by Nick Frost
It’s still dead twenty minutes later when I give up trying to bring it back to life. The fish was well and truly dead. I slump onto the floor exhausted by the efforts that went into the revival attempts. After a while my pragmatism wakes up. I need to arrange the funeral. How does one deal with the earthly remains of such a stoic aquanaut?
I lift him (I’m guessing it was a he) onto a piece of newspaper and mummify him ready for his journey down the toilet to his spiritual father, Poseidon. When push comes to shove I can’t do it. I evolve my plan slightly and I decide to bury the beast.
I look for a suitable coffin. I empty the curdled liquid from a milk carton and gently lower him in. He doesn’t quite fit, his tail is so long and beautiful that it sticks out of the top of the carton by a good three inches. What to do? I grab a pair of scissors and neatly cut the tail off, plopping the two long fins in either side of his body. I close the carton up, Sellotape it shut and bury the poor mite. I say a prayer in the beast’s own tongue and that was that. Simon wasn’t happy and I think a small part of him believed that someone murdered that fish on purpose. I guess we’ll never know for sure.
Him and me spent more and more time together, Mouse not so much. She got a job touring with a play and off she went. When she came back terrible things happened. When the considerable ash plume settled Simon and I were all we had left. I never saw Mouse again. I got him and he got me. It was imperfectly perfect. I picked him up and he picked me up, so began our time living together.
After moving out of Mouse’s flat Simon had nowhere to go so he came and moved in with me at 142. At first he lived on the couch for a bit, then he slept next to me on the floor but soon he became chilly so we topped and tailed. One of our favourite things to do was sit up in bed and read a big book together, usually a big glossy atlas or a book about Christmas. He’d hold one page and I’d hold the other. After a while he’d just stay in the bed. It was cold at night and we’d just snuggle down and sleep. It felt right.
So much has been written about us sleeping together like some kind of modern Morecambe and Wise that it now feels pretty boring talking about it. At the time though it felt nice. There was never once a sense that at any point we’d start making each other’s bananas cry. We often use the phrase ‘Some mornings I didn’t know where he ended and I began.’ That makes me laugh so much. I think it made it into our wedding speeches.
I often get a suspicious narrow-eyed look from ‘Real Men’ who hear we used to sleep together in a single bed for nine months, but we were great friends and then like now we’ve never had a problem showing affection and love for one another.
This arrangement didn’t last long though, thank god, for as much as I liked it I enjoyed the nights I got the bed to myself. Simon was offered the opportunity to travel to Australia as part of a comedy tour. He took it. I was sad for me but happy for him. It was exactly what he needed. Of course I was still working in Chiquito. I must have been twenty-four by now, I was starting to get bored on the floor, starting to yearn for something else, what that was I had no idea.
It’s tough sometimes when you deal with the general public and you realise there are a lot of fucking bell-ends out there. One lady asked if I could put more ice into her drink, as it was too cold! Whaaaarttttt! Another man complained, as he’d found a bone in his rack of ribs. It is bones. Ribs is bones. The bit that’s delicious is the bit between the bones. That’s the bit you eat. Sometimes there was a strange phenomenon where once one table complained about the food all would start to complain. I think it was a kind of shared psychosis.
On a couple of occasions someone would complain about something small. This is how I’d deal with it. Big smiles. Big bowing apology. I’d take the offending plate back into the kitchen, count to five and bring it straight out again. Exactly the same meal. Sometimes I’d regarnish it, sure, or stick it in the microwave but in essence it was exactly the same meal. They’d tuck in happily, chuffed a waiter, someone of lower status, had apologised to them. That’s the key to dealing with complaints at the table. Many apologies.
You have to make them think they’re completely right, apologise, remove the offending dish straight away and offer something else. Nothing should be too much trouble. If they’re really acting up sling them a free pitcher of margarita. No one can resist a free pitcher of margarita. Even if one of their party dies choking on shrimp a free pitcher of margarita makes everything okay.
