Friday Snippet

This is one of the opening scenes from another Amnar series which I’ve never completed (there’s one finished and four incomplete, at this point). It’d been a long time since I’d worked with “human” characters in a “human” landscape, and the balance between the rather acerbic humour of Lucy and the need to start off a fairly serious story was difficult to set. I ought to add that although the location is American, both Michael and Lucy are English, hence the character of the dialogue, and neither, I hasten to add, are based on anybody I know. This is a first take, as far as I can remember, and hasn’t been edited since first writing.

Book One: Chapter Two

October 23rd, 20—

Lucy Stanton sat opposite her ‘date’ in the small diner on the corner a block from her hotel, watching him performing some kind of torture on a milkshake with a straw and wishing she had blown it all off and stayed in her room eating expensive chocolates and crying over an Audrey Hepburn movie. Beyond the window to her left, it was raining, large splatting drops of water crashing into the glass, whilst on the radio at the counter, a cheerful reporter was talking about how unusual the weather was for this time of year. It had been raining steadily for a week, ever since Lucy had arrived in the States for her conference, doing nothing to cheer her up.

The date she had met at the conference, and as she sat and watched him vacuuming up the remains of his banana milkshake, her lament for the chocolate and Audrey deepened. The date’s name was Michael, and she had first ‘met’ him through an online dating agency. After a few weeks of exchanging those sort of boring, nonsense emails where interest in everything is exaggerated and the performance takes on a kind of surreal theatre, she had mentioned the conference, and he suggested they meet for coffee.

At thirty-two, Lucy had been single for far longer than she considered either sensible or sane for a woman. The steady thudding could have been her heart, or her biological clock. Most of her friends were now married and procreating with reckless abandon, or equally bemoaning their inability to find somebody. On the plane on the way over the Atlantic from the small island called Britain, she gone over her past email and phone conversations with Michael, and tried her best to fall in love with the picture of him. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t happening, and meeting him proved that with even greater certainty.

She had imagined that meeting for coffee would happen in an uptown bar, where they sold fifty different varieties of espresso and all the cups were designed to be no bigger than a thimble. It would be sophisticated, but have sofas where they could sit and chat about life in a big American city. Michael was English, though, and about as thrilling as a rainy afternoon in Droitwich. He evidently imagined the best place to impress a smart young academic woman was in a seedy diner where the burgers were made out of the bits of cattle that even dogs wouldn’t eat, and everybody smelled of cigarettes and badly controlled body odour. Now she had had the pleasure of watching him attack this banana milkshake while she delicately sipped at coffee that tasted like it had been dredged up from the bottom of some prehistoric river, she thought maybe it was time to draw things to a close.

“Perhaps I should be heading back to the hotel,” she said, raising her voice a little over the sound of his slurping. “I’ve got a busy day tomorrow, as I’m speaking in the morning and I really should check my notes—”

“There’s that new movie just opened at the cinema down the road,” Michael said, ignoring her as he focused on teasing a chunk of banana out of the corner of the glass with the end of the straw.

“Was that the place we walked past to get here?” Lucy asked, thinking that she had probably never seen such a clear living example of the word ‘fleapit’ since she had worked as a cinema hostess selling popcorn during her undergraduate years. It was stunning to see that such a place still existed. Perhaps they were preserving it as part of the historic urban fabric of the city. “They were only showing James Bond movies.”

“Yeah, that’s the one,” Michael said. “I love James Bond movies. I’m a bit of a Bond, myself.” He straightened, abandoning the straw and the banana as he adjusted his anorak and gave her what he apparently thought of as a suave wink. “Hi, the name’s Bond. James Bond.”

Lucy looked away before the urge to fling the cold remains of her coffee at him overcame her completely. I’m in a café with an anorak-wearing Bond fan with an addiction to banana milkshakes, she thought, my life could not possibly get any worse than this. She looked out of the window and noticed that the rain had stopped.

“Well, it’s drying up,” she said, in her most positive tone. She thought she sounded like an air stewardess announcing that the plane was about to crash. “I think I should be heading back to the hotel now.”

“I’ll walk you back,” Michael offered. “I might be a modern man, but I’m not above traditional chivalry.”

