Ten Storey Love Song (22 page)

wakes up screaming air. He’s been in and out of slumbers all evening. Sweaty and nervous, he glances at the back of Georgie’s head, and worms start wiggling out of her dark bird’s-nest hair. Sitting bolt upright, Bobby wonders what the hell’s happening to him. He’s got so much to give! Shivering, Bobby the Artist says a little prayer, staring up to the heavens, although sadly he doesn’t actually believe in God. He glances nervously round the bedroom. Thankfully that bastard swastika wallpaper seems to have been taken down, and there’s no more Michael Jacksons in the curtains. However, all the furniture seems to have been replaced by the apparatus of a horrible horrible torture chamber. Shuddering, Bobby clutches the covers up round his forehead, big sloppy heart choking him in his throat. He blinks nervously at the Homebase gallows, IKEA stretching-rack and matching stocks, shiny guillotine, GAK iron maiden and various ball-gags, whips, rusty chains and cats-o’-nine-tails. Georgie continues sleeping soundly beside him, her breaths becoming the deathly gasps and groans of torture victims, echoing off the horrid machinery. Bobby the Artist knows it’s just his mind turning the bedroom into a Chamber of Horrors, not some evil Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, but he wonders why he’s got such a nasty bastard for a brain. Sniffing, Bobby concentrates on the various torture devices, trying with all his might to turn them back into furniture. He remembers an essay he studied at college, where André Breton says (like Leonardo da Vinci before him) if you stare into a crystal ball or cracks in the wall long enough, soon you’ll start seeing obscure objects and images. On the other hand, Bobby figures if you focus long and hard enough on the illusory objects and images (for example, guillotines and gallows and cats-o’-nine-tails), soon enough they’ll turn back into a crystal ball, or cracks in the wall, or your furniture. So, gritting his teeth, Bobby the Artist battles the torture chamber with mind power for fifteen minutes. By the end of it he’s sweating profusely, but at least he gets his bedroom back to normal. He stares breathlessly at the Homebase clothes rack, IKEA desk and matching chest-of-drawers, Georgie’s shiny dresser, Georgie’s GAK suitcase, and various socks, tights, belts, and plugs and wires. Phew-ee! All exhausted, Bobby bumps his head back against the headboard. To celebrate, he decides to crack open a bottle of Bellabrusco, bought for
£
1.99 across the road. Holding the weight of one and a half litres in his trembly paws, Bobby coaxes paralysis out of the hefty glass container, getting completely hammered in just under half an hour. He chucks the empty bottle across the carpet, then chucks his head back on the pillow and burps and falls straight back to sleep. Next thing he knows, Bobby’s woken at 8.30am by Georgie getting ready for work in a daze, then again at 11.05am by Johnnie battering on the door. Bobby tumbles out of bed. At first he thinks it’s a
déjà vu
, and has he slept with Ellen and is Johnnie going to smash him up? Para para para. But Johnnie seems in incredibly high spirits, jiggling around in a new Le Coq Sportif tracksuit, and he says, ‘Now then, Bobby, how’s it going?’ Bobby does a nervous grin. ‘Er, not too bad,’ he replies, still feeling quivery after The Scary Incident with the Acid and all the other scary incidents. He doesn’t feel right at all, and he finds it a bit of an effort speaking to Johnnie when they go to sit in the kitchen. Johnnie helps himself to a handful of Skittles, fidgeting about on the stool, asking his pal, ‘So how’s the art coming on? Any good?’ Bobby stares blankly at a crawling teaspoon on the crumby breakfast bar. ‘Er, not too bad,’ he repeats, then he says, ‘Erm,’ then he says nothing at all. He’s had a few cheques through for various paintings (‘Bobby’s Favourite Trip’ went for two grand, ‘Boozy Bastard Bashes Bird’ went for one and a half), but money just annoys him now and it’s a drag having to log everything in his fucking tax book like Lewis told him to. And as for painting, Bobby hasn’t done anything of value for ages, unless you count the lovely sketch he did the other day of a man with his head chopped off. Shifting his bum, Johnnie can see Bobby’s a bit distant and moody but, instead of reading the signs and leaving him to it, he grins his teeth one by one and announces, ‘I’ve got some good news, by the way.’ Bobby raises a caterpillar. ‘Yeah, well did you hear how I got banged up the other week?’ Johnnie continues. ‘Yeah? Well that’s not the good news like, but it was alright anyway; I had pills and that on me but only five or so. Got off with a caution; daft cunts. But anyway, I’ve decided to pack it in. I’m giving up all this shite; you know, drugs, and stealing and all that. It’s like what you said about being relaxed – I’m never fucking relaxed when I’m out and about causing trouble, you know, always watching my back and that. I’m just gonna get myself a job or something …’ Johnnie’s eyes are bright as golf balls as he speaks, genuinely excited about the prospect. He’s twenty-one years old, after all – stealing phones and dealing drugs and robbing people’s purses just seems ever so babyish now. Crossing his legs, Johnnie breathes a really big sigh of relief – he’s so proud for those words to be finally flying around like the spores of a dreamclock. He’s going straight! Grinning, Johnnie glances at Bobby and carries on, ‘Anyway, since I’ve given up dealing, I’m not gonna be taking drugs any more. But … I’ve been keeping this last gram of ket in my shoebox for a rainy day and well, it’s not raining or owt, but I wondered if you’d be up for one last dabble? To celebrate and that …’ Bobby watches corpse-like as Johnnie scrabbles through his pockets then plops a healthy bag of ketamine on the melamine, then for some reason they both start laughing haw haw haw. In his heart Bobby knows it’s a foolish idea to go shoving more psychedelia up his nostrils, but then again it’s Johnnie’s last day of drugs and he’d be a fool to turn down such a generous offer. Perhaps the Special K won’t send him doolally. The boys adjourn to the living room. The bare walls watch over them gobsmacked as they cut up lines of Kicking K with the credit card Bobby’s been awarded by the Visa company. Four lines later, Bobby the Artist splits the card in two and hurls it in the bin overflowing with acrylic tubes and papers and sweet wrappers. He tries to forget about The Scary Incident with the Acid (even though that entails thinking about it a little bit), putting his feet up on the settee. The ketamine kicks in, numbing his limbs, sticking him to the sides of the sofa. Objects and patterns begin to flutter about the flat. Johnnie, glued to the floor, starts to giggle and run his hands through the carpet, imagining the most beautiful shiny flowers growing from where Bobby saw skulls buried a couple of days ago. He’s catapulted back in time to his back garden in Ormesby, him and his brothers playing in the long unmown grass with toy cars and punctured footballs. Johnnie feels lovely, sitting there in the soppy flower bed, his head all free and happy for the first time in years. Bobby, on the other hand, suddenly begins to panic as the settee starts getting uncomfortable under his skinny frame. Not again! Absolutely paralysed from the sniffy stuff, Bobby can do nothing but lie still as needles begin to erupt from the sofa, ripping and severing the soft pink fabric. Next thing he knows, he’s lying on a bed of nails, all twelve thousand pins stuck deep into his white flesh. With every wriggle, Bobby the Artist feels himself sinking deeper into the nails, until some needles start sticking their heads out of his chest and neck and scrotum and forehead. He screams the word ‘      ’. This is Bobby’s black period. Sweating, Bobby glances at Johnnie while shifting about on the pins, and lo and behold his friend’s gleeful face starts to turn gnomish and hooky-nosed and horrible, with big grey flappy ears and sloppy fangs. He looks away. Drenched in perspiration, Bobby the Artist lubricates the bed of nails, sliding further and further in. During this ordeal, Alan Blunt the Cunt taps on the door three times (he’s in dire