Gimme More

by Liza Cody

  GIMME MORE

  LIZA CODY

  Contents

  Bitchcraft

  Part 1 Introductions

  I First Impressions

  II The Sister

  III The Band

  IV Dancing for Daddy

  V Victim of Comfort

  Part 2 Pay The Man

  I Big in Brazil

  II Hopelessly Devoted

  III Sold for a Song

  IV Dance the Night Away

  V A Weird Little Man

  VI Rolling Stone Magazine ‘Hit The Road, Jack’

  VII Love and Other Stuff

  Part 3 The Movable Man And The Movie

  I Peanuts and Promises

  II Excerpts from the Antigua Movie

  III Losing the Juice

  IV Excerpts from the Antigua Movie

  V Game Over

  VI Here Today Gone Tomorrow

  Part 4 Going Down

  I The Blues

  II Soft Touch

  III Sex and Suicide

  IV Show Time

  V Serenity

  VI A Grotesque Suggestion

  VII Thank God for Lipstick

  Part 5 Ain’t Goin’ Down

  I Patchwork

  II Negative Energy

  III

  IV Feel Like Shit and Ashamed

  V What’s Done in the Dark Will Come to the Light

  Coda

  I

  II

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Bitchcraft

  ‘She’s a kindhearted woman, she studies evil all the time.’

  Robert Johnson

  I am the bitch who puts her bags on the empty seat beside her. If you want to sit next to me you have to ask my permission. Even when I’m travelling scuzz-class. Especially when I’m travelling scuzz-class.

  The train was hot and crowded. Coats were rolled like loft insulation in the luggage racks. Frayed and fractious children squawked. Weary travellers tried to blank them out. I had the scuzz-class blues.

  We waited. It would be a few minutes before the doors closed and after the initial scramble, anxious lethargy blanketed the train.

  ‘Um, ‘scuse me.’

  I looked up into a pale twitchy face.

  ‘I’m in a jam,’ he said. ‘Can you help me out?’

  I pulled off my headphones. ‘Depends,’ I said.

  “Cos me an’ my wife we’re really in a jam,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to get to London and I ain’t got any money. See, my social security cheque didn’t turn up and we got on the train without a ticket.’

  He was talking very fast, looking over his shoulder and sweating.

  ‘And the ticket inspector’s coming and we’ll be chucked off and fined. And we’ve got to get to London to see our little kiddy who’s in hospital. At the children’s hospital. She’s very sick.’

  I tried to look down the carriage to see where the inspector was, but the man was blocking my view and I couldn’t even see his wife.

  ‘It’s only ten quid,’ he said. ‘Each. Twenty quid. I wouldn’t ask but I’m really desperate. You’ll get it back. My social worker’s meeting us at Paddington. So you’ll get it back in fifteen minutes. Twenty quid for fifteen minutes. What d’you say? I’m really sorry I got to ask but the inspector’s on his way and we’re so desperate.’

  He wasn’t giving me time to think. I smiled at him slowly.

  ‘Please,’ he said, sweating, twitching. ‘Can you help me?’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  ‘Jesus, thank you,’ he said, holding his hand out. ‘Only twenty quid.’

  ‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you and your wife take a seat?’

  ‘The money,’ he said, hand still outstretched, fingers shaking.

  ‘I’ll take care of the inspector when he comes. He’ll take a credit card.’

  ‘Will he?’ he said. ‘Oh, right. I’ll fetch the wife.’

  And off he went, so quickly that he didn’t catch my most helpful sympathetic smile. What a waste.

  I craned my head round the back of my seat and saw him approach another woman further down the carriage. He was still talking very fast, sweating, twitching, nervous. Not his wife, then.

  It’s none of my business how a man makes a living, but this woman was trying to keep two small children under control, and there aren’t many who make the effort. She already had her hand in her handbag and I thought: effort should be rewarded, not punished. Maybe the man’s effort should be rewarded too, but not by a woman with two small children who still has kindness to spare for a stranger.

