Girl 99

by Andy Jones

  Jiang walks up to our table. ‘Is everything okay?’ he asks, looking at our half-finished food. ‘You want the bill?’

  ‘No, a . . . a calcalator,’ says El. ‘Fr’addin up.’

  ‘The bill?’

  ‘I want to see how shit Tom is.’

  Jiang looks to me for clarification, and I can only shrug apologetically.

  ‘How far away’s C-Day?’ asks El after Jiang has supplied him with a calculator the size of a sandwich.

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  ‘You’ve go a calendar on y’ phone, right? Come on ch. . . ch. . . chop chop.’

  I open up my calendar app and count backwards from July the nineteenth. ‘Seven weeks. Exactly.’

  ‘And you’ve fucked how many?’

  ‘Jesus, El,’ I say, miming a volume switch being turned down to somewhere below level nine.

  ‘Keep yr knickers on,’ says El in a stage whisper barely an increment quieter than his previous outburst. ‘I was only asking how many birds you’ve—’

  ‘You know how many,’ I tell him, dropping my voice to a whisper. ‘Ninety-five.’

  ‘One hundred minus niney-five is’ – El taps the digits into his calculator – ‘five. Five fucks.’

  ‘El, what are you—’

  ‘Patience. I’ll lose my place. Seven weeks is’ – tap tap tap – ‘forty-nine days. Forty-nine divided by five is . . . nine-poin-eight.’ El shows me this number on the calculator. ‘Nine-poin-eight DPF.’

  ‘I’m sorry? DP what?’

  ‘F,’ says El. ‘Days – per – fuck.’

  ‘Do you have to?’

  ‘Yes I do. ’swhat you need to get yr hunred for C-Day.’

  I try burying my head in my hands.

  ‘I’m juss tryin to help,’ says El. ‘Give you a target. Small ’ch. . . ’chievable goals.’

  ‘Well, thank you for your concern,’ I say from behind my hands.

  ‘Well, you’re very welcome.’

  We eat for a while. El vibrates in his seat, bouncing his heels, listening to music on invisible headphones. It takes him two, three, four attempts to load rice onto his fork. He fumbles a piece of prawn toast, so I hand one to him before he knocks the table over.

  ‘Hope you’ve washed yr hans,’ says El.

  ‘Ingrate.’

  ‘Like one of those dancin’ puppets, aren’ I?’ he says. ‘Like you see blokes sellin out’f suitcases.’

  ‘Here,’ I say, handing him the bread.

  El sighs. ‘Guess when I lass had sex?’

  ‘Mate, I haven’t got a clue.’

  ‘Me either. I tried to remember, but I juss carn.’ He says this quietly, almost apologetically. ‘Maybe not since Christmas – we must’ve done it at Christmas.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘Phil understands.’

  ‘Some people like me, with this’ – El presents his arms as if they were evidence – ‘they go sex mad. Turn into fuckig nymphos.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I haven got that. Lucky I s’pose. I mean, s’ardly very sexy, is it?’

  ‘Phil understands.’

  ‘Yeah, y’already said.’

  I sip my beer.

  ‘I wan him to get a new boyfren,’ says El.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘You know what dysphagia is?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Trouble swallowing. You cn breathe liquid into your lungs and drown on your beer. They give you powder to thicken y’drinks.’ El takes a two-handed gulp of lager. ‘Lager milkshakes.’

  ‘Yummy.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’ve got that to look forward to – lager jelly. No wonder we kill ourselves.’

  ‘Oh, knock it off.’

  ‘Just saying, aren I? Lager soup.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Phil finding a new boyfriend?’ I ask.

  ‘Best snario, I’ve got fifteen years, ten.’

  ‘Fifteen years is a long time, El. Fift—’

  ‘Thass my point,’ El says. ‘I’m only going downhill from here, aren I? Won’t be able to eat, wash, read, shit outside of my fuckig pants . . . Fifteen years is worst-case snario.’

  ‘El, come on—’

  ‘Full-time care.’

  ‘If you need help, Phil’ll get help.’

  ‘In ten years Phil’ll be in his fifties. I wan him t’ave some’un now, before he’s too old t’enjoy it.’

  ‘Maybe he doesn—’

  ‘I’d want somen else. Wouldn you? Fuckig . . . look at me,’ says El, and his eyes are full of tears. He drops his napkin, so I reach across the table and wipe his cheeks with mine.

  ‘Very fuckig gallant,’ says El.

