Broken Neon Arabesque (16/17?)
Title: Broken Neon Arabesque(16/17?)
Summary: Carl has locked himself away from the world, living a life of self-imposed quarantine until a certain stranger comes crashing through his door...
Beta: the lovely rutherinahobbit
Notes: Fairly angsty, this part, I'm afraid. Just call me the ghost of Christmas depression ;P. Oh, and it's too long, and so shall be in two parts
part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11 part 12 part 13 part 14(1) part 14(2) part 15
Part 16
When I awake, it’s because I’m freezing. My eyes snap open to reveal the culprit, Carl is wrapped up in the entire cover, his back to me. We must have both moved in the night. I shiver, perhaps not from the cold. Carl’s back to me seems like an ill omen, a curse upon the day, a bright neon sign lambasting our actions of the night before. Not that I wish that we hadn’t slept together, far from it, but now, in the very-fucking-cold thankyouverymuchCarl light of day, I’m having some slight doubts about the timing. He’d had been all over the place, begging me to leave and then making me promise to stay, there had been so many moments when I’d had no idea what was going through his head… I should have talked to him, not fucked him. But apparently, now that I’m no longer ruled by the brown, my cock has decided to take over. Fuck it. I look at the figure facing away from me, the curve of his back, feet poking out from the bottom of the covers. No, scratch that, Carl has taken over. My head is all filled up with him, I’m not thinking straight, how can I, when he’s here and he’s everything I want?
I bring one hand up, scrunching it into my hair, biting at my bottom lip. I need some logical thought here. I have to clear my head. What I really need to do, I know, is to talk to him, to try and get to the root of whatever it is that’s chipping away at him from the inside. But I’ve been trying to do that, and failing, for as long as I’ve been here. I need to think, I need to find a way…
I get off the mattress slowly, gradually, so as not to wake him, since, despite any irritation at his cover stealing, I can’t bring myself to disturb his peaceful slumber, not while he looks so untroubled. Not like in paintings, graceful and serene, but splayed out, hair all over the place, a snore escaping every so often from parted lips. Not that he looks any less beautiful than those idealistic depictions of sleep…just real. I step away with some reluctance. My trousers and boxers are lying in a tossed heap about a metre away, and I pull them on quickly. I take a look around for other items of clothing, and spot two differently coloured socks beside the telly. I think they’re Carl’s, and a cautious sniff reveals them to be in no way fresh, but I pull them on anyway. Right. What now? A shirt. I’m sure I put one…yes…there we go, over the back of one of the kitchen table chairs, and the tie’s on the table. Dressed, I feel a bit more together. I don’t feel like Carl’s Peter, the one that has come into life since the drugs departed, I’m another man. Slipping on my shoes, I find that one of them has an old, tattered leather wallet inside of it. Brain casting back to the memory of an old man at a bus stop, I flick through it quickly. There’s nothing much there, save from a phone number scrawled onto a folded over bus ticket. I frown, replace it and slide the wallet into my trouser pocket. Never know, could come in handy.
I leave a note on the kitchen table for Carl when he wakes. I don’t write ‘Gone for a think’, that sounds far too ominous. Instead, I remember our position in terms of food, and scrawl down ‘Gone to purchase edibles.’ I’ll just have to hope that my old shoplifting skills are still in working order. So he doesn’t worry, I add ‘Might be a while.’ I can pick up some food at the shop ten minutes up the road, but I’ve got the feeling that I might need a while longer of walking and wondering. One more scribble of the pen, ‘Peter x’, and I’m done.
I linger for a moment at the door, doubts swimming. I can hear Carl’s desperate plea of “Promise you won’t leave me” in my head. But this isn’t the same thing at all, I just need to clear my head.
I reach for the door handle, and force myself out the room before I can change my mind.
* * * * *
“You’re a danger to the people you love.”
“There’s just nothing more we could have done, he was the only hope we had.”
“You might as well have killed her yourself, son.”
“They did a right good job, he’s black and blue.”
Images are jack-knifing around my head, faces, words, memories. I didn’t…I didn’t mean to….I did it. Someone’s dead, and it’s my fault. Peter? No….it was Lucie….it would have been Tim. I’ve tried not to think about Tim for so long, but Peter, Peter’s safe, he’s here, he’s….my eyes blink open. He’s not here. I sit straight up. Something’s happened. I know it. He got too close and now something’s happened to him….oh fuck, he’s dead, isn’t he? Oh…why did I sleep with him, I already knew we were in too deep, I knew that he had to get away before it was too late, I told him. I…
I get uncertainly to my feet. What do I do now? If only he’d never come breaking through my door, if only I sent him away, if only I hadn’t loved him, if only, if only…I spot my bottle of whiskey on the table and stumble towards it, taking a nice, generous gulp, coughing slightly as it burns its way down my throat. I slam it back down on the tabletop, and something flutters to the floor. It doesn’t matter though, whatever it is, how could it? The whiskey doesn’t help at all, although I didn’t really think that it would. I don’t think I was sober at all in the month after Lucie’s death, if I was then it only for sparse intervals while I headed to the offy, or a pub to remedy the situation…but I hadn’t been able to drink away my guilt quite so well after Tim, after I finally made sense of it all, and even with Lucie, it had caught up in the end. Everything always does. Drinking isn’t a good way to forget things, you’re like an ostrich sticking its arseing head in the sand. You might get rid of the world for a while, but it’s just sitting there, waiting for your return with a big fuck-off hammer in it’s hand. I’ve learned that lesson so many times I could take a friggin’ doctorate in it, but still, it doesn’t seem to stop me heading down the same bastard path to hell time and time again.
My head feels as though it’s spinning, and I almost sit down. But no, because if I sit down I’ll just stay there forever, unable to move, and my bones will turn to stone and in years to come I’ll just be a strange statue, a curious ill omen frozen in time. And maybe, somehow, Peter’s family will find out that he was here and they’ll come looking, and I’ll be sitting and staring and unable to say a word, unable to tell them that he’s gone because of me. I wonder what they look like? Pete said that they’d fallen out of touch, what with his less than savoury habit, will they ever know? I pace up and down, questions, grief and guilt all tumbling down on top of me, and I focus on them as hard as I can because then I don’t have to think about the huge, screaming blankness of the future stretching before me.
* * * * *
It’s odd, when I was in the flat I just assumed that it was morning. I woke up…therefore it was morning. Easy peasy. But I step out the door, expecting bird song and brightness….and it’s dusk. Hmm….somewhere along the line my body clock has gone incredibly off, but it’s one of my lesser worries right now. Still, if I’d known, I might’ve tried to locate a jacket, it’s bloody freezing. I shiver. I could go back for one…but, no….I might not leave then, and I need to clear my head.
Cause yeah, while I’m in that flat, with Carl, he’s all I think about. And you might think that that’s a good thing, after all, it’s him that’s got my head in such a spin, a spot of thought might sort it out. But my old brain-box doesn’t work like that unfortunately. I know that I could spend years contemplating all the different ways in which to encourage him to part with his secrets, let me help, and I would find myself no nearer to the solution. But if I get away, then the answer will likely as not come to me. If there is an answer, that is. I’ve never worked out why this method works, but it’s come through for me before so I’m willing to give it a try. I don’t really know what else to do.
There’s a pebble on the ground just in front of me, and I kick it away as I walk forward, watching it skittering across the pavement. Stepping heavily sideways onto my right foot, I catch the stone with my left before it comes to a stop, kicking it forward again. There’s something nice in the simplicity, the world narrowing down to the pebble, never letting it stop, keeping it moving from foot to foot until I spot a drain a small distance ahead and, most probably frowning with concentration, I aim and send the stone flying across the pavement and into it, disappearing with a metallic noise, and then a small splash a moment later as it hits the water. Ha. I grin at my small victory, and run a few yards down the street before slowing back down again, scuffing my shoes against the pavement now that I no longer have any other distraction.
If I’d been a footballer, as I’d wanted to be when I was younger, would my life have been any better? I think briefly about great wads of cash…then about the blonde bimbos plastered with fake tan that would inevitably be all that I would attract. I shiver. No thanks. Wonder if Carlos had any dreams like that? He must’ve, surely he didn’t ever intend to cloister himself inside a basement flat with only a redemptive junkie for company. I’ll have to ask him, I think I’d like to know. And perhaps, if I get him started talking about his past, he might give me some other glimpses too. I grin, whistle a few snatches of notes and stroll into the shop on the corner. The bloke at the counter nods briefly at me, before going back to reading his copy of the Sun. A shaved headed man glares out from the cover, over the heading “Do you want this man as your neighbour?”. I shrug, and walk down the aisle a bit, stopping in front of some cans of soup. Ha….no thanks mate. Peering over the counter I check that paper is still well and truly obscuring me from view, before surreptitiously purloining a few odds and ends, slipping them into my trouser pockets. I could have done with a bag, although that might have attracted slightly more attention, but I’d be able to fit more in it. As it is, I only manage to squirrel away two wrapped sausage rolls, a small block of cheese and an apple, before the man coughs and turns a page and I jump slightly. I stay perfectly still for a moment, until I’m sure that cough wasn’t some kind of signal to the armed ninja guard he’s got to twist any shoplifters into knots, then I wander over to the magazine rack, picking up the first thing I see and leafing through it casually. I count slowly to ten in my head, my eyes slowly growing wider and wider as I realise that I’ve picked up ‘Nuts’ magazine. I tilt one of the pictures on its side, frowning slightly, before putting the magazine back and heading out the door, tossing out a cheery ‘Bye’ to the still Sun-engrossed gentleman as I leave.
I take the apple out of my pocket as soon as I’m a safe distance away, shining it against the fabric of my shirt briefly before biting in to it. It’s a touch soft, but still tastes wonderful after however long of eating odds and ends from tins and old bashed cartons that have lain in Carl’s cupboards for god knows how long. It’s a wonder that neither of us has got some form of food poisoning yet, when you think about it. Or scurvy. Do people still get scurvy? Hmm…anyway, I’ve got my apple now, I’m dancing.
