As I listen, I wonder if either of them have appeared as entertainment speakers at one of head office’s mysterious conferences. On the subject of ‘Making Friends With New Technological Advancements.’
Soon as I get this thing near my own tools, I think to myself, this talking Morse-bot is heading straight for the toaster. See how it handles a few crumpets and a bagel…
Chapter 38: Quality Time
I wake up on Saturday morning at home, with my usual deliberations over which of the so many versions of my dreams might have been the reality. Like, am I dead. But the familiar cobweb in the corner of the ceiling has a certain grounding presence, as I watch its blurry grey shadow move without apparent disturbance in its ghostly undulations, directed by God only knows.
I move to stretch, and find the rest of my bed unoccupied, so possibly only hormones and the fear of recent brainwashing meant I dreamt the one about Connor giving up on his self-control ideas. And the big-faced digital alarm clock, propped up in its compact black leather stitched wallet on the cluttered chest of drawers, wedged into the narrow space beside the bed, tells me by its very existence that I’m not one of the Borgias’ recent dinner guests. Who, in my rapidly clouding dreamscape memory, were telling very rude jokes in Scouse accents at some Romanesque food-themed orgy. Where I avoided eating anything other than a breadstick, trying to climb out of the nearest pillared balcony when someone announced that pizza was on the way. I wonder if I stopped off at Crypto on the way home and found Elaine giving the whole of Red Watch a lock-in lap-dance in V.I.P, or whether that was a dream. Considering she was very primly appreciating her new guy last time I saw her. Was Niall Taylor really working in the same venue as me last night, talking about his girlfriend wishing he was a vampire, or was that a dream? And did Martha ring me in my sleep and ramble on about a wild horse rescue centre I had supposedly promised to make a contribution to? I hate those dream phone calls. My dream hands can’t operate the keypad buttons, and nothing I mumble into it makes any sense, unless I talk Mandarin or Japanese. For some reason the person phoning me in my dream is always in a mood, and on about imaginary promises I haven’t kept. I asked my counsellor about it once, during our short series of consultations years ago, and she said it was about unfulfilled goals that my subconscious had set a time-frame for achieving. I remember thinking back then, how inconsiderate it was of my subconscious to have so much expectation of me. Like having internal parents looking over my shoulder the whole time, tapping their wristwatches, tutting and shaking their heads regretfully.
An empty apple and watermelon JJ soft juice drink bottle is standing behind the clock. I stare at the empty glass bottle and its cheery fruit-shaped label, willing its solidness and reality to provide an earthing point for the strangely alive tentacles of alternate realities flailing out of my brain, somewhere between consciousness and sleep.
As often happens, my alarm goes off as I’m awake and looking thoughtfully at the clock-face, but not fully registering it. I stretch again, and try to encourage my body to feel motivated enough to sit up.
“Made you a cup of tea,” Connor announces, walking in and putting it down next to me, pressing the button on the clock to mute the alarm. “Sleep okay?”
“Now I’m really confused,” I reply, and rub my eyes. I notice that I slept in my uniform, which isn’t unusual as my house only has one working storage heater, in the hallway of all places, and no double-glazing. So that definitely doesn’t fit the dream I had. “I dreamt you were here. But I was pretty sure waking up just now that you weren’t.”
“I just got here,” he confirms, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Just finished a late uniform shift. More tramps, more drunks, more hippy protesters, more escaped or missing animals. The usual.”
He reaches out and teases a strand of my hair. I sit up, unsure how I feel about things, now my dreams have compromised a lot of my memories about him lately.
“How was work last night?” he asks me, as I reach over and idly move the JJ bottle before picking up my mug of tea. I recall vaguely putting the other drink in the fridge before coming to bed.
“Kaboom,” I say, sipping my tea, the first word I can think of. I remember standing in the kitchen downstairs last night, holding the now-empty JJ bottle and a dolphin bottle-opener, not moving and staring at the wall saying ‘kaboom’ to myself like a self-hypnotic mantra. While my ears were still ringing, and the faint after-images burned into my retinas still danced around at the corners of my vision. “Fireworks.”
