by Stuart David
‘Of course I have,’ she said. ‘And he’d get me into that film too, wouldn’t you, Bob? Just a wee part, nothing too fancy. Just so’s you could see me up there even though I’d be gone.’
Bob laughed, and then he looked down at his Chaplin Chicken Stir Fry.
‘It’s a good plan,’ he said. ‘But I could never do that kind of work, Bev. They’re a different kind of people altogether, actors. Same as those guys we were working with the other night. It’s a whole other thing, creating.’
‘How is it?’ Bev asked him.
‘It just is,’ Bob said. ‘Before I left New York I was at a comedy club watching this guy, and he was just awesome. Someone shouted something at him, some kind of abuse—and he came straight back at them—instantly. And then he started laughing at what he’d said. ‘Where the fuck did that come from?’ he asked us. And all through the act you could see these things occurring to him just before he said them, and you could see him struggling not to laugh. That’s how it works. I’m always thinking that very same thing—’Where the fuck did that come from?’ But it’s different with me. I’m on the other side of the coin. The things that occur to me are destructive things. Nasty ideas. It’s this worm. It just fucking crawls in there…’
‘You don’t seem that nasty to me,’ Bev said.
‘Oh, I can be,’ Bob told her. ‘I can be…’
And he got stuck back into the stir-fry.
* * *
Before we left there he gave her a wee demonstration. She’d kept asking him about his worm all through the rest of the meal, and telling him he didn’t seem that evil to her—till I think it finally got on his nerves.
So in the end he stood up and told her he’d show her something. Then he just walked out of the place.
For a while we sat there wondering if that was it, if that was his demonstration—just leaving us there to wait for him while he never came back. But soon he reappeared at the window, waving in at us, and he was holding a chain.
‘What’s he got that for?’ Bev asked me, in a bit of a panic. ‘What’s he going to do, Peacock?’
But I told her I’d no idea. ‘He’s a fucking live wire, hen,’ I said.
She tried to signal to him to come back inside, but he was grinning his mad grin. He waved to us again and then started crossing the road.
‘I shouldn’t have encouraged him,’ she said. ‘Should I? Do you think it’s my fault? What’s that worm he keeps going on about anyway? Has he told you about that before?’
‘He’s mentioned it,’ I said.
‘Well what is it?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t ask him. I just let him bang on about it.’
‘I should have kept my mouth shut,’ she said.
But soon the wee man was back in the restaurant again, sitting at the table with us.
When he’d got across the road all he’d done with his chain was wrap it around a pole, and then slip it through the wheel of a motorbike that was sitting there, and fasten it up.
He was in fucking stitches when he came back to the table, though.
‘That’s awful, Bob,’ Bev said to him, and he knocked the key for the chain against his glass.
‘How much did that cost you?’ I asked him.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I stole it. Now all we have to do is wait.’
To be honest I didn’t really want to wait in there any longer. That big Oscar thing was starting to disturb me, and the whole place was grinding me down. But it turned out we didn’t have to wait too long. Soon Bob started tapping his key frantically on the table and cracking himself up again.
‘Here he comes,’ he said. ‘Here he comes.’ And we watched as a guy in leathers walked towards the bike.
He didn’t even notice the chain at first. He just took the bike off its stand and hopped on. It wasn’t till he started trying to roll forward that he realized it was stuck.
‘Strike one,’ Bob shouted, laughing away to himself.
We paid up and got out of there then, and we could hear the guy muttering away to himself across the street.
‘Motherfucker!’ he shouted at one point, and he kicked the chain.
‘Go and unlock it for him,’ Bev said to Bob, but he wouldn’t do it. He held the key out and then let it drop down a drain.
‘Jesus,’ Bev said to him. ‘You are an evil wee shite.’
‘I told you so,’ he laughed, looking back at the guy. ‘And you know what he’s thinking right now to himself, don’t you?’
‘What?’
‘He’s thinking—’Where the fuck did that come from…’’
Chapter 20
The problem we had later, though, was that the worm appeared to be asleep. He seemed to have worn it out, and we needed its help to come up with a plan. We needed a way to make some fucking money.
Bev had gone to bed not long after we’d come back from dinner, worn out from all the excitement of her tour, and I’d taken the chance to slip through to Bob’s room to try and sort something out with him. But we were fucking struggling.
We’d spread all the money out on the bed, and counted it up. It came to five hundred and eighty six dollars, plus some change, and we were just sitting staring at it; stuck.
‘All we need is another thousand for the song,’ I said. ‘Then enough to get us to Washington. How many days will that take us?’
‘Probably five,’ Bob said. ‘It’s a long fucking way. And we need to renew the lease on the car, that’s about to expire.’
‘What?’
Bob shrugged. ‘There’s only a couple more days on it,’ he said.
‘It’s a fucking pity the rumour about us being DJ’s didn’t spread,’ I told him. ‘Another night of that and we’d be laughing.’
‘Another night of that would get us lynched, Peacock. And I’ll tell you what else.’
‘What?’
‘Ever since we did that I’ve been haunted by one of the songs we played. I keep getting this vague picture in my mind of us singing it. I think it must have been one of the songs we did at karaoke.’
