Life's Lottery

by Kim Newman

  ‘She can sleep it off in the back of the van.’

  That’s an ideal solution. Presenting Rowena to her parents in this state is not going to make anyone happy in the short or long term.

  Victoria’s van is by the Corn Exchange, only a short walk from this alley. It might still not be easy to get Rowena to cover the distance.

  ‘Come on, get her on her feet.’

  Gently, you pull Rowena up. She clings to you, head against your chest. Somehow, she manages to weigh more than you would think possible.

  You are still pondering your own feelings. Your head spins and your heart burns. You have the beginnings of an erection. These might well be the physical symptoms of love as you understand it. If you feel this way about Rowena now, while she’s in such a sorry state, you must be serious. Or at least well on the way.

  You and Victoria manipulate Rowena out into the open. Rowena is like a two-year-old, tugging in all the wrong ways, a broad smile threatening to turn into tears.

  Gully Eastment asks Victoria if she wants to go to Graham’s for a dope session before the Rag Show.

  She turns him down. ‘Duty calls,’ she says.

  Gully shrugs and catches up with the others.

  Victoria opens the back of her van and shifts stuff around inside. She has a guitar and an amp stashed in there. She arranges a sleeping-bag.

  ‘It’s snug,’ she says.

  You help Rowena in, bumping your head on the roof of the van.

  ‘Poor dear,’ Rowena says, kissing you where there ought to be a throbbing cartoon bruise rising.

  She pulls you into the van with her. It is so cramped that you have to lie down not beside her but half on top of her.

  You catch a glimpse of Victoria’s raised eyebrow.

  The smell of drink on Rowena’s breath is very strong. Her eyes aren’t focused. She kisses you and you taste the bitterness of vomit on her tongue.

  Still, she clings to you.

  This is not what you imagined. You’ve always sneered at those little ‘Love Is …’ cartoons, with their horrible sentiments. But … ‘Love Is … Snogging Someone Who’s Just Been Sick.’

  Rowena takes your hand and slips it into her jumper, guiding it to her breast.

  The cold is coming in.

  ‘Goodbye, Victoria,’ Rowena says, pointedly.

  Victoria doesn’t shut the door yet. She is giving you a way out. But not for long.

  Rowena’s nipple puckers under your palm. You can feel it through her bra. Her tongue flicks at your face.

  There might well be rules about getting off with someone so drunk she probably doesn’t know who you are. And you could worry that taking further advantage of this situation will imperil your possible future with Rowena.

  For the first time, you are interested in a girl and have an opportunity to pursue that interest. And her hands are in your trousers, cold against your buttocks. Rowena clearly wants you to shag her here and now.

  But if you do, how will she feel about you in the morning? And, considering how you think you feel, could you live with yourself. Is this the first sexual experience you want to remember for the rest of your life? Under these circumstances, can you even go through with it?

  It’s not fair, is it? That you should be dumped with a choice like this. You’re only a kid, really. How can you be expected to puzzle it through?

  It’s just that you have to.

  Victoria uncertainly starts to shut the door.

  If you stay in the van with Rowena, go to 52. If you extricate yourself and leave her to sober up, go to 60.

  47

  ‘Your loss, mate,’ Sean says.

  ‘I don’t think Vanda would …’

  ‘No need to make excuses.’

  ‘It’s just …’

  ‘It’s all right, pal.’

  Nothing ventured, nothing gained. You don’t venture. So you don’t gain.

  As weeks pass, you expect Sean to come back to the subject. Either to gloat good-naturedly about the profit his scheme has yielded, or to admit casually that he’s taken a £2500 bath and that you were sensible after all. Then, you’d have a pint and laugh about it.

  But Sean backs off a little from you. You and Vanda aren’t invited to Sean and Ro’s house for several months, though they come to you. Sean spends a lot of time in his office, on the phone.

  You just get on with things.

  Sean buys a flash car. Not a new car, a second car. A nifty little two-seater MG. Vanda comments that Ro is wearing originals.