Some people though were absolute monsters and deserved to be punished. One man who was so disgusting got his car scratched to fuck with the two pence tip he’d just tossed at me. I stood in the window and watched him discover the offence. Fuming. Good. Don’t fuck with the waiters.
If the person I was serving was both a monster and a vegetarian, I’d handle it a little differently, I’d take a different tack, a silent revenge if you will. While their burrito or soft taco was being made I’d nip behind the line and pop in the tiniest, microscopic speck of beef into their meal. They never knew a thing. I’d smile while they shovelled it down and abused me knowing they’d be turned away from their heaven by their vegetarian god once they’d passed. Sometimes revenge tastes just fine served piping hot.
Late one Saturday night I receive a table. I was very not happy. I was six minutes from closing and they get sat in my section. I must’ve really pissed Melissa off that night. Fifteen rowdy drunks who are loud and aggressive, lots of swearing, lots of nipping back and forth to the toilet, lots of sniffing. When it comes to the food, some order one starter between two people as a main course. This was not going to be a good table tip-wise. On top of everything else these folks were finger clickers. I was tired and pissed off. I took all their shit knowing there’d be little or no reward at the end of it.
No matter. Suck it up, do your job, get rid of them, go to the Pink Rupee. After a while I get clicked at by a belligerent old fucker wearing stained tracksuit bottoms and a dress shirt. Not a good look.
‘Oi!’
Fuck, here we go.
‘Oi!’
He repeats it again but this time louder. His angry relatives have taken some kind of offence that I didn’t react immediately to what I imagine is their elderly father and they are now giving me a kind of death stare that makes my feet ache.
‘Yes, sir, what can I get you?’ His voice stumbles and cracks, his eyes close then flicker, he seems way fucking gone.
‘Get me a fucking beer!’ Woah.
This man’s far too pissed, he’s so pissed it’s actually illegal – no, morally wrong – for me to serve him any more alcohol. As a waiter I have a responsibility to this poor man and his family while he’s dining here at Chiquito Mexican Bar and Restaurant plc.
I also think it’s a great way for me to get them out as quickly as possible. At first my voice shakes. I know the reaction to this will be bad. British people tend to react really badly when you accuse them of being drunk. Even if they’re so pissed they’re shitting in a hat.
‘I’m afraid I can’t serve you any more alcohol, sir, I think you’ve had far too much already.’
His son looks up at me with half a chimichanga hanging out of his mouth. His eyes fixed wide with a disbelief his brows never knew existed. The women at the table tense up. It’ll go like this: first the kids get chippy and call you a cunt, then the big-armed women wade in and attempt to smother you with their bingo-wings, lastly the men punch you in the temple with a Clipper lighter until a fluid that smells like freshly cut hay dribbles out of your ears, all this for the chance of a £1 tip.
I grow more confident. Legally I have the law on my side. Rumbles around the restaurant at my denial of alcohol mean my GM has come out to watch, to observe from a distance this family killing me.
‘I’m afraid I can’t serve you any more alcohol, you’re too drunk.’ Silence.
The stick-thin dad with the stained tracksuit bottoms, drunk and so angry, struggles to get to his feet. He stammers, fuming.
‘I’m not pissed . . . you, c
heeky . . . prick . . . I’ve . . . had a fucking . . . stroke.’
Oh. My. God.
Some heck breaks out. The women stand and tuck their war-gunts into the top of their jeggings. The men get their stubby Clippers out ready to jab into my paintwork. I edge backwards really slowly and turn, running into the kitchen. My manager follows me at pace. I can hear shouting.
‘Just go quickly and hide in the break room.’
My plan has worked perfectly. Sure people have been stabbed but I’m out of there by midnight with a great story, noshing down on a Butter Chicken.
***
Rachel had gone and I’d been single for a while. Sure there had been kissing and second base visits but it wasn’t very fulfilling. I’d never been the type of man to just fuck around, not then, not later. I didn’t like it. It felt weird and I always ended up falling for one-night stands. I’m a romantic at heart and I think what I was really looking for was love.
