Lust Or No Harm Done

Part III. What do you want for Christmas?

For a while, Michael stalled.

The project wound down. The results were conclusive. The learning process caused a range of chemical changes in nerve cells. The pathway of that chemical change through the brain was common. Some neural pathways for learning about light seemed to be pre-established, at least in chickens.

Michael began work on a small, publishable paper, for a respected scientific journal. He let Emilio go to his new job early. Shafiq was fine; he simply went back to his agency and a new post. Geoffrey Malterton at the Council found another project that could use their facility. He was pleased: he would end up being the lab's new Director, not Michael. It was left to Michael and Ebru to turn out the lights on the lab one last time, and share a quiet drink at the Pineapple.

Michael still had his teaching once a week, which was a living, not a calling. He explained the basics of neurology to students for whom it was not a calling either. It was a way of increasing their earning potential. They argued with him about each and every mark on their phase tests and worked out from their percentages so far whether or not getting an A on the final test would make any difference to their overall grade. If it wouldn't, then they would stop studying.

Christmas came, full of tinsel and loneliness. The students left for home, except the ones who had no home. They stayed on in student accommodation playing disconsolate dance music.

Michael went home for the holidays. His mother had gone back to Sheffield ten years ago and lived in a terrace house near where the city ended abruptly in green. She had her garden and her friends. She was 63, an age when it is still insulting to be described as spry.

His mother had come into her own. She made an effort. Her hair was dyed a believable shade of ash; you could see she had once been pretty and elegant, though there was also now something firm around her outlined eyes. She was good with a screwdriver and hard on building contractors. She was confident in life.

She greeted Michael without fuss, kissing him on the cheek and patting his arm. 'You've lost weight. It suits you.' She didn't get that stricken 'are you eating?' look. She just said, as she would to one of her mates, 'You fancy something to eat?'

'Yeah sure, a cheese sandwich or something. I can make it.'

'Go on then. You'll find all the things in the usual place. You can make me a cup of tea while you're at it.'

When he came back with the tray, she already had the Christmas cards out, ready for signing. She didn't believe in this nonsense of sending everything months in advance. You did your Christmas cards at Christmas.

'You forgot the spoons. It's all right, my turn.' She stood up and came back with spoons and a white envelope.

'You haven't been ringing me, and it turned out you even moved without telling me, you daft pillock. So I knew something was wrong that you weren't telling me, so I wrote you this.'

She put the letter next to the tray. 'Go on, have your tea. You can read it later, after the cards.'

There were fewer and fewer cards each year: one to their cousins in New Zealand; one to his mother's best friend Beryl now in Canada; one to the Blascos in San Diego. They were an isolated family. They only had each other.

'In the old days, people didn't move about so much, I suppose. There were more of you around it seemed. Are you on this e-mail? Because I was thinking it's probably a good way for me to keep in touch. Could you set me up on it?'

That would indeed be something good to do with the long and sometimes pointless days of Christmas. 'Sure could.'

In fact, it would be great fun, and it solved the problem of what to buy his Mum for Christmas instead of a scarf or chocolates.

They did the cards, and she brought out the roast chicken, with its clogged brand-name stuffing, and both of them ate hardly anything.

'So are you going to tell me what's wrong? You've broken up with Philip.'

'Broken up with everything. I um, forgot to apply for the grant, so the project ended.'

'So you're at a bit of a loose end. Shall I tell you what the letter says, save you reading it?'

'OK.'

'It goes like this. The worst things that happen to you in life turn out to be the best things. Like your father. He left me on my own and I thought, I'll never cope. But look at me now. And then I got that phone call from him telling me that you were gay and you'd done something terrible. But he wouldn't say what it was, except that he was plainly going to blame me. Well, that gave me the chance I'd been waiting for. I finally stood up to the man. I just told him. It isn't your fault; and it's not mine either so don't go putting all the blame on me. It's just who our Michael is, and what of it? I've known for ages, it's no news to me. And you should have known too, if you had your eyes open.'

Michael chuckled. 'What did he say?'

'Nothing he could say; it was all true. He said, You're right, Mavis. I felt sorry for him by the end of the conversation.'

'I sometimes think I killed him.'

Mavis wiped crumbs off her knee, sniffed and said, 'So what was it then? This terrible thing you did?'

Michael thought, then answered, 'I made a pass at him.'

His mother nodded once, downwards. 'People don't die from having a pass made at them, Michael.'

That tickled Michael and he chuckled. 'No, I guess not.'

'He didn't have himself sorted. He was all front.' Michael saw his father's face, big and needy. 'I look at it this way. Because of all that, you knew that I knew. You didn't have to spend twenty years screwing up your courage to tell me. I could just ask you straight out if Phil was your boyfriend and make up the double bed. Speaking of which, have you found yourself someone a bit more down to earth now?'

'No. No one.'

'Sorry for prying. Mother's prerogative. Anyway, you'll be all right, Michael. You're smart. You work hard. You're a kind person. I've known you since you were born. You'll be fine, love.'

That was indeed what the letter said. That night in bed, Michael read the letter over and over. When he was young, his mother was always telling him to be careful. Now she was telling him to be brave.

How could I tell you, Mum, about the miracle? Could I say: I have the power to generate flesh from dream? Would you think I was crazy? Or am I just underestimating you again? What would you say?

Michael's head unconsciously adopted the slightly sideways bolshiness of her enquiring position, and his eyes took on her slow burn.

And he knew she would say: 'So how is all that any different from wanking?'

He thought and answered her: 'You can touch them. And they have minds of their own.'

'So how is it any different from the real thing?'

Michael thought again and said, 'It's safer.'

He saw Mavis chortle, just before she stood up to take out the tea things. 'You mean like trainer wheels on a bicycle. They'll have to come off sooner or later, love.'

Finally, Michael folded the letter away and snuggled down under the duvet that smelled of fabric conditioner. He felt safe and warm, like a child, which is what Christmas is for. He leaned across and snapped off the light. 'Goodnight, Mavis,' he said to her eternal and developing spirit. He slept.

Until something in the night stirred. There was a smell of talcum powder and liniment, and the sheets parted, and someone huge and smooth and naked slipped next to Michael. Biceps and forearms as big and wholesome as loaves of brown bread enveloped him. 'Hello, Mikey,' his father said, his voice low and hot and close to his ear.

'Jesus Christ!' hissed Michael in panic, and threw off the bedclothes and spidered backwards, away from him.

Street lights shone through the curtains. Michael saw his father's big and handsome face, and the light reflected in his eyes. The eyes shone with yearning.

'You know what this is, now, Mikey.' It was a statement. 'You know what this means.'

'Sssh!' Michael was frightened to shock his mother. Yes, he knew what this was. He had reached down into the darkness, and pulled something back like a plum.

What he had really wanted, outside time. All this time.

'So what's different?' his father asked, rumbling deep as if out of the springs of the bed.

What will be different is that this time you will want me. His father looked young now, almost like a teenager. He and his father were now nearly the same age. Their hands were the same size. Louis's hand enveloped his, and coaxed him back towards him.

'No,' said Michael. 'She'll hear.' Mum is real and you are not.

Michael pointedly rolled over and turned his back. The bulk of his father shifted closer to him. It was the smell that was the most powerful; indescribable and immediate, his smell, the smell of his body, still vaguely like honey, the smell of this breath tainted from too much exercise, a bit sharp, even vinegary! The smell of American soap, different from English.

Those ripped muscles, when pressed all around him, were soft and smooth and gentle, as if a giant baby were holding Michael. Not a 40-year-old Marine sergeant who could kill automatically on demand.

'Merry Christmas,' Sergeant Blasco murmured.

And Michael let himself be held. Yes, Dad, this is what I wanted, yes Dad, this is what I dreamed of, night after night, morning after morning.

But you know something, Dad? Big and beautiful as you are? I'm not sixteen now, and though it might be easy to slip into this, I'm not going to do it. I'm thirty-eight and it's been too long, and this is my mother's house.

Michael resisted. But Michael let himself be held. He settled into sleep.

He had a dream which mingled his father with Santa. He was a child and under the white fake beard, his saw his father's eyes.

Then Michael had to get up to pee. He stood up and rammed the front of his foot into his bookshelf. How could he forget the bookshelf? It was where all his records were kept. Outside, beyond the slatted Venetian blind, there was still the warm murmuring of the surf. Michael walked on towards the door, and walked into a wall. The door was on the left not the right. He fumbled through it, advising himself to remember: the stairs are just in front of this door.

There were no stairs. And the bathroom, instead of straight ahead along the landing, was right, and then left again.

And Michael's eyes started wide open, and he stared and saw: this was not his mother's house in Sheffield. This was the condo in Oceanside.

