Illusions

Illusions

The day Mike discovered day trading from his PC at home, he never went
out anymore. He'd sit in his oversized leather chair, at his father's
grand old oak desk in the study, and start. In New York, London and
Paris. Even Tokyo sometimes. That was three months ago.

His girlfriend Sylvia knew she should have sent him back out to the
streets there and then. Mike walked back in that morning an hour after
he'd just walked out, carrying his briefcase, his car keys and a box
full of papers, envelopes, CDs and disks from the office. She'd just
come out of the shower, and was drying her hair, when he said, "Guess
what, the company's closed. I'll have to start finding something new."
Then he offered her a box of squished chocolates and a bottle of wine
left over from some party at work, he said.

Sylvia was busy that morning - she'd arranged to meet an important
client on the other side of town - and was already running late. But
what else could she do, beside utter the usual clich?s, "Don't worry,
something'll come up," or "It's not the end of the world." Even those
words were too much for her. And now, it was too late. He was glued to
the screen in their study.

Everything was done on-line now, so Sylvia could hardly even find an
excuse to send Mike out for something. Not even a loaf of bread -
groceries were delivered to their doorstep. All their bills were paid
on-line. He signed on for his unemployment benefits on-line, and they
paid it into his bank account every two weeks. Mike told her he was
looking around the web for some new positions, that he was mailing out
his CV and making calls from his study. But he never got a call or an
e-mail back. Where there really no jobs out there for a man as
qualified as him, a former commercial director? He'd been such a
hot-shot at that company, but because of ongoing tax investigations, as
Mike put it, he didn't even got a severance package. Soon, he installed
an exercise bike in the study, another thing that he'd ordered on the
web. But mostly, he spent the day watching the Dow Jones and NASDAQ
indexes going up and down. Sylvia was worried how they were going to
keep up the mortgage payments. And the credit cards were almost maxed
to their limit.

Sylvia still left for the office each morning as usual. By the time she
was putting on her make-up, Mike was already scanning the headlines on
CNN. He sat and drank his coffee, listening quietly. To everything.
Then he'd get up and pretend to do some stretching exercises on the
carpet. He switched to MTV and jumped around to the hip-hop music
blasting out for a while. He even did star-jumps and sit-ups. Sylvia
thought he seemed very cheerful each morning. And by the time she was
out the door, he was seated in front of his PC monitor. When she came
home, and Mike called out "Hi honey" from the dimly lit study, Sylvia
never answered. She could smell the pizza he was eating, whose
discarded cardboard and shrink-wrap packaging littered her kitchen
tops. She'd make some fresh coffee for both of them and bring it over
to him.

"All right?" he'd say when she looked into the study.
"Okay," she'd say. "How are you?"
"Okay."

The study smelt dusty and sweaty, but not more so than she'd remembered
it when she used to work there herself. Nowadays, she took her laptop
to the bedroom and worked if she had to. She leaned against his file
cabinet while he swung around on his chair. They talked about what
she'd done at her job, trying to sell more mobile phones. The sun would
set through the blinds while she was in the study telling him her
tales, and he'd loosen his tie as she played with his hair. Then they
would be interrupted by a Ping sound coming from the PC, and Mike
turned back to see what was going on. She returned to the kitchen to
microwave her Weight Watchers' solo meals.

Once, almost two months since he'd lost his job, she'd peeked into the
study before she went to bed and she'd seen him slumped over his
keyboard, dressed in his business suit, with a big book open beside
him, "Killer Day Trading Investment Strategies." It was like one of her
old economics textbooks at college. She saw a spreadsheet open on the
monitor, with all sorts of figures running across and down columns.
Some of the numbers were in red and with minuses in front of them. They
may have made sense to her once, but now they were just squiggles and
her eyes kept glazing over as she tried to figure out what they could
mean. Then Mike woke up, and saw Sylvia standing there in her
underwear. "I'm just catching a little shut eye before Tokyo opens
hon," he said. "Gonna make a big killing tonight."

There was no one who could tell Sylvia what was happening to the Mike
she loved, the Mike she married and moved all the way here for. Things
were going awry too soon, before she'd even had a chance to settle
down. All she had to hold on to was her job. She wasn't sure if she
really felt grateful for it, and it didn't stop her worrying about what
was going to happen to Mike, to their beautiful apartment in the city
centre, to the baby she really felt like having. Then, Mike ordered
another two flat screen monitors so he could watch the action 'really
happen in real time everywhere' as he said to her.

