The Taste
Dez hauled the vendor over the counter by his apron.
Three cans went over. A coil of hose came off its hook. The vendor's flat cap landed in the rain, and somebody two stalls down said hey in the tone people use when they are not going to do anything.
“Put me down.”
Dez drew his right fist back.
It stopped halfway.
He pulled harder. Something shifted under the plating above his elbow, a small movement with a dry, gritty sound. The fist stayed where it was.
The vendor's brass feet hung six inches above the cobbles.
“Dez.”
He could open the hand. He could close it. He could feel rain getting into the seam at his wrist. But between the forearm and the upper arm there was suddenly one solid piece of iron where there ought to have been a joint.
The vendor stopped struggling.
That was worse.
For three seconds they looked at each other. Behind the vendor's head, a loose can rolled along the counter, struck a pair of scales and settled.
Then the elbow let go.
It came back with a crunch he felt through his back plate. His fist dropped. Dez set the vendor on his feet with enormous care and smoothed the apron flat, twice, as though that had been the intention throughout.
“Right,” he said.
Splice took a step away from him. He looked at Dez's hand before he looked at the can.
Rain ticked on the awning.
“Eighty marks,” Dez said.
“Yes,” said Splice. “We've established the price.”
“Then give it back.”
“You haven't let me taste it.”
Dez put his right hand on the counter. Flat. He took it off again before Splice could see why he had done it.
The taste was still there, at the back of the little sampling port beneath his throat. Harbour water. Old crates. The fish market at Low Quay after a warm day, when the ice had gone grey and the drains could not take any more.
“It tastes of fish.”
“I heard you.”
“You heard eighty as well.”
Splice bent to retrieve his cap. Water ran out of it when he turned it over. He held it between two fingers, considered it, and put it on the scales.
“You watched me break the collar.”
“Then the collar was wrong.”
“The collar's the collar, Dez. That's the whole—” He stopped, rubbed the front of his apron and began again. “It's a sealed can. Off a bonded lot. I opened it in front of you.”
The lead strip lay beside the crimp tool. A warehouse number, a date, two little crossed keys pressed into the metal. A minute ago Splice had turned it under the lamp so Dez could see the stamp properly. A genuine pre-war pull, he had said. Not the sort of thing he could get every week.
Now the strip was broken and the marks were on Splice's side of the counter.
“You said it was One.”
“It is One.”
Dez pushed the five-litre can towards him.
Splice reached for the tasting spout. His hand hovered over the counter, three narrow brass fingers spread. A dark line had appeared along Dez's elbow seam.
“Was it doing that before?”
“Taste it.”
“Your arm.”
“We're talking about the oil.”
Splice drew a little from the can. He put it to his own sample port and stood still.
His teal lenses narrowed. They widened again.
“Well?” said Dez.
Splice set the spout down.
“I'll have to speak to the runner.”
“You can speak to whoever you like after you've given me the eighty.”
“I paid for that lot.”
“So did I.”
Down the row, the bearing seller was upright now. He had got as far as standing behind his crate with both hands on it, ready to explain that he had seen nothing. Splice noticed him and lowered his voice.
“Let me look at the paperwork.”
Dez had carried the marks folded flat in his chest pocket. Six weeks of putting a little aside, and then not touching it. Taking the long way round a tram stop because it was easier than standing beside one with money in his pocket.
Four shifts' pay, near enough. Six weeks to spare it.
He had expected an argument about the price. He had prepared for that on the walk over. He had not prepared for standing in the rain with one arm he no longer trusted and a shopkeeper offering to read.
Splice pulled a shallow drawer out from beneath the counter. Papers lifted in the draught. Dez put his left hand on them before they went into the wet.
The shoulder ground as he leaned.
“That one as well,” Splice said quietly.
“It's the pallet jack.”
Splice looked at him.
“Don't,” Dez said.
Splice took a folded invoice from under his hand. He held it next to the broken collar. Looked from one to the other. Turned the paper over, although nothing was written on the back.
“The numbers match.”
“Congratulations.”
“I'm telling you what it says.”
“And I'm telling you what it tastes like.”
For a moment neither of them moved. Water dripped from the brim of the cap onto the scales.
Splice folded the invoice again, carefully along the old crease.
“Come back tomorrow.”
Dez flexed the right elbow. Slowly, without lifting the hand above the counter. It moved. A little rough at the middle, then freely.
“You going to be here?”
“It's my stall.”
Dez picked up the can.
“I'll be back about the eighty.”
He stepped over the hose and went.
* * *
At the mouth of Fell Street there was a limousine with white-wall wheels.
In this weather. In this district.
Long, armoured, black, with gold trim along the running boards and a brass boiler stack venting into the rain. The rear window was down about a hand's width.
As Dez passed, somebody inside laughed.
It was deep and entirely unhurried. In the dark behind the window, something gold turned slightly and caught the lamp.
Dez kept walking.
His intake still read eleven percent. He was eighty marks down and had just been unable to hit someone he had every intention of hitting. He could think about the limousine when he had room.
The tram came past above him, iron wheels running on the viaduct. Every fourth minute the whole street got a sound like a door closing in a much larger room. He waited for it to pass before he bent the elbow again.
Still moving.