I briefly think about turning around and trying to nick another apple for Carl, after all, I don’t want him to get scurvy either, But I figure that might attract attention. It’ll be easy enough to pinch some form of fruit from another shop before I return though. I can do that. Somewhere far down in my mind the thought bubbles up that I can’t just keep casually stealing things, that I’m going to have to get a job, a life. It’s almost as if I passed the last three years in a dream. Now that I’m out in the world I can see just how out of place I am, I feel as if I belong with Carl, but already I can tell that settling down into day to day life is going to be tricky. What do I know of it, really? I can remember having a job, going out for a pint after it, getting up the next day and doing it all again. It hadn’t seemed all that terrible at the time, but now the idea of that routine sends a strange sickening feeling to my stomach.
But it won’t be like that, will it? Well, it will, but I’ll have Carlos. And if a normal life means a job, a life of routine, well it also means doing things with him. We could go to the pictures, to gigs, even just to the pub….I can already imagine my attention centring on him amongst the hubbub of other people, talking, and music, and amused blue eyes staring at me over the top of a pint glass. I smile widely, probably freaking out the pretty red headed women walking in my direction, perhaps she thinks I’m eyeing her up, but I’m lost in my illusion, I don’t care.
Illusion…I….my smile falters, and then drops completely. Because it is just an illusion, isn’t it? How am I to know that he’d even want that? If I was to suggest that we do things by the book, that I was getting a job, I’m sure he’d join me, I think he cares that much….but I can also see him settling for the first, appalling job he comes across…falling further and further down inside his misery until he’s not even there anymore. Once again, that sick feeling has returned, and I blink my eyes twice, quickly, shaking my head.
That’s not happening. I want that first scenario, and I know that we can make it come true. If I try, and he lets me in, we can do it. It just might take some time, that’s all, but we’ll get there. I’m willing to put off that ‘normal life’ for as long as it takes to make sure that it works out for the best. And it will. After all, it’s not like either of us are at all blameless for our less than fantastic state of affairs, but still, I figure we deserve a break. Surely we do.
I much on the last few bites of apple, core and all, and flick the stalk onto the ground. Bio-degradable, ain’t it? A bus pulls up as I approach a stop, and without thinking I board it, grinning slightly nervously at the driver as I root around in my pocket for the oyster card that I’m sure…yep…here we go. He sighs, as I pass the card over the scanner, hoping to hope that it’s actually got something on it. Thankfully, the gods of the London Buses appear to be shining on me today. I even get a seat. By the window and everything.
I peer out, trying to decipher where it is that we’re actually going, since I didn’t bother to take a look when I boarded. We must be headed out towards Whitechapel, I recognise some of the shops and pubs we pass. I’m grinning fondly, ‘cos it’s all so familiar, and I half thought it would have changed. But it’s the same, almost exactly, as far as I can see through the dusky gloom. Almost seems like the same people too as the last time I came down this way, a small group of blokes chatting and smoking outside a pub, turning and whistling as two birds, laughing and clutching hold of each other’s arms, sashay up the pavement. They must of made an early start of it, ain’t even properly dark yet.
Maybe I’ll call that doctor bloke, when I get back. Not that I think Carl is sick or anything….but doctors, they get trained in asking the right questions, the right way, don’t they? And he had liked Carl, I’m sure he’d help. I rest my chin on my knuckles, elbow on the windowsill as Street signs and buildings pass by. Carl has the number though…how to get it from him? Can’t just ask him for it, he won’t want to ask for help…but if I give the bloke a call, have him come over, casual-like, then that might work. Even just ask him for advice, cos right now I don’t have a bloody clue, to tell the truth.
Pretty sure Carl put the bit of paper in his pocket…just have to separate him from his trousers then. I grin…..like that’ll be a chore…
The bus pulls to a stop, lifting me from my semi-pornographic imaginings. Shame that, I had a very nice vision, I think from the previous night, of Carl, eyelids fluttering over darkened blue, teeth biting back a moan that rumbles through his chest anyway. I lick my lips, a substitute for his swollen, reddened mouth, and I can feel myself hardening, purely from the tantalizing images swimming around behind my eyes. Right, definitely not getting off at this stop then. And oh, fuck off, that’s not what I meant. I quickly take a look around, paranoid in case anyone’s noticed my lovely little trip down memory lane, but no one’s watching, all trapped inside their own private bubbles, by the looks of it. I breathe a sigh of relief, and forcibly eject all thoughts of Carlos from my skull. After all, I don’t really want to end up getting myself off on a public bus. ‘m not that much of a perve. Not quite, anyway. Not that I’d be entirely opposed to a bit of fun with Carl, if it were to readily present itself. Late at night, neon lights flashing through bus windows, Carl squirming, shooting worried glances between me and the oblivious passengers at the front of the bus as I grin, easing my hand in circles over the rough denim covering his crotch. Yeah…yeah…I think I’d like that. I can just see him, parting his lips, once, twice, as if he can’t quite decide whether or not to tell me to stop or keep going, before giving up and just biting down on his bottom lip, or maybe he’d push my hand away angrily, glare… or turn and kiss me. I… but fuck… what happened to ejecting all thoughts of Carl from my head? Bad Peter. Now, let’s try again.
I fix my mind firmly on the scattered fibres of a tune that’s been winding its way inside my brain for the last few days, and by the time the bus next stops I’m okay to get out, disembarking onto the pavement with a shiver at the sudden cold. Night seems to have properly fallen as the bus has travelled, the temperature has dropped and street lights have flickered into life.
I wander for a bit down the street, still humming my tune, before trailing off, frowning when I realise that it’s actually just the chorus to ‘Back to the Old House’, sped up a bit. Hmph, just when I’d thought I was on to something. I stop humming, feeling as if I’ve been robbed of some kind of fantastic innovation, but all it does is make the night suddenly, quite unnaturally quiet. I’ve stumbled off the main road, these are all houses, lights shining in some windows, but not much noise past the light thudding of my footsteps against the pavement. Suddenly, I’m not sure why I’m here, because I know this place, I’ve been here before. but I didn’t mean to end up here, it’s just co-incidence, isn’t it?
Some part of me that knew all along where this little trip was headed sends a bitter snicker whistling through my teeth, taunting my shocked naivety. Coincidence, my arse. If this wasn’t intentional, would I really have stopped in front of this building, his building, with its pen-scarred red door? Would I, even now that I’ve consciously realized my direction, still be heading up the path, pushing open the door that hangs just slightly ajar?
“Wolfie?” I hate the way my voice sounds. It’s not me, it’s someone else pretending. There’s no answer, and I sigh in what? Relief? Disappointment? I don’t even know. I step through the door slowly, pausing for a moment before curiosity pulls me into the messy living room. Fuck, listen to me still lying to myself… in reality, curiosity has nothing to do with it. I’m dragged forward by a thirsty desire overpowering my senses, nothing else.
The room looks as though it’s been raided, belongings scattered across the floor, and my breath catches in my throat as I scan it frantically. The air is filled with a ghastly stench, a half eaten pizza covered in green mould lying in an open box on the sofa. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in days, maybe even as much as a week, and what’s more, it looks like they left in a hurry. My head hurts. What happened? Where’s Wolfe? Where’s his gear?
Suddenly, I’m moving, pulling drawers out, scattering their contents on the floor. I’m an anxious blur, searching the room from top to bottom. No fucking stone, table or cushion is left unturned. But it’s no use, there’s nothing, nothing. As the last slender fibres of my hope are on the verge of snapping, I spot a briefcase, wedged in the gap between sofa, and breath escapes from my lungs in one long, fluid exhalation. My fingers tremble as I reach for the handle, three hard tugs to get the case out, it’s just there, just a bit more and….it comes free all of a sudden, bursting open, and newspaper cuttings are falling every which way, all around me to the floor. What... it was meant to… my eyes follow the papers to the floor, uncomprehending, and my fingers press along the empty corners of the case, searching in vain.
Eventually, my hand falls slack and the case hits the floor a second before my knees, hands falling down to mingle with printed headlines. I spread two fingers across ‘DRUGS RAID’ typed in bold, and remain there, crouched on the floor, as overwhelming relief mingles and is pulled under with complete despair.
* * * * *
There’s a knock on the door, and I pause my pacing, heading over with a frown on my face.
“Who is it?”
“John. You called me, said to come round. You sounded rather perplexed.”
“Oh...” I called John? Did I do that? I stare at the closed door for a while, blinking. I wouldn’t do that, why would I do that? I shrug, and turn away from the door. I walk over to the kitchen table, pour some whiskey into a glass. My hand is shaking.
“Carl?” I twirl the glass slightly, watching the amber liquid move. “Carl, let me in.” I sigh, and sit down at the table. A couple of seconds pass, and then I hear the turn of a key in the lock. It was John that changed it in the first place, of course he has a key. I think I knew that, perhaps that’s why I didn’t let him in. I look up slowly, meet his level gaze.
“John.” I’m pretty sure that I must look a state. I remember sobbing and mumbling scattered words as I pressed the phone receiver to my ear. Was that John? I’m calmer now, I think my emotions have just fucked off. Good riddance, they only brought trouble anyway.
“I killed Peter.” See, nothing. It sounds too real when I say it though. Too blunt, too intentional. I feel a bit odd, but I think it’s the whisky.
John tilts an eyebrow. “Really?”
I shrug. My head hurts. I wish John would do something to stop me from thinking. He doesn’t seem to be moving, so I stand up and walk towards him.
* * * * *
I’m walking away from Wolfman’s, trying to figure out just exactly what’s just happened. What does it mean? Stupid fucking me, practically dancing around waving an ‘I’m no longer a junkie, hurrah!’ banner above my head. I should have known. It’s one thing keeping off drugs when you’re sealed off from the world with a wonderful fuck-up to divert your attention, quite another when you know exactly where to go to get them. I should have known.
But how had I let it come to that? Why did I go to Wolfie’s, after I’ve managed to pull through the hells of cold turkey? Surely that’s the hard bit….it was meant to be easy from now on, wasn’t it? The last few weeks were meant to be me closing the door on that dark section of my life. I don’t want to go back there. But if Wolfman had been home, If I’d found any junk….then I know I would have. I’d have thrown everything away before even thinking about it.
