Jello Salad

by Nicholas Blincoe

  She said, “Those women who caught us in the kitchen, the ones who screamed at me. They were the ones who were killed, weren’t they?”

  “Yes. Jools and her mother. And Cheb and his mother, they were there too.”

  “I’m really so sorry.”

  Hogie said, “Were they killed by your husband?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.” She didn’t know what else to say. And she couldn’t decide whether she was being stupid or selfish, keeping Hogie at arm’s length. She let the telephone cable twirl out between nervous fingers. “Maybe you should come over.”

  He was almost unbearably pleased. After she listened to him repeat the address and hang up, she began to think it was for the best. They both needed comforting. And what had she achieved, this past few days. She had spent most of her time answering the phone on over-heated Johns demanding either Correction, Greek or special classes in TV deportment. All she could tell them was this lady was retired, then shout up or down the stairs, asking if anyone wanted some business.

  She screwed the tissue she had been holding into a tight damp ball. Diluted traces of mascara were soaked deep into its ply. As she walked into her room, she tossed it on the floor. It landed in a teacup. It didn’t matter, every sip of the tea had swelled up in her mouth like cotton wool, she could never have finished it.

  She knew, if she thought she would ever be able to kill Frankie, she was dreaming. She had got as far as getting a gun—another favour she owed to Maltese Rosa. At the moment it was hidden under a copy of the Daily Mail, among the mess of spray cans and atomisers on the dressing table. Rosa had said it was a woman’s piece but when Susan took it out for another look, she still couldn’t imagine using it. The grip was mother of pearl or something similar, the rest of it was nickel—plated, stubby-looking and battered When she laid the pistol down she did it carefully, then she started crying again.

  *

  Hogie put the scrap of paper with Susan’s address safely in his pocket and started packing his overnight bag. He was just glad to get out of the flat The last four days, he’d been passing Mannie and Naz in the living—room, around the microwave or in the bathroom and neither of them had anything to say to him. They walked like ghosts, he bumped into things. He wanted to know, still, whether they blamed him. If they ever started, then he would have to start wondering whether he felt guilty. He knew he felt something.

  He never did get around to his great act of atonement and, now that was forever impossible, he hadn’t tried to tell Mannie the truth about his mother, either. The way Mannie acted, he seemed to want to write it off as just one of those things; you know, like two consenting adults. The only problem with that, they both knew he wasn’t an adult: he was fifteen-going-on-sixteen.

  Between Hogie and Mannie’s old school and the housing estate where Mannie lived, there was a golf club. A screen of trees separated the roofs from the fairway. The day Hogie first got together with Gloria Manning, he’d been lying in a bunker since nine-thirty in the morning, smoking a weak two—skin spliff and holding a bottle of cider. By eleven, the dope was making him queasy, the acid house tape in his Walkman was definitely making his head pound. He had no idea whether Mannie had gone into school either but decided to try his house. If he was home, they could chill out together, watch TV and have a cup of tea.

  Hogie cut through the trees at the far end of the fairway At the back of the nearest house was a wire pen with a Rottie dog barking inside. A kid, about ten years old, was beating on the mesh with a cricket stump, making the dog crazy. Hogie knew the boy was being paid to do it by the owner. The man bred certified insane attack dogs.

  Hogie walked on, along the line of compact semis. A garden to his left had a single rose tree, the one to the right had a mini van sitting on a pile of bricks. Hogie crossed the road and walked up the passageway to the side of Mannie’s house. He never used the front door, always the back.

  The kitchen was empty but the door was unlocked. Inside, the breakfast pots beside the sink were dry but frosted with foam. Mrs Manning usually did the dishes before she went to work. If the door was open, then Mannie might still be in bed. Hogie walked through the sitting room and climbed the narrow stairs to Mannie’s room. It was the smallest room in the house and if Mannie hadn’t kept it reasonably tidy it would have been squalid inside five minutes. The eiderdown was heaped at the end of the bed, off the floor. Mannie wasn’t underneath it.

