Jello Salad

by Nicholas Blincoe

  “So there’s never ending wars?”

  “No. It’s over.”

  Naz saw a crack beginning to open. He said, “What about Bosnia? The Lebanon? Sudan?”

  “Freak shows. It’s over. No one lives purely on wheat. America and China never have done. It’s what I’m saying, we’re ready for a new world religion. And the first sacred act is going to be a burial. It’s almost time to get the body out of the back.”

  THIRTEEN

  Hogie told Mannie he wasn’t going to be responsible for Cheb’s actions. Because it was a certainty, the guy would go insane when he found Jools camped out in his room. “You don’t know, but he was up all night tracking the room’s psychic energy.”

  Mannie said, “I don’t believe rooms have psyches.”

  “It’s some kind of karmic shit. You’d get into it if Cheb explained.”

  They were stood in the Good Mixer, a market pub off Camden High Street. Later, they were going to move along to the Dublin Castle. Hogie felt he should explain why every pub they’d visited was so disgusting.

  “It’s not like Manchester: London‘s really run-down.”

  “Aren’t there any, like, modern bars, or anything?”

  Hogie told him, “There’s a few, down Soho. But they’re so tiny, they’re not worth the hassle.”

  Anyway, they were so drunk now, it wouldn’t matter if the next pub turned out as bad as all the others. The Good Mixer was a bare wood and formica place, built around flaked paint and semi-broken tables. The big surprise for Mannie was the place was so crammed, they could barely move. Judging by the decor and the beery whiff, it should have been strictly an old man’s place but everyone there was about their age or younger. Most of them pod-mods tapping their feet to old R&B tracks. There was nowhere to sit, there was nothing but plastic leatherette wall seating and it was all taken. A few couples were sat on top of the pool table, which was covered in a plywood sheet, and others were crouched round the floor but most people were standing, bobbing their heads slightly to the Kinks riffs from the jukebox or mouthing the lyrics.

  Mannie said, “What about outside?”

  Hogie shrugged, “Yeah okay. Maybe after we could try the Spread Eagle. It’s cleaner but it’s all done in Victoriana—style. You got to understand, a lot of these places haven’t been done up since the 1980s.”

  They took their drinks out and sat on the edge of the kerb. The night was hot and still, with no wind to blow away the daytime market smells. Mannie sniffed about, asking: “What is it?”

  Hogie pointed across the road where matchwood crates were piled with unsold vegetables. The smell didn’t bother him, what he could do without was the reminder that he had to get to the market in—he checked his watch—maybe five hours. He hadn’t told Mannie yet, but he was getting nervous about the party. For the past few hours, his stomach had been churning over. He couldn’t even think about food, never mind cook it up. The beer wasn’t helping, it was fruity and flat and only made him want to run to the toilet.

  Mannie must have picked up on something, his green face or the rumbling in his guts. He said, “What’s your problem?”

  “Just nerves, about the party and the menu and that.”

  Mannie didn’t believe it. “What, really? I thought you were just up for it, like you didn’t give a shit.”

  Is that what he thought? “No. I’m a touch nervous. Alright. I mean, do you think I’m the kind of dickhead who doesn’t worry about anything?”

  Mannie thought it over. “Basically, I’d have to say, Yeah. Like, don’t have an epi or anything. It’s just that you’re teflon-coated.”

  Hogie sat silently for a moment and thought. “Yeah. Well I try to maintain.”

  Mannie said, “I mean, you always landed on your feet before. Like you only went to cooking college because Cheb made you, but you’re the one who’s the big success.”

  It wasn’t quite like that. Hogie said, “Give me credit. It was a, what d’you call that shit? A conscious decision.”

  “I thought, what happened, you and Cheb had just come back from this mental holiday in Ibiza and he persuaded you that you could live like that the whole year if you started working in hotels.”

  That was part of it. Cheb had enrolled them both on the catering college at the tech, straight after he got them kicked out of school. But that was only the beginning, when they were sixteen. And even then, it turned out Hogie had talent. The real story, though, centred on the art student. Hogie said, “You know how the tech was divided in two, with half of it as an art college and the rest of it for catering. There was no antagonism or anything: we just thought they were morons.”

