Finally.
She leaned on the wall in the kitchen exactly as she had done the day before when Lucky made milky white tea and talked of Dad and love and miserable lives that couldn’t be changed. She looked at the boy but didn’t want him to know it so every time he looked at her she looked away or pretended to fall asleep. He laughed. His voice was broken up like a scratched record. He looked like Lucky, and didn’t.
What are you doing? she said.
Making a sandwich. Do you want one?
Do you know where Lucky is?
Don’t know. Don’t care.
I’m hungry.
Okay then.
He opened a jar that he had got from the fridge and he stuck in a knife and scooped out white cream from the inside and chucked it on top of a slice of bread and spread it around. He went back into the jar and scooped out more white stuff and spread it over a second slice and stuck the two slices together on a plate with the stuff in the middle. She could smell eggs. Salt. She was hungry. He cut the crust off the edge of the bread and cut the slices into triangles and he slid the plate to her. She watched him working on his own sandwich. The light from the bulb that he had turned on in the living room sat upon his shoulder and the cat from before came to the wall on the outside to watch them eat.
He bit into his sandwich and looked at her as he chewed.
She drew her own plate close. What is it?
Mayonnaise.
I’ve never had it before.
Try it.
It smelled like eggs and chemicals and vinegar and sweets and looked like something Dad would’ve used to stick the wallpaper back to the walls or reattach the bathroom tiles to the place above the bathroom sink. It was different. She picked it up and bit the bread and tasted the bitterness that ran along the edges of her tongue and rolled beneath all sour and creamy and. She finished it all and so did the boy and the cat jumped away from the wall outside.
Are they Lucky’s glasses? he said.
He gave them to me.
They look better on you.
I don’t believe you.
I normally don’t lie.
The boy was strange, wonderful. The taste of the sandwich was still in her mouth and she pushed her tongue around and mopped all the flavours that had sunk into her gums. His face twitched and he made those little noises again and he swore for no reason fuck, fuck, fuck and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
I don’t have to swear, he said. I like doing it. I can get away with it easy because people just think it’s one of my tics. It’s not. I just enjoy doing it. Like smoking.
I like smoking.
Smoking is an act of bravery.
I’ve been smoking since I was eight.
You must have a cool Dad.
Do you know why Lucky is called Lucky?
He didn’t speak.
What does it say on your top? she said.
He pulled the shirt out and pointed to each word. This is a picture of Jesus and above it the words say I hate Jesus. I hate Jesus. There. It’s funny because it’s true. Also, Jesus isn’t real but some people think he is and I want them to know I don’t like him and I don’t like them and everything is a big joke. Couldn’t you read what it said? Don’t you think everything is a big joke?
He talked so fast it was like hearing ten different voices all at once fast and slow and back and forth and she listened but she couldn’t understand everything he said. The silver track in his mouth reflected the light from the bulb and he laughed and when he did he laughed silver and when he talked he talked silver and when he smiled he smiled with more silver than she had ever seen in one place before. Every part of him jumped and ticked and laughed and jerked. He was a carnival. He was many fish.
My Hey Dee Dee medicine gave me Tourette’s, he said. I don’t have Hey Dee Dee though and I never did. I don’t listen to boring people and I don’t like rules and I like to do whatever I want and I like to draw mad things and because of that they told me I had to take medicine. Tablets. I could write and draw and paint and everything before but I don’t do that now. Some prick of a teacher told Lucky I didn’t listen and some prick of a doctor told Lucky the same and they gave me some tablets and told me to sit still and now I can’t sit still even if I really wanted to. I told my teacher that school is a big fucking joke. Don’t you think school is a big fucking joke?
I don’t know, I’ve never been.
Don’t bother; it’s a big fucking.
What if I wanted to go?
You’re too old now.
Well. I.
One teacher accused me of cheating on a test because my mark was so good and he didn’t think I could do that. I told him I was just trying to make my Mum proud. Another teacher accused me of plagiarism when I wrote a short story for school and it was the best thing she’d ever read and that’s why she said the work wasn’t mine. I said I didn’t know what plagiarism meant and she didn’t believe me. After that I decided not to be good at anything anymore. I decided to be thick and mad and mean and to swear and smoke and piss in the kitchen sink and drink whatever I want. I don’t go to school much. I don’t listen. It’s all so funny. It’s such a big game. I’m not a good boy anymore. I’m a little shit.
He laughed.
Do you like being a little shit?
I try to be worse.
He smiled and laughed and said fuck and hit his thigh with his fist and jerked his neck so much he had to rub on his collarbone. She said sometimes I feel like being bad. I think about bad things and then I do them.
I do bad things when Lucky tells me not to.
Where is Lucky?
Don’t know. I told you.
Will he come back?
Don’t care. I saw him outside earlier. He was walking back from one of the flats carrying a box of food and he told me to go home. He told me about you.
What did he say?
He told me he was helping you. Saving you was what he said. I had to come back so I could see you. He doesn’t normally bring his work home with him. He usually goes outside to fix and mend everything and then he leaves it all there and comes back and goes straight to sleep. I had to see you.
