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Authors: Matthew De Abaitua
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your status.
What I do doesn’t matter. I sort out all their messes. But they don’t see that. They just see Harold on the way down. I want to talk to the board about my needs but the other red men
bump me to the bottom of the list. Blasebalk goes off the rails and I get punished. I don’t deserve to be punished.’
Harry Bravado was in emotional turmoil. These weren’t finely tuned emotions; they were big blocks of envy, resentment, and anger banging against one another. He was indignant and
unaccustomed to being on the receiving end.
‘Why do you want to get into a Dr Easy?’
‘To find Blasebalk. He’s gone off the grid. I need a body so I can get into the dark zone to look for him.’
‘I am not the man you should be talking to. I don’t have any power.’
Bravado nodded. Yes, he expected this response. He pointed at Raymond, pricking the surface of the screen with his index finger so that it rose up.
‘You could have power, with me in your corner.’
‘Maybe Blasebalk doesn’t want to be found,’ he said.
‘No doubt. He is selfish. My wife… his wife… our wife and kids... Doesn’t he see what he’s doing to them? And me. His own self. He’s ruining me. I have to
go and sort him out.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Come on, Raymond, don’t be a shmuck all your life. What is it you want?’
‘You tell me, Harry. Red men are experts in desire. Or are your superpowers limited to consumer choices, merely guessing whether I will plump for fish soup or the chicken livers? Does
Raymond want to take two bottles into the shower or just one? You don’t know what motivates people, do you? You’ve lost that knowledge, if you ever even had it.’
Bravado’s face hung in the screen, cold and expressionless, as the red man worked through the equation of human motivation, the
x
of sexual desire, the
y
of existential
questioning. It walked around its bachelor pad, found what it was looking for and returned to face Raymond.
‘Do you recognize this?’ said Harry Bravado, waving a manuscript. ‘No? That’s because you haven’t written it yet. It’s your book, Raymond. I took some of your
poetry, some of Florence’s. I had to get some advice from the others here. Literature is not my thing. I do know about branding, though.’
He showed Raymond the title page.
‘We think you should call it ‘The Great Refusal’. It has an authenticity. Authenticity sells to the type of people who buy books. We’re assembling pieces based on some of
your correspondence, some of your drunken riffs. It’s going to be a great book. Powerful revolutionary shit. People are crying out for it. Something that feels real, you know, in the unreal
city. That’s poetic isn’t it? I really admire people who are creative, Raymond. I don’t have an ounce of your talent. But I do make things happen. I think you creative types,
you’re awesome, but you’re lazy, and you’re self-doubting, and you’re self-sabotaging and you need the drive of someone like me, and my colleagues here, to knock you into
shape.’
Raymond snapped, ‘Give it to me.’
Bravado laughed. He made a mockery of trying to pass the manuscript through the screen. Raymond had never written that much, not even close to it. He asked to see a few pages and Bravado leafed
through it, showing the artful juxtaposition of Florence’s calls for unmediated life next to his cuticle-gnawing vignettes of street life. Unpunctuated transcripts of their sex talk ran
together in small print like the diary of a graphomaniac. All the months they had been working at Monad, the red men had been idly monitoring them, condensing the vapour of all their chatter.
‘Send it to me,’ Raymond insisted.
‘When it’s finished. It’s up to you. When I’m in a Dr Easy, the first thing I will do is hand it over in person.’
Bravado chucked the manuscript back on a coffee table.
‘Have a good rest, Raymond. You’ve got work to do.’
The screen dimmed and
What I do doesn’t matter. I sort out all their messes. But they don’t see that. They just see Harold on the way down. I want to talk to the board about my needs but the other red men
bump me to the bottom of the list. Blasebalk goes off the rails and I get punished. I don’t deserve to be punished.’
Harry Bravado was in emotional turmoil. These weren’t finely tuned emotions; they were big blocks of envy, resentment, and anger banging against one another. He was indignant and
unaccustomed to being on the receiving end.
‘Why do you want to get into a Dr Easy?’
‘To find Blasebalk. He’s gone off the grid. I need a body so I can get into the dark zone to look for him.’
‘I am not the man you should be talking to. I don’t have any power.’
Bravado nodded. Yes, he expected this response. He pointed at Raymond, pricking the surface of the screen with his index finger so that it rose up.
‘You could have power, with me in your corner.’
‘Maybe Blasebalk doesn’t want to be found,’ he said.
‘No doubt. He is selfish. My wife… his wife… our wife and kids... Doesn’t he see what he’s doing to them? And me. His own self. He’s ruining me. I have to
go and sort him out.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Come on, Raymond, don’t be a shmuck all your life. What is it you want?’
‘You tell me, Harry. Red men are experts in desire. Or are your superpowers limited to consumer choices, merely guessing whether I will plump for fish soup or the chicken livers? Does
Raymond want to take two bottles into the shower or just one? You don’t know what motivates people, do you? You’ve lost that knowledge, if you ever even had it.’
Bravado’s face hung in the screen, cold and expressionless, as the red man worked through the equation of human motivation, the
x
of sexual desire, the
y
of existential
questioning. It walked around its bachelor pad, found what it was looking for and returned to face Raymond.
‘Do you recognize this?’ said Harry Bravado, waving a manuscript. ‘No? That’s because you haven’t written it yet. It’s your book, Raymond. I took some of your
poetry, some of Florence’s. I had to get some advice from the others here. Literature is not my thing. I do know about branding, though.’
He showed Raymond the title page.
‘We think you should call it ‘The Great Refusal’. It has an authenticity. Authenticity sells to the type of people who buy books. We’re assembling pieces based on some of
your correspondence, some of your drunken riffs. It’s going to be a great book. Powerful revolutionary shit. People are crying out for it. Something that feels real, you know, in the unreal
city. That’s poetic isn’t it? I really admire people who are creative, Raymond. I don’t have an ounce of your talent. But I do make things happen. I think you creative types,
you’re awesome, but you’re lazy, and you’re self-doubting, and you’re self-sabotaging and you need the drive of someone like me, and my colleagues here, to knock you into
shape.’
Raymond snapped, ‘Give it to me.’
Bravado laughed. He made a mockery of trying to pass the manuscript through the screen. Raymond had never written that much, not even close to it. He asked to see a few pages and Bravado leafed
through it, showing the artful juxtaposition of Florence’s calls for unmediated life next to his cuticle-gnawing vignettes of street life. Unpunctuated transcripts of their sex talk ran
together in small print like the diary of a graphomaniac. All the months they had been working at Monad, the red men had been idly monitoring them, condensing the vapour of all their chatter.
‘Send it to me,’ Raymond insisted.
‘When it’s finished. It’s up to you. When I’m in a Dr Easy, the first thing I will do is hand it over in person.’
Bravado chucked the manuscript back on a coffee table.
‘Have a good rest, Raymond. You’ve got work to do.’
The screen dimmed and
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