Animals (14 page)

Where were my allies? My sad captains? Those moonsick girls I drank with over long winters behind the bowling alley, driven there in cars we didn’t know. Those times when we were all strangers and everything was so far away but all we needed to do was run towards it. I had not grown much. I had not reached anywhere. I was still running. When I wasn’t lying down.

I opened my eyes and saw leaves above me, flickering in the wind.

Something slimy by my hand. I threw back the duvet (my duvet, my room) to see a chicken carcass, grey and sunken-ribbed, crouched on a dinner plate. Chicken jelly had gathered around it. I retched. A sound in the hallway.

‘Hello?’

The door opened and hit the clothes rail. ‘Fuck!’ Tyler’s arm appeared round the door and shunted the rail over.

‘Is it morning or night?’

‘Night.’

It all came back as it always did: in shards and splinters and burning arrows. I remembered waking under the bush and walking and buying a hot roast chicken, getting back to the flat and getting into bed with the chicken.

‘How are you?’

‘
My mouth has been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night.
How are you?’

‘Pretty stoked actually. The talk was amazing.’

‘Can’t have been that amazing if you’re using the word “amazing”.’

I lifted the plate off the bedsheet and held it steady. Tyler peeled the end of a nail off with her teeth and spat it onto the floor.

‘Jim says he wants to cook you dinner,’ I said.

‘Are you getting me in practice for seeing you
in situ
?’

‘Oh, just come and have some fucking spaghetti.’

‘But will he let us drink in there?’

‘
He’
s buying the wine.’

He bought good wine, too. Rioja. Two bottles. I saw Tyler glance at them in the middle of the dining table when she came in and then look away. I wondered whether we should have asked her to bring a date to even things out. Jim poured two glasses of wine and a pint of lime and soda for himself. We sat down.

‘I almost came in your place for a coffee yesterday,’ he said to Tyler.

She was loosely blowing on a Medusa-like forkful of spaghetti. She stopped blowing. ‘
My
place?’

‘The coffee shop.’

Personally I think it’s insane that people ever try to eat and talk at the same time but this is the situation you often find yourself in at dinner parties and restaurants. Not that this situation was either, of course: we were just three friends sitting together having dinner. Still, I wished we were on the couch watching TV with our bowls on our knees.

‘You should come in sometime,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a free shot. Of syrup.’ She raised her glass of red wine. ‘I’ve got the decorators in!’

‘You know that means you’re on your period,’ said Jim.

She looked at me and tipped the glass into her mouth.

All things considered, they did a reasonably good job of barbed civility until dessert, when Tyler said: ‘I haven’t asked you, but are you two having a first dance?’

It was an odd thing to hear her say.
I haven’t asked you.
Like she was a stranger or a not very good friend. I looked at the table. The red cloth was splodged with cream where Jim had spilled the trifle.

‘We’ve discussed this,’ Jim said. ‘We talked about having lessons at one point, put on a bit of a show.’

‘A show.’ Tyler’s teeth were dark and grainy from the wine. We were halfway through the second bottle.

‘We decided against it,’ I said, getting up to smoke out of the kitchen window. ‘I’d bottle it on the day, I know I would.’

‘Just get some drugs in you,’ said Tyler.

I was afraid that if I went to the bathroom they might kill each other. I turned the lever on the window and pushed the pane open. Cold air whirled in. I got up on the counter and pulled over the ramekin I used as an ashtray at Jim’s.

‘It’s a drug-free occasion,’ Jim said. ‘Has Laura not mentioned that?’

‘I was just kidding,’ said Tyler.

‘Just so you know. Charlie’s not invited. Or any of his illegal friends.’

Silence. I exhaled. I thought,
They’re actually going to leave it there. Thank fuck.

‘Weeeelllllll, of course you know they shouldn’t
be
illegal in my opinion. But for the sake of what this pathetic government deems “legal” for tax purposes, I’ll respect your frankly patronising request.’

My hand shook as I held my cigarette.

‘The libertarian in me wants to agree with you,’ Jim said. ‘But it’s not as simple as legalise drugs and they become safe.’

‘It’s a start. Out of interest, are you presenting this as a health issue or an organised crime issue?’

‘Both. Besides, people on drugs are wankers. Especially coke. Coke is the worst.’

Tyler emitted a squeal. ‘How do you NOT KNOW I’m on coke right now?’

