“Tabs, wait!”
“I have spin class, Raymond. I have to go. Enjoy your trip.”
“Tabs …”
She stopped in her tracks and turned back to me, expectantly.
“I—I can’t help but think there’s maybe something special between us …”
“You noticed?” Tabs breathed.
“Well, yes—a man can’t avoid being aware of the needs of a beautiful young girl like yourself.” I came closer.
“Raymond, it’s … It’s …”
“Yes?” Zooming in for the kill.
“Well … you look so much like my father.”
“Oh?” Okay, not a total setback. Some birds have major father issues.
“It’s been so long since I’ve seen him.”
“Really, luv? How long?”
“Eleven years now.”
“I’m sorry. How did he … pass1?”
“Oh. He didn’t die. He’s in prison.”
That was a plot twist. “I’m sorry to hear that. What … what was his, um, situation?”
“He was a serial molester. The Tinsdale Fondler. Made the cover of the Daily Mail.”
“Right.”
“I’d best be going now, Raymond.”
“Yes, Tabs. Thank you for everything. Good night.”
Fucking hell.
Deprived of coitus, I daydreamed of slave ownership and got as shitfaced as I possibly could on a bottle of single malt I’d stolen from the bar at a Stella McCartney fragrance launch.
Survival is a popular reality TV game show produced in many countries throughout the world. On the show, contestants are isolated in the wilderness and compete for cash and other prizes. The format uses a progressive elimination, allowing the contestants to vote one another off one at a time, until only one final contestant remains and wins the title of “The Survivalist.”
You’re either into this show or you’re not. It’s binary.
1. A dreadful, hideous modern euphemism for dying.
04
Tracking down Neal the next morning wasn’t hard. I walked into the off-license, held up a banknote and said, “Twenty quid to whoever can help me find my long-lost brother. He’s got one good eye, dresses like Duran Duran and stinks of the worst kind of dog shit.”
“Oh, that’d be Neal,” squeaked a trainer-clad gran buying a stack of (what else) lotto tickets. “Lovely boy and a great singing voice. This week I think he’s in a box behind the stationer’s on Old Oak Common Lane.”
“Thank you very much.”
“What about my twenty quid?”
“Only once I find my prey, Sea Hag,” I said over my shoulder as I headed out into the brisk fall air. I could practically hear that mummified old soak composing an indignant letter to the Daily Mail, beginning I’m a pensioner and …, at which point a lifelong diet of greasy fish, scotch mints and whimsically flavoured crisps catches up to her and she falls dead at her kitchen table, not to be discovered for weeks.
Neal was indeed inside a Samsung cardboard box, eating a Subway sandwich, when I found him. He squinted up at me. “Right, it’s Cunty, it is.”
“It’s Gunt to you, Neal. These your digs, then?”
“I’ll not have you knocking this box. Samsung has emerged as one of the strongest competitors in the Darwinian world of home electronics.”
“For fuck’s sake, Neal, it’s a cardboard box.” I kicked the side for emphasis. It emitted a deep bass thump and didn’t rupture, which gave me pause. “I have to admit, if you’re going to live in a fucking box, this isn’t a bad one.”
“My point exactly.”
“In any event, no boxes for you anymore, mate, I’ve found you a job.”
“For Christ’s sake, Ray, why would I want a job? I’m living the life, aren’t I?”
“Look, you ungrateful prick, I’m not talking about picking up litter along some wretched motorway or latrine duty at Rikers. I’m talking about a South Pacific lagoon populated with gorgeous, needy sluts, fuelled by an endless supply of rum drinks.”
Neal’s lone good eye stared into mine. “If you’re one of those people who collects hobos so you can take them home and eat their brains or something like that, good on you, but I’d rather keep my brains.”
“It’s not that at all.”
“Sex with you and the missus, then? Afterwards smother me with a dry cleaning bag and toss me into some brambles off the M5?”
“Why are you being so fucking paranoid, you ungrateful walking toilet? I’m on the level.”
“Really? So tell me more.”
