The Dreams of Max & Ronnie (10 page)

– What film they making?

– Dunno. Knights and dragons and all that shit. Don't ask me, brar.

There is a whipping wind in this high place.

– So what do we do? Just stroll on in like?

Thirteen gives this man a look. – Yew stupid?

– Well, what
do
we do, maan? Just gunna stand up yur all fuckin day?

Thirteen shakes his head. – Them actors and that, they'll all be staying in some big posh hotel somewhere. And I'll bet yew anything they'll be having a party tonight. Every night. Bit of local knowledge, that's what we need.

So they return to their cars and drive and they find a nearby pub and in that pub are two shaven-headed track-suited lads playing pool and an older man with grey hair waiting his turn to play, sipping a pint of bitter and chalking his cue. Thirteen buys these men drinks and befriends them and recognises the time to declare who he is and what he's doing there and he shows them Max on his mobile phone and they recall the documentary he was in and seem impressed by what they see and give Thirteen the name of a nearby country-mansion hotel when he asks.

– And that's where they're all staying is it?

– Aye. And guess what? We're only tonight's security, aren't we? Me and him, here. We're only on-a fucking door tonight, mun.

Thirteen laughs and shakes their hands and buys more beer and then more beer and the afternoon fades in pints and pool and then the lads must go to prepare for their night of work and after nightfall Thirteen and his men follow the given directions to a huge white house all lit up in the middle of a meadow in the middle of a wood and surrounded by the types of automobiles for which they all long. Much noise comes from inside the house, music and laughter. Bright lights are thrown by the windows into slanting rhomboids on the neat green lawn. Thirteen nods and winks at the two lads on the door, now in smart black suits, who nod and wink and grin back at him and Thirteen hands them each a small package, a tiny envelope wrapped in cellophane which they gratefully accept and pocket and Thirteen leads his men into a well-lit and gorgeous clamour. Some of his men pounce on the table of food. Some of them make for the punchbowl or the bar. Others just stand and stare agog and one accompanies Thirteen into what looks like a ballroom, chandeliers suspended over milling people on a gleaming parquet flooring, and he nudges Thirteen in the ribs with his elbow and points and says
HER
and Thirteen follows his pointing finger and his eyes narrow and he nods his head slowly and thinks
Jesus fucking Christ
. And he says: – Fuck me maan yes. Well spotted.

They mill and mingle and drink, all the time keeping the woman in their sight. She is an album of moments from Thirteen's past; her hair reminds him of the chocolate mousses his mother would buy him as a treat if he'd been good; the shoulder-straps of her white dress recall single strands of the tinned spaghetti he'd have on toast, and the breasts that those straps sustain hoisted suggest to him the round and brown and gleaming horse-chestnuts he'd reveal when he broke open the spiked carapace of a conker. He cannot keep his eyes off her. Past midnight, when he feels like he's drunk enough to keep his tongue stable and safe from tripping over itself (because he's not very good with women, our Thirteen), and the woman is alone at the punchbowl, he approaches her, pound signs in one of his eyes and her face in the other. Jesus Christ her
face
.

– Hello, he says, and within a few minutes he's learnt from her that the film being made is based on some old national poem or something, that she's just an extra on it but has a speaking part and that, far from hailing from Hollywood or even America, she was born and still lives in the town with the castle and the marina. Thirteen has discovered, too, that friendliness needn't necessarily be seen as a sign of weakness and that this woman is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen and that the pangs she has put in him, part pain and part joy, he can only relate to the pitiful bleatings of some be-vested and hairgelled prick he'd seen last week giving it all soulful gestures on
The X Factor
as he sang a song about love.

He's about to tell her something about this. Dear God, help him, his lips are open and the words are in his throat to tell her something of how she's made him feel, him with the big 13 tattooed on the back of his hand, when there's a tap on his shoulder and one of his boys says: – Yew asked her yet?

– Asked me what? The woman says, in a voice that moves like a gliding silver fish.

