You haven’t seen me before, the man said.
She pulled.
You haven’t seen me before.
I haven’t seen you, she said.
You haven’t seen me before and you haven’t seen me today.
Let. Him. Please. No. I haven’t.
He let go of the boy and took her by the arm instead and held her close. She wanted to bite or scratch or punch him but she couldn’t. His eyes made chains for her feet. The boy pulled her by the waist and he told the man to stop.
Stop it, please.
Who is she?
She’s nobody.
Who is she?
She’s. She’s retarded.
He looked at Tick.
Yeah she’s retarded. She’s my cousin. She’s staying with us and I have to look after her. If I don’t get her back in one piece or. Or. Or if I mess her up or get her hurt she’ll be sent off to one of those nut houses or something. She’s retarded. Honestly. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.
The man looked at her. He let go. He looked at her feet and then he looked at her legs and her crotch and her stomach and her breasts and he looked at her neck and her face and then he looked at her arm where there were four little nail marks in bloody moons deep and stinging in the cold that whipped between them. She rubbed her arm and stood back onto the pavement and out of reach of the passenger. He didn’t say anything and he didn’t look at her again. He held his hand out through the car window and hooked his finger and told the boy to come. She stepped back again and the boy stepped forward and put a stack of money into his hand.
Is that everything? the man said.
Yeah. I did well last night.
I didn’t ask how you did. I asked if this was everything.
Yeah, it’s everything.
Good. I need you to do the evening shift later on.
Yeah.
And I need you down on Sweet Street tomorrow.
I got school but I don’t care.
Good.
The passenger opened the glove box and stuck the money inside and closed it again and then looked at the boy and smiled. Tick smiled back. Wiped his nose in his sleeve. The faces had disappeared from the back of the car and there was only darkness then and a plume of smoke where they had puffed on cigarettes while they looked out. The man who sat in the driver’s seat didn’t look at her and didn’t look at the boy but looked in the mirror that faced backwards down the long black road. The passenger looked at her once more and then looked at the boy.
How old is she? the man said.
Seventeen.
She looks your age.
She knows.
He rolled a smoke on his knee and licked the paper flat and smoked it deep and long and held it behind his teeth. He let his arm hang on the outside of the car door and then breathed out through his nose and the smoke spiralled up towards the green air that rose loveless into the ever-changing sky. He pointed at the boy.
What do I always tell you? he said. You have nothing to learn from your parents. They have no souls. They have no art. They’re faulted and they’re afraid and the sooner you learn that the better it’ll be for you.
He pointed to each of the towers and he pointed to the people on the streets and the people standing on their balconies and smoking alone in their bedrooms and he said they’re all scared. Look at them. Terrified, the lot. Their children know it. I know it. They’re cowards. Everyone’s afraid and everyone is ashamed and everyone is guilty but they don’t fucking know it. Look at them. I said look. Little rabbits inside little towers. Cowering. Hiding. Guilty. You don’t know. You’re young, boy. Sometimes I think you’re too young.
I’m not.
Well.
I’m not too young.
Childhood only ends when you can see the faults of your parents.
I have seen them. My Dad is such a.
Your Mum too.
Yeah. I just. I don’t know.
Your. Mum. Too.
He slipped the smoke into his mouth again and he gestured for the boy to come and she tried to hold him back but he wouldn’t let her. He went to the car and she stayed back and the passenger took hold of Tick’s shirt and drew him close and he pointed at the boy’s chest and he said don’t. Use. That. Word.
What word?
Retard. Don’t say it. Don’t use it. Don’t even think it.
Okay.
I’m serious, boy.
What should I say then?
She has a name. Why don’t you start with that?
24
Curtains
THE STRANGER TURNED the radio up again and raised the window and the silver car took off and followed the black road around the estate and out of sight. The cold wind came and whipped at the little scratches on their shoulders and she sat down and doused her cuts with water that had collected in a hole in the pavement. Tick kicked a stone and didn’t talk. He rubbed his arm but he wouldn’t show her the bruise. He turned around to wipe his eyes and when he turned back his face was dry and he was smiling.
He was pleased with me, he said. Don’t you think? He was pleased with the money and he was pleased with how hard I’ve been working. It’s all a game with us. That’s all. Everything. I’m not a kid and he knows it. Didn’t I say that? I said I’ve already seen the faults of my father. I have. I have. I have. I’ve seen the faults of my father and my mother and I’m not scared like they are. I take care of things. I can take care of me and I can take care of you too if you want me to. I’m going to make a lot of money and I’m going to have respect and nothing Dad does can make up for all the bad shit I do.
They walked.
Lucky came out of a door near the park and saw them and stopped and the boy looked at him and then he turned away and walked down an alley that went alongside the left of the estate. She looked at Lucky and he looked at her. He went into his car and took out a black bag and slung it over his shoulder and went back into the tower and up the stairs and into an open door. She turned away and followed the boy and there was no sound from anything and all the people that had stood on their balconies had all turned around and gone back inside. The whole world had turned its head and the day fell into the ground.