‘Because you’re asking me a question,’ Jim said. ‘Ever noticed how someone on coke doesn’t ask a single question?’

I thought about making coffee and taking through Jim’s big shiny cafetiere and the pretty little pastel cups.

‘I’d better get home,’ Tyler said. ‘I’m up at six.’ She got up, put on her jacket and looked at me. ‘You’re staying here then?’ She smacked herself on the forehead. ‘Of course you are. Sorry, force of habit.’

‘Let us call you a cab,’ I said.

Oh, that ‘us’! She flinched and I instantly regretted it. I made a point then of saying ‘I’ in every subsequent sentence.
I’ll go get my phone. I do have a number in here somewhere. I’ll come outside with you. I’ll meet you at the station after work.

‘Have a great time in London,’ Jim said. ‘Look after each other.’

‘Oh, we will. Shame you can’t make it, but don’t worry, I’ll be your stand-in.’

‘You’re welcome, Tyler,’ Jim said, turning to stack the dishes.

I stood in the road smoking long after the cab had gone, thinking about her travelling through the city towards the opposite outskirts, the streetlights sliding over the window in front of her peering face.

Tyler was waiting for me outside Piccadilly. Shades on, smoking, reading a paper, a carrier bag by her boots. As I reached her, a sports car screeched away from the drop-off point, tyres searing the tarmac. I jumped and dropped my bag. ‘Oh no stop please come back I simply must have sex with you,’ Tyler said, folding the paper. She was in a good mood.

On the train she emptied the contents of the carrier bag onto her tray table. A quarter bottle of vodka, four cans of diet coke, two pork pies. ‘We need to get these in while we can,’ she said, unsheathing a pie. ‘Jean has turned practically macrobiotic. There will be nothing to eat except beansprouts and dung.’

When we arrived at Euston we sat down for a smoke at one of the wooden picnic tables in front of the station. I was enjoying my London cigarette. I’d never been one of those Northerners who hated the South. Big cities comforted me: the cover, the chaos, the hollow sympathy of the architecture, the Tube lines snaking underground. London could swallow you up, in a good way. There were times when I’d been broken and being subsumed into a city had made me feel part of a whole again.

A copy of
Nuts
magazine had been left on the table. Tyler picked it up and began flicking through. ‘Oh this is abysmal. Abysmal! You know what this country needs? Another world war. Something on the doorstep to knock things back into perspective. A recession clearly hasn’t been enough.
This week’s stripper is an air hostess!
An AIR HOSTESS! Get her in a nuked-up plane over the Middle East – see if she feels like whipping her norks out then.’

‘I thought we agreed it was wrong to slam individuals for the perpetuation of –’

‘Oh, you think her real name’s “Vikki”? She’s a symbol! An allegory! That’s all we have, and people celebrate these symbols as though we don’t need a complete economic restructure. I despair, I really do. It’s all completely fucked.’

‘You watch porn!’

‘Well, that’s different – that’s already there, like meat. You might as well.’

She tore the magazine in half and threw it to the ground. I sat down. There was a woman reading a book on the other side of the table. She looked at me and went back to her book. Tyler pushed the fag packet towards me. I pulled out a fag and sparked up. ‘Let’s get a drink before we head to Jean’s. These station pubs are hideous, though. Threadbare seats and homemade vodka. It’s like capitalism never happened. Let’s finish these and go somewhere louche en route.’

A wasp zigzagged past my fag and I jerked backwards. The insect landed on the table and began crawling towards a sticky patch of something. The woman across the table quickly shut her book and bashed the insect to a pulp, hitting it ten times at least. Tyler watched. When the woman had finished, the wasp was a mass of black and yellow on wood. Tyler tapped her fag in the parasol hole. The woman recoiled, as though a cigarette was worse than a wasp.

‘NOT A BUDDHIST, THEN?’ Tyler said.

I loved her. I did. Sometimes.

We stopped at a pub called The Approach in Hackney, sat out back smoking and sharing a bottle of rosé. The wine was disgusting – every time either of us sipped any we gagged.

‘Why do we keep trying with rosé?’ I said.

‘Because it feels like a compromise when you don’t know whether you want red or white. Rosé, you think, it’s the natural choice, straight down the middle. But it’s not, it’s fucking shit.’

The barman came and cleared some glasses off the table. ‘I’ll bring you ladies an ashtray. You’ll have to move your bags, they’re blocking the fire escape.’

