by Ezekiel King
Fifteen minutes after we had parked up, Kieran finally pulled round the corner onto my road. He had gone home to wait while Chris and I had went for dinner. The almost silent tiny engine rumbled quietly around the corner. Chris and I watched as the car approached. Chris’ car looked small and puny and slow, especially in contrast to the car we were sitting in. “I guess this is goodbye, my friend,” I joked as I turned to shake Chris’ hand.
“Okay, I will see you tomorrow, Cyrus,” Chris said as he pulled himself out of the bucket seat.
“Chris, because it’s Friday tomorrow, you want to do something tomorrow night?” I asked as the feeling of not wanting to go inside my house returned. It was a feeling I always got before I went into my house, but if I had something to look forward to, it made it that little bit easier.
“Yes, of course, what were you thinking?” Chris asked happy in the knowledge he would almost certainly be driving my car.
“I just want to drive around and see who’s about at night time,” I suggested not knowing what else we could do. We could have went to pick up Holly and Charlie, but I couldn’t be bothered with them. I wanted to see someone new, to me ‘new’ meant ‘exciting’, and ‘exciting’ made me ‘happy’.
“Yes, I don’t mind after I’ve done all of our sales. We’ll definitely do something,” Chris replied.
“Cool,” I said as I fist-pumped him and got out of the car and locked it with the fob.
I waved at Kieran as I turned to go into my garden through the back gate. He just waved back with a face full of shock, Kieran had always thought I was mental. He was as normal as normal was, whereas I was as different to everyone else as a cat is to a dog. I amazed Kieran, and he was scared of me. Unpredictability scares most people and rightly so, unless it is a quality you personally possess; in which case, it’s just admirable.
I spent the next morning pottering around my house, bored. I was tempted to drive my rally car somewhere, but I had nowhere to go. At least nowhere important enough to justify driving. Traffic law states if somebody drives a car with no insurance then that car is liable to be impounded instantly until the owner can collect it with valid insurance after paying the cost of roadside removal and impound fees. Since I had put my dad’s name on the logbook when I had purchased the car, I concluded it wouldn’t go down too well me saying, ‘Dad, could you get my rally car out of the police compound for me, please’. In fact, that would go down like a lead balloon.
Instead, I tried to entertain myself otherwise, sending text messages to Holly for a while, then talking to my brother and showing him my car, starting my car and leaving it to warm-up before revving it, which seemed to send vibrations through about 20 of the cardboard houses it was parked near. I called John and Tom to check on the day’s business, I called Chris to see how he was getting on. “Everything is good, I’ve got three people waiting to see me now,” Chris said. My brother had left the house after spending at least an hour inspecting every crevice of my car while maintaining a big smile on his face. The problem with selling drugs and being the boss was that most of the time, your job is to do nothing. If someone were to ask me how business was, a truthful answer would be, ‘we are busy, so business is good’, but what really annoyed me was Chris was busy. John and Tom were busy; even my brother, Daniel was fairly busy. I, however, was bored shitless. I’d done everything that could be expected of me, calling all my employees to make sure they were ‘on job’. I had made sure I knew my money was as safe as humanly possible. I worked out how much drugs I had at each location and estimated when I would need to restock those locations. It all involved making a few phone calls or doing a few calculations on my phone or a piece of paper that I would burn after reading and digesting. All in all, everything I had to do took me no longer than 20 minutes. Yes, I earned more for my 20 minutes then an average Joe would for his eight hours, but at least the average Joe had something to do. I would have happily sacrificed a little of my income for having something to do to stop me being ‘so fucking bored’. I decided to sit outside my house with the group whose ages ranged between 18 and 24. They had congregated on the little wall by the stumps outside my house. “Cyrus, that car is absolutely amazing,” they had said, and, “you’re creaming it, you are, lad.” It had made me feel happy as I sat looking at my car in the warm afternoon sun. The weather wasn’t hot; just warm enough to feel a slight heat on your skin. The warmth made the air seem that little bit thicker as you breathed. All the people around my estate respected me. If I was a pushover, they would certainly have tried to pick on me; they would have probably forced me to take them for a drive or let them take the car for a drive. Or even made me give them weed for free. They were older than me and physically stronger, but they didn’t have the balls or mentality that I had. They didn’t even ask for any of the above. If they had asked me to take my car for a drive in jest, of course I would have laughed it off. After all, that would be a funny request, and I’d like to think I had a good sense of humour, but anything serious, for example, ‘I’m taking that for a drive’, would have ended in bloodshed. If any of these divs ever tried anything funny, I’d go in my house and get my dad’s ‘machete’ from behind the bedroom door and make the person in question eligible for the para Olympics faster than my car could go from 0 to 60mph. These were the thoughts that ran through my head as the six strong adolescent guys laughed and joked with each other around me while drinking beer and talking nonsense.
