by Adam Millard
Beeep-beep-beeep-thrum…
Was this some kind of trick? Calum lulling him into a false sense of security, before Bam!, a fortnight in hospital being fed sludge through a tube.
“You could at least say thank you,” Lee said. “Say ‘thank you, Calum, for not kicking the shit out of me’.”
Beeep-beep-beeep-thrum…
“Thank you, Calum, for not beating me up?” Why had it come out as a question? Jamie cursed his awkwardness. It was difficult to concentrate, though, with the constant 8-bit peeping at his back.
“You’re welcome, Jimbo,” Calum said, stepping forwards. Jamie was hit by what smelled like a thousand stale cigarettes and, as Calum prodded him gently in the chest, he saw that the bully’s fingers were almost all stained orange with nicotine. “And just remember this moment, because one day, your bald-ass boyfriend isn’t going to be around to look after you, and when that time comes, no matter how fast you run, we’re going to fuck you up.” He punctuated his little speech with a grotesque grin; Jamie turned his head to the side so that he didn’t have to stare directly at his filthy teeth.
“Have you just put money into that machine?” Lee approached Gēmuōbā indifferently. It could have been any old game, so long as there was a credit in there. A free credit, at that.
“He has,” Calum said, nudging Jamie aside as if he had become a bore, a plaything which no longer interested him. Jamie watched as Calum squared up to the machine, wrapped his fingers around the joystick, his right hand hovering over the green and red buttons on the console. “What is this shit, anyway? This one of your fucking faggot games, Jimbo? If the graphics are shit, I’m gonna punch you in the dick on general principle.”
Jamie shrugged. “I don’t know what it is,” he said, glancing out through the window, willing Scottie to make a return. “It only came in this morning, and I haven’t played it yet.”
“So we’re the first to play it?” asked Lee, as if this was some sort of great honour. And it was, in a way. Jamie felt a pang of jealousy deep within the pit of his stomach.
“Yeah, you’ll be the first,” Jamie told them.
“And it’s totally free!” Calum added. “Thanks to our sponsor over there.” He nodded toward Jamie. “How’s that mother of yours doing this morning, Jimbo? She never said goodbye when she left mine last night.”
Jamie shook his head. It was childish banter, the kind of thing which didn’t warrant a response, not if he liked his teeth attached to his jaw.
“Hit START,” Lee urged Calum.
“Calm your tits, Lurch,” Calum said. “For fuck’s sake, it’s not like we’ve got to be anywhere else today.”
He brought his fist down onto the red button, thusly beginning the game.
“Fuck off away from me, Jimbo,” Calum grunted. “I can’t concentrate with you standing there like a right lemon.”
Beeep-beep-beeep-thrum…
Jamie did as he was told. He would get his turn later, he was sure of it.
*
Scottie was about to give up and head back to the arcade when Marcus appeared as a face in the crowd. He was carrying steaming coffees, despite the unrelenting heat. “There’s Dad,” Barry said, pointing at the approaching Marcus.
“Yeah, thanks for that,” Scottie said. “I wouldn’t have seen him if you hadn’t pointed him out.” His sarcasm was lost on Barry, who smiled and nodded as if pleased with himself.
When Marcus saw Scottie standing there next to Barry at the ticket booth, his smile faltered, though it didn’t fade away completely. It was a look which said, I’ve done something wrong, but none of us know what it is yet.
“Everything alright?” Marcus said, handing his son one of the steaming polystyrene cups. Barry removed the lid from his and began to blow steam noisily from the top of it. “Scottie?”
What the hell am I doing here? This is fucking ridiculous. “Barry here was just filling me in on life as a Master of Dodgems,” Scottie said. Oh, and you wouldn’t happen to have ripped me off last night, would you?
“Master of Dodgems?” Marcus said to Barry, sniffing and rubbing at his eye. He looked like Scottie felt. “That what you told him you were?”
Barry, Scottie noticed, looked a little scared. “Nah, I didn’t say anything,” he told his father.