straits, sad and desperate to talk to someone), but Bobby thinks it’s the Hangman – or even worse, the Grim Reaper – and doesn’t dare answer it. In any case, his limbs are completely numb; except for the searing needle pain, of course. Hyperventilating, Bobby just hopes he doesn’t forget how to breathe, and he has to keep telling himself in out in out and shake it all about. Johnnie stares at him with blood dribbling out the corners of his gob. Squirming about, Bobby manages to swallow down a bit of bile, then finally musters up a few words: ‘Johnnie … eh, maybe you’d better go …’ Bits of stringy flesh peel off Johnnie’s face. He sticks his big red tongue out. ‘Oh, er, aye sound,’ he mumbles, claws and penises and horns growing out of his eyeballs. Johnnie was quite enjoying himself just then, in the flower bed. He can tell when someone’s having a bad trip, though – his mate Ronson once saw Hell in Sainsbury’s car park, and he would’ve thrown himself onto the busy flyover had Johnnie not been there to look after him. The next day Ronson was fine, and they had a delicious Sunday dinner round his mam’s with all the trimmings. Recalling that Bisto, Johnnie stands up from the daisy patch, licking his lips. He’s in heaven. ‘You alright, mate?’ he asks, grinning his pearly off-whites/piranha gnashers. Bobby just grumbles though, fear and panic and all those other words tumbling about his system. He lets out a sustained, blood-boiling scream, and after a bit Johnnie gets the picture and starts readying himself on the sofa arm, checks his appearance three or four times in the TV set, says goodbye to every single one of the carpet flowers, then leans right over Bobby the Artist and growls, ‘I hope, er, you’re alright … take care, mate … er, take care.’ Bobby just stares at him though, with weeping eyes. Shutting the door behind him softly, Johnnie feels a bit guilty leaving his friend in such a sorry state, but Bobby’s a big boy and surely he knows how to combat a bad trip. It’s just the drugs, it’s just the drugs. Slinking down the staircase with heavy limbs, past 4B’s fuzzy WELCOME mat, Johnnie’s still firmly under the influence himself. With his new breezy state of mind, the world seems so simple and wondrous – hanging around with people having bad trips is pretty bad crack like. He slides down the slimy banister. Shivering, Johnnie catches the 65A into the town centre, and by the time he reaches Doggy the ketamine’s beginning to fade off and he stares out the window at the scenery slowly becoming dull again. Off the bus, Johnnie strides peacefully between the mad chain stores and concrete blocks and gothic castles, head full of blank paper. For the first time in his life he wants to earn an honest crust; it’s hard work as it is running around stealing wallets and selling drugs and avoiding policemen, it might actually be more of a doss having a nine-to-five occupation. There’s always the dole – if they’d have him back – but it’d be depressing hanging out with the same bad characters on the New Deal; opportunist cunts like Bello who got him into twocking mobiles and suchlike. Keeping his head up, Johnnie goes into an off-licence on Borough Road for a pack of ten Royals, and he asks the assistant if they’ve got any jobs going. ‘No, sorry mate,’ the skinhead lad says, ding-a-linging the till. Nodding, Johnnie strolls a bit further down the road, popping into the Crown and then into Isaac’s to see if they need bar staff. He’s never poured a pint before in his life, but he likes the idea of working around pissheads, and he’s also under the false impression that being behind a bar feels the same as being out on the lash. However, the lovely barmaid at the Crown and the fatty gadge at Wetherspoon’s both turn him down, especially with no CV and no experience to speak of. The boy with spots at WHSmith turns him away as well. So does Superdrug. So do all the sports shops. Getting disheartened, and getting more and more cold and sober as the day goes silvery grey, Johnnie stops for a pint in the Central to calm his nerves. He looks at the people whizzing about Corporation Road, doing their daily jobs and errands and it looks