Michael looked down at his legs. They were thicker, and ice-blue in the light. He stroked them. They were hairless.

Michael was sixteen and smooth. There was no hair on his chest, and his nipples were sore and swollen from too much sunlight. He looked down at his own chest with desire and stroked it. Himself at sixteen. The dream was always of being someone else in a different situation. In the end, at root, all the fantasies had been this fantasy.

Michael's dick started to creep downwards. This situation was that he was young, only almost a man, and that his father in the last days of his sexual power wanted him.

This was no dream.

Michael was awestruck. I've really done it now.

He'd wrenched and pulled bodies out of nothingness, and now the need had wrenched round everything else. It had wrenched the whole universe around him.

This was the right miracle, now. This was the miracle he had really needed.

He had become someone else – Michael at sixteen again, back home, home in California. Without any Viagra at all, his dick was twice the size it had ever been, and it was slammed straight up against his stomach, reaching all the way to his belly button.

Michael was wide, wide awake, as wide awake as he would be if he were walking barefoot across broken glass. He remembered the flower of his self, the flower of cobwebs and light and areas of dark. It would not be thwarted, that flower. If even he himself blocked it, it could wrench other realities into this one. If thwarted sufficiently, it could, evidently, pull him, instead, into another reality. Into this one.

Michael at 38 could resist, but not Michael at sixteen. He felt the old white carpet under his bare feet, and he felt the lining of his stomach seethe. And Michael started to weep as he walked, out of relief and fear and joy. He knew he would do it now. It was really, finally going to happen.

Michael went to his father and hoisted up his smooth, thick legs, and he looked into his father's eyes, eyes that in this reality wanted him.

His father's pubic hair was a tight little purse over his pressed genitals. Like so many men about to fucked, he was not erect. Michael touched him. His father's ass was smooth, the crease between the cheeks was smooth, and the pucker of his sphincter was neat and tidy and hairless. To Michael at least, it still smelled of honey. Michael needed neither KY nor spittle to ease the passage; he was luminous with lubrication. He entered his father and looked into his father's eyes, and his father nodded and closed them as if to dream.

Michael saw his own young crouched thighs thick with muscle, his own belly, and his dick gently shifting in and out, lapping like little waves on the shore of a lake. My body isn't ugly, Michael told his father in his mind. My sex is not ugly, it's a gift, it's a gift I wanted to give to you. You didn't have to treat it like something dirty, you could have said no, no gently; no I don't want this. You could have been calm and wise and said, no, you feel like that now because you don't know me, because we've been separated, because I am a man to you, and not your father. You could have continued to love me and care for me and hope I would find myself and someone my own age.

You didn't have to go and kill yourself slowly. You didn't have to try to kill me. You might even have let me do this once out of love, just once, so I could escape you.

Now we've gone and torn the real.

And I don't know if I can get back, and I don't even know if I want to.

Michael rocked back and forth, and felt as if he were moving through curtains. He saw his own body shift – when he blinked it had hair again. He was 38. He had accelerated from one reality to another. Then he flipped back: sixteen. He kept moving back and forth between the two, and that acceleration became part of the ride. We are fucking reality, Dad.

And that acceleration rose within himself, hurtling as if towards a brick wall. And there was a sudden, disintegrating crash, and part of him seemed to fragment and burst apart, scattering inside his father's body. He came in at least two different realities at once.

His father's eyes were round and brown, like a cartoon animal's. He looked trapped, cornered. Then the eyes crumpled into a smile. You really are the most beautiful man, Michael thought.

And Michael rolled away, and settled. This was still the room in California in some kind of 1970s. Michael was still sixteen. Cupped between his arms, his own smooth pectorals swelled. His fingers rippled over his own flat tummy and down his lean thighs. There was a kind of sparking in the nerve ends and suppleness in his joints. He could sense speed and reactivity there.

Michael held up the sheet and looked again at his own sixteen-year-old body. The thought of being in that body, and in this room, in this situation, made him rise again.

This time Michael turned and rolled over and presented. His father now was erect and reared over him, and settled on top of him, as heavy as the sky, as heavy as God, and the thought came: it could go on like this. I could stay here. I could start over again.

I could stay sixteen for ever.

'Oh, Michael,' his father breathed out, and shivered and went still.

They lolled in each other's presence as if they were warm waves. Michael had finally obtained his ends. He slept.

For a while. He woke up when the Oceanside train went past, at 2.30 am.

His mind was clear. He touched his chest, and it was covered with hair. He looked down and saw the slightly greying fur and his plumper stomach. His father still slept beside him, only two years older than he was. Latin, big-dicked, as handsome as Brendan Fraser, and Michael did not want him in the least.

But this was still Oceanside in 1976.

Michael was terrified. He threw off the sheet and stood up, and looked out the window. There over the wall was the vacant lot next to the train tracks. The lot was now a multi-screen cinema, and there was a new train station.

My God, what have I done?

Michael still had to pee. He turned and walked out of the room and there was a sensation as if he were parting shower curtains. Reality billowed and separated and closed shut behind him.

In the dark, he felt his way straight along the landing, next to the stairs.

Michael pulled open the bathroom door in Sheffield. His mother had a 1960s colour sense and the walls were lavender and the door lintel was mauve. And on the toilet, naked, sat himself at sixteen. He was wiping his butt and looked up. His face was thicker and more obstreperous. He looked, curiously, more like his mother.

'Close the door, willya. Get the fuck outa here.' The accent was pure American. He was beefier; the strength concentrated in his shoulders and arms. He can throw, Michael thought. He plays football.

'We need to talk,' said Michael, his arms thinner, hairier, his stomach softer.

'I'll be with you in a second.'

'You're straight, aren't you?' Michael demanded.

'What's it got to do with you, fruit fly?'

Another self, another fantasy.

Michael sat on the edge of the bathtub.

'What happened?'

'Whatja mean?'

'To us. You were straight, what happened to you?'

This other self flushed the toilet. 'I dunno.'

'Go back to that moment in Oceanside when he pulls the car over and starts to cry because he's so happy you want to live with him for a while. So you go and study in San Diego. You play on the football team and you get your degree. What happens after that?'

This other self circled gum round and round in his mouth and looked confrontational, but curiously, he had Henry's puppy-dog eyes. He was bronzed and had a terrible seventies haircut: compromised Beatle with sideburns. He looked Latin.

'I met this girl, you know, in school. So we got married. I got my degree in veterinarian medicine, we moved north to Ventura, where her folks are.' This was still in his future but he knew his future because he was timeless.

'What happened to Dad?'

'He lost his job at forty-eight, but with an NCO's payoff and stuff. I'll help him set up in a window repair business. There's a real call for that in Oceanside. All that salt air on those aluminium French windows. He'll show up looking cool, and all those divorced women, man. He'll get a lot of ass.' This Michael chuckled.

'He doesn't drink?'

'Well, that Latin blood. He knows he suffers for it in the morning, so he'll take it easy.' His head jerked backwards; his face was impassive. This was how a tough guy laughed. 'Man, you look so English.'

'I am so English.'

'You really gay?'

'Yup.'

'What's that like?'

'No different from being straight… except you lead a different life.'

'Did you, like, really make a pass at Dad?'

'Yes.'

'Jeesh. You're really sick.' He was amused. Michael thought he was going to say something like Gross-out City. Instead he said, 'Do you like me too?'

'Up to a point.'

The teenager's grin was steady. 'Jeez. What don't you like about me?'

Michael stirred. 'Your attitude. I know what's inside and I know what you're hiding. Remember, I never saw Dad when we were kids. So, whenever I did see him, he didn't feel like my father. When I did see him, he was my ideal man.'

There was a glimmer of understanding. The voice went softer. 'Mine too. He sees my kids a lot. He comes up that driveway and they go running out. "Grandpa Blasco! Grandpa Blasco." 'Cause he always brings them little presents and stuff, you know.'

Tell him I love him.'

Michael Blasco sighed. 'Where I am, you don't exist. And him and me, we don't have to tell each other that shit. We just know.'

'Cool,' said Michael, smiling.

'Cool,' agreed Michael the Angel. He looked around him at the walls and his face screwed up with distaste. 'Are all English bathrooms this colour?'

'Only Mum's.'

'I keep thinking I'll go and visit. I remember my English half too. Keep an eye open, you might even see me in London, England.'

They didn't really have much to say to each other. The other Michael narrowed his eyes. 'So. I guess I'll be on my way. It's been really… weird.'

'I'll go,' said Michael.

He stepped out of the bathroom. And looked down the corridor past both bedrooms to the sitting room. Somebody was watching the TV. He could hear sobbing music, and a breathy, posed woman's voice whisper a scripted lament. He padded down the corridor. The carpet and the walls were white.