  I got up and walked towards them, still wearing my most helpful, sympathetic smile. I tapped the man on the shoulder.

  ‘How’re you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you fuck off and mind your own business?’

  I didn’t say anything. I just smiled at him.

  ‘Fuck!’ he said. He ran down the carriage and jumped out on to the platform.

  The shuttle lurched and started off slowly.

  ‘What was all that about?’ the mother asked.

  We passed the twitchy man, still standing on the platform. He saw us watching and gave us his middle finger. Three times. Hard.

  ‘Was he conning me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I offered to pay for him by plastic,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t want a ticket. He wants cash.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, blushing.

  I went back to my seat thinking about the blush. The mother was embarrassed because a man had marked her out, seen her weakness and exploited it. Probably everyone she knew exploited her kindness – her husband, her children, her friends as well as strangers.

  As for the twitchy man – well, he wasn’t a very good hustler. He had some things right. Speed, not giving your mark time to think, social embarrassment, they’re all good strategies. But the sick kiddy was crude. He should have worked harder on a less plausible story because a less plausible story is more likely to be believed. You have to be imaginative and articulate if you want to be a successful hustler. Or pretty and charming. You have to be able to reward your victim one way or another.

  They don’t call them confidence tricks for nothing. A good scam is based on a relationship, even if it only lasts for thirty seconds. Your mark has to want to give you something. And to be a good scammer you should want to give them something back.

  I used to have long legs, long hair, long eyelashes and dewy youth. I was willing to share them with strangers, even for the price of a train ticket. I looked fabulous and I didn’t have to pay for anything. Why? Because people wanted to be seen with me, if only for thirty seconds. I looked like a reward for a rock star. If you top the chart with your latest album you deserve someone looking like me to swish into clubs with. It’s expected. I’m part of the package.

  I mean I was part of the package. Not any more. Dewy youth, nowadays, is not what I have to offer. And when did you last see a superstar of my generation swishing into a hot club with a woman his own age on his arm?

  The shuttle rolled into Paddington. The mother collected coats, bags, children, the push-chair, and unloaded them. No one stopped to help her. Not even me. I’d saved her twenty quid – that was my good deed for the day.

  But as I overtook her she said, ‘I should have thanked you but I was too confused.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I said, moving on, not wanting to be caught.

  ‘No, really,’ she said. ‘I’d have forked out twenty pounds like a lamb and it’s more than I can afford.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, backing away, suddenly distressed.

  ‘So thank you.’

  Her toddl
er son gave me a blindingly sweet smile and silently offered his packet of crisps.

  I took one. If a man wants to give you something, take it. Even if it’s a potato crisp and he’s only three years old. It’s what he’s got to give.

  That is a scammer’s skill. It’s a judgment you make almost instantly. What will your mark part with happily? Set the right price and you’re halfway home.

  Mr Twitch set my price at twenty quid; the same price he set for a harassed mother. That was the cause of my distress. It was comforting to remember that he was a very crude scammer and presumably incapable of fine judgment but it was, all the same, a bad jolt to my confidence.

  Twenty pounds, Mr Twitch? That’s your price, not mine. Not for this girl. Not even now. I don’t live on a fixed income and I don’t spend my days with only two rowdy toddlers for company. Although, sometimes, when I meet one with a blindingly sweet smile I do wonder what I missed.

  But that’s just sentimentality. Blindingly sweet smiles come two-a-penny. I had one myself, and I used it mercilessly.

  A smile is a mask. Mr Twitch used a different mask. His was a furrowed brow, anxiety. But he was too nervous. He couldn’t control the sweat, and that’s because he didn’t believe. You have to believe in your mask to control it – like I believe in smiles and tears and the power of a song.

