I kicked the sidewalk to check how drunk I was. My analysis led me straight passed my car. I’d have to collect it in the morning. Shouldn’t have driven there in the first place.
Three drinks a night later, cheap all-American Lite beer. I could drive home on five more. I’d already asked for my tab. They handed my friend and I a leather folder we placed our debit cards in and they took them away.
“Should’ve grabbed one for the road.” My friend added as he tapped the bar.
I shrugged and could’ve sworn I heard some familiar chords on the bar’s music but it was just another overplayed radio tune.
“Do you remember Val Lawton?”
“Ol’ Valerie?” He laughed and turned his stool towards me. I remained facing the wall behind the bar. Forced a sip of the warm beer, tried to finish it but it was too stagnant to be swallowed in full.
“Yeah. Ol’ Valerie.”
“Course, I remember her. The legs on her! God, I bet she’s a saggy wrinkly skeleton of a woman.” He smacked his gut. “She couldn’t retain her meat like us.” His hand smacked my shoulder and he downed the remnants of his final beer. “Hell the way she smoked.” His voice had dropped its humor.
“Yeah right.” I forced the final mouthful and our cards were returned to us. We scratched tips onto the receipt and stretched off the stools.
Couldn’t hear each other on the way through the young crowd blocking the door. The night air was like listening to a CD. All around me there was silence where there shouldn’t be.
“I know who killed her.”
“What?” My friend stopped in his tracks, “No, wait, what?”
“Val’s been dead ten years.” I broke the news. Didn’t think he cared. I left him on the sidewalk. Looked back in the rearview mirror but he hadn’t come around the corner. Maybe I was drunk? I had no reason to say what I said.
The silence played in the background all night. I kept the song on repeat and laid my head against the cold window. The orange glow off the asphalt, could’ve matched her skin.
The rain started. I could smell it first, thick and musty. Then a knock came on my door. My friend let himself in.
“You drunk, man?” He asked.
“Was.” I shook my head and held up my fresh bottle directing him to a similar offering in my fridge. He took it but didn’t take a sip. His nose hit on something he didn’t like, I didn’t apologize.
“You saying she was murdered?”
I shrugged and took a seat on the couch.
“You said you knew who did it.” He stood before me. Thick shoulders his beer at waist level, both his arms at ninety degree angles. His stance wide at the feet. He was positioned.
“I did.”
“You know, maybe sometimes it’s not murder so much as self-defense.” His knuckles had whitened around the bottle. “Not everyone always jumps to that, but that can happen.” His tone was sharp.
“Never said it was murder. Dying caused by another is still a killing.”
“So where does that leave us?”
He wanted to know if I was going to turn him in.
“Same. I’ve just been thinking about her.”
“What do you want?”
“I want Moontan on vinyl.” The song still played behind us in all its silence. It had just started all over again.
“You are drunk.”
“Yeah. Sold all that stuff away and now I just want it back. I want to hear this song the way I remember it. I want to hear the needle.”
He eyed me for a long time. I didn’t look up at him. Just kept taking sips.
“I like it when it pops just before it starts a new track. Remember that?” I met his eyes; they were as bloodshot as mine, but probably not from the beer. His postured slouched and he took a seat next to me on the couch.
“No one else knows.” He whispered first, then raised his voice and repeated so he knew I heard. His elbows dug into his knees and he drank. “I was drunk. Probably should’ve quit that day, but drinking never reminded me. If I was thinking about it, the drinking made it easier. Not like, I forgot, or got over it, or even just took my mind away. Just made it like, I couldn’t actually touch it. I’ve kept it separate from my life all these years. But I can tell you.” He looked me over as if my judgment was in his favor.
“You were drunk. It was a Friday and a payday, it had just started to rain and you two shimmied outside. The bathroom line was too long and I was there too. Taking a piss on the dumpster. She was hot then. You’re right, she’s just a skeleton now. But she’s not buried.”
“I didn’t.” He said and drank long. “Christ, I threw her in a ditch and that was that. I checked at all the papers and radio. I still do. I keep thinking she’ll turn up when they do roadwork. But I can’t go back there. I’m just done with it. I’ve lived a better life. I’ve tried to make up for it. But I know if there is a Christ, he’ll get me.”
“It stinks in here.” I admitted.
“Yeah, man, it does.” He stood up. “I probably should go, right?”
“You can.”
“We’re cool?”
I thought of the needle, I could feel my own in my hand. Only mine couldn’t play records. I turned it to my friend and I could hear the start of the next track. It was Vanilla Queen. And there was that girl, standing in my doorway. My friend stared up from the floor and saw her, too. Her body was as he had told me it would be. She could never hold onto her meat.
“Is that her?” He said.
“Well in simple English: Yes.”
END
5.
ROCK
By Michael Sims
The thing that struck me first about Gibraltar in the March of that year was the numbers of dogs in the streets. My hotel was out of the main town, about a mile up a hill and overlooking the sea. I knew it would be quiet but that suited me. I needed a break, some solitude, because in confirmation of my parents’ fears, and despite their best efforts, I did grow up alone, and eventually that was the way I liked it.
