by Tom Fletcher
I think that it’s already too much.
He is a complete fantasist. He pays no attention to the war. To the economic situation. To the human-rights atrocities in the news. To climate change. To cancer, getting closer. To the things that stop me sleeping. He just retreats into this other world. That doesn’t exist. He reminds me of Dad.
‘You’ll have to invite her round,’ I say. ‘This Jennifer.’
‘I will,’ he says.
We pause in the doorway of the living-room. Erin and Taylor are kissing. They’re sitting side by side. Holding hands. Their heads turned towards each other. Like five-year-olds might kiss each other. I guess it’s kind of sweet.
‘What’s happened?’ Jack asks. ‘Are the fires out in hell? Is it getting cold down there?’
‘No,’ Taylor says. ‘It’s quite simple. It’s commonly believed amongst scientists that, given an infinite timespan – like the length of time it takes you reprobates to make the tea – then anything that can happen will happen.’
‘Might not give you your tea now,’ Graham says. ‘Arsewipe. Talking science at us when our hands are full.’
‘Don’t you talk to my boyfriend like that,’ Erin says. ‘And give us our fucking tea.’
Taylor loves Blade Runner and Jules et Jim. He loves Truffaut. He loves weird instrumental music that I can’t listen to, like Philip Glass and John Cage. When he’s feeling poppy he listens to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or Tom Waits. He is addicted to the Resident Evil series of video games. He knows every word Orwell ever wrote. And he reads a lot of science books too. He is terrified of growing old. Getting lonely. Becoming stupid.
We hand out the teas and I look behind me. Back through the open door. Opposite the doorway – on the hallway wall – there is a huge poster. We took it from a bus shelter. It advertises the remake of Dawn of the Dead. I glance at it. Again, the only way of working out the true personality of a person, their true soul, is by their taste. In films, music, books. Everything sprouts from the one root. The words across the bottom of the poster resonate with me every time I read them.
WHEN THERE’S NO MORE ROOM IN HELL, THE DEAD WILL WALK THE EARTH.
JACK
I tried clothes on in front of a little mirror that was about five inches square. The smell of my rattan mat permeated the room and I felt sick at the thought of mine and Jennifer’s first proper ‘date’.
Sometimes Francis bothered me. Erin had told us all about Francis’ dad after he went to bed the previous night, and it was awful, but still. His obsession with what people liked, and the implication that not knowing what Jennifer liked or didn’t like meant that I didn’t really know her at all, I mean, it boiled down to defining a person by what they bought, really, didn’t it? It boiled down to a list of all the crap that people bought in order to fill the emptiness they felt inside themselves. What Francis thought of as the essence of a person was more accurately defined as the substitute for the essence of a person, as far as I could see.
I decided on an outfit – jeans and a shirt, which is all I ever really wore when not at work – and looked for my hair stuff. I looked on the windowsill, and found myself looking through the glass at the early September clouds.
‘I don’t believe in monogamy,’ Jennifer said. ‘I think it’s important that you know that right from the start.’
‘OK,’ I said, something quivering inside of me. Morgana le Fay, I thought, Morgana le Fay would never have been monogamous either. ‘OK.’
‘I honestly believe you can love more than one person at any one time. And also that sex is something that should be enjoyed outside of love as well as inside of love.’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘I know we’re not together or anything, but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. Because I like you, and I think that something might happen between us.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Yes. I think that too.’
She looked at me over the table and our empty cocktail glasses, her huge green eyes hypnotic.
‘What bar are we in?’ she asked. ‘I can’t even remember, they’re all so similar. And I can’t believe the Fidel Castro and Che Guevara posters!’
‘It’s probably called Cuba or Havana or something like that,’ I said, but really I was still thinking about sex.
