Seville

Was it too mawkish? Had he overshot it? He didn’t know. A stubborn summer rain peppered the windscreen and a final looking tube of light forced its way through the rafters of cloud. The evening was coming.

Peters scrawled his signature on the card anyway, a bewildering squiggle of ink that whorled beneath the note he’d written in the middle. Peters liked the open promise of white, the crisp smooth surface of the new card. You could put anything on there, change a meaning, give a hint. It could be anything you wanted it to be.

He stuffed the card into its envelope, climbed out of the cab and ran to meet Lars. Lars wasn’t a friend yet but Peters had high hopes for him. They’d met the way Peters met most of his acquaintances, on a bar stool, shoulders drooping, spouting increasingly slurred declaratives that neither of them were likely able to back up.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” said old Lars, as Peters approached. He was a thick necked brute with a head like a ball of plasticine and tattoos on each hand. A Swede apparently, although his accent was weak.

“What?” replied Peters who was no slouch himself, a thirty five year old Englishman, over six foot with size thirteen boots. He patted his back pocket to check the card was still there.

Lars pointed to the taxi with a smirk.

"Him."

The front passenger door was open and the driver was leaning down with his sallow face just visible, jabbering in Spanish and waving at Peters.

"Oh."

Peters stalked back and with eventual effort managed to count out the appropriate coins. “Fucking peseta’s. Don’t expect a tip little man.” He dropped the money straight onto the seat, avoiding the driver’s outstretched palm.

In the bar Lars displayed real promise. He bought the first couple of rounds and Peters was delighted to find that he smoked the same cloying cigarettes as him. Sitting down, Lars hunching, Peters tapping a finger on the card he had forced into his pocket, they talked, swapping army stories and drinking as much as they wanted to. The low lit bar with it's spinning overhead fans and it's population of drinkers, flies and lizards was not the type of place where you were made to stop what you were doing because you were doing too much of it. No one cared here, you were alone as long as you found your own way home and left with little fuss. That was the way Peters liked it. It was the kind of attitude he understood. This bar was one of the only places he respected in this country.

The army talk went on for a while, but although it might have been nice, it couldn't go on forever. It was a time that was over and Peters himself was done with it. He found that dwelling on such finished matters produced a sense of being slowly crushed, as if time and the sense of its passing suddenly lay heavy on the back. He avoided too much talk of that history when he could, the things he’d done were best left the way they were, a clouded fog of buttoned down malaise. Confiding in people was not something he was familiar with and besides, he believed that holding things back afforded him an air of real, palpable mystery, which was another thing he liked.

After a time it became clear that it was Peters turn to buy the drinks, so he obliged, counting out the pesetas on the table whilst Lars smoked and looked out the window at the dusted white pavement and the people that walked on it. As he counted, Peters grumbled about the stupid foreign money and the stupid foreign people and stood and walked to the bar to order. He was new here and he felt at odds with the city and the sweating humid constancy of the days, of the evenings and the nights.

He returned to the table with two bottles of beer and a pair of amber whiskey chasers on the tray and set them down. Then as he sat, he found that with a smoky sigh and a sense of crippling inevitability, Lars had begun to brag.

Lars was drunk already. He laid a hand on Peters shoulder and declared that he’d come to Seville by night, by boat then on horseback, on the run of course, though whether it was from the law or the mob he wouldn't say. He told Peters he’d killed a man in a brawl in self-defence. He stood enthusiastically and acted out the process of smashing the metal bar stool round the poor fellows face. Lars said that the man had taken the blow right in the temple and had fallen to his knees, then the floor.

"He was crying as he fell, but I expected he would be. You know what he'd done? Called me a stinking ass and came at me with a bottle. Would you believe it? I put him to the ground. What would you have had me do, huh?” Lars said, "I'm a man." He implored Peters and held his grubby hands up in a gesture of innocence. Peters shrugged. He’d never killed anyone face to face, he had no real frame of reference.

"It doesn't sound like he deserved to die."

"Well who does deserve it? Not like I killed him on purpose."

Lars had been in the city a while and had apparently seen many things; prostitutes with penises, weekend long parties, 12 kilo fish at the end of his fishing line, choking motorbikes that worked anyway, all kinds of meat and all kinds of money. He told Peters about a time when he’d been chased by a pack of stray dogs near the San Sebastian Gardens. Lars claimed to have caught a dog’s mouth in his hands, keeping the jaws prised open and preventing it from biting him.

“I looked him in the eyes and I told him ‘NO.’ We respected each other. We were brothers not foes. I let him go and he was on his way. His friends too, they did not dare face me,”

“You’re full of shit.”

“I’m telling you,” said Lars, eyes like lumps of coal, “don’t you call me no liar.”

Peters told his companion about some of the times before he came out here. About the walks up to the fell ridge with his brother Frank and his two slobbering dogs, about the card games, the smell of the fire and the way you could see the buzzards cruising in the sky on a clear day. Peters used the Faulkner quote he had memorised to highlight the anecdote. He liked to try to impress people with it and often had to go to great lengths to shoehorn it into conversations.

“Faulkner said if he was reincarnated he’d come back as a buzzard. He said nothing hates the buzzard, nothing envies him or wants him. He said he’s never in danger, and he can eat anything,”

“Who the fuck’s Faulkner?” said Lars, “what are you talking about?”

Peters emptied his glass into his waiting mouth and gulped the burn back. He hadn’t told Lars about the feel of Franks soft little wife underneath him, her hot breath and the feel of her hungry teeth biting him on his bottom lip. He hadn’t mentioned the black eye that he could still almost feel that Frank had given him in return. He’d had her on the kitchen floor and it had almost been worth everything it had cost.

By eleven they were both drunk and the talk had turned to women. The bar was still full, populated by unshaven natives who ignored the two men. The locals were easy working guys and the place was without tourists. Everyone there was drinking to forget and to enjoy it, just to do it. The air felt full of smoke.

“Women are easy. They love me,” said Lars. “I see a women I like and I take her immediately. I say ‘come here,’ and you know what? They always do. They like strong men like me. Men who take everything.”

“Guys like you?” Peters snorted.

“Your tone. I can see you don’t believe me. But you haven’t seen me with women.”

“I don’t need to see you with anyone. That's not how it is. I had a wife, I have a daughter. They’re certainly not easy, I’ll tell you that. You’re talking out of your arse.”

“Wrong. You're not doing it right. They think you are weak so that’s why it’s not easy. Show them your strength, like I do.” Lars pulled back a sleeve to reveal an arm that looked like a bag of footballs. “Show them you are a man.”

Peters pulled the blue envelope from his pocket and rested it on the table, ignoring the bent corners and rumples it had picked up. He placed a hand on it, as if he was trying to feel the brusque apology it held inside.

A glass at the end of the bar smashed the moment his hand touched the name written on the envelope. Peters looked up. As the responding laughter rang out he gazed across the room and took in the camaraderie. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. All of a sudden he felt like he couldn’t stand to be in this country, or anywhere at all for that matter. He lifted his hand from the card, from the black ink of the name Susan. Everything seemed so forced, so full of lies and the truth that people left out. How the hell could everybody stand it?