‘Which song?’
‘You don’t want to know. Remember, we agreed never to talk about it. Just be glad it’s in my head and not yours.’
He opened the mini-bar and got us a beer each. I thought back over some of the songs we’d played that night and then decided I didn’t want to remember. I had the feeling if I thought about it properly it would come back all too easily, and he was right—I was glad it was in his head and not mine.
‘Alright,’ he said as he opened his beer, ‘let’s get to work, worm. This should wake you up. Come on, we need a plan…’
* * *
And this is what his worm came up with. Are you ready for it?
Housebreaking.
It was hardly a fucking masterstroke, but then again—it was more than I’d managed. For a long time I’d just sat there drinking from the mini-bar and thinking we were fucked.
Admittedly I hadn’t really wanted to get back into any kind of crime. It’s like I said; there’s not enough money in it anymore. But we didn’t have a lot of options, and with it being L.A. I supposed there would probably be a lot more money in everything here than there was anywhere else. So we had the valet guy bring the car round to the front of the hotel and we went out looking.
The worm’s original idea had been more specific than just housebreaking. Its first suggestion had been housebreaking in Beverly Hills, so that was where we started out.
It was fucking obvious when we got there though that it was a no-go. Every house had a sign at the entrance letting you know there were guards and dogs on patrol. Armed guards, and probably armed fucking dogs too. And the signs made it clear that they were perfectly prepared to shoot you on sight; that they would positively relish the chance to take a pop at you. And all of this was presuming you could actually get into the grounds in the first place, which didn’t look likely, what with the height of the walls and the strength of the gates.
>
‘Bad worm,’ Bob said, and slapped his stomach. ‘Bad worm.’ And we decided to get out of there and go looking for somewhere a bit more do-able.
We kept passing cars on the way down that were crawling along about three miles an hour, with people in the passenger seats pointing torches at maps. It was like a fucking road-rally for kerb crawlers, and curiosity got the better of me in the end. I had to get Bob to pull up beside one and ask them what it was all about.
It turned out you could buy a map in town telling you which film stars and singers lived in which mansions.
‘We’ll have to make sure Bev doesn’t find out about that,’ I told Bob as we drove away. ‘Otherwise we’ll be spending a miserable afternoon up here again tomorrow.’
‘Fucking weird,’ Bob said, as he swerved out to overtake another one of them, and we headed off towards the less affluent streets.
We had to be careful choosing our area. If the houses were too run down there would be fuck-all worth stealing inside, but it seemed that anyone who had anything at all was protecting it all-out. We got to thinking it might even be a status thing; the more security you had the more the neighbours would think you had to protect. So there might have been fuck-all in a lot of those houses too.
What we were really looking for was some kind of rebel. Someone who’d decided all that show was unnecessary, and stepped out of the race. Then we could prove to them that they were wrong, and that it was all necessary. Do them a service, if you like.
But we looked for a long fucking time. We drove through all kinds of neighbourhoods, and we did find some places that we thought could be done, but there was a lot of life going on in them all.
‘What the fuck are you doing at home, you freaks!’ Bob shouted. ‘You’re living in L.A. for fuck sake. Get out and party.’
Finally though, we did find a street that looked pretty dead. Bob drove along slowly and we looked at some houses. Then he stopped.
‘What do you think?’ he asked me.
‘Let’s get out and have a look,’ I said.
We’d decided there was no point in taking anything other than cash. Maybe jewellery at a push. But we didn’t want the hassle of trying to sell anything. We didn’t know how it went there, and we didn’t know anyone who did. So it was bound to be more trouble than it was worth.
‘Which one do you think?’ I asked Bob, and he walked up and down. There was one place sitting off on its own more than the others, and we decided that was the one. There was less chance of anyone in any of the other houses hearing us trying to get in there and, like Bob said, it looked like the kind of place a weirdo would live in. Someone who kept all their savings under the mattress.
‘What does the worm reckon?’ I asked him, but he didn’t laugh.
‘Don’t fucking joke about that, Peacock,’ he said. ‘It’s not a fucking thing of amusement.’
He looked pretty rattled, so I apologized to him and said I’d been out of order, just so’s we could fucking get on with things.
‘Alright,’ I said. ‘Forget it. Let’s go.’
Although it didn’t have any of the obvious protection we’d seen everywhere else, it was still pretty secure. Nothing gave way or opened easily.
‘You go to the front,’ Bob said in the end, when we’d tried all the windows at the back of the house. ‘I’m small enough to get through that one if I break it. You make sure no-one’s out front and I’ll open the door for you when I get through.’
So round I went.
He must have broken the window quietly, cause I didn’t hear a fucking thing. I was still out there listening for it when I heard a scream from inside the house instead. It came from somewhere near the back, followed by the sound of things falling, and then I could hear someone running towards the front door.
I tried to get away then, but the door burst open almost instantly, and it was the wee man who came tearing out.
‘Go,’ he shouted at me. ‘Go, go, go.’
Then he pushed me and I went flat out on my back. I could see him still running from where I lay on the ground.
