by Jason Beech
“You told your boss I was going to get you fired? I don't even know you.”
David scratches his belly and his shirt lifts with each scrape to reveal his gun. My hands move through my hair. I scratch at my scalp. Pull at my face so my eyelids stretch to a ramp my eyes could roll down. David leaves a hand on his belly to keep his shirt high. He wants me to take the gun. He wants me to shoot Jones. Behind him, Jones shifts from one foot to the other. He's still mad and the slither of sun which slips into this yard glints off whatever he has in his hands.
David clocks my eyes – planets in my face – and he swivels. His hands shoot out wide of his body and his fingers splay. He takes a knee. From my angle it seems he prays to my boss and his newfound authority. Jones leans over and pulls the knife from David, who shakes and gurgles. I'm sure he wants to say words, but they come out limp and unformed. Jones inserts the knife again. Cool like a butcher. Knows how to slice his meat. David slumps and Jones is quick to wipe the knife on the dead man’s shirt.
“You don't fuck with an ex-Marine, Rivaldo. Even when he gets to my size. Now get back to work while I clean up. Make sure nobody comes out the back.”
I shake at the fact he might kill me, but I’m sure he’s satisfied with the one kill. My shakes level up. What kind of trigger has Jones pulled? I don't know the whereabouts of my Maria and Rosa. This man knew. I rustle through his pockets and find nothing. No slips of paper with an address. I fiddle with his phone, but it's locked and the code will take forever to find. I growl my anguish.
“What is wrong with you? What are you looking for?” Jones has the dumpster wide open for the corpse. His hands rest on his sides. He's forgotten my family. I doubt he cares. I'm an illegal. I'm cheap labor. I'm disposable, like the boxes he throws in this dumpster.
“My family.” He cocks an ear. I must have whispered. “My family. He knew my family’s whereabouts. How will I know, now?”
His bald head folds. My family has only just registered. His shoulders rise up and down. He just shrugs. Just fucking shrugs. I can read his lips, if not hear the sound that left them – “Who gives a fuck?”
David lies before me. His blood trickles down the slight incline and pools toward the central drain. I see Jones washing it away, soon, like a bad memory. I focus on the red stream until it’s like the gush of a river, its source the ragdoll figure of my Maria and Rosa. I jerk the gun from David’s pants and hold it to my chest. I try hard to push my heavy breaths back inside as it simmers the air before me.
I make out Jones’ sneer through my tears. “I care, Mr Jones, I care.” I aim the gun and hope it's just a matter of pulling the trigger. The pop races round the courtyard. Assaults my ears two or three times and jolts my eyes about the walls. Until they settle. On Jones. Slumped against the dumpster, the sneer tattooed in his dead eyes.
Scrag
I get on the tube at Shepherd Bush station. Feel like toothpaste eager for a hand to squeeze me out. There’s a quiet from most of the passengers which fails to silence the obnoxious kid at the end of the carriage. I hardly ever get a seat, so now I’m stood in the middle of the carriage, surrounded on all sides. I can’t lean into anything to have the comfort of nobody behind me, judging me. I prefer to keep my eyes on a face or at groin level. Faces tell me things that groins, rarely, do. At least I think so. That man over there, his eyes are on my hand. What? Does he reckon I hold the handle in an effeminate manner, or something? I hope not. I grip harder, manlier. I relax again. I’m foolish. Has the woman seated before me taken the odd glance at my crotch? I’m mortified and excited at the idea, despite her mousy, bookish demeanour. I haven’t been with a woman for years. I’ve forgotten how they feel to touch, or to converse with in any meaningful manner.
The floor fails to hold my attention away from the obscenities coming from the kid. I look over and see he’s about eighteen. His floppy fringe contrasts with the crew-cut that shows the rest of his bone-head, like he’s stepped out of an early-80s SKA band. There’s a variation of “fuck” in every one of his sentences, all aimed at an older woman. She’s in her forties, or thereabouts, but the way she sits, all hunched and bitter, says she’s lived a hundred lifetimes. My stomach tells me emotion has left my depths and is headed to the surface.