  You kick yourself a bit. But you’ve a decent life. Even if your car is three years old and there’s a rattling noise under the hood you can’t identify, you aren’t due for the poorhouse.

  The branch wins an award. Suits from head office come down and are photographed with the whole staff.

  ‘You’re Harry Marion’s son,’ says the head suit.

  You confirm that you are.

  ‘Jolly good,’ the suit says, and passes on.

  Long-time customers still telephone the bank and ask to speak with Mr Marion, and are disappointed when Candy Dixon, the new girl, puts them through to you. Each time you have to admit your father is dead, you feel a smidgen of inadequacy. As Sean says, your Dad was this branch.

  Now Sean is the branch.

  Sean wears Italian suits. Very sharp.

  Sean asks you to see him in his office. You assume it’s about the Shearer loan. You’ve extended overdraft facilities to Kay Shearer, who runs a small shelving company, and repayments are slow in coming. You understand Shearer isn’t doing well. You assume Sean is going to exert gentle pressure, and that you’ll have to squeeze Shearer. Instead, Sean tells you he is leaving in two months.

  ‘I’m going to give the City a go,’ he says. ‘Just thought you should know.’

  You don’t regret not going in with him.

  You don’t.

  The Shearer loan is a mess. You take a rare Saturday away from home to go through the paper trail again.

  Candy comes in to help.

  Surprisingly, Vanda is keen on you doing the extra work. With Sean going, she thinks you should draw attention to yourself.

  ‘Keith Marion, manager,’ she breathes in your ear.

  Shearer’s Shelves is tied in with the Discount Development, which Councillor Robert Hackwill is forcing through the Planning Committee. There are a lot of bad vibes about that project.

  You are worried the Shearer loan is a dud.

  ‘Keith Marion, dud,’ you think.

  You ask Candy to bring you the files on the Discount Development. Sean is keeping them up to date.

  ‘Mr Rye has his own office key, Keith.’

  You’re sure you have keys to every lock in the bank. It’s policy. No, Sean has fitted an extra lock on his office door. You wonder why you didn’t notice the workman coming in.

  ‘I can open it with a paper-clip,’ Candy says.

  You’re shocked.

  ‘My boyfriend showed me how.’

  Before you can protest, Candy has the door open.

  ‘It’s a good thing you can trust me,’ she says.

  It feels wrong, being in Sean’s office, even searching for files you know he’d want you to consult. Sean ordered you to keep tabs on the Discount Development in the first place. You compiled most of the documents you want to look at.

  You do have a key to Sean’s filing cabinet. You open it, find the Hackwill file, check the facts you want to check, and put it back.

  Something catches your eye. Sean has a personal code for files. They have joke names. USURY, EMBEZZLEMENT, FINAGLING, ARMS DEALS, HARD DRUGS. Sean often raises a laugh by pulling out one of the files, revealing that it contains harmless material.

  In between SLUSH FUND and WIDOWS AND ORPHANS (DISPOSSESSION OF) is a file marked HOUSEKEEPING. That sounds legit. But it shouldn’t. It should sound crooked. That’s the joke.

  What do you do?

  If you look at the HOUSEKEEPING file, go to 83. If
you shut the cabinet and try to forget about the file, go to 112.

  48

  Graham lives in a bedsit in the centre of town. It contains a mattress, piles of Michael Moorcock paperbacks, layers of strewn clothing, and, currently, twenty-eight people. Graham either doesn’t believe in chairs or has sold off the landlord’s furniture for cash. On the walls, he has a map of Middle Earth, a Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers poster and a star chart with the astrological signs highlighted.

  ‘Move over,’ Gully Eastment tells Shane Bush, giving him a kick.

  Shane, eyes glazed, shifts.

  When you stepped into the room, you got an instant headache from the fug of dope smoke. It hangs in a hazy mist, thickening nearer the carpet.

  As you sit down in the space Shane has cleared, you feel like coughing. On top of the cider and whisky, you even feel a slight buzz.

