Wildlife

by Joe Stretch

  Since Sally was given to him, Joe’s been trying Life on her mobile every day. He figures an event like being entrusted with a baby warrants a phone call. She never answers but yesterday the answering machine message changed to, Hey, this is Life’s phone. You can find me in Wow-Bang. Weekdays. 10pm. The Real Arms. Ciao.

  Most non-Italians shouldn’t say ‘Ciao’. But Life gets away with it because she’s perfect. Every word is hers.

  Joe returns to the bed and puts Sally into her feeding position, cradled horizontally on his lap. He takes a bottle from his bedside table and presses the teat into Sally’s little mouth. There is still no colour in her eyes. She glugs the black milk. Black eyes wide and fixed on Joe.

  ‘There you go,’ says Joe. ‘My little puffin.’

  This week Joe has eaten nothing but rainbow trout. He buys them whole and fresh from Rusholme Fish Market and eats them off the floor with his fingers till just the face and the skeleton remain. He has not been needed at work since Asa Gunn retired. He spends his days crawling around the flat with Sally, hunting spiders and hiding in small places.

  When Sally’s drunk enough she begins to overflow. Black milk begins to stream down her cute little chin and onto her podgy body. Joe removes the bottle’s teat from her mouth and raises his arms, allowing Sally to scurry from his lap, leap off the bed and begin crawling in fast circles around the bedroom floor.

  Earlier today, Joe made the decision to track Life down. He and Sally had found a pair of her knickers while they were busy building a nest inside the airing cupboard. They were bright blue, the knickers. Sally tried to incorporate them into the nest but Joe snatched them back, barking, turning from Sally and entwining the blue silk around his fingers with his shoulders hunched. He sniffed the knickers, sobbing a little. We’re really alive, he thought. I want to plant these knickers at the back of my throat. I want to grip my heart with them. Push them inside my body as far as they will go. But he didn’t. He put them into his pocket and curled up beside Sally in their nest of yellow, insulating foam.

  ‘We’ll find her, eh, Sally?’ he whispered. ‘You don’t really mind travelling south, do you?’

  Sally didn’t seem to. She followed Joe out of the airing cupboard and watched him eat uncooked rainbow trout from off the kitchen floor. It tasted salty. He bent down at it and pulled at the oily flesh with his teeth. When he’d finished he cleaned his mouth with the knickers and said to Sally, ‘I’m in love, Sally. Do you know? I’m madly in love.’

  The two of them leave for London after Sally’s feed. Around six. Outside the night has crushed the day to nothing but quarter-light and cold wind. With his rucksack on his back, Joe walks through the neon of Rusholme, Sally’s travel seat hanging from his right arm. The air smells of Indian food and exhaust fumes.

  At the bus stop a fat, drunk, white woman bends over Sally with buckets of enthusiasm tipping and emptying from her eyes. Joe watches as her face drains quickly of colour like strawberry milkshake up a straw. The woman turns to him. Transparent.

  ‘My child has an illness,’ Joe says, looking over the woman’s shoulder at the flashing orange indicator of the bus. ‘It’s nothing for you to worry about.’

  Joe entertains Sally on the journey into town. He plays peekaboo. He pretends to nibble at her chubby arms and presses her pretty nose like it’s a button. ‘Bleep,’ he says.

  As they walk from Piccadilly Gardens to Chorlton Street bus station, Joe’s attention is drawn by a miaowing coming from a dustbin. Placing Sally down on the pavement, he reaches inside the bin and grips a delicate ribcage covered in soft fur.

  ‘We’ll call him Beak,’ Joe says to Sally, removing a kitten from the dustbin, taking a small crown of chewing gum from its head and then stroking it under its chin with one finger. Joe brings the kitten’s small grey face near to Sally’s. Sally looks at it with those totally black eyes of hers, eventually giggling when Beak performs a cute miaow.

  ‘The three of us,’ says Joe. ‘No more pretending. Let’s get Life back.’