“Thank you,” Lucy answered, and glanced across to the counter, projecting that telepathic message to any passing staff that they would like the bill as soon as possible. When it arrived, delivered by a woman who appeared to be wearing a uniform designed and last washed in the nineteen fifties, Lucy glanced at it, and then watched as Michael patted his pockets in a half-hearted attempt to find cash.

“Can you cover it?” he asked, all traditional chivalry swept away.

Lucy sighed and opened her handbag, searching for the collection of dollars she had stuffed in an inside pocket for the outing. She dumped a few on the counter and stood up.

“I do think it’s only fair to let women take care of themselves these days,” Michael was saying as he fussed about with the many pockets of his anorak. “I expect you’re a feminist, aren’t you?”

The way he said it, Lucy thought he could have meant she killed men for a living.

“Only with certain men,” she replied tersely. The waitress had returned with her change, and before Lucy could leave a tip, Michael had carefully swiped up the coins and deposited them in an upper pocket. Lucy raised her eyebrows at him, and then stalked out of the diner, failing to hold the door open for him. She gave a mean little smile of satisfaction to the damp night beyond as she heard Michael groan as the door hit him in the chest.

Looking up into the sky, she could see the clouds had miraculously cleared, and those few stars that could pierce the light pollution of the city were shining brightly down on them. For a second, it was almost romantic, and across the road, there was the entrance to a park. She turned and looked at Michael, who was once again searching in his pockets for some unknown article.

“I’m going for a walk in there,” she said, indicating the park with her elbow as she dug her hands deep into her jacket pockets. She was rather glad she had dressed ‘sensibly’ for the date, in flat shoes and jeans, rather than the dress and heels she had brought, in that failing hope that some fabulously attractive, intelligent, rich and heterosexual man would suddenly appear out of nowhere and sweep her off her feet.

“That’s dangerous!” Michael complained. “We could get mugged.”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Look, I’ve been on safari on the Serengeti and not been mugged by lions,” she said. “I’m not going to be put off walking through a park.”

“Where’s the Serengeti?” Michael asked as she strode across the street. She heard his footsteps on the wet tarmac as he followed her through the open gates and into the urban wilderness of the park. It was only small and reasonably unthreatening, a few graffiti-decorated benches, memorial and then a little hillock at the centre that was clear of the rather unimpressive and city-weary trees. Without waiting for Michael, she started off up the hill, feeling the cool air on her face and her mood beginning to improve.

“So, what is it you said you were here for?” Michael asked, finally arriving at the top of the hill.

“It’s a conference on global environmental change and sustainable development,” Lucy replied, standing at the top of the hill and admiring the view of the city lights, the dark haze and the stars above. “I’m currently looking at how we can use traditional cultural knowledge in developing sustainable semi-urban communities …”

She glanced at Michael, and saw his eyes had glassed over as she spoke. This was not something she was unfamiliar with.

“So we’re just going to get together and talk about how to use different approaches to deal with the problem of global warming,” she finished abruptly, deciding that despite the anorak, his issues with chivalry, bills and doors, not to mention James Bond, it probably wasn’t fair to torture the uninitiated with the details of her conference, or her current specialism.

“It’s a myth, isn’t it?” Michael remarked, giving her an ugly, puzzled look that showed his teeth rather more than Lucy liked. “Nobody believes it’s real, do they?”

“Of course it’s real,” Lucy retorted, unable to stop herself. “Look around you, the evidence is everywhere … the storms all over the place, the strange weather we’ve been having, the Larsen B ice shelf melting—”

“The what?” Michael asked, but paused. Lucy was staring past him, over his shoulder to the north, her eyes wide.

For a second, Lucy thought there was a storm about to start, but that did not make sense with what her eyes told her she was seeing in front of her in the sky. A flash of lightning had appeared out of nowhere, several hundred feet up in the air over the city, followed by another, that launched upwards and dissipated into the upper atmosphere. The sky was clear; there were no clouds except those lurking low on the horizon.

Suddenly there were bursts of lightning showering off in all directions, and the air was filled with a roaring, hissing noise that nearly deafened Lucy. She clamped her hands over her ears as she watched, unable to believe what she was seeing, this tremendous black hole opening up in the sky in front of them.

“What is it?” Michael shouted at her over the noise.