In the Oceanside living room, another Michael was watching a movie at 3.00 am. He was crying, and hugging and chewing a pillow at the same time. He was practically bald, with long hair in wisps, and just above the ears, a line of black scabs.

Michael sat down on the sofa next to him, gently, fearful of disturbing or even breaking him. 'Hiya,' he said gently.

'Hiya,' this Michael replied, miserable, and with a quick jab wiped his face.

'Howya doin'?'

'Oh,' this one sighed. 'Not so chipper.' He had lost even more weight than our Michael had.

'Where have you spent the last twenty years?'

This Michael didn't want to talk. He wanted to watch his movie. It was Gene Tierney. Who, these days, was a Gene Tierney fan?

'Are you gay?'

Long pause. 'Uh-huh.' An American yes.

'Did you marry Dad?'

Longer pause. 'I divorced him.' With a shiver of irritation, curdled anger, this Michael suddenly roused himself and snapped off the television from the remote control. He turned and faced Michael, looking like death. 'So what exactly do you want to know?'

'What happened?'

'What the hell do you think happened?'

Michael's voice went soothing. 'I don't know.'

'How long do you think you can stay married to your father?'

'Oh. I'd say until about six months after you graduate. And then everyone starts to ask when's Michael moving into a place of his own? People start to say: has Michael got a girlfriend? People start to say: Louis, are you seeing anybody? They start asking each other: have you ever seen Louis with a woman? Are you sure that's his son?'

The other Michael was looking at the TV as if the film were still showing. 'That's about it. Plus.'

'It's that plus I can't imagine.'

'Plus it fucks you up. Fucks you both up. You start saying to yourself every time you fuck and every time you don't fuck: this is my father. There is a word for this. The word is incest. It's supposed to be wrong.' This Michael punches the pillow. 'And you start to look at guys your own age. And he starts to think, it would be a lot healthier if you split up, if he found someone else too. He says that to you. You cry, because it's true. And because, goddammit, you don't want anyone else. Who could ever compete with your Dad?'

Michael asked, 'Did he start to drink?'

The other Michael just nodded. He sighed raggedly. 'And how.'

'Lose his job?'

Just a quick nod, yes. 'He had to have dental work.' Whatever that meant. 'He got all fat. You'd find him in the hall in the morning, and he'd shat himself. He'd get drunk and yell things. One day I just got in the car and started driving.'

'Bad scene.'

This Michael chuckled and shuddered at once.

'But you got out.'

A kind of cough. 'Not really, no. No, I wouldn't say that.'

'How come?'

'Let your father fuck you for seven years and find out.'

Michael coughed. 'I never did. I tried. I never did.'

Michael the Angel said, 'You end up in LA, you hit the bars and declare open season on your ass.' He shrugged. 'It was the 1980s. I got sick.'

'Michael, love. Is there somebody there?' It was his mother, calling from the spare bedroom.

Michael's heart stopped. He looked about the room. This was California; she shouldn't be there.

The other Michael answered, shouting towards the bedrooms. 'It's OK, Mom. I'm just talking to myself.' He leaned towards Michael. Michael could see the shape of his skull. 'She came over to take care of me. She's a nice lady.'

'She is,' murmured Michael. 'Look. I don't want her to see me.'

The patient's eyes said: she'd love to see you. You're healthy.

'See you around,' said Michael.

'You hope not,' said the other Michael. He flicked the film back on. Gene Tierney sat in a casino that was in circles like a circus.

'What year is it?' Michael asked.

'1995. Early.'

Before the three-drug treatment. Michael felt sick. He walked unsteadily back to the California bedroom.

His father was in bed waiting for him, but there were strands of muscle down his neck, and his pectorals sagged like an old woman's dugs and were thicketed with snow-white hair. His face had collapsed.

'Everything all right, Mikey?' he asked in a phlegmy, quavering voice.

'Sure Dad.'

'I love you, baby.' His father's age-spotted hand clasped his. 'I thought you'd gone away.' The voice trailed off with relief from panic.

And it could have been this too, me at 38 and him… how old? Michael started counting and got up to 70 and stopped.

There was nowhere else to go. Michael lay down next to him. His father smelled now of dentures and catheters and the ending up of things.

Get out; go away, Michael told the apparition. Leave me alone, we never would have ended up here, it would have been terrible, sick, sad.

Michael looked back.

And in the bed, there was himself. Himself at 38 now as he was.

'Welcome home,' his self said, and held open his arms.

Michael could see that he was beautiful, and he could see his body was beautiful.

The Angel smiled shyly and rolled up and over and pulled open his cheeks, and the fur crinkled apart to show the oddly innocent-looking croissant of an orifice. Michael leaned forward to kiss this lower mouth. It was like having a foot massage – an unloved part of the body responded with delight to unexpected tenderness. Michael both gave the kiss and felt it.

Michael was surprised how feminine his body looked with its hips spread wide, and the back arched. This only made him love it more, so he stretched forward and kissed the back of his own neck, which he had never really been able to see before. It was the youngest part of his body. It looked sixteen years old, even now.

His unreliable cock was now buoyant as if floating in salt water. Michael pushed forward but against anal resistance, it missed and swept up the crease between the buttocks.

Michael felt his own penis between his cheeks, and he felt his Angel feeling himself feeling that. He seemed to stand between two mirrors and feel himself reflected off into infinity.

Michael pushed forward again, and felt himself sheathed and entered at the same time. There was an enfolding tenderness and warmth, and superimposed on it, a sudden cramp as the valve of the anus was forced to work in the wrong direction. 'Relax, relax,' both of them whispered. The pain subsided.

The Angel settled down flat on the bed with Michael inside him and suddenly there arrived that most exciting moment of all, when a man welcomes you so deeply that his anus opens wide. The Angel turned around and Michael saw his own face flushed and happy. I'm beautiful, Michael thought.

After a time, the Angel said, 'I want to see you come.' They bounced their way around, slightly awkwardly on the bed, and the Angel nestled his face on Michael's tummy. Michael stroked himself and felt the familiar rise, like a voice heading for its high note.

But he came before it reached high C. There was a jet of semen that shot up onto his shoulder. And then the pitch was reached, and he shot outwards again, this time in lashings like cream over his other face.

'Oh,' said his other self, who felt it too, who was surprised as well. 'Oh, that's spectacular.' Michael kept on flowing like a fountain. It poured down over his hand, an opalescent sheen, as if it were liquid ice. He seemed to be settling back, the walls of his penis accordioning shut in wrinkles, when it suddenly tossed its head like a lion to roar one final time, taking Michael by surprise, one final flinging of come up in an arch over his body.

And both of them laughed, as if in relief. His other self swam his hand through a pool of semen, spreading it luxuriously up and over Michael's belly. For some reason it was funny. For some reason Michael laughed and laughed.

The joke was this.

He was a sexual being. He always had been. He had always been an especially sexual being, with especial sexual power. And that was why, paradoxically, he had been impotent.

It just struck him as funny, that's all. Both of them lay chuckling for a while. And they did it again.

What do I do next?

The next morning, there was no doubt at all which of his many selves Michael wanted to be.

It was Christmas Day and the air was full of the sound of 'Joy to the World', of breakfast sizzling downstairs, and of his mother humming along. The stairwell walls were lavender, the carpet a kind of ribboned purple-grey and white, the stair banisters a glossy orange. Britain in the 1990s, with thick grey bacon and eggs that had been fried in so much fat your mum tipped the pan so it would bubble over the yolks and cook them from above. There were baked beans and fried bread.

There is destiny. Destiny is how you shape your potential. Like fantasy, it's a kind of self. Here Michael was healthy, gay, still good-looking, and single, in Sheffield, in England at the age of 38.

'That looks great, Mum.'

'Don't be daft.' Michael kissed her cheek. 'You haven't shaved,' she complained. 'You're not washed.'

'After, Mum, after.' He sang along with the carol in a false and booming voice.

His mum sniffed. 'Roll over Pavarotti and tell Demis Roussos the news.' She held up food on thick white plates. 'You sit there. Go on, these plates are hot.'

'May the Lord make us truly thankful,' Michael said, finishing Grace before he had begun it. He tucked in.

After breakfast, looking in the bathroom mirror, Michael was satisfied. Dammit, I am good-looking. I really am. I look my age, that's all. It was as his Mum had said: intelligent, hardworking, kind. But also, he had to admit, kinda chewy, kinda chunky. Michael, just believe it. You're sexy, OK?

He looked back at his own flushed, still olive face, with its stubble and expression of slightly dazed delight. You're in the best place. You're in the best me.

They opened their presents. Mum's was a hand-written note. This is a new PC and Internet connection, it promised. She gave him new shirts and tie clips. 'Every time I see you, your tie's blown back over your shoulder,' Mum said.

