Manny got in the way as they tried to open the tunnels and so they shot him and went in anyway. We ran then, so I don’t know what they did. I shouldn’t think they killed them, because most had lots of parts left. Cut out bits of their brain, probably, to make sure they were all tunnel people.
We ran, and we walked and we finally made the city. I said goodbye to Sue at the subway, because she was going home on foot. I’ve got further to go, and they’ll be looking for us, so we had to split up. We knew it made sense, and I don’t know about love, but I’d lose both of my hands to have her with me now.
Time’s running out for both of us, but I don’t care. Manny got addresses for us, so we know where to go. Sue thinks we’ll be able to take their places. I don’t, but I couldn’t tell her. We would give ourselves away too soon, because we just don’t know enough. We wouldn’t have a chance. It was always just a dream, really, something to talk about.
But one thing I am going to do. I’m going to meet him. I’m going to find Jack’s house, and walk up to his door, and I’m going to look at him face to face.
And before they come and find me, I’m going to take a few things back.
The Munchies
When he’d found the ashtray, Nick gathered his thoughts and had another try. Howard watched him like a hawk—a hawk, at least, that looked like it was either about to fall asleep or be sick—and waited for him to speak.
‘Imagine, right, that you’re sitting in the middle of this huge drum. A huge drum that goes all around you.’
‘A drum?’
‘Yeah, made out of wood.’
‘Like a bongo?’
‘No, not like a fucking bongo. Not a drumming drum. Like a circular shed, made of wood.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘This drum is on little wheels, okay, so it can swivel round you.’
‘Why?’
‘Listen. Because when you’re sitting in the middle, okay, your head’s clamped so you can only look straight ahead, so you only see a tiny section of the drum.’ Pleased with having pulled off so complex a sentence, Nick beamed at Howard, who was staring at him owlishly. ‘Right?’
‘Right,’ Howard replied, and giggled briefly.
‘But imagine, then, right, imagine someone jigs the drum round, just a little bit. Then you’d see another section, wouldn’t you? Right next to the original one. Not a huge difference maybe, but very slightly different.’
‘Ri-ight…’
‘The point is…’ Nick flailed, trying to remember what the point was, ‘the point is…Christ.’
He reached out for his glass, suddenly desperate to irrigate his mouth. Unfortunately the movement shifted his centre of balance fractionally too far to the right, and he keeled slowly over until he was lying on his side with his legs still crossed. This wasn’t a problem: the Jack Daniels and Diet Coke was still within reach.
He took a long pull, and then coughed alarmingly. ‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ he said, reproachfully.
‘Yeah,’ Howard sighed sympathetically. Then, after a long pause: ‘What?’
‘This drink. Put any Coke in it, did you?’
Howard gave it some thought. ‘Yeah,’ he said, frowning with concentration. ‘I think so, anyway.’
Nick looked at him dubiously, and then laboriously pushed himself back into an upright position. ‘What was I talking about?’
‘Fucked if I know.’
‘It was really interesting.’ Nick dredged the murky river of his thoughts, trying to find the train of thought he’d fumbled and dropped. ‘It was…’
In the meantime Howard reached out and picked up the cigarettes, finding them comparatively easily. They were right in front of his face, of course, but by this stage in the evening no action was a straightforward undertaking. With his jeans, denim shirt and long blond hair Howard looked amazingly like Gary out of ‘thirtysomething’, and Nick considered telling him this, but then recalled that Howard hadn’t watched the show, and wouldn’t know what the hell he was talking about. He also thought he’d probably tried to tell him at least once before, possibly that very evening. Maybe even within the last five minutes.
Then a little light went on in his head. ‘Remembered it.’
Howard pulled two cigarettes out of the packet and lobbed one in Nick’s direction. Once they were lit, he rested his weight on one elbow and looked at Nick, brow knitted.
‘Okay,’ he said, with the air of a man steeling himself for a difficult and dangerous mission, one likely to leave him dead or at the very least seriously wounded. ‘I’m really going to try to understand this time.’