“He never said anything,” Scottie quickly added. He didn’t want the boy to get into trouble because of something he had said in jest, and that’s what appeared to be happening right then. “Marcus, I wanted to have a word about something, if you’ve got a moment.” Scottie didn’t want to bring up the wallet in front of the guy’s son; it was bad enough accusing him—that’s what he was in fact doing—without there being an unnecessary audience. Marcus must have realised what Scottie was suggesting, and dismissed Barry with a cocked thumb. Barry sighed and stepped into the ticket booth.
With the boy out of earshot, Marcus said, “What’s this about, Scottie?” He looked perplexed, which led Scottie to believe that the guy was innocent of knowingly pilfering from his wallet. If he’d believed it was someone else’s, though…
“You were in The Arms last night, weren’t you?” Scottie lit a cigarette and watched as the smoke drifted off on the breeze.
Marcus nodded. “I didn’t see you in there. Some fucking homo tried to come onto me, can you believe that shit?”
So that was why he had kicked off, why he had almost put a guy in the hospital, and why Ted had had a word with him. “Each to their own, huh,” Scottie said. He wasn’t interested in the fight or the reasons behind it. “Listen, I feel like a shit for even having to come over here, but… look, I left my wallet in the pub last night. On the bar. And, well, Angela said you were sitting there just after I left, so—”
“I didn’t see no wallet,” Marcus said. His defensive tone suggested he knew exactly what was going on here, that he was being accused.
Scottie gnawed at his lip and took another long pull on his cigarette. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I got the wallet back, but it was empty. I’m not bothered about the money, Marcus, but there was a picture of Jake—”
“Are you fucking deaf, Scottie?” Marcus placed his coffee down on the ground next to the ticket booth—definitely not a good sign—before stepping toward Scottie. “I didn’t see no wallet, and if that bitch barmaid says she saw me with it, she’s fucking lying.”
Scottie held up placatory hands, but he was ready to fight if necessary. Marcus was the kind of guy who would throw a punch, then ask questions later. The trick would be to spot that punch before it landed. “Angela didn’t say she saw anything. She just said that you had been in, and that you were on the stool I had been on next to the bar. I’m just trying to piece this together, mate.” Throwing a ‘mate’ in at the end was, he thought, a shrewd move; he didn’t want this to escalate. “Did you see anyone at the bar when you arrived?”
Marcus seemed to relax a little. Now that the accusation wasn’t pinned exclusively to him, he was willing to discuss things more civilly. “The bar was two deep when I got in there. Could’ve been one of about a dozen blokes. If you see a faggot wearing tartan trousers and a black eye, you might want to question him.”
Okay, this was going nowhere fast. Either Marcus was an actor of the highest order—Gielgud, Hopkins, Heston—or he truly didn’t know who had raided Scottie’s wallet. “I’m sorry for coming across here like this,” he said. “I just want that photograph back, you know?”
Marcus nodded. He had a son. He knew exactly what Scottie was going through. “Pic of your boy, was it?”
“The only one I had,” Scottie replied. “And I got pissed and lost it. Fucking joke, yeah?”
“I got pissed and punched a prick in tartan trousers,” Marcus said, a slight smile curling up the corner of his mouth. “I don’t know whether there’s a moral to this story, but we’re men. We do stupid fucking things when we’re drunk.”
“That we do,” Scottie agreed. The threat of imminent violence seemed to have d
iminished, and Scottie was glad about that. His head was still pounding, and he really didn’t fancy going three rounds with Marcus Mills, though perhaps three rounds was being a little optimistic. “Well, can I ask you a favour?”
“I’ll keep an eye out for the photo of your boy,” Marcus said, bending to pick up his coffee, “but, if I were you, I’d forget about it. It’s gone.” Just like that: it’s gone. The way the last dregs of a milkshake are just gone; the way ice cubes are just gone. Gone forever, and there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it but just admit: it’s gone.
The words stung, but Scottie knew he was speaking the truth. Why would anyone want to hold on to a picture of some random kid? Not only would it be incriminating, but it was creepy as hell. Scottie tried not to think about it: some fucking thief poring over Jake’s portrait, running a dirt-stained thumb along his forehead, down to the Thomas the Tank Engine sweater…
“I’d better get going,” Scottie said, pushing the disgusting image from his mind. “I’ve left Jamie in charge. He’s probably climbed into one of the claw-machines, trying to snatch himself a Minion.”
