Читать книгу The Crash of Hennington - Patrick Ness - Страница 16

Jacqueline Strell sat in her office and bathed in numbers. They flooded her desk in wave after wave, pages of numbers blocked in charts, scraps of numbers scribbled in pencil, computer analyses of numbers bracketed and cross-referenced to other rivers of numbers filed away in the cabinets behind her, numbers on cards, numbers on machine readouts, numbers on computer screens, numbers on the desk itself put there when, in a flurry of activity, Jacki chose not to flip over a page but continued onto the hard wood. Even her fingernails sported numbers, whimsically painted there this morning when she was in a whimsical mood. The time was rapidly approaching when she would need more whimsy. Oh, yes.

Her office nestled in the back half of the Hennington Hills Golf Course and Resort Administration Building. She loved it. Spacious table tops flung out from her desk in wings towards her office door, room enough to keep the flood of numbers churning and churning in their never-ending whirlpool. Cabinets lined the three walls behind her and to her right and left, streams and cauldrons of bubbling, stirring, steaming numbers. She had fourteen different clocks decorating her walls, all set to the same time but all with different number fonts.

This was the reason Jacki was an accountant: she, alone among everyone else she had ever known, understood infinity. This understanding was innate. No epiphany, no trumpet blast of the everlasting had ever filled her brainpan. The eternal had always whiled away its time in her gray matter. She had been intimate with the infinite from the time she could even speak such words. The human mind was not supposed to be able to truly grasp the never-ending, but she could close her eyes and set her mind running off into forever, tripping lightly away on a line with no beginning and no end.

This was the reason Jacki understood infinity: she understood numbers. Infinity, aside from its unfathomable physical existence, could only and would only ever be expressed in numbers. Jacki looked scornfully on the small-minded ‘appreciation’ of the layman towards an infinite set. ‘Really, really big, then even bigger'. They didn’t see it. Jacki saw it. More, she felt it, smelled it, could almost touch it. Numbers adding and adding and adding and adding exponential upon exponential upon exponential and then all those numbers were still as nothing because infinity remained, brightly spilling itself infinitely forward.

Jacki leaned back in her chair and sighed. She was tall, generously boned, with loopy brown hair that matched the gawky, unconfined sprawl of her body. She rubbed her hand across her high forehead, inside which was an increasingly throbbing ache. Yes indeedy, it was time for whimsy again, most definitely. She opened the top drawer of her desk and pulled out a vial and syringe. With practiced movements, she filled the hypodermic, tapped it for bubbles, raised the hem of her skirt, and injected her thigh with 50ccs of the purest Forum you could get anywhere in Hennington.

Because there were three more things about Jacki:

1) Besides being an accountant with a comprehension of infinity, she was totally, utterly, wholly, paralytically and absolutely addicted to Forum.

2) Because of this, Jacki also worked as a prostitute for her boss, Thomas Banyon, biological son of Archie Banyon and general manager of the Hennington Hills Golf Course and Resort, lent out to clients to feed a specific need, thereby pleasing Thomas and causing him to provide her with more Forum, although of course never quite enough. These shifts were in addition to the full day’s work she put in as Thomas’ Head Accountant. Never let it be said that Thomas Banyon lacked a darkling sense of humor.

3) And all of this was true because, at age forty-one, with her youngest child fifteen years old, Jacki still produced, on a daily basis, nearly two pints of breast milk, and there were a surprising number of men who would pay a surprising amount of money for just such a delicacy. Thomas Banyon was not a man to let potential income go unexploited.

Her phone rang. Alone in her office, she mouthed an expletive.

—Hello?

—Jacks.

Jacki frowned, but the Forum was already dribbling its way through her veins and she began to feel her consternation melt away, butter in boiling water.

—Yes, Mr Banyon?

—I have a clip for you tonight. Are you up for it?

As if there was a choice involved.

—Of course, Mr Banyon. It would be my pleasure.

—It’s Councilman Wiggins. You remember the good Councilman, don’t you?

Remember? She had to put salve on her nipples for nearly a week after the good Councilman displayed a tendency for toothiness. This memory too, though, floated away into the shimmering mirage of the drug.

—Certainly, Mr Banyon. What time?

—Say ten?

—All right. Ten it is. Usual place?

—Usual place.

—I’ll be there.

—I truly appreciate that, Jacks. I’ve got some really wonderful merchandise here that I had been hoping to share with you. I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity.

—I’m grateful for your indulgence, Mr Banyon.

—You’re a good girl, Jacks.

He clicked off. Jacki closed her eyes. She was deep into butterscotch warmth now and glorious waves of light and color filled her head. The anguish, thank the heavens, was winding its way clockwise down the drain, spiraling blissfully out of her presence.

God bless Forum. Forum’s name be praised.