They sipped sherry and ate Christmas cake, and about noon her friends called, all ladies of her age, all interested enough in Michael. He felt chipper. 'My last project's finished more or less,' he told them. 'I'll think of something else to do.'

On Boxing Day they went to PC World and he got a deal so good he was jealous of his mum: laptop, printer, Microsoft Office and five other bits of software including an encyclopaedia for eight hundred pounds. He took AOL because of its supposedly simpler operation, found its browser didn't let you increase the typesize easily and spent the day with his mother who tutted and felt stupid because she didn't get it. It was late at night when finally she sent an e-mail to his home address. 'And how do I send you an answer again? And how do I find it when I want it?'

He left the next day, a simple hug and a kiss.

She said, patting his shoulder, 'If you do move again, you know, change countries or the like, try to remember to let me know.'

'I will Mum, I promise.'

And not long afterwards, Michael found himself settled in on the train. The weather was changeable, turning between sun and rain. Outside the windows, the sky seemed lower and the world got smaller, lost in drizzle. It was a grey and indistinct world. Maybe that's why he felt fear and misgiving close in over him. He thought of the dirty Camden flat awaiting him, cold and dark. He thought of his project.

What, really, do I do next? The thought of going back to teaching filled him with dismay. It's just daily life, Michael; it's like that for everybody. He would finish revising the article, and it would end like this: chicks don't make new pathways to see and interpret light. They are born with them.

And what did that mean?

Michael remembered the flower. It was moving and unmoving at the same time, like a bridge half built while its CADCAM model was whole and alive. That was him, that beautiful powerful thing. That was us all. Where was it?

It would be where there was no time. And where would that be?

Mathematics said there were eleven dimensions in all. Four of them existed only in time. The three dimensions of space were created by the big bang. They were expanding outwards. That expansion was simply time, flowing in one direction only: towards the future.

But.

That would mean there were seven dimensions outside time. They would be just as small as they were before the big bang. They would be a point. No height, width or depth. They would be like the smallest dot made by the sharpest pencil. But that dot would be everywhere. It would be at the core of everything around you. It would be in the core of you. You live there, but don't know it. Everything in your life flows in one direction only, into it.

A word came to him: neurophysics. The extension of the self into the universe.

He knew something was there. He had once stood in its presence or rather, had not stood. He had thought there, like someone hovering on the outside of a black hole, just escaping before being sucked into its powerful maw.

How would you research something like that? Was anyone else doing any work in it? Michael began to get restive. His hands, still in gloves, moved to assuage a sudden urge for movement in his gut. He wanted to get up and find out. He wanted a library, a bibliography, and a database to search.

How would anyone research something like that? Well, how do they do black holes? They do thought experiments, they work through the logic of the mathematical descriptions, and they model the maths on something else. It's mathematical metaphor, really. Like Einstein, proving atoms exist in a paper on molecules in tea. He just used the same maths that would describe ping-pong balls.

I said it was like standing on the edge of a black hole.

Heaven collapses into a point, where gravity can no longer work, because there is no space, and time cannot work because there is no expansion. Our eternal lives happen in something like a black hole. Mind you, only like a black hole.

Why not use the same mathematics to describe it and see what happens?

Michael went even more physically restive. He did a little jump in place. Does neurophysics exist? Did I just make that up, or did I read it somewhere? And if I did make it up, I could really be on to something, I mean I could, I could do that, I could take all that mathematical work, and just see what happens. And I wouldn't have to cut up any chickens to do it. I could just go ahead and do it, and if I was wrong, then that's great too, a negative result is still a result, we've still learned something.

Suddenly the train was too small and too slow. All he had to read was a John Grisham novel, and he wanted to throw it out of the train, or chuck it into the steam furnace like the boat in Around the World in Eighty Days. They burned everything on it for fuel. Get me home, get me to my computer, now!

And don't tell me it's not empirical. I've been there, buddy, I died to get there, and I saw it, and I'll know it when I see it again, described in numbers.

Michael settled back in his chair and slapped his own thigh. Outside, light rain was falling, like stars on grey farm outbuildings with tin roofs, pulled down by gravity, gravity which he had read in one paper could be described mathematically in the fifth dimension as electricity. The rain fell and dried and was exhaled as vapour. As a child he thought that was how the earth breathed. He loved the idea, the vapour going up like his own breath on a cold day, and turning into mountains of steam in the sky. The perfection of the system. It was perfect, the world was perfect, life was perfect, this rain and those farm buildings, ancient but with new roofs, were perfect.

Gravity twists reality out of nothingness, what physics calls quantum vacuum.

Is that what made his Angels?

If so, his mind, reaching into eternity, can twist his dead father back into being. What does it mean that he can twist those different selves so far that he can slip into another life? It means there are parallel universes. Universes you can stub your toe on and have a black toenail the next day. And parallel selves, with parallel flesh you can touch?

So gravity is thought? How can a black hole make anything?

And Michael jumped up yet again.

Well, because we know that matter going into black holes is ultimately ejected again as new creation, white holes.

So, I can take those equations too, for white holes, and see if they tell me how my real self can make Angels.

I can account for this, I know I can. I can account for the rain. I can account for the yearning between stars. Somewhere there in all that process is yearning between people as well.

Michael took a taxi from the station, an extravagance to slice through the rain, to get home. He ran up his stairs unwinding his scarf, and threw it and his coat onto the sofa, and took down his Stephen Hawking and his Daniel Dennett. He did a search on Amazon and ordered books. He began to think about how he could organize his days, teaching, marking papers, researching at night, like Einstein in the Patent Office. He would be invisible, unknown, effective. He felt fulfilled, abundant, forgiving. He had an answer to the question: What do I do next?

Michael made himself a cup of soup. Sipping it, he looked at his Picassos, which seemed to rise up in colours like a flock of parrots. The rain had stopped, and sunlight pierced the layers of skyscrapers to glow on his wall. And Michael felt a sudden sense of joy.

It could be of course that the miracle had been sent to teach him about the universe. It could be that it had come to help him understand God, or duplicate God's experience of creation. But it seemed to him now that the miracle had simply come so he could finally learn to enjoy himself. That was what fun was: liking your destiny.

Over the next three days, Michael called back Mustapha the Afghani engineer and they made the love they should have made the first time. He remembered Rabindrath, who permed his hair and who worked in college administration. At one time Michael had been so drawn to him that he would deliberately walk into Rabindrath to feel the warmth of his body and the wiriness of his arms through his cotton shirt.

Michael remembered Stavros the Greek who delivered the post and lifted weights. In mid-winter he wore black T-shirts to show off his musculature. But it was his sweet, slightly dreamy smile that Michael had liked so much.

In fact Michael, who had once found difficulty thinking of someone he fancied, was suddenly shocked by how many beautiful people there were in the world. There were his students, whom university protocols said he must not touch. They rained down onto his bed, sweet and young and at their best, no longer calculating grades or hoping to avoid paying fees until they were sure of an A. In the magic space of the miracle, he and students became what they were in fact: equals. His beautiful body did its work and Michael did not even allow himself the thought: I'm cured. Everything had become light and easy and floating, as if they all had the bones of birds.

There was the boy behind the till at Tesco, whom Michael had once found almost unbearably beautiful. His beauty was not unbearable now because of that equality. Michael was up to it. The boy from Tesco liked being tickled and roared with delighted laughter on Michael's bed. He recombed Michael's hair with gel into a kind of cross between James Dean and Christian Bale. Michael combed it again to save it after the boy had gone, and realized he would comb it that way from now on.

Other kinds of fear disappeared. There was the braindamaged boy Michael had met at a dinner party years before. His name was Robin. Robin had reached out to Michael and tried to take his hand and fumbled with it. 'I can't say things,' he said. 'I want to touch you.' Robin had offered up his hands that were helpless to hold. His slurry voice and his numb sideways lips had put off the younger Michael. Michael welcomed him now and was rewarded. In bed Robin was ruined, muscular, twisted, lithe.

Michael wanted to photograph them but knew that was futile. He wanted to sketch them but he couldn't draw.

Then Michael called up an actor who had once stayed in the same house during the Edinburgh Festival. They had gone to bed with each other, and it hadn't worked, and Michael had moped for weeks. Michael had him back now. His name was Stephen, and he began a dance around Michael's bed. It was an odd, looping thing he had learned in some other country, somewhere like Bulgaria. After Stephen was gone, Michael found he could imitate it. He could make his belly and heavy feet move like Stephen's.

Michael found he could recreate Stavros's dim smile and loping stride. He found he could light a cigarette one-handed like Nick. He could make his face and hands move like his brain-damaged lover. Among all his strengths, Michael's greatest talent would be of use only to him: he could remember people in his body. He would remember all of them.

