The Tesseract by Alex Garland Read Free Book Online Page A

let Panding live?”
    “Jesus, son! These questions you ask. That was the way it was!”
    Don Pepe, old as any church that Jojo had ever seen, moved in mysterious ways.
4.
    Making good time, said the green LCD clock on the dashboard. Having cut through side streets, slaloming past foot-deep potholes, they were going to arrive at the Patay ahead of schedule. Jojo wasn’t sure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing, in view of the fuss there had been over punctuality. Now that the meeting had been moved to a later time, which arrangement was the correct one to stick to? Which punctuality took precedence? Probably the original one, Jojo guessed, so he took no detours and stuck to the quick route.
    On Sayang Avenue, just before the left to Sugat Drive, the Mercedes ran over a cat. It was caught by the headlights for a frozen second, then caught by the left front wheel. The impact shook the car and made everyone hunch his shoulders—except Teroy, who had never hunched his shoulders in his life.
    “Was that a dog?”
    “It was a cat.”
    “A kid?”
    “Eh! Eh! We hit a kid?”
    “I think it was a cat, sir.”
    “Not a kid?”
    “A cat, sir.” Jojo steered the car over to the side of the road. “I’d better check the car for damage.”
    “Hmm,” Don Pepe murmured, not yet sure whether this was something he ought to be getting angry about. “Yes, you do that. You go and check.”
    The tarmac was still half melted from the daytime heat. It sucked at the soles of Jojo’s shoes as he walked around the front of the car, feeling along the bumper for dents, nicks, or fur. Behind the car, the injured cat flipped and jerked in a pool of red light. At a guess, its back was broken. Jojo tried to avoid looking in its direction, but found he couldn’t help it. His daughters kept a cat with similar markings. The cat slept at the foot of the younger girl’s bed. There had been no mice in the kitchen for years.
    “Damn,” Jojo said to himself. “I can’t leave it like that.” He walked to Teroy’s window and motioned for him to wind it down.
    “It’s still alive.”
    “Is it going to be okay?”
    “No.”
    Teroy rubbed his cheek. “Run it over again?”
    “We have to do something, but…”
    “What’s going on?” Don Pepe’s voice snapped from the backseat.
    “The cat is still alive, sir,” said Teroy. “We’re wondering what to do about it.”
    “It’s hurt?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Eeh…And is the car damaged?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Good.”
    There was a pause, during which, in Jojo’s peripheral vision, the twisting of the silhouette moved up a frantic gear. As the pause continued, Jojo realized that Don Pepe was waiting for him to get back in the car.
    “Sir,” he said. “Perhaps we should kill it.”
    “Kill it?”
    “Stop its suffering.”
    “Ah. Ah well, yes. Mercy, absolutely. Go on then.”
    “Right, sir.”
    “Anyway, we’re early for the meeting now, so there’s no, eeh…no need for you to hurry.”
    Jojo and Teroy glanced at each other.
    “No need to hurry,” Jojo repeated warily.
    “Yes. We’re early now, so you don’t need to hurry.”
    “Sorry, sir. You…want me to kill the cat slowly?”
    A wrinkled face appeared over Teroy’s shoulder. “I beg your pardon?”
    “Sorry, sir. I thought you were saying that—”
    “Do you know, Jojo, if I have time tonight I shall say a prayer for your soul.”
    “Kill it quickly, sir.”
    “Yes, kill it quickly, sir! Kill it very quickly, sir! God in Heaven, what have I done to…” The sentence tailed off as the face retreated. “Oh, just get on with it.”

    Easier said than done. Jojo never used his gun. Come to that, he’d never used
any
gun. Age twelve, circumcision had come and gone, and age sixteen, he—and every other boy he’d grown up with—had lost his virginity to one of the three barrio whores. If only firing your first bullet were as straightforward as losing your virginity. Pay fifty pesos to a sharp-tongued