He threw the black bag on the seat behind where there were sweet wrappers and cigarette packets and papery junk and he looked at her and she looked at him. He leaned over and she could smell the smoke in his hair. He took the seatbelt and pulled it around her and clipped it into place.
He turned the car on and it rumbled and chugged and she grabbed hold of the seat with both her hands and looked at Lucky as he shifted his legs and pulled the stick that sat between them and worked his feet and turned the wheel in front of him and looked at the mirror. The strap was tight. She loosened it.
They drove slowly around and around in a big circle for no reason. She laughed. A smile caught the corner of his mouth. He sped up and then drove off and stopped the car as the wide concrete space narrowed into a small path that became a thick black road. Above them was a streetlight and she could feel it hot inside her eyes and she squinted and raised her hands to her face. She looked at him. He leaned over again and threw his hand into a drawer that was next to her knees and pulled out a pair of glasses with round green lenses set in silver frames. He gave them to her.
Put them on.
Why?
They’ll help with the sharp edges.
Are they yours?
My gift to you.
She put the glasses on. She looked through the window at flickering streetlights and the glow from the shop signs and the aches from the bulbs in the window. Everything was numbed into green. The lights on the hills didn’t make her eyes ache anymore. The world was tinted. She looked at the end of the smoke and waved it in the air and she smoked and blew the smoke in green streams that circled their faces and kissed the air between them.
He looked at her with those eyes and she felt that lovely ugly love.
Cool, he said.
*
They drove. The yellow car drove on down the black road and the world rushed past on waves of hot green light. The smoke from their mouths whipped through the gaps at the top of the windows. She saw men and women standing underneath lights. She saw the rabbits in the eyes of the sweetly insane. She saw children crossing the road in front of them wearing nothing but their jeans and socks, holding bottles of booze that they supped from as they flashed into existence and disappeared again into the naked arse of the world.
Cool, she said.
He went faster.
An old woman with witch-grey hair crossed the road in front of them thinking on sleep and her own two feet and holding a carrier bag behind her that swung against the backs of her legs and drove her staggering to the other side of the road. Children pretended to be frightened as she came and they screamed away with their hands raised over their heads. The car stopped at the red light. Women shook their breasts to the music that poured from the windows and doorways of blacked-out houses. A man came to stand and smoke beneath a red sign and another came to ask for a light. A woman laughed like an engine. There were so many people. Everywhere. They walked in front of the car and into streets to the side and into the town and into the gutters and up the road and on and on to the ends of their lives.
The light changed to green and they drove on. On a street corner there was a dog. The dog barked hatred through the legs of its master, snapping at nothing, and lay down again to bend its body to the hot concrete where one day its bones would rest. She took off her glasses to wipe her eyes and she put them back on again. She wiped the sweat off her window and watched the world rise to meet the glass. She sank into her chair and looked at Lucky and she pulled the hair out of her face and pretended to be beautiful. He drove on laughing and talking and calling her Sweetheart.
Sweetheart, are you hungry?
Oh yes.
He pulled through a side street. Two rows of houses were stacked shoulder to shoulder on each side. They turned a corner and came to another road much wider than the other with street lights and neon signs and cigarette smoke and a building with arches and long windows and a garden with old stones stacked in rows over patches of dirt with flowers alive and dead and names she couldn’t read.
She was junked on people, mad on living, driving, light, dogs, buildings, children, the sky and the long tall spaces, the road, the on and on and on of it. The all. Everything. They went through the acid green lights and wide concrete corridors that were slicked with oil and water and they were laughing manically at something Lucky had said. Joy and anger was gutted out of the houses and tossed against the walls. Green. Green everywhere. She was mad with all the green and the new town baring its bones to her lovely bright eyes. A drunk man whistled at her from a bench and tossed his bottle into the air and it went spinning and spitting high and then down into the gutters where rats came to drink and to sniff the broken glass. She laughed. Lucky reached into the drawer in front of her and pulled out a plastic case and he peeled the clear packaging away with his teeth and popped it open with his thumb and pulled out a disc with one hand and slotted it into a box that whirred and lit up above the gear stick. Music played. He asked her if she liked music and she nodded. She listened. The music was new. Different. A sad man sang about his mama and papa. She listened and watched the world. A piano chimed and a guitar hummed and drums came cutting through all of it like a storm in an empty room. Another man sang miserably and said oh Hell, oh Hell, oh Hell over and over. He said a well-lived life is full of regrets and a well-timed death is what he needs and on and on and on and.
This is my favourite band, he said. This song is new.
It’s good.
Are you upset?
Why are you asking?
You’re crying.
I don’t think I am.
She dried her eyes with the little piece of cloth that had fallen out with the glasses and rolled her sleeves up past the elbow as they turned a sharp corner and another and took it slow and heavy through an empty street. They rolled into an open space almost the same size as the patch of concrete that lay flat outside her old home. They stopped. Stranded in his headlights was a row of shops that stood vacant, dark, boarded and abandoned and spilling envelopes from beneath their doors. One shop stood lit and alone with a fat sign burning white and suspended in the dark above an oblong window through which she could see tables and chairs and pictures on the walls of cartoon food that looked bad enough to eat.