‘Communist revolution consumed by capitalist enterprise, and then regurgitated. Idealism as a theme.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s sad. I don’t really like it in the city. All cities are basically the same and all the places within the cities are basically the same, so wherever you end up for a drink or a sandwich or whatever, it doesn’t really matter. It was inevitable that you would end up there. There was never anywhere else to go. Well, it’s a generalisation. I know.’
‘I suppose if you take the time to look, you can find all sorts of decent places,’ I said. ‘But you have less time in cities.’ This is better, I thought. I’m finally engaging. But really, I was still thinking about sex.
‘Sometimes I think I’m growing up in the wrong decade,’ she said. ‘I should be in the sixties.’
‘I’m a bit like that. Sometimes I think I should have been alive at the beginning of the nineteenth century.’
‘Why?’ she asked, laughing.
I shrugged. ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You know.’
I was glad that she didn’t like the city. I supposed I shouldn’t really get involved with somebody who didn’t believe in relationships, but I didn’t know if I could help it. I looked at her. How could I not fall for her when she said the kind of things that I thought about saying? Although in truth I fell for her the moment I saw her.
Her hair was wavy tonight, held back by a rust-coloured headscarf, and she was wearing a brown dress that reminded me of old-fashioned Roma-style gypsies, like those in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and she told me that she made it herself. There was a story about an old gypsy fortune-teller who, apparently, spent so long hunched over, smoking a pipe, that she couldn’t straighten her body out at all, and when she died she had to be buried in a cube-shaped coffin. I didn’t mention it though. I was afraid that Jennifer would think me strange.
I became aware of a figure somewhere in the middle distance, over her left shoulder, standing absolutely stationary, and I looked up at the figure, but it was moving now, making its way towards the exit. Its identity was difficult to establish amongst the growing crowd, but I was pretty sure it was him. Kenny.
‘Shall we go?’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Shall we go to yours?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘OK. If that’s alright with you.’
Outside, the street was nearly as bright as it was during the day, and it was as if we’d driven the natural nighttime out of our cities with electricity, and replaced it with a darkness of our own invention, all muggings, murders, rapes. The Christmas lights were up but not yet turned on. Electricity meant we could work all kinds of shifts and stay out all night with our vision unimpaired, and it turned us into unnatural creatures, awake and ravenous all the time.
FRANCIS
Jennifer came home with Jack last night. She is like the sky at night. She is beautiful and crisp. She is like frost on a bare black tree. I love her lip-piercings. I love her body. Her skin is pale and her hair is black. She is like all those vampire women in all those black-and-white films. She is like Renée French in Coffee and Cigarettes. She is like a chessboard. From the moment I saw her I have been lusting for her. So badly that it has opened something up inside me. Something very much like a wound. She sat on the edge of the sofa. With her feet pointing at each other. And looked around at all the posters. And the shelves full of books and CDs and DVDs. I asked her what she likes.
Jennifer loves Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Secretary. She likes Patti Smith and Eastern European music. She likes books by Kerouac and Aldous Huxley.
When I went to bed, she and Jack were in the living-room drinking wine. And she was still here this morning. I saw her in the kitchen eating a ba
con sandwich. Dressed for work. So I guess she stayed the night. I am confused, time-wise. I don’t know what day it is. One of the problems with working shifts.
We are out in Manchester. Drinking. In celebration of the fact that none of us are working this evening. It’s 9.57 by the clock on my phone. And we’re in a bar called Sandbar. Just off Oxford Road. We sit around a dark wooden table in a corner lit by light from red bulbs.
I am drinking a strong, dark imported beer out of a strange, squat bottle. Graham is drinking lager. Taylor and Erin are drinking red wine. Jack is drinking a guest beer called Copper Dragon. Jennifer is drinking whisky and Coke. She finishes it and sets the glass down.
‘Today was my last day,’ she says. ‘Thank fuck. No more scripts. No more cash incentives. No more sales. No more debt collection. No more Kenny!’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Graham says.
‘God,’ Jennifer says. ‘I’m sorry. I just didn’t – didn’t think.’