“Fireworks, huh?” he smirks. I grin. I think I was probably grinning to myself last night in the kitchen as well. “Whatever lights your candle.”
“I’m not allowed candles, I’m a pyromaniac,” I tell him automatically. Like a child pointing to where it has hidden the chocolate digestives.
“I know, that’s why for the life of me I don’t get why they gave you the damn thing.” Connor shakes his head to himself, and sips his own tea. “Maybe because they really do think you’ve got more self-control than anyone else. Even in regards to your own unnecessary urges.”
I shrug. I remember ending the phone call with Warren, driving home, parking and locking the car, feeding the cat - the only thing outside of my normal routine, was having a bottle of soft drink with me to open. Creating a pause in my internal program, in which the original spark of my personality woke up to enjoy the event.
“Maybe they just trust me not to go abusing it to make money on the side,” I suggest. “To switch allegiances. Go taking contracts instead.”
“You’ve proved enough times how trustworthy you are,” he points out.
“Really?” I ask, curiously. “Why, what’s everyone else doing?”
“Never mind,” he chuckles.
Connor goes home to sleep saying he’ll ring later, and I pick up Junior. We go for a walk on the pebble beach, skimming every flat stone we can find across the waves. Junior has only just learnt this trick and her record is five bounces, so when she gets a nine out of a triangular stone, her screams of ‘NINE!’ quite possibly carry all the way along the coast in the whiplash wind, which is chasing clouds across the sky. Like teams of grey horses pulling coaches to fairy castles.
Some hard-core windsurfers pull off their dream stunts in the swell. Men in green or navy kagools dotted at regular intervals sit in lashed-down windbreakers, nursing their fishing rods. Junior finds three live Dabs in the mouth of an Angler head washed up on the beach near the boats, optimistically setting them free in the surf, which soaks her old pink corduroy trousers up to the knee. I worry that the Dabs will be picked off by seabirds immediately, or caught by the fishermen, but she doesn’t mind. I think the only thing she’d have objected to, would have been me suggesting she take them home and cook them herself.
It’s a nice way to spend some time out together. We get chips and Southern Fried chicken for lunch in the seafront restaurant at the end of our walk, sitting inside by the window, watching gulls steal chips from customers brave enough to sit outside to eat.
Junior tells me all about the different kinds of clouds in the sky, and how and why they are different. She says her favourite is the Anvil Top Cloud, and you hardly ever see it any more, because there are so many aircraft vapour trails making more cloud than there used to be. And that aircraft vapour trails are actually cooling the Earth down, because the extra cloud is reflecting sunlight and heat by increasing the planet’s albedo. She says sometimes she wakes up really early before the early vapour trails expand and watches out of the window, hoping to see an Anvil Top. I tell her I remember them from the village I grew up in, which was a long way from any airport, and we’ll go visit one day. And she’ll meet Miss Haversham, and can watch clouds from the garden, while my Godmother updates me on whatever version of village events currently have the most reaction value.
I’m glad we’re enjoying some quality alone time, not interrupted by the ongoing dramas of work colleagues or head office demands, because I feel as though it
’s putting last night’s job back away into its box. Not labelling it with any more or less importance than any other event. The view of the open sea, idle background chat of the other customers in the restaurant, discussing TV highlights and plans for the summer, or reading today’s papers at the counter, alongside the coastal radio station playing faintly on the speakers in the kitchen - perpetually stuck in Fleetwood Mac’s 1980’s era - and Junior’s foraging for the mythological Enormous Chip (as big as an adult-size toothbrush or it doesn’t count) all contribute to more of a peaceful state of mind today than I could have wished for. Although part of me supposes it was also the dream about Connor, and waking up to find he was there making me tea. Or rather, more likely - the pyrotechnics demonstration by War In A Box last night, which has given a very small part of my personality the feeling of what it’s like to be God in a split second.
