The Weight of Numbers by Simon Ings Read Free Book Online

disappearance in March, I had had no choice but to dismantle the British end of the business. This inevitably meant that I owed favours. Relocating to the States, I had hoped to revive the fortunes of my moribund employment agency. But competition had grown fierce and word of my problems had arrived before me.
    Blessing and Femi, my housekeepers for the northern states, fell foul of US Immigration at the beginning of March 2000, and there was no one on the books I really trusted to take their place. I debated whether to bring Chisulo and Happiness over from London. But they had their daughter to look after, and I had already asked too much of them.
    Until I found somebody new, then, it fell to me to meet the arrivals we had already booked in for the spring. Arrivals like Felix Mutangi: I was there to greet him at the gate. It was a risky business, but no riskier than letting this son of the African soil wander alone through all the snares and brakes of late Western capitalism. I was pleased to hear that the paperwork I had prepared for him had seen him past the desk without a hitch. In the car, driving him to his motel and subjected to his boyish burbling, relief was added to pleasure: if he had had to open his mouth for any extended period he would surely have found himself on the first flight home.
    He seemed hearty enough when I left him that evening, but the next morning when I picked him up he sneezed almost the moment he got in the car. I thought nothing of it at first; long-haul travel always leaves you feeling depleted. The sneezes did not stop. He was in his mid-twentiesand, according to the medical report I had ordered, he was in good health. Still, even a head-cold could delay, by precious days, what we had planned for him. ‘How are you feeling?’
    â€˜Fine, fine,’ he grinned. He pulled out a packet of 555s and offered me one.
    â€˜They didn’t tell me you were a smoker,’ I said, waving it away. Where he came from, what twenty-something man didn’t smoke? But I wanted to disconcert him a little; I wanted him to think about what we were doing, and what it would mean for him. The opportunities it represented. ‘I don’t know that the clinic’s going to like you doing that,’ I said.
    Felix’s smile was irrepressible. He wound down his window to let out the smoke. It was freezing outside. Literally: minus one according to the dashboard. He sneezed, spat and noisily inhaled the gasoline fumes of the promised land. Blood and urine tests were booked for 11 a.m. Assuming the authors of the medical report had not been altogether fraudulent, the operation would take place that night and by Monday Felix would be on a plane home.
    The Stevenson expressway had other ideas: after half an hour’s driving, just as we were passing under the Gilbert Road flyover, everything ground to a halt. I couldn’t believe our ill-luck. The Tri-State Tollway was right ahead of us, straddling the expressway on an inclined curve. The whole arrangement of structures, piles and embankments here looked like something sculpted by the sea. We couldn’t get near it. The feedlanes were barely half a mile away, and they might as well have been on the other side of Lake Michigan.
    We were there so long we started picking up radio bulletins about the tailback building behind us, stretching far along the canal. It was a clear day, bitterly cold. The radio said something about a spilled load, and a couple of fire trucks, with lights but no sirens, slid sedately past us on the hard shoulder. I got out of the car, found my parka in the back and zipped myself up. I glanced around, looking for newscopters. This closeto Chicago Midway it probably wasn’t worth their while negotiating such a busy airspace. Domestic jets howled over our heads.
    â€˜Hiya.’
    The voice seemed to come from above me; it made me start. I turned around. Beside my own rental there was a van. Not a pickup, or a