Tick looked at his phone and lit it up and read the words written on the screen out loud and it said come home and he said it’s only my Mum and rubbed his forehead and turned it off and put it back into his pocket.
Want to hear a joke? she said after a while.
He nodded.
A man once went into a pub and sat down and the moon came in and he saw his wife kissing someone else and he went over to him and punched him and the barman threw him out and then he forgot where he lived.
That’s not a joke.
It was funny when my Dad told it.
On the other side of the world and on the other side of the black road was the last tower. It stood gigantic and empty and so wide that she couldn’t see beyond it. Each brick and stone and column and window was like the one before it and the ones surrounding it and it stretched on and on wide and tall and covered the sky in concrete. She looked at it as they walked past. It mirrored the towers opposite in size and shape but it was empty and the rooms were black and solemn in their dead rows. The grass in the gardens had grown long and yellow and the black washing lines that stretched from one wall to another horizontally against the back door were unfilled and broken and they hung limp on wire fences and walls and little stone posts. The windows were closed and covered in a film of dirt and dust and inside there were empty childless rooms and walls without photographs and there were spilled paint tins and pieces of filth and cans of lager and sheets of newspaper turned over or spread out in the middle of the floor. Outside the lights from the lampposts had turned from green to grey and she and the boy had turned to black and white and she couldn’t see another living thing. There were no dogs and no men and no birds in the sky and nothing crawling on any stone. She had never heard her footsteps so loud and she had never fe
lt so lonely while she was standing next to someone else. Dorothy was gone. Dad’s voice was quiet.
I have to do one more thing, the boy said. Then we can go home and watch cartoons or something. You have to come with me even if you don’t want to. You have to stay with me now because he saw you and if he has seen you you’re not safe on your own anymore.
I could go with Lucky.
You’re only safe with me.
I could go with Lucky.
Please. Just come on.
The last of the light that clung to the lower lid of the sky sank into the ground to be with all those who had already gone from the world and everything became as black as the road. Two minutes in the eyes of Plastic Jesus and four hours in the eyes of the mad bird went by. She faced her own shadow stretched out on the floor in front of her. It was tall and it was thin and it led her on. Dad watched TV in her head and Mum looked through the letterbox and said fuck and it was so loud and.
Have you really seen him before, the man from the car?
Yes. What’s his name?
I can’t say.
My father had a little box that he kept upstairs. Inside the box was a tape cassette that I was never allowed to listen to and a picture cut from a newspaper. The picture was of a man sitting on the side of the road with his hand drawn up to his temple and his jeans ripped and his face crooked and furious. The man in the picture was the man in the car. I don’t know what that means.
Me either. He’s done some pretty bad shit.
He was young in the picture.
Why would they take a picture of him unless he did something bad? The worst people end up in newspapers. Maybe that’s where it all started.
Do you really think that?
If you’re bad once you’re always bad.
The boy looked at her and held her hand. The clouds fell down around their ankles and the street lights lit it all up. The tower curved and ended and at its end she saw that it was burned and broken. The walls were blackened and twisted and the whole front face of the building had been torn off and she could see the construction of the floors and pipes and rooms that were laid bare and leaning to one side. The rooms and halls were caved in. Bits of concrete stuck to rusted pipes like the sparse leaves on the branches of a winter tree. The walls and rooms were black and open to the sky. The picture frames were still hanging on the wall though the faces of the families were all burned away. It was beyond the end of the world. It was the end of all things.
Where are you going? he said.
Her red shoes were alone in their own thoughts and they took her to the lower garden that had no grass only dirt and she went to the window and rubbed the smoke from the outside and looked in and saw nothing but that same darkness hanging fat in the air. She walked around to where the end of the building was gone and the whole side of the tower had fallen down and black bricks and toys and dolls and lamps and broken wood from chairs or cabinets were spread from it going back to another car park that was empty except for a few discarded balls and another discarded bike thrown next to two overturned bins. She looked at the rows of floors and ceilings with steel spikes sticking out in all directions and places all the way to the top until she had to step back over the loose bricks to see further up and then she started to climb.
The little slit of moon was high and it shone its silver light up there to all the rooms she couldn’t see and the living that had its end and all the hard front doors still closed and for no reason at all. He came behind her and pulled her down and said you can’t go up there and she scratched her hand on the first iron rail that she had reached up to hold. She looked at her hand. It bled. She held her hand up and the cut ran down to her twisted finger and the blood was black in the light of the moon.
All the moths were alive again inside her. She took a stone in her hand and threw it and it went through a window. She was calm and quiet. She looked at her shoes and then back up at the large sky that changed fourteen times a day and Tick wiped the blood off her finger with the end of his tee shirt. She let him look at the twist and the missing nail she had got when she had decided to hurt herself and she let him kiss it.
