by Peter Ackers
"…GOD CLOSES THE CELLAR DOOR…"
The world's always nicer when it's still sleepy.
I like the city when it wakes up for a new day. Shops are opening and people are travelling to work. It's tranquil. The newspapers are full of bad things that happened some other day. The dossers and the yobbos are still asleep or still partying and not infesting the streets. Every bus and train is full of smart office workers or attractive students (those who don't just study in the afternoons and evenings, that is) learning to be smart office workers one day. There's an orderliness about this habit of life that gives hope to the belief that this world is but a prelude to another. But as the hours roll on, the crazies come out, the TV stations start to report on chaos and crime affecting us this very day, people slip out of uniform and routine and begin to meander through life, and any sense of purpose to human existence is erased and the jumble of activity that is the world screams that we're alone and aimless and abandoned, and as if to prove this, God closes the cellar door on us at the end of His day and all goes black. And, shit, if things didn't just get worse when that happened.
I was parked on one such busy street. Shutters were being rolled up over doors. Signs advertising cheap stuff were dumped on the pavements to lure people inside. A truck with a fat cylindrical back lurched far too slowly along the pavement to warrant the whooshing sound it made as some appendage sucked up last night's scattering of trash from the street. People walked past in both directions, carrying briefcases, laptops in canvas holdalls that clearly held expensive portable computers, coffee in paper cups, newspapers, and satchels that people eyed warily in this age of suicide bombers. I saw the manual workers, too. The labourers who rolled past in a van, still groggy and eyeing up the eye candy beyond the windows, this combination of sleepiness and lust on rugged faces making the vehicle seem like an ambulance full of mentally imbalanced guys headed for the Rubber Ward. A postman either lost or en route home after his shift. Two window cleaners carrying their entire business. Others. Arrayed before me, a sample of all the ingredients of physical skill and cognitive intelligence necessary to continue to progress our species in the race against nature to see if we can get ourselves off this planet before the sun goes nova and boils the seas.
And across the road was a small pair of conjoined shops that together could sell you a bacon sandwich and the tools you'd need to make one yourself if you had nought but a pig…and some bread.
And outside this pair of shops stood three people, arguing. One wore a police uniform, one an apron and latex gloves, and the other a set of dirty coveralls. Obviously there was some dispute here between the owners of the café and the hardware store that the boy in blue was attempting to reconcile. Fingers pointed at a lamppost that almost seemed to mark the midway point of the single building that housed both shops, and at one wooden sign tied to that lamppost and another laid on the pavement nearby. I guessed the rest and watched the action - or inaction - as I sat and waited for signs of life in the window of the beauty salon further down. That was where my girl worked, but it was still early, too early for a blue rinse or highlights. The door was still locked. A digital clock in another window said - not literally, of course - it was to be another hour before any key would open that door.
Across the road, some guy with a week's growth of stubble walked past the cop and the two arch-enemy shopkeepers and flipped the bird behind his back, before waltzing onward with a snigger. The cop hadn't seen the move, so what did the guy get out of it?
The cop continued doing his job of talking to both shopkeepers while remaining between them like a boxing referee, making sure nobody stepped into the other's reach, which sometimes is enough to spark violence. He didn't use an old notebook, as I imagined cops did; instead he wielded a small tape recorder, which both shopkeepers seemed wary of.
My gaze returned to the guy who'd flipped the bird. He wore shiny shoes, pressed trousers and a shirt whose tie I could see above the fork of the zipline of his windbreaker. He was about twenty, still retained a few acne craters from his teenaged days, and fragments of tattoos poking beyond his sleeves on both forearms said all I needed to know about him. Neat and professional during the working day, but doubtless uncaged at night and the weekend. Some event or other had put this guy off the police, and I was eager to know what it was. Maybe he'd been one of those brainless fuckers who loiter in gangs around suburban corner shops, shouting at passing cars and people, smoking dope, starting fires, often shooed or chased away by the police, and had retained his basic hate of the law even after school had ended and he'd been forced into the adult world of employment and tax. This kind of person comes to see the police not as upholders of law but as persecutors. And I hate these fuckers. They get pulled by the police because they break the law, and they call it bullying. They come to believe the police are solely in existence to ruin their day. Ha! I'd like to see these guys survive a day without the safety blanket they unknowingly operate beneath, courtesy of law and order. Take the cops away, and a guy like this wouldn't stand a chance. Put out the word that this guy no longer has human rights, and ten minutes later a hundred decent families are standing beneath a lamp-post, watching the bastard's feet kick as the noose tight around his neck turns his bloated face purple.
The police are the government's gang of protectors. A far cry from the Robin Redbreasts of old, who were old men wielding sticks and patrolling the streets to keep peace, but a gang nonetheless. They have their own jargon, their gang colours and their own turf, and we pay for their protection. But with all their manpower, their technology and money, they're bound by rules, and that was where I came in. I imagined the police were like pieces on a draughts board, unable to manoeuvre across all the squares. A clever adversary could thus escape their spotlight, but not mine. I could tread areas the police couldn't operate in, taking down people who were obviously criminal in some way but weren't currently engaged in any activity they could be grabbed for. Like this guy here, who'd flipped the cop the bird. I had no red tape tying my hands.
