How to Be Bad

by David Bowker

  “You were a journalist?”

  “Yeah. I was a staff writer on a women’s glossy. I used to make up all those exclusive stories about how to keep your man from straying.”

  “And what’s the answer?”

  “The real answer or the one I wrote for the readers?”

  “The real answer.”

  “You mutate into a completely different person every two years. Only way to keep your man. Relationships only last two years. After that, the sex has lost its edge, and all the flowers in the world can’t make up for the arguments, the resentments, and the secret loathing.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” I said. “Anyway, we were only together for six months.”

  “That’s right.” She smiled brightly, and my heart fluttered. “That’s why I never got tired of you.”

  “Oh. So how come you walked out on me?”

  “I was seventeen. My lovely teacher made a pass at me. I was a little kid, I was flattered. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Report him to the authorities?”

  “If I’d thought you’d have been able to handle me seeing someone else, I would never have ended it. Well, not for about another eighteen months, anyway.”

  The first course arrived. It looked like a giant maggot sitting on a lettuce leaf. Caro ate hers without hesitation, then started on mine. She was welcome to it.

  “So in theory,” I said, “you and I have got another year and a half?”

  “Stop it.”

  “Then why did you ask me to call you?”

  “I thought it’d be nice just to meet as friends and catch up.”

  “You don’t fancy me anymore?”

  I saw her hesitate. “It isn’t that. You’re very nice. That’s part of the problem. You’re a little too nice.”

  “I’m not that nice.”

  “You are, Mark. I bet you even wash the dishes.”

  “I prefer to wipe.”

  The main course was some kind of fish. I thought I’d ordered a salad, which just went to show how bad my French was.

  “How’s your love life?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  “I haven’t been out with anyone for eight months.”

  “How many relationships have you had since I knew you?”

  “Lost count,” she said. “You?”

  “Four,” I said. “An actress, a kindergarten teacher, a flight attendant, and a girl I met at college.”

  “Which one lasted the longest?”

  “Four and a half years. The girl I met at college. She was my second-favorite girlfriend. You’re the first. The kindergarten teacher comes third. The flight attendant and the actress share equal fourth place.”

  Caro laughed. “Is there something wrong with you?”

  “No.” I felt myself blushing. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you keep making lists.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yeah. First you did it about the restaurant. Now you’re doing it about your girlfriends.”

  “Ah.”

  She wasn’t just being hostile. The subject interested her. “Listmaking. Making endless lists about stupid fucking things. It’s an epidemic, and it’s wiping out the modern Western male.”

  “I haven’t really given it much thought.”

  “I can tell,” she said. “Does your dad make lists?”

  “No.”

  “Nor does mine. But he’s a complete nutter, so he doesn’t really count. My mum’s dad got shot in the war—can’t remember if I ever told you that. A Japanese bullet went right through him, took out his spleen. Do you think he made lists? His ten best comrades to die in action, in order of likability?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “So do I. He was too busy fighting to survive. No wonder the male sperm count is plummeting throughout America and Europe. Why would men need testosterone when all they do is sit at home being neurotic?”

  “I’m not being neurotic. I run a business, I live my life.”

  To illustrate my point, I accidentally knocked over my wineglass, spilling chardonnay over the tablecloth and the floor.

  “But your business is neurotic. Collecting things is neurotic.”

  I could see what she was saying, just couldn’t bring myself to accept it.

  “Guys like you are just not equipped,” stated Caro.

  “Equipped for what?”

  “I don’t know … life and death.”

  “And what makes you such an authority on men?”

  “I’ve screwed enough of them. And I’ve perceived a definite trend. Men who lived through the Second World War came out solid. Like Humphrey Bogart. You could see it in their faces. They’d passed through the fire. They weren’t just a bunch of compulsive-obsessive faggots.”

  “Is that what you think I am?”

  “Well, you could use a bit of toughening up. You can’t argue with that, surely?”

  “You sound like my dad.”

  “He must be partly to blame, even though he doesn’t know it. Did he ever take you out into the woods, teach you how to hunt?”

  “I worked in his bacon shop every Saturday.”

  “It’s not quite the same thing.”

  “So what are you suggesting?” I said. “A return to men who never cry, can’t cook, or change a nappy?”

  Caro lit a cigarette. I have to admit I was shocked. The dangers of smoking are so widely publicized that I’d forgotten that some people are still rash enough to disregard them. “As you know, I used to be into all that feminist shit,” she said, blowing smoke across the table. “But I now think women have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Sure, it’s useful to have a man who can wash and iron clothes. It’s also useful to have a man who keeps calm in a crisis. A man who would kill to protect his family.”

  “So marry a soldier.”

  “I’m getting on your nerves, aren’t I? That’s good.”

  “Why?”

  “If I irritate you enough, maybe you’ll get over all this shit about loving me.”

  The smoke was making me cough. “Who said anything about loving you?”

  She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “You’re nice, Mark. You always were. But that’s the trouble, Mark. I’m only attracted to bastards.”

  “I can be a bastard.”

  She smirked. “Since when?”

  “This morning. I walked right past a homeless person without giving him any money.”

