Lolito

by Ben Brooks

  I look down at my basket. ‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s for my mum.’

  ‘Cool. Some people are up at the woods. Do you want to come? We’ve got like room in the tents and stuff. And get Aslam. Lots of people are up there.’

  I tense my hands and feet. ‘I can’t. I’ve got to help my mum with her party. It’s her special party.’ What’s that supposed to mean?

  ‘Aw. Come on. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘You should come, man,’ Matt says.

  The others are looking at bottles.

  ‘Did you hear about that footballer kicking that football referee?’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Um. So are you coming?’

  ‘I can’t. Thank you. Have fun.’

  I pick up my basket with both hands and turn around and walk at an inappropriate pace away from them. I feel bad about it. It looks rude. I want to hide. I want to be deep under the ground. I want to be so deep that the heat from the centre of the earth melts my skin and bones and I am gone.

  The woman who scans my shopping doesn’t look up. She looks at something beyond me and sighs intermittently. I’m grateful. I put the shopping on my card and go to the chemist’s counter near the exit. The woman there is wearing a Lloyds shirt and arranging boxes of generic medicine on a shelf behind the counter. She waves her polka-dot fingernails at me, yawns, and asks how she can help.

  ‘A box of Nytol, please. The 50mg ones.’ She looks me in the eyes before getting them. She is checking if she can see a suicider or a drug addict in them. She is looking for deep blackness and severe discontent. I try to project domestic calm. ‘They’re for my mum. She’s experiencing severe menstrual cramps and isn’t sleeping so well.’ The woman winces and nods. I pay and leave.

  *

  Macy has replied to my email. She says that the meeting is in central London so any hotel in Zone 1 will be okay. I go onto my bank’s website and transfer the Gran money from my savings account to my current account. Mum won’t find out. I’ll do sixth form and get a job in Tesco and never tell her. She said I would need it for university. I won’t need it for university because I won’t go to university. I will marry into extreme wealth. I feel ninety per cent sure that I will eventually marry someone I meet on the Internet. I feel ninety per cent sure that the person will not be Macy.

  I’m in bed, naked, drinking beer and looking at hotel websites. They all look the same. They all look clean and marble and the colour of sand. I book one near Marble Arch. It costs two hundred and seven pounds for one night. That’s enough for two hundred and seven beers. That’s enough for sex with four cheap prostitutes.

  She’s online.

  ‘I booked a hotel,’ I say. ‘Near Marble Arch.’

  ‘That sounds great, hon. I can’t wait to see you.’

  ‘Yeah. Me too.’

  ‘I’m vaguely nervous.’

  ‘Don’t be.’

  Do be. I’m a child. You are going to feel like a paedophile and run away. We are going to sit on separate toilet floors and cry until we fall asleep.

  ‘I keep thinking about you meeting me off the plane. We instantly recognise each other. We hold each other so tight it hurts and we kiss. I’m already wet.’

  ‘That sounds nice.’

  ‘Then you lead me into the toilet and you fuck me.’

  ‘I fuck you in the toilet.’

  ‘For an hour.’

  ‘For an hour.’

  ‘For two hours.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘For ever.’

  I stare at my computer screen. I want to cry. I want tears to fly out of my eyes like I’m a character in Titanic and I’ve just lost everyone I love. I want to collapse. I want to sleep for one hundred days and wake up somewhere unfamiliar and empty.

  ‘I can’t wait. I’m so horny right now. Might have to have a little play.’

  ‘I have to go,’ I say. ‘I have a meeting.’

  ‘Shame, hon. I’ll be thinking of you. Let me know the name of the hotel and give me a time. I can’t wait.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  I finish the beer and open another one. I watch a video of a woman killing a kitten by standing on it in stilettos. She punctures its tiny belly and purple bulbs spill out. Splashes of blood throw themselves onto her toes. The kitten yelps for a while then is gone.

  There are twenty Nytol in the box. I take ten. I close the door and lie on my back and stare at the ceiling.

  22

  We were sitting at opposite ends of Alice’s bath, under a foot of foam. Morning was coming. We hadn’t slept. I planted my foot against her face, trying to fit my big toe into her nostril. Her face folded up into tiny mountain ranges.

