau designer brands while shopping on a Tuesday afternoon to work for a living) had looked at her in a cold livid way as if slavering at the thought of devouring her and asked to see the manager. Rosie had refused to hear the woman, had stared straight past her until she stormed out amid promises of reprisal. Nothing infuriates the rich like being ignored, a fact it hadn’t taken her long at this job to learn. She wasn’t quite sure what had gotten into her or why she had been so adamantly unhelpful. Perhaps she just felt ignored. Perhaps what she wanted was for someone to see her, even if only in anger.
She maintained a hurried pace, her headphones still injecting music directly into her brain. An elderly couple reclined together on a bench beside the flowing water. Rosie noticed they were holding hands and smiled to herself. As she neared them, the woman turned toward Rosie incredulously, flabbergasted by the sheer volume of the music. Just drowning out the world, Nanna. She didn’t hear when, as she passed the couple, the old woman shook her head and said something to her husband about the strange state of the youth today.
Rosie turned the corner and brought herself farther up the length of the canal. After work she would often sit and watch the murky waters drift languidly, swelling with fallen leaves and discarded rubbish. A façade of peace. Today felt endless, she thought as she neared the bench where she usually sat. A group of tall rododendron obscured it on three sides, making it impossible for one to see until right on top of it. This was one of the reasons Rosie liked this particular bench over the others also near the canal; no one else took the time to remember it. It was hers.
She rounded the corner of the shrub ready to sit down and almost jumped when she saw a man had already taken it. For a moment she simply froze. He was not the usual sort of man—not one of the sharp-tied businessmen, unkept servicemen, dazed students, or swaggering chavs that so often walked the path. He looked like some ancient black friar come back to haunt modern man, come back to start a new inquisition. He wore tight black cloth from head to ankle. Draped on the bench was a cloak of the same color, the hood of which was pulled up and only just allowed her to see the man’s eyes. The cloak looked heavy, thick. The bench seemed to buckle under its weight. It was like the skin of a giant bat. The man’s hands and face were a dead white and floated in the black of his clothing. One hand was holding up a sleek new phone, exposing a yarn of thin metal veins imbedded from his wrist to his fingertips.
Implants, she thought curiously.
The man’s eyes rose briefly from the phone, saw her, then descended again. He breathed heavily, crossed his legs, and put the phone down on the bench. As if on queue, the music in Rosie’s ears changed to a slow rhythmic dance and the man’s full gaze caught her, chilling her. His irises were a deep blackish purple.
She had been staring for longer than she meant and in the face of those frightening eyes she quailed and pulled herself around, fleeing further up the canal path.
She walked a while longer trying to shake the ghost of the man’s look. And I thought the goths were extinct, she smiled to herself.
Eventually, the path took her past the Oracle, a large shopping center in downtown Reading. The area reveled in the attention of the evening droves. The crowded causeway, steps, and escalator had Rosie feeling a little claustrophobic, and she pushed in front of a slow-moving group ahead of her and into the heart of the Oracle.
Everywhere she turned hidden signals and subtle messages wormed their way deep into her brain – some with more success than others. Seeing a poster board advertisement for earphones, she remembered that she had been meaning to buy a new pair for a while now. Rosie turned around abruptly, nearly colliding with a middle-aged woman, who stopped short in surprise. Rosie cursed her terrible memory and backtracked down an escalator and exited the busy economic byways before entering a brightly lit electronics store.
She kept her music on and stalked up and down the narrow isles arranged with various consumer gadgets. Under the progression of chords, the world morphed around her into an existence no one could intrude upon. Other people moved about the shop in the same trance-like state. Few wondered at it. Instead, like Rosie, most let their eyes drift. And when they would meet accidentally with the eyes of another shopper, they quickly turned their heads away to avoid being stolen from their all-important, singular state of mind.
Rosie ambled leisurely toward the back of the shop, where she knew earbuds were located. The corners of her vision pulsated with a ferocious energy channeled through her headphones. And yet, she thought, they were getting quite old, almost three months now. She reached the desired shelf as the song hit a crescendo of electronic melodies and skull-caving bass. At once screaming and entrancing. Frightening but also strangely alluring. She paused as her pupils contracted and dilated, wrenching her into an artificial dinge then back into the vivid brightness of the shop. Upon regaining full control of her senses, Rosie looked down at the shelves of headphones, carefully reading the back of each box, and selected a pair of noise-canceling wireless earbuds.
She paid at the counter and left the store, the satisfaction of her purchase only somewhat tempered by the memory of the man on the canal. She tried to forget him, forget those dark eyes, the wires built into his hands. She tore at the packaging of the earbuds, put them in her ears, and turned up the volume—still she could not take her mind away from him. It frustrated her. Why should one oddly dressed technophile hold her attention with such power? She shrugged to herself.
Perhaps one more walk by the canal.
The Oracle was still thick with crowds, and she moved slowly to the doors, caught in the dance of strangers. She backtracked—down the escalators, past the giant steps, over the high street bridge—until she was nearly at the bench again.