I didn’t know they came down so easily, she said.
What?
All those walls.
Tick touched her face and then he went up to the edge of the smashed concrete floor and he rubbed his hand all the way across it and as he did there was ash that fell down and dust that went up. He looked at the building and he told her that the tower block had been set on fire a few years ago.
It didn’t burn for very long, he said, but something exploded and it made everything worse. The whole side of the building collapsed. Nobody died. The boy who did it was my friend and he was taken away soon after that. If the man tells you to do something you do it. It doesn’t matter what it is. Some of us steal and some of us tell the police our parents or our teachers touch us. It’s amazing how much power you have if everyone thinks you’re innocent. Some of us stab people. We all sell rabbits at the side of the road. It’s the way things go. You have to work hard to get what you want and this is the only way people like us can do it. My friend comes back to see me. Sometimes. He gets scared and sad and that’s why he burns everything up. He can’t help it. Everyone is scared though. Everyone here. There’s a lady who lives just on the end of our block and she goes to catch the bus at quarter to ten every morning to see her sister. Gets dressed up really nice in a green hat and a shawl and everything and puts on a bunch of makeup and goes to sit in the bus stop but she never gets on the bus. She can’t. She’s too scared.
Scared of what?
Being too far from home I suppose. Going somewhere new.
Dorothy cried on a stone at the other side of the street. They walked the length of the tower to the side that the fire had not reached. The walls were grey again and there was a red door with a gold number. The garden grew there and it had been tended and the path was clean and the fence stood straight but it was the only one. The number on the door was seven and she traced it with her finger and said seven. Seven. Seven.
She was hungry. She had worn the same clothes for days and days and she had sweated in them and the wind caught the sweat and made her cold. She was thirsty too but there were no shops. Everything was boarded and broken and it made her feel so much like she was going home that she couldn’t think and. Tick knocked the door and the number rattled on the wood like bells and someone with a small high voice shouted back through the letterbox.
Who is it?
It’s me.
Say the thing.
I’m a little white rabbit and I think I’m running late.
*
The door opened. Inside the last tower the walls were naked and the brickwork and cement was uncovered and everything was stripped down to its bare bones and covered with spray painted words that she couldn’t read. The letters were big and small and zigzagged running down the long corridor from one end to the end that had been destroyed by black fire and low smoke. Two metal doors with a split in the middle stood opposite them and inside was a silver box that had blue and white tape crossed over the front.
Don’t go in there ever, the boy said.
She was hungry. Thirsty.
The red door closed behind them and she turned around. Standing behind the door was a little girl who was latching locks and spitting into a castle shaped bucket. The girl climbed onto a stool to see into a small hole in the middle of the door and after a moment she came back down again and stood in front of them. She opened her mouth and blew a pink bubble that grew and grew and then popped. She sucked it back in again and chewed loudly.
You really are fucking late this time.
I know.
Who’s she?
My friend.
Is she allowed?
Yeah.
She’s ugly.
So are you.
The little girl scratched her head and went to the lifts and tore a little of the tape away from a rusted nail an
d she took her hair in her hands and tied the yellow ribbon there. She was singing. I don’t like anyone, she sang. I don’t like you or anyone and if I say she can’t go upstairs you have to listen to me. I don’t like anyone and I don’t have to let you up if I don’t want to. I don’t like you or them or anyone else because it’s good and I feel good and so, so, so.
The little girl finished tying her hair up and went back to the door to spit. Tick kissed the girl’s cheek and she sat on the stool and looked at her toes and began to sing again. She was quiet while the boy turned away and went along the corridor to a stone staircase that led up and up and up in the dark and the green light from the town that pulsed ripe and pretty in the blurred glass. She followed the boy up the stairs and through a heavy metal door that was covered in the same blue and white tape that told them to not go on. Do not cross. Any spare change? Any?
Mercy.
I come here sometimes when I’m supposed to be in school, the boy said. I come here when I’m too mad to think and I come here when Mum is getting too much and I come here when he tells me to because he trusts me. There’s only a few of us he picks for this job. We’re the ones he trusts the most. I like it though. It’s such a big game. Everything is.
Is it?
You should hear us.
I can hear you now.
They went through the door they shouldn’t have gone through and down a corridor that was pale and narrow and covered with crooked drawings of men and rabbits and rainbows and women and hills next to houses with one window and a smoking chimney and three sets of stairs. There were trees drawn along the wall. Birds. Cars. Sunny faces that smiled with closed eyes. Further up there were schools burned down and shops with flowers and rabbit chasers with tired generous faces.
This is my one, he said.
She looked. The boy pointed to a picture of the beach and the sea and himself playing football and waving off to someone who had not yet been drawn. There was a big white house with open doors and a garden and a dog that dug and held its face to the sun. There was the sea and one silver fish that looked like Walter but may have been someone else, another poet dressed in scales with a shining silver eye. The boy pointed.
The Insomnia Museum Page 14