Meatspace (30 page)

History:

Hayley answers her phone call from me, confused. I whisper that it must be Kitab 2 so she puts the phone on speaker. We hear heavy breathing, then, in a cod English accent,

‘Uhhhhh, uhhhhhh, hey baby, it’s Kith-ahhhr-buh.’ His Indian pronunciation of Kitab betrays who it is. Not like me. Kit like football kit, ab like abdominal crunch. I make the motion to keep him talking.

‘Hey, Kitab?’ Hayley says, confused.

‘Yesh. That’sh my name. Don’t wear it out. Let’sh meet up,’ he says, almost Sean Connery-ish. ‘I want to dick you hard.’

‘Oh, okay,’ Hayley says. She mimes a WTF. I stifle a nervous LOL. ‘Sure thing. Where are you?’

‘I’m at home. Come shee me. You have keysh to my plache, yesh?’

‘Now?’

‘Now.’

Kitab 2 hangs up the phone.

‘What was that all about?’ Hayley asks.

‘I think he thinks he can have sex with you.’

‘Well, at least I now know you weren’t making him up,’ she says, nodding her head.

‘Did you really think that?’

She ignores my question. ‘Why does he want to meet me at yours?’

‘Maybe he has plans to do you in front of me, as the ultimate revenge. In my bed with the webcam on.’

‘It’s a foolproof plan.’

‘It’s not a foolproof plan. I don’t even have a webcam.’

‘He nearly had me fooled. I mean, do you 2 look alike?’

‘We all look alike, racist.’

‘Having sex with me in your bed. That would teach you a few life lessons,’ Hayley says, smiling. ‘And to think, all I wanted from this day was a Nandos and live-tweeting
X Factor
. I really wish I hadn’t texted you a picture of my breasts.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yeah. It took me hours to get it right too. Brelfies are hard.’

‘What’s the deal with “it’s complicated” on your Facebook?’

‘Oh, you know, sending an FU to an ex-boyfriend. But you know, given this second Kitab … I’d say things have got very complicated.’

Hayley and I are waiting in my bedroom, for what, we don’t know, when I hear a window smash. I usher her to stay in the bedroom and open the door slowly, peering into the main room. She is standing behind me.

Nothing seems amiss.

I can hear the crunch of feet on broken glass. I creep out from my bedroom. Hayley follows me. I can’t see anything that shouldn’t be how it is. There is no broken glass. There isn’t a smashed window. It’s empty, as I left it. I turn to Aziz’s room. The door’s closed. Which is strange. I didn’t close it before. I hold the handle and close my eyes, channelling a modicum of bravery from somewhere, anywhere, then I burst into the room.

The curtains are closed. There’s a lump in the bed.

‘Fuck off, I’m jetlagged. We’ll talk later.’ It’s Aziz, mumbling. The dry lump of panic in my throat oozes back down towards my chest.

‘Sorry,’ I say. I turn around as I close the door. ‘My brother,’ I whisper. ‘He’s asleep.’

Hayley nods and turns back around towards the bedroom. She walks in. I hear a door thump behind me. I turn round.

There’s nothing there. I’m imagining things. There was no glass. It’s just the sound of other people in the flat. I’m not used to it.

I walk back into the bedroom. Hayley’s sitting on the bed, flicking through her phone.

‘Well, this is boring,’ she says. ‘I was hoping for a showdown.’

‘There’s nothing to showdown. I just want my phone back,’ I say. ‘And for the guy to leave me alone.’

‘You’ve made it,’ Hayley smiles. ‘Your very own stalker.’

‘And he turns out to be a doppelganger. Wait, phone my phone.’

Hayley picks her phone up off the bed and dials my number. I can hear the faint bings and bongs of the church bells I’ve chosen as my ring tone.

I walk out into the main room and peer through the net curtain. I can see him in the front garden, staring in. My phone’s in his hand. He’s watching the screen, letting it ring off. Hayley’s in the doorway of my bedroom, her phone clamped to her ear. When she gives up the ringing and puts the phone down by her side, I pull the curtain tight and mouth to Hayley that he’s out there, what’s our plan? She shrugs. She says she didn’t prepare for such a situation.

‘Just go out and talk to him. He’s hardly a guy with a weapon, is he?’ she asks.

I can feel the echoes of blows over my body from our last tussle, but she’s right. I look out of the window. He’s searching in the front garden for something, stones, rocks, maybe to break the glass. I walk to the front door.

