Friction (27 page)

‘Is Colin a dangerous man?'

‘I hardly know him . . . But no, no I don't think he is.'

Franchesi stubs out a fag unsuccessfully; it continues to smoulder in the tray. As if attempting to compensate for this blunder he leans forward through the smoke and pushes the dictaphone right to the edge of the table to where Justin sits. The Italian's eyes flash briefly, then appear to darken two or three shades, like an evening sky collapsing quickly into night.

‘Is Rebecca still capable of giving birth, Justin?' His voice is rotten and vindictive.

‘Yes,' Justin replies instantly, splaying his fingers across the tabletop, admiring their innocence. But the Italian won't stop.

‘What's your connection to Frank Jacobs, to the White Love organisation? Can you explain that, Justin?'

For a moment it seems as if air doesn't exist in this awful bar, as if it's been completely replaced by enormous hedges of bright green stinging nettles. Justin yawns and sips from his millionth Coke.

‘No, I can't explain that. That's something different.'

IF YOU'VE GOT
enough energy to walk with your head held high and with long confident strides, then the experience of exiting Piccadilly train station and walking down towards the Gardens can be extremely pleasant. Particularly when the weather is good and the sunlight is reflecting off the large glass hotels. The Rosetti, the Malmaison, the Holiday Inn. There's nothing quite like the experience of public transport to instil a sense of urgency and purpose into a person's behaviour. Businessmen gallop with briefcases held close to their chests. Students saunter, overgrown with eclectic luggage and beaming with a sinister sense of freedom. For those moments, on those rare warm days, the world you experience between Piccadilly train station and Piccadilly Gardens threatens to be your oyster.

It is six-thirty in the evening. The sun begins its descent and the automatic doors of the train station glide open, prompted by the arrival of Steve. Although he's only carrying a small rucksack, his walk is laboured. It's like he's giving a piggyback to a lanky corpse. He creeps out of the
station and begins stuttering past the restaurants and the newsagents, down towards Piccadilly Gardens. This world is not his oyster.

Steve's role in establishing the White Love company was minimal, largely financial. In recent months, Frank has grown closer to Justin. He tends to seek his advice on most issues concerning the business, rather than Steve's. The fact is, Steve struggles to be outside. He struggles to keep the company of others.

He takes a few steps from the station. The prospect of seeing people causes his anus to loosen; he needs a shit. In fact, he's needed a shit for days, but the prospect of taking one causes his throat to throb with confusion. The ape in him has vanished. I'm a manmade man, he maintains. His eyes glance up from the stooping curve his body has assembled in time to see a surge of people power walking straight for him. He winces, shielding his body with his rucksack. He sidesteps cautiously towards a shop doorway to avoid the breaking wave of business-orientated life. As the people pass by, he holds his bag over his face and seems to bend his limbs inwards in an attempt to hide their precise function and appearance.

‘Are you coming in, sir? Would you like something to eat?'

A small Asian guy cuckoo-clocks out from a curry house, his face painted in jet black facial hair. Steve shakes his head and continues to sidestep alongside the row of shops, his chin hard against his collarbone as if his neck has been broken in the interests of hiding his considerable shame. In his peripheral vision the Malmaison appears, sunlight dimming quickly on its expansive glass structure. Nearly there.

On Frank's instruction, Steve has spent the last week with his parents, in the hope that some kind of rehabilitation can be achieved. But the situation remains critical. His state of mind deteriorated rapidly following Carly's release from hospital. He began to buy clothes and fashion accessories on a daily basis at an alarming rate. He started early in the morning when the shops opened, only returning to Carly and the flat late in the evening after the last of the boutiques had brought down their shutters and closed. It wasn't uncommon for shop assistants to find him still on the premises long after the shop had shut. He'd be discovered fondling garments in some concealed alcove, running his fingers over the fabric, trying to work out exactly how fashionable the item was.

Financially, Steve's discovery of retail hasn't been much of a burden, coinciding as it has with Carly's affair with the Sex Machine and her sudden apathy towards clothes and shopping. Carly spends every day in the flat with the machine. She liaises only with Frank when he calls round to assess her state, feed her and ask her questions about the machine. She nibbles at the food that is brought for her. She showers occasionally at moments of clarity; those rare moments of stillness that follow large periods of time spent in the company of the machine. Although Frank is retailing the machine under the name White Love 1000, Carly insists on calling it ‘Darling'. Her neighbours comment to each other about the late-night screaming; the near-deafening cries of Darling! Darling! Darling!