A Christmas card came late from Philip. It was a photograph of one of his paintings, pasted on a white card.

It was a portrait of Henry and was resolutely free from technical innovation. It was just Henry, with hair in his eyes, looking sweet. His gaze was directly back at the viewer, appraising.

On the back was a note in Philip's newly elegant handwriting.

And so I relax and become a traditionalist. It's more fun just getting on with the painting. Isn't Henry beautiful? We have decided to go our separate ways. We're still friends though.

Would you come to a party? We're having one New Year's Eve, just a few friends. We were wondering if you wouldn't like to come early, say about 5.30 pm.

We need to have a chat, and there's someone we'd like you to meet.

Love,

Philip

The note produced a tumult of feelings. First was dismay; poor Philip, it couldn't have been an easy note to write. What on earth did they want to say to him? Whom did they want him to meet? It sounded a bit formal, even a bit intimidating.

Second was mystification. What did Philip know? Did he know Henry was an Angel? Was that why they were breaking up? And if so, what did Philip feel about it? Did he blame Michael?

And if they were breaking up? Well. Would Henry live with him? Michael wouldn't mind living with an Angel, he'd done that before. He could see himself so clearly living with Henry. Living here, with the Picassos and the unvarnished floors. Henry would like Camden Town; he'd like the market and its bookstores and its funky restaurants. But Michael wouldn't make the same mistakes. If Henry wanted to live in the country, then Michael would move. He would make sure this time that they both felt that the house was their home.

Hold on Michael, what if they're splitting up because Henry got tired of Philip? It wouldn't be surprising. Supposing Angel Henry had fallen in love with someone else? Michael's heart sank. In fact, that's the most likely scenario: Henry's younger, he's better-looking, and he isn't screwed up.

And what if Philip wanted to move back in with him? Michael felt embarrassment and dismay. Would he say, no, I'm waiting for Henry? What if Henry showed no signs of interest? Would Michael really turn down companionship, amity, kindness?

What if the end of the story was that he and Phil got back together? Would that be so awful?

In fact, Michael, you can calm down. Either way you win. You can't lose. There is nothing to worry about.

Even so, Michael went out and bought a new shirt. It was black, and he bought a fleece to go with it. He had a haircut. The Christian Bale hairdo made him look ten years younger. No, it didn't, it just made him look less like a hippy. It made Michael look like himself.

He sat around the house for a full hour before it was time to catch the train. He checked out his hair, his new clothes. Oh for God's sake, Michael, they're not going to love you because you're wearing new clothes. You can't go there in a tizz. You'll say something daft. You have no idea what's going to happen today. Just calm down!

So he took the Northern Line down to the Central and from the Central to Docklands Light Railway at Bank. It was a long ride, on a sunny afternoon. He looked at London, gnawing on his thumbnail.

The old East End had been shouldered to one side by glossy new buildings that looked like Christmas presents wrapped up in green metallic paper. The crumbling hovels of the poor were now refurbished and had BMWs outside. Sparse art deco factories had been done up as flats and had flags and signs outside. They still looked like art deco factories.

Suddenly the train plunged into Canary Wharf. The train was all glass like eyes stretched wide open in wonder. It sighed to a halt surrounded by marble, dappled with the beautiful soft white light that comes when sunshine is filtered by a high glass roof. The doors opened, and there was a sound of a waterfall somewhere, and whispering music. The car sighed away and Michael saw to the right the new imperial buildings, huge with carvings and frontages of polished marble. There were fountains in squares with stone esplanades. There were no people.

My God, it was bleak. Michael tried to imagine living here. It would be like living in a new suburb of Topeka. The only thing you could do was go to the mall. The train hoisted up its skirts to stretch across dockland waterways. There were boats in quays. There were stranded new hotels with smoked glass and empty patios overlooking the river. The umbrellas over the white garden furniture waved in place of people.

Finally the train stopped at South Quay, and Michael got out.

The whole place smelled of drains. To be more specific, it smelled of sewage. Plainly all that new plumbing leaked. The pavements and the brickwork were new and gritty. Forgotten building timbers were piled in the parking lots beside the new buildings with TO LET signs in the windows. There was a newsagent, with an apartment over it. It was open, offering toffees and the National Lottery. Next to it was, of course, an estate agent. London property prices were booming, but not, apparently, here. There were plenty of studios for rent or pied-a-terres for eighty thousand pounds. Would suit company needing to provide accommodation to visiting executives.

The air was clear and freezing, as if the day were made of ice. The distances between buildings were Californian in scope. The roads didn't work like English roads; they melted away into huge parking lots, or twisted and turned around the canals like a dog trying to find a home in all this emptiness. Michael got lost, consulted his map and finally found an ochre-coloured brick building beside yet another canal. The doors and windows were new and half-sized.

He rang the buzzer, and stomped his feet because he was so cold.

'Is that Michael?' said a voice. Michael couldn't tell if it were Henry or Philip. 'Come on up. Top floor.'

The staircase boomed with the sound of Michael's feet. The plain white pine stairs shook as he trudged up them. There were scratches from furniture on the new brick walls. This was not a staircase for moving pianos.

'Come all the way up,' called a smooth dark voice from on high. At the top of the stairs one of them waited, standing in the doorway against the light. Michael thought at first it was Henry. No, no, there were acne scars on the cheeks: Philip. They did look just the slightest bit alike.

Philip exclaimed, 'Michael! Hello, how are you, how have you been?'

Every word was weighted because every word was meant. Michael was surprised by the surge of emotion he felt. The lower edge of his eyes seemed to shiver. It really was very good to see the old friendly face.

'I've been OK. How are you?' Michael meant, since the break-up.

Philip understood: 'It's OK. Really.' Philip kept his smile steady and kind. He had been lounging against the doorpost. He stepped back and Michael saw their apartment and Henry all at once.

Henry was standing in anticipation against a huge single window that looked out over the canal and a range of new buildings. Henry waited calmly in old jeans and an old sweater. 'Hello, Michael. It's good to see you.'

'It's good to see you both,' said Michael, and his look took them both in. He was relieved. This was going to work. This was in fact going to be delicious. He liked being with them both.

The apartment was a good place to be if you were poor and had to be stranded out in South Quay. Sunlight blazed through the huge single window so the flat was deliciously warm, even though the ceiling was rounded and high. At night it would be cold. The floors were echoey pine and the furniture was direct from IKEA: self-assembled blonde wood. The sofa was really a futon on stilts. There was a cheerfully coloured foldaway metal table. Around it were the six walnut chairs from Michael's old flat. They looked stodgy and out of place. The kitchen was tucked away in an alcove that was inserted beside the stairwell. Beside it was a doorway that led into the shower-toilet. In one corner were stacked in rows all of Philip's paintings.

'I want to see some of those later,' said Michael.

'Try and stop me. I want you to see them,' said Philip, sauntering into the kitchen. 'Darjeeling, rose hip, or camomile?'

'Um. Rose hip, I think. Vitamin C to make up for all that booze.'

Henry spoke, his soft voice echoing oddly off the hangar-shaped roof. 'The new work is really very good. You'll be proud of him.'

Michael felt a surge of longing towards both of them. This was a kind and calm household, and though Michael wanted both of them, he also felt sad. What could bring this beautiful way of life to a halt?

Philip was dropping the tea bags into the cups as if it were a game. He's different, Michael thought. He moves differently. He used to shake and shiver all the time, and look angry, and dart about the place. As if sensing his thought, Philip said, 'Henry's taught me a lot.' And he looked at Henry with real affection. He looked back at Michael. 'Thank you,' he said. To Michael.

Michael pretended not to understand.

Philip was still looking at him. 'It was a very kind thing to do.'

'Whuh what was?'

Philip's eyes rolled slightly towards the ceiling. 'You know very well what.'

Henry stepped forward. 'He knows, Michael. I told him. I told him a long time ago. I have to keep telling him or he forgets. But that's good too.' He turned to look at Philip's face. 'It means we keep talking.'

Suddenly Michael felt awkward. 'I… it wasn't something I knew I was doing.'

Henry's voice was quiet. 'He knows that too.'

Philip stood in the sunlight, and his voice was as still as Henry's. 'It really is all right, Michael. Sit down.' He passed Michael his tea. 'Would you like some Christmas cake with that?'

Michael said yes, though his appetite had gone. He lowered himself rather shakily down onto the sofa. 'Is it why you broke up?'

Philip was slicing cake. 'Well, it's hardly a permanent solution, is it? But no, that's not the reason. Here you go.'