One of the guys outside my house had a girlfriend with a little blue car similar to Chris’, so four of us decided to give her money to go and get us fast food. We sat outside on a two-foot wall eating burgers and chips. I was purely there to pass time out of boredom. Being bored all the time gave me a lot of time to think about expansion. The £2,000 I’d earn in a decent week wasn’t the flies around the shit when I made £30,000 in a single day. In comparison, it was like being given a house like Holly’s one day then being given a £30 tent the next. ‘More was the only cure’ in order to stimulate my mind and keep active enough to get rid of the anxiety, boredom and restlessness. I sat eating my food, I thought about possibly opening another shop, just like the one I had turned Tom and John’s house into. Also, I considered doubling Chris’ workload or perhaps getting more hands on myself. Milling the figures over in my head, I eventually came to the conclusion I was never going to make the sort of money I wanted selling cannabis. That left me with few options, which having already been thinking for so long. I decided not to think about what the options were at this precise minute. The fact that I had come to the conclusion that I needed to think about different options meant I had done enough productive thinking for one day.
Chapter 12
The warmth of the day had completely gone, leaving the cool night air filling the expanses of darkness. It was 9:30 at night; I was leaning against my car’s front wing, with the side of my thigh to stop the metal badge on my jeans scratching the paintwork. The phone held against my ear had Holly on the other end mimicking every girlfriend I had ever had. “Cyrus, I really want to see you,” Holly had said. It was exactly these type of statements that caused my repulsion, I was a man that wanted what I didn’t have, not the things I did have and were begging/pleading for my attention; and at this point, it dawned on me; Holly had become one of those things.
“Baby… I’m going to collect some money in, and the second I’m finished, I’m all yours, I promise,” I had told Holly a blatant lie and as empty a promise as any.
Chris walked around the corner from the entry he had cut through to get from his house to mine, which walking probably took him six or seven minutes. Chris was smartly dressed in his jeans and jumper. His legs looked thick, like the trunks of trees where his thighs sat in his jeans. “Babe, I’ve got to go now, I will call you soon,” I said to Holly as Chris got closer, and I terminated my phone call.
“Cyrus,” Chris said as he put his hand out to fist pump me.
“Christopher,” I replied as I smiled at him
and handed him my car keys. Our car doors shut almost simultaneously.
“Where to then, Cyrus?” Chris asked. I didn’t have anywhere to go. We were only going somewhere because I was bored; where that somewhere was, I had no idea.
“It’s totally up to you, mate,” I replied. Chris looked at me in amazement.
“Cyrus, I thought you had somewhere to go, you madman,” Chris said frowning slightly as if waiting for me to tell him I was joking.
“Yes, I have got somewhere to go, but it’s too early,” I lied.
“So where do you want to go?” I asked again in a voice that said I was being truthful. Chris sat to think for a second before starting the car that made growling noises as he reversed it from in front of my garage.
“Where are we going?” I asked as he turned left at the top of my estate onto the main road.
“To the McBride’s to get at a bag of weed,” Chris replied. We were at the McBride’s in under two minutes. Chris held the clutch in and revved the engine as we parked outside the front of the McBride’s house. The car sounded loud and aggressive, like somebody was letting off a machine gun. John was at his curtains instantly, looking at what was making the noise. As he noticed it was Chris and me, his smile lit his face up through the square, double-glazed windows. John and his younger brother Tom were outside on the driveway within seconds of us parking up. Chris turned the car engine off, and we got out. Seeing people’s reactions to the car made me feel special; it made me feel important.
“Is this your new car, Cyrus?” John asked with a face full of happiness.
“Yes, mate; it’s nice, isn’t it?” I replied smiling.
“It’s great!” John said as he gave the car a visual inspection from wheels to roof and from front to back.
“Go and grab a bag of weed, and then you and Tom come for a drive,” I said, “These two lads worked their arses off for me from morning till night. They had been there from minute one. If I was up then so were they, it was only fair they experience the pleasure I was feeling.”
“Whatever sales come in can wait 15 minutes,” I said as they locked their house door and jumped in the back of the car. “Chris, go to that nice restaurant I like, but let it rip all the way there,” I said as I pointed forward at the road, letting Chris know he had no more speed restrictions in place. I watched as the power of the rally car slammed the two McBride brothers into the back seat as Chris accelerated, rendering them both speechless. Tyres screeched as Chris was power-sliding around roundabouts. The car stuck to the road, like glue, and seemed to grip the tarmac from under the tyres as it constantly demanded traction. None of us spoke a word while Chris raced to the restaurant.
Chris’ facial expression was serious and fixed on the road as he negotiated straights and corners. “This is the fastest car I have ever been inside, Cyrus,” Tom said as Chris slowed down to pull into the restaurant car park.
“I know, it’s ridiculously fast,” I said agreeing with him.
“We will have a joint in the car park, lads,” I said letting everyone know why I had chosen to come to the restaurant. It was better scenery than smoking weed in the McBride’s living room; plus that was something we did every day, so the change was nice.
While standing in the car park, we began to speak about our business and families. I was still thinking about expansion, but I didn’t mention it as I didn’t know how or when this was going to take place. Well-dressed women with boyfriends and husbands walked past us after parking their cars or returning to them. Absolutely everyone paid us some attention, either looking at the car or looking where the smell of the cannabis was coming from or both.