“I have no idea!” Lucy yelled back. She tried desperately to catch her breath as her mind struggled to find some kind of explanation. It was no electrical storm, despite the buzzing in the air around them, and the prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck and arms. The sky seemed to be tearing itself open in front of their eyes, without any apparent reason or cause. The noise was so unbearably loud that she struggled to think straight through it for a long time, until she suddenly remembered Kieran.

Taking her hands from her ears, she dug around in her handbag and pulled out her mobile phone. She had been planning to meet up with Kieran, since he lived in the same city she was now visiting. They were old university friends, who had dated for a few weeks before deciding that geographers and astrophysicists were not perhaps the best possible combination for a couple. Or he had been drunk one night and slept with somebody else, Lucy thought, but she couldn’t quite remember how it was they had never really done anything more than laugh at academics over pizza in the student café on campus, then exchanged emails and phone calls for all the intervening years. Kieran was doing well, as far as she could tell, in his field, although she found his obsession with science fiction more than a little worrisome at times.

She flipped up the phone and checked her contacts for his number. As it rang, she could hear the signal cutting in and out, and muttered under her breath for the God she did not believe in to keep the signal going until she got through. She heard the ring, and then Kieran’s Midwestern accent on the answerphone. “Hi, this is Kieran’s phone. Ha ha. Leave a message after the beep …”

“Kieran? Are you there?” Lucy shouted into the phone. “Pick up! Kieran! Pick up! It’s an emergency! Where are you? You have to—”

“Luce?” Kieran’s own live voice came onto the line, which was hissing and spitting interference back at her. “What’s the matter? How’s the date going?”

“Terribly!” Lucy snapped. “I don’t have time for that now, this is—”

“Luce, it’s a Stargate SG-1 marathon on tonight,” Kieran protested. “You’re lucky I’ve got the TiVo on or I wouldn’t be able to answer the phone at all. Why is the line all cranky, where are you?”

“Kieran! Look out of your window!” Lucy shrieked. “You have to see this!”

“But it’s the episode where—”

“Kieran, pay attention!” Lucy snapped, vaguely aware that she was sounding like a primary school teacher. “You have to see this … Go to your window …”

“All right,” Kieran replied in a disgruntled voice, and she heard him swear hoarsely as something thumped in the background. “I’m blaming you for that. I’ll sue you for it.”

“Fine, whatever,” Lucy said, and the phone cut out for a second. She stared down at the blank screen, the little meter in the corner telling her the signal had been interrupted. She stared up at the sky again, and the strange formation had opened like a mouth, yawning before them like a sort of vertical black abyss that spat energy out in all directions. An electrical roaring filled the air.

Suddenly, the signal came back and her phone buzzed loudly, Kieran’s name flashing up on the screen. She quickly pressed ‘receive’ and put the phone to her ear.

“Can you see it?” she asked breathlessly.

“Wait a sec,” Kieran replied. “I’m just at the window now. I tell you, this had better be worth it … I’m missing a classic episode here, you know and oh my God what the hell is that?”

His voice rose in tempo as he was suddenly able to see the thing in the sky for the first time.

“You’re the astrophysicist!” Lucy replied. “What is it? A wormhole? A black hole? What?”

“It’s … it’s … incredible …” Kieran breathed. “Wow …”

“Kieran … what is it?” Lucy repeated.

“Who are you talking to?” asked Michael.

Lucy rolled her eyes at him. “Kieran,” she explained.

“Who’s Kieran?” Michael asked, giving her a jealous look.

“He’s … he’s an old friend of mine,” Lucy explained. “He’s an astrophysicist.”

“It’s not a black hole,” Kieran was saying to her as she exchanged words with Michael. “I’m going to have to speak to my boss … I’ve got no idea what it is but … I mean, it could be some kind of a worm hole I suppose. Wow … it’s like being in a Star Trek episode or something.”

“Kieran, could you focus on reality for just one second more please,” Lucy said, staring up at the strange phenomenon in the sky. It was already beginning to shrink, the screeching noise gradually beginning to subside, as it closed as quickly as it had opened. The mobile signal began to clear and it became easier to hear what he was saying, although it was apparently some babble about one of his favourite Sci-Fi Channel shows. “Please could you try to join normal life for a moment …”

“Normal life?” Kieran exclaimed excitedly. “This is amazing! It’s incredible!”