On the white rippled plate that Michael knew so well was the same old Christmas cake that Philip always cooked. Only now they didn't live with each other and had only the mildest, most friendly connection with each other. This felt like another reality as well.

Philip sat next to Henry, and the two of them hunkered down together on the futon sofa. 'Philip's found someone,' said Henry, smiling. He nearly pulled it off. He nearly did look entirely pleased, almost without a trace of wistfulness. He looked back towards Philip and his face seemed to open up like a rose. It was a look like a mother gives when she knows she has to let go. He's done it because he knows he won't be here for ever. 'Tell him about Lee,' said Henry.

'Well, you'll meet him later.' Philip was shy.

'Lee's lovely,' said Henry, regaining all his poise.

I'm not going to have either one of them, Michael realized. It was his turn for good behaviour. 'Tell me about him,' Michael asked.

A little smile of delight played around the corner of Philip's mouth. 'Well. Lee's from China. Communist China. Near Shanghai. He's over here to study computing. And he's… very handsome.'

'Very handsome indeed,' said Henry.

'And he says that after his course is over that it would be possible for me to live in China. And… I've said yes.' Philip chuckled at his own unexpected courage.

'I'll miss you,' said Michael.

Philip looked cheerful. 'Well, I won't be going for a few years yet.'

Henry was full of love for him, real love, the love that works to lose the thing it most wants. 'Phil's doing very well learning Chinese.'

'I figured it might take a while, so I might as well start now.'

Michael occupied himself pressing bits of Philip's cake together in order to eat it. Philip's Christmas cake was always too crumbly. Well, Michael, it never turns out the way you expect. You'd better start adjusting now. There's nothing else to do.

'Can I see the paintings now?' Michael asked.

They were very good portraits, done in a slightly impressionistic style. The paint was liberally applied, a little bit as if someone were making mud pies. They told you things about the people. There were several pictures of Henry. Then one dreamlike painting, all sunlight in this flat with a slim broad-shouldered man looking away. 'That's Lee,' said Philip.

The sun was lower. The light was golden, on the paintings, on the faces.

You can't go back, Michael. Like Time, love flows in one direction only. You'll stay friends with Philip. You'll write e-mails. You might even visit him in China. And Henry?

Suddenly, there was the painting of Henry, the one on the card.

'What… what will happen when Henry goes?' Philip asked.

'I wonder that too,' said Michael. 'You'll have the painting. I don't know if you'll remember who it was. But,' he sighed, 'you won't feel any regret or loss. You won't be in the same reality. That's all.'

'Make up a nice story for me,' said Philip. 'How I came to paint this. About who he was. What he was like.' He looked back up at Michael, and his eyes had something of iron in them.

The other friends started to arrive about seven o'clock. The thought of them had caused Michael trepidation too, but these were different friends. There was no Jimmy Banter, no Guardian film critics, and no arts journalists.

One was a somewhat too precise, but sweetly quiet mathematician. Another was a small middle-aged guy with an earring, bald, with a calm kind manner and an East London accent. He was called Declan. He repaired cars in Limehouse. He apologized because Lorraine couldn't make it. Lorraine worked in computing. She was his girlfriend.

'Declan travels,' said Henry. It was true. Declan had no money but seemed to have spent his life going to Peru or the Andaman Isles.

Nice people.

The world is full of nice people.

Philip's new boyfriend arrived. Lee was tall and muscular and was as handsome as promised. Michael couldn't stop himself looking back at Philip: my God, Philip, you have done yourself proud.

Henry and Philip brought in the satay and sweet potatoes. People ate on their laps from paper plates, and drank tiny amounts of wine. It was a well-behaved gay conversation: everyone was involved, there was no splitting off into anxious, moody tete-a-tetes. People talked in turn, lightly, pleasantly, and they listened in turn. Henry told a story about barracking a cat-breeding farm through a megaphone only to discover it was a nudist colony instead. Michael told the story about the time that he and Philip were both locked out of the flat. He didn't realize until halfway through that the story embodied the simple fact of their long marriage together. Lee laughed.

At one point, mysteriously, Henry said to Philip, 'He's not coming.'

At midnight, the fireworks went off over the river. The seven friends, a modest number, clustered around the one west-facing window. Synchronized flowers of light bloomed and sparkled, reflecting on the canal. To Michael they seemed to come erupting out the imagination, from the potential of the people who had designed them. He imagined them in their timeless aspect, forever a blurring of sequinned light, moving and still at the same moment. The fireworks looked like the self.

Someone, completely naturally, placed a hand on his shoulder and left it there. It was padded and hot. Michael turned around and it was Lee.

They toasted the New Year. They toasted absent friends: the mathematician had lost his partner two years before.

Michael liked them all. He hadn't known one of them, but before the end of the evening, he passed around his card, and got three in return, including Lee's. About one in the morning, the first guest stood up to go. Michael remembered the tubes, and was thinking about leaving as well, when the doorbell rang.

Philip and Henry each cocked an eyebrow. A voice barked up the answer phone. It sounded sinewy and smooth and reassuring. Philip looked back at Henry, his eyes wide and gleaming, and Philip nodded quickly, yes. He waited at the top of the stairs. 'Hello, hello!' he said.

'Sorry, but I had my sister's party to go to,' said a breathless voice, and Philip seized a hand and pulled in Henry.

Only this was Henry with slightly longer hair, wearing a brown sweater with a hole in it.

This is him,' said Philip. 'Michael. Meet the real Henry. This is Stumpy.'

Stumpy perked up. 'So. You're the magic man,' he said. His cheeks were redder than Henry's and the mushroom smell was stronger.

'Ah. Ah, yes.' Michael looked back at Henry, and all three of them – Henry, Philip and Stumpy – laughed.

'I told you once that Stumpy would love to know about this,' said Henry.

And Henry and Stumpy gazed at each other, grinning and slightly dazzled. Stumpy wobbled slightly in place and Henry had to catch him, and they were brotherly in each other's arms. And Philip cuddled Stumpy too, partly to keep him standing.

'I had a bit too much at my sister's,' Stumpy said, chuckling.

'He's staying with his sister. She lives in Camden Town too.'

'It's a long trip from Camden Town,' said Stumpy.

Michael asked, 'How did you get together?'

'Henry wrote me a note and said he was my long-lost twin, and sent me a photo of one of Philip's paintings of him.' Stumpy mimed amazement. 'So we met, and he told me all about you. How does it work?'

Michael heard himself say, 'The universe is twisted out of nothing by gravity. And I think I will be able to prove that thought and gravity are the same thing.'

'Wow!' Stumpy's eyes widened and he laughed with a kind of pleasure, while shaking his head. Michael realized he hadn't told Henry anything about his new research. He wanted Henry, particularly, to understand. 'I've got a new project. I think I can describe what has happened using equations.' Henry reached forward and gave Michael a kind of hug that turned into a shake of approbation. Michael looked at Stumpy and found he was embarrassed. 'I mean, I think I can do it. I don't know yet. I've still got to do the work.'

'It sounds fairly mind-blowing,' said Henry.

'I wish my head was a bit clearer,' said Stumpy.

'We've got other guests,' said Henry pointedly to Philip. When Philip didn't move, Henry pulled him away.

And for some reason Michael regained his old clarity. He had forgotten his talent for turning science into words. Michael sat with Stumpy on the futon sofa. He explained how he would apply the equations used to describe black and white holes. He explained that in the fifth dimension the equations that describe electricity also describe gravity. 'And thought is a matter of changing electrical charges.'

'Oh!' said Stumpy, and fell forward holding his head. He sat back up. 'If you did that, you might end up proving that God exists.'

'I might end up proving that He doesn't,' chuckled Michael.

Stumpy was younger than Henry. His smile was brighter, his enthusiasms more overbearing, his words more common and less distinct. Michael looked at Henry and pondered what that meant.

You're wiser than your original model, Henry. Of course, you're timeless. You are as wise as you will ever become. And does that mean you know what will happen? Or, rather what is likely to happen?

Michael looked back at this bright and cheerful, confident 24-year-old. It was like looking at old photographs of friends. You would need me more, Michael thought. I could even help you grow into becoming Henry.

It was nearly two o'clock. 'Well, I've really got to go,' Michael said. He kissed them all on the cheek, and hugged Henry and Phil together in a heap. 'Thank you, thank you, thank you!' he said. Stumpy looked a little wistful as he shook Michael's hand.

And suddenly Michael was back out in the night. Luck was with him: the evening seemed somehow warmer than the day and he did not have a long wait for the train. He heard it whining towards him, even as he climbed the station staircase.