“Nice motor,” some guy had said. The man had just parked up a brand new German car similar to Delma’s boyfriend, Mervyn’s. When the man had said it, I thought to myself, I wonder what Mervyn will think when he sees my car.
We had been in the car park for half an hour when my business-brain kicked in. It was a Friday night and instead of my shop being open for business, I had both of my shopkeepers smoking weed in a restaurant car park, so using my better judgement, we got back in the car so I could take the McBride brothers home.
Chris and I had been alone, driving around for nearly an hour after dropping the McBride’s home. We had spent the time driving around our city, going from area to area to see what we could find people doing with their Friday nights. Although there were cars on the road, because it was night, they were just passing headlights. All the shops were shut apart from the odd off-licence, and even a lot of the pubs were closed.
“Chris, this is dead out here, mate,” I said realising there was nothing to do or see.
“Cyrus, that’s because everybody will be partying in clubs in the city centre,” Chris replied. Of course they are, I thought. The fact everyone would be out clubbing had completely slipped my mind due to the fact I was too young to partake.
“Go to town then,” I said excitedly at the fact I wasn’t going to have to accept defeat just yet.
Chris stopped driving erratically as we drove closer to the city centre. The noise the car made when accelerating would have almost certainly attracted police attention, and we didn’t want that. We decided to go to a car park that was outside of all of the main clubs in the city centre. Chris was right about where everybody was. The place was alive with people; the car park was full of cars as we pulled in. All the car park spaces were to our right, and all the clubs were to our left.
“Pull up here,” I had said to Chris, telling him not to pull into where the car park spaces were. Instead I wanted him to park by the kerb that was ten metres away from the clubs and bars. There were girls in short skirts and dresses. Everywhere I looked, all different types of girls—white girls, mixed-race girls, Asian girls, short, tall, brunettes, blondes, redheads; there was literally eye candy for all tastes. The bar to our far left had dark windows and looked the least lively of the four venues we were near. We were parked outside the main bar, and it was buzzing with people. It had giant glass windows along the whole front of the bar, music was blasting out of the two open doors which was the entrance. Outside the front of these bars was illuminated with bright lights, the lights on the top of the buildings and from lampposts had lit up outside the front of the clubs, like it was the middle of the day. Two ‘doorman’ or ‘bouncers’, as some people call them, stood either side of the club’s two open double-doors. Chrome poles with red rope attached to them ran the length of the front of the place that stopped either side of the doorway. It was used to separate the people standing on the club’s side of the rope, smoking cigarettes, from the people on the public walkway side of the road passing. It also allowed the bouncers to police who came onto the other side of the red rope into the smoking area or the bar easily.
This place was ‘doing it’, I thought as I stared at everything there was to see. Next door was a similar bar, but its doors were closed with bouncers standing outside front. It had older people outside in their late 30s and early 40s. Although this place looked as busy as the place that had my attention; the crowd was less appealing to me. ‘Sugar house’ had 19-year-old-looking girls and girls in their early or late 20s in and outside. Next door, but one to the right was a big club, but it was inside a complex, so there was nothing to see in terms of what was happening there, other than the 60 to 70 people that were outside on the walkway smoking. Chris was right though—this is where everybody was. “Chris, this bar looks amazing,” I said without even taking my eyes off the place.
“Yes, it’s meant to be really good in there, Cyrus,” Chris said while texting away on his phone.
“Have you been in there before?” I asked eager to get more of an insight.
“Yes, I’ve been in there twice, but clubbing is not really my thing, Cyrus,” Chris replied basically drip-feeding me information.
As I sat thinking how I could incorporate some of this club into my life. I saw a group of people heading towards the door from inside to come outside. One of th
e guys in the group caught my eye for two reasons. Firstly, he looked different to everybody else; he was wearing black for one thing. I estimated the man was about 5’11" tall and I could see his chain flickering in the light as he reached the entrance; it was sitting on top of his black T-shirt. It didn’t look like a thick chain, but it was sparkling as the light hit it, illuminating what I assumed to be diamonds into an array of colours. Behind the Asian man wearing black was a ‘stocky’ white guy with dark hair. The Asian male did not have a heavy build, he wasn’t skinny either. He had a hundred-metre sprinters physique rather than a long-distance runner or a heavyweight boxer. His hair was shaved at the sides and looked about 3" in length at the top. He had a light skin complexion, although his skin was clearly brown, and his straight black hair and facial features told me he was Asian instantly. The man had on a black leather jacket that looked expensive. His whole appearance was just ‘glowing’. The Asian man took one step out of the club, and the doorman turned to greet him, shaking his hand and smiling at him respectfully. I could see that this man had a lot of respect in and around these clubs. Following the Asian male outside was the stocky white male in a white T-shirt and blue jeans who had a bright and cheerful smile as he shook hands and seemed to be joking around with the doormen. The Asian man and the stocky white man were also with two girls. These two girls looked like glamour models. The Asian man and the stocky white man were holding champagne flutes, and the girls behind them had a bottle in one hand and their champagne flutes in their other hands.