  Mannie nodded. He remembered them saying.

  “Yeah. We never really mixed until Cheb found out the art students were ready to pay over the odds for drugs. So we started going along to their parties and turning these big profits from complete shit. Anyway, I was talking to this artist one night and I said to him, ‘Why do you want to do art, you can’t draw.’ He came over all aggressive, telling me that wasn’t the point. So I started stubbing my finger in his chest saying, ‘You just want to be famous but you’re living in fucking dreamland, man’. I told him, ‘the only way anyone gets famous is either playing football or joining a band.’ I can’t remember what happened after, we either had a fight or I passed out—one or the other. But the next day I started thinking maybe you could get famous if you were a chef. Or even if you didn’t get famous, you could live like you were. So I got Cheb to write me letters round all the best restaurants, got a start in a Michelin one-star place and worked up from there.”

  “So you’re a self-made man. You done good, mate.”

  “Better than the art student, anyway. One time I went back to Manchester, I saw him trying to juggle in Market Street and he was crap at that as well.”

  Mannie started laughing, “The sad thing is, I nearly tried that once. And I can’t juggle either.” He had a shoulder bag slung at his feet and now he began rustling through it, saying, “Maybe I should just get some drinks instead. Calm you down and drown my crapness.” He said it like he still meant it as a laugh but it wasn’t how the look on his face read.

  Hogie stood up, “No, I’ll get them.”

  Mannie carried on digging through the bag, as though he expected to find some money hidden in there. Hogie took a peek at the mess inside and said. “Come on, mate. I said I’d got cash.”

  “Wait.” When Mannie lifted his head, the sad look had disappeared entirely. Nothing but a wide grin as he flicked a sheet of paper between his fingers and said: “I can’t believe I’ve found it.”

  “What?”

  “A virgin sheet of acid.”

  Hogie stared at it, an A4 sheet printed every centimetre with a picture of a sun. “Is that the one you lost last week?”

  Mannie wasn’t sure. He’d lost a lot of stuff, both before and after. But you could say it belonged to Hogie and Cheb, seeing as they’d paid for one sheet.

  He already knew the answer but asked anyway, “So what do you reckon we should do with it, Hogie?”

  *

  It was late when they returned to the flat. In the dark, in the main room, Hogie and Mannie clung together giggling. They didn’t know who else was in the flat. Mannie suggested there might be hundreds by now: little copies of Jools and Naz, bouncing jelly baby devil spawn. Hogie started shaking and yukking again.

  Mannie said, “What is it?”

  “That Jelly Head, Jesus.”

  Mannie started giggling too, “You’re tripping off your box.”

  “I swear I saw it, man. On the side of a wall, staring off a poster.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. A guy with a jelly head.”

  “That’s right. And I tell you something else, I fucking want one for myself.”

  They fell into each other’s arms again, sinking to the floor. When Jools switched the fights on, they were rolling around the carpet together.

  Mannie said, “Jools, how’r
e you doing? Where’s Naz?”

  “He’s out.‘ She stared at them, tiny blue eyes sparked with evil. When she spoke, it came venom-coated. “Get away from that fucking pervert.”

  “You what?”

  Jools grabbed hold of Mannie by the back of his jacket and dragged him off Hogie’s back. “I’m telling you, get away from that pervert.”

  Mannie and Hogie never stopped laughing, even though she was crying. It took at least five minutes before either realised she was serious. They tried stroking her arms, Mannie to her right and Hogie to the left. They barely touched her with their outstretched fingers but whispered anything that sounded comforting. They told her, Cheer up. They asked her not to cry.

  Jools shrugged away from Hogie, telling him to get his hands off her and bursting into fresh tears.

  Mannie said, “What is it Jools? Why are you crying Jools?”

  She said, “He’s a pervert, he’s a pervert.”