One night, in her bedroom, Sylvia logged on to the web, when Mike was
still in the study at 2am. She shared her fears on a support group set
up for partners of people who'd recently lost their jobs. She confessed
to the group what had happened and they sympathised. They listened and
made her feel she wasn't alone. One lady, a Margaret from Kentucky in
America, even told Sylvia that what Mike was going through was nothing
unusual. It was an everyday thing, especially in difficult times like
these. Margaret's uncle had been forced into early retirement when his
phone company was taken over by a larger rival. He came home, got in
bed and never got out again. Except to use the toilet and shower. That
was twenty years ago, when her uncle was forty. Now, he only gurgled in
bed, with spit dribbling from the corners of his mouth. His body was so
wasted that all he could do was click the buttons on the remote
control. Nothing else in his body worked. Sylvia imagined Mike in front
of those monitors in their study for another twenty years. Playing with
her savings. Somebody else in Shanghai mentioned a commodity trader
they knew who'd lost all his savings and his house when he'd taken up
day trading in pork futures from the bedroom. In twenty years time,
she'd be fifty-five and she wanted a child with Mike soon. But what if
Mike refused to get out of the study for the next twenty years? She
logged off and went to bed ashamed of what was happening to Mike and
her. It didn't seem normal no matter what others said.

***

Sylvia came home from work one cold grey day, laden with shopping bags,
tired from the crush in the Metro and soaked from the downpour on the
walk home. Sylvia heard no sound coming from the study, and she
instantly missed the familiar stock market news that usually rattled on
all the time behind Mike, as he looked around for the best deals to bet
on. But it was when she walked into the spare room to take off her
shoes that it struck her. The smell. At first, it was the sort you
sniffed in a really upscale boutique selling leather shoes, jackets,
boots, vests, that sort of thing. But it was also a smell of decay, of
walking past rows and rows of stalls selling fish going stale in the
hot blazing midday sun. And then her eyes focused on the far end of the
room and she saw stacked high against the wall boxes and boxes labelled
100\% Genuine Leather.

She walked over and looked into one that was open, and lifted out a
square patch of dark leather. She couldn't believe the mess in the
room. And when she dug deeper into the open box, she saw something else
below the two to three layers of leather patches. At once, she knew it
was fake. Leather would not have such a colour or texture, she would
know. When she pulled her hand out, it was smeared with a stinky blue
ink. Her fingers were stained. She hauled out one of the heavy patches
and saw that the blue ink had run all over the fake leather. Then she
looked even more closely and saw the boxes were wet, the cardboard was
all smudgy and soft, while a pool of bluish water had formed on the
floor. The smell of leather was now the smell of rotting meat. That was
when Sylvia screamed at Mike.

He came running over from the study into the spare room, and stood at
the edge of the room. "What is it," he said, "what's wrong?" Mike was
still in a fading white long-sleeved shirt with a maroon striped tie
that he kept adjusting. He scratched his head several times, and she
wasn't sure if he'd been dozing all day long or what.

"This goddamn shit in my room," Sylvia yelled. "That's what."

He stepped into the room and walked over to the boxes. "Let me see
this". He poked around the boxes and said, "Shit, I don't believe
this."

"Take a good look Mike," Sylvia said, "I don't even want to ask what
kind of scam you're pulling here. But whatever it is, everything's
ruined."

Mike poked around the boxes further. Shifting the top boxes and poking
deep into the lower boxes. His hands also came out stained blue. Some
of the pretend-leather hides he held up were deeply creased with
cracks, ugly blue lines streaking the beautiful surface.

"What am I going to do?" he asked Sylvia.

Sylvia walked out, calmly removed her raincoat and placed it on the
coat hanger. She went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her
face. She had some ideas what Mike could do or should do, but she
didn't want a slinging match. She wiped her face and brushed her hair,
staring into the mirror above the basin. Then Sylvia walked back to the
spare room to hear out Mike.

"There's ten years of my savings. Down the drain. Shit. Shit shit shit
shit Sylvia. They told me it was perfect when I ordered it. All I had
to do was store it for a few days then when the price picked up, they'd
come pick it up again. We're a new consortium you see, a virtual
trading company. We buy up stuff nobody else wants, create a shortage
that jacks up the price then offload it bit by bit and make a quick
killing. It's perfect. Nobody suspects a damn thing. It was fine the
first time. I mean I had 1 million ball bearings here, down in the
store. That was all fine. And why are they screwing me now? I just
don't get it. I'm screwed Sylvia." There was a small creaking sound,
and one row of boxes, stacked almost 10 high against the wall, came
crashing down on the floor. Mike got out of the way just in time.
Sylvia noticed a big damp blue patch stained the wall. Soon, the entire
floor was covered in a stinking pile of fake leather and blue dye. She
was gagging for fresh air, and ran to open the window.