One thought crossed my mind—fuck: “Do you have a passport, Neal?”
“Passport? Fucking right, mate. Have a look.” From within his maggoty jacket he produced a valid British passport. “What’s the matter? You look surprised.”
He handed it to me and I opened it to the photo page, and there he was, milky-eyed, hair all dagged up with shit and mucus, wearing a shirt like he was an extra from Oliver! His expression was crazed.
“I always thought one day I’d like to go and see Dollywood, USA. You know, the singer and that. It’s a world-class resort destination. An uddersome songbird she is.”
Fuck me ragged with a concrete dildo—this was going to work. “Neal, here is what we’re going to do. You are going to gather your few wretched shreds of possessions and we are going to throw them into a trash bin and you will never see them again. After that we are going to walk to my flat, where I will give you a Stanley knife and you will cut as much of your hair off as possible …”
“Hold on. I told you, no sexy shit.”
“I’m not finished. After you’ve sheared away that viral beavers’ nest, you are going to apply lice cream to your head—no, your whole body—and then shower it off. After this, you will don clean garments supplied to you by me. You will take vitamins, drink a glass of milk and then, at six o’clock from Heathrow, you will be flying along with me to the islands of Kiribati in the South Pacific, where you’ll be working as my personal assistant. I’ve just scored a gig as a cameraman on some dreadful American TV show where real-life people, not celebrities, shag each other for a few weeks and then turn into cannibals in front of my camera.”
“One of those survival shows, then?”
Hallelujah. “Exactly.”
“Why do you need an assistant?”
“Is it wrong to care about other people, Neal? Is it wrong to want to help?”
“You just want a slave is all.”
“There’s that, too.”
Neal snorted, then removed something foul from his moustache, which reminded me: “Actually, you’ll have to completely shave off your disgusting fucking beard and moustache, too. Deal-breaker.”
Neal stared around at his Samsung box with evident fondness. He’d drawn cupboards and windows on its inside with a Sharpie. “I’m not quite sold yet, Raymond.”
“Two short sweet months, one thousand quid and afterwards Dollywood.”
Neal patted the walls of his soon to be former home. “I’ll miss you, old box.” He stood and I could see invisible wavy stink lines rising upward from his carcass.
“I take it that’s a yes.”
“It’ll be an adventure.”
“Good. I’m two blocks away.”
“Don’t you have to stop and get some of that lice cream first?”
“That’s okay, I’ve got some at home.”
Neal froze.
“No, Neal, stocking liberal amounts of anti-nit cream is not part of my regular regime of recruiting and eventually murdering vagabonds. A sexually active man simply has to take a few precautions.”
Neal snickered. “You? Sexually active? Sorry, Ray, I figure you haven’t had proper physical contact with another person’s body since Friends went off the air.”
“Spare me your editorializing. Do you speak any other languages?”
“No.”
“Any other skills you’re keeping hidden from the world?”
“Perfect skill set. You’ll do just fine.”
We approached my building and went around back. “Your first job as personal assistant, Neal, is to pick all this crap off the ground and bring it upstairs.”
“All of it?”
“Not the bottles and take-away food refuse. Just anything resembling clothing. And there’s a throw pillow over there. Give it a shake to freshen it up.”
“It looks like there’s a kickass herb garden underneath all this stuff, Raymond.”
“I know. Herbs: what would we do without them? Nature’s little survivors.”
“If I’d known about this garden, I’d have changed my diet weeks back.”
“Rosemary sprigs on your tinned cat food?”
“Look!” said Neal. “Half a pack of uneaten Starbursts!”
“Yes, Neal, that is correct: life is good.”
05
I was in the hire car’s rear with Fiona en route to the airport, a generous gesture on her part, but a gesture made only because Billy let it slip during a phone call that she was jetting to France at roughly the same time as I was leaving for Los Angeles. In any event, we first had to pick up Neal a few blocks from my place, where he was getting a facial to tidy up his complexion, which hadn’t been exposed to sunlight since the Spice Girls ruled the pop charts.
