Gary’s mind throbbed, his throat burned like someone had taken a blowtorch to it. It was the weekend but it was still dark and he’d awoke to find a remorseless sensation of fright pummeling him, the disconcerting fear that the guilty and the prematurely dying have.
His eyelids dragged themselves apart and he was greeted by the sight of himself in the mirror in the wardrobe door, buried there beneath the covers and looking like a cloth hillock. It was uncomfortable when the first thing you saw in the morning was yourself.
There was his head, freckled and orange, his eyes buried in his face like a pair of golf balls in a bunker, the same old features but with new wrinkles every day, and there heavy in his mind and never far away, the nagging sensation that things might have been different and maybe they still should be.
He was hot and dry mouthed and his paunchy stomach felt as ill at ease as his lungs and throat. His balls and dick howled too, they felt sore. He knew it, this was drink and smoke and this was the feel of last nights infidelity. He groaned and shut his eyes again. He knew it wasn’t true, but he felt like Jackie was watching over him, perhaps holding a scalding cup of coffee that she was going to hurl in his face, a knife in her hand ready then diving in to stick him in the throat. She was a tender wife, she was merciful. She'd place a finger on his lips and tell him to be quiet as he gurgled. “Shush Gary,” she'd say, “shush.”
Jackie was actually away on a team building exercise with Pauline and the other grey people from her office, but Gary couldn’t help thinking about her bursting in and knowing everything. He had the ingrained siege mentality of the married man, he always expected the worst.
With effort he managed to roll over and look at the pillow to his left. To his relief he saw that a note rested where a woman’s head should have been. It was written on a crisp and slightly furled piece of lined notebook paper, the spidery hand only legible because he knew who’d written it. A cute misspell finished the note above the name and the kissed sign off, betraying the authors foreign birth.
You’re great but I had to go.
Thanks for last night. I had great time..
Daisy
x
Daisy Chu had dark hair and eyes with cool epicanthic folds that he had noticed when she’d sat next to him in the cafe yesterday. It was late Friday afternoon and Gary had been tearing up the sugar packet on his table with what he liked to think of as his tender scholarly hands, grumbling about the price of the coffee and feeling just about as dislocated from everything as he’d ever felt before in his life.
Daisy had sat next to him, teary, obviously looking for company, for a conversation that she could steer in the direction of sympathy.
“What’s the matter?” She’d been in the self help lecture he’d just given.
Daisy told him the goofy story about how Glossophobia prevented her from speaking out and making the most of her educational journey. She’d said she didn’t know what to do about it. Gary had been proud of himself for not laughing at her foolish sounding pronunciation of the word Glossophobia, the substituting of the letter ‘L’ for an ‘R’ and the hurried jumble that she’d spat out the final cadence ‘phobia’ in. He gently rolled the word around in his mind as he liked to do, feeling the italics and probing the sound of it in his head. He loved words. He had grown up wanting to be a playwright but it had never worked out.
“I know what fear is Daisy, can I call you Daisy? And I know how to attack it. That’s the main thing. You channel your fear and you make it yours. Recognise what it is then move on it.”
“But I know what my fear is-”
“Shhhhh,” he soothed, “through hard work, fear can become something incredible, it’s a fuel that can burn.” Gary had a profound knack for producing such sentences in the face of adversity. Oblique little mantras that really didn’t mean anything but gave the impression that he’d picked a positive strand out of the nothing. This had been key in his success as a motivational speaker.
“But tell me! How I can learn when I cannot speak? I can’t discuss what I wish to! I am afraid,” she wept.
Gary looked deeply at her and imagined what it would be like to have some kind of true feeling. It might have been nice, actually caring about what she was saying, or believing the words that came out of his own mouth. He drank, quaffing most of the lukewarm coffee in one go, realising to his silent horror that he’d forgotten to stir it properly. He endured the sour initial taste and the saccharine finish of the two sugars as one might a trip to the dentists, a necessary evil. He adjusted his trousers, and made room for himself.
“I can help you Daisy. It’s my job.” He'd set the cup down amidst the papers she’d brought and watched her face as the name badges and notes lay where she’d dropped them, soaking up the small puddle of liquid that was slowly seeping across the surface and dripping onto his satchel that was by then prostrate and forgotten on the floor.
