Stonedogs

by Craig Marriner

  But at this extraordinary disclosure her regard for him gathers momentum.

  On impulse, throwing it out like a touchstone: ‘I’m a vice restructuring executive for ITS HO Branch.’

  And without warning the curl of his lip, his unconscious sway from her, threaten to rupture her vague enchantment; inflate it to a craving.

  Gator, flat: ‘What a waste of a human.’

  Her heart leaps … and then it remembers he’s immune to her.

  Quantifying: ‘But I’ve got a huge office, a company car, expense accounts. I’ve got more money than I know what to do with, high-powered friends all over the Smoke. I’ve got a PA to do all my shit work, and I’ve got almost fifty people who bark “what colour?” when I say “crap”.’

  ‘And you know what else you’ve got?’

  Snatching at the question: ‘What?’

  ‘My undying sympathy.’

  Bourgeois slut! Tundra in hell before I put myself out for the comfort of the likes of you!

  Walking away, Gator stops as she grips his arm, hard. Turning, he blinks at the raw need on her face.

  ‘It’s not true!’ she yells like an appeal. ‘I used to be that, but I chucked it in! Honestly!’

  What the fuck is your story, space cadet?

  ‘To do what?’

  He senses her hesitate. Watches her plough on, daring his reaction. ‘To work in a library.’

  Rocked: ‘You’re a librarian?’

  She misreads him, gives him her anger: ‘So what about it?’

  And, as if his vision has suddenly cleared, he seems to behold her for the first time, regard her with full consideration. Then he grins as if she’s told him she’s Freedom incognito. ‘So I think that’s the coolest fucking thing I’ve heard in shit knows how long!’

  Tania blinks, scratching at her face, hiding a tear months in the making.

  Gator: ‘What’s your favourite book?’

  Her voice holds with an effort. ‘Debbie Murphy: Demons Among Us.’

  His smile twists delightedly. ‘“What must mortals think of a being like I? A creature who scares children to their beds …”’

  Melting her completely.

  Throwing back her shoulders: ‘“… a being who lusts for warm flesh”’, swelling her chest, ‘“yet stands enchanted for days by the shivering of leaves.”’ Oh God, I’m sorry I took it for granted. Please let him look down. Just once. I’m not enough without it.

  Yet his eyes, though gleaming, refuse to leave her own, and all at once helplessness and loss suck the will from her spine.

  But a stubborn part of her remains intact enough to insist that the ‘why?’ is still important.

  From nowhere: ‘You’re not gay, are you?’

  Gator’s claimed by a breathless giggle.

  Fuck me drunk, this is possibly the most astonishing person I’ve ever come across! Oh, to be juiced! I’d ask for her hand, just in case. Now I’ll have to die wondering.

  Still laughing: ‘No, I’m not gay! Why do you ask? Is my manner so maidenly?’

  Tania, somehow melancholy: ‘Not at all. It’s just that … that … that when I show interest in guys I’m used to getting a response a lot different to the one you’re giving.’

  Smile withering, Gator’s struck by the most appalling notion. He wants to demand of her: Show ‘interest’? Define for me please your exact application of the word! Soon would be good; now would be better!

  And for five long seconds he’s caught in the headlights. At last, though, he finds the will to face them down or perish. I’m no doubt wrong, but I’ll suicide for sure if I don’t learn one way or the other. I’ve not got the balls for it in this state but.

  Stripped of all composure, he fumbles for enough of it to keep himself in the game. Arranging his features to express regret: ‘Look, I’m really sorry I seemed rude, it’s just that my mates and I underwent something pretty disturbing before arriving tonight, and I just wanted time alone to reconcile myself to it. You could have been Courtney Love — or even the Beatles — trying to get me chatting, and I’d’ve been just as crabby … and that’s saying something, ’cause I’m a serious Lennon fan.’

  ‘Me too.’

  She brightens markedly, and Gator’s excitement renders him mute for heartbeats. Finally: ‘Now that you’ve snapped me from my anti-social trance, you seem the most interesting sort I’ve come across in ages. I’ve gotta go to the bar and the toilet right now, but if you’re still here when I get back I’d really love to hear more of your story.’