Thirteen shakes his head. His boy rolls his eyes. Speaks to the woman. Tells her why he's there. She listens with her eyes all big and brown and sipping at her drink and only speaks when the man uses, in relation to Max, the word ‘gangster';
gangsta with
an ‘a', right
? is what she says. When the proposition has been put to her and Thirteen and his man are just standing there staring at her she pours herself another ladle of punch and says:

– So you've come all this way to take the piss. Why? I mean I can see that you are who you say you are and all that but why are you laughing at me?

Cue protestations of innocence from the two men, and a shared insistence on the veracity of their proposal and mission. Thirteen takes out his phone, shows her the picture of Max.

– This is him, see. Recognise him? He's been on the telly and everything. He's an important figure. He's all fucked up. Honest, no word of a lie, this is easy money. Man's proper pickled. Man's in a right state.

– Fuck of a lot of it 'n all, says the other boy. – Money, I mean.

The woman thinks for a moment. Says: – Tell you what. Bring
him
up here, what's his name, Max did you say? Get Max up here. Not sure to believe you two or not so get him up here to prove it.

Thirteen nods. – When?

– Soon's you can. I'm not needed on set for the next couple of days.

Thirteen nods again. Rips his eyes off the woman and patrols through the mansion gathering his men and herds them into the cars and the soberest amongst them gets into the driving seats and they head back south to their city. Dark night they drive through, the mountains just darker shapes against that background blackness, a massive masking of stars all that tells of their presence. ‘Hey There Delilah' by the Plain White T's comes on the radio and Thirteen goes all quiet for its duration. Thinks about the woman and realises he doesn't even know her name. He's heard this song before and hated it but now he likes it, except for the bit about ‘paying the bills with this guitar'; that's just fucking stupid. But the tone of it, and the mood of it... she had interesting eyes, that woman.

They drive all night through the land to which they have been told many times over that they belong yet none of them has ever felt that they do and nor do they feel that now and each man feels a relief, a settling of something inside, as he sees the skyline of his city approach at dawn. This familiarity: this safety. They each go separately home for a few hours' sleep after which Thirteen goes straight to Rome. No point calling at the Emperor's flat, he won't be in. Rome's where he'll be. He is.

When Thirteen was a boy, he found a dead cat in a canal and fished it out with a stick. It'd been dead some time, and Thirteen spent five fixed minutes looking into its face. He's reminded of that cat, now, as he looks at Max in his usual corner booth in Rome. He looks at the boys who have already gathered around Max with an expression that says:
Him in this state, this ain't gunna work
, but he says to Max: – We've found her, boss. Woman yewer looking for. We've found her, brar.

With a speed and determination that startles in such a wasted frame Max slams back his drink and leads his men into the car park and they clamber into cars and again leave the city, heading north. Plains and mountains and rivers and lakes again, everything they know and trust falling away, falling away. Max drives very, very fast. Thirteen supplies the directions. Max grinds his teeth all the way. If he speaks, it is in a garble, impossible for Thirteen to discern what he says. On the flat island beyond the mountains, overlooking the castle at which the filming is going on, Max stops the car and says softly:
Dreamed of this place,
I yav
. And he says it again, at the entrance to the mansion hotel:
I have dreamed of this place
.

Thirteen leads Max into the ballroom. There's the same two bouncers; Thirteen nods at them and they nod back and regard Max with something like puzzlement. The mess of him. And there's the woman, wearing a shirt and torn and faded jeans, her casual wear, sitting with her legs tucked beneath her on a red couch in the window bay. She smiles at Thirteen, a smile like a bolt of lightning. Thirteen shows her to Max. Max nods and sits beside her and stays there as the party around them gathers noise and energy and at some point in the hours of darkness they, Max and the woman, go upstairs. Max's crew have once again dispersed themselves about the house, eating free food, drinking free drink, touching shoulders with the people around them some of whose faces they've seen many times on screens and billboards. They're feeling famous. They're feeling important. Except Thirteen, who is hovering around the patio doors, feeling what he doesn't know, worried, jealous, apprehensive, uncomfortable, heavy and hot in the head.

