I slap his hand away before he reaches my hair and we laugh at our in-joke. Everybody always wants to touch an Afro.
“You look great, Mars.”
I dodge his eyes. “Shut up.”
“Sick!” He’s walking over to the counter. To my sketchbook. Still open. Full of you.
I swoop past him and close it.
“That looked so good! Is it new?”
I push my sketchbook behind the computer. “No. It’s nothing. Shut up.”
Sean grins.
“I knew it, Mars. You don’t just stop drawing. Not when you’re that good. Is that what you’re gonna do with yourself?”
I look at you on the sofa, watching Sean, remembering the fire.
“So will you do like a foundation course or whatever?” Sean says, face turning serious. “I spoke to Cara.”
I sit behind the till. “You did a bit more than speak, Casanova.”
“Mars, listen …”
“It’s good. You did good. She’s so happy.”
“I’m sorry.”
Your eyes don’t leave him. It wasn’t your fault, Thor.
“Why did you tell me she liked Jordan?” Sean says, picking up one of my pencils.
I look at you.
“I know you,” I say. “We might not hang out all that much any more, but I still know you.”
“You knew I liked her?”
Your eyes are closed.
“Sometimes people need a little push,” I say.
Sean steps closer. “So you knew why I never said anything then?” I look down.
“I know you too, Marcie Baker,” he says, and I feel the blood rushing to my face.
“I just helped you both get what you want,” I say, tapping the computer keys for something to do.
“And what about what you want?” says Sean. “I see how you look at her, Mars.”
You stand up, ready to defend me, but I’ve got this.
“I was just watching. She’s into you, Sean. She always was. I’m fine. I’m not ready for any of that right now.”
“Any of what?”
“I don’t know. Love.”
You walk over. Sean puts my pencil down.
“Marcie …”
“Sean. It’s cool. Seriously. It’s what I want. I’m going to do things just for me for a bit, you know?”
You are close enough to touch him. “Tell him I’m sorry, Marcie. Please.”
I see fire.
I see blood.
I see flashing lights.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Sean looks confused.
I point at his chest. He touches it.
“Every warrior needs a good scar, eh?” he says, with a smile. You smile too.
“Thank you.”
Sean strokes the back of his head. “I really like her, Mars.”
“I have to go, Marcie.”
I look at you, then at him.
“I know you do.”
“Goodbye.”
And you’re gone.
The shop feels slightly colder. Like someone left a door open.
“Did you really just draw a picture on the exam paper?”
The empty sofa. The space where you were.
“Yep.”
“That’s so badass, Mars! And you’re still pretending you’re not an artist?”
I put my pencils in the mug and shrug.
“Let’s see.”
My shadow on the landing.
It’s almost sunset and the air is cool.
What is this feeling?
Part sadness, part relief.
Last chapter, heart released.
Stare at your door.
That was right. No big goodbye.
No melodramatic farewell scene.
Just you. Feeling strong. Getting on the train, of the rest of your life.
I helped, Marcie, didn’t I?
Thor Baker helped this time.
Now it’s done.
And I have to finish my job.
He’s sipping a Ribena.
Shirt open. Dots of blackberry on his white vest.
And he’s got Calvin on a lead.
It’s one of those telescopic ones attached to a little body harness that lets your dog wander a distance from you.
“What the hell, Dad?”
His carton gargles as he sucks the last drops through his straw.
“We went for a walk.”
“You don’t walk a cat.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not a dog.”
“So what?” He squats and unhooks Calvin, who scampers over to me. “I used to see a guy walking a ferret every morning, back near the old house.”
I scoop Calvin up next to me on the sofa and console her with strokes. “Don’t worry, little one, it’s over now. The crazy man won’t make you pretend to be a dog again, I promise.”
Dad stands up and runs his hand through his hair. “She’s fine. She doesn’t abide by species stereotypes. She’s a freethinker.”
“She’s a victim,” I say.
Dad looks at the sofa and shifted tables. “Nice set-up.”
“Can we talk, Dad?”
“Course. Later though. I need your help.”
“With what?”
“Clear-out.”
“Cleaning? Dad, it’s getting dark. I’m hungry. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“No. We can get a takeaway. It’ll work better at night. More dramatic.” He points at Calvin. “We’ll have to keep her out of the way of course.”
I scratch between Calvin’s shoulder blades and she purrs like a little motor.
“Out of the way of what?”
Dad looks at me like he’s already told me twenty-five times.
“The fire.”
I hold your door on my lap like a surfboard.
Everything is rubble. Everything is dust.
The exposed brick and steel supports of the houses either side.
What was your house is now a gap in the smile of the street.
It’s done.
Just me, sitting with a rectangle of wood on the broken pile where the stairs used to be.
I stroke the smooth edge of it.
I’m good at my job.
More than good.
Nobody destroys unwanted things better than me.
I’m not crying.
It’s the dust. The fine powder of crushed bricks making my eyes water.