  Too terrified to await a reply, he manages to fade into the crowd like a man with no questions.

  ‘Yeah, two Exports, mate.’

  Mick finally gains the bar. He’s desperate to get trashed, forget about that awful fucking drive. Not to mention their impending action. From tonight’s turmoil he’s beginning to question how well he’ll hold up on Operation Durban. From Vegas it’d sounded fraught enough, but up here, so much closer to the target, and with a taste of real stress still fresh, the prospect of the raid has begun to nauseate him.

  Fuck, if the bar staff are this slow all night, I’ll be diving into my powder a lot sooner than planned.

  A little of Bum’s nose-candy would sort things out quick smart (for a while). The night, though, is but a puppy and Mick’s loath to tap his supply too early.

  From the crowd behind him: ‘Watch it, mate! There’s a queue here, if you didn’t notice.’

  Gator: ‘Yeah, and my bro’s at the front of it. I just realised I’ve got all his money.’

  Someone else: ‘You can wait like the rest of us.’

  Gator: ‘Get the fuck outta my face.’

  This belligerence startles Mick: socially, a sober Gator is a person Mick seldom finds reason to view as a liability.

  Looking across his shoulder, he’s in time to flick a questioning eyebrow as Gator wins through to his side.

  Gator, wired: ‘How many ya getting?’

  ‘Two. Seeing as it’s getting busier, I thought I’d get you one while I’m here.’

  Handing over a twenty: ‘Get three more, man.’

  ‘Three? We haven’t got a table to put them on.’

  ‘Who needs a table when you’ve got a stomach?’ As the barman places the first handle before them, Gator hoists it — ‘Here’s to ya!’ — and downs it in four seconds flat.

  Mick, twigging: ‘What’s her name?’

  Grinning: ‘Tania. She’s one of us, man! And hot as Vesuvius besides. I’ll never understand what the fuck just happened, but I think I fluked myself a chance.’ He drops the next beer with equal alacrity, sighing deeply, muffling a belch.

  Mick places the extended order, then raps his mate on the back. ‘Why don’t you go and snort up, dude? Get old man charlie rooting for ya.’

  ‘Someone bring this man a chocolate Easter Bunny. See ya back out there.’ Taking another handle, he heads for the toilets.

  Sentenced to more queuing, the beer’s half gone by the time he can enter a cubicle, lock it behind him, delve into his underpants, draw forth a small bank bag. Sprinkles a third of its contents upon the cistern and chops it fine with a piece of plastic. Divides it into two lines.

  Stresses when he realises he has no notes on him; comes close to hurling curses. Regroups. Sees a crumpled flyer in the bog’s far corner. Claims it. Briefly ponders its level of contamination: how much discharge from a plethora of orifices have made its acquaintance; how many billions of hazardous bacteria have colonised a home on it?

  Decides he couldn’t care less. Priorities, people. Rolls it into a tight straw. Stuffs one end into a nostril. Bends toward the powder.

  Greetings, fellow slugs and weasels. Well met, I say. Again we convene in the Graveyard of Ambition.

  Snorts hard, moving along the line, reducing it to crumbs, amazed as ever by the total lack of pain involved, lack of any real sensation, the prime cocaine numbing his sinus instantly, its cold paralysis moving down his throat in droplets.


  Then the very interior of his skull seems to freeze.

  He’s never before encountered this, and for the barest second Gator panics, horror leaping to his mouth like cold vomit. Fighting it down, he swaps nostrils and nails the second line before he can reconsider.

  For a while he dabs at the cistern with a wet finger, transferring white remnants to his tongue, and then, sniffing and snivelling, he drops his pants and sinks to the toilet seat, looking to kill time.

  Negotiations ensue, and a chocolate hostage is freed without bloodshed.

  He wipes up and belts up, the charlie well stashed again. Sits back down, breathing deeply. Lights a cigarette. Sips at his beer, endeavouring to forget the drugs in his system, the babe he hopes is waiting.

  Three minutes later, beer and ciggie expired, Gator stands up, fast, and a wondrous beam spreads from ear to ear. For a second he laughs out loud, a breathless giggle, and he doesn’t bother trying to cork his exclamation. ‘Ah sayed god-dame!’

