Beast of Burden (2 page)

I can guess, but I shake my head.

“That you're a full-on mong now.”

I shrug.

“That you're all … brain-damaged.”

If he's trying to get a rise out of me, he'll be disappointed. None of this “mong” shite is anything I haven't already heard from the kids on the street.

Tiernan shifts his gaze back to his pint. “You even working now?”

I nod. I have an office, letterhead, small business client list with occasional private work, the whole shebang. Even got a stack of professionally printed business cards, 400 GSM, thick as you like. He knows all this. I wouldn't be here without an up-to-date background check.

After a minute's silence, he says, “Well?”

Finally, he's looking at me right in the eyes and holding it. I stare back. He doesn't waver for a second. If he's desperate enough to look at me full on, we're off to a good start.

I give him my own special brand of half-smile, really milking the difference between the good and bad sides of my face. He blinks, but keeps whatever discomfort he's feeling under wraps.

“Just tell me how much,” he says.

I smile wider on the left side of my face. Then I give him the standard look-see price. I could skin the bloke, but I choose not to. After all, he's paying me to ask a couple of questions to the right people. That's all.

And besides, the price Tiernan's going to pay has fuck all to do with money.

INNES

I'm already out of the Wheatsheaf, hobbling across the car park to my Micra, when my mobile rings. It's Frank, calling to see where I am.

“Still in Starbucks.” I pull open the car door, and hope that he doesn't pick up that I'm obviously outdoors.

“Still?”

I get in the car, toss my stick onto the passenger seat and pull the driver's door almost closed to kill some of the ambient sound. It's still drizzling outside, and the fat kid's started on the monkey bars again. “There's a queue. Out the door.”

Frank sighs down the phone. He's got a proper pet lip on by the sounds of it. “Right, okay.”

“I'll be back soon,” I say.

“Paulo's being a pain.”

“He's had practice.”

“He wants his coffee.”

“Then he knows … where the
kettle
is.”

“Cal—”

I hang up on him, slam the car door closed, and start the engine.

There's a reason I'm stalling, other than the obvious meeting with Tiernan. One of the major drawbacks of working for a gay bloke is his coffee order. With Paulo it's a Caramel Macchiato, extra sugar, soy milk, and a skinny lemon and poppy seed muffin. It's just embarrassing, ordering that. And to make matters worse, he thinks that by sending me to get his order, he's doing me good. Getting me out into the world, forcing me to interact with other people, making me better.

Because even though he hasn't said as much, he knows I'm not doing the speech therapy or the physio. He doesn't need to ask me, so I don't need to lie. But I'm still glad I told Frank that I was going for coffees. Frank's easier to lie to; he's still daft enough to believe the best of people.

But then fate always did have a bastard streak: when I get to Starbucks, wouldn't you know it, the place is fucking packed.

Late morning, midweek, it shouldn't be like this. But then I'd forgotten what any calendar or charity shop could've told me: the students are back in town. Loud voice with non-Manc accents compete with the screech of the steamer. Too much youth in this place, the smell of what I presume is popular aftershave (it smells more like perfume) mixed with the smell of burned coffee, the blokes with the kind of haircut a kid fashions in the bath with shampoo suds, the girls rich and cold enough to bundle themselves up in what look like their grandmother's clothes. Experience makes me watch my step round here. I haven't had the best of times in student company, and it pays to be wary.

I catch sight of a guy in one of the back nooks, got the big black Buddy Holly glasses and the look of a serial mouthbreather. When we accidentally lock stares, he pushes his glasses and drops his gaze to the silver laptop in front of him.

A brief shuffle, and the queue moves forward enough for me to reach a bottle of orange and mango juice for Frank. He's not one for hot drinks, our Francis. More often than not, he feeds the vending machine, but all that Coke's given him chronic wind and the beginnings of a stomach ulcer, so for all our sakes, we've been trying to get him to switch to juice.

I don't mind. If this trip was all about buying a fucking smoothie, I wouldn't be sweating cobs right now.

