That’s how it is, he said. That’s me, winning.
*
The boy bought a pack of biscuits from a shop that didn’t close except to eat and piss for five minutes at a time. Afterwards they sat in the park and looked at the dog on the wall and ate the biscuits one by one until the whole pack was empty. On the other side of the world Lucky went into a door and came out of another one and so on and so on all through the cold night while they watched. Tick said that he was a man and Lucky didn’t know it. He said he was king. He was master and head teacher and he was Jesus and all the heroes from all the films she’d ever seen. She looked at him and he looked at her. He looked at his feet that scraped the floor when she pushed him on the swing.
I’m saving up for a car and when I get it I’m going to load my stuff in the boot and I’m going to just drive off forever. I’m not coming back either. No fucking way. I hate this fucking place. If you stay here for long enough it gets into your blood and you can’t leave. You stay here and so do your kids and so do their kids and nobody ever does anything and nobody sees anything and nobody ever leaves. You start thinking that there’s nothing over that wall. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen parents begging their kids to be different in the same place that their parents took them aside in nineteen seventy whenever and said the same thing. It’s the place that makes them useless. The sameness. That’s why I have to leave. I have to. I have to. There’s plenty more fish in the sea and Mum can do better.
Better than Lucky?
Better than me.
They smoked. She was tired and so was he. They took turns swinging and pushing and they swung higher and faster to wake their bodies up so that they could stay awake longer than Tick had ever stayed awake before. She told him that she could stay awake easy because a long childhood of fake living room lights and loud TV had cursed her with insomnia and it meant she couldn’t sleep much and it meant she was tired all the time. A moth came out of the dark and floated between the smoke and returned back into the dark again.
She could smell Lucky on her clothes and she thought of him then and thought of the woman with the long beautiful back. The boy got down from the swing and pretended to be tall. He looked at his little phone that he kept in his pocket and he lit it up and pressed the face and pressed it over and over and then he put it back into his pocket and threw a stone at the dog.
Mum wants me, he said. She says she wants me to come home so she can take a look at me. I don’t know why she does that. It makes me feel weird. Like she thinks she’s going to forget who I am. I don’t want to go home. Let’s walk around the estate a few times and you can talk and that’ll keep me from falling asleep. Don’t worry about Mum. She’ll have to watch me in her head is all. If we walk this way I can show you all the ways to take if you’re ever running from something. I can show you where to hide if you’re ever feeling scared. I can show you all the places you shouldn’t walk if you’re ever walking on your own.
22
The Good Kiss
THE BOY BARKED like a dog in his sleep.
They were home. Tick wanted to go to bed and she didn’t mind helping him along. He started off sleeping quiet and gentle and then he began to whimper like a lost little pup. She had been lying next to him in the same bed because he said he hated being on his own. They talked and looked at the ceiling and then the boy curled up on her chest and sucked on his knuckles that were raw from punching garage doors and he fell asleep while she sang Dorothy’s songs. She listened to him when he made those little noises. He whimpered. Then he growled. Then he barked. The barks twisted into howls that went on and on while he moved his paws and chased after rabbits in his sleep.
She got out of bed and watched him. She was still in her clothes, her tee shirt had begun to smell and so did her jeans and underwear and even Plastic Jesus who had been ignoring her these past few hours. Everything smelled like cider and burning junk and sweat and that lovely chemical spray in the black can that the boy used to make him feel good. Older. Better than himself.
Doesn’t it?
I don’t know, Dorothy.
Why don’t you know?
What is better supposed to smell like?
Hey-Dee-Dee.
I’m hungry.
Hey-Dee-Dum.
In another room a door opened and closed and a key twisted in a lock and then it was released again and she knew that Lucky had come home. She stood in the frame of the door and opened it and watched Lucky wipe his face with Tick’s school shirt that had been slung in the hall. He held it to his face and breathed deeply with his eyes half closed. Then he dropped it and stood there looking at his own hands in the green light. He had the hands of a woman. So she thought. She had noticed this about him the first time they met. They were softer than Dad’s Slender. Hairless. Pretty. The fingers were long and the nails were picked clean and there were no blooming roses or black branches. He had the hands of a. All the better to touch.
He turned the light on in the hallway and went to the bathroom to piss and to think and when he came out again she was standing there under the swinging light waiting for him to look at her. She twisted her tee shirt in her hands and forced her hair behind her ears and didn’t scratch or pick at her finger while he was watching.
I don’t sleep well, she said.
I don’t either, Sweetheart.
We’re the same.
Maybe. Yes, I think.
He went into the kitchen and she followed him and he set aside two mugs and told her he was sorry for not staying with her when she needed him. She tried a smile and told him it was all right. She was all right. He made the tea and took the mugs into the living room and gestured for her to sit before he gave her the tea in her hands. She sat on one end of the settee and he sat on the other. He blew on his mug and she did the same though her tea was lukewarm and pale. He looked at her.
I would’ve come home sooner but I knew you were doing okay.