  Gully eagerly takes a joint from Shane and draws on it, holds the smoke in his lungs, mumbles an obligatory ‘Potent brew, my man,’ and exhales in Bronagh’s face. She licks up the smoke, sucking it in and rebreathing it.

  You have no prejudices against drugs. Mum and Dad went on about what a monster Graham was when your sister was going out with him, which made you sympathise with him. Laraine smoked dope for a while, but says she never got much out of it. From what you understand, marijuana is no worse for you than alcohol. But you have never smoked a joint.

  Graham rolls a fresh one, sprinkling scraps of black into tobacco laid in a line on several stuck together Rizla papers.

  Gully offers you the joint.

  The worst thing in it is the tobacco. That’ll kill you quicker than dope or booze. And you don’t smoke.

  You want to try this stuff. You’ve had so much craziness today that you might as well go the whole hog.

  But your one attempt at smoking was a disaster. You remember Stephen Adlard giving you a cigarette on the rec ground when you were thirteen. You sucked flame to the fag from his match, then drew in a great lungful. You coughed yourself sick and haven’t repeated the experiment.

  You know you can’t get away with keeping the smoke in your mouth. You have to take it into your lungs.

  ‘Have a hit, Keith,’ Gully says.

  If you take the joint, go to 51. If you turn it down, go to 61.

  49

  ‘Yes,’ you say. ‘I think he is.’

  Vanda slides a little down the door-jamb. Her dressing-gown gapes open a little.

  ‘Silly boy,’ she says.

  ‘Yes,’ you admit.

  Vanda is thinking about something. You wonder if you should have lied.

  ‘Ro mustn’t know,’ Vanda says.

  You agree.

  ‘We can’t afford to break the Syndicate.’

  You’re surprised Vanda has thought it through.

  ‘By the way, Keith …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re not fucking Candy, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good.’

  She slips out of her dressing-gown. Since she’s been going to exercise class, her body is better toned than since before Jason.

  You lean back in your swivel chair as she undoes your fly. Her tongue works around your penis.

  ‘Keith,’ she says, pausing.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We’re rich, aren’t we?’

  You nod. She smiles, licks her lips and bobs her head. You stroke her hair, and can’t think of anything but her mouth.

  Go to 72.

  50

  Your bedroom window creaks. Suddenly, torn out of a dream, you are awake.

  The room is darker than it should be. Something hangs outside the window, beyond the curtains, blotting out the moon. It could be a man-sized kite.

  It is days before Christmas. And you don’t believe in Santa Claus.

  It is days since Rag Day.

  Time has passed, in a blur.

  Why is your heart hammering? You’ve lost the memory of a dream, but have awoken with an erection.

  Are you afraid? Or excited?

  The window seems to swell inwards, as if a giant breath is gently playing on it, pushing the panes in their beds of putty, bending the wood.

  There’s a scratching outside.

  You get out of bed, flagpole cock stuck out of your pyjama fly, and stand in the dark.

  What is outside the window?

  You walk to the window, and take hold of the curtains.

  Through the weave of the curtains, you sense a white, moon-like circle.

  You open the curtains.

  The moon has Victoria’s face.

  Go on to 55

  50

  Your bedroom window creaks. Suddenly, torn out of a dream, you are awake.

  The room is darker than it should be. Something hangs outside the window, beyond the curtains, blotting out the moon. It could be a man-sized kite.

  It is days before Christmas. And you don’t believe in Santa Claus.

  It is days since Rag Day.

  Time has passed, in a blur.

  Why is your heart hammering? You’ve lost the memory of a dream, but have awoken with an erection.

  Are you afraid? Or excited?

  The window seems to swell inwards, as if a giant breath is gently playing on it, pushing the panes in their beds of putty, bending the wood.

  There’s a scratching outside.

  You get out of bed, flagpole cock stuck out of your pyjama fly, and stand in the dark.

  What is outside the window?

  You walk to the window, and take hold of the curtains.

  Through the weave of the curtains, you sense a white, moon-like circle.

  You open the curtains.