The guy stopped at a mirrored shop window. He pulled a small tub of cream from a pocket and started applying it to his face.
I ignored him. There was a coffee shop further down, with tables and chairs outside, but no customers yet - not outside, anyhow. I took a seat, to think.
A guy appeared at my shoulder moments later.
“Hey, mate, you buying?”
Buying? I scrutinised him, half-expecting him to yank up his sleeve and show me a forearm of stolen watches. But a badge on his pea-green shirt exposed him as bar/coffee shop staff.
I indicated my bottle with a flick of the wrist. He didn’t look happy. He was about my age, a bit too pale, and his grim lips suggested he was rather pissed at having to work on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Dickhead should have phoned in sick like I did, he he.
“Other people might need that table, pal,” he said. “Paying customers.” He didn’t look comfortable squaring up to me. Maybe it was my face - I didn’t know what grimace or wild-stare the Chivas Regal might be forcing upon me - or maybe he was just scared of confrontation. More likely, he just didn’t trust some young guy waltzing around the streets with a bottle of hard liquor.
I looked round at the other tables, to let him know I clearly saw they were unoccupied. I asked him if they did food here - which they obviously did.
“Yeah,” he said. He still didn’t look happy; still obviously didn’t trust me. He waited.
I said, “Got a menu?” So, he wanted to play a game? Fine.
He paused. Of course, the menus were inside the pub, where they couldn’t be stolen or defaced by passers-by. I knew that and I think he knew I knew, and my spirits were too buoyed by spirits to care that he knew.
“What you after? Chips or something? Sausage and chips?
Sausage and chips did sound good, but I wanted to make this guy list the entire menu, if he couldn’t be bothered to please a customer by going inside to fetch a printed version. I was itch
ing to find something criminal about this guy.
“Got a menu?”
He stomped off inside. I swigged more Chivas Regal. My mouth was now too numb to even feel the burning sensation any more. Now each swallow simply made my head light, as if I were drinking nothing but hot air. I almost felt that if I overdid it, I’d float off into the sky like a zeppelin.
He came back with the menu. I checked his badge again. Zack. Zack was back. He slipped the little laminated sheet of A5 paper in front of me and turned to go. The game was afoot - he wanted me to have to get up and enter the pub if I wanted to order. No, no, no, Zack.
“Got an ashtray?”
He turned back to me and threw a glance at the ground. I thought he was considering telling me to just flick ash on the ground, maybe the butt, too. He looked even more unhappy now.
He nodded at the menu. “Fancy anything, then?” Ah, planning to fetch the ashtray with the food! Couldn’t have that. There’s something intrinsically funny about winding up someone who cowers under the shadow of a telling-off. I wanted my fun.
“I’ll look in a minute, cheers. Got an ashtray?”
Away he went, stomping. When he came back, carrying an ashtray, I told him all I wanted was a bag of crisps, Smokey bacon flavour. I actually fancied a hot meal, but I never eat out because you can’t be sure what people might do to your food. If it isn’t out of date or undercooked, it might have been contaminated in some way. Who really follows hygiene rules to the letter, eh? What café staff member is going to clean the only red chopping board when he could easily grab a fresh green one for cutting your corned beef? Besides, I thought this little twerp might spit on my meal just for a modicum of revenge. At least crisps were sealed. Unless he had access to a syringe with which to inject foreign substances into the packet, I would be safe.
“Forty-five pence,” he said.
“That’s cheap. Yeah, that’s fine,” I said. I knew he wanted the money up-front, so I started reading the menu. Fuck him and his obsessive mission to cut down on the number of paces he’d make for a customer - even a paying customer.
When he returned with the crisps, I pulled my shoe off and found Coyote's folded £20 note.
When he returned with my change, I put it away and asked him outright: “Bet you wish you’d left me alone now, eh?” and left the table. Walked away, back to my van. I left behind my purchases. Despite my hunger and thirst, I didn't want anything in my body, not even sustenance. There was a calmness in me that I’d never felt before. Nothing worried me. I felt as if all my problems had been put off until tomorrow and that today I was a free man, free to do what I wanted. I walked with a confident stride. I am a people-watcher by nature and that day I glared directly at them instead of at the pavement. No need for the odd sneaky glance: I stared and soaked in the data about them and didn’t care even a fragment of a jot of an iota.
But I was angry. I didn't want to get back in that cramped van again, not while I was feeling angry like this, like a Hollywood unorthodox detective who feels the City Hall suits are preventing him from taking out the bad guy. Chalking one up against that kid hadn't been enough. Not nearly enough, and I wanted my fill. I knew what to do.
I had that feeling again that this was something I needed to do, or I wouldn't sleep well that night. Anger and a sense of Fate - a potent combination.