I shiver. He wasn’t there though. I’m still clean. But I don’t feel triumphant, or safe anymore… I’m perfectly aware that I’m teetering on the edge, ready to fall off at the slightest push. And maybe that’s for the best. The moment you feel invincible is the moment right before you fall. Perhaps it’s better for me to know that I should be constantly on the eye out for… well… me. Maybe…
I cough, rub up and down my arms to try and warm them up a bit. With every step nearer home my pace quickens. I need to see Carlos. I need his faith in me to cover for the absence of mine, and… I just really fucking need to see him. I can taste salt on my lips as my tongue flicks over them, and I try for a smile as a bloke approaches, walking in the other direction. He nods in response and takes a step sideways, away from me, all in one moment. I sometimes wonder if at times I seem transparent. Can people see the thoughts all brawling and fighting? Do they move away a safe distance because I can’t?
Charlie Chaplain once said, ‘We think too much and feel too little.” clever man, that one, even if silent comics are more Carl’s thing than mine. But even I can see the tragic element of them. Oddly enough, the best example of Chaplin’s philosophy has to be, not him, but Buster Keaton, the ‘Great Stone Face’… never showing a flicker of emotion, an unfeeling genius. But of course, it’s not as simple as all that. A short while back, Carl was telling me about an interviewer, once asked how the comic did his stunts. Keaton showed him, opened his jacket and let him see the bruises. It wasn’t that it didn’t hurt, or that he couldn’t feel… he just had the best fucking disguise in the business. He felt everything, just never showed it*. I don’t think Carl quite got why I was so taken aback by that story… but for me it was like looking at myself from an outsiders perspective, I could see all my different disguises in my mind in that moment, all merging into that famous deadpan expression. Yeah, I can see the wisdom of Chaplain’s words, but most of the time I wish that I could feel less too, and perhaps Buster would have agreed.
There’s a noise, a clatter of some sort, and I’m spooked and running full pelt along the street. I pass a group of people, wondering if they can spot the fear in my eyes, make it a good way along the street before I have to stop, lungs burning. I double over, hands on knees, sucking in huge breaths of air through my mouth. Fuck. I look over my shoulder, but no-one’s there, save from the backs of the people I passed, a small distance down the road. Sometimes, I used to think, that if I ran fast enough then I’d leave everything that was wrong behind. It makes a kind of sense, don’t it? Survival of the fittest, and all that. If I could just get fast enough, move my legs at a great enough speed, then all my good qualities would keep up, but the worries and faults would all slip away to fall by the wayside. I’d start off at one side of my old school pitch, and every time I’d think that I might make it, I’d seem to be moving at brilliant speed. My heart would skip in my chest, a smile sliding wide, but then my muscles would begin their slow burn and I would despairingly realise that I was travelling slower and slower, until I’d eventually come to breathless halt. I’d wait a few minutes, and then try again, convinced that if I could just keep up that initial speed for just a moment longer, then I’d finally succeed. I took up smoking a week later though, and that soon put paid to that.
Hmm… thinking about it, I don’t half need a fag. Wonder if Carl has any? They’re going to be a trouble, actually, seeing as they’re kept behind shop counters. I’m going to have to be clever if I want some. Or just pinch some cash… but that wouldn’t seem right, somehow. Stupid fucking conscience would have to come back with a vengeance, wouldn’t it? I turn a corner, and I’m on our street, can see the door halfway up it. Seems like a great beacon of hope. Carl. I can feel myself grinning, already I feel a bit safer. I wonder if that’s what originally made me stay with Carl, before he himself became the motivating factor… he doesn’t live in the real world, hasn’t for the longest time… and it’s the real world I’ve never been able to cope with. Perhaps I thought that we could both run away forever… but I think that I’m now coming to the realisation that what we have to do is to both face the truth. It’s more terrifying, but also potentially far more rewarding. I shiver…fucking lot of good that’s going to be if I can’t go out the door without looking for a fix though. Fuck…what the hell happened to Wolfman?
Christ, what would have happened if he’d been there? I couldn’t have come back, I couldn’t have taken the disappointment on Carl’s face. Is that it, am I doing this because it’s Carl or the drugs? I thought I was doing it to help myself, I thought being shot of the drugs was what I wanted, but after today I’m not so sure. I take a deep breath as I turn the door handle, wrap my arms around myself as I head down the stairs. I feel cold. I need Carl. If I can’t have drugs then I might at least have him. No… no, I don’t mean that… fuck. I try the door to the flat, and it opens, even though I’m sure I locked it when I went out. Yeah… the keys are in my pocket.
I can hear a voice. It’s unfamiliar… maybe he has the telly on? “Carl?” I step fully into the room. “Carl, I…” My voice clogs up in my throat, a black mass stopping my breathing. All I can do is make a slight choking sound, stand and stare. My heart is beating too quickly in my chest, I feel sick. I take a half step forward and he looks at me. Carl has his eyes closed, I can see his breathing push and pull against his bare chest. The other one, the one with the cheekbones and cold eyes, the one that looks at Carl as if he’s carving a masterpiece out of unhewn ice, he puts a possessive hand on Carl’s shoulder and smiles at me, a welcoming smile, like he’s inviting me into his fucking house. Then he raises an eyebrow, as he leans down and whispers something into Carl’s ear. I don’t quite know why I’m not moving, but it’s like I can’t budge, can’t blink either as lips meet in some kind of grotesque mockery of a kiss. There’s bony fingers wound tightly through Carl’s hair, and it must hurt, but he could be dead for all he reacts, mouth slack, and there’s a moment when I can see the pink flicker of a tongue pushing past unresisting lips, before the man withdraws. He looks at Carl for a long minute, fingers curling into his palm one by one, releasing again. When he turns to face me it’s with a look of confusion. He looks as if he’s reached the end of the rainbow only to find a smashed mirror. I very nearly pity him, but then his features melt into blankness and my sympathy vanishes with it. Rage is clawing up inside my gut, but I’m not sure entirely who it’s directed at.
“Well…” The words draws slowly across his tongue as he looks me up and down. “You must be Peter.” He sounds bored, his eyes glint with moisture. “Must say… you’re awful animate for a dead person.”
I… what? I open my mouth, because apparently I can talk now, but the words die on my lips at a strangled sound from Carl. I think I’ve been avoiding looking at him, but now I have to. His eyes are wide now, and he’s so pale. Lips wet with the other mans saliva, a euphoric expression on his face. I look away, away from him and from the strange cold man, to the floor.
“Peter?” Oh Christ… why does he have to say my name like that, all mixing disbelief and affection? Fucking bastard. Lying, cheating… how long has this been going on? I bet he’s been laughing at me all this time, behind my back. Was this all a game? I thought he cared… or maybe he did. Maybe it’s that there’s not enough left of me without the drugs… am I not enough… did he have to find someone else? There’s the sound of movement, indeterminate noises from Carl and the chair scraping repeatedly across the floor, mingled in with quiet giggling. My hand curls into a fist, I squeeze it tight until my nails dig in to the palm. There’s a louder scraping now, an amused “Well done, Carl.” that makes my blood boil and then I just have to look up and Carl’s there, right in front of me. He’s smiling, and what hurts is that this has to be the happiest I’ve ever seen him, then he’s kissing me.
I’ve always thought that you can tell a lot from a kiss. Have walked away from people I could at the very least get a shag from because I didn’t like the way they kiss…automatic, like they’re reading a manual over your shoulder, or greedy and mindless, all thrusting tongue, your mouth just some undiscovered territory to be somehow conquered. Carl isn’t like that. And it’s not like there’s even really any difference… it’s just feels as if there is. Something in the way his lips linger against mine, his small puffed sigh of what seems like relief as he presses up close... makes it seem as if he’s imparting proper emotion, love, in the action. It seems like it means something. I’m sure this is the kind of kiss Penelope would have given Odysseus when he finally got his arse back to Ithaca… that is, if she’d been a bloke… and a bit more modern, ‘cos they didn’t get the tongue involved quite as much back then, did they? Or maybe they did, it’s not like I’d know.
But anyway, it seems special, genuine, caring and I push him away, because much longer and I’ll be convinced. He has the cheek to look confused, following my gaze slowly over to the strange man that still stands not more than a foot away. A few of my own emotions seem to spark across and take up residence in the other mans eyes. He looks as if he’s come to some sort of a revelation, and he’s staring at Carl with something close to hate… I think he loves him, the bastard. I swallow thickly, and look back, head hurting.
“You absolute fucker.”
Carl looks at the man, and then at me. He takes a step forward, wide-eyes deep and honest.
“Peter… I-“ I cut him off, because I’m sure he’s going to lie. I can’t trust anything anymore. All the signs I’d thought mapped out his emotions, intentions… well, they must be wrong. Because if not, then how can this be happening? I thought I could trust him…
“No… just-no.” My fingers splay out as my eyes watch them instead of him, I roll them back into a fist again, look up just in time to see Carl’s gaze flicker over to the bloke, the tilt of his head towards the door. I shake my head.
“He can stay… I’m going.” Carl looks back at me, alarmed, and I suddenly notice his eyes, red and puffy. He’s been crying, for hours, from the looks of it. In a moment, my mouth is opening to ask why, to see if I can help… fuck. I take a step back. I can’t deal with this, I want to hate him. I want him to explain, but I don’t want to know. Carl’s moving forward, his hand is on my arm.
“Pete… you can’t. I… John, he isn’t…” He’s speaking in snatches of sentences, no sense, just mumbled words and panic. I jerk my arm from his grasp, trying my best to glare but I’m pretty sure tears are leaking from my eyes. “I love you” tugs from his mouth, the words strangled, cracked around the edges.
And then he’s on the floor, my fist burning.
“It’s no use, he won’t fight back.” The man - John, Carl said John - speaks, before giving a pained smile. Carl’s getting to his feet, opening his mouth to speak, but I’m gone before I can hear the words.
* * * * *
I run for the door, need to catch him, need to tell him, explain… what? I don’t know if I can… what the hell have I done? Earlier, my fears and paranoia had seemed so solid, so very real… how come reality only ever comes into focus when it’s all gone wrong? My hand reaches the door handle, but I can’t move forward, there’s a firm grasp round my arm.