  “Who is? Naz?” Mannie grew cold, wondering if she was going to make him defend her.

  “Not Naz. Him.” She pointed. “Hogie.”

  She started coming for him, screaming: “And don’t you fucking dare make out that my mother’s to blame. Don’t even think about trying to worm out of it by saying she abused you.”

  Hogie backed away until he felt the wall behind him. Suddenly he realised he was going to have a bad trip. He’d never had one before.

  *

  Putting it together, later, Mannie had to admit that Hogie never ‘once blamed their mother. At first it was difficult to understand anything through Hogie’s gibbering but it seemed he wanted them to believe it was nothing, just a brief affair. When that didn’t quieten the situation or stop Jools from beating him, he began to make it worse. He told them he’d been drunk. He told them he’d been drinking Olde English cider at lunchtime. Too wasted to make classes, he had looped over to their house to see if Mannie was home. Instead, he found their mother, stepping around her bedroom in nothing but a towel.

  Jools stopped beating him for a while. But she still looked dangerous: “What happened between the two of you?”

  “Gloria’s okay. I mean, I always liked the way she looked but you should have seen her that day. Undressed, in nothing but a bath towel.”

  Mannie made a noise he’d never even heard before. A kind of squeal that he couldn’t stop from turning into a giggle. Jools turned her death-look on him. He wanted to say, It’s not me, it’s the six tabs of acid I took. Instead, he ran to the end of the flat and started sprinting up and down the stairs. By the time he returned, he’d almost managed to persuade himself the whole scene was nothing but a strange Oedipal trip. But when he walked into the living room, he found nothing had changed. Jools was screeching, Hogie was crawling under the sofa telling her he needed time to think: “I’m a bit, you know, I can’t focus.” His voice was indistinct but Mannie heard him plead, “What a.m I supposed to say‘?”. His eyes swivelling round as though he didn’t recognise anyone. ’I‘urning between the two of them, both orphan cold, his left arm clutched upwards, reaching out towards Mannie to tug on the sleeve of his jumper. Begging: “I’m sorry.”

  For hours, he didn’t know how long, he sat and watched Hogie thrash around on the carpet, moving in and out of different attacks of hysteria He was still there, curled on the floor, and Mannie was sat close by, drinking beer. Some people favour orange juice as the best way to neutralise acid. Mannie knew the only way out of a bad trip was to sit still and drink yourself unconscious. So long as you never moved, no harm could come to you and eventually you’d just slip away. Now the beers were finished, he would have to drink the bottle of Mount Gay Rum he’d seen among the tomato tins in Hogie’s cupboard.

  Jools wasn’t crying any more. When Hogie finally quietened she started making toast, tea and cereal like nothing had happened. She even placed a bowl of Weetabix on the floor for Hogie who couldn’t eat but had rubbed his face into the mush instead. There were still a few strands of his long blond hair spooled in the milky gunk.

  While she boiled the kettle and worked the toaster, she talked. Talked absolutely non-stop and all of it about Naz. She couldn’t finish the list of his good points, physical and intuitive. Mannie ‘could not believe there were so many shades to Na.z’s personality. That he was both a drug dealing gangster and a pro-active lover, whatever that meant. But he appreciated the change of subject.

  Their mother had been shagging Hogie. It was the tie-in, an explanation for all kinds of things that once had no significance but were now monstrous indicators: his mother and Hogie were the only ones doing any conjugating during the last French classes on Wednesday afternoons. She was his detour on the Friday cross—country run. The days when Mannie came home from school and Hogie would be there, ahead of him, saying, “What kept you mate, I been waiting ages.”

  One other thing was clear, so clear that even Jools had guessed, one day Hogie stopped visiting. No one had said anything since Hogie’s mad explosion or the fit of autism that followed but the only reason Jools had begun to describe her perfect lover was because she wanted to prove a point. There were some men who tried to relate. There were others that only precipitated declines.

