“Does that mean your dingle tingles, or the girl’s flower?”
“How the fuck . . .” I could feel wet on my spine by this stage.
“Ultraconfusing, Dylan. Ultraconfusing.”
“You can look at rubbers all day if you want, Amir, but I need to get out of here quick styley.”
I did. I needed to make a rapido exit, because I could feel him coming, like he was sitting on a wall ready to
pounce
swoop
or
leap
on the next person who walked past.
I could see him there with saliva hanging from his teeth, tongue dripping wet.
GGGGGRRRRROOOOOWWWWWLLLLLIIIIINNNNNGGGGG.
I hadn’t seen him for a while, which tickled my happiness because When Mr. Dog Bites, it’s an unpleasant present to the peepers and lugs.
Please don’t let Mr. Dog get out, not in a drugstore.
Please don’t let Mr. Dog get out, not while I’m browsing the rubbers section.
Please don’t.
Please.
And guess what happened?
Mr. Dog came out.
*
“It’s okay, Dylan, I’m here.” Amir was sitting next to me on the sidewalk with his arm around my shoulder. Not in a doolally batty-boy way, more in an I’ll-take-care-of-you-bud way. “D-d-do you want some water?” he said, handing me a bottle.
“Thanks, Amir.”
“That’s what best buds are for, isn’t it?”
“You bet.”
“You okay now?”
“A-okay. What am I going to do, Amir?”
“Have some water.”
“No, with Michelle Malloy.”
“Tell her some j-j-jokes. That’ll put her at ease.”
“Telling her rubbish jokes won’t woo the knick-knacks off her.”
“Well, maybe these will,” Amir said, and handed me a small white bag. “Here.”
“What is it?”
“Look inside.”
I looked.
“Aw, Amir, you bought me rubbers.” It was, like, the nicest thing anyone has done for me. What a top-notch bloke. And what a lucky dude I was to have such a top-notch bloke as my best bud.
“I did. ‘Extra safe, with extra lubrication,’” he said, pointing to the writing on the box. “Now you can pump Michelle Malloy all night long and your willy will be super safe.”
I wanted to say thanks, but the gobstopper in my gub stopped me from doing it.
So I hugged him instead.
29
Empty
The extra-safe rubbers are in my top drawer. Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On is on pause, ready to spring into action. I’d put a twenty-watt lightbulb in my bedside lamp—Twenty’s Plenty, and all that. The sheets and pillowcases have been given a chick makeover: they now smell of aloe vera and lavender. All my socks have been removed, for safety reasons. All the Internet sites I used for doing some last-minute-dot-com research have been cleared from my browsing history. And I have two boxes of Pringles (Hot & Spicy Wonton and Salsa de Chile Habanero), a box of malt balls, and a bottle of Irn-Bru on the sideboard for mega munchies and a debrief afterward. But no matter how much I prep the gaff, leaving no brick unturned, I still need some momentous brain gym to calm the old tense nervous-energy jets. So I try to think of my top six big-belly-belter jokes that I can tell Michelle Malloy in case the conversation becomes weird or she has one of her ODD moments.
When the doorbell rings, I swear to Jesus, Allah, Buddha, Samson, and Doc Colm I almost shite a bazoonga.
“Hi, Michelle. Glad you could make it.”
“Make what? Oh, God, you’re not having a weird night, are you?”
My tongue twists; I can feel the gobbledygook coming on.
“Did you hear about the dyslexic man who walked into a bra?”
Michelle Malloy squints her face and shakes her head.
“Get it?”
Joke number one is a disaster.
Michelle Malloy’s getup is anything but. Black tights (hard to remove, skill required) under a wee red tartan skirt (no clue as to what clan) and a T-shirt with a banana on it and the words “The Velvet Underground” (I know it isn’t a comfortable mode of transport she’s promoting) AND the red Adidas high-tops. Absolute class! My teen dream queen.
“Marvin Gaye’s in my room if you want to go up. PUMP. RIDE. DRILL,” I say. (But I sooooooooooooooooo want to say, “You look like the first thing I’ve seen after twenty years of blindness, Michelle.”) “Oh, shit, sorry, Michelle. I didn’t mean . . .”