Volta City went up in every direction and dripped in every direction as a consequence. Water ran off an awning onto his shoulder and found the gap under the plate. He shifted the can to his right hand, disliked the weight there, and shifted it back.
Ahead, a teal sign flickered over an oil shop. Through the glass he could see cans stacked behind wire and a small card with the prices written on it.
He stopped long enough to read the card.
Then he went on.
At Carrow Hill the steps were wet. His building had six floors, and the lift had been a rumour since before he moved in.
On the second landing he rested the can on the rail. The left shoulder made its sandy little noise when he lifted it again.
Three weeks of that. Three weeks of blaming the jack at the yard, although the jack stayed at the yard and the sound came home with him.
He climbed the rest without putting the can down.
* * *
There was nothing else in the flat.
Dez checked anyway. He opened the cupboard beneath the basin and lifted the old Grade Three can. He tipped it. A slow brown thread gathered at the lip and stopped there.
He put it back.
Two months on Three, since the rate cut. It tasted of its tin and dragged through the lines on cold mornings. He had stopped noticing most of it. At work there was always something else making a noise.
He sat on the edge of the cot with the new can between his feet.
The white sticker had come loose at one corner. He pressed it down with his thumb and felt the raised shape underneath. The same little mark he had found before paying: a long teardrop with a fan at one end, above a row of glyphs he couldn't read.
Foundry mark, Splice had said.
Dez lifted the paper again.
In the light from the basin lamp it looked very like a fish.
He let the sticker fall back. 100% SYNTHETIC, it said, in a typeface somebody had paid money for.
The can sat there, patient.
Tomorrow he could take it back. Tomorrow Splice could find the runner, or another piece of paper, or the eighty marks. Tonight his intake was at eleven percent and in the morning there were crates.
He opened the flip-top.
He had tasted real One four times in his life. Clean and slightly sweet, with nothing behind it. Like hot stone in the moment after rain. The yard hands saved for a can when they could. A can of One a season keeps a chassis honest. Merrin used to say it while they waited for the wage book.
Merrin worked the gate now.
Dez held the can with both hands. The elbow bent without catching.
Bad batch or not, he had paid for it.
He drank.
The harbour taste came with it. He swallowed it down and closed the cap and sat waiting for something to happen.
Outside, a pipe knocked against the wall. Somebody upstairs dragged a chair across bare boards.
The oil went in cool and thin. None of the drag the Three had, none of the varnish, none of the tin. He felt it spreading through the lines and waited a little longer.
Within twenty minutes the sand had gone out of his shoulder.
He lifted the arm above the horizontal.
Lowered it.
Did it again, with his head turned to listen.
There was nothing to hear. Just the clean small sound of a bearing doing the only job it had ever wanted.
He reached up and caught the basin lamp. The bracket had been loose for a fortnight. Every time he washed, the light swung away from the bowl. He had meant to tighten it, but the screw was above shoulder height and by the time he got home he had usually done enough lifting.
He held the bracket steady with his left hand and turned the screw with his right.
The lamp stayed where he put it.
Dez stood under it for a while.
Eleven years of hauling, and he could not remember the last time his own body had been quiet.
He lay down in his plating on a cot that was too short for him. Across the room, the can stood beneath the cupboard with its white sticker facing out.
It was the best sleep he had had in two months.
* * *
In the morning there was oil on his elbow.
A bead had gathered at the seam, swollen and run an inch down the forearm before it stopped. He wiped it off with his thumb. Worked the joint. It moved.
At the gate, Merrin was having trouble getting his chair under the awning.
One leg had caught in a gap between the cobbles. He had both hands on the gatepost and was shifting his weight in little jerks, making the chair scrape.
Dez put the can down.
“Which way?”
“Dry would be nice.”
Dez lifted the back of the chair. Merrin moved his good leg, and together they got it under cover.
“There.”
“Don't move it back when the rain stops,” Merrin said.
“Wasn't planning to.”
Merrin had been the second-fastest loader on the north apron. Now he waved people in. He was very good at it.
His hip had stopped moving the winter before last. Dez had helped carry this same chair out here on the first morning, with Merrin insisting all the way that it was temporary.
Merrin looked at the can.
“Get the proper stuff, did you?”
“That's what it says.”
“Keep it inside. Someone'll walk off with that.”
He held the gate while Dez went through.
Ordway was waiting by the shed with the wage book against his chest.
“You're early.”
“Put it in the book.”
“I put drums in the book.”
“Then I'll get you some.”
Twenty-two marks yesterday. Twenty-two the day before. Since the rate cut, he had been staying later to make the same money, loading until the lamps came up and Ordway began talking about which bell it was.
Today he reached the first stack before the others. Got his hands under a crate. Braced for the grit in the shoulder.
The crate came up smoothly.
He set it on the pallet and reached for the next.
For most of the morning he forgot about Splice.
At the break he went into the shed to get the can. There was a dark bead on his right forearm, exactly where the first had been.
He left it there and bent the elbow.
It moved easily. The bead ran towards his wrist.
Beside the wage book, Ordway had left the blotting paper he used under wet invoices. Dez tore a corner off and touched it to the seam. The oil spread into the fibres.
He set the paper on top of the can and watched the stain widen.
After the shift, Fell Street. Before Splice shut.
This time he was taking the can, the stain, and both hands flat on the counter.
