by Ben Brooks
‘Um,’ I say.
‘I ummed once. Look.’ He pulls up his trouser leg and prods a squirting purple dick with eyes and lipstick. It is crisscrossed with bursting veins, cuts and hairs.
I swallow. ‘Very cool,’ I say. ‘Very cool tattoo.’
‘Not really.’
‘No, I mean. Yes. Not cool at all. Medium cool. Not cool and not not cool.’
‘Right.’ He blinks at me and shakes his head. He thinks I have special needs. I do have special needs. Macy is one of them. ‘You ready?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’
‘Yes or no?’
‘Yes.’
He wipes jelly over the ink and starts to follow the outline. It doesn’t hurt like I thought it would. It feels like a small trail of burning. I watch the line form and feel warm knowing it won’t ever leave. My skin will stretch and shed, and my bones will grow, but the edge of this bruise will stay the same. Macy stands behind me, her hand resting in my hair.
‘You’re done,’ he says, after not many minutes. ‘Now it’s Mum’s turn.’
‘She’s not my mum.’
Macy shakes her head and laughs. ‘Kids,’ she says. ‘They hit a certain age and it’s like they don’t want to know you any more.’ She grins. Mitch smiles and shakes his head at me like I’m his son. I’m not his son. I’m Dad’s son.
When hers is finished, we stand in front of the mirror.
‘Yours looks like Alaska,’ Macy says.
‘Yours looks like a panda,’ I say, imagining each word is the name of an invincible superhero.
33
We buy beer, paper, scissors, glue, and several home and lifestyle magazines from a Morrisons near the hotel. When we get inside, we immediately undress and climb back into bed, peeling the sheets of cellophane away from our tattoos. We use bedside tables to prop the duvet up from inside. We sit in the tent and touch each other’s faces. I hold her jaw lightly in cupped hands, like a hamster. Macy grips my wrists and tells me to wait.
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘The first rule is that nothing outside of this tent exists.’
‘Not even Cher Lloyd.’
‘Especially not Cher Lloyd.’
‘Bye, Cher.’
‘The second rule is that you can only make it out of things from the magazines.’ She tucks a band of hair behind her ear. Under the thick light her face looks like a sepia photograph. ‘But you can arrange them any way you want.’
‘Can there be celebrities?’
‘Yes. But no kissing them.’
‘I don’t even want to.’
She leans in and kisses me. ‘Okay. So we have the pictures and we connect them up anyway we want. It has to be about you too, though, not just us. You need a job, remember.’
‘To support you.’
‘Yes.’
‘Okay.’
‘Ready?’
‘Yes.’
*
I will wake up refreshed and alert in a room that smells of lake water and butter. You will be asleep on your back. I will kiss your eyebrows, move into the kitchen, and sip coffee prepared by our friendly robot maid, Dolores. The view from the window over our empty sink will be of a morning the colour of peppermint, happening over flat, endless ocean.
I will think about boats, your feet, and redecorating the bathroom.
I will idly push my finger against dates on the calendar.
Sarah wedding. Tom birthday. Katie baptism. Leave for NY. Back from NY. Dentist. TV interview. Knighting ceremony.
I will leave for work.
My job will be to sit in a cushion pit, watching unreleased films and suggesting improvements.
More touching. Less cancer. A joke about manatees.
My colleagues will be quiet and unserious. On work trips with shared hotel rooms, we will pile up our mattresses and jump from increasingly dangerous heights. We will empty our minibars and become wildly honest.
Me and Robert Pattinson will play tennis together every other weekend. He will have an extremely strong serve. Over post-match drinks, we will plan a week-long camping trip to the Italian Alps. We will talk about snow and sap and how quick our calves will turn to tightly strung bows.
My chauffeur will drive me home along neon-heavy streets under light rain. His name will be Sebastian. He will enjoy sushi, latex, and the films of Sion Sono. We will stop briefly for tangerines, then leave the city. I will text you a photo of the back of Sebastian’s head with my face reflected in it.