‘Right,’ said Nick, nodding vigorously. ‘Right. Oh fuck.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve forgotten what it was.’
Howard fell forward onto the carpet. ‘You bastard,’ he wailed. ‘You bastard.’
Nick started laughing. After a second or so it became obvious that he wasn’t going to stop for a while, so he put his glass down. He didn’t want to spill Coke all over the carpet.
‘I was there,’ Howard spluttered, ‘I was fucking there. I was giving it all I had. And you blew me out.’ Racked with silent laughter, Nick toppled sideways again. ‘I thought finally, finally, I’m going to understand what the twat’s banging on about.’
‘It was really interesting,’ Nick coughed.
‘Well I’ll never fucking know, will I.’
As suddenly as it had started, the laughing jag passed off, leaving the two of them feeling warm and tired. That, and very, very stoned.
‘Well,’ Nick said briskly, ‘I think it’s about time we had another joint, frankly.’
Howard peered at him through the smoke and dark hazy light. ‘You’d be mad,’ he muttered. ‘And don’t call me Frankie.’
‘It’s your turn.’
‘Is it fuck.’
‘It is.’
‘Isn’t. Who rolled the last one?’
‘I did.’
‘Exactly. So…oh fuck. It is my turn then.’
Nick suddenly stood upright. Howard stared up at him from his semi-recumbent position.
‘Jesus,’ he said, with genuine respect, ‘How did you do that?’
‘I’m going to pour some more drinks.’ Colliding with both the sofa and the armchair, Nick negotiated the tricky three yards to the kitchen area.
‘That’s a disastrous idea,’ Howard said comfortably, content in the knowledge that he was right, and that Nick would pour another drink anyway, and that he’d drink it.
‘Yeah,’ Nick agreed cheerfully, trying to find the fridge.
Howard hauled himself up onto his knees, and used the mantelpiece in a valiant effort to reach an upright position. It took a couple of tries, but he made it in the end.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘Okay. But I have to piss first, or I’m going to die.’
While he was gone, Nick pulled the fridge open and got out some ice. Most of this made it into their glasses. He splashed in a ridiculous amount of scotch, and added half an inch of Diet Coke.
‘This,’ he muttered quietly to himself, ‘this will sort us out.’
When he was sitting cross-legged on the carpet once more he lit another cigarette to keep him going, fumbled a jumbo-sized cigarette paper from the packet, and laid it out. Once a cigarette’s worth of tobacco lay in a neatish line across the paper, he warmed the lump and crumbled dope in.
He continued to do this for quite some time.
When Howard wandered back as if by accident back into the living room, Nick pushed the half-finished joint towards him. Howard looked at it benignly.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘you’re a gentleman. Jesus. There’s a lot of dope in there.’
The joint was an absolute bomber. The first drag left Nick feeling as if someone had poured warm, wet sand into his head, sand that jumped and fizzed with sluggish electricity. It also took him instantaneously from being merely very stoned to being stupendously stoned, cataclysmically stoned, outlandishly stoned.
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‘That,’ he squeaked, ‘is a joint.’
He watched as Howard took an injudiciously deep drag, and then cackled manically as his friend helplessly thumped the floor, eyes tightly shut, making a noise like a puzzled elephant.
For a second he had a sudden burst of clarity, saw the two of them beached like dissolute whales on his living room floor, pissed and stoned and enjoying each other’s company as they’d done so many times before. Old friendship, he thought, knowing someone very well: that’s worth having.
Then his mind went runny again, and he stood up quickly.
‘Don’t do that,’ Howard groaned. ‘It’s very eerie.’
‘Munchies,’ Nick explained, trying to find the kitchen.
‘Fuck, yeah!’ Howard exclaimed, sudden much-cheered. ‘Food. Fucking tremendous idea.’
Nick rootled through the cupboards and came back with a large bag of pickled onion flavoured crisps, bearing them in front of him as if they were the Holy Grail.
‘Oh wow,’ said Howard, ‘Top quality munchies.’ The bag wrenched open, they both took one of the huge crisps and dropped them into their mouths.
