The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith Read Online Free PDF

strung around the perimeter of the platform. With the lights on pre-set, it was gloomy up here. There was glow-tape marking the platform perimeters, but the wires were painted black. He searched for them with his hand, a little giddily.
    ‘How’s that?’ he said, finding a wire and twanging it, as if he were touching it only for the purpose of demonstrating its strength. ‘Does that solve your safety problem?’
    Bill ran his hand over the wires. He knelt so he could inspect the point where they were anchored to the wall. He leaned against them, gingerly at first and then more aggressively. He bounced once or twice, like a boxer against the ropes, but when he had done with his tests he withheld his judgement. Instead he turned, and looked down into the gathering audience.
    ‘There’s no point you being angry,’ he said at last. ‘Obviously, there’s something wrong with that baby and denial isn’t going to help anyone.’
    ‘How’s the wire, mo-ami?’
    ‘Tray bon, thank you.’
    ‘That’s good,’ Wally said, and turned to leave.
    ‘It
might
be Vincent’s baby,’ the actor said. ‘No one can say it isn’t.’
    Wally was kneeling on the platform, getting ready to descend.
    Bill said, ‘You needn’t look at me like I’m so weird.’
    Wally rose. ‘Listen, frere – you’ve got a show to do in ten minutes.’
    ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Bill said. ‘Who are you to look so fucking righteous?’
    Wally knew better than to argue with him, especially not now – he was like a drunk, full of chemicals – ten minutes before the curtain on press night.
    ‘Mollo-mollo,’ he said.
    ‘Mollo bullshit,’ Bill said. ‘Why is everyone pretending there’s nothing wrong?’
    ‘If there’s something wrong, mo-frere,’ Wally said (gently he hoped), ‘she’s going to need you. You can’t afford to be afraid.’
    Bill stared at Wally, his black eyes suddenly brimming with poisonous emotion. The look was intense, unwavering.
    He jumped. The platform shook. Wally put his hand out to hold the wire.
    ‘Look at you, you old twat,’ Bill said. ‘Don’t lecture me about fear. You’re too piss-weak to even check the scaffold. You sent the Sparrow here instead.’
    ‘You knew it was fixed? You knew?’
    ‘Don’t lecture me about fear.’ Bill jumped again. The whole platform kicked and swayed, listing over nearly twenty degrees before coming back to a shuddering horizontal. ‘What ever made you think you had all this wisdom to impart to me?’
    Wally put his arms out, found a wire, steadied himself, looked down into the half-full house. There he saw a familiar beard-fringed countenance scowling up from the front row. It was Vincent, stewing in his own negativity.
    When he saw Vincent’s defeated face, something changed in Wally. He was still afraid, it’s true. He hated heights, feared the giddy emptiness of air. But when he realized that Vincent had already abandoned me and my mother to the whims of fate, he went a little crazy.
    Wally loved my maman, and it was this powerful and secret emotion that moved him now. When he began to speak to Bill he no longer cared that they were only minutes from the curtain.
    ‘It’s true – I don’t like heights,’ he said to Bill, and something in his manner transmitted itself to the actor who extended a placating arm.
    ‘Come on, mo-ami …’
    ‘What is love?’ Wally said.
    ‘I’m sorry …’
    ‘When you love,’ he answered, ‘you don’t care. If you’re thinking about your own prestige, your own position, that’s not love.’ Wally was grinning now. He was bright red and sweating, he had purple fungicide between his toes. The long hair on the back of his head was lifting off his neck. He went to the edge and stood with his toes sticking out over the edge of the platform. Down below, directly below, was the eight-by-eight foot net he had finally ‘borrowed’.
    ‘Give me your hand,’ Bill said.
    Wally’s big pale lips twisted in a smile, a