The train doors whooshed open to show a car that was nearly empty. Past Canary Wharf, it began to fill with people. A gang of Indian lads in fleece jackets and trainers got on at West India Quay. They all had helium-filled balloons. The balloons were metallic, in the shape of dolphins. At the next stop, a merry black girl bounced in as lightly as the balloons, turning and laughing with her elegantly groomed friends. At Westferry two groups arrived, ebullient new City lads in modern fabrics who sang Abba songs against a competing group of what looked like nurses.

Michael was one of the oldest people there. He watched secure and detached from his early found seat, and settled into a kind of contented concentration.

He seemed to go on settling deeper and deeper. The settling almost made a sound. It would have been a sound like rain.

What were falling were impressions. The black girl had done her hair in perfect rows. The Aids-awareness ribbon on her coat was in fact an enamelled broach. Michael pondered the generosity that impelled her to take up permanently a cause that many people would think was someone else's. The Indian boys began shyly to offer people their balloons. They gave one to Michael.

Michael thought of his chicks. 'We ought to let them all go free,' he said to one of the lads.

'That'd be great. People'd look up and see all these dolphins up in the sky. They'd go like, oh wow, the sky is full of dolphins.'

It seemed to Michael that it was an inspired thing to say. 'I wouldn't let this one go if you don't want me to.'

'Do what you want, man. It's a party.'

Everyone, Michael included, got off at Bank to change onto the Central Line tube. There was a long, long wait for the train. A raucous bevy of young women stood near Michael. They were plump, pale and nearly nude, all in the common fashion of tight trousers, peel-off tops with little straps and shortish hair parted in the middle. They showed off pastures of perfect white shoulders, a sacrifice in winter. They had all written on pieces of paper, which they had taped to themselves. 'Innocent,' said one, 'till proven guilty!' Another said, 'Free to Good Home.' They were all more than a bit pissed and had done something extremely daring in either a pub or a party and couldn't stop talking about it.

When the train came, the girls all ran, though they didn't need to, the thick heels of their shoes clopping like horses' hooves. They swept themselves and Michael into the carriage on a gust of giggles.

Michael sat down and let everything rain around him.

A fat businessman with bags under his eyes like croissants was gently going to sleep on the shoulder of a young man with slicked-up hair. The young man gently tapped him.

A girl was standing fast asleep against her boyfriend as if slow-dancing. She was thin and pale, almost translucent, with a slight contented smile. It was the smile she would wear lying next to him in their own bed.

And the settling seemed to stop, and Michael came to rest finally on the floor of the ocean, where it was deep and cool and calm and silent.

He loved them all. It had nothing to do with lust, or feeling safely superior, or being merely drunk. He was clear-headed, more clear-headed than he had been in a long time. He saw the girls wanted fun and friends and to be noticed and not to be dull before their time. Michael wished they would always be friends, and always go out, and never go sour from bitterness. He yearned for the sleeping man finally to find family or friends. The young man with the slicked hair had decided to let him go on sleeping, and that it did him no harm to leave him be. Michael wished that people would give the lad the same leeway, and that he would lose his slightly tense, pinched air.

In the quiet, in the peace, it seemed to him that he knew their stories and could guess how far they could go, and loved them like a father loves: from a distance, with best wishes.

It was promiscuous this love, it went beyond lust and romance and making families. Michael moved beyond biology.

The train pulled into the next station and Michael saw its notice slip past like someone trying to sidle unnoticed into the bathroom. He sat and waited for a while as the engine whirred, and he saw the sign partially obscured by the window frame: '… ourt Road'.

Jesus Christ, it's Tottenham Court Road! His stop. Just before the doors closed, Michael jumped off. It's 2.30 in the morning, Michael, you can't go missing your stop. He was tired and strolled towards the Northern Line. The balloon bobbed along after him, still tugging at his hand.

Just beyond the arch to the northbound platform, he heard doors rumbling shut. Oh shit, he'd just missed the train. He jumped forward in time to see the grey and red train sigh away, moaning gently.

The platform was empty.

And there was a rush of wind as if another train were coming, and someone stepped out of the moving air. Michael's body knew the green gym uniform before his mind did. He jumped with recognition.

'Hello there,' said a familiar voice. 'You've stopped coming in for your workout.' It was the Cherub.

'No time, I'm afraid.'

'You've managed to lose some weight though. It suits you.'

'Thank you.'

The Cherub stirred, looking chagrined, and glanced about him. 'I'll try to keep my clothes on this time, shall I?'

It was good to see him. 'So, how is Tony?'

'Tony's fine,' said the Angel. 'Him and the girlfriend are going to move up North. She wants to open a restaurant. You might like to pop in and say goodbye to him. Since, you know, you liked him so much.'

'Thank you. Maybe I will.'

The Angel chuckled. 'Maybe you won't.'

Michael ventured, 'And how are you?'

The Angel looked pained. 'Me. I'm a bit different.'

Michael nodded. 'You become different.'

The Angel had a pleading look.

Michael felt love. 'Just ask me,' he whispered.

'I don't want my life to be just working in a restaurant, showing people to tables.'

Michael asked, 'Does that mean Tony doesn't want it either?'

The Angel shook his head. 'No! No way, he loves Jacqui, he wants a family. So, he makes sacrifices. But that doesn't mean that part of him… me, I guess… part of him wants adventure. He wants to go places, see things. And… and I thought I could go there for him. And he could see it, in his dreams, like when we made love, he saw that in his dreams.'

'He saw it for real.'

'Right. He saw it for real.' The Angel had passionate eyes. Need.

'Where,' Michael asked. 'Where do you want to go?' I can do this, Michael realized. My God, what a thing to be able to do.

The Angel's face was set. 'I want to go to Tibet. I want him to see one of those big monasteries. He wants to see Tibet, and, well, I know he never will. I can see all the way to the end you see.'

'Tibet…' agreed Michael. Lust pulls you out, pulls you into becoming someone else.

'Can I go now?' the Angel asked, glancing at his watch.

'Yes, now,' promised Michael. 'All you have to do is leave the platform, and when you turn left at the Way Out sign, you'll be in Tibet.'

'Brill!' said the Angel, and shook his hand. 'You're a star, mate. Thanks. Thanks a lot.'

'Say hello to Tony for me.'

'Sure,' the Angel promised. 'I'll make sure he sees it.' The Cherub looked anxiously at his watch and he turned, and broke into a half run. Michael watched his broad back retreat down the platform. The Cherub stopped and waved just outside the exit.

'Do you know why I called you up?' Michael shouted to him.

The Cherub nodded. 'Because you know it's not going to last much longer,' he called.

'Thanks,' said Michael, to the Cherub, to the miracle itself. Michael held a little hand up, a gentle sigh of a wave. He still held the dolphin balloon and it dipped in farewell.

The Cherub turned left and was gone.

Someone tapped Michael on the shoulder. He turned, and there was Henry, red-faced and panting. 'Gotcha,' Henry said, grinning.

Michael was expecting to see an Angel. This Henry's hair dangled differently and he wore a brown sweater with a hole in it. But there was no doubt in Michael's mind that he had called this one up too.

'You're Stumpy,' said Michael, and he found he was grinning.

'As much as anyone is,' replied the Angel. His cheeks glowed silver and sweaty, as if he had run to catch up with Michael. They both grinned and their grins latched as though their braces had locked.

'My God, you're pretty,' said Michael. He couldn't help himself. He took the Angel's hand and to his delight it squeezed back, and the Angel's cheeks glowed even brighter. Michael was a bit pissed and that allowed him to feel his own delight. He glanced up the platform. What the heck. There was no one there, and anyway, it was New Year's Eve. Without any doubt that the Angel would want him, Michael pulled Stumpy to him and kissed him. The Angel shuddered in surprise, and then his mouth worked.

Stumpy was delicious. He tasted of cinnamon. He tasted of celebration. Michael was slightly stunned. He had never kissed someone and felt taste as communication. He pulled back, and looked into Stumpy's beautiful nut-brown eyes.

'I'm embarrassed,' said Stumpy.

'I'm not,' said Michael.

'I didn't say I didn't like it.'

'I'm enraptured,' said Michael, and it was true. He laughed and pulled back and bounced the dolphin balloon up and down in his grasp.

There was answering laughter. Two men settled next to them on the platform and it took a moment for Michael to realize who they were. The Chinese Thai who had danced and grown up to run a plant nursery cradled Mustafa the Afghan. Michael laughed.

'These are Angels,' he announced to Stumpy. 'These are two more of my dear, dear Angels.' And he pulled them to him, and quickly kissed them both.

Stumpy's eyes widened. 'These are them. These are more of them?' He reached out to touch them, and the Thai seized his hand. 'Happy New Year!' the Thai said, syllable by memorized syllable, and dipped his head.

'It's love isn't it?' said Stumpy.