  ‘Yeah,’ I tell him, ‘you’re very fuckig welcome.’

  El smiles and takes a sip of his beer. ‘I juss want Phil to be happy.’

  ‘I understand that,’ I say.

  El brightens by a shade. ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thass good. I dumped him.’

  ‘You what?!’

  ‘I’m movin out,’ he says, nodding emphatically.

  ‘Wh— Oh you daft bastard. Where to?’

  El looks at me like I know the answer full well.

  ‘Piss off. No. Forget it.’

  El smiles sweetly.

  ‘Do you know what a Gilligan Cut is?’ I ask him.

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  ‘There’s an old American sitcom called Gilligan’s Island, about this shipwrecked family. And the guy, Gilligan, would say something like, “No way am I getting on that raft!” and then they’d cut to . . . ?’

  ‘Gillingham on a raft?’ says El, a sparkle of hope in his eyes.

  ‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘And this isn’t one of those. You are not getting on my raft.’

  ‘Fine,’ says El. ‘I’ll sleep rough.’

  ‘Oh shut up.’ I wave at Jiang and indicate that I want the bill. ‘Drink up, we’re going.’

  If you had to guess, you’d guess Phil was gay. His head is small and tidily angular, with evenly cropped, half-grey half-dark hair. He is always clean-shaven and precisely ironed. He wears tight T-shirts, usually white, that show off his toned yoga arms and neat wine-drinker’s paunch. He is neat in every respect apart from his fingernails, which are bitten back to the pulp.

  ‘If it isn’t my ex-boyfriend,’ he says as we enter the living room. He’s curled up on the sofa, tinkering with his laptop, something acoustic on the stereo, a glass and a bottle of wine on a lacquered occasional table. Chez Phil is all wallpaper and antique furniture, like your parents’ house if they had good taste. He glares at El. ‘Didn’t drop dead over dinner then?’

  El walks through the room and into the adjoining kitchen; he flicks two fingers at Phil en route.

  ‘Hey, Phil,’ I say. ‘El just told me.’

  ‘Just? He told me he was moving in with you.’

  ‘Yeah, he just told me that, too. Phil, I had no idea.’

  ‘Little bugger.’

  ‘I’m bigger’n you,’ El says, re-entering the room with two wine glasses.

  ‘Only in height,’ says Phil. ‘When you’re gone I’ll move in a Samoan lodger with a cock like a rounders bat. I’ll take inches in lieu of rent.’

  I inspect the embroidery on the cushion clutched to my lap.

  ‘You woudn know what t’do with it,’ says El, reaching for the wine.

  Phil snatches the bottle away. ‘I’ll pour. How much has he had, Tom?’

  ‘Two pints of Tsingtao.’

  ‘Lager porridge,’ says El, lowering himself with some difficulty onto the sofa beside Phil.

  ‘Porridge?’ asks Phil.

  ‘Old joke,’ I say.

  Phil elects to let it drop, pours a splash of wine into El’s glass, crosses the room and fills mine to within a finger of the rim.

  ‘Sure y’could spare it?’ says El.

  Phil turns to me. ‘So, plans for the bank holi
day?’

  It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for the last seven days, since I realised I was staring down the barrel of a three-day weekend.

  I was with Sadie for a little over a year, but in that time I appear to have lost the knack of weekends – those glorious two days that used to sparkle like an oasis at the far end of the working week. Single friends have found partners; hitched friends have produced children. Sadie and I did nothing special between Friday night and Monday morning, but there was always someone to do it with – cinema, wine bar, restaurant. Things you don’t do on your own. Or cooking a nice meal, a long bath, an afternoon on the sofa – they are different propositions in an empty flat. Weekends are now an exercise in making time pass rather than making it last. I churn out thousands of metres on my stationary rower, killing minutes but going nowhere. I read, I walk, I can make a trip to the supermarket last two hours. There is barely a speck of dust in the flat and I can see my reflection on the inside of the oven. A regular weekend is long enough; a three-day weekend gives me palpitations. Everyone has something to do. Ben is visiting his in-laws, Phil and El are weekending in the Cotswolds, Doug has his dirty weekend with Eileen.

