Liar's Kingdom (Part 3)

Naturally, I pick it up, sniff it, look at the parchment yellow colour and know it’s osseous nature. Roll the bone, I think. I do a variation of the coin walk across my knuckles using the die: the first dice were the made from the talus of oxen, but even the Romans playing for Germans’ liberty called them ‘knucklebones’. I practised conjuring tricks as ‘Caulfield, Implementation’ in the privacy of my office. When I wasn’t writing scripts for imaginary films, that is. I flick the die metres high from my pinky, trap it with a flat palm as it lands on the top of the filing cabinet. The hand lifted, the die shows a sice. Six cabinets down; I move six cabinets down the aisle. I ponder what I should do next. Should it be the sixth drawer too? Should I throw the dice again? Should I employ the wriggling evasions of “Cruel Man Luke” Reinhart and say 2 x 6 is 12, 1+2 is three to justify a decision I’ve already made? Through the noise of the machine I hear a faint noise like the howling of an animal. I think of Lon Chaney Junior again. I shiver and think, Fuck it! I open drawer number five.

There’s a plant; in a brown plastic pot, like part of Bill or Ben’s body. I don’t recognise the plant, it’s got flowers and dark green leaves. Luckily it does have one of those little bits of plastic speared into the soil. There’s a picture of the plant and the latin and vulgar names, both of which I recognise:

Aconitum Vulparia

Wolfsbane.

It’s all I can do not to burst into ‘Werewolves of London’, but the machine’s incessant rhythm section wouldn’t provide the right accompaniment.

I stick the die in my pocket. I am NOT the Dice Man! Whatever this game is about there will be an element of chance. And that chance will be me. Carrying the Wolfsbane, I consider saying some prayers tonight but guess I’m just not pure enough of heart to bother. I run to the last cabinet on the aisle’s left and turn to the one opposite. I wish I had a bag or something to put this bloody pot in! Strangely, I’m reluctant to put it down. I hit the side of the cabinet, the third drawer down lips open inviting me to draw it out. I shove it in firmly and open the one above it. Again, there’s just one item in the drawer.

It’s a Harrod’s carrier bag.

So I just put the Wolfsbane in the bag. If you could still smoke anywhere at all inside I’d have a cigarette now. If one turns up in the next drawer I open, I’ll smoke it anyway. Maybe I should wish for something … important: an end to war, plague, famine and death? It would be interesting to see what was in the lucky dip then. A humane horse killer perhaps? But what I really, really want is a cup of tea, I’ve embraced that much of office culture, I mean what time is it already? It must be ten past cup-of-tea-time. On the face of my hooky Tag (ten euros in Torremolinos) the second hand is sweeping – really smoothly -backwards. The time says 12.05 and the date reads 0.

I look at the crazy flywheel which is opposite the end of this middle aisle. There’s something ellipsoid in its rotation: Klakto etcetera has been replaced by:

‘ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa’

and I feel as miscast as Danny Kaye. Sorry James, I ain’t no Walter either.

No telltale panting, no clicking on the concrete, but suddenly Cerberus is in front of me. He looks… not hairier, exactly. Just… something different about the skin. Tighter certainly, less papery. I feel an urge to stroke it. He interrupts my weirdness:

‘Did you get Kropotkin?’ he enquires,

‘I did. He wasn’t much help.’ I say

He lifts a foot. I stare. It looks like he’s wearing a pair of those ‘funny’ slippers like animals' paws. He looks down, the foot drops to the concrete with a click. He scratches behind an ear with his hand. It looks like it costs him some effort, like it’s unnatural. He sighs:

‘He prefers a more… anarchic approach to solution finding.’

I ask him what’s with the machine: what’s it doing now?

‘It’s being the machine. What else?’

‘What about me?’ I ask.

‘That rather depends.’

A long tongue creeps out, starts to loll. He straightens up, winds the tongue in, ashamedly. As if he’s been caught with his hand on his knob. I say nothing.

‘Aren’t you going to ask?’ I know what he means.

‘Nope. I’m going to have a cup of tea.’

He turns away abruptly, starts to slink off, does that impossible neck turn and says:

‘Be careful what you wish for.’

‘I was thinking the same myself.’

At that he scampers off, less like an old man than ever.

My watch reads 12.05 still, though the sweeping second hand still widdershins across its face. I picture teabags, march 12 aisles to the left (in honour of my sinister watch) and five cabinets up. Trying to think of a truly random number between one and six, it occurs to me that no thought is ever ‘truly random’. Unless you’re completely insane perhaps. The number I think of is five-and-a-half.

I almost die as the cabinet teeters forward while my arm is jammed down the back of drawer six. The papery object has been just out of reach for two or three minutes; finally I snatch it and my arm from the cabinet’s jaws and roll away. The cabinet rocks itself back to the perpendicular with the clatter-and-rattle of a giant hub cap on concrete. I pull the paper tag on the string away from the bag. Be careful what you wish for indeed, the tag reads:

‘青茶 oolong tea produce of Szechuan’