Saturday morning. He hauled himself from bed (revealing the downy shoulders that reminded Jackie of a teenage boy's poorly bearded cheeks) and shrouded himself with his black silk dressing gown. He made his way down to the kitchen, pristine and proud, its polished white and black surfaces seldom used, its breakfast bar too familiar with takeaways and microwaved meals.
It was straight to the fridge and the milk right out of the carton; a mouthful of this, a nibble of that. This was a hangover after all and Gary had never had much willpower. His father George had often remarked on this, on his flighty son who could never be relied upon to finish anything and who didn’t like the outdoors. He would often mutter under his breath at the boy and say things behind his back, or declare to his friends that he didn’t like the cut of his jib, bitterly telling them all that one day he had a mind to deliver a slap that would knock some drive into him. But he never did. Gary didn’t know any of this. He had seen his father as a distant Luddite with a bare personality and calloused hands, an old man with a lack of wit and originality that was sincere yet far from endearing. George was dead fifteen years now.
Gary sat himself on a chrome legged stool, scratching himself beneath the white spotlights in the ceiling. He was bathed in their artificial glow and could see his shadow projected onto the table surface next to him as if in some kind of show, perhaps in one of the plays he would liked to have written, the sparse, dialogue driven pieces that explored atavism and solipsism and other long winded terms that he wasn’t totally sure he understood, the kind of terms he bandied about in his lectures to help justify to people why they should find their lives satisfying and unique.
He puckered his lips in the morning air, leisurely replaying the drinks in the bar with Daisy and the feel of her thigh under his hand in the back of the taxi. He recalled the static of her tights with fondness and felt himself getting hard again at the thought of her.
The answer machine beeped. It had been dormant on the counter beneath a framed photo of him and Jackie, but now it wanted attention. The pre programmed voice blared out first, followed by another that was no less disinterested but ten times more real; his daughter Beth’s. He marveled at how bored she sounded. She was a lot like her mother.
"Dad are you there? Dad?...God you’re never there. ..um...OK well look I’m staying at Zoe’s house tonight so I’m not coming back for dinner. I’ll probably stay over too. Pick me up tomorrow. You’d better call when you wake up.”
How he missed the little girl who listened to what he said and thought he was cool. He still tried to engage with Beth, usually around the dinner table, attempting to prove he was interested and that he could still relate to her, that their minds might connect given half a chance, but she didn’t seem to care anymore. When he asked her anything, enquiring about her day or what she was doing in school, who her friends were or what she was doing this weekend; she would stare at him witheringly, would pause and sniff like it was the least important thing in the world and then condescendingly swat him away like a horses tail on some little bug flying too close to its arse. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ She’d say before turning back to the flickering TV on the sideboard.
He called her back and she picked up the phone after a single beep. She’d probably had it in her hand, ready for his call.
“Dad?”
“Hey Beth! You alright?”
“I suppose,”
“How was your night? What did you get up to?”
“Not much. The usual.”
“That’s great!”
“Yeah,”
“Yeeeah.”
“So are you coming? I want a lift.”
“Sure no problem. And do you want it now?”
“Yeah,”
“Are you at Zoe’s house?”
“Yeah,”
“And you want me to come over there now?”
“I just said that didn’t I?”
She hung up.
Gary’s smile faded and he smoothed his hair down. This was his relationship with his daughter now and there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. Not since fucking up some months previously.
He cringed to remember. In the summer he’d met a Romanian immigrant who cleaned at the college where he’d been giving a series of dull lectures about corporate competencies. They’d met standing outside the building in the blistering heat, each wishing they could be relaxing somewhere rather than working their dull jobs. The conversation had began with Gary asking for a cigarette. It had ended with him offering her cleaning work, easing the burden on Jackie and giving Carla, for that was her name, extra cash to spend on Bartosz, her five year old who had a drastic case of irritable bowel syndrome that was driving her crazy.
Everything had been fine. She came and hoovered, made the beds, did the washing and polishing and everyone was happy, until after just two weeks and without any real provocation, the two of them ended up having dreary wheezing sex on the sofa in the lounge. The affair lasted two weeks before Gary ended it, firing Carla quickly and managing to massage his conscience by giving her a decent severance wage and telling himself that the fact that he felt guilty proved he was still a good person. Weeks passed and he thought he’d gotten away with it until he arrived home one evening to find Beth with a pair of Carla’s sticky rubber gloves in her lap. She’d found them down the sofa and although that didn’t say much it said just enough for her to draw a conclusion once she saw the look on Gary’s face.