Lars continued.

“I’ve been here six months and there isn’t a woman I haven’t tried that I haven’t had. I’ve fought animals and men without thinking and I’ve drank every night.”

“Come on, give it a rest.”

“I tell you. I’ve fought eight men in Seville alone. I fought my own barber, he cut my head when he was shaving it and laughed in my face. So I hit him.”

“Sure. And you won every fight did you?”

“Of course! I am successful in everything I do. I’m strong and I have my confidence,”

“You’ve got a big mouth.”

“Big enough to keep you quiet. Big enough to please your wife if you show me where she is. What do you think of that?” Lars laughed. The light shone dimly on his sweating forehead. Peters was drunk too, and now he’d had enough.

“I think you’re a stupid lousy lying Swede and you’re full of shit like everyone else. I think I could take you, I think you don’t know anything about anything!”

Peters took what he wanted when he wanted it and this bilious oaf didn’t know a thing about it. He’d finish up here and then send the card like he was meant to. It was just another missed birthday, his daughter would have to suck it up and he’d have to go on and be damned like everyone else wanted him to be. He wasn’t going to waste his whole life being sorry.

“I don’t like the way you talk to people. No one talks to me like that.”

“I’ll talk to you how I like Lars. I’m tired and I don’t like liars and you won’t stop talking,”

“I told you don’t call me no liar!”

“I am calling you a liar. And I’ll bet you,” he emptied the contents of his wallet over the birthday card, and put a hand flat on the table, “that I can take you right fuckin’ now.”

“You think you have strength, but you really have none.”

Peters ignored him. He set his right elbow firm on the wetness of the table, his shirt sleeve rolled up, his left palm flat on the thigh of a long bent leg. Lars did the same, his eyes were bulging and a warm red colour had begun to mantle his cheeks. He threw back his whiskey and smiled at Peters.

“Take a drink!”

Peters did as he was bid and grinned at Lars. “After three we go OK? One round, winner takes all,”

“Good. Here. My wallet.” Lars tossed it onto the table on top of the money Peters had set down.

“Good.”

Their hands met with a start, clapping together. Lars gave the count.

“One. Two. Three.”

They started the arm wrestle. The pair of them tensed with the effort and leaning in toward each other, their arms forced and as firm as possible. Peters had his trousers gripped, the fabric of his jeans bunched in his fist. Lars sweated, making odd grunting noises through gritted teeth.

After barely half a minute had passed Peters thought he had the best of it, he’d boxed as a youth and was not without strength. He held Lars off and slowly worked at the man, centimetre by grudging centimetre through the humid Spanish air. He was with it he felt, focused upon the task and managing to gain the upper hand, in the lead for certain. He tried to make eye contact with Lars and stare him down, attempting to out psyche him as much as out muscle him, just like he used to do with brother Frank who could never take it.

But Lars was not Frank. The big man had extra reserves of strength. The Swede really began to go for it, craning his head down and beginning to force Peters arm back away from him. This was disconcerting. Peters had had their hands barely an inch above the wooden surface and had been on top, so perilously close to victory that he could taste it, but now their two hands were fixed in a clenched hovering embrace. They were still, hands suspended, bodies shaking with the effort. It was the kind of time when a man might have a hernia, burst a vein.

Lars fought back. He leant in even further, almost turning fully in his chair with the exertion, and managed to force Peters' hand back up so that their two arms were upright again, just like they had been at the start. Then Lars bent his wrist down and towards himself, making it hard for Peters to draw the strength from his upper muscles. He steadily began to push Peters’ arm back towards the table.

With that final surge Peters knew he was done for, that he could not summon the strength to fight back from there. There was nothing else for it: he took action.

Peters shifted in his seat slightly to allow himself more room, drew his leg back as far as he could, then kicked Lars under the table, hard, steel toe capped boot connecting with shin bone. Lars grunted and the strength suddenly, momentarily left his arm. In that instant, Peters took his chance and pounced, slamming down their hands to the damp wooden surface with relish, his hairy paw a winner on top. Susan’s card fell quietly to the floor as their hands slammed onto the table, landing in a puddle of beer where it lay unnoticed, soaking up the liquids and the dirt.

Peters stood and swept the money off the table, stuffing it in his pocket and laughing. No one in the bar had noticed them, they weren’t important enough.

“That’s the one!”

“A cheat! A dirty trick.” Lars stood. His two tattooed hands slowly taking hold of the back rest of the chair nearest to him.

“I still won didn’t I?”

Peter’s returned to the bar and blew a load more pesetas. “I won,” he said to the bartender and downed a tequila. He sucked on the lemon that came with it.

“Que?” said the man. He didn’t understand.

“I said I WON. Me,” and he pointed at himself with his thumb.

“Que? lo siento mi amigo, que no hablan Inglés,” said the barman, smiling politely.

“Jesus, you people. Why don’t you ever learn any English?” he said, spitting a lemon seed onto the wooden surface in front of him where it rolled off to the ground.

Peters shook his head. His last thoughts before the chair hit him from behind were that no one ever understood anything and that it would all be a hell of a lot easier for him if they just did. This was Seville and this was everything and he wished he could forget it all.

Apply Liberally When Necessary

It was in the afternoon, peering through the daggers of the October light. Jim didn’t see it so much as smell it, that rubber strawberry tinge coming from the stuff that she was wiping on her lips. It really took him back.

“You’re always putting that stuff on. It stinks,” he said. He was shaken. It didn’t take much these days, the past affected him, made him think too much.

“It’s for the cold. My lips don’t like it when it gets like this, they get all crusty.” Becky held up the little yellow tube of balm in her hand, the domed red lid pointing up towards the sky, and she read the instructions. “Apply liberally and evenly as often as necessary. See?” She smeared more on her mouth with her long tanned finger, staring toward the sun in the distance as she did.

Jim grunted disapprovingly, barely audible above the throbbing siren of the police car that flashed past them. “It still stinks,” he muttered.

They were in the little park. It was sparse and placed too close to the main road, dropped there almost as an afterthought to compensate for the squat grey buildings, shabby shops and lumpen roads of black that made up that sullen London area. Clapton wasn’t exactly what you’d call a home town, Jim rented a flat there. It was a roof and it was four walls and it wasn’t much money. It was nothing else, nothing more. But that was what he’d wanted.

The park wasn’t large. It was fenced off with black iron and dominated by a pond that sat in the middle. There was a thick patch of bullrushes in the bottom corner of the pond and a bridge to the far left that connected the tarmac paths on either side of the water. The bridge was a Chinese style design, a Willow Pattern knock off, painted in peeling green and made out of wood.

Although she’d never told him, Jim was by far Becky’s favourite. They met there every other day, sometimes talking and sometimes not, but always looking to the middle of the water where the large fountain was. The fountain had something that seemed to appease them both, a reverential ambience that the sun lent it at certain times of the day. Its stone base was like an upstretched palm and it had many fingers of water that left it, straining up into the air and catching the light so they shone.