  ‘It still doesn’t fit,’ Alice said.

  ‘It will,’ I said. ‘I read yesterday that your ears and nose are the only things that never stop growing. It’s the cartilage or something. Because they’re made of that.’

  ‘We’ll be like eighty and then you’ll fit your toe in my nose.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  23

  There are grey moths and spiders playfighting on the ceiling. I know they aren’t there but I can see them. They aren’t so scary. Watching them is watching an open tap. It is slow and predictable and okay. I could watch them for a long time. I will keep watching. Look up. They walk on straight tracks and sporadically shiver in unison.

  I’ll play helicopter on the computer.

  Crash.

  Crash.

  Points.

  Crash.

  This is hard.

  Everything is hard.

  There is no water left in my mouth. I should go and get a glass of water. I’ll do that. I’m in the kitchen. I don’t know why I’m in the kitchen. Touch things. Try to remember. It was probably food. Put pizza in the microwave. It won’t fit. Okay, calzone. They left a lot of Iceland food. Maybe I should cook more of it. I’m in the toilet now. Lying in the bath now. It’s empty. It’s dark here. Slow death party for ever. The sink is full of goldfish. Spiders. I want to see a whale. I should call Alice and make her come. Ask her to bring a whale. No, I wouldn’t do that. Because of something. Is it too late in life to start ballet? I remember Billy Elliot. He jumped and clicked his heels. Thirsty. I’ll play helicopter on the computer.

  Crash.

  Crash.

  Aslam in my bedroom. Breaking in again. Hi. Thirsty. Aslam, can I have water? No, I haven’t seen that yet. It sounds good. I’ll watch it. I watched that other one. The stabbing one. There was sex and then dying. When she died she didn’t cry. I kept thinking, cry. I kept wanting to reassure her. Do you ever want to climb inside the TV? To get goals or be somewhere warmer? No, I haven’t seen that either. Is that Eminem? Brittany Murphy died. I don’t know how. Someone said it somewhere. She had sex with Eminem in the metal factory. She died. We should make films. I know you always say it. We should make a film where we sail a ship to an island filled with sexy women and we marry the women and throw rocks at the moon. No, we ride whales. No, we dig tunnels under the ground and live in them. We blow up houses from underneath. We blow up big Tesco. Mums die.

  Aslam, you’ve gone.

  Okay.

  Where are you?

  This is not funny.

  Really want to ride a whale. I don’t know where Aslam’s gone. Thirsty. Whale. Go and get water. I’m in the garden. There was something here. I came here for something. What. What. What if I hit my head for long enough, will the memories surface? Like bubbles. Forehead in the grass. Bubbles. What did I want here? Water. I want water. That’s the toilet. No, kitchen. Let’s go. Army. I don’t want to be here. It’s cold. Antarctica. Amundsen. Where is Amundsen? I know you can hear me. Let’s kiss. You taste like purple meat and grass and burnt rubber. Join the army with me. Let’s go somewhere. Let’s be comets.

  The doorbell. Answer it. Walk. Legs. I’m in the kitchen. I’m in my bedroom. I’m in the kitchen. What is happening? The doorbell is shouting. That is what is
happening. Okay. Answer. I want a drink of water. Open the door. Oh. It’s Alice. Come in. Hi. Thanks. I missed you. You came from Antigua. Yes, I’m okay. Your cheeks are bright. Your skin has eaten sun. Water. Wait, what. I’m on the stairs. Where’s Alice. Alice? ALICE. You left. The door’s open. You went outside. ALICE. It’s nighttime. You’ll get stabbed. Come back. ALICE. Oh God. You’ll die. You’ll get taken.

  Crash.

  ALICE.

  Go outside. Find Alice. Alice. Alice. It’s cold out here tonight. Everything carries on for ever in every direction. A man. Ask him. ALICE. Have you seen Alice? He’s running away. Come back. Help. ALICE. Alice is gone. Please. Where is she? Did you see her? It’s cold out here. Alice. Oh. ALICE.