The two security guys approach him. – See yewer boss is renting Helen, then.

Thirteen squints. – What?

– Does he know how much she costs? She ain't cheap.

– What're yew talking about?

– Helen, mun.

– What, the, the extra on the film?

The men laugh. – That what she told yew? Well she might be that as well as a very expensive prozzie, like.

– And we are talking
very
expensive.

In response to the incomprehension in Thirteen's face he is told that Helen has, for some years, been servicing the film sets that regularly visit this area of castles and mountains and lakes. In response to the mounting dismay in Thirteen's face he is told that she can charge a fortune for her services because the actors and directors etc, the celebrities like, can afford to pay it plus she's very good looking. And in response to the anger in Thirteen's face he is told that the two guys look after her, make sure she's safe and that she gets her money, even from a famous actor, even from a big city gangsta like Max who's been on the telly and everything.

Thirteen puts down his drink and takes a deeeeep breath. This is going to be very, very bad, he thinks, and at that thought there is a roar and Max appears in the ballroom like a whirlwind, overturning tables, scattering glasses and plates and people, kicking pot plants over, standing fists clenched at his sides before Thirteen and looking up at the chandelier so that the sinews in his neck stand out like cables:

– A whore! A skank! Woman-a my
dreams
maan an yew take me to a whore!

Proper lost it, has our man Max. He's crying, or something. His face is in his hands and his shoulders are shaking.

– Boss, I didn't know. See, she…

And she appears now, in front of Thirteen, all ruffled and dishevelled and furious, and God help him but Thirteen can't help but crumple at her beauty.

– My fee, she says in a broken voice to the two security guys. – Bastard won't pay me my fee! Sort him out, will you?

And then the three of them converse in their own language, the tongue of the country to which Thirteen has been told many times over he belongs but which he's never felt to be true, the tongue he's rarely heard in the city that has forever been his world, the tongue that has excluded him from the country he's been told he belongs to in the same way that it excluded his Somalian father and his French mother. He's in a foreign land, here. And Max is being shaken by sobs and the two guys and the beautiful woman are looking at him and one of the guys, the one with the smaller eyes, has an empty bottle of champagne in his hand and is taking aim with it at Max's rocking skull. Thirteen is aware that those few people who have remained in the ballroom are watching, aghast. He's under a bright light. He has an audience.

– Got to do it, lad, the guy with the bottle says. – Apologies and all that but the lady needs to be paid. Services rendered, like. Can't let it go, mun. What kind of arsehole would I look like if I did?

Thirteen nods. – Aye, alright. But, no, listen; Max yur isn't thinking straight. Look at him, bruv – he's pickled. Proper lost it, maan. So I'll stump up for him and pay the bill as long as Helen yur gives me a kiss. Just a kiss.

The guys look at Helen. She shrugs and nods. – Tenner extra. And just a kiss, like. And only cos you seem to be a decent sort of bloke.

– Then payment in full, Bottle-man says. – With a tenner on top.

– No problem, brar, says Thirteen, and leans in to kiss Helen. Lips meet. Oh what a fire burns. Thirteen sucks her tongue into his mouth then bites down as hard as he can, alligator-hard, and in the screaming chaos that follows he spits a chunk of meat out of his mouth in a billow of blood and scoops Max up and yells at him to RUN and they exit the mansion at speed, leaving the rest of the crew behind, and jump into the car and screech away and it seems like they don't cease screeching until they're back in the city they know and in their usual corner booth in Rome. Hearts still beating hard. The trembling fingers.

Over the course of that day their crew straggles back from the northlands, bearing broken arms and noses and gaps where teeth used to be, all except one man who will never be seen again. They tell Max and Thirteen that they're off, they're going, they've already gone. Some days later some men with the explosive accents of the north, hard voices chipped from lofty rock and depthless black icy lakes, appear in the club asking for Max and Thirteen. The barman points them out. The northmen drag them outside into the city's dank alleys and Max and Thirteen are never seen again, not in the city, nowhere in the country to which they were told all their lives that they belong, nowhere.