Stamping his feet and hunching his shoulders Jim’s eyes were drawn to the shape of the ripples that formed in the pond. He followed the trails and splashes of the water fingers as they fired up in the air and fell down into the darkness of the pond’s surface, making dimples that circulated and spread outward, markers of nothing in particular. He shivered and sank his chin beneath the zip of his collar, feeling rather uncomfortably summed up by the way the marks in the water disappeared,unnoticed by anybody except him.

“I’m cold. It’s chillier all of a sudden don’t you think? What happened to the summer? Where the hell did it go? It was barely even here in the first place.”

“You’re such a grump man, you know that?”

Jim’s hands were entrenched in his pockets stand-offishly, but Becky, in a moment of tenderness that surprised her, reached out and pinched his elbow with her forefinger and thumb.

“Poor old Jimmy,”

“I’m just saying,”

“It’s not so bad, I like it. You appreciate Autumn, you notice it. You don’t notice Summer unless it’s hot, and Winter’s something else. Here, look I’ll warm you up.”

Emboldened, Becky pushed her hand through the crook at his elbow and linked arms with him, huddling closer, the bright red of her bubble jacket brushing close to the black of his anorak, the colours contrasting nicely. For a moment, in spite of himself, Jim moved closer and almost fully relaxed into her. But that would have been too easy. He realised what he was doing and almost without thought retracted into self awareness, his consciousness scrambling back to maintain its distance, wary and tentative, needing the contact but unable to let go and just accept it.

“I like the pond too,” she said, “I don’t know why but I just do.”

Jim said nothing. He was unable to speak. With Becky’s utterance he’d caught a whiff of that lip balm again, the glossy fruit sheen drifting from her mouth, those two red sleeping bags. Strawberry memories flooded back to him; three of them, and they floated, vying for precedence.

The first memory was years back. He was riding his bike; a red BMX, white wheeled and without gears. He recalled two little fists gripping the ridged handles, and two reckless feet pushing on the pedals. It was a hot July and he was ten, riding along the gravel street behind the terraced houses near his dads old house. The washing lines that were always there in the summer were full, stretched from hooks on the brick walls of the back yards to posts that were planted opposite; blankets and clothes hanging from them like captured ghosts. He used to ride with his friends, as fast as they could, hurtling along beneath the lines and letting the easy hanging fabric touch their faces. The soft coolness of the clean linen and the fruity smell of the sheets would drape across their skin and slide crisply over their heads as they rode blindly, never thinking about what was beyond them or what might be coming because it was irrelevant.

The second. A pillow on his bed and the sweet traces her hair had left, the smell of her still on it where she’d lain, and him rolling over to touch his face to the cloth; reminding himself all over again, and heaving then, returning over onto his back, thinking he wouldn’t see her for another two months, not knowing that that was actually the last time. He recalled sitting up from the pillow and burying his face in the small of her naked back as she sat up to begin the process of leaving. He recalled the messages he sent her for months after. He recalled the thud to the stomach when he knew she’d gone back on everything she ever said. He recalled trying to forget her, consoling himself with the distracting things she’d say in bed, her naivety that had been cute but grew tiresome, her maddening sense of propriety, her drunken vigilance for perceived slights:“What did you say Jim? What did you mean by that? So what I’m not allowed an opinion now?” But it was no good, the smell she left on that pillow was what made the real mark, the thought of her when it was good was what he missed the most.

Number three was clearest, the last time he ever saw Uncle Tony. It was the old folk’s home at Christmas and the room was suffused with the smells of cheap canteen turkey and people who’d plain given up. Tony’s face, like a bone that was once broken and never quite healed, was pale and confused and his crinkled eyes were almost lost in skin. He was eating from a plastic plate and his food had already been cut up for him like he was a baby. “I haven’t seen you in years,” the old man had said to Jim, when his nephew sat down and gave him the hello pat, the gentle smile. Jim had told Tony that in reality it had been just a week previous, and that Jim had brought him those DVD’s and didn’t he remember? Tony had listened, sighed and then in a moment of implied coherence had held Jim's wrist with his shrapnel digits and hissed in a horrified voice whilst staring down into his crotch, “hold onto it boy; for as long as you can! I mean it. They take it from you in the end, you lose everything! There’ll be nothing left of you!” Jim had yanked his hand away like it had been burned and Tony had returned merrily to his food.
Across from them there’d been another old man in an armchair, his head lolling back toward the ceiling and the ever spinning air con fan. Jim remembered sipping on his water and looking at him. He could not reproduce the face of that old man but his strange posture was still familiar, bent up and forced like a fossil trapped in stone. The mans body had looked flattened and twisted as if he’d been glued to his seat in any old way, as if it didn’t matter whether he was comfortable or not because soon he’d be dead. Jim had looked at that other man and at the winking Christmas tree, he'd heard the tinned carols coming through the speakers in the corners of the conservatory, and he'd sworn he’d never come to a place like this ever again. Then he’d turned back to old Tony, the man who’d taught him chess as a boy, mercilessly beating him every time they ever played, the man who'd slapped him in the face when he caught him stealing, the man who always smelled of the outdoors, of wet leaves and the wind; Tony, in that brown chair at Christmas in the old folks home. And his uncle had looked back at Jim with his walnut eyes, and a moment had seemed as if it was about to come, some semblance of clarity, of pathos, something memorable for all the right reasons. Jim had opened his mouth to speak, to say something nice maybe, or to let loose some truth about himself, something they could both share, but the old man had shushed him with a impatient flap of a hand, put down his knife and fork and leaned backward so his chair was hovering on its back two legs alone, the front two up in the air. And Tony had just said, “boy the one thing I can’t stand in here is the smell. It smells like fucking strawberries!”

The traffic hadn’t stopped and nor had the light or the passing of the day. Jim steered the two of them towards the bench which they sat down on. Becky had to remove her arm from his.

“Here, I’ve got your money,” he said, handing over the twenty to her. That was how much it cost. “Might as well pay you now, there's only five minutes left.”

“Oh, thanks,” said Becky, taking it and stuffing it hurriedly in her coat, before, and not without careful consideration, hesitantly offering a little more of herself. “Jim, you know if you wanted maybe next time we could go somewhere. You know, inside to the room. No talking, not if you didn't want. I could show you what I show the-"

“Don’t you get tired of doing that all day?” he spat.

"I dunno, I hadn't thought about it. Sorry I-"

“If I wanted that from you I’d ask.”

“Suppose you would.”

“That's not what this is now.”

“Alright. Sorry, I didn’t mean to-” she actually felt embarrassed, which was strange for her, she’d thought she was passed the embarrassment phase, that she’d gone beyond it. That blanching feeling curdling in her stomach felt new all over again, it was almost as if she'd just downed a shot of a toxic drink that had made her sick years ago and that she swore she'd never touch again. The sensation was familiar but just as alien and unpleasant as it had ever been.

“Forget it, it’s fine."

"Yeah, it is fine." She was suddenly defensive, straining to salvage something, even if it was a negative upper hand. "I mean fuck me, what are you surprised? What do you think this is? Don't get all superior with me alright that's not fucking fair, you're the one who asks for me OK, you're the one who-"

"I know I do. Look I said don’t worry about it. So don't. Forget it, it never even happened.”