  From the cubicle next door, cheekily: ‘You all right in there, buddy?’

  Emphatic: ‘Though touched by your concern, my good man, let me assure you that I’m just as fine as red wine in the sunshine.’

  Humbled by Gator’s ardour: ‘Fuck, what’ve you been drinking? I’m ordering some as soon as I get up the bar again!’

  ‘Were it only so elementary.’

  Strolling out, Gator’s met with his own reflection in the washroom mirror. He’s stuck fast for seconds, unable to get over how fucking good he looks! His blue shirt complements his flushed complexion with sorcerous skill, leaves it almost flawless, even under this harsh light. He doubts three hours in a salon could improve upon the untamed symmetry of his normally unruly hair, the vitality in his eyes make them seem holes in the fabric of time. He attempts to wipe the grin from his face — just to see if he can — succeeds only in expanding it.

  Never mind the grin in his heart and soul, the bubbles of rapture and mirth inflating and bursting in his stomach, over and over in a ceaseless cycle.

  The molten self-belief and bliss spurting through his limbs like plasma.

  Washing his hands without looking, he moves toward the mirror until he stares at himself from mere inches. ‘Brother, you are looking tip-fucking-top! I know what I like, and I like what I see!’

  The mystery voice from the cubicle joins Gator at the basins — a tubby twenty-something — and to feel embarrassment at being caught in such intimacy with a mirror doesn’t even occur to Gator.

  Without deliberation: ‘How’s your night going, bro?’

  Tubby: ‘Yeah, decent, dude. But I’m guessing not half as good as yours. You look like you just won Lotto.’

  ‘Yeah? Maybe I did.’ And the ebullience in Gator is so overwhelming he says: ‘You want a taste of it?’

  Quick calculation in the eyes. ‘How much?’

  ‘On the fucking house, my son.’

  Leading him into a cubicle, Gator chops up a line, passes over the ‘straw’, heads back to the mirror.

  Minutes later and they’re arm and arm, helplessly cackling over a joke they no longer remember, the fact that they can’t stop laughing — and are beginning to suffer for it physically — only intensifying the paroxysm.

  Gator, at last, wiping at his eyes: ‘Ahhhh, fuck me dead. You, my boy, are one funny motherfucker! I’ve gotta go, though, dude. I’ll see ya later on, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, man. Thanks, eh? You’re a fucking legend.’

  ‘In about half an hour there’s gonna be someone a hell of a lot tidier than you saying that.’ He salutes his new friend, borne away on a conveyor-belt of confidence.

  And, pondering the boast, Gator can’t fault it. His innate modesty banished by the powder with more fullness than liquor could ever, he’s left free to identify the many angles his earlier conversation with Tania presents. More than enough to make her worth chasing under ordinary, boozed circumstances. Under these terms …?

  Terms where he feels he would happily address the nation on topics ranging from ant-farming to the geological structure of Saturn’s third-largest moon, Triton.

  Terms where he feels as if his wit has been wired to the national grid, given the velocity of a super-processor.

  Terms where the words reticence, self-consciousness, doubt, might as well be spelt in hieroglyphic.

  Terms where he’s filled with goodwill and zest to the point of needing to share it or die.

  His eyes greet the sight of the now crowded club as if he owns it, all present at his invitation. Music adds a new layer to his buzz, seems to tug at his bones in small belts of AC/DC. His every movement falls into an unconscious rhythm, nodding head leading the easy dance.

  He takes the time to swing by the crowded pool table and check on Barry and Steve, joined now by Mick. From the way they’re both playing — sinking balls they’ve little right to, maintaining running banter with all and sundry, grinning like cocks in a cunt shop — Gator learns instantly that they too have been at the nose-candy. He catches their eye, brows asking a quick, Sweet?

  They wink back fondly: Sweet as!

  Threads toward Tania’s postulated position, making good progress through the swelling throng, taking gaps he’d normally shy from, placating annoyed frowns with a grin and a jest. So impulsively does the dialogue flow, he finds himself in conversations — with blokes and girls alike — which he has no memory of initiating. Coaxes encouraging giggles from several likely ladies, dancing as he chats, bending way too close to be heard above the tunes, thrilling to some similar responses.