There were people in my office at work. There were crowds of people in the underground and the London streets on the journey to get there; there were hundreds of people in the lunch hour queues. Even in my isolated country cottage lane in rural Kent there must have been another, what, two hundred people? Everywhere I went there were people, whether I wanted them or not and I didn’t know or want to know any of them.
It was pleasantly warm that spring, shirtsleeve weather. Not hot enough for me to linger too long in the blue tiled pool, but sitting on the plastic loungers sipping drinks was fine. My double room had a good view of the sea, with the tankers lined up on the horizon, waiting to slip off out of sight when my back was turned. There were arrogant black-billed gulls that sat on the balcony all day waiting for scraps of food that never came.
When I was in primary school my parents would spend hours driving me to friends’ houses so I could play with someone for a few hours. Except they weren’t really friends, just other kids I could spend time with, until I could be on my own again.
My parents were forever having other children round to our house, never actually enjoying the experience but worrying nonetheless that their only child might grow up lonely and friendless if they didn’t manufacture company for him.
That was the prime focus of their lives at that point. The other parents must have sighed with embarrassment when the phone call came from my mother, ‘Hi, Pam here. Are you doing anything, only I wondered if Ronson could come over and play…’ or ‘If you like Danny can play here for the afternoon. I’ll give him something to eat.’
If only they had known that their efforts were in vain. The other kids could see through the façade, even though they were still too young to understand the word, and I was more than happy within my own company. In fact I preferred it. I never learned what the other parents thought.
How I wish I could get some of that privacy back now.
I would even resort to the imaginary friend I
used to play with rather than have these echoes and shadows around me all the time. When I’m sleeping, or in the shower, wherever I am, the constant feeling that there is someone there with me.
If I am honest I know who it is. I just need to understand why they are here.
The flight from England is a short one and I had barely read a couple of chapters of my novel as the plane began its descent onto the short runway, which divides Gibraltar from Spain. During the day you can walk across the runway, over the border crossing either side and visit for the day. Gibraltar is really a lonely outpost of better days.
‘Heh, Ronnie, got any more beer?’ A belch from the living room of my cottage reminded me that my friends were round, or at least Pete and Tom, who were the only people I still saw from university.
‘Yeah, couple of IPA coming up.’ I was already in the kitchen so I leaned over and opened the refrigerator. Stacked with meals for one, and beer, with cartons of milk, and yoghurt perched precariously at the edge of one shelf.
We were assembled to view my holiday photographs and DVD. Beer and junk food was obligatory. There was a kind of revered hush about the proceedings, a few less farts than usual, a little less banal sexual innuendo. The girl was going to be revealed, the holiday romance. At least that was the idea, the intention behind the evening.
I would walk from the holiday hotel into town each day and never fail to be appalled at the mess on the street. For a small place, and it was just a rock at the tip of Spain after all, there were a hell of a lot of dogs. It was a military outpost for the British of course, and they still had a large presence there, though I never saw any military dogs. These must have been locals, and they may have had some Spanish blood in them. That was my theory, arrived at around my third day, and with my routine set.
I would breakfast on melon and fruit, swim a few laps of the heated pool and then walk into town. On the third day it struck me that the Spanish might have trained the dogs to mess in the most inconvenient places as a kind of protest. The politicians had failed to win back the rock; so let the damned dogs ruin it for the British. A canine protest against British sovereignty.
The walk into town was unassuming. A terrace of attractive Spanish style houses merged into a concrete and glass office block. The streets were lined with trees, and everywhere was dwarfed by the huge expanse of the rock. There was a cable car riding up to it, and organised trips would take you round and into it. There were caves and views to amuse a traveller for a few hours.
By the time I got to university my personality was well and truly set. My parents had divorced by then so their interference, which is what it was, no matter how well intentioned, had subsided. I was left to my own devices and I settled in far better because of it. Sure there were certain cliques that would make fun of ‘Ron’ or ‘Ronnie’ and I grew accustomed to being excluded from trips or from joining clubs. There were societies that guys like me were expected to gravitate towards; the ones that the misfits, jerks and nerds were supposed to join so that they could feel the camaraderie that everyone is supposed to need.
The truth was I didn’t feel I belonged there either. I was comfortable with my own company. I didn’t feel the need to belong with other people; to pretend I wanted or needed the social life. I wanted to be friends, real friends with someone, and I certainly wanted to get a girlfriend, although I made no real effort to do anything about it. But I thought that would come in time, and there was no need to alter my perception of my life to accommodate the expectations of others.
‘Where are the photos, Ron?’ Tom demanded as he opened a can and sprayed the carpet.
‘I’ve gone digital, they’re on the computer but I got them printed off at Boots. There’s three packs of photos on the table.’
Pete crammed a handful of crisps into his bearded mouth. ‘Les tek loo,’ he seemed to say as he made a grab for the yellow folders.
Tom shook his head in mock despair. ‘I can’t believe you E-mailed us from your hotel for Chrissakes. And about the Poletti deal of all things.’