  When he heard the bathroom door open, Hogie slipped behind Mannie’s door. Across the hall, Mrs Manning stepped out with a towel wrapped like a turban around wet hair. She had another towel tight around her body, running beneath her arm pits. Her breasts were squashed into two half discs, her skin was unnaturally white. She didn’t see Hogie. He was peering round the edge of the door and saw everything—everything she was showing, everything he could imagine under the towel. She went through a door on her left, into her bedroom. Hogie slipped out of the room and stood, spy style, against the wall. He craned his neck around Mrs Manning had left her door open a touch.

  When she dropped the towel, she had her back to Hogie. She wasn’t a fat woman but her bottom was quite big, like a giant milk chocolate Easter egg split into two halves. Hogie wanted to run over, pull those cheeks apart and nose down until they were both giggling.

  He got up on his tip toes and crept back to Mannie’s room and found Mannie’s pistol hidden in its usual place, at the back of the wardrobe, rolled inside a Subbuteo cloth. He pulled back the hammer and flipped out the revolving bit. The six little holes were empty. Hogie opened the cardboard box that used to hold the Ajax squad and took out six brassy little bullets. He put them in the gun, snapped the cylinder back and eased the hammer down.

  Hogie held the gun to the side of his face as he crept back to Mrs Manning’s bedroom, still in secret agent mode. When he pushed the door open, she was stood right in front of him wearing a red satin bra and a blue skirt that covered her from her waist to her knees. The towel turban was still in place. She looked surprised.

  She said, “Hogie. What the hell are you playing at.”

  Hogie felt himself blush through. He knew his legs were about to give way.

  She said, “Where did you find that bloody gun?”

  He staggered to one side. If he could sit down, then he might be alright There was a velvet—padded stool pushed underneath her dressing table, he pulled it out with his toe and collapsed onto it. All the while, he made sure that he faced her. He couldn’t keep his hand from shaking, the gun was pressed hard against his cheek so that it would remain steady.

  “Get out, Hogie.”

  Hogie’s voice came out mid—way between a croak and a bleat, “Take off the skirt Mrs Manning.”

  “Or what? You’re going to shoot me?”

  Hogie moved the gun around and pushed it barrel-first into his mouth. If he didn’t clasp it two—handed, he might have knocked his teeth out, his hands were shaking so much.

  “Don’t do that Hogie. Hogie. Put the gun down.”

  Hogie knew she recognised the gun. She had seen it every Wednesday night when her last—but-one boyfriend packed his bag and headed off to his shooting club. She knew he wasn’t sucking on a toy. He eased the pistol out of his mouth, just far enough so he could talk. “Take off the skirt or I’ll take off my fucking head.”

  Already, he was beginning to shake less. He knew he could see it through. It even showed in his voice, “I said, take it off.”

  She held out one hand, soothing as she said, Okay, Okay. She unzipped the skirt at the side, pinching the material together as she did it. The skirt loosed and she shrugged out of it. She was wearing a red panty girdle, a different shade to her bra.

  Hogie took the pistol out of his mouth for another brief command. “Open the door of the wardrobe.”

  She did it. She probably didn’t understand at first but as the mirror on the inside of the door swung out she realised that he wanted to see her from all angles.

  There was
a vinyl clad radio standing on the dressing table. Hogie pushed one of the preprogrammed buttons. He got Piccadilly Gold playing Elvis’s “Viva Las Vegas”. His soul was already on fire.

  “Take off the panties please, Mrs Manning.”

  She shook her head.

  Hogie thumbed back the hammer, it clicked into place and the trigger trembled beneath his finger. Their eyes were locked. He could feel tears pricking in his. Hers were beginning to fill.