He was like a shock absorber. He was made that way.

"Look I'm going." Becky said, and stood, unsure, her hands sagging by her hips that felt overly exposed all of a sudden.

“Don't get upset. It’s not worth it.”

“I'm not upset."

"Well that's good then.”

"Yeah it is, isn't it. I'm not ashamed you know. Not about any of it."

"I know you're not."

"Good."

"Will I see you again?"

"Maybe," she said. She was half right.

“Ok then.”

Becky applied more of the lip balm and frowned at a distant point somewhere above Jims head.

“I'll see you Becky,”

“Bye Jimmy,”

Becky about turned, with next to no aplomb, and left. Jim watched her as she went, crossing the road in her large heels that weren’t quite in keeping with the suburban afternoon. He pushed his hands back into his pockets and turned, squinting in the sun, watched her figure disappear from view, missing her already. The smell of her lip balm was there, faintly, fleeting, in his mind as much as his memories.

Jim turned back to the water and the shadows of the trees that were reflected on the surface of it, and breathed again. There, finished for the day; Becky's dark hair, her white teeth and so too the fruit smell, all gone, and with them everything else. That was that. That was all that was needed.

Still Old School

The suckling allure of my finger as I pop it in my mouth is not seemly. And the papery shame of my spotted hand and the gold ring shining at the knuckle of the finger that slides in, is at best, in poor taste.

“Come on baby, you know you love it,” and I’m rubbing the shoulders, “you act don’t you?”

I’m perched on the ledge of the white dresser. A missing light bulb on the showbiz mirror lends an am-dram sorrow to the proceedings.

“You’d make a perfect Dorothy,”

She’d read OK. She knew her lines, she had the walk and she didn’t seem fake. But she acted it; didn’t become it.

“You really think so Mr Poulin?”

“Call me Harry,”

“Mr...Harry,”

“Sure baby you had all the steps. And you’ve got yourself a great set of teeth.”

She showed them to me and looked down. She’s coy and she’s a knockout. She’s got red hair that burns and she’ll make me young again, for five minutes. Ten if I’m lucky.

I take the plunge and delve my slinky paw down over her shoulder. She doesn’t stop me and I feel awful for a minute as I catch a sight of myself doing it in the mirror.

“Why don’t you turn and face me?”

“Well I’m just not sure,” she says.

“You want this don’t you?”

“Well I suppose you’re still handsome and everything, but-”

“But you want Dorothy though, right?”

“Yes,” she whispers.

I get what I want and I assume she enjoys it for whatever it’s worth. So she’ll get the part, not Dorothy but something, and maybe she’ll get a start out of it, I can do that for her. And I’ll get to look hard at myself in that room, rolled sleeves and a drink in my hand, thinking about what I did with my day. I might wonder at my creaking bones that are such a cliche and my ears that don’t work and I’ll still miss my Jessica and I'll know that if she was still here I wouldn’t be scratching for blow jobs like this.

But for now it’s just here and everyone else has gone or is going. She and I are done in this respect so I help her put on her coat and I kiss her cheek with my dirty mouth. Then I open the door for her and show her out, just like we used to back in the old days.

Back Home

It was around the time he graduated and had to move back home. He’d drank his way around the city for long enough, and he hadn’t got lucky the entire time he was there. Course he told his friends he’d done it lots of times.

He packed his bags, said a goodbye to the stinking fridge and a ‘see you later’ to his housemates. Then Mother drove him all the way home. There was no real heartbreak.

Sloping onto the families drive Mother pulled up the handbrake and told him it was good to have him back and that it had been quiet without him, then they went inside.

It quickly became apparent that things were different. Dad was fat and the living room had been rearranged. The dog had lost his pep and his parents watched TV in separate rooms in the evenings. Sister had grown tits too and she was seeing some barman from down the way. Dad said she wasn’t in very often and she liked to come home late when she was. He also said her skirts were ‘waaaay too short’. It was all very dissatisfying.

They lived on a simple estate that if you looked at it from above, looked like a jesters face in profile. You had your hook nose and your prominent chin and that was where the houses were. Then you had the long hair which was the forest. He had no friends in the area so he took the dog on walks there. It wasn’t big but it was certainly green and that was aesthetically enough.

He found a livery on one of those walks, just through the edge of the Jester’s Hair Forest on a pitching yellow hill. Youngsters rode there at weekends and people kept their horses there and you could go down and watch the horses on the jumps too if you wanted. Not that anybody really did. He found it one evening, semi-drunk on a half a hip flask of Dad’s cheap port and wearing Mother’s fleece that stank of Chesterfield cigarettes.

“That’s a nice horse.” He said after a healthy nip, stuffing the flask back in the arse pocket of his jeans.

“Which one?” said the woman he spoke to.

“Him,” he pointed at the grey one with the black mane.

“Oh yeah, he’s a beauty.”

“You work here?”

“Yeah,”

“Can you ride?”

“What do you think?”

“Yeah, I thought so. I’ve got a sense for these things. I used to ride myself,”

“Yeah?”

“Oh shit I was pretty good. I rode all the time. I did jumps...you know...jumping.”

“Wow that’s great. Good for you,” she said, “I mean that.”

She had her hair cut short and she was older than him and she wore jeans and one of those anorak tank tops. She was packing away her gear into a metal shed container that was lit by a floodlight and illuminating the blue air all around. She had a brusque manner that he found unsurprising.

“Do many people work here?” he said.

“A few of us do yeah,”

He felt a little bold. “Well, you need any more people? For work I mean. To help out?”

“You could always volunteer I suppose,” she said, finally stopping and looking him up and down in his green fleece, blue denims and trainers that used to be white.

“What volunteering? Working for free?”

“That’s what volunteering is you know,”

“Yeah, course. What I actually meant was what would I be doing?”

“Well it won’t be glamorous. Maybe mucking out, helping tidy up. Checking the gear...”

“Hey why not just let me get to the good stuff? You know, the riding and shit.”

She’d bent down to put some rope into the metal shed so he took the chance whilst her back was turned, to have another massive slurp from the flask. He was drunk. The dog quivered behind his legs pathetically, cowering from one of the horses which had made its way over and was now hanging its huge brown head over the wooden beam of the fence, half a yard away from where he stood.

“You need to train for that kind of stuff you know, there’s safety to think about. You can’t just walk straight on in and-”

“Listen, I know what to do. You stick ‘em on the horse and you tell ‘em to go round the track. They’re kids they’ll be fine.”

“It’s a little bit more complicated than that,”

“So you say. Listen let me have a go at it. I’ll prove it to you,”

“I’m not sure, you might-”

“Yeah you are. And if I do it you take me on and you come out for a drink with me. What do you reckon?”

“What so you ride the track and I come out for a drink and then I give you a job,”

“Yeah, but actually fuck the job.”

She laughed and she checked her watch and looked him up and down. He smirked slightly, hands sinking into his pockets and breath slowing.

“Well seeing as you’ve a nice smile alright. But you have to do all the jumps too,”

“Easy.”