like such a settled, easy life. And he can’t wait to have that amazing safety-net: a wage. Strangely, he’s even looking forward to getting up at the crack of dawn and coming home knackered after excruciating days at the grind, throwing himself on the sofa between Ellen’s Care-Bear arms. Maybe she’ll even have dinner ready for him! Finishing his Kronenbourg, Johnnie gets up to leave and asks the glass-collector if they’ve got any ‘vacancies’ (a term he picked up from the boy at WHSmith), but no, they haven’t. Back outside, he can’t be bothered asking at the Hairy Lemon because it’s got such a silly name. All sullen again, Johnnie’s head drops to the ground and he follows it into the gaudy Cleveland Centre, kicking bits of receipts and fag butts in really clichéd upsetness. He wanders the aisles aimlessly for a bit. He sees a pair of trainers he likes in Sport&Soccer, but he can’t afford them. Hands in pockets, Johnnie scampers into Bhs on the off-chance Georgie’s on her shift. Bored, she stands there behind the sweety counter, scoffing stick after stick of carrot dipped in humous. She’s begun eating healthy since adopting her third pink spare tyre round her belly, although it’s hard work what with all the kids coming in to buy their advent calendars ready for December the first. ‘Oh, hiya, Johnnie,’ she says, with orange teeth. Johnnie smiles. He’s surprised how much weight she’s put on recently and how spotty she’s becoming but, in the way that baby hippos are cute, she’s still quite attractive. ‘Alright, Georgie?’ he asks. ‘Not bad,’ she replies, swallowing. ‘Not very busy. What you been up to?’ Johnnie shrugs. ‘Not a lot,’ he says. ‘I was round yours today, mind; me and Bobby done a bit of Special K … it was mint …’ Georgie gulps. Just when she thought she’d ridden the flat of drugs, Johnnie goes and forces more shite up her boyfriend’s nose – that’s the problem living so close to drug dealers. Bastards!! ‘How is he??’ she asks, calming down. ‘Er, I dunno. I think his head’s a bit fucked like …’ Georgie looks at Johnnie with eyeballs starting to glisten. She’s never really liked Johnnie, especially since he’s sort of the devil sitting on Bobby’s right shoulder, and she’s the angel. ‘Where is he now?’ she asks, dipping another carrot stick. ‘Dunno; at home I guess like,’ is the reply. Georgie nods, wishing she could get Bobby to a doctor/psychiatrist/hippy spiritual healer. She looks around Bhs and the boring beige shopping arcade – she feels so locked and useless in her crap dead-end job. Johnnie, on the other hand, stares at her with a little bit of envy, then stares at the till and the brightly coloured shelves, trying to figure them out. ‘Any chance you’ve got any jobs going here like?’ he asks, and Georgie’s a bit taken aback to hear that pop out of his mouth. She gargles some humous. ‘Ah, I dunno,’ she replies, just as Mr Hawkson her evil boss starts coming over to have a go at her. He strides across the dingy chewing-gummed carpet in his sticky polyester shirt, eyebrows like droopy knitted scarves, and he takes one look at Johnnie in his Le Coq Sportif tracky top and spouts, ‘Who’s this?’ Johnnie feels a bit of an angry squirm in his belly, but he chokes it back trying to remain ca (argh) lm. ‘This is Johnnie,’ Georgie answers softly. ‘He’s looking for a job here.’ Mr Hawkson splutters out this dreadful sarky laughter. ‘Well tell him we’re fully manned,’ he snaps, then turns one hundred and seventy degrees and scuttles off back to his lair; the pokey office up by Menswear. ‘Ignore him, he’s an idiot,’ Georgie says, although her body language is a bit stiffer and colder now Hawkson’s been over. ‘Ah, right,’ Johnnie goes, gently walking backwards on his way out of the shop, ‘I’ll be off now, anyway. I’ll see you later, eh, take care. Oh, and I hope Bobby’s alright and all that.’ Left with those words, Georgie feels a bit sad and subdued for the rest of her shift. Once Hawkson gives her the OK to grab her coat and leave the sweety labyrinth, Georgie stampedes sharply to the bus station through the chilly, slowly freezing town. She goes via Virgin Megastore, picking up a sale copy of Television’s