BY CHANCE THE FUTURE: AN EXCERPT

Waiting in another line at another bank, I maintained a strong posture to offset the crippling effects of boredom. Banks were all the same; alphabetic order as good a strategy as any other — I was up to H. I fantasised about Sef, Pop Daddy, which was fun until I thought — I bet he has a bank account — and then I felt like a loser. Finally called to the counter I made my request clearly, politely, but the bank teller looked back at me with a mixture of disinterest and disgust — as if a rat were gnawing my eyeball from its socket. Distracted by her impressively long fake nails with their distinctly unnatural French finish, I was unable to follow her impenetrable rejection, its absence of consonants. I was silent, ungenerously curious as to how she got dressed with talons like that, how she did anything — turn on the computer, enter new customer records, etcetera.

I blushed, feeling the breath of those had long since escaped. Australians were mutating, circling back to disrupt things. I blushed more. I turned away and walked out of another bank — empty handed.

I was suddenly aware of Australians, en masse, like pests, a plague. They, we, were everywhere. Their cumbersome backpacks. Their crude, broad accents. Their silly colourful board shorts, which in winter, miles from any kind of beach, were nothing short of bad manners.

I trudged on to the next bank on the list. The administrative obstacles mounting. I imagined Ganesha lighting a bonfire of sandalwood underneath it all. I bought a copy of the Big Issue from the painfully thin Indian guy at Lancaster Gate and, come the weekend, tired and tripping on sickly sweet cocktails that Renae made me drink in an effort to cheer me up, I dreamt that a giant rat with human facial features was riding a big bronze horse, bareback. The animal cantered like a horse and cornered like a horse but was actually an elephant. It held up a bank.

Monday morning, I descended back down into the depths of London to ferret my way along the Central Line, a rodent forcing its way through the red oesophagus of the underground. Above, the busyness of the Bayswater Road and Marble Arch continued oblivious to the underlying operating system. Up there people walked, the brave rode bikes, others sat blankly on buses. Everyone held their breath. Down here we relinquished personal space — it was the cost that came with warping London into something that could be mastered. There were men with angry weeping cold sores, uncomfortably close by, and old women with slack mouths sucking back excess saliva.

Flushing it from my mind, I finally emerged at Oxford Street and smiled back at the Top Shop models’ impressively perky, looming presence. I dodged pedestrians, walking in a zed until I came upon a tiny old man sitting alongside the grand entrance of an imposing edifice. L. The little man was chewing slowly, rhythmically, like a camel. I imagined him toothless. He fisted a crumpled McDonald’s bag, grubby fingers producing a few more limp chips which he mashed with his gums and a not-displeased look on his face. He had a handwritten sign that read please help.

Well, exactly.

Thick glass doors parted to reveal an elaborate antechamber that led to a cavernous, climate-controlled haven of marble and mahogany. There, under a sign descending from the heavens that read customer assistance, I saw a clean-shaven man in his very sensible suit with his sensible haircut and etched metal nameplate. I came with a different pitch. I always pay my way, never shoplift, I give my real name to men at bars and talk to the talkative types on public transport. I recycle, buy unbleached two-ply toilet paper, I floss for fuck’s sake. I thought it should all count for something.

That had been the problem…

Earnest I realised was for god people and science people, for people who had to plead come with me because they didn’t have half the personality needed to make someone follow. I feared I was earnest. So, I relaxed my shoulders and all the exhausting, trying justification dropped away. There was no precedence for me in this big old ever-changing place. No context, no bloodline, no family names. No have-to this or that. I got to decide who I was going to be. I damn near strut up to that sign. He could see it in my eyes. Revelation. And he wanted in on what I knew.