  The moon has Victoria’s face.

  Go on to 56

  51

  You cough a bit, but can hold it. Things smooth away. You don’t feel guilty about Rowena, you aren’t angry about Victoria, you aren’t uptight about anything.

  ‘Hey,’ announces Gully, ‘Marion’s just turned on.’

  The kids applaud. You smile and smoke burps out of your mouth.

  ‘A first-timer,’ Graham declares. ‘You should have told me. He’ll need a special.’

  ‘A special, a special,’ kids chant.

  That seems like a good idea. Yes, man, a special. That’s what you need.

  Graham sees it’s you. ‘Keith,’ he says, ‘Welcome to enlightenment.’

  He asks after Laraine but you can’t put enough facts together in your mind to give him an answer.

  You hold up the joint. ‘Bobby Moore says smoking is a mug’s game,’ you announce. ‘Bubba Moron suss Nosmo King Esau mugwump,’ it comes out.

  Graham is rolling a Special. He fixes a dozen Rizlas together.

  ‘Has to be the size of Errol Flynn’s dick,’ he explains.

  You laugh. That’s funny.

  A whole packet of tobacco is scattered in a thick line. Then, Graham roots in a tea-chest and comes up with a plastic model of Thunderbird 2.

  ‘Calling International Rescue,’ he says, popping the central pod. He opens the door and pulls out a lump of something. With a penknife, he scrapes flecks of the lump on to the tobacco.

  ‘Special, special, special,’ the kids chant.

  The Rizlas are rolled round the fillings, and the ends twist-tied. It looks more like a sausage roll than Errol Flynn’s penis.

  ‘Open wide,’ Gully says.

  You close your eyes and open your eustachian tubes, hearing the roar in your ears.

  ‘Mouth, drongo,’ Gully says.

  You open your mouth and the special is stuck into it.

  ‘Light the blue touch paper and retire,’ says Gully.

  Graham flicks his lighter and plays the flame against the end of the special. The twist burns.

  You inhale.

  An inch of loose tobacco and special mix burns at once. You suck the smoke into your lungs. And hold it.

  All through the rest of your time at college and your three years at u
niversity, you smoke marijuana regularly. Mostly in sessions with other people, but sometimes at home, alone. It helps you slow down, relax. You think it makes you sharper when you’re straight. You feel the time you’re stoned is time off from thinking, from achieving. You’ve always needed that, but now you have it.

  You get into the whole dope scene. You let your hair and beard grow. You make your own bong. The walls of your room in a student flat are browned with smoke, carpet ravaged by burn-marks, trodden-in tobacco shreds and other stains. You have a ‘Legalise It’ badge. You buy grow-lamps and cultivate your own plants in a cupboard.

  By your second year, you have a morning joint when you wake up and get through the day with a loose chain, hanging smokes round intervals of taking in tea or beer. You become a connoisseur and can tell where dope comes from at a sniff, like an expert identifying wines.

  You have the occasional paranoia spasm. Nothing heavy, but you and your friends all know kids who’ve been busted, and that makes you think about the police too much, elaborating fantasies about their fiendish schemes to entrap and undo you.

  At one point, the big dealer on campus is arrested. In his flat, the pigs find a bundle of cheques, each for £25 — the cost of an ounce in 1979 — and all the signatories are raided over the next week. You’ve always paid in notes but this still makes you go to ground, finding a neutral pad and staying there until it blows over.

  Your throat is dry all the time.

  Even your mellows start to feel edgy.

  You take another drag on the special.

  You need to be further away, where the nagging doubts can’t get to you. You realise the dope is just getting you to where you used to start out from.

  You try LSD. Lovely. Strange. Delight. It’s not like being Keith. It’s a three-day holiday from him. You make connections, you become part of them. You discover things about yourself and your furniture.

  You trip regularly.

  One time, you realise your campus is infested with shadow-parasites. Some people have transparent spider-things clamped round their heads, straw-like suckers implanted in their brains. Those with shadow-spiders are in charge.