One afternoon, a bright, clear spring day, a girl walked into the restaurant, a new hostess who completely blew me away. This was Stevie and she was amazing. Tiny little floral print dress, long bare legs, glossy brown hair, rich chestnut-coloured eyes and the most amazing smile. Butterflies and bluebirds surrounded her. She was the most amazing girl I’d ever seen.
‘Hello.’ She was Scottish. She bit her lip. (She didn’t but it adds to the erotic charge.)
I just stare at her. She giggled a bit and I scurried off to fetch the manager.
That’s how it began. I was completely enchanted by her. I’d never felt anything like it before. Over the next few days and weeks I played it cool, well, cooler than I had during our first meeting. She was so out of my league. To use one of my lines from Cuban Fury, ‘It was like a butterfly going out with a parsnip.’ Again I was the parsnip. I had something that the parsnip didn’t have though, I had the funny, I could make her laugh.
I flirted with her so outrageously over the next few weeks she felt compelled to tell me she had a boyfriend. I was sad, she saw I was sad too. I’d played my hand too soon. She knew. I didn’t care. The dance begins. We up our flirting. I can’t believe this. It never goes this well. Never. She told me she wasn’t in love with her boyfriend any more. That made me happy. She saw I was happy. That was a green light to me.
The usual way of courting here in Britain involves alcohol and lots of it. You go out. You have a drink, a dance, another drink and then you try and kiss, then you decide to go out or not at a later time. It can be that simple. It can also be a fucking disaster. A few times you’d get too pissed to close the deal or you realise that she’s a complete helmet when she’d had a few. Or I was, entirely possible.
The problem I had was this. A year or so before meeting Stevie I’d decided to stop drinking. Holy Fuck. Big shout. I did not see that coming. It’d just got all too much for me, the hangovers, the anger, the aggro, the crushing shame of a wet bed. I couldn’t do it any more. I went to AA but chose a really hard-core meeting in Hendon. The people there, the brave people, frightened me. Their stories and tragedy frightened me. These people were at the end, they’d hit bottom. I kidded myself that I wasn’t like them, that Mum wasn’t like them. I honestly never made the connection between what those people at that meeting had and my mum’s own illness. Later down the line Mum attended two AA meetings in Fishguard. After the second someone pointed out two women there who came not because they were alcoholics but because they wanted to gossip about who in town had a drink problem. I wonder how many people those two blabbermouths drove away from help. I never went back to those meetings. I decided to try and do it on my own.
So far I was a year dry and as such I didn’t have the tactical advantage of using alcohol to woo Stevie. No matter. We still laugh a lot, our hands brush together, the air between our fingers ignites spontaneously. She bites her lip. (She actually did this time.) It was too much to bear.
Eventually after weeks and weeks of intense build-up it happens. We lie on the floor smoking joints (I know, I know) and reading passages from The Prophet to one another, what a cliché! At one point I turn and kiss her. She kisses me back. It was amazing. And that was that. We fell in love. I fell in love. We were an item.
Stevie became my girlfriend. The more I knew about her the more I liked. We walked around London hand in hand, lay in the park, laughed, went to museums, the lot, proper boyfriend/girlfriend stuff. I told her about my exploits in Israel and promised one day I’d take her there. I told her I intended to write a book about my adventures, she liked that, liked the fact I wanted to be a writer.
Some afternoons if I wasn’t working I’d take the bus into South Kensington and wait for her to finish university (she was studying biology). I’d never been to a university so it was always a thrill to push through the big old doors and enter the Gryffindor Quad from the east side. I’d watch the boffins running here and there with their abacuses. It was nice. For a moment I regretted my absence from tertiary education.
Stevie and I hadn’t moved in together but I spent a lot of time at hers in Cricklewood. We planned our trip to Israel and worked hard to pay for our tickets. We were actually in love. It felt amazing. She was fresh and funny and fit and beautiful and every day I was with her I found myself a moment away from fighting with perverted men. Going out with a hottie has its downside. The letching chimps hanging out of vans making ‘fuck’ noises at her was too much to bear. Poor woman. Poor women. If you go out with a hottie you better be good at looking like you’re good at fighting.