“Calm the fuck down, Mint. I’m not even in your room yet. Come here, hun.”
She puts out her arms, and we come together for a hug special. Her hair is in my face. I close my eyes, take an inhale of her astounding scent, and think, This moment is a gamillion times better than sitting in heaven munching on an ice cream with a big cherry on top any day.
Michelle Malloy isn’t too good with stairs—she lives in a bungalow—so I help her up. That’s what any decent bf would do for his gf who has stair-walking difficulties. If I had my way, I’d fling that dame over my shoulder and carry her up the blinkin’ stairs.
In my room the twenty-watt is doing its thing. Michelle Malloy sits on my bed. I wonder if the chick makeover is doing it for her.
“Want a glass of Irn-Bru and a couple of Pringles?” This is what’s called playing it cool before the main event.
“Rank! No.”
“Malt balls?”
“No.”
“Maybe for after.”
“After what, Mint?”
“Nothing. BONKING. Fuck!”
“Got any water?”
“Water? FUCK WATER’S DICK. Sorry, Michelle.”
“It’s okay. Relax.”
“I didn’t plan for water.”
“So what have you been planning for?”
“I’ll run down and get some.” I make my way to the door.
“Take a chill pill, will you?”
“Okay, chill pill. Got it.”
“Come and sit here, Mint.”
“Where?”
Oh, Sweet Billy Pilgrim! She only wants me to sit next to her on MY bed.
“Here,” she says, and pats the bed next to her.
“What, there?” I point.
“Yes.”
I sit. Thank God I do, because I think my arse is going to collapse.
“Are you sure your mom and her boyfriend aren’t coming back until late?”
“The rom-com runs for one hour and thirty-eight minutes, and then there’s seventeen minutes of crap ads before it comes on, and then there’s chat time afterward, then time in the car home, so I think that makes well over two hours and thirty-three minutes until they’re back.”
“Good,” she says.
“Good?”
“Very fucking good, Mint.”
Crash! Bang! Wallop!
It happens.
SMACK-A-ROONY full force on the lips.
Michelle Malloy grabs my crisp shirt and pulls me toward her. SOMEBODY CALL THE HEART TRANSPLANT DOCTOR—NOW! I’m not joking—I think someone has planted an IED in my chest.
We do little kisses at first, like longer Good night, Mom pecks but on the lips. I don’t really know what to do, so I follow Michelle Malloy’s lead, as she is clearly the experienced one. Then our lips kind of stick to each other’s and go around in a wee circle for a while, fast, slow, fast, slow. I enjoy it. So does my heart, as it goes back to just beating-fast pace. So does my willy, as it starts to wake up like an alligator in the Florida Everglades. Then Michelle Malloy’s tongue enters my mouth and jabs in and out as if she’s playing a game of tongue sword fighting. If that’s the game she wants, then I’m her man, I think, so I jab my tongue in her mouth and we play tongue sword fighting together. When the tongue sword fighting stops we do some mouth-to-tongue sucking. And boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh bo
y, does my willy like this game! When our mouths separate, I don’t want to clean my face of the slobbers in case Michelle Malloy thinks I’m being RudeTube to her saliva.
“Wow, Michelle.”
“Enjoy that, Mint?”
“A-mayonnaise-ing.”
She laughs. YEEEESSSS. I make Michelle Malloy laugh.
“You are fucking mad as a bottle of crisps, aren’t you, Mint?”
I want to make her laugh again. I want to make her laugh all night. “A sandwich walks into a bar. The barman says, ‘Sorry, we don’t serve food in here.’”
She doesn’t laugh.
I jump off the bed. “Want to listen to some Marvin Gaye?”
But it’s too late—Michelle Malloy clocks it. Her eyes aren’t on my eyes. No siree. She’s staring at my Matalan jeans, which are a crap fit. I’ve forgotten all about my willy.
“Wow, Mint. I am impressed.”
“No . . . Shit . . . Sorry . . . I didn’t mean . . . It’s not mine . . . COCK . . . Shit!”