I agree with Junior, though. You’re better off looking for interesting naturally-formed clouds, and huge potato by-products, attributing them to atmospheric and geological conditions man has no control over, in the search for a God. Rather than just watching your own influence over the carbon cycle, in whatever direction you push it.
“I was thinking last night,” I say, while she eyes up my chips for comparative size, speculatively. “We should find out about getting some maintenance money from your dad.”
“Good,” she says, nodding. “About time. Not even one Christmas card ever. Are you going to eat more chips? I think there might be a really big one hiding at the bottom.”
I dutifully dissect my stack of chips, Jenga-style, for Junior’s professional scrutineering. A harshly bleached blonde girl with an Alice band holding her hair scraped back, sitting at the table outside the window nearest to us - swathed in scarves, zipped into a padded sports jacket and fashionably white denim jeans tucked into her grey Snugg boots - hasn’t stopped typing into her phone since we sat down. A frown of concentration is between her brutally tweezed eyebrows, risking permanent Botox-target lines by simultaneously smoking, even though her food is only half-finished. The pattern-recognition of hair accessory, and her present preoccupation, has me thinking about the other Alice, what she’s writing about now, how it’s working out for her, or helping her psychological state. I wonder how much of it is centrifugal, her own ego running the show, and how much is external, needing approval from the male characters featuring in her delusions. Or whether something else is at work. Her own need for continuity, a commentary or storyline to make sense of the disorder of her life, to fulfil a desire for romance and excitement, or to compensate for a dislike of the mundane. I wonder if she’ll grow up to be Miss Haversham, or whether some other thread of hope will lead her onto another lifestyle path, with the attractive mirage of her ideal reality at the far end.
Junior announces that she has won today’s Biggest Chip contest, and I buy her an ice-cream cornet as her reward, which she has to finish before we get back in the car to drive home.
I sort out my uniforms for washing and look for more black things to fill the washing machine, finally persuading Junior to let me strip her Halloween-themed bed, while she grumbles that Johnny Bones and Skulldog don’t smell of anything. Except perhaps where she’s spilt ketchup, giving the cartoon print more of a gory look than the bedding arrived with. As I’m in her room, and she’s changing out of her beach gear, she points out to me a rather frightening pile of clothing which apparently doesn’t fit her any more, meaning she is now down to two pairs of jeans, and three tshirts which aren’t quite threatening to turn into crop tops yet. I realise the day has come when I’m handing down my own clothes already, so after starting the laundry, I go into my room and sift out as many tshirts as I can find which are too short or too tight on me, but still suitable for her. She says yes to approximately a third of them, which is a good enough result, and I remove the rest and bag everything else up destined for the charity shop.
I wonder if I’ll grow up to be Miss Haversham when I’m older. Living in some fantasy limbo-world, without anything to connect me in real life to my peer group, and society. I sit on the upturned laundry basket in the utility cupboard, watching the rinse cycle and eating a banana, while the vacuum cleaner fails to grab my attention with reminders that there is still a cobweb on my bedroom ceiling. When I finish the banana, I rest my feet up against the opposite wall, and read another chapter of this month’s Scamways chart bookshelf, pulp paperback, dark fantasy romance, for women who like their heroes cold, bitter, twisted, and without a pulse. Makes me worry that modern women now really are a generation of closet necrophiliacs. A man who can’t say no, and won’t ever see you in daylight without your hair and make-up done. And of course is never around while the shops are open to stop you spending. Would make a new and original psychosis should I want one.
I suppose that’s what today’s women clubbers see in doormen, I ponder idly, resisting the urge to count how many repetitions of the phrase ‘heaving bosom’ I’ve noticed since the start of Blood Lust or whatever I’m currently absorbing. Not just a guy they see scrubbed up, in a suit they can picture in all their fantasy wedding photos. He’s also a guy they imagine only ever sees them in their most flattering light - in other words, minimal lighting - in their most glamorous attire and most approachable mood. At least until after the first couple of drinks, when all the best intentions come undone, along with the shoe straps and clip-on hair. By the end of the night, they’re in the kind of state that only a bucket and a tartan dressing gown can improve anyway, so they might as well allow themselves to be seen during the day. Rather than showing themselves up at both their best and worst within the space of a few hours, or less.