The light continued to fade as he swung a leg uneasily over the wooden fence. The horses were docile in their coats and produced occasional brays and squeals, swishing their tails to rid themselves of flies. He wished he could do the same. It was summer and it was a buzzing free for all everywhere around him and he could almost feel the flies on his scalp and in his ears, touching onto the flesh and then flying off again as soon as a hand was raised to them. It was a constant restless itch that he felt all over himself all the time and it wasn’t just here and now it was everywhere. The flies never stopped and neither did anything else.

She was wrenching on the reins of one of the horses that had looked like he might buck and scare off, and she was calming him down, whispering in his ear. She turned away from the horse and looked over.

“Come on then. He’s already saddled,”

“What’s his name?”

“Jerry,”

He hated that name. He uneasily placed one foot in Jerry’s stirrup and a hand on the pommel of the saddle. Then he attempted to hike himself over but found he couldn’t do it first time. He tried a couple more times but each time he got up, hiked half a leg up, managed to get the heel on the horses rear end but then couldn’t quite get it all the way over.

“Want a hand?”

“No.”

He did it at last and when he hauled himself up he had the gall to look down on her from Jerry’s back like he’d acheived something. He nodded and smiled, his head reeling slightly, and was shocked when she actually smiled back at him. He hoped that she hadn’t smelled the booze on his breath or the smoke from within the fleece.

The dog sat on it’s haunches beyond the fence, cocking its head to one side and looking at him. The flies buzzed and the light continued to fade. They were all stood on sand and dirt, everything smelled of shit and of the country and the evening colour had now changed from the red to the blue to a light hazy black.

And then it was pretty much time to start so he kicked his heels into Jerry’s sides and they set off at a canter. As they went he thought about leaving university and about how everything was now that he was back and there was nothing to do. There was Mother’s sad resigned smile, Dad fat and oblivious to it all and his Sisters new tits, and right there and then it was all just a little too close to home.

Jerry’s hooves hit the sand in tandem, speeding up far faster than was expected, and for a moment he forgot the booze and considered that just two basic riding lessons when he was a boy might not be enough for this task. But it didn’t matter, because as the first fence loomed he bounced up and down and back and forth on the saddle on Jerry’s back, his arse aching, holding on tightly, beyond all fear and supposing all the way that this must at least be worth a try.

The dog was looking on and it barked and leapt into the air then just as Jerry the horse jumped, and at that moment the flies finally felt like they’d stopped buzzing.

He floated there and he couldn’t see anything, not the girl, not the forest beyond or his house through all that. All he could see was the possibility of landing and the possibilty of falling, so he held on tight and hoped.

Gary's Unexpected Saturday

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.”

Kodiak

I was in the shed out the back of our house and I was picking up heavy logs that were going to go on the fire in the house. Earlier it had been tearing it up in our little hearth but now it was dying out so it needed more fuel. The logs we’d collected were a little damp to the touch and they had layers of moss and grainy dirt and grime all over them, not to mention insects. My dad stood with his arms folded and the wind blowing the wisps of what little hair he had left up into the air so that they were pretty much standing on end.

“You need to pick all the crap off them first.”

I opened my mouth to speak but Stewart butted in just like he always does. He’s six years older than me and he thinks he’s got twice the brains I have. He’s too stupid to realise he’s wrong.

“Hey dad that’s a one man job,” he pointed down to the pile of logs that he’d just helped me lug out of the shed, “and I’ve got homework to do. Can’t he do it?”
Dad rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully.
“You’re probably right, you get on inside. Nicky you can finish up here.”

I hate my brother sometimes. I knew he had no intention of working; that he just wanted to stare out of his window at our neighbour Becky Prendergast all night. He’d recently bought himself a pair of expensive binoculars and he’d sold a load of stuff on Ebay just so he could pay for them. I’d met her a few times and she seemed like a nice person and everything and she had a nice pretty smile and “really awesome tits” as Stewart liked to say but she wasn’t worth selling your TV for.

My dad pointed a finger, a warning point that he didn’t seem very sure about.

“Nicky they’d better be completely clean; I don’t want any mess on my carpets when you bring them.” He paused, squinting, before carrying on, “you need to make sure the moss comes off and they’re not wet. Otherwise they won’t burn.” He came over and crouched next to me and showed me how to quickly pick off all of the moss in one big lump. Even down on his haunches he’s taller than me and I couldn’t help but feel insignificant. He ran his hands along the surface of the wood and tugged off any stray pieces and extra bits of rough and felt the wood with the backs of his hands, checking for dampness I assumed. Dad’s good at doing those kind of outdoor mans jobs where you need to have a plain mind, he thinks in straight lines and that’s useful.

I looked at his arms and the tattooes that live on them in sporadic areas. He says he likes his tattooes and that they all mean something to him. He’s got my birthday on one arm and Stewart’s on the other. He’s got quite a few on his back and he even has one on his leg. He has union jack flags, lightning bolts, curvy ladies and cords of rope and twine. I don’t know what even half of them are. Over his heart he even has two that are crossed out. They were names but now they’re not there anymore, they’re just two scribbled blue blocks. He says this is because they don’t mean anything to him now and that he doesn’t want them there any longer.

I sat down as he went indoors. It was a dry day so the stone floor of the yard was ok to sit on. Still after a few minutes my backside started to get cold so I sat cross legged like a Red Indian, only rather than sitting on my rear I pushed my trainers back underneath me to make a kind of seat. I sat like this standing the different logs on end between my legs, picking the moss from them as patiently as I could. I can’t exactly say I felt happy about it but I felt like a caveman, this seemed like the kind of thing that they would have to do. I felt like Stig of the Dump, I’d just read that book and it was playing on my mind a lot.

I read a lot you know, usually at night when dad’s asleep and when Stewart’s locked in his room on the phone or lifting weights or whatever it is he does in there. I’ve got a lot of books in my room, all kinds, I don’t know where they came from; I imagine they were my mother’s but I’m not too sure because my dad won’t tell me.

The light switched on in my brothers room whilst I sat working on the logs and listening to the sound of Becky’s dad Mr Prendergast mowing his lawn with that sound that’s like a hornets buzz. Mr Prendergast always uses it in the evening and gets complaints from the other neighbours including my dad.

Mr Prendergast works in “some insurance place” as my dad says and he moved here when his wife “took off”. When the Prendergast’s moved in Mr Prendergast came over to say hi to my dad. The two of them stood in the kitchen drinking beer that Mr Prendergast brought over, talking about their lives and hovering side by side as they looked out of the window onto our garden out the back; neither of them sure how they felt about each other yet. I was eating my dinner, it was macaroni and cheese that I had actually made myself and I was feeling pretty good about it so I only heard a half of what they were saying but it seemed like they got on OK. Dad told Mr Prendergast that the local school was good and he told him that he liked his car. Mr Prendergast joked about how the weather up here wasn’t quite as good as it was down South but I could tell that Dad didn’t really agree with him.

We met Becky a week later when she started school and it was pretty obvious that Stewart liked her straight away. One Saturday when I was lying on my bed looking out of my window I saw Becky walking home from the bus smiling to herself about something. As she smiled, the fronds of sunlight beat down right upon her mouth and shone off of her braces so that it looked like she had some kind of weird alien freak mouth. I laughed hard about it but when I mentioned to Stewart that she had a mouth like Jaws from James Bond he told me that he was going to “smash me in my face if I didn’t shut up”.