I crossed the road at a jog, burning with anger. I angled so that I'd reach the far pavement right in step with the guy hiding his negative personality inside office apparel, but using a reflective surface and anti-ageing cream to shout about his vanity. I slipped neatly over the kerb, veered across the concrete, and rammed Tie-guy right in the back. We were outside a closed restaurant with a recessed double-doorway. Tie-guy stumbled into those reflective glass doors and they shook hard enough to dislodge that morning's mail from the teeth of the letterbox and onto the carpet inside. He turned to find me blocking his exit from the doorway
"What's the worst thing you've ever done?" I said. I leaned back slightly, head turned so I could see the cop and the shopkeepers. The law official continued to interrogate the two men some twenty metres away down the street. He hadn't seen me accost Tie-guy, but if the guy shouted for help…
"You one of the Hamptons? I didn't even stay at the party."
It sounded like pleading, on a subject he thought I knew something about. Yep, this guy was dodgy. He knew that cop was back there, yet he didn't shout out.
"There's a policeman down there," I said. "Shout him and I guess I might have to run." I said it almost like an offer, but Tie-guy didn't take me up on it. He just said something about having asked Arky's sister if she wanted another drink, but that was it.
"You fucking people are idiots," I spat. "You think that if there were no cops, you could just walk into shops and houses and take what you want, and that people would cower in fear and let you and never mention it again. You've been watching too much Scorsese. You're no gangster. I don't want to go to jail, that's why you're not a bloody mess right now. It's why no bunch of vigilantes has burned you and your house to the ground. It's why the last girlfriend you beat hasn't stabbed your eyes in your sleep. It's why your fence hasn't dropped you in the river to take your share. People think that crime would run amok if there was no law or people to uphold it. No, you see, most people on this planet are decent. They weren't fucked up in vitrio by arguing parents, unlike you. They weren't dropped on their heads as babies. They didn't learn bad values in the playground. In a lawless world, the good would bond en masse and turn your kind into moisturizer. Every last one of you. New Zealand, I think. New Zealand would become a mass grave, and you won't need a passport, Tie-guy."
I looked in his eyes to see if this had all sunken in. I couldn't tell. Obviously, a yob like this was unaccustomed to a guy like me. Maybe he expected me to take his mobile phone, or deliver a slapping, and the fact that I was effectively lecturing him was throwing him off. At least he didn't look as if he was prepared to fight me. Something about the general theory that people who say and do strange things are likely to snap and cause violence and havoc without ever knowing why. If there was a guy stood in a shopping centre singing a song at the top of his voice, you'd pass him using a wide arc and a wary eye, right? And this guy here had that same wariness in his eyes.
"What's the worst thing you've ever done?" I asked again.
He flustered a bit. Maybe it was the directness of the question that threw him. Maybe he didn't know what I meant.
"Crimes, dickhead. Old ladies mugged, cars torched, newsagents held up, ethnics beaten. A daily routine for a cunt like you. Explain. Explain why you hate the police."
"I don't hate the police."
"Then why the bird?"
"Bird?" His face relaxed. "The finger? Aw, that's just something…that's nothing. Kids do that. It's nothing. What's it to you?" Not an arrogant question. Just a question. I looked more closely at this guy. He did look neat and pressed, and was obviously on his way to work. And that was what decided it for me. Finishing school and stepping into the real world can wake people up in acute ways. I've seen it happen. My guess was this guy had watched his friends gets jobs and girls and follow the straight and narrow, and since it was in every yobbo's core to be a sheep, a follower - well, I guess he just followed. So it was not my place here to punish a man who had changed his stripes and begun to make a decent lifestyle for himself.
"You were lucky today," I said. "Repeat it to me. What were you?"
He still didn't look fazed, but he was as obedient as any dog whipped and kicked into a corner. "Lucky," he said without emotion.
"When?" I was sure my eyes blazed, as if I were leading him to give up a secret password.
"Today," he shot back instantly.
I looked at him. I relaxed. I nodded. Good enough for me. I did not turn away from him (did that say something about my own over-blown caution, or did part of me think I had misjudged this guy?), but exited backwards, eyes never leaving him. I walked like
that all the way across the road, until my feet touched the other pavement. One car had stop because of my passage; the driver spoke his annoyance with his horn.
Just before I turned away finally, I noticed something that might have been something or nothing. The guy's hand was in his trousers' back pocket, and I was sure it had been there since I'd accosted him. Not a good place to tie up a hand if you suspect something is going to attack you, unless that pocket contains -
But as I turned back for another look, I saw that the guy had forgotten me and was going on his way, not looking back. And not caressing the inside of his pocket.
Really lucky today, I guess.
I was eager to be on my way and to reach my destination, but just then an idea came to me, and although it would mean a detour, it was something I knew I had to do. This was not a whim, though, despite the late surfacing of the idea. Instead, this was an apple falling onto Newton's noggin. And look where that got us. This was my spotting a tear in the enclosing fabric of my existence, and forcing my way through that rent to discover a whole new set of rooms and pathways in my world. But if I didn't smile, it was because I knew pain and suffering lay ahead.
No one ever made an omelette without breaking eggs.