redRobe

Chapter One Sounds/Silence

Axl could hear, that wasn’t his problem. Axl’s problem was his life lacked a coherent sound track, at least it did these days. When doors shut they just slammed, with no kick-back loop of drums. Cars collided on the freeway and no hi-haus/low-fi chords crashed. Not like back when…

He was blind to the music.

Axl still had a Korg sound system installed in his head, at least he figured he did, just not connected. After fifteen years Axl still couldn’t get used to it.

He had the negative algorhythm blues. He had…

Shit, Axl knew exactly what he had, a sucking black hole where the music used to loop and feed inside his head, sound-tracking everything.

‘You look like death ...”

The mirror wanted to say like shit, but it was too mealy-mouthed.

‘Yeah.’ Axl pushed one thin arm through the sleeve of an old biker’s jacket. He had a job to do and he was in a hurry. Plus, there was something he was meant to remember and crystalMeth from the night before was making him forget.

The jacket was PaulSmith with silver ceramic elbowpads, relined years back in spider’s silk and Axl liked it. The mirror didn’t…

Wedged into the mirror’s frame was Axl’s driving licence which showed a round-faced, vaguely European male with spiky, peroxide-blond hair. Years of not sleeping had left him with the dissolute look of a drunken Welsh poet, which was odd because his mother was originally Irish Catholic. Axl had no idea who his father was, the police never caught the man.

Age 29, height 6’ 1”, weight 152 lb, name Axl Borja, status human. It lied about everything except his height, and that was only true if Axl wore Cuban heels. There was other shit crypted onto it, like a DNA profile and medical record but that was also fake.

Besides he was using another name these days too. Which one didn’t matter. He changed them as regularly as swopped his dead-end jobs flipping hamburgers.

Axl shrugged, checked his looks in the glass and then took another glance at his eyes. Nineteen years back they’d been advertised as ‘clear and sparkling, like early daybreak peeping through a clear night sky.’ And at $4500 a pop on the open market that’s what they should have stayed. Right around now they looked more like the sodium headlights of a dumptruck refracted through smog. And he could have moved house using the bags under them, if only he could raise enough credit to relocate…

Walking across the kitchen of the flat he semi/sort-of squatted, Axl realised he was stark bollock naked except for the jacket and remembered seconds later that it didn’t matter a fuck, he lived alone.

His choice. At least that was what he always told himself.

Machines he could handle, even if they did answer back. Human beings couldn’t be returned. Hell, most didn’t even come with a guarantee.

‘Hey fuck-wit ...’

‘Coffee,’ Axl demanded and wrapped his fingers round the cable attaching the Zanussi BreakfastBar to the wall. For once the Zanussi didn’t argue. Above the BreakfastBar what looked like a tastefully-framed Fox Studios poster flicked over on cue to a rolling newsfeed, leading in on the major headlines.

‘Samsara takes another 50,000 refugees from Europe.’

Crashing chord from the screen. Shot of thin Catalan woman breastfeeding toddler.

‘Cartel Pharmaceuticals sue IMF for collapse of Colombian economy. . .’

Another chord, less emphatic. A pan back from bombed office block to burned-out district of Bogota.

‘Vatican refuses to release figures for auditing. WorldBank denies Pope Joan might rise from the dead ...’

Minor chord for what would be a major miracle. And an archive shot of the Pope staring at a hovering camera.

No news in other words.

Axl pulled the tab on a Lucky Strike and drew smoke deep into his lungs. If there was anything the Zanussi hated worse than Axl washing breakfast down with coffee it was him smoking and eating at the same time.

The front door said goodbye, even though it knew Axl hadn’t paid rent on the sublet in months. The lift was scrupulously polite on the way down. One of the Armani-suited porters even smiled wryly as he let Axl out through a service entrance, something that was strictly forbidden.

But Axl was still scowling as he walked out of the Metropole and into a Mexican morning so hot it felt like someone had just kicked down Hell’s front door. Dead fireworks from last night’s fiesta littered the open-air car park at the back of the building. Dead fireworks, a sleeping drunk and three blank-faced local kids flopped out on a discarded nylon settee.

They watched him pass, their eyes hidden behind cheap copies of last season’s Spyro wraprounds. The joker in the gang crossed himself and Axl scowled even more. He’d remembered what he was trying to forget. It wasn’t the thought of a day at McDonalds that pissed him off. As if a day spent flipping burgers wasn’t bad enough, when his shift was over he had to go out and shoot somebody.