How did you know?
I saw you.
Where did you see me?
I saw you both. You were playing in the street. You were near the garages and Tick was sitting on the wall. I didn’t say anything because I know he likes to think I don’t see him, that I can’t find him there in the dark, that I don’t know the sound his shoes make when he’s walking, or the way he sucks his braces when he’s thinking about being naughty. I pretend not to notice him. It’s just one of the games we play. I’ll tell you something though, Sweetheart. I always have this secret hope that if I stand there long enough with my head down one day he’ll come up to me or call out. I think to myself that he’s going to call me today, tomorrow, two weeks from now, I’m going to stand there with my head down for long enough and I’m going to hear Dad, Dad, Dad in my son’s voice. He’s going to say that and sound just like he used to when he was five and he had a million questions in his head and he thought I was the only one with answers. Yeah, it’ll be something, Sweetheart. Right now Dad would really be something.
He laid his head back and balanced his cup on his jeans.
I haven’t heard that word in years, he said. It’s funny, I didn’t realize it until I was out last week trying to save somebody and a little boy in the park called out Dad to one of the men who was coming up the road after finishing a shift in the factory. The kid called out Dad and I dropped the box I was carrying and turned around and opened my arms. Strange right? I mean, I just turned around without even thinking. The kid ran right past me and down the street to his tired old man and I, I don’t know, I stood there and then I picked up the box and went back to what I was doing. I felt so stupid. Then I realized how long it’s been since I heard someone calling for Dad, and how long it’s been since Dad was me.
He blew his tea and then sipped the rim.
Anyway, he said. I stand there and I wait but he always stays where he is. I don’t know what he gets up to anymore and I’m done with trying to build walls around him. I told him he’s not to go out after eight or nine a
nd he goes out anyway. I told him not to drink and he drinks so much he has to get his stomach pumped. I tell him all the time not to start fires and he starts them anyway. He burns everything down. He’s a good boy though. I know that makes me sound daft, like a blind fool, but I’m really not. He’s good. He’s not just good but honestly good. He has a good soul. I’ve seen it myself, but good people can make bad choices and that’s just life. Life pushes us down streets that we don’t want to walk through. Then we panic. Then we run. We run for our lives. We think we’re getting away but we’re just going faster in the same direction and we don’t know how to stop. The boy is like me. I don’t know what he gets up to when I’m not around. I haven’t spent enough time with him lately. I’m glad he has someone else to spend time with though, a friend to keep him out of trouble. You, I mean. He’s good. I’m terrible. I’m a lot worse than him, a lot worse, just the same as anyone.
They drank tea and sat and there was no noise except the noises the boy made from the other room fast asleep and running for his life. Lucky lay back and rested his head on the cushion and let all the air out of his chest slowly until he was empty and then he was still and breathless for a while. He looked up and finished off his tea and sat up again and rolled a smoke for himself and rolled her one too and lit them both.
Have you thought about what you want to do with your life? he said.
I didn’t know I had to do something with it.
Everyone has to do something.
Do they? I just thought it was mine so it didn’t matter.
It is yours, but nothing is free so you have to do something if you want money.
I don’t want money.
Nothing is free and everything costs something and that’s just life.
You say that a lot. Why can’t life change?
Well, because everything goes in one direction really fast.
Like on the black road.
Like on any road there ever was.
He sat in silence and lay back again and looked at the ceiling. She was tired. She half listened to him as she closed her eyes and opened them again and looked at a spider that was climbing up the TV cable that stuck out to the side behind the Dee Vee Dee box. In the corner was an old table that was good for nothing because it leaned too much to the left and everything rolled from the top. Lucky was talking. She wasn’t sure what he was saying anymore. She looked at the small wrinkles next to his eyes and at the yellow stains on his slim fingers. The smoke caught a draught of air and swam into the hallway where the green light burned it into nothing.
I don’t want to be anything, she said. Is that so bad?
What do you mean?
I want to be nothing. I want to make no difference at all.
They smoked the hour away and he fell asleep. She looked at her red shoes and listened to the sound of his steady breathing and she cried into her hands because she had not done that for weeks or hours or. When she was done with crying the moths were gentle and faint and didn’t bother her again.
She looked at Lucky. His mouth was open slightly and she could see the shine of his crooked front teeth and the grey hairs buried in the blond on his chin and she heard the sound of his tongue gently clicking against his gums and smelled the ash and dirt and petrol on his clothes. She slid towards him and he moved his head from the back of the seat to his shoulder and she placed her hand on his chest. Her heart drummed in her ears and her stomach twisted and tugged. She pushed her lips together, moved her hand to the back of his head, and pulled him gently closer. She didn’t breathe and didn’t talk and she stopped her heart for a little while. Everything was dark and silent and still. His breath was warm and smoky. She leaned in and closed her eyes and kissed him. She kissed him on the mouth. He didn’t wake. She kissed him again. Softly. In the hallway there was a little creak and then the sound of a door closing. She could see herself in the TV screen. A beautiful shadow.