Maybe I’m the one in need of some better form of escapism, I think to myself, closing the book and replacing it on the shelf above my head. I look up at my Travelite suitcase stored higher up. I wonder what books are the best-sellers in airports these days.
I get my phone out to Boogle the thought while it’s on my mind, and Connor promptly rings as it’s in my hand. Just another of those spooky coincidences. My brain would have sighed, if it was possible. Definitely need some distraction.
“Hey,” I greet him, pressing the Power button on the washing machine to stop the spin cycle, so that I can hear. “How was your sleep?”
“Yeah, good thanks. I dreamt about you as well,” he says.
“Sorry I’m not there to make you a cup of tea,” I grin.
“No worries. You and Junior busy?”
“No, we went out earlier. Just doing laundry. She’s watching Zombie cartoons.”
“Want to go out this afternoon before work? Both of you, I mean. Do something regular.”
“What’s regular?” I ask.
“I’ll think of something,” he says. “I’ll pick you up.”
Junior has to bring her DS, as she is on the Zombie Surgeon mini-game level, learning about Zombie sporting injuries. Every so often, she asks me to pronounce the name of a bone or muscle, or an internal organ for her.
“I thought Pancreas was a train station?” she says, from the back seat of the black Audi. “I saw it on the map of the London Underground. King’s Cross Pancreas.”
“That’s probably why he’s diabetic,” Connor jokes.
“Is it okay with the balaclava on inside the car?” I ask him, as Junior’s bobble-hatted head nods and lowers over her console again.
“Don’t worry about it,” he just grins. Junior went through a pom-pom making phase and her cardigan looks like it lost a battle with a ball-pond, while her jeans went on a school trip to a badge and enamel pin factory and returned wearing more metal than an Army tank. I’m comfortable with it, I’m just aware that other parents are already sending their little girls to school discos and parties in halter tops and glitter eye-shadow, which I think is kind of sordid. “What did you have for lunch today, Junior? Or is your name Ellie at the moment?”
“I’m Dr. Frankenzombie in this mini-game,” she announces. “You can call me Ell
ie. Chicken and chips. From the chip shop at the beach earlier.”
“Nice,” Connor nods. “If you’re hungry later, just say and we’ll stop for food, okay?”
“‘Kay,” Junior echoes, and concentrates on her game again, intermittently muttering things like ‘Stupid Wishbone’ and ‘Carp Tunnel’ and ‘Achilles Willy’ - which I hope is a name she’s made up for a pet Zombie, and not something put in by the game designers to frighten parents with. Doesn’t sound like a legitimate sporting injury for a Zombie.
“Did you ever want kids?” I ask Connor, knowing it’s one of the big taboo questions that you don’t mention to a guy because it sounds as though you have a test tube hidden up your sleeve. But listening to Junior in the back of the car, it sounds as though more unappealing questions might be raised otherwise, from my point of view.
“Don’t have any that I know of,” he says, in stereotypical single male disclaimer-speak. I’ve heard it so often in passing conversations at work, that doormen should wear tshirts with it printed on. “Never thought about it. Goes with meeting the right person. A guy who says he doesn’t want kids basically means ‘Not with you.’”
“I did suspect that,” I grin, knowingly waffling to drown out any sound of dubious anatomical knowledge from the back seat. “I know at least two women who waited years, and even married guys they thought would eventually come around to the idea. One of them split up with her husband after ten years, and he met another woman and became a Dad straight away afterwards. The other left her boyfriend of eight years, and she met a new guy who wanted to start a family as soon as they were married, like, six months later. What’s that all about?”
Death & the City Book Two Page 34