I can’t wait to get to work. I sit in my cubicle and enter data all day. Reams of it. It dampens my soul, which makes me glad. If I let that thing blossom it’ll hothouse some ambition, enough to crush me when I again realise I don’t have the skills to match it. I concentrate on how it’s possible for humans to scurry beneath the earth in metal tubes like mindless worker ants to feed the system – but the kid really grates my nerves. The hum of the train prevents me hearing much of what he says, but I can see him point at her, and his face doesn’t tell me he throws compliments. I stare at them. Why does the woman sit still and passive at this boy stood above her, lightly – yet so sharply – tapping her cheeks when she doesn’t respond? Who is he? Who is she?
The man next to me, stood so close I can smell his aftershave barely overpower his halitosis, sees something in me I barely understand. He’s distracting. His hangdog eyes tell me to keep out of it. A shake of his head tells me there’s nothing I can do.
Why? Why can’t anybody do anything? I’m sick of people like this. I don’t have enough money for taxis, but I’ve begun to take them every other day to avoid kids on buses and the tube who know adults shy away from them, and then take a score of liberties. That kid on the number 92 who called that frail old woman a “fucking witch,” asking when she last had a “bit of cock to ride on.” Wow. I watch a lot of gory, violent, and sexual films in my isolation, but that forced a blush from me at its rudeness. The vile spite of the – what? – eleven-year old. My left eyelid twitched, but I did nothing, and neither did anybody else. The woman shook and remained alone.
I shake now as I remember. Shake at the man next to me, saying keep out of it, nothing good can come of my involvement. A young woman, reading the free newspaper, has the occasional huff at the pair, but stays schtum and seated. A bald man, close to the scene, his muscle barely concealed by his Parka coat, stares out the window at the black void. He knows what ought to happen. His body language says so. I wait for him to act. He doesn’t.
A grey-haired businessman who sports a ‘tache that surely takes all morning to groom, reads a paper with the front page headline, “Modern Youth the Most Obnoxious Ever.” Something about the headline’s capitalisation makes me feel it. Its strength has shifted me within feet of the pair. I’m shoulder-to-shoulder with the bald man, who still stares at the featureless outside. I don’t know what the kid says. I no longer listen. I see only body language: foul, spiteful. I recall the old lady I was too much of a coward to help.
“Shut your foul mouth,” I say. The last word almost stalls like a beat-up car.
Everybody in the carriage sways from confrontation. Or maybe that’s me. Now I’m here I can barely believe I had the guts to step into this potential nightmare. The kid has acne scars between which I could draw constellations. His savage eyes take my attention from his spots. The London cold has not hidden the kid’s gym-built torso beneath his layers of clothing. I hope that my under-worked tongue can solve this woman’s problem through negotiation, but “Shut your foul mouth” is hardly going to conciliate.
The kid’s pupils are furnaces, directed at me. His body turns to follow his gaze. Confrontation beckons. I think of my flat. It’s usually cold, and I never decorated it to any kind of warmth. It entices me now, but I cannot back down. How my life plays out from this moment will set on how this situation ends. I’m sure judgement blooms behind me. From the corner of my eye I note a grey-haired old woman’s satisfaction. Her eyes sparkle a “go on, son.” I absorb her spirit. I take strength from the grip in which she holds that umbrella.
“Stay out of my face, you fucking cunt.”
A bit of his spittle hits me. The hum of the train fades in awe of that ringing in my ears.
“Leave the woman alone.” I want my words to come out with a deeper timbre, for authority. My voice is so reedy. I barely use it.
I expected another C-word. I get a fist to my nose instead. I’m down with everyone’s shoes. I feel my face. Make sure my conk remains its focal point. The kid kneels into my soft stomach as his knuckle crashes into my left cheek. I reach out and push at him. It’s like pushing a granite statue. I flail for something to defend myself. My hand brushes an object, as if someone has thrust it into my hand. The umbrella. The old woman gave me her umbrella. It has a sharp point. I use my left arm to bar his next punch. I’m sure my bones splinter from the impact. My right hand thrusts, the sharp end of the umbrella pokes something soft. A primal scream assaults the carriage and I’m free. I stand, eager. Fury strengthens every floppy muscle. The kid is on the floor. He holds his face, red stuff between his fingers. I kick him hard in the side. His face must really hurt because he hardly shifts.
