What You Make It

by Michael Marshall Smith

  * * *

  The rain was so furious that I had to lean forward and peer through the windscreen, and I skidded at one junction and nearly totalled a cyclist. On the passenger seat lay the letters, though I didn't need the address any more. The bottle was in my pocket.

  The road was in a tangle of dead streets between Finsbury Park and Archway, an area I'd unconsciously avoided for two years. As I drew closer I noticed how many windows were still boarded up, the remnants of some developer's dream which had yet to come to fruition, waiting out the fallow years in a little patch of temporary ghost town. Most of the houses had already been abandoned when I'd last been there, when I'd last visited Tamsin Road.

  The closer I got, the slower I drove. It wasn't reluctance. I knew I had to go. It was caution, because of the wetness of the roads, and because I didn't trust myself to drive with so much still flooding into my head. It was like suddenly discovering a new room in a house which has always seemed too small, except that I knew this room from before.

  Turning into Tamsin Road was like finding a drawing you did as a child. It's a short street that curves, and on both sides the eyes and mouths of the buildings were boarded over and nailed shut. Dirty fragments of litter scuttled down the gutters, but not as much as you'd expect. No one was coming here to top the level up, and I suspected that if you caught one of the fleeing fragments of newspaper with your foot the date would be from some years ago. From 1993 itself, perhaps, the year I'd last been here.

  I pulled up outside number 12 and killed the engine. After gathering up the letters I got out of the car, locked it and walked up towards the door. It was two years older and grubbier, paint peeling a little more than before, but I recognized it. For a brief moment I thought of the people I knew, of Steve and Monica, and realized that they were somewhere in the city now, doing their jobs and – who knows – maybe thinking of me. But I wasn't there anymore.

  I was here again.

  I felt in my pocket for the key and slipped it into the lock. She gave me the key herself, obtained by some means from the company she helped to run. I don't think they were the people who were planning to redevelop the area, but I can't remember. I hadn't blanked that fact, like all the others, but simply hadn't listened when I was told. I listened to her a lot at first, because she was funny, and clever. But after a while I didn't listen to her at all, like I didn't really listen to Mel or Jackie, or even to Ginny, whom I'd liked.

  The lock turned with a little effort, and I let myself in. The hallway was dark, but I saw the letter lying on the mat and picked it up. It was the last one, covered in dust and beginning to discolour, with the address in my writing but no name at the top. I added it to the others and walked quietly to the staircase. After turning for no reason to look at the dirty yellow light which seeped through the boards across the door's thin and filthy window, I went upstairs.

  The door was shut. I'd always closed it after me, as if that would make some difference, as if throwing something away and piling rubbish on top would really hide what was at the bottom of the pile. Realizing I was crying, I rubbed the back of my hands across my eyes and turned the handle of the door.

  The room was exactly as I now remembered it, though deeper in dust. It was brighter than the rest of the house, more light coming through the windows, which had been papered rather than boarded over. The corkscrew we'd opened our wine with lay by the wall, and the mattress where we'd fucked was still beneath the window, now heavily stained with damp.

  I walked to the middle of the room and looked down, and was not surprised to see that the ragged patch of carpet looked as though it had recently been disturbed. Slowly I sat down cross-legged next to it, and took the bottle out of my pocket.

  We hadn't needed to come here. I had a flat, and so did she. We'd just done it occasionally to be different, to be sleazy in the way that middle-class yuppies sometimes think is exciting. We came on autumn afternoons, letting ourselves in separately, then shared a bottle of wine and had sex on the mattress and carpet and floorboards; her eyes flat with lust and hurt, mine with lack of feeling. Rubbed into the walls of the dead room I could almost smell the only two emotions I ever experienced in it: jittery, perfunctory desire, and bored, selfish remorse. The first time I'd said I didn't think our relationship was going anywhere was in this room, but of course we'd come back several times after that. It was as if I deliberately ended up sleeping with women after saying we shouldn't, as if I wanted to hurt them as much as possible. I didn't. I just followed the line of least resistance, lived out my programming like an abandoned automaton.