At one point in our sexually frantic courtship I began to write my book. I called it ‘The Alcoholic’s Guide To The Holy-Land’ and it was a fictitious account of a boy’s time on a kibbutz. It was based on my own time there but trippier, more psychedelic, with a really tragic ending. It was also tragically, really shit. When I tried to read it a few years ago I was struck by how infantile it was. The imagination was there but everything else was truly awful. Leaving school at an early age hobbled me slightly, grammar wise. I still don’t know what an adverb is. True. The only reason I wrote that book was to impress Stevie.
I had no table to sit at and certainly no such thing as a laptop. I wrote it using a creaky old typewriter with an ironing board as a table. I didn’t plan the thing out, instead I wrote the whole book like a big story a child might write at school.
With our lovely young relationship getting more serious it was time for us to pay a visit to her parents in Glasgow. I began to sweat at the thought of parents. My last parent hadn’t gone so well. The rum and the ironing board shit. I planned to learn from my mistake and be cool. Be on my best behaviour. I’m not drinking so this should help a lot. We took the train up and we’re met by her mum and younger brother at the station. It’s my first trip to Scotland and with Stevie on my arm I felt great.
Even though her family are Rangers fans they live in the shadow of Parkhead, the home to the city’s traditionally Catholic football team, Celtic. This, I sensed, was a secret pain for her father.
Stevie was greeted at the door the way you’d expect a returning daughter, the apple of Daddy’s eye, to be greeted. I was also greeted the way you’d expect, a sharp nod, an impossibly firm handshake and that was about it. He knew, as a father and more importantly as a man he knew, and as a younger man I knew he knew and he knew I knew he knew. It was unsaid and it simmered. She was eighteen, I was twenty-five and we were boning like rabbits. I was a scummy, overweight English waiter who smoked way too much weed. She was a porcelain-skinned ray of light receiving a fine university education with the aim of becoming a scientist, a fucking scientist for godsakes. She was gorgeous and clever and saucy and I totally understand her dad’s negative vibes.
It was cordial to begin with, the first inkling of an issue arises when I refuse a beer. Suspicious. They have a few, we chat and then Dad decides to put Braveheart on. He goes upstairs and returns wearing a fine Glengarry with a long feather stuck in the top. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable that said, the DVD player
’s sound system belted out a tremendous noise with an impressive depth of clarity. I could literally hear every drop of English blood spilt on the battlefield in crystal clear 5.1 digital Dolby surround.
I’m definitely in the spare room that night. At one point the door opens and Stevie creeps in. I’m terrified our angry noiseless fucking would wake Dad and he’d come in and cleave me with his fat broadsword.
In the morning Mum introduces me to the wonders of the square sausage. Ironically I’d been doing exactly the same to her daughter the night before. (I have no idea what that means.) The Saturday was nice. We visited the sight of the battle of Bannockburn where Robert the Bruce routed the English, then we drove to Sterling and I was forced to climb the William Wallace monument, erected to the memory of a man who’d spent years routing the English. I started to get the feeling I wasn’t welcome.
We drove through the Highlands and Dad stops the car and makes us all get out. I’m forced to drink from a small stream running off the heather-clad hills to prove Scottish water was the cleanest and best in the world. It gave me terrible diarrhoea.
I still sensed a simmering anger from Dad. To smooth things over I ask if I can cook them dinner. My mum’s fantastic recipe for Beef Stroganoff is sure to smooth over any cracks. Food and the eating of it I feel can be a great weapon in the war for peace. I’ve been cooking the Stroganoff since I was twelve and feel its soft beef and rich sautéed onions would work a treat.
Me and Stevie hung out and laughed while I cooked. Her brother keeps an eye on me while Mum and Dad laugh like drains watching an old video of English people being killed in car crashes. As I was about to serve up there’s a slight issue: unknown to me her brother has a weird phobia of people touching food with their hands. I wish he’d said something while he stood and watched me cook it. Mum fortunately intervenes and makes him something untouched by me. This was the beginning of an uncomfortable dinner.