  Moving on like a heartbreaker.

  By the time he locates her Gator feels like Brad Pitt on steroids. He’s set to tap her shoulder when he notices who it is she’s talking to.

  Lefty’s slick beam brooks no imperfections, even as he makes eye contact with Gator, effects not to notice him, wordy flow running unhindered.

  As if from an unseen body-shot, Gator’s diaphragm collapses.

  And the warm wind flees him in a rush as, for the first time ever, he experiences a foul cocktail: amphetamines and crisis.

  Blood thick with scum roaring in his head, across his eyes, as the room starts revolving, music madly distorted, heard from a rollercoaster. The rushing in his limbs quickens and boils — from pleasure to pain in two easy seconds. His heart seems to falter, limping in his chest like a half-smashed rodent, sucking more vision away; Gator has to fight to keep from his knees.

  And then jealousy — sick, consuming envy — curdles his marrow.

  Fury follows in its wake, shooting through him in a starburst. His fists bellow for battery.

  Even now, though, in this extremity, his sensitivity won’t let him act; won’t let him paint so glaring a picture of his perceived inadequacies.

  Mortal again, Gator motions to retreat, shuffling away.

  When a break in the song carries Lefty’s words to him with incongruous clarity. ‘Na, seriously, I’m certain I know you from somewhere!’

  Tania, bored: ‘You do … that’s why I don’t go there any more.’

  A sentence like a cardiac adrenaline shot: without transition Gator’s re-elevated to the role of Man Who Just Can’t Lose.

  Unthinkingly, he spins her to him with gentle force, leaving Lefty, for once, stranded in mid-sentence. Gator beams at her like a soulmate, points it at Lefty, as if he’s included. ‘You should be wary of the likes of him: when he goes to the barber he’s not after a haircut … he’s chasing an oil change.’

  Her eyes holding Gator’s are wide enough to seal his throat. ‘I guessed as much.’ She dismisses Lefty with a tiny shrug, ignoring his next line like the chorus haze it suddenly is to her. ‘I didn’t think you were coming back.’

  Gator lets his smile fade; wills his stare to nail her own to the back of her skull. ‘How could you doubt it?’

  ‘Because you’ve made me doubt all sorts of things.’

  ‘Do you hate me for that?’

  ‘Is the Pope a pagan?’

>   Trademark grin fraying at the edges, smooth tones oddly ruffled, Lefty places a hand on Tania’s bare arm, attempts to win back her attention. ‘Listen, I’m going up to the bar. What would ya like to drink?’

  Sweetly. ‘I’ll have a case of champagne. Get the barman to leave it with the bouncers; I’ll collect it on my way out.’

  Then, very deliberately, Gator moves around until his body occludes Lefty from the circle.

  And then he forgets him. Completely and without effort.

  To Tania, eyes twinkling: ‘So, unless I’m very much mistaken, you’re a vulnerable soul ripe for indoctrination.’

  ‘Into what?’

  ‘The Craft of Arch-Treason.’

  * * *

  Mick: ‘Fuck, have you seen the bird Gator’s on with?’

  Steve: ‘Yeah, I just saw them when I went up the bar. Maori too, the sly dog: ’e’s s’posed to leave those ones for me!’

  Barry: ‘What’s this?’

  Mick: ‘Gator. He’s chatting up a honey.’

  Barry: ‘Chatting her up? Fuck, when I saw them she was practically eating from his palm.’

  Mick, craning his head: ‘I don’t think she’s looked away from him once in the last twenty minutes.’

  Barry: ‘You’re not wrong. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a couple masturbate each other spiritually. At this stage, it’d almost be worth betting that by the end of the evening those two will conspire to manufacture an article of Siamese genitalia.’

  Mick: ‘Lefty was hitting on her earlier.’

  Steve, darkening: ‘Where’s ’e now?’

  ‘I saw him heading for the dunnies. He’s been in there a while. I’m guessing he’s getting charlied up, ready for another lash at her. He’ll try too: just walk straight up to the pair of them and join in on the convo’. Dude’s got no shames.’

  Steve: ‘’E’ll be getting through me first.’