“Don’t.” It’s John. Fucking nuts as usual, of course I have to go after Peter. What else can I possibly do? I try to pull my arm away but his grip holds tight, all bones frozen in place.
“Fucking lemme go, John.” He stares at me coldly, like I’m some sort of idiot. Well… I guess I must be, mustn’t I? Only a first-class idiot could fuck things up so royally. Looking back… I can’t even see how happy I must have been. I painted it all over with my own shadows, can’t even see the light I’m sure was there. Fucking have to get it, him back. My heartbeat is thudding, can hear it in my head, overpowering my thoughts, all frayed edges anyway.
I’m tugged closer to John. Too close for my liking, I feel small… pinned to the spot by the cold logic in his gaze. He doesn’t whisper, although he probably should. It would work better, but John doesn’t do changes in vocal tones. “Right. You’ll catch up with him. And then what will you say?” I open my mouth, but no sound comes out, and John arches an eyebrow. “You thought that he was unfortunately deceased” he states, with no emotion in the words. I nod slowly, and his eyes flash with some indiscernible emotion, bright and savage.
“Well that’s insane now, isn’t it? Do you really think he’ll believe that?” Oh Christ… he won’t, will he? Even I’m having a hard time believing that I was so wrong. But it makes sense… if I explain, explain everything… then it makes a kind of sense, doesn’t it? I’m not crazy. I shake my head in denial, and John thinks it’s in response to his words, a smile twisting his lips.
“I can understand, dear Carlos. Your mind is so dark, so convincing… and in this place...” he swings his free arm in a circle, gesturing at the flat, which all of a sudden seems full of shadows, so small and closed in. John looks straight at me again, straight through me. “You don’t live in the real word Carl. This flat, well, it might as well be in here.” He taps one finger against the side of my head twice and I close my eyes, breathing deep. Shit… he’s right, isn’t he? He’s fucking right…
“Your Peter… give him time.” John’s voice seems less harsh with my eyes closed, it wraps round my breath as it fills my lungs. “When he comes back, you’ll have to tell him everything. He’ll understand too. But give him time.” Small fibres of hope start twisting, winding up… perhaps, perhaps. My eyes blink open, I’m done hiding. John’s looking at me, and the knowing in his eyes terrifies me. Of course, that’s what’s been happening all this time, hasn’t it? Yeah… in my mind I might have fooled myself that he was into the power-play of it all… but really, he’s been learning me, inside and out. The same way you might learn a scale, a chord progression, testing it out, playing it over and over until the notes ring true. Fuck… why?
“W-why…” I ask a question, but my voice is all garbled, I can’t even tell what it is I’ve asked. Why would Peter return… to me, to this? Why would he understand? Why does John know so much, and why is he helping, instead of relishing my despair like I thought he would?
John lets my arm go, and it tingles where his firm grasp had held, Blood flow unrestricted. He steps away from me, although his eyes don’t seem to move. “He’ll need to know. He loves you.” I hear Peter’s voice… replacing the ‘he’ with ‘I’, and it feels like a memory, even if I can’t place it in my head. I’m not sure how John can know that though, if I barely do. He’s only seen Peter betrayed, standing at the door clothed in fury and sorrow. As if he knows what I’m thinking, John smiles, and I’m not used to his smiles containing anything save from the cold twist of lips, but there’s definite sadness in this one, moving from brown eyes to hover across his expression, thick painted lines. “He’ll understand… he’ll understand because he loves you.” John’s voice is still cold, still emotionless… but despite that, everything scatters for a second, all the lines and masks that make up who we are. For a moment, I understand him more than I ever wanted to, but then it’s gone, and he’s the same cold, blank psychopath he’s always been, dark eyes freezing my bones for a moment before he nods and steps away.
“Been good knowing you Carl.” I almost want to nod, repeat the statement back, but we’d both know I’d be lying. The side of his mouth twitches slightly, and he looks me up and down slowly, memorizing me, before nodding, heading for the door. It shuts with a thud, and I mutter “Goodbye John.” before his image fades and disappears completely.
And then I wait. Wait for Peter to return, holding fragile hope tight in my chest and rehearsing my truths.
* * * * *
I can still hear the slam of the door even now, halfway down the street. I can’t even think… can’t see cos my eyes are all blurry and the street lights aren’t doing much to illuminate the blackness of the night. One is broken, blinking, sending the pavement flickering in and out of clarity as I pass it by, and my steps are slip sliding on the ground like it’s ice and I can’t focus enough to put one foot ahead of the other, and I’m freezing, shivering without my jacket and fuck, oh fuck oh fuck oh…I catch my toe on a stone, stumble, feet two heavy thumps on stone as I almost fall, righting myself at the last moment. I pull my sleeve across under my eyes and it comes away wet.
I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been, winding all of my hopes and dreams around one, fragile man. Thinking he was different. How can he be? Stupid, stupid, stupid. And what do I do now? No Carl, no drugs, no home, no hope… I’m fucked, no two ways about it. But I’ve been here before, haven’t I? Been turfed out many a time by girlfriends, blokes I’d been staying with. This is nothing new. And I’m a survivor, me. Takes more than a cheating little bastard to pull me down.
I lift my head up high, try to whistle but I can’t. Don’t know why whistling is the universal sign of happiness anyway, but it’s sure as hell caught me out. It would be different if I understood. But I don’t… not at all, just can’t get my head round it. Okay, so he’d seemed worried, distressed at times… I swallow, remember wide blue eyes and ‘promise you won’t leave me’….but it hadn’t seemed like the kind of turmoil that would come hand in hand with cheating. On the contrary, he seemed more terrified of something happening to me… why would he be if he was always intending to break my heart?
I shake my head, so hard it almost feels as if it might fall right off my neck and fall to lie on the ground. Sitting down on the edge of the pavement, I let my chin rest against my knees, grab my legs with wound arms. Something falls from my trouser pocket at the movement, lands with a dull thud on the pavement. I pick up the leather wallet using only the thumb and middle finger of one hand, passing it over to the other, leafing it open, more for something to do than anything else. I’m reaching for the warmth, the brain-halting passion of hatred, but it’s eluding me at every turn. It’s like there’s a small, disbelieving part of me standing at the threshold, holding the anger back. When I think of Carl it’s a spinning myriad of betrayal, confusion, sorrow… but still not hatred. It would be easier, if I could hate him. If I could hate him, I wouldn’t still be sitting here, unable to move any further away. How is it that I can be shown so clearly that he’s not everything I thought he was, but still feel as if I need him?
I’ve been spinning the wallet around in my hands, watching it blearily through half open eyes. It revolves again, but this time a small sheet of paper falls to the ground. I snatch it up quickly, memories flickering into life along with a wild, desperate hope that pushes sense to one side. Of course, I don’t need Carl. I just need someone. It’s an easy mistake to make… but Carl isn’t special (wrong, wrong, wrong) certainly nothing that isn’t replaceable. He just tricked me into thinking that he was… there was only the two of us, what choice did I have? But now there’s a whole city full of warm bodies and intertwining thoughts. And what’s more, I’ve got a head start.
The scrap of paper with its scrawled phone number pressed into my palm, I get to my feet, near running towards the phone box at the end of the street. Once inside though, I almost let out a sigh of despair. Oh fuck… don’t have any cash, do I? My hopes come to a screeching halt, and I prepare to turn on my heel, pressing my thumb against the button for coin return in a pessimistic reflex action. There’s a jangle and… there’s never any money left in payphones, never… but no, a twenty and two ten pence pieces have fallen down into the slot, and I remove them with shaking fingers, smiling wryly. Perhaps this is my luck for the day then… I sure as hell haven’t had any up until now. I feed them back into the machine, lifting the receiver to my ear as I type in the number off the creased bus ticket. I can remember the bloke, dimly… so much has happened since then, and even when I met him, my mind was filled with… I swallow, blink quickly. I can remember him though, a wide smile and kind eyes… handsome bloke wearing a green Ramones t-shirt on a bus to Whitechapel. See? There we go, he seemed like a nicer bloke than Carl anyway, safe, uncomplicated. The phone stops ringing.
“’ello?” Oh, yeah, Irish. I’d forgotten that. Christ… he won’t remember me, will he? His life will have been packed full of so many more faces than mine, all in a blur. But perhaps he doesn’t have one etched in such fine detail, bleeding all the colour from the rest, as I do.
“Eh, hi. Dunno if you remember me… I’ve left it too long, I know. But my names Peter… em… Pete. Met you on a bus to Whitechapel a while back. You said to give you a call?”
Warm laughter sounds across the phone line, he seems amused by my nervous rambling. “As a matter of fact, I do recall you, Pete.” I breathe a sigh of relief that he hasn’t said Peter, hasn’t sounded the two syllables, and then hate myself for it. Fuck, it’s my name, not his, why should I care? The bloke… oh shit, I can’t remember his name… is still talking. I half listen, as I try urgently to remember… David, Derek…”I don’t pass out my number with the evening paper, y’know? Only give it to people I like,” Well done, Mr… eh… Drew... that’s it… anyway, half of London most probably has my number by now, got higher standards than me.
“Right… well…” I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this. I think that I half thought once I’d dialled he number Drew would just appear in front of me and all thoughts of Carl would vanish into the ether. But no, I’m still in a sodding phone-booth, and I’m not entirely what I want from this bloke, other than for him not to be Carl. Luckily, Drew seems slightly more savvy.
“Listen, I’m just having a drink… fancy joining?” I nod, then realise he can’t see me, say yes instead. “Right, fantastic. Whereabouts is it you are?” I give him the street name, and there’s a pause where I can hear him talking to someone, voices muffled, before he returns to the phone. “Yeah, that’s not far from here at all, you just need to...” he gives me a quick succession of street names and directions, rounded off with the name of a pub that’s unfamiliar to me. I frown, trying to hold all the information still as it swims around my head. I might need to ask him to repeat himself.
“Could-“ the phone cuts off. Wonderful.
* * * * *
* Garry Moore (television host on the Ed Wynn variety show) - "I asked (Keaton) how he did all those falls, and he said, 'I'll show you'. He opened his jacket and he was all bruised. So that's how he did it - it hurt - but you had to care enough not to care."