  I was almost tempted to visit Dad and Bianca, but my nerves haven’t fully recovered from my last visit two weeks ago. I was barely through the door on Friday evening when Bianca began with Will you tell him; He’s not listening; It’s not fair. Before I’d had a chance to put my bag down, Dad was firing back with You’re still a child; You’re my responsibility, and, the perennial favourite: Just because everyone is doing it doesn’t make it right. They hectored me while I made supper, harangued me while I ate it. Doors were slammed, threats made, names called. The campaign continued over breakfast the next morning without missing a beat; it followed us from room to room to the garden, shouted though walls and up and down the stairs. I attempted to interject equanimity and reason into the gaps, but the gaps were small and filled with reverb from the latest salvos of accusation and counter-accusation.

  On Sunday there was a brief suspension of hostilities as we gave Dad his birthday presents, played The Minister’s Cat and ate birthday cake. ‘The minister’s cat is a stuffed cat,’ Bianca said, taking a final forkful of cake and pushing aside her plate. ‘The minister’s cat is a taxidermist’s cat,’ Dad said without missing a beat, and Bianca – briefly forgetting she was at war with her father – snorted with laughter and came close to choking on her chocolate sponge.

  It was a lousy way in, but I was running out of time and the mood was the lightest it was likely to get before I had to head back to London. ‘The, er, minister’s cat understands everyone’s side of the argument?’ I tried.

  The laughter stopped abruptly. No one spoke, but I could see both Bianca and my father preparing to launch either an attack or a defence.

  ‘The thing is,’ I went on, ‘the minister’s c— I mean the daughter, the Bianca, is going to university in a year or so.’

  Dad cocked an eyebrow.

  ‘The minister’s cat will be a varsity cat,’ said Bianca.

  ‘Right,’ I went on. ‘And once Bianca’s there sh—’

  ‘A year is a long time from now, Thomas. And—’

  ‘But,’ I went on, sensing a tiny opening, ‘a week in Kavos . . . isn’t a long time at all.’

  ‘But they’re going for two weeks,’ Bianca said.

  I shushed her with my eyes and my sister took the hint.

  ‘If anything,’ I went on, ‘it might prepare her for uni.’

  ‘What, by going out and drinking?’

  ‘Well, kind of, yes. The ones who’ve never been away are the worst. Like hounds off the leash.’

  ‘You hadn’t been away,’ Dad said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  Dad took a sip of his whisky, held it in his mouth. He nodded, although to such a subtle extent I doubt he knew he was doing it. ‘A week,’ he said.

  Bianca took a preparatory breath . . .

  ‘A week,’ I interjected, my eyes again warning her not to disturb this delicate compromise.

  Dad went to speak but this time Bianca beat him to it: ‘I’ll call every night. And if you find out I’ve been acting like those idiots on the telly, I’m grounded.’

  ‘You said it,’ Dad told her. And I got the very clear impression Bea would consider a grounding small price to pay for behaving like those idiots off the telly. And in her position, I would think exactly the same way.

  But even though the temperature has dropped at Dad’s house, Bianca is halfway through her AS levels and there’s more than enough potential for another uprising.

  So it looks like I’ll be spending the long weekend rowing nowhere and cleaning the fluff from between the floorboards.

  ‘Just chilling out,’ I say in answer to Phil’s question.

  ‘Billy no mates,’ says El.

  ‘Sorry, I wasn’t too conversational earlier,’ Phil says. ‘I’m afraid it’s been’ – he glances at El – ‘one of those days.’

  I’ve hardly touched my wine, but Phil tops up my glass nevertheless, before topping up his own.

  ‘Ah-he-he-hem!’ El holds his empty glass aloft.

  ‘You’ve probably had enough, darling.’

  ‘I pr. . . prolly f. . . fucking havn’t!’

  Phil slumps onto the sofa beside El. ‘I’m only thinking of you,’ he says.

  ‘Well, you won’t have to after tonight, will you? You can listen to y’own music, drink y’own wine, stick your legs behind your head and suck y’own fuckig dick.’

  ‘Fine,’ says Phil, pouring a dribble of wine into El’s glass. ‘Now stop showing off.’

  ‘You won be able to talk to your Samoan cock monster like that. He’d bash in your little head with his rounders bat.’

  ‘Nice wine,’ I say.

  ‘Chianti,’ says Phil.

  El burps.

  ‘So, Tom, what do you make of Laurence’s plan to abandon me?’

  ‘He thinks iss brilliant,’ says El. ‘Someone to keep him compny, hey, Tom? I’ll finish my Chanti then go an pack.’

  ‘Laurence,’ says Phil, ‘you are not bloody well going anywhere.’

  El turns to me. ‘Tom, would you, or would you not, like to see Uncle Phil happy for once?’