Talking is a problem. Words don't stay. One minute I'll have a sentence all ready to go, almost
feel
it sitting there on my tongue, and the next it's gone, or else mangled into gibberish. And even when I manage to get the words right, the voice that struggles out of the working side of my mouth isn't mine anymore. I hear myself talking, it's like there's a mental case in the room, and I'm stuck with him twenty-four hours a day.

On the plus side, I can say just about anything I want to people and they can't take offence, because their automatic response is that I'm just a mong. But it takes me so long to say anything, most of the time an insult isn't worth the effort of speaking it. So I'd rather not say anything these days, especially to strangers, unless I absolutely have to.

Which means dealing with a minimum-wager isn't exactly an experience I relish.

“Can I help you?”

I don't look at the girl behind the counter. I already know what she looks like — blonde hair pulled back, weak chin, large blue eyes and a badly hidden spot just under one nostril. But even though it's been a good couple of months since the stroke, it's still difficult for me to see that initial reaction. So I stare up at the false chalk menu, thinking about the words, running them through my head.

“Americano. Large with a shot. Of ex-press …
Espresso
.” I breathe out. Hear it in my head, then repeat slowly. Sound out the syllables. “Caramel … Macc-hiato. With soy milk. Please.”

The girl's staring at me; I can feel it. I wipe my mouth — force of habit — and find my hand comes away wet with drool. Try not to show the embarrassment, instead show her the juice and point at the skinny lemon and poppy seed.

“Okay,” she says. “You … staying in?”

Those strangled pauses are infectious.

I shake my head, concentrate. “No. There's a sign. In the window?”

I have to look at her now. After a few moments, she realises that I'm waiting on an answer to go with my change. As she drops coins into my left hand, she glances across at the front windows. When she realises what I'm talking about, she swallows. Half expect her to start tugging at her collar.

“The part-time barista vacancy?” she says.

I nod.

“You want an application form?”

I blink. “Yes.”

“Okay.” She starts nodding, as if she's waiting for me to realise what an insane request it is, just marking time until I change my mind. That, or she's mesmerised by my face. It's happened before.

“Yes,
please
?”

She glances over my shoulder at the queue. “Right, yeah, I'll see if we've got any.”

Then she calls for one of the other baristas to take over as she pulls herself away from the counter with a smile. I move out of the way, shuffle off to wait for the coffees and application form.

I didn't ask for the form to make the barista uncomfortable; this is a genuine career option for me.

Thing is, on the most basic practical level, I can't really work as a PI — I can't speak properly to ask questions of anyone, and walking more than six feet in one go is a real endurance test. But this barista job — what would I do in here? Shuffle from one end of the counter to the other, which is what I'd be doing in physio anyway, and learn a few stock phrases to perfection, which is what I'd be doing in speech therapy. So I'd actually be rehabilitating myself, and getting paid for it. I know Paulo and Frank don't think the same way — they're entirely convinced that if I just went to the hospital every now and then, I'd be back working private cases in no time, but neither of those blokes is exactly known for their realistic world-view.

So I've been collecting application forms, filled out a couple, ruined more than that. My right hand used to be dominant, but since the stroke I've tried and failed to get anything but basic movement out of it. I've been trying to teach myself to write with my left hand, but I'm still at the barely-legible scrawl stage. Which doesn't matter so much with application forms — a majority of them are happy to have everything printed in block capitals — but there's the added problem of an unreliable arm. Every now and then, especially when I'm channelling all my energy into controlling my left hand, something will spike up my arm, spasm a streak of ink across the paper. And then all I can do is pour another drink to steady my nerves, dump the application, and try to forget about it until I see another McJob that I think I could do.

“Okay,” says the girl, a booklet in her hand, though it might as well be Bible-sized. She leans over the counter to hand it to me. “If you just want to fill this out and post it back to the head office, they'll take it from there.”

I look at the application pack. “Post?”

She keeps smiling at me. I don't try to return it, wouldn't want to upset her.

