The Peacock Manifesto (Peacock Tales Book 1)

by Stuart David

  The Peacock Manifesto

  by

  Stuart David

  Copyright © 2015 Stuart David

  Chapter 1

  They call me Peacock.

  Why?

  The tattoo. I wear it on my shoulder. I had it done in my teens, in admiration of the bird. I still admire the bird today. I admire the way it looks. I admire the way it struts. I admire the way it preens.

  And did it hurt?

  Did it fuck.

  But perhaps even without the tattoo they would still call me Peacock. I like to strut. I like to preen. I keep myself colourful. I wear a white vest to give the tattoo as much exposure as possible, but when it gets cooler I like to wear a good Hawaiian shirt on top. A good vintage one. None of this modern shite.

  I keep my hair slicked back and my long moustache well trimmed. I like a good pair of vintage trousers too. I like to look good. There’s no point in slinking about in the shadows like a pigeon. That never got anybody anywhere, and I’m certainly going somewhere.

  You’ll see.

  Right now I’m on my way to Chicago. Sitting high above the clouds in the sunshine. There’s a start already. When I left Glasgow this morning the rain was pissing down. Bucketing. But here I am now with my head up high above the clouds.

  Fucking magic.

  I’ve got an idea, you see—and I’m taking that to Chicago. I’m on my way to meet a guy who can turn ideas into something real. A friend of a friend of a friend. I took the risk of telling a guy I know that I had the idea, and he said he might know someone who could help. Someone who could make it real. I’m strictly an ideas man, but then again—that’s the most important part, eh? I just hope this guy can do what I’ve been told he can do. He fucking better be able to. I spent just about the last money I had on this fucking flight.

  There’s an idiot sitting next to me. But when’s there not, eh? This one’s in a suit. As soon as we were up and it started to get stuffy I pulled off the Hawaiian shirt and he clocked the tattoo.

  ‘That’s a fine piece of work,’ he told me.

  So I let him know that he should keep his eyes off it, keep his eyes off me, and forget about trying to make any more conversation.

  He thought the bird was a fucking budgie.

  Fucking tool.

  But there’s not been another peep out of him since then. The prick’s been pretending to sleep since my wee warning. I can see him slightly opening his eyes and risking a worried glance at me every now and again, and then he makes a fucked up noise to try and convince me he’s asleep for sure. But he’s stopped bothering me now, and as long as I know he won’t try and talk to me again I’m happy. And I’ve got my idea to keep me occupied.

  I’ll tell you what I feel like up here—carrying this thing. I feel a bit like my Uncle Tam. Or how I imagine he must have felt, the day he fucked himself up for good. While he was making his journey at least.

  He was eighty-two years old then, and the poor bastard had been impotent for over twenty years. But on this particular morning he woke up with one of the most impressive hard-ons he’d ever had. Hard as a rock, he said. So—still half asleep—he rolled over towards his wife, and she wasn’t there. He started shouting on her, and as he woke up more he remembered she’d gone to stay at her sisters. Typical, eh? So he thought about working it off himself, but he decided that would be a waste. And instead he got out of bed, half expecting the thing to fall away as soon as he stood up. But it stayed. He could hardly fucking believe it.

  He got himself dressed, carefully—then he went downstairs and it was still the same. He said there was something almost supernatural about it; as if he was an adolescent again. And he got outside and got on the bus, and of course that could only help. He’d expected it might go down once he got amongst people, out of a sense of decency; but not at all. It stayed. And he had to cover it with his hat.

  So he travelled like that all the way to his wife’s sister’s, early in the morning, on a bus full of people going to work.

  When he got to the house everything was still quiet there. He knew he was taking his chances if he knocked the door and had to talk to his wife’s sister first. He’d have to think up a reason for why he was there and then risk his wife coming downstairs to sit and drink tea with them. So instead the old fool went round to the back of the house and started climbing up the fucking drainpipe to the spare room. And he got pretty close too. He got close enough to knock on the window, and close enough that his wife came and opened the curtains. And he managed to hold on. He managed to hold on while she looked scared then just confused. And he managed to hold on while she opened the window. But then, as a way of explaining his strange visit, the old idiot took one hand off the drainpipe to point at his dick bulging in his trousers, and he fell all the way onto the path beneath them.

  Never walked again, and he certainly never got another hard-on.

  But at that one point, that moment in the day when he was travelling on the bus with his hat covering his prick—he must have felt pretty much how I feel just now, up here above these clouds. And I only have to hope this guy I’m on my way to see comes through for me. And I don’t end up lying in the garden like Uncle Tam.

  Chapter 2

  Idiot-boy in the next seat kept his eyes closed all the way down. He pretended to be sleeping as we started to descend, and even after we landed. Right on through the plane moving into park, and then stopping.

  No-one can sleep through a landing. I was shitting myself. And I’ll bet if Tam had had to fly to his wife’s sister’s the landing would have assured he was still walking right up till the day he died.

  But this fool pretended to sleep right through it.

  ‘Please stay in your seats while the ‘Fasten-seatbelts’ sign remains lit,’ they said. And he pretended to be sleeping through that. Then, as soon as it beeped and the light went out, he was up like a shot and pushing to get off the plane.