After a minute of beatific crunching, Nick nodded slowly. ‘You know,’ he said, with ponderous seriousness, ‘there are some nice crisps about.’
It took them about five minutes to stop laughing at that. Then Howard took a pull of his spectacularly strong drink, leapt up and reeled round the room for another couple of minutes, swearing wildly.
Nick remembered suddenly that the joint was still alight, and lunged for the ashtray. ‘D’you wantny more of this?’
‘Bastard,’ Howard shouted quietly, and then blinked. ‘Er, no.’
Leaning over the ashtray so none of the specks of tobacco could fall out and burn the rented carpet of his rented flat, Nick sucked a last blow out of the joint.
Ten seconds later he opened his eyes again. There were three different Howards lying on the carpet in front of him, and he had no reliable way of telling which was which.
‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Jesus.’ He let the smoke pour out of him. The last drag had been just about one hundred percent dope, and the smoke was as thick as water.
Suddenly he needed to go to the bathroom.
As he stood weaving in front of the toilet, trying to remember which muscles you had to relax when you wanted to piss, he glanced blearily out of the window. Dark.
Then, just as his bladder joyfully recalled its role in such situations, the thought he’d been trying to express earlier flew across Nick’s mind like a bright dart. He peered after it. Something about a huge drum. All around you. You could only stare straight ahead, so you always saw the same vertical sliver of the drum. Then somehow the drum moved fractionally, and you saw the next sliver along instead.
What the fuck was that all about?
Realising both that he’d finished urinating and that his head was now resting against the cool tiles of the bathroom wall, Nick flushed the toilet on the third attempt and staggered out through the bedroom. Head down, he trudged into the living room and sat heavily back down on the carpet, rubbing his eyes.
When he opened them again he saw Howard’s hands, and was flabbergasted to see that he was rolling another joint.
‘You have got to be joking,’ he said. ‘We need another joint like a fish needs a bison.’
‘Go for it. You know it makes sense.’
Nick raised his head to gaze blearily across the yard of treacly air. Then his mouth dropped open.
Howard was wearing a red sweatshirt.
Still staring, Nick put his hand out and found the cigarettes. The sweatshirt looked okay, but that wasn’t the point. Leaning forward slightly, he peered at the garment.
‘Howard,’ he said, and then ground to a halt. He looked round the room, trying to see if Howard had brought a bag with him. He didn’t think he’d turned up with one. So where the fuck had the sweatshirt come from?
‘What? Oh, bugger.’ Howard looked up briefly, then set about reconstructing the joint he’d dropped.
Nick almost backed off, but knew he couldn’t. The question had to be asked. ‘Weren’t you wearing a blue shirt earlier?’
‘When?’
‘Earlier. Before I went for a wazz.’
Howard frowned bemusedly. ‘What?’
Nick took a gulp from his drink, lit a cigarette. He didn’t own a red sweatshirt, so Howard couldn’t have borrowed it while he was in the bathroom. He could now remember the image of Howard walking into the flat before they went down to the pub. He’d been empty-handed. No bag. ‘You were wearing a denim shirt earlier.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
Nick suddenly felt less bothered. He thought that Howard had been wearing a shirt earlier, but he couldn’t have been. Clearly he was wearing a red sweatshirt.
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘So. Are you ever going to finish rolling that, or what?’
‘Fuck off,’ Howard growled good-naturedly, and reached for the lighter.
This one was even worse. Reeling from a drag that had left his mind feeling as if someone was stirring it with a warm finger, Nick sat up straight and coughed violently. Then, for the briefest of instants, it felt as if a cold sharp knife had passed through his head, a knife in the shape of a dart. He shook his head and opened his eyes. ‘Wah,’ he said. ‘Wah.’
‘Yeah.’
Mouth suddenly arid again, Nick filled it with drink. Then he grimaced, and stared at his glass. ‘What’s this shit?’
‘What’s what shit?’
‘This. Drink. What drinking we are. Christ, I mean what are we drinking?’
‘Napalm. Cheeky little vintage, isn’t it?’