“Relax, Mint. I’m paying you a compliment.”
“You are?”
“A fucking big one.”
Her fucking big compliment matches her big smile.
“So will I put Marvin Gaye on, then?”
“You’d better do it quick.”
*
I’m not going to talk about the nitty gritty or any Dirty Biz, but know this: it was capital letters
RUDETUBE
A-MAYONNAISE-ING
BONKERINOS
SHIZENHOWZEN
JEEZE LOUISE
and
NO WAY, JOSÉ
all rolled into one.
Afterward we did some hugging and holding of each other while looking at the stains on my ceiling. Not even the twenty-watt could hide them. Under the covers I rubbed my foot up and down Michelle Malloy’s misshapen foot. Her foot felt as though it had been made out of a big piece of clay, her toes like little zucchinis poking out from the bottom of it. I sooooooooooo badly wanted my foot to transmit to her foot that I’d always be there for it, that I’d always take care of it, and that I’d try to protect it from any badasses out there. I wanted to kiss Michelle Malloy’s misshapen foot all over, play tongue sword fighting with her wee toes, and tell all five of them that I’d love them forever. Maybe even tell Michelle Malloy, MY gf, that I loved her forever as well.
“Babe?” I said.
“Yes, hun.”
“Did I tell you that I met a Dutch girl with these mega inflatable shoes last week?”
“No.”
“I phoned her up for a date but she’d already popped her clogs.”
My gf lay beside me laughing.
Heart rate: normal.
Actual heart: swollen.
*
Once it was just me and Amir. A best-bud twosome. But now we’re a foursome, like Friends except without Phoebe and Ross. And we know that what doesn’t kill us will make us stronger.
Now that’s what I do call Billy Blazing Bonkers.
Eh?
What?
Life!
30
Good-bye
77 Blair Road
ML5 1QE
December 15
Mr. Mint,
Mom told me everything, so don’t try to deny it. I’m not writing this to tell you about the pure brilliant things I have been getting up to; all I will say is that there have been millions. But you’ll never know what they are, ever. I’m not going to talk about soccer, school stuff, girls, or my future plans either. I just wanted to write so I could get something off my chest. I want to tell you that you are the baddest man I have ever known, possibly even badder than that mad doc in England who killed all his patients because they were too old and therefore a pain in his arse. But the thing about that psycho doc is that he didn’t use his wife as a human punching bag every other week and leave her black and blue, lying in her own blood and tears on the living-room rug. Did he? No he didn’t, because I checked it out on Google and it said “he was a loyal and loving husband,” which is something you definitely were not, and I feel heart sorry for Mom for having to put up with you for all those years. If it were me instead of Mom that you were punching for fun, I’d have had your arse for garters and dragged it down to the nearest cop shop quick style. No man has the right to lift his hand to any woman. No man. Even if he is a frustrated dad on the dole with no job prospects. Okay? Mom agrees with this.
I also think that you must be one of the stupidest robbers, if not the stupidest, that Scotland has ever known. I mean, who goes to do a post-office job using their own car and without a mask? What a wally! If we had been born in Ohio, Utah, or North or South Dakota, I would have entered you in that program, America’s Dumbest Criminals, so you’re lucky we weren’t. But what you did to that poor man and woman who ran the wee post office makes you much more evil than Evel Knievel ever was. I was ashamed to be associated with the name Mint when I heard that story.
Amir said you were a gutless wonder because you didn’t have the balls to write back and tell me the truth about where you are now living. Living; that’s a laugh! I felt worse than a gutless wonder, because I thought you were an actual war hero fighting the Axis of Evil, but all along you were in Barlinnie doing a fifteen-year stretch for aggravated robbery because YOU were Evil. You made me feel like a pure zoomer. Amir was right about you. I also told Amir that you are a nasty racist pig because you called the guy who has the corner shop down the road from us horrible names all the time, and whenever people with different-colored skin came on the telly you called them “apes” and “jungle bunnies.” Amir agreed with me, and he should know, because he has to face nasty racist pigs every day of his life. So you better watch it when you get out of that place, because me and Amir hate nasty racist pigs and aim to hunt them down and run them out of town. Miss Flynn said that society has no place for racists and I agree with her, but that’s all I’m going to tell you about school. For the record I also think that society has no place for racists and robbers and men who use women as human punching bags and dads who can’t be arsed to play with their children. I think you are in the best place for people like you.