He pulled up outside Zoe’s in his people carrier and without bothering to call went straight to the front door, rapping on it smartly.
The door swung open and he was greeted by a boy who looked on the cusp of adolescence. There was the beginnings of acne, the appearance of hair between the eyebrows, crust at the corners of his large mouth that looked like it had been carved into the face with a hacksaw. He looked as if the mere fact he was alive was an annoyance.
“Oh hello!”
“Who are you?”
Gary bent down and put both his hands on his knees as he lent in close.
“I’m Beth’s dad, Gary. What’s your name?”
The boy turned his head away; tilting it back as if he’d just caught a whiff of a harrowing dog turd. Gary’s breath had washed right over him and the boy did not appreciate it.
“I’m Aaron,” he sighed. “I suppose you’ll be wanting Beth.”
“Thanks big man. That would be great,”
“Great,” he repeated.
Aaron walked into the house shaking his head slowly; Gary could hear him muttering but couldn’t make out the words. The house was average. They had a TV and they had a stereo. There was also a coffee table which Gary was amused to notice had several copies of those trashy magazines, the cheap types with single syllable exclamatory titles where the headlines feature horrifying things that have happened to plain looking women.
“Hold on I’ll get her.” Aaron stood at the bottom of the stairs, pulled the hood on his sports sweater over his greasy long hair and immediately threw his arms wide like an opera singer. He screamed up to his sister, his voice ringing throughout the downstairs at disconcerting volume.
“Zooooooeeeeeee? Zooooooooeeeeeeee!!”
“What do you want Aaron?” came a cry from upstairs as a door was torn open, allowing the thrashing chug of heavy metal guitars to suddenly escape, blaring out into the whole of the house.
“Zoooooooeeeeeeee!”
“You’d better shut up you before I come down there and shut you up!”
“Zooooooooeeeeeeeee!” He repeated in an even higher pitch, squeaking a little in that way that boy’s voices do when they’re starting to break. “Zoooooooooeeeeee! Fuckin’ Zooooooeeeeeee! Zooooooeeeeeeee!”
“That’s it!”
The sound of footsteps thundering down the stairs; it was Zoe and Beth and neither of them so much as looked at Gary as they flew into view, a mass of black clothes and white skin. Beth grabbed Aaron from behind by his arms so his shaking torso was pitifully exposed. Zoe punched him hard in the stomach. The boy lay on the floor winded and as the girls started kicking him he somehow kept laughing. Shocked Gary was sure that if he could have, Aaron would still be screaming his sister’s name out, just to see how far he could take it.
Gary shouted out at last to make it stop and the girls whirled around as the music blasted amongst them, guitars wailing. Zoe looked embarrassed but Beth simply curled her lip and placed a podgy hand on her waist. Gary noticed this and stood, arms by his sides with fists clenching and unclenching, unsure of himself. The reality of this premature confrontation hit home suddenly and his eyes dilated like pools of spilled oil. He realised he was afraid, afraid of his own daughter.
Thankfully Aaron came to the rescue. The boy picked himself up from the floor, smoothed down his lank wave of hair and looked at the two girls with their tight black t shirts and their flared denim jeans where chains dangled loosely, at their sweat bands and matching fake tattoos. He laughed cruelly in a small high pitched stutter, his teeth with their train track braces gleaming slick with saliva.
“Beth your Daddy’s here,”
“Thanks Aaron,” she said, “but do I look like I’m fucking blind?”
“Bethany, we don’t say that word!” Gary managed, in an effort to re-establish himself. He held on, glaring for half a second before turning toward Zoe. “Hey Zo is your mum in? I want to thank her for looking after my Bethany.”
Aaron laughed.
“I’m afraid not Mr Alderman,”
“Oh well just tell her I said to say thanks then will you?”
“I’ll do that,”
“Great well let’s get home then, shall we?”
“We’re not going home Dad. You’re taking me and Zoe to the Roller Derby,”
“Oh, wow are you girls playing? That’s great!”
“We’re watching. Not that you'd know, but we actually play on Monday’s.”
Gary ignored the jibe. “I’ll take you if you like. I’ve always wanted to see the Roller Derby.”