That’s when I realised he was serious.

So there I was as Stewarts light beamed out into the evening. The curtains slowly unfurled and I saw his muscled forearms perching on the windowsill up above with the two eyes of the binoculars stretching out from his face. He was chewing something as usual and he was holding his binoculars in one hand whilst his other rested and bunched up into a fist that made little circular movements on the sill as he watched across the way over the tops of the trees. When I stood up and moved so my back was to the wall of the house I could see upward at what he was looking at through the corner of the window pane, it was Becky in her room. I couldn’t make out exactly what she was doing thanks to the angle of the window but I could make out a bit of skin and I could just about see a dash of her blonde hair, the tips of it dangling soft in the light as the evening slowly turned dark.

The next day I woke up, had breakfast (Corn Flakes) and then sat upstairs in my room reading. My bedroom is where the book boxes are. They’re big wooden crates that look like they’ve been specially made just to hold old hardback volumes and paperbacks with folded yellowing pages and dust that creeps down in the leaves of the paper. I often pick out a book at random and inspect its folds and its creases and smell its pages because I love the smell, the mustiness and I love thinking about all the people who’ve looked at the pages I’m looking at right there at that moment. I like to think about those people and imagine who they might be and what they might have done.

I sat lying on my bed and kicking my feet up in the air as I lay on my stomach in that way I like. From the big boxes pushed against the wall I picked up an adventure book about two brothers called the Hunt boys who go looking for rare animals for their dads zoo. It was written by a man named Willard Price. I thought his name was strange and that the picture on the front was cool.

The book was turning out to be really pretty good, the two boys in the story were a little older than me and Stewart but the difference in their ages was the same, Hal was the older (19) and Roger the younger (13). In the story the two of them head to the wilderness and end up having to fight a huge bear called the Kodiak bear which apparently is a lot bigger than the Grizzly.

I was interrupted by Stewart. He kicked open the door and then walked over and kicked my bed.

“Hey needle dick. Why don’t you pull your head out of that book whilst I talk to you? What you doing?”
“Reading.”
“Don’t get clever.” He snorted back a piece of phlegm to the back of his throat.
I put the book down because I knew he was going to try and make me do something.
“Listen-”
“I’m not doing it.”
“You don’t even know what it is yet!”
“I know I’m not going to like it.”
“I’ll make it worth your while,”
“How?”
“I’ll do the washing up on your nights,”
“No.”
“Hey that’s a good offer!”
“No. You’ll only find some way of getting out of it and Dad will make me do it.”
“I won’t!”
“You will.”
“Jesus,”
“Pay me.”
“What?”
“I want money.”
“I don’t have any money.”

I knew this was a lie, I’d been in his bedroom only three evenings ago and I’d opened his underwear drawer and rooted around to find the ski socks that he used to keep his cash in. I don’t know how he made his money, he didn’t have a job. I suspected he stole some of it from dad and that the rest of it he made selling cigarettes to kids at school because he was tall and had some hair on his top lip so he could get served in the corner shop. He had at least thirty in that sock in notes and a bit extra in coins.

“Ten, I know you have it.”
“No way that’s all I’ve got. I’ll give you five,”
“No you have more. Ten.”
“Eight?”
“You want me to do something? It costs ten.”
“God alright. When did you turn out to be such a little leech?”
I made a face at him. He leaned over and thumped me and gave me a dead arm.
“That’s for going in my drawer.” He flexed his muscles and puckered his lips like he was kissing the air and gave me the finger as he walked out backwards.

Later we sat on the bench round the bend by the road outside of the corner shop whilst Stewart smoked one of his cigarettes. He offered it to me but I decided not to smoke any because they’re bad for you. He wanted to go and find Becky. His plan was that I would get into some kind of trouble and then Stewart would save me or stop me from doing whatever it was that I was going to be doing. This would happen right in front of her and she’d be impressed and this would supposedly make her like him. Personally I didn’t think too much of the idea but I don’t have that many friends in our area so I had nothing better to do.

“I think what you should do is maybe get hit by a car or stand in the road so you’re going to get hit and then I can come and save you.”
“I’m not getting hit by a car.”
“I’d do it for you.”
“You would not!”
“I swear I would, if it was for something this important.”
“But I might get killed,”
“No you wouldn’t I’d save you,”
“I don’t think so,”
“Alright then Einstein you think of something.”
“Maybe I should call her a name or something. I could call her a bitch?”
“No don’t call her a bitch.”
“Why not?”
“She might hit you before I do.”
“Oh.” I thought on this for a second. “How about if I just come with you and act cute? Girls like that don’t they?”
“Yeah they do they love kids. They all do.”
“It’d be like I was your kid or something.”
“You are,”
“No I’m not.”

It took us a while to find her but eventually we got her down at the park. I can’t lie I was pretty excited about this, I’d enjoyed our search across the estate and near the shops nearly as much as I’d enjoyed spying on the local areas where the teenagers hung out. I felt like we were Hal and Roger Hunt, Becky was our Kodiak and now the green park with its football pitches with the brown dirt area that lay patchy beneath the goalposts and the swings that had been swung round and over the bars they hung from till they were tight and unreachable, was our hunting ground.

We walked over.

She was stood with her hands in her pockets, wearing denim shorts and a pink t shirt with sleeves that were hardly there. She wasn’t exactly like a bear or a wild animal when you got up close to her but I didn’t mind. She was stood by the climbing frame which her friend Sophie was hanging upside down from, suspended by the crook in her knees. Sophie’s t-shirt was hanging loosely towards her neck because of the gravity and she was showing her stomach which was quite fat and could be seen pale in the distance. Stewart was walking like he was a tough guy and I followed a few steps behind.

“Hey Becky,” he said when we arrived.
“Hi Stew,”
“I want you to meet my brother Nicky.”
“Hello Nick,” she said grinning at me with her metal mouth, “this is my friend Sophie.”

I looked across at Sophie and I felt hot all over. She looked down at me for a second then put her hands on her hips and said out loud;
“He’s sooo cute.”
“I know!” said Becky “Where did you get him from Stew?”
“I found him in a basket by the canal and took him in. My dad didn’t like it at first but I talked him round.”
They both laughed. I blushed.
“How old are you Nick?”

I actually couldn’t speak; all I could do was look at the ground and turn a horrible red. The girls both cooed to each other like pigeons and then started laughing at how cute I was. As they did Stewart winked at me but it didn’t make me feel good because I wasn’t acting at all.

After a short while Stewart was talking to the girls on the roundabout whilst I sat on the grass away from them. They were laughing and I felt bored and stupid and the melted chocolate bar he had given me that he said would “seal the deal” if he gave it to me in front of the girls was sitting in my lap because I didn’t want it. I wondered if this was how the Hunt brothers did things. Did Roger ever feel stupid and little?

I was going to go over and tell Stew I wanted to go home when I spotted some bikes across the park travelling over our way and ridden by two other guys who might have been seventeen or maybe eighteen or nineteen, I couldn’t be sure.

