Authors: Ray Banks
The girl says, “Mr Innes, I don’t think you should go anywhere.”
I throw my other leg off the sofa, fight back a rising tide of nausea, try to breathe deeply.
“I have to.”
I’ve got an appointment. Got to get back to the flat, get changed and go to this opening at Paulo’s. Can’t go there stinking of vomit, can I? I’ve got to get my head clear, too. Don’t know how long that’s likely to take.
“Probably best to stay where you are for a bit longer,” says the bloke.
“That’s kind of you — was it Ben?”
“Yes.”
“That’s kind of you, Ben. But I think I made enough of an arse of myself already this afternoon.” I push on the arm of the sofa, rise unsteadily to my feet and smile at him. Try to keep my distance — my breath probably reeks, but I need to continue the deep inhale-exhale to keep the sickness at bay. “I’ll be good. Going to sound like a daft question, but did I bring my car?”
The girl narrows her eyes as she glances from Ben to me, and back again. Then she seems to relax, but she still doesn’t believe that I’m actually walking out of here. “It’s outside, but you shouldn’t be—”
“He’ll be fine,” says Ben.
I catch a warning look.
Shit, I really must’ve acted up. This bloke — nice bloke too — wants me to leave. The state I’m in, I must’ve been a right twat. I hope I wasn’t the one who gave him that bruise. I know I get a bit lairy when I’ve had a few, reckon I can punch out of my class. I put a hand on his shoulder to keep myself steady. Lower my head to stifle a belch that could turn liquid.
“Ben, I’m sorry, mate. I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry for being a twat.” I breathe out. “It’s these pills I’m on. Fuckin’ doctor must’ve doubled my dose and not told me, eh?”
“Sure you don’t need anything?” says the girl.
“Nah, I’m good. Thanks for looking after me and that, but I think I’ve got somewhere to be and I reckon I’ve outstayed my welcome.”
I head towards the hall, feel my way to the front door. My legs don’t work, my head spinning, but I’m not going to look weak in front of these two. Got that terrible clenching sensation in my stomach that means I did something daft and I can’t remember it, the same throbbing behind the eyes means I got drunk, got doped up, something, and I fell. Don’t know what I fell on, but my head hit something sharp. Each step threatens to throw me on my arse, but I keep going, the smoke from my Embassy rising up into my eyes.
Fumble with the front door, and I’m out. I hang onto the doorway, turn to see Ben and the girl in the hall. Ben is breathing through his mouth; the girl’s standing next to him with her arms across her stomach. Looks like she’s going to start throwing up too.
Students. Must be. I know what they’re like when it comes to drinking. Probably some fruit punch with more punch than fruit, even though I didn’t see any evidence of a party.
The pain increases as I stumble back to my car. I shake four codeine into my hand and swallow them back with the taste of puke. Look in the bottle, and there’s only a few left. I wonder what the fuck I’ve been up to that would make my back spike that much.
It doesn’t matter. I know a man who can hook me up. I just have to drive there without killing myself.
Greg’s my friend. He’s my pal. He’s the one with the key, the pills, the fucking
answers
. Driving back to my flat is an assault course, like one of those on
The Krypton Factor
or like one of the other things they had on that show, like the blocks you had to put together to make a giant K or those observation tests where you had to …
I’ve lost it. Whatever it is.
Like the old joke. Why did the supermodel stare at the carton of orange juice?
Because it said: Concentrate.
Hunched over the wheel, my back scraped. Squinting at the road through my one good eye. Couple of close calls with parked cars, my door-width distance creeping into an inch. Almost took off more than my fair share of wing mirrors.
I leave the Micra parked at an angle and fumble with my keys to swipe into the block. Take the stairs slowly and seriously. No fucking about when my coordination’s this sketchy.