Our house will be a large but not blatant network of tree houses in a forest forty miles from the nearest building. It will consist of various large, wooden structures linked by rope bridges.
*
‘Wait,’ I say. ‘What about your kids?’
‘Nothing else exists, remember.’
‘I keep imagining them starving to death somewhere that doesn’t have you in.’
‘They’ve been abducted and killed.’
‘That’s too much.’
‘Abducted and never heard of again.’
‘Okay.’
*
You will meet me midway along the entrance bridge. While hugging you, I will frantically rock the bridge and you will scream and tell me to stop but you will be joking and I will continue.
We will sit at opposite ends of baths late at night, drinking rum and purposely getting film quotes wrong. We will shampoo each other’s hair. You will gently press out the blackheads on my back and you will tell me that it’s normal and you will not be revolted.
We will ingest Nytol and sleep for fifteen-hour stretches. During periods of heavy rain, we will become immobile and childish. We will communicate with animal sounds and hand-squeezing.
On warm days, you will be silent while I apply sun cream to your cheeks. We will smoke cigarettes and whip each other with tree branches, hard enough to be fun but not hard enough for bruises. We will eat jam sandwiches and pre-made fruit salads.
You will take up knitting, knit something you insist is a tabard, and give away all the remaining wool.
We will quit our jobs and retire in a politically stable country where people take afternoon naps and eat outside. We will learn bridge, yoga and scuba diving.
We will die simultaneously.
*
‘I don’t like Dolores,’ Macy says. ‘No more Dolores. She’s creepy.’
‘Okay.’
She laughs and falls forward over our collection of damp collages. I plant my hands on her arms and we roll over and the bedside tables fall to the carpet.
34
When it’s over, we open the curtains and build high pillow mounds to recline on. Lines of people in revealing clothes fill up the street and tall buildings start to glow. I think about how many people are in the buildings then I stop because it’s too many. I turn on the TV.
‘What do you want to watch?’ I say.
‘I don’t know.’
Love, Actually is on, but it’s already been on for a while and Colin Firth is already sprinting to Portugal to propose. I don’t change the channel. I can’t concentrate.
‘Do you think we should be honest?’ I say.
‘No.’ She bites her nail. ‘What do you mean?’
‘About stuff.’
She exhales and slumps forward. ‘No,’ she says. ‘That would ruin it. There’s no reason why you need to know that I work in a school or own a Saxo, because it doesn’t affect me, and you, and now, which is honestly . . . no, it sounds stupid.’
‘It doesn’t sound stupid.’
I don’t know why she’s telling me she has a Saxo if she doesn’t want me to know she has a Saxo.
‘You don’t know what it is.’
‘You never sound stupid.’
Except when you talk about big balls.
‘I feel happy today.’
‘Me too.’
Nothing happens.
‘Um. You work in a school,’ I say. ‘I thought you stayed at home.’
‘Holidays. I don’t feel like it matte
rs, everyone’s lying to everyone else all the time anyway. It’s better for us to make up lies together.’
I think about Hattie. Honesty as a piñata. A huge, garish, donkey-shaped piñata that everyone is smacking with bare hands, hoping it splits open and leaks tiny lumps of something better than whatever they already have.
‘I think so too.’
‘You want to say something?’
I tip my head back and look at hers. It seems too still and calm to be alive, like it’s the head of a serene Indian god cast in copper. I swallow. ‘I’m fifteen,’ I say.
She sighs. ‘I’m not stupid.’
‘No, really, I am.’
‘I meant I know you are.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’ll turn myself in and go to prison. They’ll give me eight years. It will be front-page news. They’ll say I lured you to a hotel room.’ She rearranges herself so that her face is on my belly button, her eyes pointed up and towards me.
‘You didn’t even groom me,’ I say. ‘I paid for everything.’
‘They’ll say I manipulated you.’
‘Did you?’
‘Maybe.’
I mute the TV. ‘In prisons, the not-paedophile inmates throw acid in the paedophile inmates’ faces.’
‘I’ll pretend to be a murderer.’
