“As for that ‘The One’ business, you don’t get to know until it’s over whether she was The One or not. For now, like I said, love is a verb. You have to practice it every day. It’s like a garden. If you don’t nurture it, it’ll wither up and get full of snails and bull ants. Love,” he said as if it were a type of complex algebra. “Is something different.”

  “What is it?”

  Even as Graham spoke, he knew he had no idea how he was going to explain it. He wished the damn fool would be satisfied with the gist. Isaac, though, was like a child. His wonder never ceased. If only he applied even half of it to their experiment.

  “It’s not that.”

  “It’s not what?”

  “Magical,” said Graham.

  He hadn’t wanted to say it, but at some point, the young man would find out for himself. It was something he needed to hear. Life was not a fairy-tale.

  “Honestly, I just want to meet a normal girl,” said Isaac.

  “What’s normal?”

  “Like Mary.”

  “Nobody’s normal Isaac, especially Mary. You’ll meet the right girl; you just have to give it time. You never find anything in life when you’re looking for it. Trust me, when you least expect it, you’ll stumble upon her. Until then, stop analysing things so much.”

  That was easier said than done. Lately, it seemed like that was all that Graham seemed to do. Whether it was family, his career or all the things he swore as a young man that he’d one day set out to do; the way he ruminated, you’d swear that nothing good had ever happened.

  “You’ll meet someone, you will. And when you do, you just gotta ask yourself, do I like myself when I’m around this person? And do I wanna keep doing things with her and for her every day for the rest of my life? If that answer’s yes then get in there and do it. If the answer’s no then either get out or…”

  His silence perched on the edge of a godforsaken cliff.

  “Or what?”

  “Have another baby,” said Graham.

  “Really? That’s brilliant,” said Isaac. “That’s amazing.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Stop being so cynical. Of course, it is. Congratulations.”

  His enthusiasm could power a small Scandinavian fishing village.

  “There’s nothing to celebrate,” said Graham. “Not yet at least.”

  “She’s not pregnant.”

  “Christ, no.”

  “You don’t want another one?”

  “Are you kidding? Nathan has just started wiping his own arse. You really think I wanna go back to looking at shitty bums all day?”

  “But what if she’s pregnant?”

  He sounded disappointed, as if, like Dorothy, the curtain were being pulled on the magic, wonder, and merriment of all his hopes and dreams.

  “Well…then we carry on carrying on. It’s not like we planned to have the first.”

  “What about your son, though?”

  His words were marred with disbelief. It was like finding out all over again that Santa Claus was not real. He hoped, deep inside, that this was just some cruel trick – hazing for the hopelessly romantic.

  “That’s where it gets a bit tricky,” said Graham as if he were debunking a fallacy like free will. “Marriage,” he said, looking for the right words. “It’s a marathon. There’s a lot of fanfare at the beginning and a fair amount at the end. The rest of it, though, is long and it’s tiring. You might pass a marker here or there and splash some water on your face but it dries up pretty quick. It’s not like dating. It’s not playing dress-ups and having to make a fantastic moment out of every moment. Marriage is…”

  His face was shaped like a purple heart.

  “I love my kids, I do. I don’t regret either one; not for a single second. If we had a third, I’d feel just the same. Sure I’d be telling you all this from a caravan park where hopefully I still had a bit leftover after buying school material and new shoes for at least tent with a zipper. Marriage isn’t easy. You see the same person day in day out for twenty odd years and you just get in a routine. You get in a rut. When my daughter turned three we had this very discussion.”

  “Seems like a good split between ages.”

  “It’s not that. It’s that for three years, we were focused on this little human. And she was so utterly dependant on both of us. Us, as a couple, was put on hold, and everything became about Isabel. Every conversation we had was about her. Everything we did was for her. At night, we’d collapse on the bed and fall asleep exhausted, because we’d spent the whole day doing everything for her. And for three years it was great. Then she turned three and she didn’t need us so much anymore. Then me and Mary kind of looked at each other and thought, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ She won’t ever admit that; no couple will, but it’s true. You spend so long feeding them, changing their diapers, playing with them, teaching them, soothing them, putting them to sleep that for three years, the only time you spend together is sharing a beer and falling asleep to some shitty television show. Then, after three years when you finally have after eight pm to yourselves, you look at each other and you’re total strangers. So you have another baby, and, though nobody admits it, you buy another three years.”

  “That sounds bleak.”

  “Yeah well, it’s true, no matter what anyone spouts off. Marriage isn’t easy. It sure as hell isn’t the perfect picture folks make it out to be. Sure, when you dress it up. But naked and raw, it’s fat in weird places, there’s no symmetry whatsoever, and it stinks half the time – but you get used to it. You adapt. You have to. And that’s Love.”

  “Would you want another?”

  “Kid? I can’t afford the two I have. I can’t do a third. Not now.”

  “If not now, when?”

  “Jesus you’re worse than her. It’s hard enough worrying whether or not we’re gonna get published with this trial. At the end of all of this, maybe, when I have a bit more time, money, and some notoriety.”