Why did you have to see me?
I thought maybe I could ruin you.
Plastic Jesus nodded from another part of the house and the noise returned in small waves that came gently against the window. She looked at the boy and the boy looked at her. In his eye that was brighter than Lucky’s was a little speck of shining glass that she thought she could see her reflection in.
You’re different to the others, he said. Better. I thought that maybe I could ruin you. But I think you’re already ruined and that’s a good thing. I bet Lucky knows it. You don’t have to wait around for anyone else to come and fix you. You’re not really broken and you’re not fixed either but being fixed is like something that stays in a plastic case and never comes out and never gets chipped or damaged or seen. Being ruined is like being free. Don’t you want to be seen? Don’t you think you’re good as you are? I know I am. I’m fucking perfect in every way and wherever I go I make another perfect mess. You’re perfect too. Perfectly broken. Lucky told me I should try to keep you in but I’m not going to do that. I’m going to take you outside. What do you think of that?
I don’t know. I don’t think anything.
That’s good. Don’t think. Get out of your head.
I’m out, and I feel tired.
That’ll pass. Pretty soon you’ll be electric.
He sat on top of the counter and looked at her hands and then looked out of the window. She felt her heart sliding down to the soles of her feet and felt the moths dancing inside a cage inside another cage inside her head. She poked her tongue through the gap in her teeth. I think you should ignore everyone, the boy said. I think you should do whatever you want any time you want to do it. Don’t let anyone trap you. You should be able to cause as much chaos as you want because you’re not dead. When you’re dead and you don�
�t have a choice, that’s when you’ll regret that you ever listened to anyone.
She looked at her shoes all red and clean apart from a little white spot of mayonnaise that had spilled from her bread when she had eaten too fast. She wiped it in the carpet and went to the settee and got onto the cushion and held the wall and jumped up and down like she used to when Dad had been chasing rabbit too long to care. She did the drums like Tick. She did them better. Shook the bugs from the nooks inside her head and thought of nothing but the beating heart in her toes.
The boy laughed and the silver in his mouth shone and Dad was knocked back into that part of her mind that forgets to brush her teeth. Mum was gone too like a passing flash she never really believed she’d seen. Everything was everywhere. Burning. Gathering. Smoking. It was all over the rainbow. Chucked in the left eye of the green witch and down into the toilet bowl. And the boy was a fish. The boy was alive and jerking his fins and spinning through all the weather that he caused. Real.
20
Dog on the Wall
THE BOY’S NAME was Matthew. Or something.
Lucky was still gone and Tick was making faces in the mirror and she was standing behind him watching his ear that twitched slightly when her breath blew there. He turned around and looked at her and the shining glass in his eye flashed green and then yellow. They went into the living room and turned the TV off and went into the hallway and he took his key into his hand and she was standing behind him thinking about. He twisted the key in the lock and then he stopped and turned around and he was silent and still. He looked at her.
Did you hear something?
No, she said.
Listen.
The woman in the bed called from the other room and Tick looked at his shoes and became as still as Plastic Jesus in a dark empty room. He drew his eyebrows together and rubbed his cheek and spat the chunk of gum he was chewing into the skirting where it landed and stuck and attracted an ant that got stuck there too. They listened to the sound of his name being called louder and louder and haunting the dusty room at the end of the hall. She said you don’t have to listen and she took two steps towards the door and twisted the key again but he stopped her and walked back down the hallway half covered in green light.
He went into the room.
She followed. The boy changed his face to smiles and winks and she watched him in the crack of the door that he left open behind him. She looked at the woman wrapped in the blanket with one loose breast peeping out and watched Tick step into the middle of the room and hardly look at anything at all. He stood there and the woman watched him and neither of them spoke until.
I just wanted to look at you, the woman said.
Tick played with his fingers and rubbed the edge of his shoes together. The dust fell. The curtains drifted out and then they were sucked back to the window again. The woman looked at Tick and then she turned around and faced the wall and pulled the blanket around her shoulders again. Tick said something in the room that she couldn’t hear from where she stood. He whispered it so gentle and calm that it didn’t even disturb the dust. He muttered the same thing over and over. He turned around and came out of the room. She leaned in to hear. She walked with him down the hall and she watched his mouth working on the quiet words.
I am me. I am me. I am me.
What did you say?
Nothing.
The light that had come through the little window above the front door had become stronger as the sun sank and the sky changed to orange. It would soon sink below the hills and then the buildings and the men and women would sit in their living rooms and eat from their laps and their children would watch TV and laugh for a long lovely while with little dogs warming their ankles. She took the key in her hand and twisted it inside the lock and the door clicked and opened.
Outside.
The boy locked the door and went across the balcony and climbed the wall and stood on it high above the rest of the world to show her that he was afraid of nothing. She got up there too and looked out at the dark and all the lights that spread out behind the tower and the reds and yellows and greens that trailed behind cars as they sped up and slowed down along that long black road.
Never look down, he said. Balance. Don’t look there. Look straight ahead. You’re not up high, you’re down low. This is all a game.