‘I don’t want them to do that to you.’
‘I know.’ She manoeuvres herself onto me and slides down my boxer shorts and I can see the shapes of ceiling lights reflected in her hair.
In the morning, Macy’s gone and there’s a note: I didn’t really want to say goodbye. I’m sorry. Let’s talk tonight.
On the train home, I write a letter and fall asleep. I dream about dead dogs, a safari and hurricanes.
Macy Poem #1
In the event of a zombie apocalypse
in which you were a zombie
my plan would be
to eat three bars of Galaxy
drink six cups of tea
and lie somewhere
clearly visible
but vaguely comfortable
and not try to decapitate you
or stop you from infecting me
with zombie virus.
PART 4
Birthmark
35
The house is filled with wind. I left the conservatory doors open for Amundsen, who’s been sleeping on my bed and moulting on my carpet. I say sorry. He pants and salivates and licks my eyebrows. I tell him we can go for a walk after I’ve tidied. There’s a lot to tidy. There are empty bottles and unwashed plates and chunks of smashed glass on the lino. I don’t remember smashing glass. I check Amundsen’s paws for splinters. He’s okay. Alive. I fill two bin bags with rubbish and stack up the washing, thinking I’ll do it later and knowing I won’t.
The kettle boils.
I make a Nesquik tea and drink it on the sofa, under a blanket thick with dog hair. There’s a film on about a man and a woman who fall in love and then the woman disappears and the man tries to find her. He doesn’t know if she’s been murdered or kidnapped. He tells everyone that she wouldn’t have run away. He sells his house and his car and hires detectives. In the end, she appears and says she loves him and they get married. She doesn’t say where she’s been. I think, this is stupid. Maybe I missed something. It makes me sleepy, though, because they’re smiling a lot at the end. I feel like the last four days have lasted forty days. They’re getting married in a park now. I don’t know if that’s legal. I’m almost asleep then Amundsen starts pestering me to take him for a walk. I yawn. I check the time on my phone.
‘If you wait ten minutes, we’ll see Mushroom.’ He climbs onto the sofa and rests his head on my crotch.
*
There’s a little Famous Grouse left and I drink it. I need to be brave. I need to go and do a sorry to Aslam. I fill my rucksack with a memory stick loaded with Greta Gerwig mumblecores, Dad’s sloe vodka, strawberry Nesquik and four Typhoo teabags (Aslam’s family use loose tea. It tastes bad with Nesquik). Amundsen’s tired. He’s asleep in the armchair. I empty a can of tripe into his bowl and leave.
Aslam lives in a house with his dad and little brother next to the cemetery at the bottom of the hill. There’s no car outside, so his dad must be at work. I push the recycling bin up to the side gate and climb over. I shuffle along the concrete and look through the kitchen window. There’s an overflowing ashtray, a half-drunk bottle of rosé, chocolate fingers, and no Aslam. I wonder who’s been drinking gay wine. I prop the window open on its metal stem and slide myself in through the gap. I land with my feet in the sink.
He must be in his room building computers. He probably has headphones on. I can come up from behind and give him a heart attack. He’ll be excited about getting to go to hospital and he’ll forgive me. Aslam was in St James’s for a week last year with broken collarbones. He told me it was fucking wicked. Free food and fit nurses, he said.
I down some of the rosé and eat a chocolate finger, then go upstairs. Aslam’s door is the one past the bedroom. Thayyab writes notes and sticks them to his brother’s door depending on how he feels towards him. Today the sign is written in green highlighter.
big gay prikheds room
I gently push open the door and stop. The curtains are drawn and a paper floor lamp that looks like a dystopian cocoon is glowing by the bed.
I immediately feel physically ill.
My chest crushes itself.
I can hear the blood beating in my head.
Alice’s back is to me. It is frantically bobbing up and down. She’s naked except for a plastic clip holding her hair together on top of her head. It’s probably so she could suck him off. She’s doing sex moans that sound like snoring lions. Aslam’s fingertips appear on either side of her waist. They squeeze until blood drives away from them and the skin turns white.