  ‘Aye, run,’ I shouted at him, and a lot of other people turned round, but he didn’t turn round. I didn’t see him again. I didn’t see him at the bit were you get your bags, or outside the building.

  Wanker.

  I got a taxi outside. The driver had no idea what I was saying.

  ‘What? Where you wanna go?’

  Over and over.

  I had to write it down and show it to him.

  Fucking Americans.

  Some of what we passed through looked pretty rough. Plenty in Glasgow looks pretty rough, but mostly cause it’s fucked up. Either someone’s fucked it up or there’s no money to fix it. Some of this looked like it had been built like that. Bars on the windows and doors. Fucking mad.

  It was fucking freezing in the back of the taxi. The driver had the windows down and he gave me the ‘What?’ treatment again.

  ‘Put the window up, pal.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s fucking freezing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ah, fuck off.’

  I said that quieter than the rest, but the prick understood that.

  He stopped.

  ‘Get out,’ he said.

  So I tried it myself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get out my cab.’

  I looked out the window.

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘Calm down, pal,’ I told him, and kept looking out my window. ‘Let’s get going.’

  Then I heard something hitting against the glass that was between him and me and I looked up.

  The bampot had a gun.

  ‘Get out,’ he said again. So I grabbed my bag and got out. And there I was amongst those buildings with the bars on the windows and door
s.

  I got another taxi pretty quickly. I don’t think the guy was going to stop but I didn’t give him any fucking choice. I got right out into the road and stood in front of him. Then I jumped in the back while he was still shouting. I showed him the bit of paper I showed the first guy and just smiled. Pretended I didn’t speak the fucking language. It was fucking easier. That calmed him down too, thinking I was just some daft foreign bastard.

  It didn’t stop him talking though. He talked all the way from there to the hotel, about how crazy a place America is, and exactly what I’d think of it. What I’d like, what I wouldn’t. What I’d do and what would happen to me. I shrugged now and again to try and convince him I didn’t understand a word. He didn’t seem to have the brains to realise that if I couldn’t speak English I probably wouldn’t understand what the fuck he was talking about either. Or maybe he just didn’t care.

  Still, I made it here. I found it pretty confusing that I’d been travelling for fifteen hours, and it was only nine hours since I’d left the house, by my watch. If I’d been at home it would have been getting on for night-time, but it was only the afternoon. I couldn’t get my head round that. I felt like going to bed, but you can’t go to bed in the afternoon. So I went downstairs to the bar.

  * * *

  I had a day to wait until my guy was due to arrive. He wasn’t coming till the next afternoon. Coming in from New York. Apparently he knew somewhere we could work cheaply in Chicago—so that’s why I was there. I hoped to fuck he would turn up. My mate who spoke to his mate likes to think he’s such a big mover that he put the whole thing together himself. He thought that would impress me. It fucking impressed him.

  ‘Maybe I should speak to the guy first,’ I kept saying to him.

  ‘No need,’ he would tell me. ‘It’s all taken care of, Peacock. Just remember, I’m on twenty percent if it all works out.’

  Tit.

  I should have fucking spoke to him though. Just to sort it out.

  I know a few things about the guy. I know he’s not long out of the jail. And I know he’s gotten into this new thing now. I know he can take the ideas and make them real. I think he’s realised the same thing as me, that this is where the money’s to be made now. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of crime on the side, to keep you going, but no one makes the big money there anymore. It’s all moved out into other places. A lot of it has moved into talking about crime. In the films and that. And a lot of it has moved into this thing we’re about to get involved in.

  As soon as I arrived at my hotel I opened my bag, and unwrapped my wee portable CD player from the towels that were protecting it. And then I went into the pocket of the bag. I felt that thrill again as I pulled the CD out of there. The same thrill I got when the idea first occurred to me. That Uncle Tam feeling. And I slapped it into the CD player and listened again.

  Each time I go to listen to it again I shit myself in case it doesn’t still hold up. But it always does. It’s perfect. It’s a stroke of fucking genius. And as soon as we get a dance beat onto this, and some of those fucking techno noises—some of that fucking scratching—it’s going to sell a million. Two million. Ten fucking million.

  If this guy comes through and knows his stuff it’ll be a fucking worldwide hit. I don’t have the fucking first iota about how any of that stuff gets done, but that’s not the important part. The important part is the idea—and what a fucking idea.

  Wait till you hear it.

  Wait till you hear what we’re going to make a dance record from.

  Are you ready?

  Glen Campbell. Rhinestone-fucking-Cowboy.

  Eh?

  Ha ha…

  Chapter 3

  When I came back up from the bar I phoned the wife, but I still hadn’t got my head round the time change.

  ‘What’s wrong, Peacock?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing? What the hell are you phoning me for then?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘What time is it, Peacock?’

  ‘Ten o’clock.’

  ‘Not here. Not here it’s not. It’s four o’clock in the morning here, Peacock. Phone me tomorrow afternoon, you big moron.’

  And then she hung up.