I’ve a feeling we’re not in. It was all a game.
He got down and held her hand and she walked upon the wall and felt the wind rushing around her legs and through the sleeves of her tee shirt and under her arms that were wet from all the fun and all the fear. She went to the end of the wall and jumped onto the path and walked beside the boy down the concrete corridor and listened to the people that lived inside the houses all the way along. Tick watched her. Sometimes she watched him. He showed her a brick and a potted plant and a child’s bike left to rust outside a broken front door and a word written over and over again in red paint on a wall. He took her onto the bridges that webbed the towers. They went through thick doors that took them inside and then outside and inside again and he showed her how to take the stairs two by two and slide down railings and he showed her how to spit at cats. He talked about his Mum but she didn’t listen. He didn’t talk about Lucky and she wished he had.
They walked on a dark path between the towers and followed a fence that was topped with razor wire down to an open space that smelled of smoke and meat. A man walked out from the dark and another came out after him both with long beards and red sores on their foreheads and brown stains on their clothes and teeth. The first man held up a sign and the other stamped out fires that were not there. She turned to Tick and asked him what was written there and he kept walking and didn’t speak and didn’t look at the men and didn’t look at her.
In the town that was lined up along both sides of the black road there were boarded shopfronts with cracked lights. Cars came and went speeding up and slowing down carrying people who looked at her as she looked at them. The lights shone in endless greens and yellows and the boy pushed her and she jostled him. Men and women with signs and without came and talked nonsense into their ears. Spare change please? How many times do I have to tell you? There was a baby and now she’s gone. I can’t find my Mum. You kids. They told me I did it but she was strung up before I got there. The best day of my life is not today. On and on chattering and spewing their thoughts drunk and smart as machines that worked in ways she couldn’t understand. She threw her hands over her face and laughed into her hands but didn’t know why. Tick smiled at her with that little speck of glass spinning forever in the reaches of his fat open eyes. The streets were beautiful. Ugly. Just like her, him, Lucky, Dad, Dorothy and everything else.
A shop was open and Tick went inside. She followed him through the aisles that were lined with sweets and toys and dust and food with dirty packaging and a man who stood behind a counter and watched them. Bars of light radiated pink and hot above each aisle. The floor was sticky and spotted with gum that had been walked flat and indented with the patterns of small shoes. She had only seen the inside of a shop on TV and she stopped to look and touch the things that lined the floor in rows and boxes that spewed out multicoloured packets of crisps and cereal and coffee and small rat shaped holes. Tick went onwards to the corner of the shop and looked back at the counter that had disappeared from view behind one of the shelves and he took a packet of sweets and a bottle of pop and a magazine from a stand and asked her if she was playing.
What?
Are. You. Playing?
She nodded and watched him and did what he showed her. She picked a necklace made of hard sweets from a plastic box and a packet of crisps and she stuffed them up her tee shirt like Tick and held them there. They heard the pop of a chair and the quick feet of the brown-eyed man as he came down one of the aisles. Her heart was wild in her chest and she looked at Tick and Tick looked at her and they both started and then they were both running. They left the shop and ran through the streets and hit the shoulders
and arms of strangers so hard that the sweets burst through the bags and exploded in a rattle on the pavement. They laughed. Her heart was bigger than it had ever been. The voice of the man that had shouted after them grew quiet as they went over a black hill and onto a path and over the green and found a bench to sit on awhile. They calmed their chests and watched rough men and children who gathered under a bridge to start little fires and go to sleep with their clothes on.
You see that? Did you see me not giving a shit? he said.
Oh damn yes.
I don’t listen to anyone.
I’m glad.
You shouldn’t either.
I won’t.
Not even if Lucky tells you to do something.
I feel so. I’m too far gone now.
They ate the sweets they had saved and drank the pop and sat beneath the streetlights whose faces were shattered on the grass below. The air was cold and it filled her all the way to her feet when she breathed in. They ate and then they smoked and when they were done with that they walked upon the path that cut across a large garden that led back to the estate. The air was grey. Thick. The ends of her fingers were cold and she warmed them on a patch of grass that was blackened by a fire that hadn’t long died down.
She was awake. Bright. More awake than ever. And her heart was. They walked beneath a thick concrete bridge with silver fencing along the top and bins turned over and brick towers loaded up towards the sky where the moon was swollen big and fat and beating between the flashes of light and cloud and smoke. Tick ran ahead and she chased him and they knocked on a door and ran away. When they were on the black road again she looked at him.
Why is Lucky named Lucky?
He stopped and went into his pocket and brought out a silver lighter and crouched on a patch of dry grass and tried to ignite a flower. He’s called Lucky because he can’t die, he said. He’s invincible. Didn’t I tell you that already? He’s called Lucky because he tried to kill himself four times and it’s never worked. He survived all of it. He tried hanging himself with a tie and it snapped in four places. He tried cutting his wrists but a retired doctor found him while he’d been out walking his dog. He tried swallowing pills but his body just kept throwing them back up again. He first tried killing himself when he was a few years older than you, what do you think of that?
The Insomnia Museum Page 11