“Stoppit.”
I smash the umbrella down on his forearm, the one connected to the hand holding his eye. He flinches, but most of the pain clearly remains in that eye. His mouth is wide open. I can see fillings and this morning’s breakfast between some of his teeth. He had a bacon sandwich. Might have had some lettuce, too.
“Stoppit. Now.”
I lower the toes on my right foot, lock the ankle, and step in to kick his balls as if I’m shooting a free-kick from the edge of the penalty area. His screech is worse than the last, and his arm pulls away from his face to soothe what’s left between his legs. But I’m just warming up.
“Stoppit …”
His eye is a pulpy mess. His ooze drips all over the floor. I’m a little sorry for the person who will have to clean it all up. I hope the rail franchise provides them with rubber gloves. I clench my right fist, raise it high – search for a fresh spot to purple. My fist begins its descent –
Not quick enough … a fist from my right, hard enough to rattle what’s inside my skull, sends me sprawling to the left. I squeeze my eyes like that could purge the pain, and squint up to see a fist, at the end of an arm that belongs to the woman I’d saved from this shithead’s harangue. It lands on my already pulped nose. My neck snaps back, my head saved from a smash to the floor by the cushioned seat behind me.
“What – ?”
“You leave my boyfriend alone, you shit.”
A kick takes the wind out of any reply I might have made.
“It’s only me can hit him. You stay out our fuckin’ business … Cunt.”
I wince as the train stops at I-don’t-know-what station. The jolt shakes my aching head. Security guards pile on and take hold of me and the one-eyed lunatic I thought I’d saved this woman from. They pull each of us to our feet, probably ready for a frog-march to the nearest cell. The halitosis-aftershave man heads for the exit, as does every commuter in this carriage, an “I told you to keep out of it” in every shake of his head.
I don’t care. I wipe the back of my hand across my face and check the blood smear. I see life. Bloody hell, this donkey-faeces-for-brains had somebody to love him. Sure, she reeked of desperation, but she had enough passion for his behind to lash out at my attack.
I smile at the mousy woman who might have inspected my groin. I keep my smile despite how she turns her cheek from me. I smile at the security guards who hold each of my arms as they lead me from the train, up the escalator, to the waiting police vehicle. I smile at commuters in expensive business suits as they check me out. They pretend to check their flashy wrist watches when I catch their eye. I smile at the sun as I’m forced up the long stairwell. I think about how to live my life properly. I’ll start by decorating my flat warm enough for company.
Pop Star Burger Van 2
I'm one false step from humiliation, I know it. Liz, my sole employee, on five quid an hour, says something about me getting my arse back in the van and to stop acting like a tart. Burgers need a flip. Onions need a chop.
No. No way. I'm Adam Callen, former big fat pop star, and my audience waits.
“Adam Callen, burger-flipper, I thought he’d died.”
“I'd forgotten about him, mate.”
Who said that? Who fucking said that?
Three blokes in the pack stand like statues. It's a cold night and all three are in those t-shirts where the neck drops just above their massively well-defined pecs. They look like a bag of walnuts.
“My bird used to love him. Said she'd marry the ladyboy eventually – wait until I send her this picture.”
I stamp forward from my burger van, but I don't know what holds me back. Could be the freezing blast of a wintry night’s wind. Could be Liz. Could be cowardice.
Nah. Despite the seventh sip of whatever brand of whiskey this is, it's opportunity that I recognise. That prevents my fists windmilling into these fellas’ chops. I wish my old boyband mates could see me – and back me up. I snatch at the Tommy sauce bottle before I lose balance and the moment. I attempt sincerity as I give my best smoulder into the camera phones. I suppress that burp and sing one of our old songs into the ketchup bottle:
“When I look intooo your eyes,
I know it's you who holds me,
Don't let’s ever say our goodbyes,
Let it be our love that sets us free.”