One was wearing long denim shorts, a baggy red t shirt and a baseball cap. The other was wearing tracksuit bottoms, white trainers and had a cigarette behind his ear. They pulled up at the roundabout next to Stewart and the girls and I could see them talking. At first I stood where I was, watching things but I wanted to hear what was going on so I ran over as fast as I could. I stopped behind them.

“What you girls doing with this loser then?” was the first thing I heard. It came from the one in the tracksuit. The other friend was on his bike and looking the other way not caring much at all by the look of him. His bike was a little BMX and he had bright blue pegs on the back, I’d wanted one like that for years.

“Not much,” said Sophie. Becky didn’t say anything.
“Stewart Hughes. I remember Little Stewey from primary school. You forgot your kit and had to do PE in your boxers. Remember his boxers Matt?”
“Yeah! It was well funny!”
“Looked like you’d shit yourself!”

I looked at Stewart who looked at the floor. The two older boys laughed.

The one in the tracksuit looked over at me. I didn’t look away but I did squint my eyes because the sun was glaring and it made it hard to make out his face properly. I felt small in my shorts and my t shirt but I wasn’t afraid.

“And who’s this then? What’s your name?”
“Nick.”
“I see you know my little mate Stewey then?” I could make out the silhouette of his head and saw the shadow shape of his cheeks widening with his smile. A hooped earring hung from his ear.
“He’s my brother.”
“You never said you had a brother Stewey,”
My brother didn’t say anything.
“What do you think of your big brother then Nicky? I suppose you think he’s the big man don’t you? Walking about like he’s ten men all the time it’s hard not to eh?”
I shrugged, saying no without actually having to say the words.
He laughed and looked at my brother mockingly.
“What have you got no other mates Stew?”
“Course he doesn’t!” laughed Matt.

Stewart couldn’t look up and meet their eyes like I could. He’d wimped out. “Dear oh dear Stewey. Looks like Nick here isn’t very impressed with his big bad brother is he!” They both laughed at him but still he didn’t say anything. “What a puff!”
The one on the BMX called Matt nodded at Sophie.
“Fancy a ride?” he said, “We’re going down the precinct.”
“Alright,” she grinned and climbed onto the pegs. She linked her hands around his waist and pushed her chest up close against his back. “Bye Nicky,” she said as she looked down at me. I held up a hand by way of a goodbye as they cycled off and failed to prevent the spread of blushing red from creeping up my neck and burning my cheeks.

The remaining boy stood between Stewart and Becky pointedly.
“What about you?” he said to her.
“I don’t know,” she said and she glanced at Stewart.
“Come on. You’re not staying here with these kids are you?” I noticed at the edge of his zip up tracksuit top, the point of a tattoo at his wrist. I wondered if it was like any of my dad’s. “You might as well come with me, we’ll have some fun.”
She paused and I could see her thinking but it didn’t take long for her to make up her mind.
“You know what; I don’t think I will.” she folded her arms and she looked away. “Fine,” he smirked and he turned his bike around, climbed onto it. He cycled off, spitting his cigarette out of his mouth to his left as he went. I watched it spiral through the air with its little puffs of smoke still trailing up out of it.

It landed on the floor and I watched it there with my back to my brother and Becky and the ember burning in the grass until it died and spent itself out, a black tip that was finished; lying forgotten by everyone except me.

As he began to cycle away I didn’t think twice, I pulled the chocolate bar that Stewart had given me earlier out of my pocket and ran forward a few paces like a javelin thrower. I drew back my arm as far as I could and threw it after the older boy. It stopped a little short but he turned around and he saw it and he looked back and he looked right at me.I stayed where I was, looking back at him, trying to stare him down like a big man. It wasn’t much but I was satisfied with the distance I got on my throw and I’d very nearly hit him.

He waited for a moment before turning round and cycling back towards me, pulling up fast in a sharp and intimidating skid. I had it in my mind to tell him where to go but I soon found that I was incapable and actually pretty frightened.

“What was that? You throwing stuff dickhead?”

I didn’t know where to look or what I could say, my stomach dipped as if I was riding in a car and I’d gone over a hill too quickly.
“No!”
“Yeah you was. Trying to act the big man eh?”

He got off his bike and let it drop to the floor and approached me. I stood my ground several yards away from Stewart and Becky, not knowing what to do. He wasn’t far off six feet tall and he moved fast. He pushed me in my right shoulder with an extended index finger.
“Well do you know what happens to big men who mess with bigger boys?”
I said nothing.
“They get shown what’s what,” he said and he leant in and grabbed my balls.

He squeezed them for a second and gripped them in his palm, “They get shown what’s what.” He repeated.

In that long moment then the midges buzzed around my head carelessly and I stood, unable to move, my head swimming. His eyes glared down at me and his mouth leered open and slack as he cupped me. It occurred to me that I might have made a rash decision trying to get at him.
He released me and smirked and I could smell chewing gum on his breath as he spoke.
“Remember that.”

He poked me in the chest again as if to drive the point home one final time and then turned away and picked up his bike. I didn’t wait to watch him ride away; I just turned my back and walked. I returned back to my brother and Becky.
“What did he say to you?” said Stewart.
“That was really brave Nick!” said Becky.
“I want to go home Stew,” I said.
“I think we might stay here, it’s still sunny.”
“Fine!” I shouted, and I turned and I ran, ignoring him as he shouted after me.

I ran back across the green of the park, away from the yellow roundabout and I ran through the gate and onto the tarmac pavement with its loose scuffed stones bouncing under my trainers. I ran back to my house as fast as I could, running for some of the way with my eyes shut tight, the beads of sweat quietly soaking my hair at the back of my neck and running in salty rivulets down my forehead onto my cheeks and nose.

The gate clanked shut when I got back and I ran inside and up to my room and locked my door. Inside on my bed was the Willard Price book about the Hunt brothers. I looked at the cover and I thought about them and the Kodiak bear that they fought and I suddenly felt, for the first time in my life, that a book could be bullshit. I angrily swept it onto the floor and I kicked it across the room as hard as I could where it bounced off the wooden crates up against the wall in my room. It lay there splayed open; face down as if someone had put it there to temporarily save their place.

Later on I made my way downstairs for dinner feeling wrung out and empty. My dad was smoking at the table, drinking a beer and doing the crossword. He asked me what was wrong and why I’d come back on my own. I told him simply that I was OK and that I was feeling tired so I came back.

He took a drink from his can and stuck the pencil behind his ear and said breezily that it wasn’t safe for me to be out in the evening on my own past nine o clock and Stewart probably shouldn’t have let me come back on my own, that I was too young to be out on the park.

“I know,” I said.

A Little Out of Touch

I’m in the supermarket and I’m looking at the bar of chocolate sitting there on the shelf. It’s one of the big ones. Fruit and Nut.

“Hey Gerry,” It says to me, smiling and jiggling its little corners at me. “Hey Gerald.”

“What do you want from me?”

“You know what I want. Come on; touch me.”

God all the things I’ve lost; my job, my car, my dignity. I’m thirty two, unemployed, going bald and I’m hideously fat. Now to top it all off I’m talking to a piece of confectionary.