Not tears.
We live for you, we are the made.
I stand up.
And hold your door over my head.
He wasn’t joking when he said clear-out.
The stuff just keeps coming. We run a production line between upstairs and the little back yard. Old clothes, books, papers, a broken chest of drawers, all get thrown into the big silver wheelie bin in the little backyard.
It’s dark now, and the street light from the other side of the shop gives everything that film noir feel. Across the alleyway, the tall dark tree peers down at us as we add to the pile.
Calvin’s tiny silhouette miaows through the frosted glass door to the shop each time I walk back to the stairs, my empty stomach growling in reply.
Last confession. Hardest one. Dad won’t give me grief about uni, might even be excited, but going to find Mum, that might be a little bit more of an issue. With every trip inside to fetch another load of fire fodder, I practise a different set of words to lay it out, speaking them under my breath, and every single version I come up with feels awful.
“Nearly done,” he says, carrying two empty wooden drawers crab-style past me through the back door.
“You’re going to be sleeping in an empty room,” I say, wiping my brow, feeling a trickle of sweat run down the ridge of my back.
Dad tosses the drawers into the bin. The jagged top edge of the rubbish looks like his hair.
“Clear room, clear head,” he says, smiling, a sheen of sweat on his prominent collarbones.
<
br /> “Why don’t you go get us chicken and I’ll find the lighter fluid.”
“I want to talk to you, Dad.”
“Not on an empty stomach, Mars. I won’t be able to concentrate.”
He rubs at the dark Ribena dots on his vest. “Get one of those big family buckets, will you? I’m starving.”
The lift feels the same.
That’s the way, right?
You can make all the huge, world-shattering decisions you like, but the routine minutiae of your day really don’t give a shit.
Nineteen lights up above the doors.
The familiar squeak as the brakes squeeze the lift cable and I feel the weight in my stomach rise up into my chest.
Knock the dust from my arms.
See your bedroom door in pieces at my feet.
Scooping them up.
Laying them on top of the rubble like chocolate sprinkles.
An ice-cream sundae of the past. It’s done. I’m done.
The lift doors open.
Pale walls and charcoal doors.
Same old grey.
This is me now. On the train with all the others.
Stare at the numbers. Floors. Days. Weeks. Years.
And push the button for the roof.
Fire is amazing.
Fire at night is even better.
Fire at night with a bucket of chicken and a cold Pepsi just might be heaven.
There’s something about the flickering flames that seems to talk to the dark. Whispering dangerous secrets into the air.
We are a caveman and his blue-haired daughter, sitting on a fold-up camp chair and the back step, enjoying our takeaway hunt.
The pop and crack of expanding wood. The smell of carbon coming home.
I sip my drink and watch tiny sparks float up and die in the dark.
“I’m not going to uni, Dad.”
Dad doesn’t say anything. Chewing a drumstick, staring at the fire, his head is probably full of his new story. What difference does it make if his daughter shuns academia?
“Dad?”
“I know,” he says. “Coral rang me.”
“Oh.”
There’s a hiss from inside the bin as something synthetic finally succumbs to the heat.
“What did she say?”
Dad throws his bone into the fire. “She said you seemed sure.”
I pull my hood on to my head and cross my legs.
“And what did you say?”
“I said OK.”
He bites into a crispy thigh, and, even though I expected it, his indifference grates. Like my life choices are minuscule next to all the weighty story shit that’s churning in his head.
“That’s it?”
Dad chews and nods. “Yep.”
“I’m passing up my degree, Dad. Opting out of further education. Don’t you even have an opinion?”
Dad licks his fingertips. “What would I say, Mars? That you’re making a mistake? That you’re derailing your life?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
He wipes his mouth. “You’re making a huge mistake, Mars. Completely derailing your life.”
The urge to slap him sits up in my gut.
“Well, it’s good to know my future’s important to you.”
Dad screws up his napkin and throws it into the fire.
“Coral thinks you’re wasting talent. She says you would fly in a university environment.”
“I’m not talking about Coral! What do you think?”
He stares intently at fire.
“I think you have to trust yourself. If not going feels right then it probably is. Only you know, Mars.”
“That’s not an opinion.”
“Who cares about the opinion of an old man?”
“I care! I’m asking you, just for once, to please stop with the passive Yoda bullshit and act like a normal parent. Tell me what to do. Tell me I’m being stupid. That I’m throwing away the best years of my life! I don’t know! Just give a shit!”
My heart is thumping.
“Do I have to fight you to give a shit?” he says. “Is that how it works? Is that what proves it?”
My hands are in fists. “At least then I’d know.”
He looks at me, anger in his eyes. “You sound like your mum.”
That crackle in my stomach.
“And you sound like someone who’s easy to leave.”
His expression flickers, a millisecond glitch where I see him gutted, staring at the door she walked out of. Then his eyes glaze over, and he turns back to the fire.