  24

  ‘Oh my God,’ Alice said. ‘Look how dead she is.’ We were standing over her mum’s open casket.

  ‘Pretty dead,’ I said.

  Alice reached down to prod her mum’s cheek.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘What are we supposed to do?’

  PART 3

  Simultaneous

  25

  Sometimes I think of atoms as tiny people who are extremely scared and hold hands with each other a lot. I imagine that my body is made of tiny, scared people, and they pick up mugs and books, which are made of other tiny, scared people. And when you sex someone it’s just lots of tiny, scared people holding hands.

  I think about the tiny people that are me and I feel less alone.

  I’m an army of tiny people, trying their best.

  They work in a tall building (my body). They have meetings and parties and office romances. When I vomit, that’s people getting fired. When I eat, I’m hiring. When I’m dizzy, it’s a fire drill. When I die, the tiny people will wander off and look for new jobs. As plants and dirt and people. Some of the tiny people (my bones) will stay for a long time, not wanting to admit that everything is over.

  That’s what I’m thinking about now, naked, with my head inside the toilet. Regurgitated noodles are stacking up in small underwater pyramids. All of the muscles in my face are being stretched like elastic bands and I can’t breathe and I can’t feel anything, which feels good.

  When I’m empty, I feel better. I lie on the bathroom floor and hum. It’s eight and my train leaves at twelve. My body’s still asleep. There are children on my shoulders, swinging their legs against my shoulder blades. Amundsen pads up to the open bathroom door and cocks his head. There’s heavy weather in his eyes. We haven’t been going for walks. He misses The Outside. He doesn’t get anxious because we never hit him. Not even when he shat in Mum’s shoes and she put her feet in them. Not even when he jumped up to hug an old woman and she fell over asleep or unconscious. He doesn’t know what being hit is.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, convulsing as another length of bile abseils from my mouth. I am indifferent to my existence now. My existence is like India. My existence is like a basking shark in the middle of the Atlantic. It isn’t connected to me any more. It isn’t a fact of me. It is just here, next to me, like a lamp or a microwave.

  *

  It’s balmy and mild outside. Mabel is dragging herself past the far trees with Mushroom. I wave. She smiles. There’s something in my eyes that lets her know I don’t want to talk. We watch the dogs kiss each other’s bums. She tells me about being a dancer for a harmonica band when she was young. She tells me about rationing. She tells me about dancing dances I don’t know with people who are now dead.

  *

  I try to get into my funeral suit but it’s too small. It’s from when I was thirteen. From when Alice’s mum died from the wars that were happening in her breasts. The funeral happened in the church on Emery Lane. It was the first time any of us had been inside. We took ketamine and Alice kept whispering that she felt as if she went on for ever as the coffin got carried in and put down. She fell asleep behind a quiz machine at the wake. Her dad stood on a table for his speech. It’s the only thing I remember clearly.

  ‘Death is just something that happens to people but it is the worst fucking thing that happens to people and it’s going to happen to everyone.’ He started pointing. ‘To you and you and you, Brenda, to you, Brian, actually you’re probably next’. Alice’s uncles pulled him down by the elbows and dropped him onto a bench. The room applauded and someone did a cheers.

  We stayed in bed a lot that year. We stayed in bed so long I started to think our bodies were taking on the shape of cellos. We watched documentaries about faraway places and looked up ticket prices to them knowing we could never go.

  I put on Dad’s funeral suit instead. I drink. He’s not a big person, but he’s bigger than I am.

  *

  I get a taxi to the station because I might as well spend everything because what else. The taxi driver asks how I am and I say I’m really great. He asks where I’m going and I say London, to meet a woman from the Internet, who I’ve developed unfamiliar feelings for. He says that he met his second wife on the Internet. He says she used pictures of herself that were ten years old.

  On the train, I sit next to a man with large headphones and a duffel coat. He has the window seat. He’s asleep. When we start moving he opens his eyes and unfolds his hands and looks down at them. Maybe he’s looking for mouths too. I think about making him this offer: let’s both tell each other exactly what to do from now until it’s over. Every time I don’t know what to do I’ll call sleeping man and he’ll tell me. Tell her to get fucked. Choose the lasagne. Wear blue. Same with him. We will never be confused again. We will be each other’s robots.