  The Megabus heaves itself round the bends of central Manchester. Posters glimmer in the dark tunnels like ghosts pleading for DJs and fun. Joe, Sally and Beak share the back seat of the upper deck. By the time the bus joins the M6 just south of Tatton Park, they have the upper deck to themselves. A black couple, the woman pregnant, have retreated downstairs, frowning towards the back seat as they descended the steps. Three veiled Muslim girls followed soon after, lips muttering complaints behind their black face cloths. Through the windows, the orange lights scroll like brushstrokes of fire. And beyond the light, northern England, moonlight and moon shadow.

  None of our three notice the brightly lit blue sign. ‘Birmingham, 59 miles. The South.’ No. None of our three notice because of the fun. The thrill of the quest. Sally shrieks and crawls under seats. Beak scratches at the dusty upholstery, sharpening his young claws. Joe is crouched at the very back of the bus, staring down the filthy aisle. He pictures Life. Such fun to imagine happiness.

  ‘We’re coming,’ he whispers, beating his arms a little, then smiling and tweeting for joy.

  10

  IN A TERRIBLE bar with Anka Kudolski, people are speaking, loudly.

  ‘People will still sing, I just know they will,’ says a cameraman with pinhole eyes. ‘Get your tits out,’ he sings. ‘Get your tits out, get your tits out for the lads! People will still sing that,’ the cameraman confirms, suddenly talking quite seriously. ‘Even in the Wild World. Don’t look so gloomy.’

  When Anka had asked to be taken out to lunch she had hoped for somewhere nicer than this. Wetherspoons. An enormous Wetherspoons on Deansgate. A dump. A crap dump. A quite crap life.

  Anka stares at the vegetarian lasagne that has fallen asleep on her plate. It hasn’t been cooked so much as stared at moodily by a thin yellow chef with warm cheese eyes. I wouldn’t eat it if I were dying, she decides, throwing her cutlery onto the table as the director, a forty-something with an aimless nose and white skin like the inside of an orange peel, begins to sing.

  ‘Oh Manchester is wonderful.’ The cameraman joins in, putting an arm round the director, his smelly mouth surrounded by rusted lips. ‘Oh Manchester is wonderful. It’s full of tits, fanny and United. Oh Manchester is wonderful.’

  Earlier on, the shoot had begun with Anka stripping to her underwear in a cramped room above a vegetarian cafe on Thomas Street. ‘Cracking bones,’ said the director, before he pressed Play on a CD player, crossed his arms and said, ‘I fucking love Kylie. Now let’s see some dancing.’

  Anka did her best to sway and look sexy. She licked her finger and gyrated a little. But, in truth, she felt like shit. She had hoped that stripping like this might feel a little like performance art, and initially, as she removed her bra in four sexy stages, she had told herself that this was so: I’m an artist. This is arty. I’m Warhol, Kruger, Manet, Magritte. When did I last see myself eat? Anka started to panic. She grew frantic and started dancing wildly and at a faster tempo than the music. I’m Warhol, Kruger, Manet, Magritte. When did I last see myself eat? In the end she must have fainted.

  She must have fainted because she remembers opening her eyes and seeing the cameraman and the director peering down at her as she lay on the floor. ‘Don’t worry,’ the director was saying. ‘Don’t worry, we got what we needed, don’t worry, they’ll spunk early because it was very sexy. Up you get now. Let’s go get that pub lunch, shall we?’

  Anka leaves the cameraman, the director and the lasagne in Wetherspoons. She walks across Exchange Square, near to Selfridges.

  Where is it that we go to think? In this wide and meticulously gardened roundabout of history, I mean, which turn-off leads to the quiet wasteland? Where is thought possible? The coffee shop? Too much choosy bollocks and rules. The urban parks? Too much posing and sandwich sex. The library? Too tense. Home? Too depressing. Cinema? Shite. Pub? Distracting. Anywhere else? Too much one-on-one, chill-out, kick-back and kill-yourself conversations, confessions
of a constructed mind; talk so dull it could bore the tits off womankind, leaving bras empty and leaving future-man groping and sucking at boobless air. I can’t think, thinks Anka. Was I really just filmed in the nude? Yes. In which case I’m in trouble. The facts of life are aliens but cannot be ignored. I touched my tits with a licked finger. A camera captured my nipples. I fainted.