  I smoked a cigarette, ground it out on the floorboards, and then reached out and pulled up the carpet. The boards looked loose, as indeed they were. Not knowing how she'd look, or caring, I pulled the middle one up, and then the two on either side.

  She lay there, caved in and empty, body curved a little because she had been too tall to fit in the space. A last faint remnant of the smell I'd buried drifted up, but not much. Not as bad as it had been when I'd come here before, on the seven occasions I'd come and sat with her, watching the body decay, seeing the parts I'd kissed or sucked decomposing into sludge.

  It wasn't just that she'd killed my cat. It was what she'd done to me before that, or helped me do to myself. Every time I tried to break loose from her she appeared in front of me, and diverted me to the side. She needed me to say I loved her, and manoeuvred me until I did, standing in the kitchen at her office and blurting it out in the hope that she'd stop crying. That was the only time I've ever lied in a sentence with that word in it, and it was the beginning of the end for me, the last time I could tell the difference between loving and not caring. That was when my feelings finally died, where I lost the battle to keep myself alive.

  She was mad, but she was also a little girl who deserved and needed someone better than me. She killed my cat to try to keep me, and when I realized what she'd done, I killed her back. I rang her up at work and hinted that I wouldn't mind an afternoon behind papered windows, and she'd purred and said she'd be there as soon as she could. I knew she would. Being fucked in the afternoon by someone she knew didn't care about her was exactly the kind of self-inflicted wound she was incapable of rejecting.

  I was standing behind the door when she walked in, and brought a brick down on her head as hard as I could. It took a couple more blows to finish the job, but I got there in the end. I cut off part of her pointing finger to prove to myself that I was free, put it in my pocket and then hid her body under the boards.

  I wrote the first of the letters in my head as I stayed with her that afternoon, a letter that I needed to write. In these years since Katy I've had someone in my mind, someone I will be able to care about, someone I will come back to life for. Yvonne hadn't been that woman, and neither was Mel or Jackie or Ginny. That woman had no name, no address. She was the best of all of them, the opposite of their worst, all of that and more. She was me, I suppose, transposed and set apart, an idea to comfort me across cold evenings and grey years. Sometimes I'd thought I could almost picture her, almost smell her skin.

  But she was everyone, and no one, and I never found her.

  In my head I wrote a letter to that woman, pretending she really existed. Maybe, for a while, I even believed she did. I went home and typed it, and then posted it to Tamsin Road. I didn't know where else to send it.

  A few weeks later I came back, picked up the letter in the hallway and read it out to what was under the floorboards. As a punishment, I suppose. To show her what I would have written if she had been the one, if she hadn't got a name.

  I wrote seven more letters, but on the last occasion I didn't come to read. By then it didn't seem so important, because I'd given up. The letters had started to follow their own course, to replicate the only kind I was capable of writing. I could make up dreams like going to Bourbon Street, but I couldn't carry them through. Without the nameless woman to hold me, I couldn't keep them alive. Soon afterwards I must have blanked it a
ltogether.

  I didn't kill Mel or Ginny or Jackie, in case you're wondering. They didn't kill my cat. I'm not a violent man. I was just trying to find someone who was never really there.

  After I'd looked at the remains for long enough, I opened the bottle and tipped the finger joint out onto the floorboards. I picked it up and placed it as close as I could to what was left of her right hand. Then I took a pen from my pocket, wrote her name at the top of each of the letters and on the envelopes, and placed those in there with her. The letters had never been to Yvonne, or to anyone who'd really existed. But they had confused what was left of her, and until she knew her name, she wouldn't be able to go.

  I kissed the tip of my finger and touched it to where her lips used to be, remembering for a moment how much fun she'd been in the beginning, how often she'd made me laugh. Then I replaced the floorboards one by one and moved the carpet back over them. I ground the bottle to fragments under my foot, took a last look round, and then left. The key I dropped down a gutter as I got into the car.

  I spent two hours driving, but have no idea where I went. Round and round the backstreets, not paying attention, just trying to find my way back to the present. When I'd come far enough I pulled over at a public phone box and called Steve.