  Charming, eh? What a wee smasher. Six thousand miles I’d travelled and she didn’t even ask me how the fucking trip was. She was awake by then anyway; it wouldn’t have killed her. But she’s still in the huff, you see. She’s in the huff cause I never brought her with me. I kept telling her I was coming here to work, not for a holiday. But all she kept saying was, ‘What the hell do you know about music? You big baboon.’

  I told her,

  ‘I don’t know a fucking thing about it, but I know a good idea.’

  And that always shut her up. She knows it’s a good idea too.

  I got a good sleep after I’d phoned her, though. Just knowing it was four in the morning at home put me out like a light. I didn’t wake up till the phone woke me, and I’d no idea where I was.

  ‘Mr Johnson?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Guest for you, sir?’

  ‘What? Who the fuck’s this?’

  ‘This is front desk, sir. We have a guest for you? Shall I send him up?’

  I looked at the clock then. Fucking two o’clock in the afternoon.

  ‘Tell him to wait,’ I said. ‘I’ll come down.’

  I took my time. I had a shower. I fixed myself up. When I got downstairs he was the only person in the lobby. He looked pretty ridiculous. For a start, he was wearing a hairnet. A hairnet. Like my fucking granny used to wear to keep her rollers in place. I liked his boots though. Snakeskin they looked like.

  He stood up when he saw me.

  ‘Peacock?’ he said.

  ‘That’s me, son,’ I told him, and he reached out his hand.

  ‘Glad to meet you,’ he said, and then he introduced himself. Are you ready for this? Just keep in mind that he said it with a straight face. He said,

  ‘I’m Evil Bob.’

  Can you believe it?

  There was no way I. could keep a straight face.

  ‘You’re fucking joking,’ I said.

  But he held up his knuckles. It was tattooed there.

  He didn’t find it amusing that I’d found it amusing.

  ‘So why do they call you Peacock?’ he asked, and I showed him the bird.

  ‘Looks more like a parrot,’ he said. ‘Or a cockatiel.’

  We stared at each other for a bit, then he laughed. Then I laughed. It seemed okay. So we went out to a sandwich shop further up the street, to talk some business.

  ‘What the fuck is that?’ I asked him when he brought our sandwiches to the table.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That.’

  ‘Ham and cheese. You asked for ham and cheese.’

  ‘Not that much ham. Not that much cheese. That’s a whole fucking packet of both, pal.’

  ‘Welcome to America,’ he said.

  I stripped some of it off. Fuck that.

  ‘So,’ Bob said, as he sat down, ‘you’re the guy.’

  I assured him that I was.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s hope this works out.’

  And then he started eating his own thing. Full to bursting with vegetables and what looked like grass.

  He was quite a skinny wee guy, but he could eat. He didn’t strip a single vegetable off, and his speed amazed me. He didn’t look up or say a word till he’d finished, and even though I’d knocked mine down to a normal size before I started I was only halfway through the first slice by the time he was done.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said. Then he started on his coffee. ‘From what I’ve heard, it seems we’ll make a great team,’ he said.

  ‘Should do, son. Should do.’

  ‘Did they tell you what I’ve got?’

  ‘Not a word. They only told me you were the guy.’

  ‘That’s pretty much all they told me about you. But I think you’ll be impres
sed. I think we’re onto something.’

  He dragged his bag up onto the table and I laughed at the logo on it. Boston Ballet.

  ‘Quite the faggot, huh?’ he said. ‘I used to dance there.’

  ‘Dance?’

  ‘Modern dance. Then someone knocked me off my bike. Broke both my legs.’

  ‘Probably for the best,’ I told him.

  ‘Forget that,’ he said. ‘This is the shit.’

  He pulled a pair of headphones out of the bag, and put his hands back inside.

  ‘Put those on,’ he said, so I did. A Stones song came on. Fucking Jagger whooping like a monkey. Then it stopped.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘Eh?’

  He nodded at me and winked.

  ‘What?’ I asked him, and he looked a bit hurt.

  ‘You don’t like it?’

  ‘It sounds okay.’

  ‘So you think you can do something with it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We just need to repeat that one part. It’ll fly. As soon as you’ve added some beats and maybe a house piano it’ll be fantastic. It can’t fail.’

  I looked down at all the spare meat and cheese on my plate.

  ‘Ah, fuck…’ I said.

  Chapter 4

  I’d got the time difference worked out by the next time I phoned the wife, but I didn’t tell her about what had happened. She’d have gone mental. I just told her that I’d met the guy, and he seemed like an okay guy. I didn’t tell her he’d been expecting me to do the same job I’d been expecting him to do. And I didn’t tell her I’d lost the head with him a bit, there in the sandwich shop.

  I can’t remember all what I shouted in there now, but I think I scared the wee guy. Some of it was directed at him, but most of it was about that twat who’d sent me over there in the first place. I remember I started throwing bits of meat at the window at one point, and he just sat there staring at me. And then, when I’d settled down again, he asked me what my idea had been.

  ‘Ach… It doesn’t matter, son,’ I told him.

  ‘I’m interested,’ he said. ‘Mine was good enough to bring me in from New York. I’m interested in what brought you all the way from Scotland?’