Heliopolis by James Scudamore Read Free Book Online

while car soup simmers beneath them. But the energy doesn’t disappear just because the flow is blocked; as in a human artery, it is re-routed. A grid of trapped vehicles activates every vendor, huckster, implorer and charity case within a kilometre-radius, and the resulting teeming sideshow makes you forget you had anywhere to go. The incident up ahead is barely two minutes old when five young boys materialise to wipe windscreens, sell peanuts, peddle flowers. One, barefooted, juggles fire on the shoulders of another, both grimacing with concentration. Everything is an opportunity.
    Guilt begins to wring out my guts like a wet cloth. I thrust cash at the boy with the peanuts, averting my eyes from his face. Instead, I look upwards, at two black vultures congregated on the high X-bars of a streetlamp, hoping for carrion. Everything is an opportunity.
    I have had enough of this. I pull out between the traffic and put my foot to the floor. The car lurches forward, and the wing mirror loudly slaps the car in front. The driver honks his horn and swears through his open window. I keep driving, tearing open the package of nuts with my teeth and tipping them wildly into my mouth. Somehow I make it through without hitting anyone else and I drive past the accident, where blame is being tossed about in loud voices over broken glass. The two drivers look over in astonishment, as if I have broken some unspoken rule of the road by presuming to drive through their argument.
     
    I have a recurring nightmare in which Melissa probes around in my belly button with one of the sharp metal skewers my mother used for weekend barbecues. She stares intently into my navel, manipulating the skewer, and I feel its cold metal point enter my stomach. Eventually, she achieves her objective, and unknots my umbilical cord. My intestines gush to the floor like a string of raw sausages.
    Not a complex dream—just a recurring one.
    Last night’s stopover was a rare treat. I don’t get the call so much now they are married. I am not permitted even to have the idea that Melissa and I should see each other; it has to come from her. I had finished work for the day and was contemplating a solitary evening on my balcony when she rang.
    ‘My husband has abandoned me,’ she said. ‘Want to come over and order a pizza?’
    ‘I’ll cook,’ I said.
    I haven’t been to the penthouse much lately, but I lived there for years, and I still have my key, so it seemed ridiculous that I was regarded with such suspicion when I arrived. Like any stronghold of the wealthy, Melissa’s building is defended by bored young guards reading comics behind bulletproof glass, craving melodrama and an excuse to let off their weapons. Even though Melissa had told them to expect me, they insisted on looking through my groceries from the Municipal Market before they let me through.
    I knew something was wrong when she met me at the front door and kissed me on the lips. She only does that when Ernesto has pissed her off.
    ‘It’s been so long,’ she said, when we separated.
    I took in the dazzling, infinite city behind her, and put the food on the counter. ‘This view,’ I said. ‘You forget. Especially at night.’
    ‘What’s in your bags?’ said Melissa, pouring me a glass of wine.
    ‘Santa Catarina oysters, and pork chops.’
    She made an appreciative noise, and handed me the drink.
    ‘What have you been doing?’ I said. ‘You look almost as if you’re . . . shimmering.’
    Melissa has a lot of her mother in her, and is very white. But unlike Rebecca, she is never pale. At the beach she sets herself out to bake all day, though her genes protest. When she returns, her freckled skin glares with outraged heat for twenty-four hours before it swallows the damage and moves on. But last night, she seemed to be positively emitting light.
    ‘I’ve been working,’ she said. ‘There’s a new spa treatment at the shopping mall: gold, frankincense and myrrh. I’m doing a