  Once when I was very young I was scammed myself by a song, a smile and a tear. A legendary bluesman called Dude Dexxy convinced me that he wrote ‘Honey Crawl’ on the spot when I walked into Crawdaddies one summer night. I’d blagged my way past the doorman – I was underage – and I was standing, uncertain, not knowing where to hide, when this deep dark voice from the stage said, ‘Hey little girl. You. Yeah you. Come close. This one’s for you.’ Me. He noticed me. I went to the stage and literally sat at his feet while he played ‘Honey Crawl’ and the crowd went crazy. I was too green and ignorant to know that he wrote it ten years previously and it was his groove number for pulling dumb little chicks. I just sat there with bass and drums vibrating through my body, with Dexxy’s voice seeping through my ears to my heart until I felt I’d burst.

  I didn’t know he’d done time in a Louisiana jail for screwing and stealing from underage girls. A lot of them. Nobody told me his European tour was as much to escape the Feds as it was to feed London’s hunger for legendary bluesmen.

  He told me he’d been in jail, but when he told me, later that night, I believed it was something to do with racial persecution. And so it was – in a way. A good scammer manipulates truth with a light touch; the same way Dexxy manipulated me.

  The odd thing is that I still feel proud that he picked me out as his mark, that he noticed my weakness. Even when he’d gone, taking my heart and a fat wad of my dad’s money with him, when I understood I’d fallen for a sleazy line, when I knew ‘Honey Crawl’ was an old song, I still felt a thrill. Because it’s a great song and, one time, a legendary bluesman sang it to pull me. He set me on a path of my own, because by the time he left I was part of the legend: underage, leggy, wild child who had been touched by a god and burned. There were so many musicians, who wanted to be gods themselves, who wanted to touch the girl who’d been burned by a genuine, gold-card, legendary bluesman.

  Dexxy burned me but he showed me my métier. There was no doubt that I’d sat at the feet of a master. I was his mark and I was marked by it. He showed me that anyone can be made to believe anything, and that I too want to believe. Nobody is immune – and that includes you, babe.

  Somewhere, in my inexperienced little brain, something clicked and I asked myself – Do you want to be a mark all your life? Or do you want to wear the mask and make ‘em pay? Because youth and beauty is a ready-made mask. If you are young and beautiful everyone wants a piece of you anyway. So why not make them pay? Why give away for free what time will erase? You only have it for a short while, so use it.

  But that was then. This is now. What is my mask now that youth and beauty are no longer mine to use?

  Let me show you. But you must attend because I’m only going to do this once and I’m going to do it fast.

  Right in front of Paddington station is the Great Western Hotel. Climb a few stairs, push through glass doors, cross the lounge, slide into the ladies’ room. Check the cubicles. All empty. Remove coat. Check mirror. I am wearing a simple long-sleeved, navy blue dress, low-heeled shoes, dark stockings, light make-up. I look like a respectable working woman.

  I hide my coat and bag under the counter. Carrying only a magazine I leave the ladies’ room and walk purposefully through the hotel lounge. I put the magazine down on one of the coffee tables, turn right again and go into the dining room.

  It’s lunch time and very crowded. I am looking for someone who is already there. I make that obvious, and none of the restaurant staff stops me.

  I take in the whole room. I look right, left. Someone is waiting. I don’t know who she is, but she’s here, and she must show herself quickly because I haven’t got long.

  There she is – wearing the smart business suit of middle management. She’s with two younger women, she’s tapping her credit card on the table cloth, looking round for a server, still talking to her companions who are finishing their coffee.

  I’m looking for her, I’m joining her. I smile at a waiter as I make my way over to her table. He can see I’m meeting someone. He can see I have a purpose. He doesn’t stop me.

  I arrive at the woman’s table. I stand at her left-hand side, exactly where she expects to see me.

  I say, ‘Can I bring you anything else, ma’am?’

  ‘Just the bill,’ she says, hardly looking up.

  ‘Are you in a hurry?’ I say. ‘Shall I take your card?’