  The station gets eaten by terraced houses and the terraced houses get eaten by fields that are blank at first then studded with sheep. People take off their coats and turn on their computers and a collective sigh happens. A woman across the aisle opens a packet of cheese and onion crisps. She blinks and knocks five into her mouth. They shatter and sound like radio static.

  The only thing I brought to read is the book Dad gave me, so I open it at random and try to learn about batting off a bear. I learn about how to give someone a tracheotomy with a ballpoint pen. You just cut a hole, put it in, and blow. Welcome back to life. I hope it gets better.

  *

  When the refreshment trolley pulls up, I think about asking for one of everything, like Harry Potter in the first book. I could share all of the food with sleeping man and we could get drunk and form unbreakable bonds through the shared feeling of being a deforested forest.

  I don’t ask for one of everything.

  I ask for peanuts and two cans of pre-mixed Smirnoff and coke. They cost four pounds each. I say ‘four pounds’ out loud while trying to do a smile at sleeping man. It doesn’t work. I look retarded. Doing smiles is hard. Sleeping man wakes up and asks for a chicken sandwich, two Twixes and a Magners.

  ‘How much?’ he says.

  ‘Nine eighty-five,’ the woman says.

  ‘Nine eighty-five,’ I say. ‘Sweet Mary, Jesus and someone else.’ He catches me with his eyes. They have being tired bruises under them. I think about hugging him. People like hugs. I think everyone wants to be hugged at all times but everyone is scared so no one does. Everyone has to sit around being unhugged. There should be people who are paid by the government to sit on public transport hugging people. The people should be called Hugabees.

  Head Hugabee.

  Hugabee of the Year.

  Hugabee Headquarters.

  No, that’s retarded. Everyone would sue the Hugabees and they’d get upset and disappear.

  I eat the peanuts and drink one of the vodkas. There is a high-pitched female voice leaking from sleeping man’s headphones. He puts the sandwich onto his plastic table and goes back to sleep. The woman in front of us answers a call. She’s excitedly making plans to walk the length of whatever river runs between London and Manchester. She is talking about verdant landscapes and kind weather. She says the word ‘contemplation’.

  I want to be excited.

  I want to walk along rivers.

  W
ait, I don’t. That’s boring. I don’t want to contemplate anything. I want to want something instead of not wanting things all the time. I want to get drunk. I finish the vodkas, get up and walk to the buffet carriage. I buy a miniature Heineken and another Smirnoff and coke. I drink them quickly in my seat, close my eyes and think, see you in London.

  26

  ‘So do her tits fall off?’ Aslam said. ‘Like with the hair?’ He sank a hand into his bucket of popcorn and leaned back. An advert for a film about talking warrior owls was playing on the big screen. We were fourteen.

  ‘No, you twat,’ Sam said. ‘They cut them off. It’s called a mastectomy.’

  ‘They actually cut off the tits?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Alice said. She was holding an Evian bottle half-filled with vodka and coke. It was the first day of the Christmas holidays and we’d taken her to see 50/50 via it having Seth Rogen in and being about not dying from cancer. ‘She says they’ll cut them off and then give her fake plastic ones to stick on so no one will be able to tell.’

  ‘Etgar would love that job.’

  ‘What job?’

  ‘Cutting off tits.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ someone said. We all turned in our seats. A man whose hair made the shape of a toilet seat was leaning forward. He was wearing glasses but looking over the top of them and he was holding a Styrofoam coffee cup and he was tall. The woman next to him was wide. Her lips were the colour of pomegranates. ‘Would you mind keeping it down?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘We’ll be quiet.’

  ‘It’s the fucking adverts,’ Aslam said. I punched him in the shoulder.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, again. We turned back to face the screen. A small boy was wandering around New York while inspiring music played. A voiceover said things about life and love and death.

  ‘Right,’ Aslam said. ‘So do they cut off the whole of the tit or like just the nipple?’