"Seems to me you had no clean partners or a clear strategy," Sylvia
said coolly, folding her arms and leaning against the door. She saw
herself in her sweat shirt and jogging pants, her hair tied behind her,
with pink rubber gloves and face mask, cleaning up the entire spare
room for hours. What she wanted was to be lying in bed with Mike once
again, in their honeymoon suite on a remote island in the Pacific, all
satin sheets, champagne on ice and Sade playing in the background as
the sun set over the lagoon.

Mike didn't say anything. He was looking at the mess in front of him,
and went down on his knees, as if he was trying to salvage some of it.
But the 'leather' crumbled in his hands. He was left holding a gooey
mess that looked liked papier mache.

Sylvia bent down to Mike and whispered into his ears, "Boo! Boo! Boo
boo boo!" She turned away, walked into her bedroom, undressed and put
on some old sweats. She came back to the spare room armed with garbage
bags, mops, pails and rags, and floor cleaner. She didn't say anything
to Mike but walked to the other end of the room where the boxes were
stacked and began opening them one by one. She started with one box
that had fallen open, with a bunch of 'leather' hides stained
bluish-grey. She couldn't decide what to do with them. "We need a plan
here," she said without looking at him. At least the top layer of each
box still had genuine leather, she assumed. So she carried three of the
heavy leather patches to the bathroom, dumped them into the bath and
started running hot water over them. She took a brush and began
scrubbing the hides one by one. But the leather just got a darker and
darker blue. She poured some liquid washing detergent onto them and
scrubbed even harder. Sylvia kept pushing her hair back, while the
sweat trickled down her forehead.

"Can you give me a hand in here?" she shouted to Mike.

Mike came into the bathroom and just stood there with his mouth
wide-open. "I don't believe this Syl," he said. "Look, I'm sorry, I
know you must think I'm some jerk, but I didn't mean to pull this scam
on you. It's just twisted that's all, it wasn't supposed to be like
this."

"I want to get rid of this mess," she replied. "You got any ideas?"
Sylvia asked him. Then, as abruptly as she'd started her scrubbing, she
stopped, turned off the taps, and removing her gloves, dried her hands
on a towel. She left the blue-stained leather hides in the bath and
marched out of the bathroom, saying to Mike, "I want my money
back."

"I'll get you your money back," Mike said, running after her, wondering
where she was headed. "It doesn't grow on trees, but I'll get it
back."

"I want my money back. That's my money I was saving for something more
than a stinking mess of blue fake leather in my spare room. What do you
want me to do? Don't I need my money? Maybe I don't. Maybe I can just
go and beg on the streets. I barely scrape by now anyway, I don't think
it'll make much of a difference will it? I guess the room will just
clean itself up, and the stains on the wall will just go away." She was
now in the study, and looking at the mess Mike had been living in, she
just threw some papers off his desk, sat on his leather chair, and
buried her face in her hands.

"I'll get you your money back," her husband said. "Oh yes I will,
they're not going to screw me and get away with it. Let's check the
net, there'll be tons of people wanting to buy some used leather. Just
hold on, let's check the classifieds on-line. I'm an expert on buying
and selling with strangers, come on, let's check out eBay," he
said.

Mike grabbed himself a chair and came over to the PC, and he showed
Sylvia how he found someone to trade with on the net. "Don't worry, he
said, "this will only take a couple of minutes."

"I'm going to have to clean that whole room up," Sylvia said. "Get the
mess off the floor, wash it and scrape all the blue ink off the floors.
And I'm going to have to do it right away. It can't wait, or the stains
will never come off. And don't forget the leather hides in the bathroom
either."

"Goddamn pricks," Mike said. "I should have seen it coming."

As Mike waited patiently for a web page to load up, Sylvia noticed a
recent Yellow Pages lying on the floor and began thumbing through the
directory. She came across different categories, but she didn't know
what exactly she was looking for. She just let her fingers do the
walking and see where it led her. In fact, her mind was still on the
sick mess in the spare room and bathtub waiting for her. She scanned
CAR SALES, JUNKYARD, PAWNSHOPS, then finally she noticed, "LEATHER
ACCESSORIES, PERSONALISED".

"Here," she said, "try this. Maybe we should give them a call."

"What is it?" Mike asked, "Let me see."