The train arrived but the Thai and the Afghan did not get on it. They waved as if at the departure of a ship, as if saying goodbye. The train pulled away, and they were dragged slowly past the window, and Michael's eyes were suddenly stung as if pricked by bees, and he could not think why.

'I think we must have caught the last train,' he said.

Stumpy smiled up at him. 'This is going to be a very nice New Year's.' He had to shout over the noise of the train. 'A miraculous New Year's.' His eyes were unbelieving and admiring and wondering.

They got off at Camden Town. At the foot of the escalator, the Angel enfolded himself under Michael's arm. The escalator lifted them up towards heaven like the machinery of an eighteenth-century opera.

Outside in the bracing air, the dolphin balloon grinned wide-eyed like a welcoming baby. Michael asked his Angel, who still stayed bleary within his arm, 'Shall we let him go?'

'Aw. Why?' protested Stumpy.

'Because if we let him go, we'll see him swim among the stars,' said Michael.

Stumpy smiled. 'Yes,' he said. 'Balloon liberation. Free all balloons now!'

Michael let the dolphin go. It bobbed for a moment, its eyes still on them as if reluctant, and then it turned away and began to rise.

A drunken man stopped beside them. He was a vicar in a dog collar. 'What a beautiful thing!' he fluted. They all watched together. The dolphin was silver and white and held the reflected light as if it carried candles. 'Fancy a swig?' the vicar asked, and held out a small hip flask of whisky. Both Stumpy and Michael drank. The dolphin gleamed until finally it was one of the stars themselves.

'Which one do you think he is?' Michael asked.

'All of them,' said Stumpy. 'He's become all of them. Or maybe all of them were dolphins all along.'

They walked north with the vicar, who was as pink as a rose, and they all began to sing 'Jerusalem'. 'And did those feet in ancient time?' They parted at the empty market street, waving goodbye.

Stumpy went all floppy, his hair lashing Michael's arms.

'I'm sorry. I don't usually drink,' he said.

'That's OK,' whispered Michael.

'I've never met anyone like you,' said the Angel, his eyes squiffy.

'Well, I've met Henry, who is like you.'

Stumpy nodded yes, a wide grin on his face. 'He's me when I'm older. He says I ought to become a politician. I think that's what he did. He even told me which Labour MP I should ask to work with.' This little Angel was very proud of himself. 'I'm going to do that.' He seemed to come into focus. 'The trouble with protests is that nothing happens. Nothing changes. That's not good enough.' His eyes had the hunger, the light that Michael had seen in Henry's eyes, to change things for the better.

Michael thought he had never seen anyone as beautiful. He said, 'That just happens to be my front door.'

They stumbled up the stairway and into the front room, and Michael switched on the light and the Picassos on the wall seemed to leap into life. Stumpy saw them and seemed to think the locale had painted them.

'I love Camden Town. It's like it could have been posh and rich, but it decided not to be. So it's full of good things and it's sleazy at the same time.' The Angel put his hand on Michael's breast. 'Like you.'

There was something in the Angel's eyes that had been given too quickly and too completely for Michael not to feel overwhelmed.

He found he chuckled and ducked. 'You're drunk. Let's get you to bed.'

And they thumped up the final staircase.

Stumpy undressed as Henry always did, slowly and methodically in a way that meant all the clothes in the morning would look ironed. And that somehow cancelled out any doubt that he was anything other than what he said he was.

'I'm too sleepy for sex,' he said simply. 'Do you mind?'

'I don't think,' said Michael, 'that this is about sex.'

'It's about dolphins,' said Stumpy and grinned.

Stumpy slipped out of his trousers and his underwear and his skin all over was almost as silver as the dolphin's. He stumbled against the bed and then into it.

'Goodnight, my love,' said Michael. It was that quick and that simple and that unthinking.

Stumpy reached back over himself and took Michael's hand. Michael snapped off the light, and as heavy as curtains, sleep fell. In a dream, he looked up into the sky, and it was full of dolphins, and knew somehow it was a dawn sky.

Later, there was a movement in Michael's head. It was not entirely pleasant to feel the flesh inside his skull flex like a muscle. He woke up, and everything was dusky grey, in a different year. The blackbirds were singing their unexpectedly beautiful song, though they lived south in the Gardens next to Michael's old life.

Michael's mouth was dry from dehydration. Dreamily he stood up and padded out of his bed. And he felt the realities part again, as a series of curtains.

Dropping away.

He was padding down the corridor of the condo in California. He heard his father snore. Rest in peace, he murmured. I will always love you and you will always love me. Somewhere in eternity we are father and son running on that beach, and it doesn't matter what kind of love I feel for you.

And he moved past the little table with the telephone to turn left, leaving Philip behind him in their big Lancashire bed. He turned at the doorway, to see him asleep in their old flat. Well, what do you know, baby? We both finally grew up.

And he slipped downstairs towards the sitting room in the Camden flat and the expressionistic toilet. Who had left the lights on? He thumped down the steps and was only mildly surprised to see there was a party. It was all right, he realized. He had been having a New Year's party of his own.

'Hello, hello!' said James the Irish monk, merrily. He was wearing a lumberjack shirt now, instead of monk's robes, and a handsome moustached man in plus fours canoodled next to him. 'This is my George. I wanted you to meet him. He came to the monastery. He followed me all the way to California and I just went away with him to Big Sur. ' They both had grey hair.

Michael smiled, pleased for them.

'Ah!' A voice. 'Ah, my old friend!' And Michael was suddenly enveloped in Picasso's arms. 'Look, look at what you made possible for me!' Picasso threw an arm up towards the wall of beautiful paintings. 'Here, here, did you see this?' He pushed a leaflet at him, glossy and in four colours. It was for an exhibition. 'MODERNIZING ART' it said, and showed a computer screen full of glowing colours. It was Michael's own mirror face.

Al pressed against him, and stepped back and was enfolded in the generous arms of Mark. 'We've just realized we should have met because of you,' said Mark. 'You and I would have become lovers for a while and afterwards Al and I would get together.'

'And then we'd both be alive,' said Al.

'Can you be together now?'

'We always were. That was the potential,' said Al. He seized Michael's hand hard. 'And that's as real as if it had actually happened.'

Someone put on music. The old Oceanside record player sang out Cinderella.

Bottles came dancing towards Michael, and took him up mischievously in her arms. She held her nose up in the air, miming Broadway posh.

Billie Holiday leaned next to the record player. She was older now, in the 1950s, and she was wearing a blue satin dress.

'Man,' Billie said, chuckling to herself. 'How can anybody sing that stuff? It sticks in your throat.'

She tried anyway. Billie sang Julie Andrews as if it were true in her rough old voice.

It was a sweet song about falling in love. Billie gave it uncertainty. Billie turned it into a song about last chances.

The old music swelled, and the two voices blended, hopeful, exhausted and innocent, exalted. The sweet long ended.

'Happy New Year,' growled Billie and held up an unsteady toast for them all.

And there was Henry.

Henry was weeping with joy. 'It's all right Michael,' he said, shaking. 'It really is all right. Everything will be fine. Really.' Michael hugged him, to soothe him.

'I love you,' said Michael.

'I love you too,' said Henry.

Michael said, 'You know who's upstairs?'

Henry nodded yes and smiled.

'You planned this!' exclaimed Michael, realizing.

Henry closed his eyes once and opened them. 'I can see all the way to the end,' he said. His eyes were as steady as car headlights. 'I am,' he said, 'there.' And he pointed far away, beyond. Michael knew what he meant: Always.

'I gotta pee,' explained Michael.

Michael stumbled out of his sitting room into the dark landing with the floor that would ram slivers into his feet. Parched, headachy and hungover, he slumped down on his own cold-seated toilet, and held his head in his hands.

He could feel a movement in the structured fat of his brain, a kind of kink, as if it had shifted gears. Abruptly the music was turned off.

Suddenly it was dawn for real, grey and quiet.

Michael wiped himself and padded out into his neglected sitting room. It was empty and quiet and dark. God, it was drab. It was like a hangover after a party was over. Why was it so dull suddenly? It wasn't just that the lights were off.

Then he saw why.

The walls were blank. All the Picassos were gone. So was the desk that was the only thing Picasso had directly carried up the steps himself.

And suddenly, eyes wide with terror, Michael knew what that meant. It's over. My God, it's over. And then he remembered Stumpy. He had not got the Angel's home address. And he couldn't ask Henry; Henry would be gone. Would the real Stumpy have any trace of memory of meeting Michael? What if he couldn't find Stumpy again?

Michael ran up the stairs and darted round the lintel of the doorway into the bedroom. And he saw the bed was full. A pale, silver arm reached across the empty sheet for Michael. Everything else had gone, but the real Stumpy was still there. Then Michael knew what that meant, too.