23
The Passenger
LUCKY WAS GONE from the settee and there was a note stuck to the TV screen that didn’t say a thing in big red letters. She looked at the note and around it the TV fizzed with a black and white cancer that had come sometime during the seventeenth hour when the rain grew fat and noisy on the outside. She pressed the buttons on the remote control and changed the channel with the note still stuck to the screen and the news came on and a man talked about thieves and riots. She changed the channel and put on cartoons and left the cartoons running for the whole morning. She laughed. A mouse got hit on the head and refused to die and a cat laughed big and fat in his belly and she decided that there was more truth in that than in the news or in the writing she couldn’t read.
She made jam and toast and ate it standing up in the kitchen. The boy was still asleep but he had stopped barking and his knuckle had come out of his mouth and when she checked on him she saw that his jaw was clenched and his eyes were half open. He wasn’t awake. She listened at the door to the woman’s bedroom and heard a faint whistling that became a song that didn’t end while her face was pressed against the cold wood. She made another piece of toast and stood alone in the kitchen chewing on the crust and she wasn’t hungry anymore.
When she went back into the hall she found the boy standing in the living room doorway looking at his feet. He squeezed the frame of the door and stood there without talking. She sat on the settee and he came and sat there too.
I need to take care of something, he said.
All right.
You should come with me.
Okay.
Her mind was on Lucky and the note he left that she gave to Tick to read out loud and it said be back later with two crosses that meant kiss kiss.
Love. Love.
Do you like Lucky? the boy said when they were standing in the middle of the black road looking down at all the cars that didn’t drive that way. He was looking at his shoe that had a piece of chewing gum stuck to the end and he scraped it against a rock until the minted rubber rolled away.
Yes, she said. I like him.
He jerked his head. Fuck. Fuck. Why do you like him?
I don’t know. He’s different. I just do.
Do you like me?
Yeah.
How much?
I don’t know.
Do you like me as much as you like him?
I’m hungry again.
You’re always hungry.
The boy jerked and twitched and looked her in the eye and scratched the back of his head and flashed his silver mouth when the words called him to it. She had watched the sun set and rise behind the tower block every day and night since she first came beyond the wood of her own front door and she had seen the people and heard them talk and saw them work and play and mend and fetch and do all the things that they did because their lives and the lives of others and love and money and hunger called them to it. The moon and sun were in the sky at the same time.
What are we waiting for?
We’re waiting for him.
A silver car came down the long black road. It came slowly. Soundless and shimmering in the far away and trailing smoke that split into two tails behind it. They got off the road and stood on the pavement and waited for the car and the boy kept telling her to be quiet and say nothing even though she had not said a word since he talked about Lucky. He pulled a handful of notes out of his pocket and counted them out in his hand and it was more than the man had given him the night before when they stood outside the garages selling rabbits. She held the boy’s hand because she was afraid but she didn’t know why. The boy’s wrist pulsed quicker and quicker as the car came and slowed and stopped when the blacked out windows were just in front of them. Nothing happened for the longest time.
She couldn’t see into the car and she held the boy’s hand and he held hers and he stood taller on the very edge of the pavement and closed his mouth that had been hanging open since the car stopped. The thumping music grew as the window was wound down with an electric switch that the passenger
kept his finger on until it disappeared all the way into the door. The music pumped from the window and then it muted as the man in the front seat turned it all the way down and looked at them both.
You got something for me, Lad? he said.
The man in the front seat looked at her and she looked at him. He was as young and old as Lucky with eyes that were wide and mean and blue and the blue seeped into the white and made everything seem uneven. Blurred. She had not seen eyes as large as his that were not looking out from the face of a child or a cartoon mouse, and the skin around them was thin. His face was open like a wound. The mouth parted and contained her where she stood like the walls of her long lost room. She couldn’t look away.
What are you looking at? he said.
I know you, she said.
The boy stood on her foot on purpose and she looked at the muddy smudge that was now on the front of her shoe. The boy’s jaw twitched madly and his fingers shook and he sucked on his cheek. He didn’t say anything and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She wiped her muddy shoe on the tyre of the car but it would not come clean.
You don’t know me, the man said.
I do. I’ve seen you somewhere before.
You don’t know me, he said.
The rough man who was driving looked at her and two other faces came forward from the back seat and they looked at her too. Everyone was watching her. She stepped back onto the pavement and she played with her fingers and she didn’t say anything and somewhere in the car was a frantic whispering and somewhere else a dog barked on a wall.
I don’t know, she said. I don’t know.
The man reached out of the car and took the boy by the shoulder and Tick yelped like a dog and squeezed the man’s fingers and pulled but he couldn’t move and couldn’t break away. He cried. He said ow, ow, ow and then he hissed through his teeth. She lunged for the boy and she pulled him by the arm but she couldn’t get him away from the car or from the man whose face had become dark and opened even more like a fleshy trap.
The Insomnia Museum Page 13