  She began to roll the elasticated material down, staring at her waist. The panties were so tight, they could only be peeled away. As she bent forward, he caught a flash of black hair reflected in the mirror. Hogie felt his dick swell with a painful tug; a stray pubic hair had caught inside his foreskin. He slipped a finger through his button-down fly and freed himself. His dick edged out beneath his grey denim school jeans.

  He had her now but he wasn’t sure what to do. She stood holding her panties in her left hand, as though she was saying “Well?” Hogie’s eyes were level to her crotch and the tangled mass of her pubic hair.

  “Can you come closer.”

  She hesitated.

  Hogie felt the itch of sweat bubbling up on his forehead. “Please do it. Or I’m dead, I mean it.”

  She began to move.

  “Slowly, with both hands on your head.”

  She put her hands to the top of her turban.

  She was right in front of him now, a half-arm’s length away. He could just stretch out, a tip of one finger testing the curled springiness of her hair. As he touched her, she flinched backwards. Hogie pushed the gun deeper into his mouth, the sight at the end of the barrel scratched against his palate.

  “Closer.”

  She took half a step closer to him. Near enough now for him to reach out his hand and measure the expanse of her hair to his palm‘s length. The hair, like her skin still carried the clammy damp of her bath, warm enough to agitate the scent molecules of her soap.

  He rested like that for a long while until he felt her shiver. Before she turned absolutely cold, he had to think of something else. When he asked her to get on the bed she just backed away from him in silence until the edge of the bed touched her knees and she fell to the duvet.

  Hogie stood. The gun was still firm in his mouth, almost deep enough to make him gag. He undid his belt and popped the buttons one-handed. He hauled his jeans and his undies down together. His dick snagged on the fly-slit at the front of his undies, then sprang out.

  Mrs Manning lay where she’d fallen. You couldn’t say that her legs were either open or closed.

  Hogie pulled the gun out of his mouth again. He said, “Can you…” He didn’t know how to say it. “Can you, like, put your hands under your bottom and, like, pull the cheeks apart.”

  “Like in a mucky book?”

  Hogie nodded: yeah, that was it.

  “Forget it.”

  A drip of spittle hung off the end of the gun barrel. Hogie jammed the gun back into his mouth, too hard. He felt the roof of his mouth split open and then the flood of warm salty blood. He pulled the gun out and drops of blood fell from the barrel. He felt blood and spit sweep across his chin.

  She said. “I’ll do this.”

  She inclined her knees upwards slightly. As she did it, the blackness between her legs began to make sense, to divide into separate defined parts between dark, thick lips.

  Hogie hobbled out of his jeans and moved towards the wardrobe. Keeping his eyes on her, he stretched out his free hand and reached into the top shelf drawer where he knew she kept a tube of KY gel folded among her hankies.

  As he drew out the gun again, a glob of blood dropped onto his chest and slid to the carpet. He looked from the stain to the tube of lubricating gel, almost apologetically as he said, “I don’t know much about this. Will we need this?”

  She looked at him in sharp surprise, “How did you know it was there?”

  Because he often looked around her room, he knew where she kept everything. He didn’t know how to admit it, though. So he said, “I’m in love with you.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Honest.”

  He was on his knees on the bed now, hovering above her in the praying position with the gun back in his mouth. When fresh drops of blood fell, they dripped to the fold at the middle of her belly.

  Her voice was softer now. “So get rid of the gun.”

  There was no way he trusted her. He kept the gun in place as he dropped onto one hand, into a press-up position. As he lowered himself onto his elbows, the gun stayed in place. As he probed, first, then surged forward, the gun jolted against his teeth. He carried on pushing.

  She wheezed and her hands flew out, gripped him and hung on tight. With her head pinned between his elbows, the cylinder of the pistol grazed the side of his face. He kept the gun in his mouth, he was gagging on it but he kept it inside his mouth.