Summary: Carl has locked himself away from the world, living a life of self-imposed quarantine until a certain stranger comes crashing through his door...
Beta: the lovely rutherinahobbit
Notes: Fairly angsty, this part, I'm afraid. Just call me the ghost of Christmas depression ;P. Oh, and it's too long, and so shall be in two parts
part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 part 6 part 7 part 8 part 9 part 10 part 11 part 12 part 13 part 14(1) part 14(2) part 15
Part 16
When I awake, it’s because I’m freezing. My eyes snap open to reveal the culprit, Carl is wrapped up in the entire cover, his back to me. We must have both moved in the night. I shiver, perhaps not from the cold. Carl’s back to me seems like an ill omen, a curse upon the day, a bright neon sign lambasting our actions of the night before. Not that I wish that we hadn’t slept together, far from it, but now, in the very-fucking-cold thankyouverymuchCarl light of day, I’m having some slight doubts about the timing. He’d had been all over the place, begging me to leave and then making me promise to stay, there had been so many moments when I’d had no idea what was going through his head… I should have talked to him, not fucked him. But apparently, now that I’m no longer ruled by the brown, my cock has decided to take over. Fuck it. I look at the figure facing away from me, the curve of his back, feet poking out from the bottom of the covers. No, scratch that, Carl has taken over. My head is all filled up with him, I’m not thinking straight, how can I, when he’s here and he’s everything I want?
I bring one hand up, scrunching it into my hair, biting at my bottom lip. I need some logical thought here. I have to clear my head. What I really need to do, I know, is to talk to him, to try and get to the root of whatever it is that’s chipping away at him from the inside. But I’ve been trying to do that, and failing, for as long as I’ve been here. I need to think, I need to find a way…
I get off the mattress slowly, gradually, so as not to wake him, since, despite any irritation at his cover stealing, I can’t bring myself to disturb his peaceful slumber, not while he looks so untroubled. Not like in paintings, graceful and serene, but splayed out, hair all over the place, a snore escaping every so often from parted lips. Not that he looks any less beautiful than those idealistic depictions of sleep…just real. I step away with some reluctance. My trousers and boxers are lying in a tossed heap about a metre away, and I pull them on quickly. I take a look around for other items of clothing, and spot two differently coloured socks beside the telly. I think they’re Carl’s, and a cautious sniff reveals them to be in no way fresh, but I pull them on anyway. Right. What now? A shirt. I’m sure I put one…yes…there we go, over the back of one of the kitchen table chairs, and the tie’s on the table. Dressed, I feel a bit more together. I don’t feel like Carl’s Peter, the one that has come into life since the drugs departed, I’m another man. Slipping on my shoes, I find that one of them has an old, tattered leather wallet inside of it. Brain casting back to the memory of an old man at a bus stop, I flick through it quickly. There’s nothing much there, save from a phone number scrawled onto a folded over bus ticket. I frown, replace it and slide the wallet into my trouser pocket. Never know, could come in handy.
I leave a note on the kitchen table for Carl when he wakes. I don’t write ‘Gone for a think’, that sounds far too ominous. Instead, I remember our position in terms of food, and scrawl down ‘Gone to purchase edibles.’ I’ll just have to hope that my old shoplifting skills are still in working order. So he doesn’t worry, I add ‘Might be a while.’ I can pick up some food at the shop ten minutes up the road, but I’ve got the feeling that I might need a while longer of walking and wondering. One more scribble of the pen, ‘Peter x’, and I’m done.
I linger for a moment at the door, doubts swimming. I can hear Carl’s desperate plea of “Promise you won’t leave me” in my head. But this isn’t the same thing at all, I just need to clear my head.
I reach for the door handle, and force myself out the room before I can change my mind.
* * * * *
“You’re a danger to the people you love.”
“There’s just nothing more we could have done, he was the only hope we had.”
“You might as well have killed her yourself, son.”
“They did a right good job, he’s black and blue.”
Images are jack-knifing around my head, faces, words, memories. I didn’t…I didn’t mean to….I did it. Someone’s dead, and it’s my fault. Peter? No….it was Lucie….it would have been Tim. I’ve tried not to think about Tim for so long, but Peter, Peter’s safe, he’s here, he’s….my eyes blink open. He’s not here. I sit straight up. Something’s happened. I know it. He got too close and now something’s happened to him….oh fuck, he’s dead, isn’t he? Oh…why did I sleep with him, I already knew we were in too deep, I knew that he had to get away before it was too late, I told him. I…
I get uncertainly to my feet. What do I do now? If only he’d never come breaking through my door, if only I sent him away, if only I hadn’t loved him, if only, if only…I spot my bottle of whiskey on the table and stumble towards it, taking a nice, generous gulp, coughing slightly as it burns its way down my throat. I slam it back down on the tabletop, and something flutters to the floor. It doesn’t matter though, whatever it is, how could it? The whiskey doesn’t help at all, although I didn’t really think that it would. I don’t think I was sober at all in the month after Lucie’s death, if I was then it only for sparse intervals while I headed to the offy, or a pub to remedy the situation…but I hadn’t been able to drink away my guilt quite so well after Tim, after I finally made sense of it all, and even with Lucie, it had caught up in the end. Everything always does. Drinking isn’t a good way to forget things, you’re like an ostrich sticking its arseing head in the sand. You might get rid of the world for a while, but it’s just sitting there, waiting for your return with a big fuck-off hammer in it’s hand. I’ve learned that lesson so many times I could take a friggin’ doctorate in it, but still, it doesn’t seem to stop me heading down the same bastard path to hell time and time again.
My head feels as though it’s spinning, and I almost sit down. But no, because if I sit down I’ll just stay there forever, unable to move, and my bones will turn to stone and in years to come I’ll just be a strange statue, a curious ill omen frozen in time. And maybe, somehow, Peter’s family will find out that he was here and they’ll come looking, and I’ll be sitting and staring and unable to say a word, unable to tell them that he’s gone because of me. I wonder what they look like? Pete said that they’d fallen out of touch, what with his less than savoury habit, will they ever know? I pace up and down, questions, grief and guilt all tumbling down on top of me, and I focus on them as hard as I can because then I don’t have to think about the huge, screaming blankness of the future stretching before me.
* * * * *
It’s odd, when I was in the flat I just assumed that it was morning. I woke up…therefore it was morning. Easy peasy. But I step out the door, expecting bird song and brightness….and it’s dusk. Hmm….somewhere along the line my body clock has gone incredibly off, but it’s one of my lesser worries right now. Still, if I’d known, I might’ve tried to locate a jacket, it’s bloody freezing. I shiver. I could go back for one…but, no….I might not leave then, and I need to clear my head.
Cause yeah, while I’m in that flat, with Carl, he’s all I think about. And you might think that that’s a good thing, after all, it’s him that’s got my head in such a spin, a spot of thought might sort it out. But my old brain-box doesn’t work like that unfortunately. I know that I could spend years contemplating all the different ways in which to encourage him to part with his secrets, let me help, and I would find myself no nearer to the solution. But if I get away, then the answer will likely as not come to me. If there is an answer, that is. I’ve never worked out why this method works, but it’s come through for me before so I’m willing to give it a try. I don’t really know what else to do.
There’s a pebble on the ground just in front of me, and I kick it away as I walk forward, watching it skittering across the pavement. Stepping heavily sideways onto my right foot, I catch the stone with my left before it comes to a stop, kicking it forward again. There’s something nice in the simplicity, the world narrowing down to the pebble, never letting it stop, keeping it moving from foot to foot until I spot a drain a small distance ahead and, most probably frowning with concentration, I aim and send the stone flying across the pavement and into it, disappearing with a metallic noise, and then a small splash a moment later as it hits the water. Ha. I grin at my small victory, and run a few yards down the street before slowing back down again, scuffing my shoes against the pavement now that I no longer have any other distraction.
If I’d been a footballer, as I’d wanted to be when I was younger, would my life have been any better? I think briefly about great wads of cash…then about the blonde bimbos plastered with fake tan that would inevitably be all that I would attract. I shiver. No thanks. Wonder if Carlos had any dreams like that? He must’ve, surely he didn’t ever intend to cloister himself inside a basement flat with only a redemptive junkie for company. I’ll have to ask him, I think I’d like to know. And perhaps, if I get him started talking about his past, he might give me some other glimpses too. I grin, whistle a few snatches of notes and stroll into the shop on the corner. The bloke at the counter nods briefly at me, before going back to reading his copy of the Sun. A shaved headed man glares out from the cover, over the heading “Do you want this man as your neighbour?”. I shrug, and walk down the aisle a bit, stopping in front of some cans of soup. Ha….no thanks mate. Peering over the counter I check that paper is still well and truly obscuring me from view, before surreptitiously purloining a few odds and ends, slipping them into my trouser pockets. I could have done with a bag, although that might have attracted slightly more attention, but I’d be able to fit more in it. As it is, I only manage to squirrel away two wrapped sausage rolls, a small block of cheese and an apple, before the man coughs and turns a page and I jump slightly. I stay perfectly still for a moment, until I’m sure that cough wasn’t some kind of signal to the armed ninja guard he’s got to twist any shoplifters into knots, then I wander over to the magazine rack, picking up the first thing I see and leafing through it casually. I count slowly to ten in my head, my eyes slowly growing wider and wider as I realise that I’ve picked up ‘Nuts’ magazine. I tilt one of the pictures on its side, frowning slightly, before putting the magazine back and heading out the door, tossing out a cheery ‘Bye’ to the still Sun-engrossed gentleman as I leave.
I take the apple out of my pocket as soon as I’m a safe distance away, shining it against the fabric of my shirt briefly before biting in to it. It’s a touch soft, but still tastes wonderful after however long of eating odds and ends from tins and old bashed cartons that have lain in Carl’s cupboards for god knows how long. It’s a wonder that neither of us has got some form of food poisoning yet, when you think about it. Or scurvy. Do people still get scurvy? Hmm…anyway, I’ve got my apple now, I’m dancing.