“So Raymond, I hear you managed to rustle up an assistant.”
“Only fitting for a man in my position.”
“Darling, how on earth did you find someone willing to put up with you?”
“Well, his name is Neal and he has a long track record of living and working in the, um, outdoors.”
“You’ve always wanted a slave, Raymond—and frankly, a slave would be a nice boost to your ego. You’re so insecure. No wonder you haven’t been properly laid by a non-whore in ages.”
When did everyone become an evaluator of my private life?
“By the way,” Fi added, “I Googled Kiribati—it’s lovely.”
A chill came over me. “Fi, you won’t actually be physically coming to the Pacific, will you? Not that I wouldn’t love to see you and all.”
“Darling, you know me better. I’ll just sit here and collect fifteen percent of what you make.” She paused to stare out the window. “Who is that … fascinating man up ahead?”
“Who?” The car stopped beside Neal, who sat on the curb staring into another discarded Caffè Nero paper cup as if it contained dancing pixies. His diseased Chewbacca locks gone, and some ghastly white shaved areas contrasting with a decade’s worth of windburn, he looked like the sort of relative everyone dreads showing up at a wedding: off his meds, without loyalties and perhaps possessing a bit more insight than is good for him. Some dishtowels repurposed as scarves gave Neal his preferred dash of eighties style.
I was about to call for him, but Fiona shushed me and rolled down her window. Her overture to Neal was preempted just then by two scrumptious schoolgirls, who stopped to bend over him. “Sir,” one of them asked, “Are you all right?”
“Me? Oh yes, why thank you, girls. Kind young women like you make my day.”
The duo blushed. “Oh, sir, anything to help.”
“You sweet, sweet girls. Thank you.”
The charge in the air was almost pornographic. I swear, if the three of them could have orgied right there on top of the McDonald’s litter and a squished Coke Zero can, they would have. A new chill came over me: Neal was one of nature’s born studs.
Didn’t see that one coming.
I evaluated this new piece of data: was it a plus or a minus for me? I decided to break the mood and yelled out the window, “Neal, load your bag into the boot, you crazed shitpig.”
He looked up and smiled.
Fiona said, “That’s your slave?”
“It is.”
“He is sitting next to me.”
Oh fuck.
I got out so Neal could slide into the middle beside my ex-wife, and we left for Heathrow.
LHR to LAX = 10 h, 55 m
06
So I’m standing at the business class check-in counter for the Los Angeles flight when I hear the words, “Mr. Gunt, I’m afraid there’s been a mix-up in ticketing.”
Reduce the temperature of my blood by twenty degrees.
“Oh?”
“I’m afraid your seat has been deleted.”
“Deleted?” Okay. I’m reasonable. Did I say that I like people? I like people who like people. “What do you mean by … deleted?”
“The physical seat itself, sir, has been removed from the plane for reconditioning.”
“So there is simply no seat there at all?”
“Oh, thank you, sir, I’m glad you understand.”
I dropped my eyes to her name tag. JENELLE. “Jenelle, is it?”
“Yes, sir.” I might add here that Jenelle is a gruesome creature, her sullen jaws most likely sore from chugging her wedding-averse boyfriend’s knob for ten long years. “What other seat shall I be seated in?”
“Let me check … you’re in 67E, Mr. Gunt.”
“67E?”
“Yes.”
“An E seat—is that an aisle?”
“No, sir. I believe an E seat on that aircraft is the second seat in a row of four.”
“Jenelle, you do understand that I am in business class.”
“Yes, Mr. Gunt.”
“Do you have a seat map here at the desk?”
“Yes, sir.” Jenelle handed me the map.
“Let me look here. Ah—67E.” I pointed to 67E, a centre seat sandwiched between two lavatories.
“It’s a full flight, sir. No other seats are available.”
Suddenly, from behind me in the coach class international check-in, there came a series of childish screams so horrifying and so loud that even the most sinister baby-hating citizen would worry about the health and sanity of the child, as well as its parents. Jenelle looked up with a smile. I stared at her. “How can you possibly be smiling?”
