Damascus by Richard Beard

number.
    As he waits for someone to answer his heart performs some amateur acrobatics, an imperfect somersault or two in the tender vault of his chest. Her father, her mother, her sister will answer. Or shell be out at the seaside, wearing a swimming costume and a tennis skirt, lying on a sand dune staring up at the sky, listing favourite airlines.

    11/1/93 M ONDAY  10:12
    The phone call was a sign. William was sure of it. He’d been about to change his mind about going outside when the modem portable thing had gone off and a complete stranger had told him he ought to go out now. One last try then. It had to be worth a try because miracles were always possible.
    He stood boldly in front of the door. He went to check his braces, flies, thought I’ve already done that, and instead straightened his jaw. He blinked hard, put his hand to the latch, pulled the door open and stepped outside into a light unexpected drizzle. He felt the rain only vaguely because unused to the random generosity of outside life he stood transfixed by JEPSON’S PIANO SALE NOT ON!!, With Prices Cheaper Than Others’ Sale Prices Who Needs A Sale? By Jereiny Yates and Tony Fellner listening to Nigel Coren’s opinion that Maradona was no spring chicken on the top deck of a big red bus marked Clapham driven by Clive Webb, volunteer RSPB Birdline recorded message operator and planning to get engaged at Christmas. By Mr and Mrs Peter Pinkerton, conservation officers at the Garden History Society in their new Vauxhall Cavalier with low-solvent content Bayer paint, and the flying bicycle of Stuart Dangerfield, two-times Newlands Pass British Hill-Climb Champion, and the non-stop left-right, right-left tennis of traffic and the noise of cars, Toyotas, Vauxhalls, Peugeots, Fords alongside distant shouting from the library which is National Library Week and The-Most-Noise-Ever-Made-In-A-Library. Outside the newsagents 
Ulster Talks
 and 
Children Find Body
 and 
Film Star River Phoenix (23) Dead
.
    And this was only the beginning.
    William knew there was more than this, much more of it out of sight and branching away from here through the countless towns of the nation. All of it was peopled, named, full of explicit purposes achieved or frustrated, with reasons before and consequences after, all converging on now so that it was hardly surprising if William found it difficult to breathe with the sheer quantity of significant things crammed into this and any one tiny moment, the collision of everything that had ever happened with everything that was still waiting to happen, second after second after second. His eyes left right left, past the parked cars and a stalled Ford Transit, and on the far pavement he tries to contain in his mind and fully understand the simultaneous possibility of REVISED INTEREST RATES 7.00 (6.50) % gross, and flying south this winter with Forte Grand, 2 nights Jet-Setting in Monte Carlo from £269 per person based on 2 adults sharing a standard twin/double room with private bathroom single room rates available on request and 7 nights of majesty Cairo and the Nile from £699 per person, Historic Malta, Fabulous Algarve, £229 and £279 respectively per person per person, like per second per second as a maximum velocity per person per person of things to be and places to go.
    There is no end to it.
    Here come Raymond Pangalos and Giles Nuttall in vampire outfits teeth crooked stumbling home in morning tail-suits from a wedding or an epic Hallowe’en party, past the window of DJM Games, black and white with chessboards harsh on the rambling eye. A shrieking yellow poster for a three-way rock concert featuring 
Mal Pelo
 and 
Southern Dogs
 and 
Ignominious Defenestration
, doors open 20:30 - LATECOMERS WILL NOT BE ADMITTED TO AUDITORIUM. In the sky above an Iberian Airlines jet plane deporting a pair of Kurdish asylum seekers, and then what?
    And then Spencer is slamming the door