Default defensive Dad.
But I’m not having it.
Not this time.
“I’m going to find her,” I say, staring at the back of his head.
He watches the flames. “She doesn’t want to be found, Mars.”
“No? Guess I’ll ask her myself. Madrid 28070.”
He doesn’t turn round. Maybe he forgot about the letter.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he says.
“It’s a postcode, Dad. If I have that, and her name, I can find her.”
Dad nods to himself, leaning forward on his knees.
“Did you hear me, Karl? I can find my mum.”
The flames.
The dark.
My plan.
“No,” he says, turning to me in what seems like slow motion.
“Remember, Marcie. Whatever happens, just be you.”
And I feel a wrecking ball hit my chest.
“What did you say?”
Dad shifts his chair so he’s facing me. My name. Handwritten.
“It was a mistake, Mars. Misguided. I just …” He trails off in a thought.
I feel faint. “Dad?”
He smiles, weakly. “I wanted you to have something, from her, you know? A full stop. She should have left something.”
My chest is cracked glass. My head shaking.
“No.”
Dad holds out his hand. “I just wanted to help.”
“But Madrid 28070. She’s there. Somewhere.”
Dad shakes his head. “It was the book. Spanish launch. They flew me over. I was talking to this woman, about you. I was telling her all about my amazing daughter, how you’d been through a lot, and how I wanted to be better, more present, now that I’d signed the deal and had some cash, and the idea just … came. I posted it the next morning. In time for your birthday.”
His hand is there, waiting in the space between us.
But I am crumbling.
I am sliding off the step. It wasn’t her. All this time. Not her words. Not a message. A lifeline.
Nothing.
She doesn’t want to be found.
It was him.
“You.”
The word bursts out of the trapdoor in my gut, climbs up my throat and jumps out at him.
“You.”
“Marcie, please …”
But nothing matters. I’m already up.
Flying at him like a fucking bear.
I can hear drums.
He’s leaning on the edge, smoking as he watches the city.
I see the appeal, I really do. Night air all around you, the freedom of having nothing over your head but sky.
Maybe I could move, find a roof of my own.
“Good to see you with clothes on,” I say, walking over and leaning next to him.
Leyland smokes calmly. “Time and a place, my young friend.”
I look over the edge. Down on the street, some kind of procession is happening. One of those giant fire-coloured Chinese dragons ripples along followed by a solitary float holding a lone drummer.
“This place never stops,” says Leyland with a smile.
“How you doing?” I say.
“You didn’t come up here to enquire about my well-being, Thor.”
He taps ash into the air. “You came to tell me your news.”
The glowing end of his cigarette is one firefly, hovering under his control. I
point at it. “Can I get one of those?”
Leyland narrows his eyes.
I show him that I can pinch my first two claws together with an effort, and he taps out a cigarette for me. I watch the light flicker in the smooth silver of his lighter.
“Experimenting with a new persona?” he says, tucking it back into his pocket.
I inhale and hold the smoke in my throat, immediately regretting it, and shake my head.
“Just feels right tonight.”
“I see,” says Leyland, tapping the ledge. “So you’re done?”
I nod. “As of right now.”
He smiles. “Hallelujah.”
I squeeze the filter between my claws and it tears. The lit end falls, bounces on the ledge and drops over the side of the roof.
We both lean over and watch the tiny orange dot float down and out of sight.
“Shit.”
Leyland coughs out a small laugh. “Know thyself, Thor Baker. The man with a bear’s paws shall not a fiddler be.” He flicks his cigarette back over his head and spreads his arms wide. “Welcome to the rest of your days.”
Two car horns go back and forth down on the street. Leyland looks up to the dark sky. “This town needs an enema!”
He does a single twirl, full of tired mockery.
I drop my torn filter by my feet.
“Are you happy, Leyland?”
Leyland drops his arms as though his director just called cut.
“My dear boy, Happiness can exist only—”
“—in acceptance.” I finish his sentence and look down again. “And that’s what we’ve done, right? Accepted it? The fade?”
Leyland pulls a psychotic Joker smile. “Look! Gaze upon my happiness! As I shuffle from here to there with the rest of the cattle tapestry!”
There’s trouble in his eyes.
“Are you OK?” I say.
He starts to climb up on to the ledge.
“Leyland, careful …”
He’s laughing to himself as he kneels on the edge, his head swaying as he speaks. “Let us listen, make us feel. Or send us off, from all the real.”
“OK, Leyland. Come down now, yeah? Enough.”
He looks at me.
“A mind can’t exist in two worlds, Thor.”
“Leyland, please, you’re scaring me. Get down. We’ll go have a drink.”
I try to grab his arm, but he throws me off. His dark eyes are shining, his hair dancing in the breeze. “But wouldn’t it be worth it?”
“Wouldn’t what be worth it?”
“Five more minutes.” He stands up. “To kiss all of this goodbye.”
Nobody Real Page 20
