Chapter 8

A bit short, and potentially libellous, but still better than a kick in the groin. Just.

Who's next? Someone other than me and dh I think, please.

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The smell of sulphur was becoming overwhelming, the heat stifling, the sound of glutinous eructations unbearable. Eddie could no longer feel the restraints around his ankles. He started to thrash in panic.

And awoke abruptly to another eggy, painful and prolonged belch and the elbow of his revolted neighbour thrust into his ribs. Airline food, peanuts and bourbon – never again, he thought, as he reached for the top of his head. Hair all present and correct – what the hell had that toupee nightmare been about? In fact, what the hell had the dream as a whole been about?

He looked at the seatback monitor. They were about 15 minutes out of JFK and the seatbelt lights were already on, the descent underway. A three hour layover in one of the world’s most boring airports beckoned before the connecting Icelandair flight to Keflavik.

Jesus. Phillip. And Ryan. All in one nightmare. He’d dreamt about Ryan a lot while he was in prison, mostly in connection with him, Ryan and a machete, a large number of black refuse sacks and not much else, but he’d moved on from that since starting his life afresh, hadn’t he? And that little creep Phillip, always blethering on about non-trivial zeros and pronouncing his hypotheses incorrectly. Admittedly, he should have just got through the placement at the BBC without trying to do anything clever. But he’d had a bit of thing for his probation officer Violet at the time and he wanted to make sure that she spent as much time thinking about him as he did about her. It was only a trivial fraud anyhow, not like dweeby Phillip and his fucking zeros. Phillip knew and he knew that if Eddie had wanted to, he could have solved the Riemann hypothesis standing on his head with one fist wedged up his arse. But he wasn’t going to tell Phillip how to do it. Anyhow, he had better things to do – like earn a bit of extra money from the BBC before heading off to take Hollywood by storm. They clearly loved mathematicians over there. Look at that Russell Crowe film.

Eddie stretched, scratched his still gurgling stomach and glared meanly at the woman in the seat next to him. She glared back, her dark eyes flashing in her olive complexion, her frankly notable rack making him think of a set of torpedoes. The elbow jabbed again. He belched again. Fuck her. He’d never see her again in about twenty minutes’ time. Shame about those tits though – better even than Carmen’s.

Stupid dream though. Anyone would think he had a guilty conscience. As if. He’d tried his best to go straight in Hollywood, bar the odd bit of small time drug dealing. Turned out the mathematician movie fad had been a red herring. Or a bit of a poisson distribution if you will. Eddie sniggered to himself. Maths jokes rock. Shame his writing career hadn’t but there comes a point that you have to accept that you have a particular set of talents, he thought, and in the last few months in LA he had reconciled himself to returning to what he did best. Of course, he’d fought it (M’lud), he thought to himself. That Larry David thing. That could have worked, if it hadn’t been for the GreatSheElephant interfering.

Eddie shook himself mentally. Must stop blaming things on figments of his imagination. One of his therapists had made it very clear to him that if he insisted on passing the buck to imaginary elephants, or deceased African ruler’s mothers (depending on which brand of bourbon he was drinking at the time), then he would be looking at the wrong end of a prescription for schizophrenia drugs. Or at the very least a complete ban on bourbon. The other had merely pointed out mildly that if he wanted an imaginary elephant friend that was his business. However the fact that her texts mysteriously self destructed the moment he read them and her phone messages wiped themselves within seconds suggested that the elephant, which was in fact a soft toy he had kept since childhood, was not actually running his life, as he liked to make out.

Better hope he’d stop burping before he got to Iceland. And saw Caro for the first time in over 15 years. Iceland. Caro. Back to life as it ought to be. It hadn’t taken so long to get back in touch with his most significant client, a man living an apparently respectable life as an Icelandic corporate raider, his business successes disguising his real life as a proper raider. And Jóhannesson, delighted that one of his most reliable contractors was back in the game, hadn’t found it that hard to track down Caro for him by way of a thank you either.

Trudging through JFK, Eddie wondered about the wisdom of trying to cram a Cinnabon down on top of the still fermenting peanuts. It might make for better smelling gas, and he wasn’t expecting much in the way of catering on the Icelandair flight which after all was a mere 4 hours long. What the hell? Better grab a Starbucks too. Last chance – Icelandic coffee sucked puffin bollocks, if he remembered correctly.

And so it was with minutes to spare that he got to the gate. He wasn’t the last to board and once onboard, he realised that the person in the seat next to him appeared to be even later than he was. Or maybe, please God, he’d get two seats to himself. It was only when he was trying to cram his hand luggage into the last available overhead locker that he noticed the pointy elbowed, pointy titted Greek looking bitch sitting two rows ahead of him. Weird. With that in mind and with the Cinnabon lying like a syrupy pool of lava in his stomach, he shut his eyes and tried to focus on the job to come.

The seat next to him heaved slightly as the plane door slammed shut. Someone was even later than he was and the jerk was sitting next to him. Fan fucking tastic. He opened his eyes and looked at his neighbour.

“Hello Eddie,” said Phillip.