She saw him before she reached the wall of shrubbery. He was walking toward her with his hands in his pockets, his face turned down and half hidden beneath the hood of his cloak. Standing, he was not so tall as she might have thought. Who still wears a cloak? she wondered. She walked on, thinking she might now take her spot at the bench. She tried not to make her inquisitiveness obvious to the bizarre stranger. As he passed her, Rosie could have sworn she saw the corners of the man’s lips upturn for just a moment. Whether it was in recognition or at some secret personal amusement was only for her to guess. She glanced back at him in time to see him turning off the path, across the grass.
She walked to the bench and noticed right away. The man had forgotten his phone. It was still on the bench right where he had placed it earlier. She grabbed it quickly and ran back after him, shouting, “Sir! You forgot your phone!” This earned her quizzical looks from the elderly couple she had passed before, but the man was already gone. She ran the way she had seen him take across the grass and down a nearby street but he was nowhere within view. She walked slowly back to the bench. She was breathing hard from the exertion as she sat down again, thinking she might wait with the phone. Surely, once he realized it was missing, the man would come back to fetch it.
The more she thought about it the more she found the prospect of a conversation with him daunting but she resolved nevertheless to wait. She had come back to sit by the canal anyway.
The sun set as she waited there on the bench for the man to come back, but he never returned. She waited for two hours, until ten o’clock. She watched as the old couple walked past her, eyeing her once again as they walked still arm in arm. She saw the late night commuters passing the canal with bags under their eyes and suitcases in their hands. A group of seven university students stumbled past, already drunk from dinner. It was getting late now. She began to feel that staying was no longer worth her while. She got up to leave, taking the phone with her, thinking perhaps the man would call it, or in compensation for the annoyance of having her evening ruined, that she might simply keep it. She turned it over in her hand, unsure of its make or model—equivalent in police terminology to an unmarked car—no logos, without details to distinguish it from any other smartphone. She tried to check the contacts, but it was password protected.
Her flat wasn’t far away, just two blocks north to London Road and, as she jostled the key in the lock, she met another of the tenants leaving the building. Winston Smidt was a thin, jumpy fellow in his mid-forties. Rosie had always speculated that the grey in his temples was a result of an effluence of paranoia. He was perpetually acting as if he knew of a bomb plot but could not convince anyone else of its existence. He pushed the door open roughly, sending it into Rosie, and sped out the door without making eye contact. Pick up something on your police scanner, buddy? she thought dryly, and let herself in the hall.
She ascended two flights of narrow stairs and unlocked her door. Her apartment was a mess, but that was nothing unorthodox. The sofa was the epicenter of the mayhem; open books, crinkled magazines, crusted breakfast dishes, and other domestic detritus cluttered its surface. The life of a bachelorette. I’m giving any man a run for his money. She sighed at the untidy nature of her life, took the man’s phone out of her pocket and placed it on the counter next to her own, then put the kettle on for tea. She opened the fridge and wrinkled her nose. The milk had gone off. She poured it down the sink. She threw away the carton and stalked over to her phone. Pizza seemed to be the order of the day.
Before she could put the phone to her ear, a loud knock at the door made her jump.
Ms. Holgrave, this is the Reading Police Department. We’d like a word.”
Rosie was incredulous—just what had she done to warrant a late night visit from the police? She checked the peephole and saw two men dressed in brown suits standing outside. They were a rather incongruous pair; one was a short, clean shaven, close cut, gaunt-faced man, while the other was taller and had bushy hair and a long dark mustache that circled into his sideburns, making him look like a quintessential American cowboy. The latter had his police ID in hand and extended before the peep hole for Rosie to see. She opened the door.
Hello?” Rosie’s greeting was also a question. Even as she opened the door she noticed the clean cut man peering past her into her flat.
Good evening, Ms. Holgrave,” said the English cowboy, “This is Officer Cordon, and I am Officer Charrington.”
Good evening,” she responded perfunctorily.
We’re here investigating an allegation of corporate espionage.” Charrington’s tone was convivial, but his eyes were pressing. Rosie did not try to contain her surprise—her mouth dropped open and it was all she could do to keep her eyes on him.
His eyes didn’t move from her. He was measuring her reaction. She was not prepared for this.
Before she had time to respond, the shorter man elbowed his partner lightly and pointed past Rosie into the room.
It’s there,” he said.
Rosie followed his finger back to the counter where she had put down the mystery man’s phone.
I just found that! I was waiting for someone to call so they could pick it up!” Rosie protested.
Charrington shrugged, taking handcuffs out of his back pocket. Cordon had already pushed past her and was now putting the phone into his own pocket.
That may very well be Ms. Holgrave, but we’re going to have to take you to headquarters for questioning. You are now under arrest.”
Rosie was too stunned to resist. Charrington handcuffed her and led her out the front door, while Cordon stalked behind them predatorily. There was a police car waiting out front, past the garden wall. Rosie was put in the back and they pulled out onto London Road, making for the station.