Zoe raised a hand as if she was in school. “I’m sorry Mr Alderman but my mum says I have to stay here and look after my brother,”
"What?” said Beth.
“She did!”
“That’s OK girls he can come with us if he wants, I can keep an eye on him if we all go. It’ll be fun!” He looked at their faces “I’ll call and let your mum know.”
“Great,” Aaron hitched his crotch with both hands, “I love fun.”
Gary paid for them at the Roller Derby. They were in a large hall with a circular track ringed by the crowd. Aaron was slurping noisily on a can of Coke and surveying everything, a look of surly amusement plastered across his face.
“So what the hell are the rules to this thing?”
The premise of Roller Derby, Gary had discovered, was for two players to try to skate past a pack of players in front, scoring points for every opposing team member they managed to fight their way past. He explained this to Aaron carefully.
“So basically they have to beat the shit out of each other?”
“Well not exactly, there’s quite a lot of skill involved, they have to-”
“Yeah, could I get a Hot Dog Gary?”
When the teams came out Gary shifted in his chair and swigged on his mineral water. He looked at the audience and saw that everybody here was much younger than him. He sucked in his stomach and untucked his shirt. The others came and sat; Aaron to his left and Beth to his right with Zoe rounding things off at the end. As the pack set off, the sound of bodies clunking into each other and the echoing shouts of the crowd made Gary feel disembodied and strange. Noises and crowds reminded him of childhood nightmares where he was crushed by oncoming masses, unable to run properly, as if he was underwater and his limbs wouldn’t do what they were supposed to.
Aaron seemed to be enjoying himself. He jumped out of his seat as two girls went sprawling on the floor in a mess of arms and legs just two metres away.
“Shit!” he whooped, laughing and clapping Gary on the shoulder, “See that Gary? She almost broke her fucking arm!”
One of the players with a single painted panda eye on her face and blood painted on the corners of her mouth fought through the pack and established herself as the lead Jammer.
“She’s good!” Gary shouted.
“Yeah, she’s awesome!” replied Zoe, grinning broadly. Gary thought to himself that she was a nice looking kid and that she had a nice smile and she really took care of herself. He was sure her chest wasn’t that shapely the last time he saw her.
“Yeah I know!” said Beth, catching Gary’s eye for a fleeting moment and taking a bite out of her Hot Dog, the mustard and the ketchup squelching together in a contrasting amalgamation of colour, her teeth sinking deep into the bread.
“What position do you play Zo?”
“Its called Pivot. I’m one of those girls at the front. Beth blocks, she’s the best.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Gary said, “Beth’s always been strong. I remember once on holiday in France Beth tackled the leader of the kids club because he didn’t like her drawing. Isn’t that right Beth. You were so upset!”
"He was trying to embarrass me,”
“So you tried to kill him?”
“He deserved it.”
The referee blew his whistle loudly. The main body of the pack had fallen to the ground and were writhing on the floor in a heap of wheels and discomfort. One of them had lost her footing under a particularly ferocious shoulder barge and had taken out several of the other skaters. It didn’t look like any of them came of it well.
What do you call yourself Beth?” Asked Gary.
“Beater Blocker.”
“That’s funny,”
“It’s a pun.”
“Yeah. What’s yours Zo?”
“Miss Disaster”
“Is that a pun too?”
“No.”
“Well sounds like it is!” he said, winking.
The whistle blew again as the players climbed to their feet unsteadily, helping each other up. Time was up and this early bout was over. It was probably a good job, Gary had sensed that he was going to have to tell Beth to cheer up, that this whole day was a treat. Maybe a break would do her a little good.
“Dad I’m going to the toilet.”
“Me too,” said Zoe.
“Well don’t take too long, you don’t want to miss anything.”
They stood and shuffled out sideways, making for the corridor without looking back. Gary watched them both, his eyes flicking from one to the other.
As fifteen minutes passed by, the next bout started but still the girls hadn’t returned. Gary could feel a fret coming on like the onset of a nosebleed, that hot feeling you get as the red liquid trickles and you don’t quite know what it is yet. He scanned the hall.
Aaron was toying on his phone and whistling to himself. Gary leaned his gingery face down to speak to him, surprising the boy who, as he turned was shocked to see a pair of quivering nostrils above him and Gary far closer than he’d actually thought he would be.
"Have you seen the girls?”
“No!”