I briefly think about turning around and trying to nick another apple for Carl, after all, I don’t want him to get scurvy either, But I figure that might attract attention. It’ll be easy enough to pinch some form of fruit from another shop before I return though. I can do that. Somewhere far down in my mind the thought bubbles up that I can’t just keep casually stealing things, that I’m going to have to get a job, a life. It’s almost as if I passed the last three years in a dream. Now that I’m out in the world I can see just how out of place I am, I feel as if I belong with Carl, but already I can tell that settling down into day to day life is going to be tricky. What do I know of it, really? I can remember having a job, going out for a pint after it, getting up the next day and doing it all again. It hadn’t seemed all that terrible at the time, but now the idea of that routine sends a strange sickening feeling to my stomach.
But it won’t be like that, will it? Well, it will, but I’ll have Carlos. And if a normal life means a job, a life of routine, well it also means doing things with him. We could go to the pictures, to gigs, even just to the pub….I can already imagine my attention centring on him amongst the hubbub of other people, talking, and music, and amused blue eyes staring at me over the top of a pint glass. I smile widely, probably freaking out the pretty red headed women walking in my direction, perhaps she thinks I’m eyeing her up, but I’m lost in my illusion, I don’t care.
Illusion…I….my smile falters, and then drops completely. Because it is just an illusion, isn’t it? How am I to know that he’d even want that? If I was to suggest that we do things by the book, that I was getting a job, I’m sure he’d join me, I think he cares that much….but I can also see him settling for the first, appalling job he comes across…falling further and further down inside his misery until he’s not even there anymore. Once again, that sick feeling has returned, and I blink my eyes twice, quickly, shaking my head.
That’s not happening. I want that first scenario, and I know that we can make it come true. If I try, and he lets me in, we can do it. It just might take some time, that’s all, but we’ll get there. I’m willing to put off that ‘normal life’ for as long as it takes to make sure that it works out for the best. And it will. After all, it’s not like either of us are at all blameless for our less than fantastic state of affairs, but still, I figure we deserve a break. Surely we do.
I much on the last few bites of apple, core and all, and flick the stalk onto the ground. Bio-degradable, ain’t it? A bus pulls up as I approach a stop, and without thinking I board it, grinning slightly nervously at the driver as I root around in my pocket for the oyster card that I’m sure…yep…here we go. He sighs, as I pass the card over the scanner, hoping to hope that it’s actually got something on it. Thankfully, the gods of the London Buses appear to be shining on me today. I even get a seat. By the window and everything.
I peer out, trying to decipher where it is that we’re actually going, since I didn’t bother to take a look when I boarded. We must be headed out towards Whitechapel, I recognise some of the shops and pubs we pass. I’m grinning fondly, ‘cos it’s all so familiar, and I half thought it would have changed. But it’s the same, almost exactly, as far as I can see through the dusky gloom. Almost seems like the same people too as the last time I came down this way, a small group of blokes chatting and smoking outside a pub, turning and whistling as two birds, laughing and clutching hold of each other’s arms, sashay up the pavement. They must of made an early start of it, ain’t even properly dark yet.
Maybe I’ll call that doctor bloke, when I get back. Not that I think Carl is sick or anything….but doctors, they get trained in asking the right questions, the right way, don’t they? And he had liked Carl, I’m sure he’d help. I rest my chin on my knuckles, elbow on the windowsill as Street signs and buildings pass by. Carl has the number though…how to get it from him? Can’t just ask him for it, he won’t want to ask for help…but if I give the bloke a call, have him come over, casual-like, then that might work. Even just ask him for advice, cos right now I don’t have a bloody clue, to tell the truth.
Pretty sure Carl put the bit of paper in his pocket…just have to separate him from his trousers then. I grin…..like that’ll be a chore…
The bus pulls to a stop, lifting me from my semi-pornographic imaginings. Shame that, I had a very nice vision, I think from the previous night, of Carl, eyelids fluttering over darkened blue, teeth biting back a moan that rumbles through his chest anyway. I lick my lips, a substitute for his swollen, reddened mouth, and I can feel myself hardening, purely from the tantalizing images swimming around behind my eyes. Right, definitely not getting off at this stop then. And oh, fuck off, that’s not what I meant. I quickly take a look around, paranoid in case anyone’s noticed my lovely little trip down memory lane, but no one’s watching, all trapped inside their own private bubbles, by the looks of it. I breathe a sigh of relief, and forcibly eject all thoughts of Carlos from my skull. After all, I don’t really want to end up getting myself off on a public bus. ‘m not that much of a perve. Not quite, anyway. Not that I’d be entirely opposed to a bit of fun with Carl, if it were to readily present itself. Late at night, neon lights flashing through bus windows, Carl squirming, shooting worried glances between me and the oblivious passengers at the front of the bus as I grin, easing my hand in circles over the rough denim covering his crotch. Yeah…yeah…I think I’d like that. I can just see him, parting his lips, once, twice, as if he can’t quite decide whether or not to tell me to stop or keep going, before giving up and just biting down on his bottom lip, or maybe he’d push my hand away angrily, glare… or turn and kiss me. I… but fuck… what happened to ejecting all thoughts of Carl from my head? Bad Peter. Now, let’s try again.
I fix my mind firmly on the scattered fibres of a tune that’s been winding its way inside my brain for the last few days, and by the time the bus next stops I’m okay to get out, disembarking onto the pavement with a shiver at the sudden cold. Night seems to have properly fallen as the bus has travelled, the temperature has dropped and street lights have flickered into life.
I wander for a bit down the street, still humming my tune, before trailing off, frowning when I realise that it’s actually just the chorus to ‘Back to the Old House’, sped up a bit. Hmph, just when I’d thought I was on to something. I stop humming, feeling as if I’ve been robbed of some kind of fantastic innovation, but all it does is make the night suddenly, quite unnaturally quiet. I’ve stumbled off the main road, these are all houses, lights shining in some windows, but not much noise past the light thudding of my footsteps against the pavement. Suddenly, I’m not sure why I’m here, because I know this place, I’ve been here before. but I didn’t mean to end up here, it’s just co-incidence, isn’t it?
Some part of me that knew all along where this little trip was headed sends a bitter snicker whistling through my teeth, taunting my shocked naivety. Coincidence, my arse. If this wasn’t intentional, would I really have stopped in front of this building, his building, with its pen-scarred red door? Would I, even now that I’ve consciously realized my direction, still be heading up the path, pushing open the door that hangs just slightly ajar?
“Wolfie?” I hate the way my voice sounds. It’s not me, it’s someone else pretending. There’s no answer, and I sigh in what? Relief? Disappointment? I don’t even know. I step through the door slowly, pausing for a moment before curiosity pulls me into the messy living room. Fuck, listen to me still lying to myself… in reality, curiosity has nothing to do with it. I’m dragged forward by a thirsty desire overpowering my senses, nothing else.
The room looks as though it’s been raided, belongings scattered across the floor, and my breath catches in my throat as I scan it frantically. The air is filled with a ghastly stench, a half eaten pizza covered in green mould lying in an open box on the sofa. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in days, maybe even as much as a week, and what’s more, it looks like they left in a hurry. My head hurts. What happened? Where’s Wolfe? Where’s his gear?
Suddenly, I’m moving, pulling drawers out, scattering their contents on the floor. I’m an anxious blur, searching the room from top to bottom. No fucking stone, table or cushion is left unturned. But it’s no use, there’s nothing, nothing. As the last slender fibres of my hope are on the verge of snapping, I spot a briefcase, wedged in the gap between sofa, and breath escapes from my lungs in one long, fluid exhalation. My fingers tremble as I reach for the handle, three hard tugs to get the case out, it’s just there, just a bit more and….it comes free all of a sudden, bursting open, and newspaper cuttings are falling every which way, all around me to the floor. What... it was meant to… my eyes follow the papers to the floor, uncomprehending, and my fingers press along the empty corners of the case, searching in vain.
Eventually, my hand falls slack and the case hits the floor a second before my knees, hands falling down to mingle with printed headlines. I spread two fingers across ‘DRUGS RAID’ typed in bold, and remain there, crouched on the floor, as overwhelming relief mingles and is pulled under with complete despair.
* * * * *
There’s a knock on the door, and I pause my pacing, heading over with a frown on my face.
“Who is it?”
“John. You called me, said to come round. You sounded rather perplexed.”
“Oh...” I called John? Did I do that? I stare at the closed door for a while, blinking. I wouldn’t do that, why would I do that? I shrug, and turn away from the door. I walk over to the kitchen table, pour some whiskey into a glass. My hand is shaking.
“Carl?” I twirl the glass slightly, watching the amber liquid move. “Carl, let me in.” I sigh, and sit down at the table. A couple of seconds pass, and then I hear the turn of a key in the lock. It was John that changed it in the first place, of course he has a key. I think I knew that, perhaps that’s why I didn’t let him in. I look up slowly, meet his level gaze.
“John.” I’m pretty sure that I must look a state. I remember sobbing and mumbling scattered words as I pressed the phone receiver to my ear. Was that John? I’m calmer now, I think my emotions have just fucked off. Good riddance, they only brought trouble anyway.
“I killed Peter.” See, nothing. It sounds too real when I say it though. Too blunt, too intentional. I feel a bit odd, but I think it’s the whisky.
John tilts an eyebrow. “Really?”
I shrug. My head hurts. I wish John would do something to stop me from thinking. He doesn’t seem to be moving, so I stand up and walk towards him.
* * * * *
I’m walking away from Wolfman’s, trying to figure out just exactly what’s just happened. What does it mean? Stupid fucking me, practically dancing around waving an ‘I’m no longer a junkie, hurrah!’ banner above my head. I should have known. It’s one thing keeping off drugs when you’re sealed off from the world with a wonderful fuck-up to divert your attention, quite another when you know exactly where to go to get them. I should have known.
But how had I let it come to that? Why did I go to Wolfie’s, after I’ve managed to pull through the hells of cold turkey? Surely that’s the hard bit….it was meant to be easy from now on, wasn’t it? The last few weeks were meant to be me closing the door on that dark section of my life. I don’t want to go back there. But if Wolfman had been home, If I’d found any junk….then I know I would have. I’d have thrown everything away before even thinking about it.