In the corridor, I can hear my upstairs neighbours listening to Kanye West. It’s the first time I’ve noticed their noise since Rach left; she used to complain about their mid-week parties and how they made it impossible for her to fall asleep. I’ve tuned them out since, obviously.

I walk to the front door and open it quietly, stepping outside into the overcast dreary day, looking out over my street and my front garden as Kitab 2 raises a rock over his head and gets ready to strike at the window.

‘Kitab,’ I say, and he stops. He looks at me and drops the rock, backwards over his head. It bounces on the ground and smacks forward into his heels. For a second, I see him wince. He keeps his hands up and faces me, like he’s surrendering, laughing, surrendering. I run forward.

I jump at him, my arms ready to clamp. A mid-air rugby tackle, successful, sends us both to the ground, me on top of him, his arms still aloft, the weight of my body pushing all the air out of him. He makes a noise like a strangled seal, a wispy brown, barely-no-longer-a-teenager seal. I sit on him in cowgirl position, straddling him.

I raise my fist to slam down into his face. I’ve forgotten myself. I’ve forgotten who I am. I don’t know this man. I’ve never seen him before. I look down at Kitab 2. For a pregnant second, he looks like I was when I was a teenager, running around, pretending I could take the world on, only on occasion letting the mask slip.

He cries.

With no air in his body and the weight of me, his tears are shallow and punctuated by seal gasps. My fist is still raised as I watch him try and fail to cry. His failure to cry is what makes me punch the ground by his head in frustration. It hurts but I pull the punch at the last second, realising it looks a bit silly and aggressive. The fear in Kitab 2’s eyes as he turns his head to my fist resting on the concrete next to him is palpable.

‘Kit,’ I hear, and I look up. It’s Hayley. She’s standing in the doorway, her arms folded. ‘Stop,’ she says. ‘Just stop.’

I stand up and offer a hand to Kitab 2. He takes it and stands up next to me.

*

‘You’re very pretty,’ Kitab 2 says to break an awkward silence in the flat, while I make an ice pack for my hand with a bag of peas.

‘Thanks, buddy,’ Hayley says, pulling a face. I shake my head. My skin is still fizzing.

‘Thanks for saving me,’ he says.

Kitab 2 runs up to Hayley and embraces her. She struggles to unpin herself from him. I rush over and grab him under his armpits. Kitab 2 giggles but then presses his face into Hayley’s mouth. His nose strays too close to her and on impulse, she bites down.

Kitab 2 lets go, squealing and clutching his nose. The bite isn’t hard enough to make him bleed, but is enough to shock him backwards. I lift him up and he laughs.

I pull Kitab’s arm and drag him into my bedroom. I push him onto the bed.

‘She bit me,’ he says, strained. ‘What an animal. I bet she’s a dynamite in the sack, dude. What do you say? Kitab sandwich?’ I want to tell him that technically it’d be a Hayley sandwich on Kitab bread, but I don’t.

I hold out my hand. ‘Where’s my wallet?’ I ask.

Kitab 2 shakes his head so I tickle his armpits. He giggles till it’s too much. I push my hands into his pockets, pulling out wads of tissue, paper, some bank notes and, finally, my wallet, shrouded in the fluff of snotty tissues stewing in hot pockets.

I hold it up to him. He stops giggling and looks at me.

‘It’s the end now,’ I say.

‘We had fun, didn’t we?’ he says.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve had the best time in London. All this fun. I have to tell you, dude. I’ve met this girl. She wanted me to buy her a beer, and cigarettes and a Big Mac. Then she let me kiss her. It was wild. All 5 minutes from here. People round here are cool. We’re meeting later. She’s taking me out. “All the best places”, that’s where she wants to go.’

‘Anything else of mine you got there?’ I ask.

Kitab 2 shakes his head. I tickle his armpits again, straying up towards his chin/neck lines. Out of his other pocket, he pulls out a wad of paper. It’s old bank statements, a photocopy of my credit card and passport and a flyer for a prostitute.

‘What’s this?’ I ask, waving the flyer at him.

‘I phoned to see if she takes credit cards …’

‘Kitab, enough now …’

‘Dude, we are just getting started. I did your reading last night. It was amazing. We can double up. Do twice the readings. Meet twice the girls. I talked to a couple of girls after the reading. They didn’t like the story but they thought I was cute. Digits, Kitab. Digits. Maybe I should stay.’

‘Kitab, no …’

‘Come on. You meet all these girls. You have to take advantage, no.’

I shake my head. ‘No, Kitab. It’s time for you to go home.’