Steve darts across the road only when he's convinced there isn't a car in sight. His run is the run of a spindly-legged fairly-tale villain, his hands and his torso wrapped around his rucksack like it's a snatched child. Passing cars
are one of Steve's biggest fears; you can never be sure of the expressions on the shadowed faces within. Never be certain they aren't mocking your appearance, doubting your fashion. Once across the road, Steve scuttles the remaining few metres to the entrance of the Malmaison where he is due to meet with Justin. He enters, head bowed, eyes staring deep into the centre of the earth's core.

‘Steve, over here!' a voice calls to him from a table over by the window. Steve recognises it as Justin's. And thanks God.

Justin had been reluctant to meet with Steve. He dislikes him. He finds it very difficult to believe the stories told to him by Frank regarding Steve's past. In Justin's eyes, Steve has always been a jabbering wreck, but this image jarred with the stories of the handsome and athletic academic told by Frank. At this moment, in Justin's eyes, Steve is a giant pantomime rat, sniffing his way over to the table in a Stetson and a vile flowery shirt. What the fuck is he wearing? thinks Justin as Steve arrives nervously at the edge of the table, his lips quivering as if muttering minuscule words. Justin stands for the introductions.

‘Mr Franchesi, this is Steve, an acquaintance. Steve, this is Marco, a journalist.'

Steve lowers his arse carefully on to the seat beside Justin, refusing to look at anything but the floor. With eyes still nailed to the carpet, his mouth opens and addresses the Italian in an uneven, trembly voice, reminiscent of the croaking of reptiles.

‘Hello, Mr Marco . . . and are you a fashion journalist? Do you write about clothes?'

‘Eh no, I do current affairs, culture, politics etc. But I must say, my friend, that is quite an outfit you're wearing today.'

With a sudden jolt, Steve straightens his spine hard against the back of his chair. He throws his neck back so his head is facing almost directly upwards. He looks a little bit like he's lost, deep in some unfortunate thought.

‘Well, you see, Mr Marco,' Steve begins, ‘what I'm wearing is incredibly fashionable today. On my head is a Stetson, like a cowboy. My shirt is crimped floral satin from Vivienne Westwood, if you look, it's crimped floral satin, you see? If you could see my trainers, you would notice the beautiful gold embroidery and the shiny crystals in the tongues . . . You must see my trainers!'

Steve and Justin lurch suddenly in unison. Steve stands up and brings his left foot crashing down on to the table in front of Marco Franchesi. Justin dives forward and grabs the soft packet of cigarettes and begins lighting one with a matchbook.

‘Of course I smoke, I remember now,' says Justin, his heart attempting to stop at the sight of Steve's trainers on the table in front of him. His cheeks apple-like with embarrassment.

‘They are certainly a lovely pair of trainers, my friend,' Franchesi mutters with a snigger, addressing Steve but with his eyes fixed on Justin.

‘There are small shiny crystals in the tongues,' yells Steve. ‘There is golden embroidery. Look, Mr Marco!'

Justin dispatches the first lungful of smoke into the air and stares firmly into Steve's eyes, offering a look that suggests he would rather he took his foot off the table. Franchesi sniggers again; an Italian sort of snigger. Hee hee hee as opposed to ha ha ha.

‘Look now . . . I suppose all I need to know, Justin, is what are your ethics?'

Justin, his eyes still on Steve and his brain simmering slightly at the Italian's snigger, decides to scratch his head before speaking, it takes a moment.

‘I believe people should follow their instincts, should do what they want,' begins Justin, turning at last to the spindly Italian. ‘People should disregard the modern beauties and the muscly foreheads, the websites, the star signs. I believe people should be a little dangerous.'

‘You mean that people should partake in recreational pregnancy, multiple abortions?'

‘No, I just mean that people should be a little dangerous. That's my ethic, Mr Franchesi.'