I shiver. He wasn’t there though. I’m still clean. But I don’t feel triumphant, or safe anymore… I’m perfectly aware that I’m teetering on the edge, ready to fall off at the slightest push. And maybe that’s for the best. The moment you feel invincible is the moment right before you fall. Perhaps it’s better for me to know that I should be constantly on the eye out for… well… me. Maybe…
I cough, rub up and down my arms to try and warm them up a bit. With every step nearer home my pace quickens. I need to see Carlos. I need his faith in me to cover for the absence of mine, and… I just really fucking need to see him. I can taste salt on my lips as my tongue flicks over them, and I try for a smile as a bloke approaches, walking in the other direction. He nods in response and takes a step sideways, away from me, all in one moment. I sometimes wonder if at times I seem transparent. Can people see the thoughts all brawling and fighting? Do they move away a safe distance because I can’t?
Charlie Chaplain once said, ‘We think too much and feel too little.” clever man, that one, even if silent comics are more Carl’s thing than mine. But even I can see the tragic element of them. Oddly enough, the best example of Chaplin’s philosophy has to be, not him, but Buster Keaton, the ‘Great Stone Face’… never showing a flicker of emotion, an unfeeling genius. But of course, it’s not as simple as all that. A short while back, Carl was telling me about an interviewer, once asked how the comic did his stunts. Keaton showed him, opened his jacket and let him see the bruises. It wasn’t that it didn’t hurt, or that he couldn’t feel… he just had the best fucking disguise in the business. He felt everything, just never showed it*. I don’t think Carl quite got why I was so taken aback by that story… but for me it was like looking at myself from an outsiders perspective, I could see all my different disguises in my mind in that moment, all merging into that famous deadpan expression. Yeah, I can see the wisdom of Chaplain’s words, but most of the time I wish that I could feel less too, and perhaps Buster would have agreed.
There’s a noise, a clatter of some sort, and I’m spooked and running full pelt along the street. I pass a group of people, wondering if they can spot the fear in my eyes, make it a good way along the street before I have to stop, lungs burning. I double over, hands on knees, sucking in huge breaths of air through my mouth. Fuck. I look over my shoulder, but no-one’s there, save from the backs of the people I passed, a small distance down the road. Sometimes, I used to think, that if I ran fast enough then I’d leave everything that was wrong behind. It makes a kind of sense, don’t it? Survival of the fittest, and all that. If I could just get fast enough, move my legs at a great enough speed, then all my good qualities would keep up, but the worries and faults would all slip away to fall by the wayside. I’d start off at one side of my old school pitch, and every time I’d think that I might make it, I’d seem to be moving at brilliant speed. My heart would skip in my chest, a smile sliding wide, but then my muscles would begin their slow burn and I would despairingly realise that I was travelling slower and slower, until I’d eventually come to breathless halt. I’d wait a few minutes, and then try again, convinced that if I could just keep up that initial speed for just a moment longer, then I’d finally succeed. I took up smoking a week later though, and that soon put paid to that.
Hmm… thinking about it, I don’t half need a fag. Wonder if Carl has any? They’re going to be a trouble, actually, seeing as they’re kept behind shop counters. I’m going to have to be clever if I want some. Or just pinch some cash… but that wouldn’t seem right, somehow. Stupid fucking conscience would have to come back with a vengeance, wouldn’t it? I turn a corner, and I’m on our street, can see the door halfway up it. Seems like a great beacon of hope. Carl. I can feel myself grinning, already I feel a bit safer. I wonder if that’s what originally made me stay with Carl, before he himself became the motivating factor… he doesn’t live in the real world, hasn’t for the longest time… and it’s the real world I’ve never been able to cope with. Perhaps I thought that we could both run away forever… but I think that I’m now coming to the realisation that what we have to do is to both face the truth. It’s more terrifying, but also potentially far more rewarding. I shiver…fucking lot of good that’s going to be if I can’t go out the door without looking for a fix though. Fuck…what the hell happened to Wolfman?
Christ, what would have happened if he’d been there? I couldn’t have come back, I couldn’t have taken the disappointment on Carl’s face. Is that it, am I doing this because it’s Carl or the drugs? I thought I was doing it to help myself, I thought being shot of the drugs was what I wanted, but after today I’m not so sure. I take a deep breath as I turn the door handle, wrap my arms around myself as I head down the stairs. I feel cold. I need Carl. If I can’t have drugs then I might at least have him. No… no, I don’t mean that… fuck. I try the door to the flat, and it opens, even though I’m sure I locked it when I went out. Yeah… the keys are in my pocket.
I can hear a voice. It’s unfamiliar… maybe he has the telly on? “Carl?” I step fully into the room. “Carl, I…” My voice clogs up in my throat, a black mass stopping my breathing. All I can do is make a slight choking sound, stand and stare. My heart is beating too quickly in my chest, I feel sick. I take a half step forward and he looks at me. Carl has his eyes closed, I can see his breathing push and pull against his bare chest. The other one, the one with the cheekbones and cold eyes, the one that looks at Carl as if he’s carving a masterpiece out of unhewn ice, he puts a possessive hand on Carl’s shoulder and smiles at me, a welcoming smile, like he’s inviting me into his fucking house. Then he raises an eyebrow, as he leans down and whispers something into Carl’s ear. I don’t quite know why I’m not moving, but it’s like I can’t budge, can’t blink either as lips meet in some kind of grotesque mockery of a kiss. There’s bony fingers wound tightly through Carl’s hair, and it must hurt, but he could be dead for all he reacts, mouth slack, and there’s a moment when I can see the pink flicker of a tongue pushing past unresisting lips, before the man withdraws. He looks at Carl for a long minute, fingers curling into his palm one by one, releasing again. When he turns to face me it’s with a look of confusion. He looks as if he’s reached the end of the rainbow only to find a smashed mirror. I very nearly pity him, but then his features melt into blankness and my sympathy vanishes with it. Rage is clawing up inside my gut, but I’m not sure entirely who it’s directed at.
“Well…” The words draws slowly across his tongue as he looks me up and down. “You must be Peter.” He sounds bored, his eyes glint with moisture. “Must say… you’re awful animate for a dead person.”
I… what? I open my mouth, because apparently I can talk now, but the words die on my lips at a strangled sound from Carl. I think I’ve been avoiding looking at him, but now I have to. His eyes are wide now, and he’s so pale. Lips wet with the other mans saliva, a euphoric expression on his face. I look away, away from him and from the strange cold man, to the floor.
“Peter?” Oh Christ… why does he have to say my name like that, all mixing disbelief and affection? Fucking bastard. Lying, cheating… how long has this been going on? I bet he’s been laughing at me all this time, behind my back. Was this all a game? I thought he cared… or maybe he did. Maybe it’s that there’s not enough left of me without the drugs… am I not enough… did he have to find someone else? There’s the sound of movement, indeterminate noises from Carl and the chair scraping repeatedly across the floor, mingled in with quiet giggling. My hand curls into a fist, I squeeze it tight until my nails dig in to the palm. There’s a louder scraping now, an amused “Well done, Carl.” that makes my blood boil and then I just have to look up and Carl’s there, right in front of me. He’s smiling, and what hurts is that this has to be the happiest I’ve ever seen him, then he’s kissing me.
I’ve always thought that you can tell a lot from a kiss. Have walked away from people I could at the very least get a shag from because I didn’t like the way they kiss…automatic, like they’re reading a manual over your shoulder, or greedy and mindless, all thrusting tongue, your mouth just some undiscovered territory to be somehow conquered. Carl isn’t like that. And it’s not like there’s even really any difference… it’s just feels as if there is. Something in the way his lips linger against mine, his small puffed sigh of what seems like relief as he presses up close... makes it seem as if he’s imparting proper emotion, love, in the action. It seems like it means something. I’m sure this is the kind of kiss Penelope would have given Odysseus when he finally got his arse back to Ithaca… that is, if she’d been a bloke… and a bit more modern, ‘cos they didn’t get the tongue involved quite as much back then, did they? Or maybe they did, it’s not like I’d know.
But anyway, it seems special, genuine, caring and I push him away, because much longer and I’ll be convinced. He has the cheek to look confused, following my gaze slowly over to the strange man that still stands not more than a foot away. A few of my own emotions seem to spark across and take up residence in the other mans eyes. He looks as if he’s come to some sort of a revelation, and he’s staring at Carl with something close to hate… I think he loves him, the bastard. I swallow thickly, and look back, head hurting.
“You absolute fucker.”
Carl looks at the man, and then at me. He takes a step forward, wide-eyes deep and honest.
“Peter… I-“ I cut him off, because I’m sure he’s going to lie. I can’t trust anything anymore. All the signs I’d thought mapped out his emotions, intentions… well, they must be wrong. Because if not, then how can this be happening? I thought I could trust him…
“No… just-no.” My fingers splay out as my eyes watch them instead of him, I roll them back into a fist again, look up just in time to see Carl’s gaze flicker over to the bloke, the tilt of his head towards the door. I shake my head.
“He can stay… I’m going.” Carl looks back at me, alarmed, and I suddenly notice his eyes, red and puffy. He’s been crying, for hours, from the looks of it. In a moment, my mouth is opening to ask why, to see if I can help… fuck. I take a step back. I can’t deal with this, I want to hate him. I want him to explain, but I don’t want to know. Carl’s moving forward, his hand is on my arm.
“Pete… you can’t. I… John, he isn’t…” He’s speaking in snatches of sentences, no sense, just mumbled words and panic. I jerk my arm from his grasp, trying my best to glare but I’m pretty sure tears are leaking from my eyes. “I love you” tugs from his mouth, the words strangled, cracked around the edges.
And then he’s on the floor, my fist burning.
“It’s no use, he won’t fight back.” The man - John, Carl said John - speaks, before giving a pained smile. Carl’s getting to his feet, opening his mouth to speak, but I’m gone before I can hear the words.
* * * * *
I run for the door, need to catch him, need to tell him, explain… what? I don’t know if I can… what the hell have I done? Earlier, my fears and paranoia had seemed so solid, so very real… how come reality only ever comes into focus when it’s all gone wrong? My hand reaches the door handle, but I can’t move forward, there’s a firm grasp round my arm.