  “You think we’ll get published? Irrespective of how the trial goes.”

  “If you see half the junk coming out of social sciences you wouldn’t worry.”

  “Yeah, but this is actual science. I was speaking to my old mentor the other day.”

  “Yeah? And what did he have to say?”

  “He said we’re wasting our time.”

  “Did he now?”

  “More specifically, he said I’m wasting my time. He says we won’t get published, not in anything reputable anyway, and that I should be focusing on neuroscience that matters instead of…”

  His face was shaped like a Freudian slip.

  “You can say it; I’m not a bloody child.”

  “The woo-woo of actual science. That was his words, not mine.”

  “Is that what you think? You’d prefer to have your name on another paper?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I love what we’re doing here, I do. It’s just…”

  “What?”

  “Well, if we can’t get published, what’s the point? If no-one’s gonna read it, is it even worth writing?”

  Track 20 (Blue)

  “Do you mind?” said Stacey, taking pieces of Isaac’s salad and arranging them on a side plate that she’d specifically asked the waiter to bring. “This will just take a second,” she said. “Have to get the right angle.”

  Stacey stood up and hopped around the table. It was only then that Isaac noticed that her leg was in a brightly coloured cast.

  “You broke your leg?” asked Isaac.

  “Oh that?” said Stacey non-challan, acting as if her injury were a perm or fake lashes. “Everybody’s doing it.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” she said kind of weirded out by Isaac’s illiteracy of style. “Casts are in now. They have been for like – forever.”

  “Broken legs are fashion?”

  “Not the broken leg, just the cast. What, you didn’t know that?”

  It was only then that he looked around the room and noticed – not a large amount of a people, but a noticeable and significant few, all of them with extravagant looking casts on their legs.

  “A good one can go for at least a couple of hundred grand. There’s this influencer I follow and hers is to die for. It’s a Dior.”

  “A door?”

  “Di-Or.”

  “I don’t know what that is?”

  “Believe me, it’s the best.”

  “So your leg isn’t actually broken?”

  “Of course not. It wouldn’t be fashion then.”

  “But it is now? Fashionable, I mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because it’s not broken?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it looks like it is?”

  “See? You do get it.”

  Then she hopped around the table bending the phone at minute angles, looking for the best way to present a meal that wasn’t even hers in the first place. And though her actions might have warranted some kind of psychiatric intervention, they were no different from what was going on at every other table around them.

  Isaac stared around the room in a deranged and delusional wonder. Each and every person inside the bar and out on the street had their attention buried in their phones, looking at the world through their own requisite filter.

  There were people climbing up on bars, lamp posts, and buses; and balancing like lotus flowers, precariously on the edges of dining tables and lighting fixtures, caught, as it would seem, in the midst of an innocent and Zen-like repose. Some fell to their deaths while others broke down and cried whenever they caught their often portlier and more honest and blotched complexions in the mirror.

  “This is bound to get a reaction,” said Stacey, finally settling on one out of hundreds of shots. “I guess I’m just naturally built for photography,” she said as if the question had been asked. “I can’t speak for other people but for me, it just comes naturally; you know, getting the right shot - kind of like how Michael Jordan didn’t have to try as hard as anybody else. If you have to know…” – which she assumed he did – “…firstly, it’s all in the right angle. Everything has she right way of looking at it. You find that angle then all you have to change is the backdrop. Whatever you’re photographing will always look good as long as you know how to look at it right. I’m great at that. I mean I don’t have the followers that I deserve for the quality of the photos I take but one day, you know? Not yet, anyway. But if you’re consistently good, you’ll get your chance; that’s what they say. How do you get the right angle? Good question. Well, that’s what really separates your average run-of-the-mill photographer from the real pros. Now, when I say pro I don’t mean someone who has a fancy diploma or who works for some mainstream fashion magazine. There are hundreds, probably billions, of real pros who are out there doing their own thing; in love with the craft and doing real art for no money at all. Art isn’t about the money,” she said, scraping the salad back on Isaac’s plate. “Art is the process. It’s visualising the photo. It’s arranging the photo. It’s taking the photo. After that, it’s all marketing and sales. That’s business. Anyone can do business. Just because something made a tonne of money or got a tonne of clicks…..that’s not what made it art. It’s not what defines it as art. One day though I’ll be able to make a living off what I do. It’s not to say I’m not grateful, though. The fact I can do what I do every day is a pure blessing. Namaste. But the key to finding the right angle, and this is something they don’t teach you in textbooks or in university and if someone had taught me this earlier I would definitely have made my first million by now, but, take as many pictures as you can. Take a hundred. Take a thousand. It doesn’t matter. The more the better. If you take enough photos,” she said, “you’ll eventually find the one.”

  Isaac knew straight away that she wasn’t The One. He’d barely even touched his salad and already he was exhausted. He wondered if he asked enough questions, could he also see her in a more favourable light? Did she also have her perfect angle? Could she be The One? And if not her, then how many more of these dates would he have to endure before he too could settle?