  Anka walks past Sinclair’s Oyster Bar with its brown sea of outside seating. Men and women grip beers in plastic glasses, grip too hard causing the foam head to spill onto their wrists. Anka passes a line of voguishly lonely designer boutiques, pressed like shiny self-help manuals into what was once the world’s Corn Exchange. The sky is blue. She arrives at Manchester Cathedral, which winces when Americans compare it to Canterbury.

  In the cathedral porch a man holds a trowel and talks to himself. He says, ‘So anyway,’ then lifts his trowel in a sort of benevolent threat as Anka pulls on the door handle.

  During the Blitz the cathedral’s north end was bombed. Every pane of glass got shattered. Trust the Germans. The south end of the cathedral is authentic. Ancient. Anka enters and stares at the blackened columns, stretched like dead tendons from the stone floor to the stone ceiling. The cathedral is full of people, bent down, faces closed in prayer.

  ‘And, at this time, we ask Our Lord for support,’ says the reverend, in his pulpit. ‘We ask him to protect the armed forces in Basra and in Afghanistan. Above all, we reject false prophets, we reject the idle tongues that talk of the coming of . . . sexual freaks or dickheads, and yet we ask Our Lord solemnly and openly for His love and His compassion, and for His fashion wisdom when the Wild World comes.’

  The man with the trowel has followed Anka inside and begun tugging on her shirt. ‘Leave,’ he’s saying. ‘Everyone is praying.’

  Anka walks the aisles of Tesco Metro, Market Street. She takes a ploughman’s sandwich from the shelf and examines its calorie content. She puts it back.

  Was it arty? she asks herself, staring with a delicate throat at fifty different types of cheese. Was it arty to strip and to dance? Am I an artist again? Maybe I am. Maybe I should tell the Sunday Times.

  Anka buys a ham sandwich and some monkey nuts. She gives the sandwich to a tramp, slumped on the pavement outside a sports shop. The tramp seems unimpressed.

  Anka nibbles on a monkey nut, walking home down Corporation Street. She becomes certain she is being followed. Anka is running. She is hurrying the key into the door of her building and running up the stairs. She is cursing herself. She is thinking, I made a big mistake. I agreed to strip for money and I tried to make it arty. I stood in front of a camera and lost myself in my performance. My art. My arse. No flesh. Just bone.

  Who the fuck is following me?

  She shuts the door of her flat, leans back on it and sighs. She goes into her kitchen and looks into the yellow of her fridge. It’s empty. Virtually. There’s a carton of soya milk, a punnet of brown cress and a black carrot.

  She checks her emails, nibbling on another nut.

  Anka, I need to meet you in Wow-Bang because I fear my time on earth is coming to an end. Normal shit!

  Yours sincerely, El Rogerio

  Great news about your eating, darling. Dad sends his love. We’re both very proud.

  Love Mum xxx

  Looks like I can help you, Anka. See you in Wow-Bang.

  Life x

  Anka drifts away from her computer, to the bathroom and its mirror.

  ‘I’m Anka,’ she says, staring at her eyes. ‘Anka as in wanker.’

  I have felt this feeling before, she thinks. I have stood in front of mirrors, brain spinning like a copper coin on a steel surface. Eyes glazing. Face greying. She splashes cold water onto her cheeks. It runs off her face and she is quickly dry and just staring. It’s back, she thinks. She’s back. My brain is calling me on an unknown number and breathing deeply down the phone. ‘Anka,’ it’s whispering, putting on a spooky voice. ‘Anka, where are you?’ Oh shit. My brain is arranging to meet me for lunch in a nice little cafe where they only serve organic food. But my brain is standing me up. My brain is suggesting we go paintballing with my womb and my liver. We could be on the same team and really fuck them up. My brain is laying me down.

  Anka thinks about the self-help mantras trapped in the picture frame in the other room. Love yourself. Feed yourself. I’m beyond those, she thinks. For a while, they worked, I did love myself. But Anka is suddenly aware that her life, of late, may well have been confused.

  Tomorrow, Anka will be surprised to receive a text from the director, informing her that her video has been uploaded and is already receiving a great deal of attention. She will be surprised when she uses her mobile phone to access the video, surprised to discover that her striptease has been listed in the ‘Bony Screw’ genre. A genre she has never heard of.

  She will be so surprised. She will lie on her bed to watch and listen to her performance. She will not recognise herself. Are those my limbs? Are those my tits?