  Tamsin had already called him. Her boyfriend had returned, and she'd decided to stay with him. She felt it was for the best that they never saw each other again. Steve sounded both relieved and mildly put out by the news. I said I'd call him soon.

  I went home, changed my clothes, and then sat at my desk watching the clouds. After a while Monica came home, and I stood up to give her a hug. I could see in her face when we parted that it hadn't been tight enough, but it was the best that I could do.

  People always have names. Yvonne, or Monica, in the end it doesn't make much difference.

  Not tight enough is the best that I can do.

  SORTED

  Alright. Here it is.

  Friday night – lads' night out. Down ‘Club Bastard’; owner's a big fan, what can I say. Beautiful. Everything on tap. Something to drink. Something to snort. Something to shag.

  Sorted.

  Roll up about ten; fucking photographers outside. No, love them, actually. You got to. Helped put us where we are, know what I mean? Stand outside, with the lads – in our top Armani coats. Flash Flash Flash.

  Questions; what about that penalty, eh? What about the ref? Are we going to win the Cup?

  Course we fucking are.

  Inside, rows of shag; take your pick. Bottle blonde, extra tits, legs up to their arses. Lovely. Stand at the bar, lads together – like fucking kings. Free bubbly? Yeah, I should think so mate – just give us the fucking bottle.

  Who've we got? Ted Stupid. Man in goal – safe. Top lad. Kevin Legg – out on the left. Goes like the clappers – excellent. Paul Tosser; solid at the back. Try to get past him – seven types of shit kicked out of your shins. Ha ha ha ha ha. No, seriously; great little player, great skills.

  And me. Gavin Mate. Fucking midfield general, innit.

  Do we dance? Do we fuck. No need mate. Stand there in a circle and the club fucking dances around us. Big laughs – Ted sticks his hand down some shag's top. Lobs her tit out – signs it. Excellent. Some cunt tries to muscle in – boyfriend. Paul elbows the twat in the face; end of problem. Great skills. Great little player.

  Go behind the bar; help ourselves. Barman gets shirty; bunch of arse. You don't understand: we can do what we fucking like. Owner comes down – I pour him a drink. He's fucking loving it. Flash flash, more pictures. Great on the back page. Nice little advert. No fucking problem.

  One o'clock, Kev's pissed as a twat – Paul's chewing face with some top black shag. I'm caning it with Ted at a table in the corner. Hundred notes of charlie up each nostril by then – fucking flying. Then:

  See this shag, other side of the room. Red mini, no top to speak of. Gypsy skin, Bambi eyes. And an arse to fucking die for. Suzy all over again: I'm thinking – right. That's me fucking sorted.

  Go over, bit of chat. She's loving it. Put in half an hour's worth – time to go. Give the nod to the lads; later – yeah, cheers.

  Flash flash out the front so slip out the back; I'm Gavin Mate, I am. Shag's wetting itself – ten seconds of fame, innit. Limo pulls up, pile in. More charlie, obviously. Roll up the fifty, cut the rocks. Show her how it's done. Excellent. Tweak a nipple, just for a giggle. She's going to go off like a fucking rocket.

  Back to the flat. Get more bubbly down her then think why fucking bother. It's in the bag. Get on the pitch, black satin sheets. She's wriggling like a pig in a tin. Another line, I dump the Paul Smith and then it's game on.

  Fuck her. Fuck her again. And then;

  Hang on. Start again.

  Gavin Mate. Midfield supremo. But not always, obviously.

  Eighteen. Tipped up at the gate. You going to give me an apprenticeship, or what? Guy takes the piss until I show him what I've got.

  Silky skills.

  Team's going nowhere – the whole fucking point. They said that one man can't make a team; proved what a bunch of twats they are. Straight in the A's: slow start – playing with wankers, aren't I. Couple of games, goals slotted in. Crowd loves it. Owner goes ‘Hang on – could have a winner here’: stumps up for some decent players. Kevin Legg. Ted Stupid. Suddenly we're a fucking team. End of first season – promotion, thanks very much. Gavin Mate, hero of the hour. Course I fucking am.