I smiled. Corporate ladder climbing was hardly suited to my character but I knew enough to keep one pace ahead of the game. ‘I needed to know you two wouldn’t screw it up for me while I was away.’
‘While you were screwing, you mean,’ Pete mumbled, without taking his eyes away from the glossy photographs he was thumbing his way through.
I felt a tensing of my defences. I was well aware neither of them believed I had ever had a proper girlfriend, and the reason they had willingly come round tonight was to disprove my claims of having met a girl on holiday.
I first saw her when I was looking at the Barbary apes. Gibraltar has these apes that live on the higher parts of the rock. They’re a bit of a tourist attraction, well that and the casino are about all the attractions there are, in total. Dog population doesn’t warrant a mention in any guidebook.
It was one of those guided tours, though the English woman who acted as the guide seemed more interested in taking calls on her mobile telephone than she did in imparting any knowledge she may have had about the historical events in the life of the rock. That initially irritated me because there is a wealth of history, much of it British maritime events.
There was a short but noisy argument between two people I had taken to be Germans, but who were apparently Swedish. I had noticed her earlier, when we boarded the coach. Her skirt was a little too tight, though it suited her tanned legs, and her hair seemed far more blonde than it had a right to be. I supposed she attracted me, but in an obvious black underwear and red lipstick kind of way.
The guys were wrong that I had never had a girlfriend, although none of the girls had got past the second date before dumping me. I never really knew why until a friend of one of them, trying to be kind or cruel I couldn’t tell, told me Paula had found me too self absorbed, too ‘tight assed’. I didn’t wholly understand this comment until she expanded it for me.
Apparently I gave no indication I needed any other person in my life apart from myself. That made me sound selfish, which I’m not. But I am, or was, self sufficient, and until I found the right woman for me, that was how I intended to remain. Sex was never a problem; the Corporation pays well, and there are always discreet arrangements that can be made; easier to maintain one’s anonymity that way as well.
‘Well, I’d love to say this Katrina is a looker, Ron, but can you show me which one she is?’ Pete had finished looking at all the photographs.
Tom laughed, spraying a mouthful of beer over his legs. ‘You mean there’s more than the one girl?’ He couldn’t avoid the hint of incredulity that invaded his voice.
I wasn’t sure what Pete meant but I knew that wasn’t it.
‘No,’ Pete said very slowly. ‘There aren’t any women in there at all.’
Tom reached for the three packs to look for himself. ‘None? Where is she, Ron? Not a little make believe to fool us poor boys?’
He didn’t seem as if he was fooling around but I laughed uneasily because Pete could only have been making fun of me. I had taken too many photos of Katrina if anything. He was spoofing me for being too enthusiastic.
I passed round some more cans and some sandwiches, and dimmed the lights. The digital DVD footage would show us together, and I could control the remote. I pressed ‘Play’. Pete belched and then settled himself. Tom carried on half looking at the packs of photographs but more absorbed now in the moving images.
Okay, the first part was boring, with shots of the airport, the hotel, and the beach, not warm enough in March to enjoy it much, apart from the occasional brisk walk along the sea shore. Then we got to the middle of the holiday, and the time I had met her.
She slapped the man she was with, a full-blooded whack that left a red mark on his pale cheek. He shaped as though he was going to return the blow but glanced across to see if anyone was watching. The others in the tour group had moved away, reserved and unwilling to get involved. I was staring unashamedly, and when he realised he
couldn’t stare me out he said something guttural and began to march off down the hills back to town. I walked across to the girl and asked her if she was all right. She was smiling.
Up close she possessed a more innocent look than I had imagined. Her complexion was uncluttered by makeup and her hair appeared natural. My initial casual attraction now took a stronger foothold. She looped her arm through mine and I felt a warm breast against my arm.
‘Do you want to hear some of the history or shall we make our own?’ Her words, sluttish in one interpretation, were said with such a tremor that I believed them to be genuine. We booked a taxi, ignoring the dark stares of the tour guide, and headed back into town. I learned her name, and the fact that the man with her was her fiancé. He would go back to their hotel and pack his bags, she told me. He had done it before when they argued. This time she might just let him go she said. My heart raced when she did, because the implication was that I was the reason she didn’t need him anymore.
By the time I left university and started employment my isolation from conventional relationships was firmly in place. I was good at my job, easily able to cope with the daily office banter, and clients warmed to me, although none ever spilled over into social engagements. The fears my mother still expressed when we spoke on the telephone seemed ill founded; inside I felt satisfied. There remained a blind faith that against all the odds I would meet my soul mate, my rock to which I could cling when the ways of life got too much for one. Until then I was content to amble through my daily routines.
‘Okay where is she?’ It was either Tom or Pete, but by now I had all but forgotten they were there. The DVD film was about two thirds of the way through and all the filming of Katrina seemed to have been in vain. She didn’t appear on the film at all. I grabbed the fallen photos from the floor and leafed through them. Some I didn’t remember but others, where I knew exactly what should or should not have been captured on film, weren’t as they should have been. There were staged shots that worked well apart from the fact that the central character in them wasn’t there.
9 Tales From Elsewhere 13 Page 5