Nick turned and looked up at the counter in the kitchen. He could see the bottles clearly. One was of Southern Comfort. The other was plastic, and held a red liquid which the label proclaimed to be Cherryade. That was very wrong.
‘Where the fuck did they come from?’
‘A shop,’ said Howard, and collapsed sideways, braying laughter. Nick stared at him. They’d been drinking Jack Daniels and Diet Coke, surely. The old JD and DC. It was traditional.
He looked at Howard’s glass, and saw that the liquid in it was the same colour as his.
He twisted round and looked behind the armchair. It was also traditional that as soon as they got back from the pub he would mix a spare drink and secrete it behind the chair. That way they had one in reserve for when they were too stoned to make it as far as the kitchen, but not quite stoned enough to be unconscious. Their bodies were indeed temples.
‘In a shop,’ gasped Howard to himself, and then he was off again, curled up in a foetal ball and quaking.
The liquid in the reserve glass was red too. Cherryade red.
But that wasn’t surprising. They were drinking the old SC & C. Same as ever. Why should he have thought they were drinking Jack Daniels? And why would the thought have made him feel afraid? Weird. He shook his head and reached for the joint.
Weird. Like some drum.
‘Shop,’ said Howard, sitting up and wiping his eyes. ‘Shop.’
Nick grinned and took a drag, feeling the hot smoke flooding his lungs. This pull was milder than the last, and he shut his eyes and held the smoke down, feeling it filter up through his neck into his head. Why was it like a drum?
Then again there was a feeling like light glinting off steel, and Nick’s eyes flew open.
The room seemed slightly lighter than he remembered it. Howard waved at him and he absently handed the joint over as the skin on the back of his neck began to crawl.
The carpet was green before, he thought, feeling his eyes prick as a kind of awful fear began to run wild in him. It was green. Now it was beige, and it looked right with the sofa, which was cream. Not blue. Not blue as it had been earlier.
The room seemed lighter because all the furnishings were different. They were all lighter. But that wasn’t all.
There was an extra window.
Howard shifted comfortably on the floor, curling up propped on one elbow. He offered the joint but Nick shook his head. The stuff in his head rocked with the movement, slopping like liquid in a jar that wasn’t quite full.
Suddenly Howard giggled. ‘Like a drum, you say. Just a little jig. A different sliver.’
Nick stared at him. He hadn’t said that. He’d only thought of the word ‘sliver’ when he was in the bathroom. Hadn’t he?
The room was lighter mainly because a streetlight shone through the new window. Nick turned to look at it, suddenly unconcerned. Now he thought about it, it had always been there. There had always been that many stars, and the twin moons.
He laughed. Howard smiled. He seemed very close by, very much there. The red sweatshirt suited him. Nick had been wrong to take the piss when he’d turned up in it. As he’d said, it matched the drink. It matched the old SC & C.
Nick tried to get up, suddenly sure that he was going to be sick, but he couldn’t move. The feeling in his stomach intensified, swelled, and changed. It spiralled up like smoke towards his head and soaked into his bones, and then he recognised it.
It wasn’t sickness. It was hunger. Not again, surely.
Head whirling, he reached out for the joint, his hand brushing Howard’s at the ashtray. He could feel there wasn’t much time, so he scrabbled for the joint, wanting to drown the feeling, coat it in that lacquered smoke. But he didn’t get to it quickly enough, and blackness closed in like a door slamming shut, and he felt the faint jig again, felt rather than saw the flash of metallic light.
When he opened his eyes the room felt different, but it looked the same. Puzzled, he moved his eyes fractionally to either side. Nothing had changed this time.
It was the same sliver. Nothing changed. He smiled, feeling luxuriously warm and comfortable. His mind was sharper too, and he felt fine. Really good, in fact.
This time it wasn’t anything outside which had altered.
He looked up and smiled at Howard. He could hear the beating of the man’s heart, sense the slippery squeeze as the muscle fibres in the arm in that red sleeve moved against each other, smell the bright blood that ran through his arteries.
More Tomorrow: And Other Stories Page 39