  Meanwhile, outside world; it's a performance, innit. Got the lads out on the prowl – flash flash, people talking. Bought top suits. And bearing – made old Eubanks look like a twat. Not difficult, of course. Joking – Chris and I are mates. Serious. He's the only loser I go round with. Ha ha ha ha ha.

  Couple of seasons, build the rep and up the ladder. Receipts through the roof; owner's like a pig in shit. Going lovely. Manager knows I'm top lad. Royalty. Paul Tosser joins the back – World War Three on a stick. Night life. Shag on tap. Fun to be had; up the nose and up the arse. Money in buckets. Respect.

  Dodgy moment; some slag from the Sun starts nosing into where Gavin Mate comes from. Can't have that; had a word. Slag never works again. Sorted. Manager's not going to let anyone piss off Gavin Mate – too fucking important. Gets the goals. Gets the press. Gets the sponsorship.

  Meet the untouchables.

  Now. This season. Premiership's in the bag. Just the Cup to play for. We going to win it?

  Course we fucking are. I'm Gavin Mate, I am.

  Leave the shag in the bedroom; go for some bubbly. Thirsty now. She's saying come back; begging for it. Course you got to oblige.

  Give Ted a call first; getting his knob polished by a couple of teenies. Hear the girls laughing in the background – he's fucking sorted. They're sisters, innit.

  Shame about mine. Suzy was good value. Shame she had to go.

  Back in the bedroom, give one to the shag again. She falls asleep after. Finish the bubbly, go for some more. Sit in the kitchen a while. Know it's going to happen. Nothing I can do about it. Artist, I am. Artist of the pitch. Got to do what I fucking feel like.

  Top plan: find a way of getting away with it. Stop being poney Nigel Smith, lose the accent, fuck the past; find a way of being untouchable. Off the parents – car crash – shame Suzy had to go too. Probably her fault though, if you think about it; shouldn't have let me watch her. I'd give her one now, if she was alive. Slag. But she isn't. Probably give her one anyway.

  Disappeared for a while – Middle East. No one's going to find the ones out there. Then back, become Gavin Mate, and a knock on the right door. Goals. Welcome to the untouchables.

  Finish the bottle, raring to go. Pissed as a twat, good news; more blood and guts that way. Back in the bedroom, tape the shag's mouth up. Then break the bubbly bottle and have some fun. Manager'll sort it during the game tomorrow: get back here, be like it never happened.

  Are we going to win? Course we are.

  Nice one.

 
; THE DARK LAND

  It started with the bed.

  After three years at college I'd come back home, returning to the bedroom I'd grown up in. It was going to be a while before I could afford to move out for good, and so in the intervening month I'd redecorated the room: covering the very 1970s orange with a more soothing shade, and badgering my mother into getting some new curtains that didn't look like they had been designed on drugs by someone who liked the colour brown a great deal. I'd also moved most of the furniture around, trying to breath new life into a space I'd known since I was ten. It hadn't worked. It still felt as if I should be doing French verbs or preparing conkers, musing on what girls might be like. I knew it was largely an excuse for not doing anything more constructive – like filling out the pile of job applications which sat on the desk – but that afternoon I decided to move the bed away from its traditional place by the wall and try it in another couple of positions. It was hard work. One of the legs was rather fragile and the bed had to be virtually lifted off the floor rather than dragged around – which is why I hadn't tried moving it before, I remembered. After half an hour I was hot and irritated and developing a stoop. I had also become convinced that the original position had been not only the optimal but in fact the only place the bed could go.

  It was as I struggled to shove it back up against the wall that I began to feel a bit strange. Light-headed, nauseous. Out of breath, I assumed. When the bed was finally back in place I lay back on it for a moment, feeling rather ill – and I suppose I just fell asleep.

  I woke up about half an hour later, half-remembering a dream in which I had been doing nothing more than lying on my bed and remembering that my parents had said that they were going to extend the wood panelling in the downstairs hallway. For a moment I was disorientated, confused by being in the same place in reality as I had been in the dream, and then I drifted off again.