If you really weren’t arsed with having a son, then you should have said so when I was in Mom’s belly. I’m sorry that me being a Tourette’s sufferer was such a mega embarrassment for you. I didn’t ask to have it. It wasn’t my fault. You can’t just catch it like the sneezes. You don’t get it because you have been bad or are ugly or something—you’re just born with it. It’s just your Donald Duck! I was innocent, unlike you, you guilty man. I was the one everyone stared at and laughed at and took the piss out of, not you. Anyway, things have changed now: my Tourette’s goalposts have been well and truly shifted. I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but I will: I went to see this amazing new doc who has developed this super-duper mouth brace that stops all the tics and twitches and grunts and barks. It’s utterly mind-blowing. I bet if you were here and loved your son, you would be dead proud, because no one can tell the difference between a normal guy walking down the street and me, but you will never get to see the new me, ever, not after what you’ve done.
I’ve got, like, a new dad now. Well, I know he’s not my blood dad, but we do things that other dads and sons do, which means we are just the same as a dad and son. No one can tell the difference. He’s got a job as well. A cool, proper job. See, when the soccer is on the telly I’m now allowed to shout at it and have an opinion about formations and tactics, and we play a brilliant new game called If I Were the Coach during the match. We also listen to all this new music like Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Button Up, and the Jam. It’s twenty-five times better than that doof-doof music you used to listen to all the time. We read cool books about cool stuff, like Friedrich Nietzsche—you’ve probably never heard of him. He’s this brilliant philosopher. I think I might even do something like that myself when I finish school. We also go for long drives in his groovy car
up the Trossachs or the Campsies, which I never even knew existed before now. Wonder why? He also takes me to the industrial estate, where he teaches me to back up, do three-point turns, and parallel park. His car is in your parking space, which is now his parking space; it looks really good from the living-room window. We don’t miss your car any longer. Our new house is going to have driveway space for TWO cars—his and mine—when I pass my test. I’ll probably get an old banger like yours to start off with. Best of all, though, is that he DOESN’T use Mom as a human punching bag.
I’m going to go now, because I’ve a million and one things I need to be doing and I can’t be spending all my precious time writing letters to someone who never thought of writing back. Not even once. The bold Amir says that maybe you can’t actually write. And when I reread that letter you wrote me last December I thought, Mmmmmm, maybe Amir is right about that. I ripped it up, by the way. I don’t want letters from you now. This will be my last one to you. Last night I typed “100 things to do before you die” into Google and it came up with tons of really cool stuff for me to be cracking on with, so me, Amir, this girl called Priya (you wouldn’t like her, because she’s Indian), and Michelle Malloy (my new angel gf) are going to try to do as many as we can. But the belter thing is that none of us is actually going to die. Well, we will one day, but not for a
long
long
long
time.
Good-bye and Good Luck.
Dylan Mint
(No xxx this time)
Acknowledgments
You wouldn’t be reading this book right now without the following people. My wonderful and inimitable agent, Ben Illis at The BIA, for his savvy eye, support, and continued guidance. The whole crew at Bloomsbury, who have worked diligently on the novel, especially my editor, Rebecca McNally, who took my hand and walked me through the murky waters of Mr. Dog; her suggestions throughout were brilliant. Helen Garnons-Williams and Madeleine Stevens, whose kind words, graft, and guile made Dylan and his cohorts shine even brighter.
I’d like to thank Sinéad Boyce for casting her beady eye over early drafts of the book; her work continues to be invaluable to me. And Yvonne Kinsella at Prizeman & Kinsella for recommending When Mr. Dog Bites as a possible title . . . I wish I could take the credit for this, but I can’t. So thanks for allowing me to use it.
When Mr. Dog Bites Page 24