  Anka will recline onto her bed in underwear she does not remember choosing. She will lie with one hand round her mobile and one hand in her knickers. Another set of knickers moistened. How ridiculous, she will think. Real-Anka will watch and wank as screen-Anka removes her bra in four sexy stages.

  She’s rubbing her bits with her fingertips, lying on the bed, surrounded by sucked monkey nuts, thinking about how we are all of us out of control, about how there is no control. And deep down we all know what we should be doing. Sure, Anka will think. Humans: WE ALL KNOW WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING. We all know we should be leading clothed lives of washed bollocks, shaved legs and opinions, served on big white plates on tables with tablecloths. We all know we should be unmurderous, light-hearted and familiar with certain trends. We should be out there, making friends. We all know that others lead wank lives so that we can lead absolute crackers. We all know that we’ve got to mostly pretend. We’re fine with it. We all know that cash is one thing, and that we need to work or get lucky to have it. We all know that love is the other thing, and that we need to get pretty or get lucky to get it. We’re fairly obsessed with fucking. On balance, this is fine.

  The rhythm of Anka’s finger will be suddenly shot to shit. Her emotions will be suddenly muddled up. She’ll be close to orgasm, tense and concentrated, but then she’ll watch in horror as, on the screen of her mobile, she starts doing things she doesn’t remember doing. This must be when I fainted, she will reason. But her orgasm will be suddenly out of reach, like a chased train in a Western that has gathered speed. Anka’s finger will slow and come to a stop as, on the screen, her naked self steps out of shot, then returns a moment later with a mobile phone in her hand. Real-Anka will watch with separating features and bending knees as screen-Anka appears to dial a number into the mobile. Seconds later the video will cease to stream and the screen of Anka’s phone will flash with the words Anka Kudolski . . . calling . . . Anka will sigh at the sight of her own name. How can I be calling myself? Yes, she will sigh and wonder why. Why is reality so trendy, so changeable, just another fashion victim?

  The air will be full of ringtone. Anka’s finger will hover above the ‘Answer’ button. Should I? She will think. How can this be? Should I? Course I should. Life is a hop, a skip and a jump. Anka will answer the phone to herself.

  ‘Hello,’ says Anka, from the bedroom.

  ‘Hello,’ says Anka, from inside the phone.

  ‘Why are you calling me?’

  ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘I don’t think we do.’

  Anka will go to the window, where the trains will be accelerating and decelerating in and out of Victoria Station. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ Anka will say, hand flat against the glass. ‘Where are you, anyway?’

  ‘I’m nearby,’ says the voice inside the phone, in precisely the same tone. ‘We need to talk about your eating.’

  ‘We certainly don’t. I’ve been eating,’ says Anka, defensively.

  ‘You ha
ven’t. I’m coming round.’

  ‘Don’t come round.’

  ‘I’m coming round.’

  Anka will take the phone from her ear and look at the screen. According to the timer, she’s been talking to herself for nearly a minute. She will return the phone to her face.

  ‘Why now? Why now, after all this time?’

  ‘Because I love you.’

  ‘And you think I feel the same?’

  ‘I know you do,’ snaps the voice, doubled now, coming from inside the phone and, more loudly, from beyond the front door of the flat. Anka will drop the phone onto the bed. She will walk to the door and place her ear next to the letter box.

  ‘Open the door, Anka,’ will come the whisper. ‘Admit it. We’re obsessed with ourselves. Open the door.’

  11

  THE GHOST OF Janek’s mum is yet to swoop into his ear and start flying round the off-white tunnels of his skull. She died only yesterday, of useless lungs, and she’s clearly yet to negotiate the customs and bureaucracy that dying entails. God is yet to tap the A4 evidence of her life into a neat stack and grant her ghost status with a grin. He will though, thinks Janek, walking up Bannerman Road in Bristol towards the crematorium. Mother will be haunting me soon. She’ll be whispering opinions that tickle the backs of my eyes. That’s all I need. A haunting.

  It’ll make pulling Life a lot harder, thinks Janek. To Life, I will seem even more distant and distracted with a dead mum grumbling inside me, disapprovingly. I’ve dreaded this moment, thinks Janek, nearing the entrance of the grey, domed crematorium.