  ‘Oh hon,’ says Phil, shifting along and placing his hand on El’s knee. ‘Of course this whole . . . thing, it breaks my bloody heart. But you moving out isn’t going to make you any better or make me any happier.’

  I drink my wine and try to look sympathetic but at the same time inconspicuous; I study the carpet.

  ‘You’re getting fat,’ says El, prodding a finger into Phil’s belly.

  ‘I know what you’re trying to do, you awful little bugger. And it won’t work. I don’t want another boyfriend and you’re not moving out. No one else would put up with you, Elly – or with me for that matter. Get used to it, we’re stuck with each other.’

  ‘Wha’bout sex?’

  ‘God!’ Phil throws me an exasperated glance. ‘To be perfectly honest, I could do without it. I don’t mean to flatten your puny ego, darling, but really, there’s more to life.’

  El pouts.

  ‘Tom, will you tell him?’ says Phil.

  ‘Why y’askin him?’ says El. ‘Tom’s a slut.’

  ‘Nice one, El,’ I say, raising my wine. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Don’t insult the guests, Laurence. Even if they are morally dubious.’

  El chuckles, Phil hugs him, and El hugs him back.

  ‘Up yours,’ I say to the pair of them.

  Phil pulls an ironed handkerchief from his pocket and carefully blots tears from his eyes and cheeks. ‘Oh God,’ he says, fanning his face with his hand, ‘how bloody camp.’ He kisses El on the cheek. ‘I love you, Elly, you do know that?’

  ‘Fine,’ says El. ‘I’ll stay. But yr still dumped.’

  JUNE

  Chapter Ten

  It’s a little after lunchtime and the long weekend starts now.
>
  The contracts are signed for the Little Horrors shoot, the crew is assembled, and after the bank holiday we begin on pre-production: casting, location scouting, set design, make-up tests, and more meetings than you can shake a croissant at. But for now, tools are down, the company credit card is behind the bar and everyone is making good use of it before they head off on their various bank holiday diversions. The long weekend is late this year, coinciding with the first weekend in June, a fact that seems to heighten the sense of expectation and release. Everyone has something to or somewhere to go to: family, friends, a festival, a wedding, a reunion. Ben, however, is clinging to an air of peevishness, as if it were a matter of principle. I thought he’d made his peace with the scripts, but he’s been almost deliberately surly for the last two weeks. Maybe he’s tired.

  ‘I am the Anti-Christ,’ says Marlon. ‘You got me in a vendetta kind of mood.’

  Marlon is the production assistant on our upcoming shoot, and far from being evil incarnate, he’s a charming and affable chap with a soft Welsh accent that clashes with his malevolent declaration. We’re playing the quote game, and in honour of the Little Horrors production, we’re giving it a loose horror theme.

  ‘Good one,’ says Rob. ‘What’s that one with Micky Rourke? Angel Heart!’

  Rob will be working as assistant director, and he’s so excited it’s almost unbearable.

  ‘Too literal,’ says Marlon. ‘It’s not a horror.’

  ‘Any more?’ asks Rob.

  ‘You never seen evil so singularly personified,’ continues Marlon in his Valleys lilt, ‘as you did in the face of the man who killed you.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ howls Holly. ‘Scream.’

  Everyone screams.

  Marlon shakes his head.

  ‘It’s not a horror,’ I remind Holly.

  ‘Final Destination,’ she tries. ‘The Exorcist, Saw, Saw Two, Saw Three, Hostel, Ho—’

  ‘What about Saw Four?’ I say, and Marlon laughs.

  ‘Don’t be smug,’ says Ben.

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘True Romance. Christopher Walken to Dennis Hopper.’ And Ben gives me a patronising little theatre clap.

  ‘Your turn,’ says Holly, apparently oblivious to the congealing atmosphere.

  On construction sites, in power plants and other high-risk environments they have signs – updated daily – declaring how long it’s been since the last incident: ‘21 DAYS WITHOUT AN ACCIDENT’, ‘674 DAYS WITHOUT A MELTDOWN’. The last time I slept with Holly was four weeks ago yesterday. ‘29 DAYS WITHOUT AN INCIDENT’. Holly is too nice to bear a grudge, but there is awkwardness between us that wasn’t there before. She still flirts, but less frequently and with less conviction. And behind it all I sense an undercurrent of disappointment or maybe disenchantment. I feel that I should address the whole thing, but the longer we go without incident, the more it feels like I might be tempting fate or simply stating the obvious.