‘Ignore him,’ Jack says. ‘Nothing to stop him looking for another job if he’s that miserable. Except he’s too busy updating his profile on Facebook.’
‘What are you going to do, Jennifer?’ I ask.
‘Start drawing again,’ she says. ‘Start designing. Try to find a house that I can afford to buy and start living like, you know, freely. Maybe even set up some sort of commune, or collective. I’m nostalgic for the sixties and I wasn’t even alive then.’ She laughs. ‘We’d grow our own vegetables.’
‘It should be Kenny who’s leaving, really,’ Taylor says. ‘Should have been sacked a long time ago for harassment.’
‘He should have been,’ Erin says, ‘but it’s one of those places where you can be as vile, malicious and poisonous as you like and it won’t count against you. You could be the sorriest excuse for a human being. You could be a thousand rats stacked up inside a suit and still do OK. Most workplaces are like that I guess. Kenny will always be there. Always be fine.’
‘So what are you going to do for work?’ I ask Jennifer.
‘Oh,’ she says. And falls silent. She looks a bit embarrassed. ‘I don’t know if I’ll get another proper job. I’m going to sell the house, and – well, I was left a bit of money. I’m going to try and set up a studio, sell the clothes that I make, you know. Might be a while before that ever makes any money though. Wouldn’t mind doing some sort of editing or proofreading if I got desperate, but I doubt that it’s that easy to get into.’ She laughs again. ‘I’m just a bit of a pervert for grammar.’
I like the way she says pervert. Her lip-rings shine. I want to ask her about her mum. I want to tell her about Dad. She is wearing a tight, low-cut top.
‘Who wants a drink?’ Jack asks.
‘Yes please,’ I say. I down the one I’ve got.
‘Tell us a story, Erin,’ Graham says. He slurs his words.
‘I need to think of one first,’ she says. ‘I had this dream a while ago. It was strange. Haven’t been able to think of much else since.’
‘Write about that, then,’ I say.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I didn’t like it. It was about a giant. I can’t. I don’t know why, but I can’t.’
‘Make something up on the spot,’ I say.
‘Well,’ she says. ‘It won’t be very good. OK. I’ll just tell you something that happened. A few little things that happened.’
‘OK,’ I say.
‘One day I went to the dentist after work. This was out of town. He was playing some Dire Straits album quietly in his room. I listened to ‘Sultans of Swing’ and he gave me a scale and a polish. Then, on the way to the train station, I saw an ex-boyfriend’s mother and sister walking along. His sister nodded as if to say hello, but thankfully his mother didn’t see me. At the train station, the guy in the ticket office was listening to Joy Division. ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ was the particular song. I bought my ticket and sat on a platform near the back of a nearby supermarket. I could smell baking bread and nobody else was around and I couldn’t hear any music.’
She falls silent and frowns.
‘Go on,’ I say.
‘It was wonderful,’ she says.
‘Is that the end?’ I ask.
‘Yeah.’
‘I didn’t know people could listen to music in the ticket offices at Piccadilly,’ I say.
‘I don’t think they can,’ she says. ‘I made that bit up.’
The table is dark and shiny with varnish. Various chips in the surface reveal the bare, pale wood beneath. People fill the room up. The walls are red brick with tall, thin, black radiators plumbed in. Lights hang on long wires. Sandbar. This is Sandbar. My head is in my hands. There comes a point in every night like this. When you realize that understanding has just slipped out of reach. People around me are saying things but I can’t put them together.
I get up and go to the toilet. I push open the door marked TOILETS and am confronted with a small, confusing space. All the walls are covered with pages of magazines. There are two doors, one on the right and one on the left. I don’t know which to go through at first. It takes me an age to find the symbol for ‘men’. It’s hidden amongst the pictures and words that surround it. I push the door open. Behind it is a long, dented urinal that looks like it’s full of thick piss. There’s a cubicle at the end. That’s where I go.