“Hey! I’m talking to you. Come on buddy, put your hands on me, touch me. You wanna see my baby brown skin don’t you? Come on feel my nuts.” The chocolate has a heavily accented voice that I cannot place.

“I can’t!” I squeal at it, my voice rising up in a little note of desperation, a simpering whimper that makes me feel like even less of a man than ever.

“What are you queer is that it? Ooh little Gerry can’t even make happy with something he wants. You gotta’ take what you want Gerry you know that. You’ve been losing weight recently haven’t you? You’ve been doing really well haven’t you? You’ve earned this. Do it. Unwrap me. I want it.”

I hug myself, grasping my sausage meat flesh. I know how I look; I’m a whale, a big fat beast who makes people feel ill. I can’t help it if I comfort eat. It’s the only thing left for me now.

“Gerry let’s do this! Take me I’m yours,” the chocolate bar starts jumping up and down a little on the shelf and making orgasmic groaning noises at me like some mackintosh wearing deviant who’s just found a dog eared porn mag in the trash next to the bench he’s sleeping on.

“I hate you!” I hiss, drawing a look from the girl standing in the aisle next to me with her mother who’s trying not to look my way. People often do this. They take a look at my tracksuit trousers hanging low beneath my corpulent torso and they look at my trainers with my huge load bearing feet stuffed inside them, spreading the tongue and laces of the shoe wide, forced apart unnaturally to fit me in them, and they quickly look away. “I’m a man!” I scream at them, “I did this to myself!” I bellow, “I wasn’t always like this!” Then I wake up.

“Quit whining,” it says.

I know it’s looking at me so I just go on and thrust a hand out, picking it up and unwrapping the black and blue outer wrapping and the golden foiled inner layer.
There’s a lot of groaning going on as I shove it in my mouth and chew down on the nutty gorgeous milkiness but I don’t know if it’s coming from me or the chocolate bar.

It’s over pretty quickly. The girl is looking and I smile down at her. She smiles back, an empty mouthed gummy grin that reminds me of my elderly neighbour Gladys. Gladys has no teeth and always talks to me about the weather. “It’s a cold one tonight Gerald!” She often roars at me, for she’s partially deaf too.

The girl does nothing but look at me and my chocolate smeared mouth, smiling with her eyes as well as her gums. I look after the mother as she leads her daughter away then and I think of Carol from work. Her curls, that smile, her business suits and her high heeled red shoes that made me think of things that wouldn’t normally have occurred to me, the seedy pink of a neon sign, the deep red of the London underground logo, my sisters heart shaped calculator and the red of my own burning cheeks whenever I’d speak to any woman, least of all her.

I’m in the bread aisle. The Pastries and the cakes bubble around in their little containers with Perspex lids, like popcorn they fizz and jump about. I don’t wait for them to speak, I grab a jam doughnut and a pecan slice and I eat them. My eyelids flutter and I feel tremulous and weak at the knees. I forget my diet, I forget that constant fear of what people think. I remember that life is for living and doing what you want and I remember that what I want right now is this, even if it isn’t human contact or comfort, but just the sensation of taste. At least it’s something tangible and constant, transgressive and brilliant, something man made and all for me.

I wipe my hands on my brown t-shirt, the pastry flakes floating down to the tiled rubbery floor of the supermarket. I shuffle on, dropping my original basket, the cans of tuna, the chicken, the skimmed milk and vegetables rattling about like lobsters in a fishermans cage.

I need more. I open up a packet of biscuits and I quickly consume them all.

“Do it do it do it!” scream the Digestives.

“I am!” I wail, crumbs flying from my mouth and peppering the laughing packages on the shelves in front of me. I drop the pack to the floor, half eaten, half broken, giggling to itself in a mania entirely of my own making.
I remember my office. I remember Carol smiling at me. I remember her bringing me cups of coffee with a little Rich Tea resting on the side of the saucer. I remember the little smiley faces she left on the post it notes she gave to me when she took one of my calls. The little love hearts she did over the tops of all of her letter i’s instead of dots. She had large teeth but I liked that about her. She wore white blouses and blue skirts and she snorted through her nose when she was on the phone laughing as she sat at her desk on her lunch breaks, not knowing that I was watching, unable to tear my eyes away from her.

“Yeah baby! Faster faster faster!” The crisps section is a particular low point. I eat about eight packets, sitting on the floor right there with the grease coating my fingers and the salt stinging the little coldsores that rest upon the corners of my mouth like twin barnacles.

Then I hit the fizzy drinks, I hit the cheeses and I hit the cured meats. My T-shirt is soaked in various stains and is sticky to the touch and my breathing is laboured and inconstant as, my mouth crammed full of produce, I am forced to breathe through my nose which is blocked with the cold I’ve been struggling to shake off for the last couple of weeks.

And then I’m sat on the floor, my fist plunged into a jar of strawberry jam that’s moaning softly to itself and crying out my name and laughing and telling me that it doesn’t mind if I want to touch it. I take another paw and scoop it into my mouth and I feel like a bear. A disgusting bear.

And yet again I'm finished and I toss the jar aside, ripe with shame and saturated in crumbs and filth. Then just as I feel that pang of disgust I turn my head and I realise I’m being watched. Two men stand, one wears the incongruously coloured uniform of the supermarket, he’s young and open mouthed. The other wears a dark woollen jumper and peaked hat, he’s proud of his job as an enforcer here and his arms fold slowly. He makes no effort to hide his contempt for me. I don’t blame him.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Eating,”

“Well are you going to pay for any of that?”

“To be honest I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“I think you’d better put that down and come with us sir,”
I try to get up but I can’t so I roll over on my front and push myself up onto my knees with my hands. I then stand up with a little assistance from the younger of the two. Brett, as his name badge declares, is a young man whose hair is tightly gelled in a series of spikes that are dyed blonde at the tips. I can tell he does not appreciate this situation being a part of his day, his breath smells of mints and as he looks down at me his aftershave is overpowering but not strong enough to stop me looking up his nostrils and being shocked at the vast quantities of nasal hair that exists there.

“I’m sorry about this,”

“Well, that’s ok, but you really need to pay for this stuff.”

“I’ve been feeling a little out of touch lately.” My brow’s pouring with sweat and all I can think of is Carol’s beautiful plump behind on that final day at work as she stood at the window pulling the blinds in my office, my hand itching and making that fateful manouevre, groping and grasping for her curved leering femininity and not knowing what it was going to cost me. And I also hear the chocolate bar all over again as I remember what I did, and the moment in that office when I knew I was going to do it. What are you queer? Go on touch me.

“Well you can’t go around just taking in sight you know,” said Brett.

“I know that.”

“You’re going to have to come with us.”

“Yeah,”

Brett walks first with the security guard following, polished shoes tapping on the linoleum floor, his breath on my neck and his hand on my shoulder. And I look then, at the gleaming lights and the ringing tills and I listen to the murmur of the customers and the squeaking of the trolleys wheels and I swear that I can hear the distant laughter of the food ringing in my ears.

“Do it!” It cries, “Go on do it!”