Edward the Fireman thought the tapes sucked. He said he didn’t need therapy anymore as he had found LOVE and A CAUSE and when one had found LOVE and A CAUSE one’s thoughts became crystal clear.

Clara asked him if she could pay him to try the tapes as she needed—

“A what?” asked Edward. “A lab rat?”

She said she wouldn’t have put it like that.

He said he didn’t mind. He’d been one before.

752

In New York City, Edward the Fireman moved on to tape three, Becoming Attractive. He left the upmarket department store and went to a bar uptown, where he looked everybody in the eye and smiled at them winningly. No one was responding.

Though the tape doesn’t mention it, he’d get much further if he took off his headphones and put on some cologne. The tapes were full of little flaws like this. Edward made a note of it on the drinks coaster.

751

Clara Redlake kept the radio tuned in to see if anything else developed. She tried to determine whether Edward would feel ashamed or exhilarated by his car bomb operation.

Then she realized she had no proof he’d done the deed so she resolved not to bring it up. Unless he did, of course.

750

Samuel Thorn was on a train to Birmingham as flight SA841 touched down. His agent had put him on one.

She’d asked him how he was feeling these days and he’d told her he still had off days. She’d said that was understandable. Sam had said nothing, picked some fluff off his jacket and had said no thank you to tea. He drank some now though, sold to him in the buffet coach by a woman who recognized him from a cereal commercial. What a big bull of a man, she thought.

The train slowed. In Sam’s hands were his CV and his photo. He hated actor’s photos. En masse they were a macabre sight. Glossy ten-by-eights. Black and white to hide imperfections in the skin. Some looking slightly over their shoulder to give the impression of depth and three dimensions. Peculiar lifeless eyes. Shadows emphasizing bone structure. Insufferably knowing. Needy. Vain. His own was just as bad. He’d thought of Descartes’s cogito, ergo sum as the flashbulb popped so that he would appear profound. It didn’t work; he looked like a man trying to remember if he’d left the iron on—or constipated.

Samuel was reading a script for a new drama set in Yorkshire entitled Graft, a gritty story about a bunch of people who all had tough lives, tough jobs, and tough skin. The audition was in Phoenix TV’s production office in central Birmingham.

Phoenix TV had made, or had tried to make, the ditched sitcom Tunnel Vision and their finances were on thin ice. Grit was a seller so grit was being made.

Samuel told his agent the show didn’t sound like much fun.

His agent had said it was pretty grim. She told him most of the characters died.