‘I don’t want to go home. Not to that dad. He hates me. He won’t let me bring girls home. No way. I want to stay with you. We’re going to have the best time. About Hayley …’

I interrupt. ‘You need to go home and see your dad. You need to go back to school and get a degree. You need to pull yourself out of this. You need to call all your old friends up and say you want to see them. You’ve had a difficult thing happen to you. I can’t be the person to help you through this. Okay?’ I am getting higher and higher pitched. ‘I can’t be your guy. I can’t look after you. And stop messing with my life.’

‘Sorry, dude,’ Kitab 2 says. ‘I thought it was funny.’

‘It’s not.’

‘When I read your book, and I read about all the stuff you and your brother did – how you were always making fun of each other and getting each other into trouble … I wanted that,’ he says. His face falls.

Kitab 2 cries. He holds a finger to his nose and tears fall down his face. I cuddle him. ‘I’m scared,’ he stammers.

‘I know,’ I say. ‘Me too.’

‘As soon as I read your book, I thought we were the same. I thought we could be friends. We grew up the same. Except you had a brother. Then when I found out about your brother, I thought I could replace him.’

It hits me. Everything that’s got me about this guy, everything that has pushed me towards something I never wanted, something I never could accept – that static was not working for me. By pushing me and pushing me towards meatspace, by giving me this endless chase outside my flat, I’ve had enough, I realise that maybe I’m not the pacifist who is scared of conflict I always thought I was. I want to kill the boy. I want to destroy him. He has damaged me, online and offline. He has cheated me of a chance to be who I choose to be. He has tried to be me. He has been me.

I push him onto the bed. ‘How dare you?’ I say. ‘How dare you? How …’ I say it again and again, I am going to beat the living fuck out of this kid, I am going to beat him like he has beaten me. He has given me the thing I’ve avoided all this time – a reason to be angry. I don’t want to be this man, but I am and I will.

For the second time in an hour, I raise my fist. I grab Kitab 2’s neck and I get ready to pummel him.

‘Kitab, stop,’ I hear Aziz say behind me. And like an automaton who respects his elder brother, I stop, drop my arm, let go of Kitab 2 and turn round.

The door’s closed. It’s just me and my other. I turn back to Kitab 2. Everything has melted from his face – the childishness, the pervy leeriness, the swagger, the lip curl of the boy in control. He looks like a little boy again. I shake my head at him. It’s time to let him go.

‘Look, it’s going to be fine. Okay?’ I say, reassuringly, reasserting myself as the adult in this situation.

‘How do you know?’ he says.

‘Because you have a family. Family’s important. Go be with your family.’

‘My dad never wants to see me. He’s always going on about himself and his career and his life.’

‘They surprise you, parents. He’ll want to see you.’

‘How do you know?’

‘When’s your return flight booked?’

‘Tonight, dude. But I was hoping to leave a man.’

‘You are, whatever that means … you are. I’ll call you a cab to the airport. You’ll get on that flight and you’ll go be with your dad. Okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good,’ I say and extend my hand.

‘I just really wanted to have sex with somebody, dude,’ Kitab says. I nod. ‘That girl said to meet me later. Can I text her and say we can use your spare bed?’

I shake my head.

‘No way, man,’ I say.

‘It should be easier, yes?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘It should be harder.’

‘That’s what she said …’ Kitab 2 said, and we laugh. For the first time, in unison, we laugh.

Kitab 2 shakes my hand. I keep holding him and walk out of the room.

Hayley is standing there, her arms folded, looking annoyed at Kitab 2.

‘You okay?’ she asks me. I nod. I turn to Kitab 2 and gesture to her at him.

He shrugs.

‘Say sorry,’ I say.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Sorry I tried to do you.’

Hayley smiles like it’s fine but it’s really not.

Kitab 2 looks at me. ‘Wow, dude. I gave you advice about cheering up. You give me advice about responsibility. Peas in a pod, dude.’

He smiles. I smile back. This time I mean it.

‘Kitab,’ Hayley says. ‘Should I go? I feel like I’ve walked in on something.’

I grab her hand and shake my head. ‘It’s complicated,’ I say. She smiles.

I order a cab and set about making tea. Hayley leans against the kitchen counter, her arms folded, like she doesn’t want to be here. I don’t blame her. She looks beautiful angry. Kitab watches television. My weird family, I think to myself. Aziz’s door is still closed. I should wake him, I think. I flick through my social media streams at great speed, expecting an ease to overcome me. It’s just a whirl of scrolling. None of it means anything. I put my phone in my pocket.