The Italian is disappointed. He had hoped to learn more from Justin. He puts his cigarettes into his satchel and swings the strap over his bony shoulder. He looks at Steve, who's licking his fingers and trying to remove tiny scuff marks from his trainers. ‘I think it's time I left you boys to it.'

Yeh, so do I. So he does; the Italian leaves. He gathers up his dictaphone, and departs, clutching his satchel. He probably says things as he leaves, things like goodbye and good luck.

Justin neglects to smile. He swigs the remainder of his Coke and wishes, as we sometimes do, that his life was completely different. He's fairly satisfied with today's set of interviews; he's given them nothing, as usual. He's made no real sense; the last thing he wants to have is a proper opinion. He watches the Italian as he disappears into the hotel lobby. Moments later, he sees him again through the dark window, crossing he street, phone to his face.

At Steve's request, Justin books a room in the hotel so they can be away from the public glare. Steve's perspiring
like mad and it's causing his hair gel to liquefy, skim down his forehead and sting his eyes. Steve's brief interaction with the journalist is as social as he's been in a while.

The room in the Malmaison is what you'd expect: plush, dark, richly upholstered. The kind of room some people call ‘sexy'. Steve lies down on the bed and begins smoothing out the creases in his trousers and shirt.

‘I've come to the decision that I'm going to be more like you, Justin,' says Steve, hopelessly fighting the creases in his satin shirt. Creases are my death, he thinks, hee hee hee. His brain is shrinking by the second, it sloshes about in tap water. ‘Yes,' he says as Justin arrives at the edge of the bed, ‘I shall make Carly pregnant, hee hee hee.'

Justin sighs and looks at his watch, then grabbing his supposed colleague firmly by the neck, he pulls the Stetson down off Steve's scalp so it's covering up his entire face. A muffled voice squirms out from under the hat: ‘Sorry, Justin, I'll stay under here for a while, it stills smells new . . . delicious.'

By the window is a table and chair. Leaving Steve under the hat Justin takes the seat and finds Frank's number in his phone. On the bed Steve continues to blindly locate creases in his clothing and iron them out with his ringed fingers. Justin's call connects.

‘Frank . . . I need you to come to the Malmaison and pick up Steve . . . yeh, I know, but it hasn't worked . . . he's worse than ever . . .'

From underneath the hat Steve can be heard muttering the word ‘Frank' to himself, although it sounds more like ‘rank'. Rank, rank, rank.

‘Just come and get him, room sixteen. You'll understand when you see his clothes, he's still fucked. Chances are I'll have already left.'

As soon as Justin hangs up his phone it begins to ring. It's his mother; she's been calling at least once a day since his name was splashed all over the tabloids. He cancels the call and sets his phone to silent.

‘You can remove the hat now, Steve.'

‘Thanks.'

Steve takes the hat from off his face in time to smile at Justin as he sits down beside him on the bed. Justin takes a moment, breathing deeply and staring into Steve's glazed eyes, then at his dreadful floral shirt. Can he really have once possessed a brain?

‘What do you remember of your economics degree, Steve?' Justin asks, noticing that Steve has at least two rings on each of his fingers and thumbs. Steve spikes his hair and adjusts his collar nervously.

‘Well . . . the thing is, Justin . . . I can barely remember anything at all.'

Justin watches as a layer of moisture develops on the surface of Steve's eyes. The delicate skin that surrounds them begins to quiver frantically, his eyebrows crease into Ms and his cheeks clench.

‘I don't remember anything hardly, Justin,' Steve says, his voice delicate. ‘I mean, your name – I remember that, and Frank, Carly, the Sex Machine. Clothes shops. Colours. Cuts . . . but it's like every day is a new life, for me. Entirely different from the previous one, and the next . . .' The first tear falls from Steve's left eye. He battles to get his words out. ‘It's like clothes are the only real thing . . . trinkets our element . . . and . . . and fashion the only real time.'

Justin picks up the hat from the bed and once again places it over Steve's face. He returns to the table and his mobile phone. Sobbing can be heard from under the Stetson,
muffled, like a man weeping privately in an adjacent room. Justin locates a number in his phone and waits for it to connect, straightening his back and staring out the window towards Ancoats and its numerous renovated cotton mills.