“Don’t.” It’s John. Fucking nuts as usual, of course I have to go after Peter. What else can I possibly do? I try to pull my arm away but his grip holds tight, all bones frozen in place.
“Fucking lemme go, John.” He stares at me coldly, like I’m some sort of idiot. Well… I guess I must be, mustn’t I? Only a first-class idiot could fuck things up so royally. Looking back… I can’t even see how happy I must have been. I painted it all over with my own shadows, can’t even see the light I’m sure was there. Fucking have to get it, him back. My heartbeat is thudding, can hear it in my head, overpowering my thoughts, all frayed edges anyway.
I’m tugged closer to John. Too close for my liking, I feel small… pinned to the spot by the cold logic in his gaze. He doesn’t whisper, although he probably should. It would work better, but John doesn’t do changes in vocal tones. “Right. You’ll catch up with him. And then what will you say?” I open my mouth, but no sound comes out, and John arches an eyebrow. “You thought that he was unfortunately deceased” he states, with no emotion in the words. I nod slowly, and his eyes flash with some indiscernible emotion, bright and savage.
“Well that’s insane now, isn’t it? Do you really think he’ll believe that?” Oh Christ… he won’t, will he? Even I’m having a hard time believing that I was so wrong. But it makes sense… if I explain, explain everything… then it makes a kind of sense, doesn’t it? I’m not crazy. I shake my head in denial, and John thinks it’s in response to his words, a smile twisting his lips.
“I can understand, dear Carlos. Your mind is so dark, so convincing… and in this place...” he swings his free arm in a circle, gesturing at the flat, which all of a sudden seems full of shadows, so small and closed in. John looks straight at me again, straight through me. “You don’t live in the real word Carl. This flat, well, it might as well be in here.” He taps one finger against the side of my head twice and I close my eyes, breathing deep. Shit… he’s right, isn’t he? He’s fucking right…
“Your Peter… give him time.” John’s voice seems less harsh with my eyes closed, it wraps round my breath as it fills my lungs. “When he comes back, you’ll have to tell him everything. He’ll understand too. But give him time.” Small fibres of hope start twisting, winding up… perhaps, perhaps. My eyes blink open, I’m done hiding. John’s looking at me, and the knowing in his eyes terrifies me. Of course, that’s what’s been happening all this time, hasn’t it? Yeah… in my mind I might have fooled myself that he was into the power-play of it all… but really, he’s been learning me, inside and out. The same way you might learn a scale, a chord progression, testing it out, playing it over and over until the notes ring true. Fuck… why?
“W-why…” I ask a question, but my voice is all garbled, I can’t even tell what it is I’ve asked. Why would Peter return… to me, to this? Why would he understand? Why does John know so much, and why is he helping, instead of relishing my despair like I thought he would?
John lets my arm go, and it tingles where his firm grasp had held, Blood flow unrestricted. He steps away from me, although his eyes don’t seem to move. “He’ll need to know. He loves you.” I hear Peter’s voice… replacing the ‘he’ with ‘I’, and it feels like a memory, even if I can’t place it in my head. I’m not sure how John can know that though, if I barely do. He’s only seen Peter betrayed, standing at the door clothed in fury and sorrow. As if he knows what I’m thinking, John smiles, and I’m not used to his smiles containing anything save from the cold twist of lips, but there’s definite sadness in this one, moving from brown eyes to hover across his expression, thick painted lines. “He’ll understand… he’ll understand because he loves you.” John’s voice is still cold, still emotionless… but despite that, everything scatters for a second, all the lines and masks that make up who we are. For a moment, I understand him more than I ever wanted to, but then it’s gone, and he’s the same cold, blank psychopath he’s always been, dark eyes freezing my bones for a moment before he nods and steps away.
“Been good knowing you Carl.” I almost want to nod, repeat the statement back, but we’d both know I’d be lying. The side of his mouth twitches slightly, and he looks me up and down slowly, memorizing me, before nodding, heading for the door. It shuts with a thud, and I mutter “Goodbye John.” before his image fades and disappears completely.
And then I wait. Wait for Peter to return, holding fragile hope tight in my chest and rehearsing my truths.
* * * * *
I can still hear the slam of the door even now, halfway down the street. I can’t even think… can’t see cos my eyes are all blurry and the street lights aren’t doing much to illuminate the blackness of the night. One is broken, blinking, sending the pavement flickering in and out of clarity as I pass it by, and my steps are slip sliding on the ground like it’s ice and I can’t focus enough to put one foot ahead of the other, and I’m freezing, shivering without my jacket and fuck, oh fuck oh fuck oh…I catch my toe on a stone, stumble, feet two heavy thumps on stone as I almost fall, righting myself at the last moment. I pull my sleeve across under my eyes and it comes away wet.
I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been, winding all of my hopes and dreams around one, fragile man. Thinking he was different. How can he be? Stupid, stupid, stupid. And what do I do now? No Carl, no drugs, no home, no hope… I’m fucked, no two ways about it. But I’ve been here before, haven’t I? Been turfed out many a time by girlfriends, blokes I’d been staying with. This is nothing new. And I’m a survivor, me. Takes more than a cheating little bastard to pull me down.
I lift my head up high, try to whistle but I can’t. Don’t know why whistling is the universal sign of happiness anyway, but it’s sure as hell caught me out. It would be different if I understood. But I don’t… not at all, just can’t get my head round it. Okay, so he’d seemed worried, distressed at times… I swallow, remember wide blue eyes and ‘promise you won’t leave me’….but it hadn’t seemed like the kind of turmoil that would come hand in hand with cheating. On the contrary, he seemed more terrified of something happening to me… why would he be if he was always intending to break my heart?
I shake my head, so hard it almost feels as if it might fall right off my neck and fall to lie on the ground. Sitting down on the edge of the pavement, I let my chin rest against my knees, grab my legs with wound arms. Something falls from my trouser pocket at the movement, lands with a dull thud on the pavement. I pick up the leather wallet using only the thumb and middle finger of one hand, passing it over to the other, leafing it open, more for something to do than anything else. I’m reaching for the warmth, the brain-halting passion of hatred, but it’s eluding me at every turn. It’s like there’s a small, disbelieving part of me standing at the threshold, holding the anger back. When I think of Carl it’s a spinning myriad of betrayal, confusion, sorrow… but still not hatred. It would be easier, if I could hate him. If I could hate him, I wouldn’t still be sitting here, unable to move any further away. How is it that I can be shown so clearly that he’s not everything I thought he was, but still feel as if I need him?
I’ve been spinning the wallet around in my hands, watching it blearily through half open eyes. It revolves again, but this time a small sheet of paper falls to the ground. I snatch it up quickly, memories flickering into life along with a wild, desperate hope that pushes sense to one side. Of course, I don’t need Carl. I just need someone. It’s an easy mistake to make… but Carl isn’t special (wrong, wrong, wrong) certainly nothing that isn’t replaceable. He just tricked me into thinking that he was… there was only the two of us, what choice did I have? But now there’s a whole city full of warm bodies and intertwining thoughts. And what’s more, I’ve got a head start.
The scrap of paper with its scrawled phone number pressed into my palm, I get to my feet, near running towards the phone box at the end of the street. Once inside though, I almost let out a sigh of despair. Oh fuck… don’t have any cash, do I? My hopes come to a screeching halt, and I prepare to turn on my heel, pressing my thumb against the button for coin return in a pessimistic reflex action. There’s a jangle and… there’s never any money left in payphones, never… but no, a twenty and two ten pence pieces have fallen down into the slot, and I remove them with shaking fingers, smiling wryly. Perhaps this is my luck for the day then… I sure as hell haven’t had any up until now. I feed them back into the machine, lifting the receiver to my ear as I type in the number off the creased bus ticket. I can remember the bloke, dimly… so much has happened since then, and even when I met him, my mind was filled with… I swallow, blink quickly. I can remember him though, a wide smile and kind eyes… handsome bloke wearing a green Ramones t-shirt on a bus to Whitechapel. See? There we go, he seemed like a nicer bloke than Carl anyway, safe, uncomplicated. The phone stops ringing.
“’ello?” Oh, yeah, Irish. I’d forgotten that. Christ… he won’t remember me, will he? His life will have been packed full of so many more faces than mine, all in a blur. But perhaps he doesn’t have one etched in such fine detail, bleeding all the colour from the rest, as I do.
“Eh, hi. Dunno if you remember me… I’ve left it too long, I know. But my names Peter… em… Pete. Met you on a bus to Whitechapel a while back. You said to give you a call?”
Warm laughter sounds across the phone line, he seems amused by my nervous rambling. “As a matter of fact, I do recall you, Pete.” I breathe a sigh of relief that he hasn’t said Peter, hasn’t sounded the two syllables, and then hate myself for it. Fuck, it’s my name, not his, why should I care? The bloke… oh shit, I can’t remember his name… is still talking. I half listen, as I try urgently to remember… David, Derek…”I don’t pass out my number with the evening paper, y’know? Only give it to people I like,” Well done, Mr… eh… Drew... that’s it… anyway, half of London most probably has my number by now, got higher standards than me.
“Right… well…” I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with this. I think that I half thought once I’d dialled he number Drew would just appear in front of me and all thoughts of Carl would vanish into the ether. But no, I’m still in a sodding phone-booth, and I’m not entirely what I want from this bloke, other than for him not to be Carl. Luckily, Drew seems slightly more savvy.
“Listen, I’m just having a drink… fancy joining?” I nod, then realise he can’t see me, say yes instead. “Right, fantastic. Whereabouts is it you are?” I give him the street name, and there’s a pause where I can hear him talking to someone, voices muffled, before he returns to the phone. “Yeah, that’s not far from here at all, you just need to...” he gives me a quick succession of street names and directions, rounded off with the name of a pub that’s unfamiliar to me. I frown, trying to hold all the information still as it swims around my head. I might need to ask him to repeat himself.
“Could-“ the phone cuts off. Wonderful.
* * * * *
* Garry Moore (television host on the Ed Wynn variety show) - "I asked (Keaton) how he did all those falls, and he said, 'I'll show you'. He opened his jacket and he was all bruised. So that's how he did it - it hurt - but you had to care enough not to care."