  Just about the time Hogie stopped calling round and began spending more time at Cheb’s mother’s place, Mannie would come home and find his mother sat at the kitchen table, wrapped in her dressing gown and a tired haze of perfume, three quarters of a bottle of gin in her soft belly and that same look on her face. The image stayed with him: a look mixing anger with a fitful daze and slow tears.

  FOURTEEN

  The queue had dwindled. Naz saw only a couple of dozen people gathered around the crash barriers at the front of Comecon. Cheb was already out of the side of the Volvo and walking towards the hatch back. Naz pulled the keys out of the ignition and pulled himself out of the car.

  Cheb said, “Throw me the keys. You go and find a bus with its luggage spaces unlocked.”

  Naz okayed him, throwing the keys in a smooth are for Cheb to catch. Over at the club, the drinks van had run out of customers and the dealer had climbed inside with the counterman. Naz walked over to the line of coaches.

  In most of them, the driver was either sat at the wheel or sprawled across the front two seats. None of them would be able to see him. It was dark, he was dressed in black and the coach windows were high but he still crouched low. He rattled at the flaps along the sides of the coaches, looking for one that had been left open. He felt self-consciously careful. Cheb’s religiosity had left him edgey. They had a body that needed disposal, it wasn’t everyday stuff but it was something he’d expected to happen one day.

  The flap on the first coach he tried lifted easily, the luggage space was empty. Instant access. He straightened up.

  Walking back to the car, Naz saw the trunk lid open, its square edge framed in a haze of light. Cheb was leaning into it. The flashlight lit his face from below. Naz had no idea what he was doing, but it looked sick. It was worse than he could “have imagined, Cheb was cutting the buttocks off the corpse with a kitchen knife.

  Cheb said, “It looks fucked up, I know.”

  Naz just stared.

  “Come on. Stop looking at me like that. You’re making me feel guilty. The shape of the cooker rings are branded into his arse. I’m just cutting the evidence away. I don’t want to mess up the body any more than it is.”

  “I thought it was part of your new religion.”

  “Not mine. But I was thinking, the more ritualistic it looks the less chance the cops have of solving the case. They’ll put it down to some sicko psychotic.”

  Naz said, “That’ll put me in the clear.”

  Cheb started sawing on the left buttock. He asked Naz what he thought they should do with the discarded parts of rump. Naz didn’t know, he didn’t even want to think about it.

  Among all the other pieces of debris that had wound up in the back of Hogie’s car, there was an empty ice cream tub. Cheb said, “I guess w
e can put his arse in this and throw it away.”

  He popped the plastic lid over the two slabs of meat and walked to the nearest bin. Came back, slapping his hands and saying okey-dokey. It was time to move the born’. Naz took the head and shoulders and most of the weight. Cheb kept the feet from scraping along the pavement. When they reached the designated coach, it was Cheb who opened the flap. Naz swung the body inside the luggage compartment and they pushed it into the shadows together. Once it was stowed inside, they stood back. The body was all but hidden. Cheb thought it would be even better if they pushed the body around so it lay across the width of the coach rather than pointing from the back to the front. He climbed inside the compartment to manouevre the body alone. Once it faced the way he wanted, he rolled it to the very back of the bus, hard against the wall that separated the luggage area from the engine.

  Naz said, “It’s gonna roll forward when the coach starts moving.”

  Cheb had thought of that. He was planning to secure the body. He asked Naz if he saw a driver in the coach.

  Naz checked back. After a few seconds, he returned saying: “Yeah, there’s a guy up front in a uniform, reading the Sun.”

  “I think the best bet, you lure him out.”

  “How?”

  “Tell him you’ll suck his dick for a fiver.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Cheb grinned out of the shadows, the streetlight shining off his teeth and dome. He said, “I was joking. A better idea; go rob that drinks van. After you’ve run off, the drivers are bound to get out and look over the scene of the crime.”

  Cheb was being serious, Naz could not believe he was being serious. “I’m supposed to just run off? Where’m I supposed to fucking run to?”

  “Round the block. Meet me back at the car.”

  Now Naz knew this was all screwed up. Suppose he was chased around the block.