She read out the advert aloud, "Specialists in personally hand-crafting
exclusive leather accessories for all occasions and tastes - from key
chains, handbags, place mats, hats, purses and jewellery. Open daily
from 9-9. We also buy good quality leather. I know where they are, it's
easy. They're open now, Mike, maybe they'll take a look at these
leather hides you have. Let's go! They're right beside that bakery,
next to the department store. Let's go check 'em out and see if they're
interested. I just want the whole stinking pile out of my flat and they
pay for it."

Mike was silent. He stared at his screen and seemed to be concentrating
hard on retrieving some wisdom from the silent screen. He took a quick
look at Sylvia, then he said, "Buy and sell what you want to anyone
anywhere. It's all here Syl. Not there in the yellow pages."

She grabbed his wrist and fixed her eyes on him. "Let's just go take a
look. Who knows what'll happen. Maybe they can repair the leather,
remove the blue spots. Who knows? Let's go out, get some fresh air,
walk there, and leave this rotten mess for a while. Come on Mike, it'll
do you good to get out."

"I'm not going to some stupid little store to sell my leather. Don't
you know what I've been doing here all this time? You think this is
some kind of joke for me? I'm doing it for us," Mike said.

"It'll be fun," Sylvia said. "When's the last time we've done anything
together? Come on, let's go out shopping. Let's have some fun."

"It may be fun, but not for me. People are going to look at me like I'm
some kind of stupid idiot. They're going to see its fake. They're going
to make us out to be cons. I'm not a con. I'll do it here, online. I've
got a job to do here, remember?"

"I don't care anymore Mike," Sylvia finally replied. "I'm just getting
out of here. Who knows. You do what you like. I'm going."

"I'll go with you. Hell, if its just a walk, I'll go. Who said I
wouldn't?" He looked at her sitting there beside him, then he turned to
face the monitor. "Why don't you cut out that ad from the Yellow Pages
and I'll just quickly scoot around the web for a while? I know more
about trading here than bargaining with a street store. But yeah, come
on, let's give it a shot. We'll get rid of it and leave town, OK? Get
out of this shithole."

"Is that what you want now?"

"If I hang around, they're gonna get me aren't they? You know I'm done
for baby."

"I'll start with the cleaning up here. I'll see what I can do first
before the mess gets bigger. Then we'd better go before the shop
closes. I'll try and find a good sample that we can take along to show
them. But then we'd better go."

"Seven o'clock OK?"

Sylvia got up form the chair, put the Yellow Pages she was holding
down, and made her way from the study to the spare room. She stopped in
the living room and looked out the large windows. Night was falling
quickly and as she stood there, fat raindrops began to fall. They
splashed against the window panes, and she rushed to close them when
she realised the carpet was getting wet. Across the road, at the little
cafe on the street, people huddled under the awning for cover, while
others carried on eating on the terrace beneath huge umbrellas. She
went back to peek into the study and watched Mike carefully.

It was supposed to be so simple, Mum had told her. Move on, and make a
life with the man you've found. Make the life you want, start afresh in
the new country, he'll stand by you, she'd said to Sylvia, he's that
sort. I can tell. Wait till she told her Mum this story.

She looked him while standing at the door. He was looking around for
his digital diary, then he bent over it for a long time. He found
whatever he was looking for, an address or a phone number, and went
back to tapping his keyboard. His fingers move so fast, between
keyboard and mouse, and so must his eyes, his mind, she thought,
between the different tasks he was doing. But soon he stopped. She
heard classical music streaming out from the PC, and he lay back on his
swivel chair, his hands crossed behind his head, and he closed his
eyes. Then he sat still.

She went over to close the study windows. She picked up the papers
she'd thrown around earlier, and arranged them neatly in a pile on
Mike's desk. His eyes were still shut. And he had a wide smile on his
face. On the monitor, there was a duck flying around chasing a piece of
toast with wings. She went back to the spare room and started clearing
up the mess into garbage bags.