  Caro said, “Yeah, but I bet you smiled at him as you walked past.”

  I shrugged. “Good manners don’t cost anything.”

  Caro wasn’t listening. I followed the direction of her gaze and saw an angry red face leering at us through the window. For a second, I thought the homeless person I hadn’t given money to had returned to taunt me. Then Caro said, “Shit!” and I realized she knew the man at the window and he knew her.

  A few seconds later, the stranger had gone.

  “Who was that?”

  “Warren,” she said wearily.

  “Who’s Warren?”

  “An ex-boyfriend who can’t accept that it’s over.”

  “A pattern seems to be emerging here.” I put down my fork and looked at her. “Warren looked a little psychotic to me.”

  “He’s a maniac. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. When we met he told me he was a record producer. He turned out to be a small-time dealer. He sells dope and speed to the sweat-stained losers of Richmond.”

  “You know some very strange people.”

  “I seem to collect them,” she said, looking me directly in the eye.

  * * *

  I PAID the bill and walked her home. On the way, Caro suddenly linked arms with me and said, “That was a great meal. I’ve had a really nice time.”

  “Thanks.”

  She added, “But there’s no way I’m going to sleep with you.”

  “I never imagined you were,” I said.

  “Yeah. I bet it didn’t even cross your m
ind.”

  “No,” I said. “I never make advances unless I’m invited.”

  “That’s right, I forgot,” she said, laughing. “Men like you don’t even get a hard-on until a woman gives you permission.”

  I found this a bit insulting but couldn’t think of a comeback. We entered Caro’s leafy driveway to be confronted by a bizarre sight. There was a man squatting on the hood of her BMW. As we approached, he leapt into our path and screamed. It was Warren.

  “Careful,” I warned. “I am armed with a large vocabulary.”

  “Warren,” said Caro, “when are you going to grow up?”

  Warren’s hair came down to his big, solid shoulders. “Is this him?” he said angrily. “The bastard you’re fucking instead of me?”

  “Let’s be reasonable here,” I said. Warren didn’t appear to hear me.

  “No, no. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not fucking him,” said Caro. When Warren had calmed down, she said, “I’m sucking his cock.”

  Warren gave us a strange lopsided stare, and for a second I thought he was going to kill us both. Then he grunted and half-swaggered, half-staggered away. I stood at the gate, watching him turn right into Pagoda Avenue. “I think he’s gone,” I said reassuringly. “What’s wrong with his eyes?”

  “One of them’s false. He had an accident.”

  “You went out with a guy with a glass eye?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “Nothing. I just think it’s laudable that you treat people with disabilities the same as everyone else.”

  “Don’t,” she said. “You’ll make me throw up.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Would you like some coffee before you go?”

  I rarely drank tea or coffee, because I liked to keep my body caffeine free, but I was afraid that admitting this would merely confirm Caro’s suspicions that I was not a real man. So I nodded confidently and said, “Coffee would be great.”

  She lived on the first floor of a three-story house. Her front room faced Kew Road, with its roaring traffic. In the distance, the pagoda in Kew Gardens reared above the trees. The walls were lined with shelves, containing, as one would expect, worn paperback copies of all the books that had ever been considered cool. On the Road, Trainspotting, A Clockwork Orange, The Doors of Perception. There was even a copy of Billy Bunter Goes to Blackpool.

  On the coffee table lay a neat pack of tarot cards, which in turn rested on a worn and threadbare copy of Wilhelm’s translation of the I Ching. Beside them was a dainty ashtray that contained a half-smoked spliff.

  We sat in the high-ceilinged living room, listening to the traffic rumble down below. Every so often a plane passed over on its way to Heathrow, flying so low that the roar of its engines drowned out the traffic. “So did your life work out the way you wanted?” asked Caro.

  “I think you know the answer to that.”

  She nodded. “Things are shit for me, too. I’m in debt up to my eyeballs.”

  “How much?”

  “Last time I dared to look, I owed about fifty grand.”

  I whistled in admiration.

  “My mum died,” she said. “Did I tell you that?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. She built her whole life round Dad, gave him his pills on time, did everything for him. She was meant to survive him so we could have a nice easy life, spending his millions, but she dropped dead from a heart attack last February. Soon as she’s out of the way, my dad hires a live-in housekeeper and guess what? He hasn’t had a hard-on since 1961, but he gets the hots for her. Last week he told me they were getting married. Pretty soon he’s going to change his will, if he hasn’t done it already. Where does that leave me? Hopelessly in debt, without a chance in hell of ever climbing out of the hole I’ve dug for myself.”

  “The BMW in the drive. Is that yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you sell it?”

  “I haven’t paid for it yet.”

  “If I had any money, I’d give it to you. In the meantime, if there’s anything practical I can do to help, just ask.”

  “I know,” she said sarcastically. “Why don’t you give me a job in your bookshop? If I don’t eat, buy clothes, or use any electricity, I should have paid off all my debts by the year 3000.”

  I went into her kitchen to get a drink of water. When I first turned on the light, I thought someone had been sick all over the floor. Then I realized I was looking at hideous orange and brown linoleum. A naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling. There was no curtain or blind at the window. It was a typically delapidated Greater London shithole.