“They went to the toilet over ten minutes ago,”
“Maybe they’re getting drinks? They always go off together. It’s fine.”
“I’m going to check on them.”
“Do what you feel,” Aaron shrugged.
Gary made his way to where the toilets were. He walked through the corridor which was deep blue in colour and lit by strip lights that maintained a steady whitened glow that bounced off the narrow walls. He knocked on the ladies toilet door and pushed it open ajar, calling inside hopefully. There was no answer and he could make out no whispering within. He let the door thump shut.
He stood thinking, they were probably smoking or something. He was unsure about his appropriate response. Should he plump for moral sermonising or liberal acceptance? He thought about maybe even asking if they minded if he shared one with them; they’d probably think that was cool.
Gary wandered back down the corridor and came to the end. There was another doorway to his left that declared itself open to ‘Staff Only’. He pushed it easily and was greeted by the disdainful sight of a moist outdoor service yard. It was walled in with bare brick, smelled strongly of cigarettes and was set out in an L-shaped narrow space that turned a corner where all the boxes and rubbish from the kitchens were stored. It was an area where dirty water was chucked and where pigeons shat. A metal grille span on one of the walls and he could make out crumbling concrete in between the brickwork.
His first instinct told him that this was pointless and he should turn back, but something caught his eye. There was a black blobbed mass that seemed to be moving in one of the corners between two tall stacks of boxes. He was confused up until the moment where he wasn’t, one glorious minute of not knowing sandwiched in between. The realisation arrived quickly and with a flurry of shock. He saw a flash of white and a twirl of pink wrapped about a twine of darkness that he realised was a ponytail of hair. It wasn’t difficult to see, like a solved puzzle it was revealed, the two girls pressed up and against the wall together and enjoying a passionate, heavy embrace.
Zoe had her back turned to him and her hand was digging up Beth’s shirt, kneading softly into her breast, the two of them were kissing hard. Beth had her hand on the back of Zoe’s neck, stroking her skin and playing with the loose fronds of black hair corkscrewing down from beneath her ponytail and the tubular looking neon hair band. There was no other movement around, it was all still and grey and everything seemed pale in the damp autumnal sky, the furred rain drizzling upon them from the static thatch of cloud above.
Gary stood with one hand on the door watching. He felt unable to move. He thought about clearing his throat and making himself known but something told him he shouldn't, that it would be an unforgivable intrusion none of them would forget.
He turned, ready to leave, breathing deeply and shaken, but decided to look back just one more time. He would not be able to explain why he had to have one more look if you asked him, he would only be able to tell you it was inevitable that it would happen. He was that youth again, the one he’d always been, the boy in the field by the electric fence, surrounded by the damp and ankle deep in sludge, knowing not to touch the metal but unable to help it. He could never walk past without touching the thin wire, the thrill of knowing what the jolt through the nail would be like and the shock of it always being the same, sticking a finger out no matter what was unavoidable, doing it to do it was the only thing that ever mattered.
He turned and of course at the exact same time Beth opened her eyes. The two of them made direct eye contact across the yard. Beth continued with her kiss but her eyes remained on her father, a final silent rebellion. Gary wondered immediately if he had known all along that this would happen. They gazed, frozen and locked in the moment as if someone had pressed a pause button. All that could be heard was the muffled sound of the crowds back in the hall and the thrum of the skates on the wood, the buzzing of an extractor fan up on the stone wall above their heads.
Gary opened his mouth ready to say something, but instead just nodded at her, thinning his lips with what he intended as a smile. Beth blinked and looked for a second more before shutting her eyes again, returning her full attention to Zoe. The moment was over.
Gary stepped back inside and let the door close, shaking his head as he made his way back to the noisy sports hall. He sat down next to Aaron in a daze. The boy leaned in to him.
“Hey Gary, your phone rang so I answered it. It was your wife, she said for you to call her back. She mentioned something about some note?”
Gary closed his eyes and breathed deep as he accepted the phone. It immediately rang again in his hand, with Jackie’s name emblazoned and flashing on its screen in front of him. He declined the call and turned the phone off.
He was staring into his lap when the girls returned. Zoe was smiling broadly. Beth followed nonchalantly behind.
“Hope we didn’t miss anything!” she said and looked at her father.
“No it’s fine, you didn’t miss much,” said Gary, “either of you two want a drink? I’ll be paying.”