“I thought that kid was smart?” Marcus said, frowning.
“Don’t get me wrong, he is,” Scottie said.
“Mine isn’t.” Marcus nodded toward the ticket booth. “You’d think after all this time he’d have learned his damn lesson, but I still have to belt him. He’s a grown fucking lad and I still have to belt him.” He took a long swig of his coffee, removed the plastic lid and finished it off. A creamy brown froth had settled along his top lip and in the corners of his mouth. Scottie thought about saying something but was saved the job when, a few seconds later, Marcus brought up the back of his hand and ran it across his lips.
“Well, I’ll catch you later. If you’re in The Arms tonight, I’ll buy you a drink, you know, to apologise for… this.” Scottie began to walk away.
“No need,” Marcus said. “Everyone makes mistakes. Even tartan faggots.”
Scottie didn’t hear the last part. He was eager to get back to the arcade, anything to take his mind off losing the only piece of Jake he had left.
ELEVEN
Teenagers and younger children were now gathered around Gēmuōbā, watching wide-eyed as Calum Rowe thumped at the buttons and yanked the joystick from left to right, up to down. There must have been fifteen of them at one point, all trying to get a look at the new game, but some had been dragged away by their impatient parents who had only popped in for a quick flutter on the horse racing simulator.
Standing in the cage—just like Scottie sometimes did—Jamie watched as people came and went. He had yet to change any money, was even looking forward to the first time, but his attention was reserved for the machine which seemed to have Calum Rowe hooked. Although he couldn’t see the screen from where he was, he could hear the monotonous chirping as Calum worked his way through the levels, unblinking, his trusty sidekick mesmerised beside him and a whole army of youths in the queue behind, patiently awaiting their turn.
If it was a game Calum Rowe liked, then there was a good chance it was a game Jamie would hate with a passion. And yet he was intrigued. From what he had seen, it was a puzzle game of some sort, though it made very little sense to him. How Calum Rowe—whose IQ was smaller than his shoe size—was understanding it was beyond Jamie.
Maybe he wasn’t understanding it at all. What if he was winging it, trying to look cool in front of his captivated audience, just battering the buttons and shifting the joystick so that he appeared to know what he was doing? Jamie grinned. Yeah, that made a lot more sense. He wouldn’t know until later, when he would give the game a spin for himself.
“Fuck!” Calum said, his whole body relaxing. For the past ten minutes he had been perfectly upright, the cords on his neck standing out, his eyes almost bulging from their sockets; now he was slumped over the machine, panting and shaking his head. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
“Let someone else have a go,” a tiny voice called from the line behind him.
Calum straightened up, blinking frantically and licking at his lips as if they were sugar-smeared. “Who the fuck said that?” he asked without turning.
“Kid’s got a point,” Lee said. “I wouldn’t mind a go myself.”
Calum shook his head and fished around in his pocket for another pound coin. There was a collective moan of disappointment in the queue behind as Calum dropped the coin into the slot and the machine kicked back into life. “You’ll all get a go when I’m fucking bored of it,” he said. “Wankers.”
Beep-beeep-beep-thrum…
Jamie stepped out of the cage and slowly made his way toward the enraptured crowd. Supervising, he thought. Yeah, I’m a supervisor, and that’s what I’m doing. He sidled up to the line and began to watch as Calum set about hammering the console once again.
Whatever he was doing, he was doing it well. Jamie just didn’t know how. On the screen, small dots gave way to multi-coloured triangles, which rotated and warped into other shapes. The score in the top left hand corner of the screen was quickly rising. In the top right hand corner was a status bar, which was 100% full, whatever the fuck that meant. In fact, nothing about this game made sense to Jamie, not least the fact that he’d never heard of it before. Usually, arcade games were given the console treatment, so that gamers could play them at home. That was where the big money was for developers. There was very little money in arcade machines nowadays—except for the slots, which continued to deprive addicts of their salaries, because those three lemons were just too damn beautiful to ignore. The gaming world had changed drastically in the last ten years, with fewer new machines being released than ever before. Most arcades and amusement centres didn’t even bother to update their machines anymore; the same old games which had been there ten years ago were still there now, battered and unfashionable, and if some kid decides to come in and throw a few coins into the damn things, well, that’s considered a good day.