  She offers me her credit card. I remove it smoothly from her fingers and walk away – out of the dining room, through the hotel lounge, into the ladies’ room. I put on my coat. I take a bright Liberty’s scarf from my bag and wind it casually round my throat. I throw my bag over my shoulder. I leave the hotel. I snag a taxi.

  This incident took longer to relate than it did to execute.

  What sort of mask was that? In fact, there were three. When I was in the lounge carrying a magazine I was a hotel resident. When I went into the dining room I was one diner looking for another. When I spoke to the woman I was a waitress. The trick is that waitresses do not carry handbags but hotel residents do. The magazine stood in for a handbag. On an unconscious level people recognise what your function is by what you wear, how you act, what you are or are not carrying. The mask, therefore, is whatever your mark expects to see. It doesn’t matter if it is glossy hair and a beautiful face or a business-like, polite demeanour – the same rules apply.

  I changed my shoes in the taxi. I changed my scarf, my hairstyle, my lipstick and my polite demeanour. Little things – all of which tell you that the simple navy blue dress may be understated but it is extremely expensive. It would keep a mother and two kids in chicken nuggets for years. Or it would have done when I first took possession of it. But that was a few years ago.

  I needed something hot and new for my next appointment and I don’t believe in buying my own clothes – not when a bank or a credit company can buy them for me. In other words, I don’t believe in using my own credit card. Spending my own money on clothes is a sign of failure. Besides, nowadays, I need to spend a lot of money to look like someone worth spending money on.

  My next appointment was with a man called Barry who has a lot of money to spend. I hadn’t seen him for years, and in those days he wanted me so much he dribbled.

  But those were the days when I did not have mature reflection to bring to a situation. I have maturity in spades now, and reflection tells me that I should not have taken his drool personally. My mark, Barry, is an Englishman and as such he was far more interested in my lover than he was in me. He wanted me because he admired to the point of obsession the man who had me. Barry was a rich hanger-on. A sucker for talent and glamour, he was our satellite, always cree
ping close, like a lizard drawn to a hot rock. He needed heat but couldn’t generate any for himself.

  Yes, my mark is a reptile and I am the heat. He wants what he always wanted – which is to be at the centre of a charmed circle; though the charm wore out a long time ago, the magic turned against itself and a third of the magicians are now gone. Including my lover, my playmate, golden Jack.

  Jack is the one everyone remembers. Jack is the one who defines me. He gives me an identity, even now. Oh yes, I owe everything to Jack. I am Jack’s survivor – his rock-widow.

  So I need a rock-widow’s frock: something dark, mysterious and tragic. Plus shoes to show off the legs, because legs last longer than faces and should attract the attention they deserve. Unbelievable fuck-off shoes, with a hint of S-M. I want to clothe myself in mystery from head to hem, in decadence from hem to heel. A good mask, like a good hustler, should touch the truth lightly and pass on by. A good hustler should use a stolen credit card quickly and throw it away. Card, discard, and move on.

  Shopping done, I checked in at the Savoy where the receptionist delivered a handwritten note. The note read, ‘Dear Birdie, I do hope you’ll be comfortable here. Old memories, eh? Please, ring me as soon as you get in. Can’t wait to see you – Barry.’

  I said, ‘If a Mr Barry Stears rings, would you tell him that I’ll meet him here at eight? I don’t want to be disturbed till then.’

  ‘I’ll make a note of it,’ the receptionist said.

  I went upstairs. I ran a bath. I remembered Barry and his characteristic anxiety. ‘Ring me as soon as you get in.’ Underlined. Fat chance. I remembered Barry who had to eat his last meal of the day by 7.30 or his ulcer grumbled. I smiled. Both of us, so far, were running true to form.

  I bathed. I lay down. I rested. At seven I ordered a fresh crab salad from room service. I began to dress. The salad came and I ate it. I did not want to be hungry or look hungry.

  At eight, the phone rang. I ignored it. It rang again at quarter past, at half past and at a quarter to nine.