‘Bob.’ I shouted at him, but he didn’t turn round. He was fucking possessed. He got to the car and started fumbling for his keys, and I noticed that in one hand he was holding what looked like a fucking teapot.
I got up and ran after him.
By the time I got my door open the car was already fucking moving. I had to throw myself in, and if I hadn’t got there in time I don’t think he’d have waited for me. He looked fucking petrified.
I turned round as we pulled off, to see who was coming after us, but there was no-one. The house was still in darkness, and the door was lying open. There was no-one anywhere on the street but us.
‘What the fuck happened?’ I asked him.
‘You don’t want to know,’ he said.
‘Of course I fucking do. Who screamed?’
‘Me.’
‘You?’
‘Let’s just get out of here,’ he said, and he cranked up the speed. We screeched round a corner and off that street, and the fucking teapot skidded across the dashboard. I caught it and looked inside.
‘Aww fuck…’ I said. It was fucking rank. There was a puddle of tea in the bottom that had green mould floating about in it.
‘What the fuck did you bring this for?’ I asked him.
‘I had to bring something,’ he said. ‘If I’d come out empty-handed the whole thing would have been a waste of time.’
‘And this makes it all worthwhile?’
‘I guess not,’ he said.
He wouldn’t say anything else about what had happened all the way back to the hotel. In fact, he didn’t say anything else at all. He just drove, with that frightened look on his face, a bit too fast. And when we got back to his room he threw open the mini-bar, and grabbed a bottle.
‘Help yourself,’ he told me, and then he lay down on the bed, and covered his eyes with his hand.
There wasn’t much left in there. We’d finished off everything except a few miniatures before we’d gone out, but I dug around till I found a whisky, and then I tried to get the wee man talking.
It wasn’t fucking easy. Everything came out in bits and pieces, and he kept stopping and covering his face up again, but eventually I managed to piece most of it together.
‘You certainly got in without making a sound,’ I told him, and he said that was the first thing that had surprised him.
‘I knocked the window in, and it didn’t make a sound when it hit the floor,’ he said. So he’d lowered himself down onto the sink and let his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, and when he’d been able to see better it had started to look like the floor was moving.
‘I thought it was just the pattern on the tiles at first,’ he said. ‘I thought it was some kind of fucked up illusion. But it didn’t smell too good in there, and when I got down onto the floor it crunched. It fucking crunched, Peacock, and I could feel it moving.’
He looked like he was going to start crying then, and he swallowed hard. And are you ready for this? Are you ready for what he told me? He said the fucking floor had been covered in worms.
‘That’s when I screamed,’ he said. ‘And I just fucking ran. I knocked something over and I grabbed that fucking teapot, but mostly I just needed to get out of there.’
‘Are you sure they were worms?’ I asked him, and he said he was sure. ‘But how the fuck does a floor get covered in worms?’
‘I don’t fucking know,’ he said. ‘But they were there. They’re everywhere, Peacock. They fucking follow me…’
He covered his face up again and I had no idea what to say, so I said fuck-all. I got us another bottle each from the mini-bar and put one into Bob’s hand. He took a drink from it and spluttered.
‘What the fuck is that, Peacock?’ he asked me, and took his hand away from his face. We were down to liqueurs by then. ‘Oh, Jesus…’ he said. ‘Is this all that’s left?’
I nodded.
He took another drink from it and spluttered again.
‘This is no good,’ he said. ‘We can’t drink this, Peacock. This won’t do at all. Come on, let’s go down to the bar.’
But before we went down, he drained the liqueur anyway.
Chapter 21
It was a harrowing night. We drank a lot, and Bob kept going on and on about those worms. I still couldn’t understand how the floor could possibly have been covered in worms, but I kept that to myself. He was too fucked up to try and talk any sense too.
Then he started talking about his worm, and that was worse. Much fucking worse.
‘It won’t die, Peacock,’ he kept telling me. ‘I’m like a slave to it.’ And he kept asking me why the doctors wouldn’t operate on it, and pulling at his shirt. All I could think of was to ask him how he’d got it.
‘Oh, that’s a funny story,’ he said. ‘That’s a funny fucking story.’
But he wasn’t smiling.
‘I had this job once,’ he said. ‘It was a fucking low time, and I had this job dressing up as a bunny at a fairground.’
‘A what?’
‘A bunny. A fucking rabbit. Handing out these fucking leaflets, in this filthy fucking fairground. And there were these feet with the costume that wouldn’t go over my shoes, so I had to do it in bare feet. And the bottom of these bunny feet were open, and the ground was all fucking wet and disgusting. That’s when I got it. Fucking funny, huh?’
Like I said; it wasn’t the best of nights, and the wee man drank far too much.
In the end he started to panic and shake, and he was saying to me,
‘Help me get it out, Peacock. Help me get it out.’
Sort of weeping.
And then he passed out and fell asleep.
It was a fucking relief by then—to be honest. And I drank on till they closed the bar, half thinking about going back out to that house, to see what the score really was with the floor. I thought if I did that I could maybe finish off the job we’d started too. But the more I drank the less I could remember exactly where the house was, and I finally started thinking of how things would be if I got out there and found out it was just a normal floor.