Beep-beeep-beep-thrum…
“If you want to play,” said a small bespectacled kid with a brown patch taped behind one of the coke-bottle lenses, “you’re going to have to join the queue. I was here first.” He had a lisp—I wath here firtht—and was wearing what appeared to be brown corduroy trousers, despite the stifling heat. Jamie immediately felt sorry for the poor bugger.
“No, I work here,” Jamie said, laughing slightly. “Just seeing what all the fuss is about.”
The boy, apparently mollified, said, “My name’s Douglas. Douglas Grice, and I’m eight years old.” The way he said it—almost like an automaton, without any inflection whatsoever—suggested to Jamie that there was something not quite right about Douglas, Douglas Grice, eight year old. Now he really felt bad for the kid. What if he was one of those… those autistics? Jamie had once watched a documentary on TV about that, and it had freaked him out. You couldn’t even touch some of these kids without them screaming and punching themselves in the face. It was horrible. He hoped Douglas, Douglas Grice, eight year old was not an autistic. He hoped the little corduroy-wearing kid was just an awkward geek, “Like the rest of us.”
“Sorry, did you say something?” asked Douglas.
Jamie frowned. “I don’t think so,” he said, though he had. He had been miles away, and now he was back in the room, and that was when he saw her.
Through the Perspex casing of a claw-machine, Jamie saw the pretty girl with the long red hair and freckles running across the bridge of her nose. She was concentrating deeply, manoeuvring the claw across until it was in line with whichever worthless stuffed toy she so desired, her eyes on the prize and only the prize, which was a good thing because if she had looked up in that moment, she would have seen Jamie gazing wistfully toward her.
“She’s pretty,” opined Douglas. “You should definitely go and talk to her.”
Jamie didn’t hear at first, for he was too busy watching the girl, the intensity as she lowered the claw, the hope turn to disappointment as the grabber latched o
nto a stuffed penguin, plucked it from the rest of the toys, then dropped it again a second later. The claw returned to its place of origin, and the girl moved to another machine, no doubt cursing her luck.
“What was that, man?” Jamie said, still focusing upon the redhead.
“I love cheese,” said Douglas. “You like cheese, mister?”
Jamie didn’t know how to answer, or how this kid’s parents saw fit to leave him to his own devices, so he excused himself with an, “It was a pleasure chatting to you on this fine morning, Douglas,” before making his way across the arcade, to where the girl had her back to him.
What are you doing, Jamie? he thought. Can’t you see that she’s busy, and the last thing she wants is you hanging off her shoulder like some cheap handbag?
Another voice, one much less whiney, arrived in the nick of time. Jamie was just about to turn around and run for the cage when it said: You work here. At least until Scottie gets back. Customer satisfaction is very important to you. It’s not stalking. You’re just making sure everyone is happy, checking if they need anything. You’re a good worker, Jamie. A great worker, in fact. You go for it.
Although he didn’t quite trust the second voice, Jamie had to admit that it made sense. He quickened his pace, marching confidently across the room the way one would expect an employee to march, and arrived at the bank of grabbers which made up the wall to the left of the entrance. The girl noticed him straight away; there was nothing subtle about the way he’d cleared his throat.
“I wouldn’t put any more money in that one,” Jamie said, motioning to the machine in front of her. It was filled with plush Looney Tunes characters. Here was a limb belonging to Bugs Bunny; there a Taz arm; here a Daffy Duck beak; there a Speedy Gonzales tail. It was like the world’s strangest orgy, a bed of mangled body-parts, and—
“Why’s that?” The girl was looking at Jamie in almost the same way he had just been looking at Douglas. It wasn’t a nice feeling, and he made a mental note not to do it in future.
