The Blue Book Read Online Free PDF

of a definite colour, not distracting, not flamboyant and not white – he needs a firm contrast to his skin, a way of quietly showing he’s almost translucent, all fragile veins and watered milk. A sense of austerity in his haircut and a hint of service, also the suggestion of precious thinking, perhaps, of heat in the stubble gleaming at his neck.
    And his thinking, if not precious, is certainly precise.
    Deception is only unforgivable if it is incomplete. Leave any access for doubt, for exposure, bad revelations, and then you’re much more than failing – you’re committing a type of delayed assault. Be utter and undetected and then no forgiveness will ever be required.
    The man’s job is to be the perfect liar, because that’s what his audience needs. Blood, words, skin, face, eyes, breath, bone – he must lie in his entirety. The enquirers deserve nothing less. So that when he names out relatives and pets, describes familiar jewellery and clothes, episodes of romance, pleasant outings, birthday parties, misfortunes, habits, griefs, coincidences, arguments, birth signs, jokes, uncommon journeys, illnesses, cars and motorbikes, hospitals, buses, armed intrusions, injuries, scrambled efforts at evasion, running and narrow paths, terminal bewilderments – most particularly when he speaks of the terminal things, of deaths – they will be true. He will give them, most particularly, true deaths.
    His job to be the window that lets them see through, the door that will open so they can walk back to the times and the places he’ll resurrect. And when he tells his enquirers worlds, they will seem true worlds. They will be truer and better than the world they have.
    Tonight 750 strangers have watched him convincingly let other souls slip into his blue-white self and then speak through him. Over and over, he’s brought loves closer, invited them, called them in. This has been his little gift to everyone.
    And he’s the best. No one is like him.
    Not sure that anyone would want to be.
    And almost done and tired and tired and tired, he’s shaken his head as if freeing himself and let his shoulders drop, he’s sighed and rubbed his cheeks and felt his audience lean their will against him, the broad, warm press of how they still want more, could easily stay here – row on row – and drink him all away. But this is it, show’s over: a nod and a handful of sentences, an appropriately small and quiet bow and he’ll walk to the bland little dressing room and wash his face and sit, lean back and sit.
    â€˜You didn’t let me speak to Billy. When you were here before you let me speak to him.’
    Woman right at the front – quite naturally right at the front and in the centre – directly at his feet, in fact, only the height of the stage between them. ‘Why didn’t he want to speak to me?’ She has left her seat, is tensed almost on tiptoe.
    Pink sweater – polo neck to deal with slightly ageing skin, overly glamorous jewellery, trying too hard – and she is yelling. The man assumes that she is mentally unable not to yell. The man has met this kind of thing before.
    â€˜Didn’t he want to?’
    The theatre stiffening, clinging round him while he remembers his previous visit – it was in the spring – and having made this woman happy about her dead son. This time, for three hours – plus interval – she has been carefully avoided. Too anxious, too bereft.
    Female, 35–45, single and childless: difficult, they lack the usual entry points, are all needs and lacks and fretting and last-minute hopes, they suffer cruel and salty lunges of impossibility. So you offer them dreams.
    Female, 35–45, divorced after her child was taken: easy. Give her back the boy.
    But just because it’s easy that doesn’t mean I should.
    The room waiting for a proper remedy, the man’s authoritative resolution.
    If I