My lethargy evaporates. I feel like I’m everywhere. I take a potted plant down from a bookshelf and advance on them. He sees me before I get close enough. He screams and spins. The girl jumps up, pulling the duvet over her breasts.
The girl isn’t Alice.
I don’t recognise the girl.
She’s fit.
An eight maybe.
‘Etgar,’ he says.
‘Uh.’
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’
‘I’m going to throw up.’
He throws a bin at me and I catch it. The last four days fall out of my mouth. The last four days are sour neon porridge. My stomach spasms and cries. I open my eyes. The bin is a wire bin. Lumps of sick spot the carpet.
‘Were you going to kill me?’ Aslam says.
‘No.’
‘Because it kind of looks like you were going to kill me, man.’
I put the bin down. ‘I thought she was Alice.’
‘She looks nothing like Alice.’
He’s right. Her nose is longer and she barely has eyebrows. ‘I know. She’s not Alice. I’m kind of drunk.’
‘This is Amy. I told you about Amy.’ I should have listened. I should have clicked the links to videos he sent. I should have helped him meet and seduce her at the Monopoly party.
‘Oh.’
‘Etgar, Amy. Amy, Etgar.’
We shake hands. She does a little laugh and smiles an I don’t know what’s happening smile. Her hand is wet with sex sweat.
‘I was coming over to say sorry. I’m sorry. I bought Nesquik and Greta Gerwig.’
‘Jesus. It’s okay. Let me punch you and we’ll be even. Just stop being mental. I probably shouldn’t have kept trying to make you come out. It’s just boring now, no one will go out with me.’
Amy shifts uncomfortably.
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Sorry. I’ll let you finish.’
‘I’ve gone soft,’ Aslam says. Amy laughs. ‘Let’s get dressed. Did you bring anything that isn’t Nesquik to drink?’
‘I brought sloe vodka.’
‘What the fuck is that?’
‘It’s like –
uh. You put berries in vodka and then leave it for ages.’
‘Sweet,’ Aslam says. ‘Wash your face and put the TV on.’
‘Okay. Thanks. Sorry.’
I go downstairs. I feel light and excited to sit somewhere warm, get drunk and watch films. There is nothing bad left to happen. I’m already drunk. I haven’t stopped being drunk since whatever day it was I started getting drunk. The news comes on. More bad things are happening in far away places. The bald man isn’t there. He’s retired. He’s gone to open a rum bar with his wife in the Mediterranean.
I go through Aslam’s DVD tower. I choose Aristocats. It’s got songs in and no one dies at the end. Alice and I never watched it together. Aslam is the only person who ever really wanted to see Disneys.
When he comes down, Aslam gets shot glasses and we arrange ourselves on the sofa cushions, under an unzipped sleeping bag. Constavlos curls up in the armchair. We talk while the film plays. Amy sings to some of the songs and I decide that I like her. She says that she made a video of herself singing ‘Everybody Wants to Be a Cat’ and it got fifty thousand views on YouTube. She says that when she broke up with her last boyfriend he crashed his car into her garage and got his hand stuck in her letterbox. Police and firemen had to come. They cut him out.
We laugh.
The laughter dissolves.
‘What did she do?’ Amy says.
I fidget. ‘She handjobbed someone with a tribal tattoo then told me he raped her with kisses.’
Amy and Aslam lock eyes. She bats her eyelashes.
‘We could egg her,’ she says.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘No. I don’t know.’
‘Say yes. We won’t get caught. If we do, you can tell her dad what she did.’ I think, I like Mr Calloway. He didn’t give Aaron Mathews a handjob. He shouldn’t have his house egged. Once, while Alice was asleep, I went downstairs to get a beer. Mr Calloway was sitting at the marble island in their kitchen, eating Weetabix and reading a book. He stood up. His dressing gown was heavy with the weight of the chocolate hobnobs in its pockets. ‘Are you okay?’ I said. ‘It’s hard to be away from each other,’ he said. We hugged and my forehead got wet from the sweat on his chest.