This place is open twenty-four hours, he said.
That leaves ten or twelve hours for sleep.
He doglooked her and turned the car engine off and leaned over and she pushed her lips out for a kiss but it didn’t come. He unclipped the belt and pulled it from around her and opened the door and she got out and stood beside the car blowing tusks of smoke while Lucky locked up.
Oh Dad.
He took her hand and they walked and she stopped to look at a tall box that stood next to one of the abandoned shops and Lucky told her it was a phone box. He said it doesn’t work anymore. Someone ripped the phone cable from the phone and put the handset back and I don’t know why anyone would do that but that’s just life. I suppose. Nobody knows why anyone does anything.
The box had plastic sides that were blistered and black as though suspended in a state of burning. Lucky looked at the box while they walked. They threw their smokes to the ground and kicked the fire out with their heels. The air smelled like fat and vinegar. A rat on a box looked at her and she looked at it. A bell rang and the doors to the shop opened and a man with ripped clothes and swollen fingers and dirty wrists came out and stood muttering and swearing on the step. He banged his fist on the door handle and walked towards them and Lucky pulled her by the hand to the other side of him and didn’t look up. The man came and killed the itches on his face and stood in front of them and muttered.
Lend us a quid, Mate. Lend us something. I ain’t got money for chips or nothing and I ain’t got money to get home or nothing. I’m hungry and that twat in there won’t give me nothing the Indian prick what’s he doing running a chip shop anyway shouldn’t it be a curry house or a Tikka masala? Lend us something, mate, I ain’t got on
e thing.
He went on and on trying to stagger when he was standing still and he smelled like museum poppies and looked like bloody Hell. He had fallen deep into the chase and she looked into his red veined eyes and his arms and the black roses that grew there too. Lucky went into his pocket and pulled out a coin that worried the man and stopped the words in his mouth. He looked at the coin.
Mercy, the man said. Mercy. Mercy.
He killed the itches on his ears and held his hands in front of him and said God bless you and Lucky went into his front pocket and pulled out more change and the man said God bless you, God bless you again and again as his hands were filled up. Lucky went into his pockets and turned them out and poured whatever he found into the hands of the man who sank lower and lower with the kindness that weighed him down. Lucky went into his coat pocket and pulled out his wallet and slipped a tenner from the inside and gave that to the man who sobbed and said mercy, mercy, mercy over and over. Lucky held his hand on top of the man’s head and left it there for a while before the man looked up. Stood up. Silent. Calm. He looked at his shoes and then raised his head and breathed hard and calm as though he had come out of the other end of some great labour. He smiled toothless and joyful and staggered forward with his hands in front of him as though he was carrying a cup of milk that he didn’t want to spill. He said God bless you once more to the houses on the other side of the road and he sang a song about Jesus before staggering away into the dark.
They turned back to the shop and she tried to understand God. Wondered what he was as they walked through the luminous door of the chip shop. She thought he lived in the hearts and heads of black veined men and women who muttered his name into the bowls of toilets and asked to feel better. Saying please, please, please and then sinking comfortable and strange into that good old ache, right into the yellow womb of that pretty Oh Dee. She thought of Dad who told her once that he was going out to look for God. When he came back he brought a bottle of vodka and a packet of crisps and a dirty photograph and scratched the roses that had begun to bloom on his skin.
I couldn’t remember what I went out for, he said.
It wasn’t that important, Dad.
16
Toto the Dark Skinned Man
THE SHOP WAS as white as milk.
She drank up the smells when she went inside and looked at the light that buzzed above her and in front of her in white sheets fast and slow. Most of the light came from long tubular bulbs set in rows on the ceiling. She wiped the steam from her glasses and the lights pulsed and fizzed just like the TV screen when the video was unplugged at the back. She rubbed her tongue on the roof of her mouth and the lights sank back to the ceiling again. Inside the shop everything was metal. White. The light reflected off the shiny surfaces and Coke cans turned on their sides on the floor near the window where there were two rows of plastic tables and chairs. The plastic was dirty and scratched with pen marks and holes gouged and plugged with chewing gum that had dried to extra limb and bone. At the back of the shop was a long worktop and behind that was a metal station with deep vats of oil filled with chips and fish and battered meat long past its time of slaughter.
A dark faced man stood behind the counter. He lifted the silver cages high above the oil and shook the meat and the chips and sighed and shook them again and dropped them back into the amber fizz. He spat into a cloth that rested on his hip and used it to wipe the oil that had hissed onto the worktop. His jaw chewed on insults she was too far away to hear. Above his head was a sign, burning white like the rest of the shop, and written on it was a long list of names and numbers edged with symbols and signs and beneath that were pictures of potatoes and meat and badly drawn fish swimming joyfully towards sharp little hooks.