“I see the astrophysicist is coming out,” Lucy said dryly. “Can we meet tomorrow and talk about it?”

“Yeah … sure … I’ll text you tomorrow, all right?” Kieran said distractedly, evidently too overwhelmed by what he was seeing to be able to respond to her properly.

“All right,” Lucy said. “I’ve got a presentation tomorrow morning at nine, but after that, I’m clear … we could do lunch.”

“Sure … sure,” he replied vaguely, and she was suddenly reminded of their brief dating life, when he had sounded very much the same. She sighed and was not that disappointed when the signal cut out again as the last of the electricity left the air, and she and Michael were left standing together on the top of the small hill, in a shadowy park in the middle of a major American city.

“I’d better go back to the hotel,” Lucy said in a small, flat voice. Michael was still staring at the sky. “I said … I said I’m going back to the hotel,” she repeated, and he looked around at her at last.

“Yeah, all right,” he said, nodding at her.

She stared at him for a moment in silence, her ears still ringing from the noise. The silence around them now was disturbing. The ordinary, persistent noises of the city had all been somehow muffled by the sheer volume of sound put out by the strange thing that had appeared in the sky, and now the hum of traffic was barely audible at all to her. Finally, she turned and strode off down the little slope to the open gates. As she reached them, a dark figure appeared in front of her. She saw a shiny, sharp object waved in front of her.

Michael, who was just behind her, let out a shriek and ran off in the opposite direction. She and her would-be attacker looked after him for a second, and then back at each other.

“Men! You’re all the bloody same!” she snapped at the mugger and barged past him before he had the chance to do anything out into the wet street and along the block to the hotel. The streets were filled with cars, most of them having swerved and crashed when the phenomenon erupted in the sky overhead, and Lucy had to negotiate her way around several piled-up cars and enraged drivers trying to decide who to sue first. As she reached the hotel itself, she began to shake, realising for the first time what she had just done. At the steps up into the hotel, she sat down on a block of concrete that held some kind of modern art sculpture of no obvious meaning or importance and put her head down, gasping for air.

She felt a hand on her shoulder, and looked up into the round, concerned face of the doorman, the best-dressed male she had seen all evening.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” he asked her politely. “You seem a little put out.”

“Sorry … I think somebody just tried to mug me,” she replied, feeling a sort of nervousness about his manner and uniform. He helped her get to her feet again.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “Shall I call the police for you?”

“Um, no, no,” Lucy answered, shaking her head and allowing herself to be guided into the hotel lobby. “I think I … told him off.”

“Well, good for you, ma’am,” the doorman said, giving her a light pat on her shoulder. “You’re staying here, aren’t you, ma’am?”

“Yes, I’m here for the conference,” Lucy said with a nod, wrapping her arms around her torso, feeling suddenly rather vulnerable. “I just went out for dinner and …”

“You saw the thing in the sky?” the doorman asked.

Lucy nodded. “We were on a hill in the park down the road … it was incredible,” she said, beginning to feel giddy as the impact of her evening hit home. “I think I’d better go and lie down.”

“Do you need somebody to see you up there?” the doorman asked her politely.

Lucy shook her head. “No, I’ll be fine,” she answered, but he walked her to the elevators nevertheless, and watched as the doors closed on her. As the metal box rose, she looked at herself in the mirror on the back wall. She had turned as white as a sheet under her short strawberry blonde hair. She leaned on the wall and breathed slowly, trying to remember some yoga class she had been failing to attend weekly for the last year. She had gone to the first session in adherence with a new year’s resolution, but that had quickly lost its appeal, and she still wondered why it came to her as the elevator doors opened and she staggered along the hallway to her room, digging her room card key out of her handbag as she did so.

Once she had shut the door behind her, she decided a bath would be the best solution, and turned on the taps in the bathroom before sitting down on the edge of the bed with a box of chocolates she had bought in Duty Free and turning on the television. Her first inclination was to search for an Audrey Hepburn movie, but most of the channels had been occupied by news reports of the strange phenomenon in the sky. She sat and ate chocolate after chocolate, barely tasting each one, watching the experts talking away and hardly taking in a word as she watched the repeated image of the thing in the sky roaring down at the city below.