“Those children, sir. It’s heart-warming. They’re off to Los Angeles to undergo a new surgical procedure that could save their lives.”
I turned around and across the hall saw a telethon’s worth of … atypical-looking children. Okay, tards, actually. Fifteen, maybe twenty of them.
“Jenelle, can you tell me more about these, um, children?”
“They have Buñuel’s syndrome.”
“Oh?”
“Children with Buñuel’s syndrome have no ability to control their emotions. Unfortunately, almost everything they experience is perceived by their brain as a threat, yet the ensuing fear isn’t funnelled through the checks and barriers we normal—I’m sorry, statistically average—people use to keep a scrim between society and us. So they basically live in a state of perpetual agitation and their voices inform the world of this.”
“I see. Might they be on my flight?” I asked.
Jenelle tapped away at her keyboard. “What a coincidence, sir—the Buñuel Children for a New Start party is seated in rows 65, 66 and 67. I can only imagine how thrilled they’ll be to have someone as compassionate as you near them in what can only be a long and terrifying flight—possibly the most frightening event most of them have had to endure during their most likely short and sad little lives.”
“Yes.” Okay. “Jenelle, do you have some sort of supervisor or something?”
“That’d be Tracey, sir. Would you like me to page her?”
“Please, yes, let’s do that.”
A band of Buñuel syndromers and their minders shimmied into my business class check-in area like over-entitled cockroaches. Fucking hell, just drug the bastards and show them a Finding Nemo DVD for eleven hours or until their bug-eaten frontal cortices cause them to pass out from understimulation.
Across the hall, I noticed Neal’s head above the crowd at check-in. Light bulb: whatever seat Neal landed would be mine, and he c
ould sit with the Buñuel children. Thank fucking Christ. Hold on, it was Neal who was drawing a crowd. To wild applause, he began performing some sort of poor people’s jig. Oh my dear God, it was the “Come On Eileen” dance from that video by Dexys Midnight Runners. Words failed me. And then the check-in agents joined in—like a flash mob.
“Mr. Gunt.” Supervisor Tracey appeared in front of me. “Can I help you, sir?” She resembled a small version of those otherworldly beings that trashed Manhattan in the film Cloverfield.
“Tracey, yes, hello. I’m Raymond Gunt.”
“How can I help you, Mr. Gunt?”
“I—”
At that moment, Neal came running across the great class divide and threw his arms around me, his breath still reeking of unwashed arses. He backed off and slapped me in the chest, momentarily stunning me. “America beckons and we are going to make the most of it, bro!” He hoisted my bag onto Jenelle’s weigh scale.
Bro?
I forgot entirely what I was about to say to supervisor Tracey, who stared me down. “You need to board the flight now, sir. Security is that way. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go handle passengers with real problems.”
Jenelle handed me my boarding pass: 67E. “Next!” she called as my bag was swept off to the Crab Nebula by a sluggish black conveyor belt.
Miraculously, security screening was empty. Neal chose one lane; I chose the other, manned by two dim-looking, soul-dead lifers. Then, as if summoned from a rubbed genie’s bottle, ten security staff clad in every form of religious headwear imaginable scampered over to confront me. The stupider-looking of the two lifers announced, “This is the training station, sir. Please empty your pockets and put any metals or electronics in a separate bin. Also, please use a bin for your wallet, your shoes, your belt or any other item likely to trigger a metal detector. Do you have a laptop?”
Clad in socks, cargo shorts and a polo shirt, I walked through the screening gate.
Beep.
In the distance, Neal was already gathering his X-ray-screened carry-on bag (a vinyl tote from Tesco). I, meanwhile, watched as every item in my carry-on bag was unpacked, picked at with tweezers, nuzzled with chemical sampling cloths for gunpowder residue, and otherwise examined closely by a group of people who seemingly spoke no English yet had no other language in common. Crows descending on run-over squirrels go at their game with more decorum than shown by this lot.
Worst. Person. Ever. Page 3