Someone laughs. That bird with the beret sat on her head like a sundial. No … that bloke whose chin ripples a tidal wave at every guffaw. Maybe that …
Ignore. Ignore the bustards, every one. Bustards? Bastards. Bustard bastards. Busted badtards.
I burp. I'm drunk and even I heard that one. The low-neck t-shirt men absorb the cold wind. The freeze shows in their stance.
“I can't believe that ever got to number one.”
I pinpoint a woman in her thirties until my eyes can't hold and she becomes fuzzy.
“For two whole fucking weeks, bitch.” Did I say that out loud? Did I?
Yes I did.
I did. I don't care. Their phone cameras are all on me. I'm at the centre of a social media viral virus about to come and give me back my fame.
“Adam. Get back in the van and serve some burgers. There's some people here actually wants to eat.”
“Shurrup, Liz. I've got people here who really want to be entertained.”
Her mohair jumper shifts like grass in a breeze – I strain my eyes for the velociraptor that must stalk within.
“Not the way you think.”
That triggers a titter which tightens my grip on the ketchup. It squirts into my face with a raspberry. That titter bellows into a guffaw. I hurl an evil eye at Liz and surprise myself at the magic I conjure. A flame shoots up for a second as she shakes the pan to flip the fried onions. She pulls her face from the flame. I missed. That would have taught her a lesson. She rubs her forearm against her side to hitch her jumper’s sleeve up the arm.
Another swig on the whiskey bolsters my frame. Adds a little depth to my reedy voice. I break into song again, but all those smiling faces withdraw and turn sad. A little … sorry. Sorry for what? What they sorry for? They want less boyband? More trashy rock?
A whole bunch of phones have dropped to dangle by their sides. I raise a palm to the van for balance and swig from my flask once more. It roasts my larynx. Axl Rose’s 1980s spirit fires within. Nah. Nah, not that whiny git. Keith Richards. Yeah. Or … God, I don't know, I was never a bloody rocker. I let go, physically and metaphorically. I don't need the van to support me. Damn these Friday pissing nights serving drunken bastards in the cold. My voice comes out rich, like it never had ten years ago. All those tweenies, dammit. Never any women, apart from mothers, who didn't want to attack the inside of my kegs.
“This is bollocks, mate.”
“Oh God, embarrassing or what?”
“Give it up you sad twat.”
No, pal. I'm a star. You're all just deprived of real music because of Simon fuckin’ Cowell. They need a bit of The Who, I reckon. I kick at the van.
“Adam.” Liz s
ounds like me mum.
I carry on with the song as her hands blur over the food. I Kung-fu kick the van again, and yes – the camera phones rise from their slumber. I'm entertaining. I headbutt the siding. It clears the whiskey for a second, but that second sparkles some stars in my eyes.
Laughter.
Calls to Jesus.
Shouts of nutter.
Somebody walks away. They're stupid. Here comes the rest of my act.
I writhe on the floor to my acapella session of The Beatles’ Helter Skelter. I recognize the squeal of guitar would fit better, and also the correct lyrics, but I drive past it. My audience thins. I get pursed lips and shakes of the head.
“You're all losers. The lot of yer. I run a burger van now, bastards, but I've reached the top. What have you lot done? Fuck all, you fucks. Fuck all.”
“Adam, get a taxi, for God’s sake. I'll run the van tonight.”
Most of the crowd has deserted me for the warmth of a pub or nightclub. The three men with pecs of steel gee me on. I'm a dry sponge. I make it to my feet and frame them through my fuck-you fingers. They tell Liz to step out. The five quid an hour isn't strong enough to gather any protest. They push me into the flower bed beside the van. I lie in the moist earth amidst dead leaves and mulch, and watch them set my van on fire. Goes up fast. Liz was lucky she didn’t fry like the onions, working in there with that mohair on her frame.