  “Do you have a profile?” she asked.

  Isaac shook his head.

  “You really should. I’m surprised you don’t. I’ve had mine now for about six months. I had different ones before that but this new profile is really catching on. It’s only a matter of time really.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, what do you think? Until I trend. Until I’m famous of course.”

  “You want to be famous?”

  “Everyone wants to be famous. Except now fame is accessible. It’s not about who you know anymore. The door is opened for everybody. You don’t have to go to Hollywood anymore. Heck, you don’t even need to really do anything. It’s fairer now; more inclusive. Now anybody can be famous. I don’t really want to be famous, though. I want to not want to be famous. Get it?”

  “I think so,” said Isaac. “No, I don’t think I do.”

  “Most famous people just wish they could be normal. I want to be like that.”

  “You want to be normal?”

  “No. I want to want to be normal – because I’m rich.”

  “But you don’t actually want to be normal?”

  “Of course not. Who wants to be normal? I want everyone to want to be me just like I used to want to be everyone else.”

  “So you don’t want to be like everyone else.”

  “You don’t listen. No, I don’t want to be anyone. I want to want to be someone else. I want to be me, but rich and famous, and wanting to be like I used to be – just common and normal. Now, do you get it?”

  “Kind of,” he said.

  “It’s all state of mind. If it thinks like a duck…” she said, drawing out the suspense.

  “It’s a duck?” said Isaac, expecting horse’s hooves.

  “Exactly. It’s not enough to look like a duck and act like a duck, you have to think like a duck too if you ever want to be a duck. It’s all mindset. A rich person isn’t thinking, ‘how do I get rich?’ That’s how a poor person thinks. A nobody is thinking, ‘what can I do to be famous?’ What does a famous person think?”

  Isaac literally had no idea.

  “A famous person isn’t thinking about becoming famous. They are famous. They’re thinking, ‘I wish I could get my taint waxed without ending up on the front page of a newspaper.’ Quack quack,” she said. “That’s how the duck thinks. The Queen of England once said, ‘Watch your thoughts for they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your…”

  “Your actions… So and so, your destiny. I don’t think it was The Queen, though. I think you’re referring to Margaret Thatcher.”

  “Like I said, The Queen.”

  “She wasn’t The Queen. She was Prime Minister. And I’m pretty sure you’re quoting a movie. I don’t think she actually said that.”

  “It was a biopic, actually. And if she didn’t say it then why was it put in the movie?”

  “Because it’s a movie. Movies aren’t real.”

  “Potato, po-tah-to,” said Stacey. “The point is, I create my world. I manifest it and I make it happen. And soon enough I will have a million followers.”

  “Really?” said Isaac genuinely surprised. “How many do you have now?”

  “It’s not about the number,” said Stacey, sounding irate. “You really don’t get the nuance of what I’m trying to say.”

  “I’m trying,” said Isaac.

  It’s true, though. The nuance could have been highlighted and spelled in capitols and sung in bold and prophetic voices by a Broadway chorus line and he still wouldn’t get it. It could have been a hand-delivered note and he still wouldn’t get it. And this alone said more about Isaac than anyone else.

  “Don’t you want to be famous?” she asked.

  “I’ve never thought about it. But no, I don’t think so.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a research scientist.”

  “And so what do you do?”

  “My colleague and I propose difficult questions and we do experiments to answer them, and then hopefully we are able to publish our findings.”

  “And do you want people to read it?”

  “Of course,” said Isaac. “That’s kind of the point.’

  “And the more people who read the better?”

  “Well yeah, obviously, but…”

  “So you want to be famous too.”

  “No, not famous. I want to be….”

  He thought for a second about the lineage of success in the world of academia and his place within it. He had already acquired his Ph.D. but in the world of academia, this was merely just his hazing. There was still a great long road ahead. He had yet to attain professorship, and even then, it would be many more decades ahead before he would even be in consideration for tenure. And that was what he longed for the most; it was what all academics longed for.

  Recognition – Prestige – Acclaim

  “It’s different,” he said.

  “We all want to be visible,” said Stacey. “The internet has brought the whole world together – seven billion people all in one space. That’s a lot of people. Everyone wants their voice heard; everyone wants to be seen. Now, more than ever, there is an absolute need to be successful and to be famous. Technology brought us together but it also made us all invisible. But this is good, too.”

  “Good? Sounds depressing. How can that be good?”

  “Because it means you gotta not just be better, you have to be the best if you wanna get seen if you want to get recognised if you want your place on the stage if you really want to be famous.”

  “Ok, so what’s your thing? How do you expect to stand out?”

  “The classics always trend,” she said.

  Then she knocked her knife and fork onto the floor.

  “Oops,” she said as if it were a terrible mistake. “I’m gonna pick up that knife and fork and then I’m going to crawl under the table and I’m going to give you a blow job,” she said in a tone that suggested this was not about the pleasure at all. “And you’re going to film it.”