  In the fridge, I found a half-empty bottle of flat Perrier. I poured some into a glass, swallowed it, and poured some more. Using the kitchen window as a mirror, I checked that my shirt looked okay and my hair wasn’t sticking up. Then there was a violent crash. Something hard and cold burst through the window and hit me on the head. I staggered and had to grip the kitchen table to prevent myself from falling over.

  * * *

  “WHAT HAPPENED?” I was lying on the sofa. Caro had laid a cold, damp cloth over my brow.

  “It was Warren again,” she said. “I saw him running away.”

  “What hit me?”

  “It was a brickbat. You’re lucky. You must have a very hard head. Now you’ve got a lump on your lump.”

  “Have you called the police?”

  “No. I just taped cardboard over the window.”

  “Hadn’t you better call them?”

  “Why? The police know all about my ex, I’ve called them a hundred times. He’d have to murder me before they took him seriously.”

  “But this is Richmond-Upon-Thames. It’s meant to be a nice area.”

  “It is. Warren’s the son of a doctor. He just happens to have an addictive personality, and at the moment he’s addicted to me.”

  “How often does he come round?”

  “There’s no particular pattern. Sometimes weeks can go by. Just when I think I’ve got rid of him, the doorbell starts ringing at one in the morning, and there’s Warren on the doorstep, howling like a stray dog.”

  I tried to sit up but felt so dizzy that I lay straight back down again.

  Caro looked at me and sighed. “Why don’t you stay here tonight?”

  My dick began to twitch hopefully. It needn’t have bothered.

  “You can sleep on the sofa,” she said. “Why don’t you? You don’t look well. Go home in the morning.”

  I wanted to see my head, so she brought over a mirror. On my forehead there was a swelling the size of a poached egg, the most recent lump representing the yolk.

  She hauled in some pillows and covered me with a flowery quilt. And when she said good night, she kissed me, once, on the brow, like Florence Nightingale kissing a dying soldier.

  CHAPTER 3

  FEVER BITCH

  IN THE morning, Caro cooked me a full English breakfast: bacon, tomatoes, fried eggs, sausages, beans, and fried bread. I usually avoid fatty foods, but I was so touched by her consideration that I devoured it all, right down to the last heart-stopping morsel. Caro, nibbling daintily at dry toast, sat opposite me, her eyes piercingly blue in the morning sunshine. I felt an overwhelming, hopeless implosion of longing.

  “Stop going on about it.”

  “About what?”

  “About how gorgeous I am.”

  I was astonished. “I didn’t say a word.”

  “You didn’t have to,” she said, with a sly smile. “It’s written all over your egg-stained fucking face.”

  “Well, of course, I’ve still got feelings for you.”

  “Dirty or clean?”

  “Pretty filthy, actually.”

  She nodded. “Just can’t let anything go, can you? The way you are about books and songs is the way you are about people. You try to keep everything.”

  “I try to keep promises,” I said, in a tone of hurt dignity. “You once told me you’d never love anyone as mu
ch as you loved me. You did say that.”

  “Maybe I did. We say a lot of things when we’re seventeen.”

  “You love someone else?”

  “Mark, I don’t feel anything. Not just for you, but for anyone. I haven’t felt a real emotion since I left school.”

  * * *

  THE TWIN bruises on my head had turned purple and green. I looked like the man from the future in an old Outer Limits show. Caro must have felt sorry for me, because as I was leaving she asked me if I fancied a walk. We ambled over to Kew Green and bought some water, hazelnuts, and chocolate. Then we circled the high walls of Kew Gardens until we came to the footpath by the Thames that links Kew with Richmond.

  The dark green river slid by on our right. To our left lay the boundary fence of Kew Gardens. Between us and the fence there was a wide ditch. A stout drainpipe emerged from the gardens and passed underneath the path, pumping shit into the river. Caro suddenly mounted the drainpipe and started walking. When she was halfway across the ditch, she turned to look at me. “Come on,” she hissed.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “You tell me.”

  “You’re sneaking into Kew Gardens without paying.”

  “You astound me, Holmes.”

  “I think I’d rather pay.”

  “Don’t be silly. It costs a bomb to get into this place.”

  Feeling shoddy and cheap, I followed her, and we passed into the gardens via a gap in the fence. I realized this was how Caro lived her entire life, never answering the door or the phone, sneaking and hiding to avoid admission fees and creditors.

  We sat on a bench, eating nuts and chocolate and looking out at the river. Caro pointed out the stone lions on the roof of Syon House. As we passed all the benches, most of them dedicated to dead people who had loved Kew, I found myself thinking of “Everything Is Cool,” my favorite song by the Serenes.

  And everywhere I turn

  I see the ones I knew

  For they found heaven here

  The dreaming ghosts of Kew …

  Men of all ages and quite a few women stopped talking as we passed, often smiling as they followed Caro with their eyes. It had been the same when we were seventeen. Some men might have felt proud to be in the presence of such a dazzling creature, yet the attention Caro attracted had always unnerved me. It would have suited me better if everyone else thought she resembled Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera and I was the only man alive to perceive her true beauty.