  Holding tight onto Hogie’s back, she hauled herself up an inch, twisting her head around until she met his mouth. She pushed her tongue forward, along the metal, and prised open a space wide enough for their lips to meet. The gun barrel ran between their two mouths, greased on blood and both their spit. She tried but failed to persuade him to let the gun go completely and the shards from his chipped teeth gave their kisses a sharp edge.

  Thinking it through, he still didn’t know if it was a rape story. Perhaps not, if she agreed to sleep with him again; as she did, later. But nothing would have happened between them if it wasn’t for that first time and he had certainly used pressure. All he could say, he was only fifteen and threatening to kill yourself was one way of getting a girl to sleep with you.

  She did ask him, one time, would he have done it.

  He was sure. She nodded. She thought so too, either out of shame or embarrassment or because the thing had gone too far. But for no other reason. That was probably true, too.

  TWENTY ONE

  Cheb had a head like a red cabbage. They showed him his reflection each time they walked him to the bathroom and he’d stare at himself in the mirror. He’d been beaten so badly he wouldn’t ever have recognised himself. The strangest thing, though, he couldn’t feel anything either. He couldn’t match this reflection to any corroborative pain so how did he know it was him standing there, swelling and bleeding and dribbling. What he had were disjointed memories.

  They told him to talk. Later, they told him to shut up. Both ways, the beatings always came eventually. What he remembered best was the constant sound of their music. Often, it was so loud he had to struggle to be heard as he tried to interest them in his life story and his personal theories. They were mostly interested in what he knew about Susan Ball and the heap of cocaine she carried with her.

  When the music was at its loudest, there were always two of them. Other times, when either Frank Ball or Cardiff were around, the music was nothing but a hum, so soft it might have been an echo, playing over in his head. They worked in shifts, coming to visit him in the windowless room where he now spent all his time, haunting the spot where his mother had been killed. One time, they gave him a chair to sit on, which was nice. True, it soon broke but for a while he was allowed to sit almost at their level as he swatted at their questions. The music was loud that day and they told him not to worry about it. He trusted them by then so when they said they intended to be gentle, he believed it. As one of them said, “Today is Good Cop Day: just call us Cagney and Lacey.”

  It was Lacey who explained their strategy. “We decided we better go soft on you, Chebby boy. Otherwise we might have another heart attack victim on our hands.”

  As he said it, Cagney started laughing. Cheb joined in. No, not another fucking coronary case, it was the last thing they needed.

  Cagney was the blond one and was kind of skittish. Lacey was more contemplative and tried his best to concentrate whenever Cheb answered their questions.

  Another nice thing about Lacey was that he rolled the joints, even holding them to Cheb’s mouth. He was grateful for th
at, there was no other way to smoke while his hands remained cuffed behind his back.

  After allowing him a few good tokes, Lacey said, “How’s that feel?’

  Cheb nodded, it was good.

  He looked over to his partner and said, “You remember where we got this stuff, eh?”

  Cagney said, “Dalston, mate. I think it’s homegrown.”

  “Could be. What’s the best you’ve ever had?”

  Cagney shrugged, “That’s the problem. If it’s any good, I can’t fucking remember.”

  Lacey had to agree on that. “What about you, Chebbo? What’s the best dope you ever had?”

  Cheb said, “Vietnamese.” Then changed his mind, “Thai.”

  They both nodded approvingly. Cagney saying, “We got a fucking connoisseur here, what you reckon?”

  Lacey nodded. “Yeah, Thai’s good. Don’t know when I last had any of that shit though. You?”

  “Oh yeah. Had some on holiday the other year, it was fucking sweet.”

  “Thailand?”

  “Yeah, Thailand, Goa, Bali. I go for a couple of months every year, do a bit of spliff, bit of opium, get my head together and fly back home.”

  He reached over to pull the joint out of Cheb’s mouth, saying: “Don’t start bogarting it, Chebbie boy. You gotta leave some for the rest of us.”

  Lacey said, “I gotta do that. I mean, I reckon Ibiza’s just about had it. It’s time I gave India a whirl.”