The last time this has happened was when she was fifteen. After that,
Sylvia never imagined it would happen again, not on this side of the
world. She was supposed to have left it all behind. Then, she'd endured
the same squalor that had now invaded her house. It was when she used
to go out on to the streets with her mother, back in the old country,
looking for junk to recycle. Sylvia remembered how they used to collect
heaps of newspapers, cardboard boxes, bottles, beer cans, even old
rags, bring it all back in big gunny sacks and stash them in the back
room of their little hut. Her mother would then prepare a bowl of rice
with some thin vegetables if she'd been able to sell her junk for
enough to buy some decent food. And if not, they'd all eat some tapioca
soup from the sweet potatoes they grew in the small patch behind their
hut. After supper, Sylvia and her sisters would gather in the back
sorting the day's pickings into separate piles of cardboard, metal,
plastic and paper to cart off to the recycling centre on their rickshaw
early in the morning the next day. They slept there also, leaving their
mother to entertain her guests in the living room. Sylvia remembered
how they fought over the best pieces of cardboard for their beds, and
whatever scraps of cloth that could make up pillows and blankets. Once
she was lucky and found three old pillows, from which she took all the
cotton out, which she then made into one big fat pillow for herself.
When she ran away, she never heard anything or looked back. Her mother
was glad she'd run off to get married and found a way to the West. She
wrote to tell Sylvia how she missed them going out hunting for stuff
together in the wee hours of the day. One day, almost three years after
she'd managed to escape, and was settled into a stable pattern with
Mike, her own job and a decent apartment, her sister wrote to her
saying their mother had died. She'd gone out one morning to collect
other people's junk as usual, but she never came back. A few days
later, her body was found in a burnt pile of cardboard, cloth and metal
at the back of the house. It looked like she'd lit a huge bonfire then
thrown herself in. Or maybe someone had pushed her in, even the police
were not sure.

Sylvia began scrubbing the floor, trying to remove the blue ink
smearing the linoleum. It was just awful to think about her mother
dying a slow painful death amidst the stench of what she earned money
from. The ink just wouldn't come off. Sylvia dragged it along with her
little finger, there was so much of it splashed everywhere. She made
little patterns on the floor and wished her Mother was here with her.
They would be back together again, happy in paper. Only this time she
could brag to mum that in the West, she'd upgraded to leather. So what
if it was fake? Hey Mum, I'm back home, Sylvia would tell her.

She would also tell Mike, she thought. They hardly ever talked about
her past, about the time before they met, before she came over. She
shouted out at him, "Hey Mike, come here. I've got something to show
you."

Then she ran hurriedly to the kitchen, got some bread slices, placed
some butter, cheese and ham on them. Then she found some old lettuce,
sliced some tomatoes and added them as well. She arranged it all on two
plates. She gathered some knives and forks, some tea lights and a
bottle of wine and two wine glasses and placed it all on a tray. The
sandwiches didn't look like food, they looked like little towers of
junk piled high.

She walked towards the study and watched Mike. He hadn't heard her
shouting. The classical music was still playing, but he was busy with a
computer game, fiddling around with his joystick. So she said it again,
only softly this time, while still waiting at the door. "Mike, honey,
dinner's ready. Aren't you going to join me?"

He turned and stared at her holding up her tray. "I thought you wanted
to go to the leather shop."

"Sure, but first, a quick snack," Sylvia replied. "Come on." Mike got
up from
his chair and followed Sylvia. She took him to the spare room, where
she'd laid out a tartan picnic mat. She placed her tray on the mat, lit
the tea lights with a match, then turned off the overheard light. She
sat down and poured the wine, and offered Mike a glass. But he stood
there looking at the mess. More boxes had fallen open and the leather
lay on the floor, dripping wet, dissolving in front of his eyes. His
mouth dropped open, but he didn't say anything. She nudged his leg, and
offered him the wine again.

"Sit down," Sylvia said, "I want you to eat this." She put the glass
down and offered him the plate with his sandwich. He stared at the
sandwich saying nothing. So she began eating her own sandwich.

"Can't you see the mat's getting wet? You're ruining it," Mike said.
Sylvia gulped down her wine and carried on chewing. "Sit down," she
said to her husband once more.

He handed her his plate, undid his laces and sat down slowly, as if
trying to make sure his socks would not get wet in the puddles. But the
moment he sat down, he felt the gooey mess soaking through his
trousers, his briefs, to his butt. Sylvia smiled, and handed him back
his plate. "We have all the time in the world," she said. "So go ahead,
Mikey, hon, go ahead. Just make all the noise you want." And she lay
down in the stinking pile of fake leather, stuffing the last bits of
sandwich into her mouth, kicked off her sandals, threw off her
sweatshirt and jogging pants and lay there in her bra and panties. She
knew she should be getting ready to out with him to the leather shop,
try and sell what they could, try and make some money back. But
instead, she rolled in the mess of blue ink, real leather, fake
leather, wet cardboard, all of it. Mike watched Sylvia smother herself
in the mess. He got off the picnic mat and slowly walked back to his
study, not bothering about his wet socks. Never again in my life will I
see this happen, he thought. Never again, he vowed.

THE END