Tyler looked at him as though she was imagining the true horror of a blocked fire escape. She leaned down and gave the bags a few bashes until they were flush with the chairs. The barman stood over us, clutching a spray of dirty pint pots. ‘What’s in them, anyway?’

She looked at him. ‘Blow-up dolls and ketamine.’

‘You’re lucky this isn’t an airport,’ he said. ‘Oh talky hand, you’re doing a talky hand at me, well
that’s
polite.’

We had another bottle before we left – rosé again. (Tyler:
Might as well, I can barely taste the fucker any more.
)

By the time we got to Jean’s in Bethnal Green we were somewhere between wedding-drunk and wake-drunk.
Christening-drunk
– a new one, I thought to myself joyously as Jean opened the door with a lint roller in her hand. The baby peered from her side, squinting in the crook of Jean’s arm like her dark half.

‘Lola!’ Jean said. No one had called me that for years. It reminded me of nights out with Jean, years ago. The two of them singing to me in stupid English accents:
I met her in a club down in Old So-ho.
I hugged Jean carefully around the baby. ‘Whew!’ she said. ‘You guys smell of … fun.’

‘We stopped off to refresh ourselves,’ Tyler said.

‘Where?’

‘The Approach.’

‘Great,’ Jean said, but she didn’t look as though she thought it was great. I started to feel self-conscious. I was staying at her house: was it rude to turn up drunk now she had a baby? The baby. It was staring at me emotionlessly. I thought of Lisa Bonet’s baby in
Angel Heart
. Yellow eyes and pointing …

Tyler released a heraldic fart as she crossed the threshold.

‘Oh, do please try and contain yourself, Tyler,’ said Jean.

‘Jean’s a shadow of her former glory,’ Tyler whispered loudly. ‘They don’t even chill wine around here any more. They keep it in a rack so you have to plan ahead if you want any.’

I stepped into the hall. Jean closed the front door. ‘Everyone’s in the kitchen,’ she said. On our nights out, now deep in the past, she’d lasted the longest despite being the youngest. In Nebraska she’d dated a man who cooked crystal meth in his garage (
Your whole brain gets pins-and-needles and you don’t sleep for days
), and she’d been living in New York on 9/11 – had run away there after the meth-chef dumped her for her best friend. Got a job at a gallery in Chelsea. Was always in work early. That day she was in for eight.
What was it like?
I’d asked her, the ghoul in me elbowing past the human. ‘Oh, I was heartbroken at the time,’ she deadpanned, ‘so it sort of passed me by.’

I followed Tyler down the hall. Photos in odd frames were hung on the walls, like you found in so many of the new Manchester bars (‘quirky taxidermy bars’ as Tyler called them); a forced eccentricity that had dismally mutated into conformity. I didn’t imagine Jean and Tom had collected the frames so much as ordered a job lot on eBay (I chastised myself for this thought, trespassing on their hospitality, but I couldn’t help it).
Desperately random, like the elaborations of a bad liar
, I thought and wondered where it was from. The answer (
Silence of the Lambs
) came to me as I entered the kitchen to see Tyler’s mum seated at the table and Tom fishing about for something in the down-scaled green Aga. A warm domestic scene. People smiling, eating, drinking, happy in each other’s company. I thought of my parents’ living room, of Jim’s bed, and I thought Yes, Okay. All right. I’ll have some of that.

‘Here they are!’ Tyler’s mum stood up at the sight of me. I kissed her on the cheek.

‘Hi, Ro.’

I loved Tyler’s mum, with her flamboyant openness and heavy clothes, all that academic lingo she used so effortlessly. She walked over to the fridge, her thighs stretching a houndstooth miniskirt. ‘I put some wine in to chill for you,’ she said. I loved Tyler’s mum, really I did. She poured two large glasses.

‘Make that three,’ Tom said.

‘Four,’ said Jean. ‘Shirley’s on formula.’

This information was for me, in case I’d forgotten. I hadn’t. I’d admired Jean’s attitude to not breastfeeding, relayed to me via Tyler. Jean had taken formula and bottles in her bag with her to the hospital, this after pre-booking an epidural.
There are plenty of times in life when I’m going to feel pain
, Jean had said.
When I’m in a building full of anaesthetists is not one of them.

‘You can do what you like,’ said Ro.