Lucky looked at her. Do you know what you want?
I’ll just have what you have.
They never have fish in stock here so I’ll get you a small bag of chips and a sausage and a can of Coke or something. He told her to sit down wherever she liked and he slipped the last note from his wallet and went to the counter. As he walked she could hear the slap of his boots as they stuck to the floor and she could feel her boots sticking too when she went to take a seat that was near the misted window.
She sat close to the wall and wiped the window with the back of her hand and searched outside for the man with mercy in his mouth and God in his head but she could only see her own pale face reflected back at her. She turned back to the room and watched Lucky as he stood next to the counter and addressed the man with the cloth. She repeated everything he said in her head. When he said Mo, my friend, and opened his arms she said it too in whispers that the two men couldn’t hear.
Mo, my friend, how’ve you been?
The dark man turned around and looked at Lucky.
Oh no, he said. You go away.
I thought you were open.
I am. To anyone else I’m open, but not to you.
A spider came from a crack in the wall to sit on the back of her wrist. The man behind the counter waved his hands and lifted the cages and shook them again and sank the food back into the oil once more. He turned to Lucky and told him he wasn’t welcome. You’re not allowed. I’m fed up with you and I’m fed up with your boy. She flicked the spider off her wrist.
What’s he done?
What has he done? What has he done, he asks. That boy is a terror. I tell you he is. He haunts me. Every time I see him I want to cry. I’m always watching for him. Always wondering what he’s up to next. I’m miserable, man. Depressed. Shoot me up with morphine. I want to die.
Look, he’s a good boy. He just.
You think so?
I know it.
You don’t know as much as you think you do, Lucky. I was here yesterday morning getting the shop ready for the day and in comes your son when all the other boys and girls are in school. He walks to my counter and asks for some pop and some chips and I serve him even though we all had that letter telling us to turn him away if he comes around when he should be in school. I say to him that he doesn’t have enough money for chips and a drink. He asks me if I would let him pay for the drink later. I say I’m running a business and I tell him he can’t just come in here and have things for free. The world doesn’t work like that I say. What happens if everyone comes in and wants one thing for free, man? What happens then? I say this to him and I tell him to go away and come back when he has the right money and you know what he does?
Lucky turned his hand in the air. Keep going.
I’ll tell you what he does. He goes to the fridge and helps himself to a can of whatever he wants. I come around and try to take it from him and he snatches it back and he pushes me right here. He pushes me this far back. He stands there and I can see what he thinks, man. I can see the nasty little cogs turning in his head. I try to stop him before he does it but there’s no stopping him. He shakes the can and throws it hard into the counter and the thing explodes like a bloody grenade. He gets another and another and shakes them all and throws them at me like boom boom boom. I’m on the floor with my hands over my face and these Coke cans are spinning and gushing and I’m trying to stand up and falling right back down and everything is chaos. I stay down until he’s done and when I get up again my shop is a mess and there’s shit dripping from the walls and shit on the floor and the pies are soggy and your son walks away leaving me to clean everything up. He threw them, man, one grenade after another, boom. Boom. I don’t need that, my friend. I’m tired of everyone always trying to kill me. How do you think I know to keep my head down? I moved to this country to get away from grenades.
He went on cleaning and when he thought of something else to say he turned back again. In my country they’d punish both of you. In my country children don’t have time to go around throwing cans at people because they’re too busy making jeans for three pence a day. You know what happens last night? Your son comes back, man. A demon. Your son comes back last night and he looks at me through that window over there and befo
re I know what he’s doing he walks across the way and he lights my bloody phone box on fire.
Lucky scratched his face. He had been listening while the dark man spoke and slowly his head began to sink until he was staring with sad wide eyes at his own boots that were gently kicking the edge of the counter. He didn’t say anything. He worked his fingers on the counter. Drummed them. The man stood back and folded his arms over his chest and looked at Lucky as though another grenade was about to be launched at him. Lucky looked up and brushed the blond out of his eyes and spoke. She leaned forward to listen.
How’s your Mum?
The man stepped back again and protected his back from the heat of the fizzing vats and looked at Lucky. His eyes were wide and he rubbed the back of his neck. It was as though another bursting can had been thrown his way. Lucky kept on throwing.
She been to the doctor’s yet? She told me she wanted to go when I picked her up from the shop and took her to see her sister. I hope she did. She looked like she needed it with the way her legs are. That’s why I had to help her up the stairs the last time. She couldn’t make it with the broken lifts. I practically had to carry her. Actually, you know, I did carry her.
The man looked at the counter and began to wipe the nothing that was spilled there. He chewed on his lip and stroked the back of his head again and spoke quietly to the surface and his own open hand.
She’s fine. She’s well, man. Healthy.
Good.
She wants to know if you can pick her up again Thursday morning.
The Insomnia Museum Page 7