I push open the cubicle door and lift the seat. The toilet water is red and there’s something opaque at the bottom of it. Probably shit. But I can’t be certain because of the red water. Rusty-brown gobbets of something are splattered all over the bowl. Looks bloody. I leave the cubicle and use the urinal. Somebody has something wrong inside of them. Some part of their body is the wrong shape.
Back at the table, I can hear ‘Jailhouse Rock’ playing. Graham is arm-wrestling with Jack and winning. Crap photos adorn the red brick walls, printed on canvas. A girl in a woolly hat is dancing outside the window. Amongst the reflections and the streetlamps. A song by Nina Simone starts up: ‘Feeling Good’.
Dad loves Steven Spielberg films, especially Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He loves the Blue Oyster Cult and Ozric Tentacles and Joni Mitchell. And he sits in the car to listen to them. Because Mum isn’t so keen, apart from the Joni Mitchell. Sometimes the car fills with smoke from his rolled-up cigarettes. I think sometimes he smokes cannabis. Judging by the smell of the car. He goes out on clear nights looking for UFOs. Looking for a sign of some other world. He is scared that we won’t make contact with extraterrestrials in his lifetime. He is more scared – terrified – that we won’t ever make contact at all. The idea of a lifeless universe stops him from sleeping, Mum told me. And it makes him deeply unhappy for days if he really thinks about it. He is also scared of his boss at the warehouse-sized computer shop that he works in. He works at the branch on the industrial estate up on the edge of town. He looks like Tony Robinson, with thicker glasses maybe. And slightly longer, whiter hair. And maybe a little bit taller. Wears a lot of open-necked shirts and beads. He looks basically like an old hippy. His name is Eric. I want to tell Jennifer about him. But not here, not in front of everybody else. I pick up my bottle. Dad is nostalgic for the sixties, like Jennifer. But he was really there.
‘Francis,’ Taylor says. ‘Come on. We’re leaving.’
Now we’re at Trof. In the Northern Quarter. The seedier, more fashionable district of the city. We’re outside in the smoking area because it’s so full and hot indoors. Although I don’t actually smoke. For fear of the damage. It must be a weekend, I think. Otherwise this place would be closed. Graham is taking something in the toilet. It’s raining. There is a tarpaulin ceiling, but it’s only half-rolled out. We huddle beneath it, but the rain drips off it and it drips down the drainpipes and it drips on to the low wooden stools and it spreads out towards us, making our bottoms wet. Graham comes back.
On the other side of the balcony, red brick walls and huge air-vents and dull metal chutes plunge downwards into darkness. There is a gap between two of the walls through which t
he bright, white horizontal bars of a multistorey car park can be seen. Behind the car park, the squareish bulk of some giant shopping centre rears up into the sky. Bright red neon letters adorn the top. Light falls down it. It’s a cathedral. We sit here for hours, drinking, talking.
Later. Taylor and Erin sit next to me. ‘I didn’t tell you the real ending to my story before,’ Erin whispers.
‘What really happened?’ I say.
‘That’s not what I mean. I told you what happened, more or less. But there was an ending that came to me that I didn’t tell you.’
‘What was it?’
‘Well I was sitting on the platform at the train station. My train was late. There were no announcements and nobody around to ask about it. By the time the train finally arrived, it had gone dark. It pulled up, but the doors didn’t open. I stood by one of them, waiting. Nothing moved for ages. And then the doors opened, and a tall man in a long black coat got off, and he had hooves.’
‘Ha,’ I say. ‘I like that ending.’
‘I don’t,’ she says.
‘But you made it up,’ I say.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. She looks confused. ‘I don’t think I did, not really. But at least I can say for certain that it didn’t really happen.’
‘It’s that dream you had,’ Taylor says. ‘Resurfacing. At times of great communal anxiety more and more people report visions of strange creatures. People were seeing angels everywhere in 1999.’
‘Are we in a state of great communal anxiety?’ Erin says.