“Or you could bring it back in here. That's not a problem. But, y'know, I don't actually think we
hire
from here? So we'd have to forward it on for you, but that's okay, we can do that.”

“Right.” Nodding. “Thanks.”

I move back up the counter to wait for the coffees. Scan through the application pack. Turns out that Starbucks are more than happy to employ someone like me — or at least they make a point of saying it on the application — but they're also keen to know every detail about my incarceration.

Fuck it.

I let out another breath, look up from the application pack to see Buddy Holly staring at me again. Lower the form, try to straighten up as best I can.

“Problem?” I say, nice and loud.

Buddy doesn't say anything. Pulls on his glasses, wets his bottom lip. He doesn't need to say a word — that look on his face is all too fucking familiar. He's giving me the rubberneck double-take in all its limited glory.

The first look catches an image of me that isn't quite whole, but enough to jar.

That first thought:
Something the matter with that bloke, d'you think?

Another look, and in a flash they connect the walking stick with the apparent slackness in my right cheek. If I happen to be moving or talking, it's clear as day.

Then the second thought:
Oh Jesus, he's had a fucking stroke or something
.

And then there's a choice that needs to be made. What do we go for here, disgust or pity?

Sometimes it's an either-or, but most people tend to combine.

Yeah, and thank the Cree-ay-tor you're not in the state I'm in.

I make a move towards Buddy. The look on his face just switched from disgust into one I haven't seen before, not in this context.

Fear.

Good. “I said,
problem
?”

“No, what?” He holds up one chair, shifting back on the pleather chair. “There's no problem here, mate.”

“Fuck you … looking at, then?”

“Sorry?”

I take another awkward step towards him, make sure to bang the bottom of the stick against the wooden floor. Wanker wants to have a staring match, he can do it with someone else. Because he's still not looked away from me. Like it's impossible for him, he's frozen to the spot, and I'm a car crash coming right at him.

“You get a good look. You get a good …
fuckin'
look, eh?”

“Wait a second, mate. I didn't mean anything—”

“The fuck you … didn't. Cunt.”

Another step. Buddy gets out of his seat, showing his hands at the same time. This just got a little bit more interesting to everyone else in the shop. I already knew I was drawing stares, but even the ones who were desperately trying to look away are openly interested now. The noise of voices in here is now almost non-existent. They all want to know how far I'm going to go.

I point at Buddy. “You're fuckin'—”

“Sir?”

It's the girl who gave me the application form. I don't say anything. Keep staring at Buddy.

“Look, mate,” he says quietly, “I didn't mean anything by it, alright?”

“Uh-huh.”

He takes off his glasses, a move that's supposed to make him more vulnerable, but which makes me think that he'd rather see me out of focus. “Didn't mean to stare at you. I'm sorry if I did.”

Silence.

“Uh, sir?” I can hear the girl move her feet, as if she doesn't know what to do with the homicidal special case in front of her. Like I'm her responsibility because she talked to me, her manager's going to take it out on her if she doesn't calm me down and get me the fuck out.

I blink at Buddy.

“I really am sorry, man,” he says. And he sounds it.

“Fuckin'—”

“Sir, if you could—”

“Fuck's sake,
what
?”

I turn around, ready to kick off with her, too. In front of her are an Americano and a Caramel Macchiato with soy milk. The cups sit in a cardboard tray. Means I can carry the pair of them in one hand.

The whole place is silent apart from the relentless bubble of the machines, everyone watching me. Lapping it up. I lower my head, grab the coffees and head for the exit, a path opening up as I hobble across the shop floor. I don't hear any conversation until the door's almost closed, and even then it's quieter than it was. I book it up the street, but stop before I get to my car to fling the application pack at the nearest bin. It bounces off the rim, hits the pavement.

I make a move towards it, then realise I'd never be able to pick up the forms without doing myself damage and, worse than that, spilling Paulo's coffee.

So I leave it, push on to where I parked the Micra. Someone parked their big black Hummer in front of my car. As I get closer, I see someone's taken a key to it, scraped the same word three times down the paintwork on the driver's door.