The Death of Eli Gold. David Baddiel

sister died: was killed. He could have done it any time over those two years. And he didn’t. A voice that seems not his speaks in his head: does he regret it? That’s what people are often asked about on TV: regret. And this voice is like a TV interviewer’s voice: polite, friendly, softly spoken. He knows this is not ‘voices in his head’. It is just something a lot of people do, imagine themselves being interviewed on the TV.

      – No, he says, speaking out loud. I don’t regret it. He continues in his head: because then I was grieving, and because I thought Janey might come back then and she didn’t, and because I didn’t know until I heard the news that he was dying that I understood what it was that I had to do. It was only then that I knew my destiny. And besides, he is expecting to be caught, and imprisoned, and executed. He is not trying to commit the perfect crime. He is trying to avenge it.

      – I don’t regret it, he says again out loud. He raises his chin while saying it, in an act of untargeted defiance, and as he does he catches Jesus’ eye, which looks down upon him with love.

      Chapter 2

      On arrival at the Sangster, Harvey Gold finds it difficult not to feel a tiny bit disappointed. He was not a man used to staying in five-star hotels if his father (or his estate) were not paying, and it might perhaps have been expected that he would only be grateful; or, if not actually grateful, at least so unaccustomed to this level of luxury as to be mollified by it. There are, however, a number of problems:

      1. The Sangster, although a very beautiful hotel, is not what Harvey had pictured in his mind when, in the taxi from the airport – as a check and balance in his head to the oncoming deathbed visit – he had mused expectantly about the prospect of staying in a Manhattan hotel. For Harvey, although himself born on that island and technically a citizen of it, a stay in Manhattan still required a certain amount of cliché: that is, a room at least seventy storeys up, with floor-to-ceiling windows, giving out on a glittering nightscape of Koyaanisqatsi skyscrapers. The lift at the Sangster, however, travels to a maximum only of twenty-two floors, fourteen of which were extraneous to Harvey anyway, as his room was No. 824. It is perfectly comfortable – more than perfectly comfortable – but has a view only of the internal courtyard of the hotel, and is furnished in a faintly European style. Harvey’s entrance into the room, once he’d got over the initial flummox of American tippage – such a pain in the arse, he thinks, handing over a five to a somewhat unsmiling, virtually fancy-dressed porter – is accompanied by a small sinking of the heart, that once again he’d come to America and wasn’t staying with Kojak.

      2. He is still not sure who is paying for the room. At reception, he had been asked for his credit card, along, once again, with his passport, but knew that this was standard procedure. Then again, it may have meant that the room was paid for, but he had to provide a surety for any extras. On handing over his HSBC Visa, Harvey had puffed up the courage in his rather pigeon-like chest, and said, to the autumnally suited man behind the desk: ‘Sorry … can I just ask: has my room been paid for in advance?’

      It was a question he didn’t feel entirely comfortable asking, since it clearly indicated a hope on his part that it had been, and therefore was likely to generate a sense in the autumnally suited man that this particular resident may not easily be able to pay for the room should the answer be ‘no’. Harvey knew this was the case from the way he raised the tiniest eyebrow and drummed some code out on the keyboard of his computer.

      ‘It’s been reserved on an AmEx card, sir … yours?’

      ‘No, I don’t have American Express. Well, I do, but I don’t use it.’ This was true: a lot of shops in Britain didn’t take it, and long, long ago, Harvey had forgotten the PIN. He sensed, on saying this, a suspicion from the receptionist, a resentment not unlike that he had felt at the airport from the immigration official when it had become clear that he owned an American passport but had chosen not to use it: why would you possess such a jewel and not offer it in your palm to demonstrate your kingliness? Harvey felt he could hear the resentment in the way the man went back to his computer, in the heavy dents his fingers made on the keys.

      ‘I’m afraid I can’t quite make out from the reservation whether or not all charges are to be drawn on the AmEx card, sir. This may be because the booking seems to be open-ended …?’

      He phrased the surmise as a question. Harvey felt moved to answer with the information that his father was dying, but sadly not to a nailed-down schedule, hence his room would indeed have been booked for an open length of time. But instead he just nodded and moved away to the lifts.

      3. He doesn’t have a suite. On arriving in the room, his first action – before even opening the heavy oak doors of the TV cabinet to check if the pornography channel was hard- or soft-core – had been to take his Sony Vaio laptop out of its silver case, connect it to the Plug and Play wire, and go straight to www.theSangster.com in order to torment himself with what he did not have. Fourteen suites, he had discovered, feature Steinway or Baldwin grand pianos (‘in keeping’, said the unctuously written website, ‘with the hotel’s musical heritage’) tuned twice a week. Harvey didn’t play the piano (although he still had a faint sense of the absurd needlessness of tuning any piano twice a fucking week) but nonetheless felt, on reading this, the deep, deep deprivation of not having one in his room. Further picking away at the scab of his envy, he read about the ‘legendary’ New York suite, on the twenty-second floor, with its sizeable dining room, kitchen, traditional living room, fireplace with faux-quartz logs, antique books, sunburst clocks, Lars Bolanger lacquered boxes, sage velvet seating area, another fucking piano (Steinway – tuned, no doubt, every fifteen seconds), wall-mounted plasmas, state-of-the-art Bang & Olufsen acoustic system and, of course, a ‘two-storey view of the Manhattan skyline’. He closed the computer, wondering, if he had been certain his dad was paying for it, whether or not he would have demanded an upgrade.

      These three reasons finesse his dissatisfaction, each one rising and falling at different times on the graphic equalizer of his anxiety. What would his present therapist – No. 8 – tell him to tell himself? I would really like to be in a better room, with a view and a set of Lars Bolanger-lacquered boxes, but the fact that I’m not is not the end of the world. Something like that. He gets up from the leather-topped desk and flops down on one of the two twin beds in his room. Harvey doesn’t much like that either. No matter how posh the Sangster is, the presence of the twin doubles makes it feel like a room at a Travellers’ Rest somewhere on the A41. Against his overhanging gut, he feels the dig of what should have been – according to the décor – an antique silver cigarette case, but is in fact his iPhone. He takes it out, noticing that another text has come in from Stella: Darling, hope you landed safely. Call me when you have a moment.

      He remembers then that the phone had trilled again halfway through the journey from JFK, where he had ignored it, because it had arrived just as the taxi set wheel on the Brooklyn Bridge, allowing him to take in his first view for ten years of Manhattan Island. However much the overall idea of this journey has upped Harvey’s already monstrous anxiety levels, he had at least been looking forward to this: this packed vertical Oz, rust-brown and silver, rising from the sea in the limpid light of the morning. It always made him catch his breath, that such an urban sight could be so beautiful. He held the view, sliced across by the cables of the bridge, for some seconds, allowing its splendour to work some small massage on his migranous soul. Then he had caught sight of the gap where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center used to be, and the view became the mouth of a prize-fighter with two teeth knocked out.

      Harvey wonders about calling home. Assuming that extras above and beyond the cost of the room are definitely going to be charged to him, he worries about the cost of the phone bill. He knows that phone calls from a five-star hotel are likely to be charged at an absurd number of dollars per minute. He considers using his mobile but then thinks that that too would be very expensive internationally. There is another option: one of the many bills that arrive daily on Harvey’s brown-as-dead-grass welcome mat at home, one of the many direct debits signed years ago and eating away at his solvency ever since, is for some company, who offer – for a small monthly payment – to provide a four-digit phone number that their customers can dial while staying