When I reach the landing, I look across at Greg’s flat. There’s the glow of his lava lamp. The little beauty, he’s in. I ease myself round to his front door, leaning on the railing every step of the way. Ideally, I should’ve gone home, got cleaned up first, but this is more important. I knock sharply on his door, then retreat to the railing. Turn around, look over the side. I feel like throwing up again. In fact, I do, but the puke doesn’t make it past my teeth before I gulp it back.
“Jesus Christ,” says Greg.
I turn around and smile. “Greg, mate.”
“Jesus
Christ
,” he says.
“How are you?”
“What the fuck happened to you?”
“I had an accident, mate. Nothing that could’ve been helped. Look, I need to buy.”
Greg shakes his head, his arms folded. I can smell weed smoke wafting out from his flat. The sweet stink turns my stomach.
“No?” I’m still smiling. Still got the taste of vomit in my mouth. Can’t quite register the word “no’. Playing around with it in my head.
Get the old 2 Unlimited song in there: “No, no, no?”
“You’re fucked, Cal.”
“I haven’t been drinking,” I say. But I have. Must’ve been. A bloke doesn’t just fall over if he hasn’t been at the booze. And I’m slurring, dizzy. That doesn’t help my case right now, so I try to watch it. “I swear to God, Greg, I have not been drinking.”
Over-enunciating now. Get a grip on yourself.
“Are you
bleeding
?”
“That’s the least of it,” I say, touching my head. “C’mon, I just need to buy. You want to bump up the prices, that’s fine by me. It’s kind of an emergency.”
Greg watches me for a second, then looks up and down the landing. He pulls a face, then pushes open the front door. “Get inside.”
“Cheers, mate. You won’t regret this.”
“Broad fuckin’ daylight, you’re coming round.”
I walk into his living room. Greg’s sacked Cat Stevens, got himself some James Taylor, singing about fire and rain. It’s mellow. I like it, sing along a bit in my head before I run out of words.
I lean against the wall. I don’t want to chance the sofa. If I sit, I’ll have to get up again. I don’t plan on being here that long, and I’m having enough of a job standing upright.
Greg looks like he’s about to say something, so I interrupt: “I know, it’s getting harder to get the codeine. You said that the last time.”
“You want the same as last time?” he says, crossing to the ashtray and picking up a spliff. Annoyance in his tone. He tries to melt it out with a hefty drag. “Or d’you want what I’ve got left?”
“There a problem?”
He exhales a thick stream of smoke. “I don’t know. You come in here, broad fuckin’ daylight—”
“You said that already, mate—”
“And you’re all fucked up. I didn’t think you’d do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like a fuckin’ junkie.”
I step forward, but keep my hand on the wall. “Don’t call me a junkie, Greg. You know I don’t like that, mate. It’s fuckin’ rude.”
“You act like one, I’ll call you whatever the fuck I want.”
“It’s just that
word
—”
“Callum, don’t think you can come round here and demand shit, alright? What’d I tell you when you first came to me, eh?”
I shake my head. “This isn’t the time—”
“I said I was glad you come round, mate. You were one of the few. Most of the bastards I deal with, they got their pupils in their back pocket. I got a reputation and a front to keep up, you think I got that rep because I let fuckin’ junkies come round all hours of the day—”
“It’s half four.”
“I’m
discreet
, I’m professional. I keep a low profile.”
“I know that, man.”
“And I maintain that low profile because I don’t have people who look like they need a fuckin’ fix hanging around plain as you like. Plus, I liked you coming round because you live just up the way and it was kind of like having a mate pop by who just like bought as a sideline thing, right? Got a medical condition, couldn’t get it legit on account of how the government are fucking up our National Health, so you came to me. It felt like I was doing you a favour rather than taking your money.”
“Nothing’s changed, Greg,” I say.
“Bollocks.” He points at me with the spliff. “Maybe the other night when you were screaming up the fuckin’ walls, you could still play off that medical thing. But a bona fide
condition
, it doesn’t make fucked up and stupid, does it?”
“Who’s fucked up and stupid?”
“Prove my fuckin’ point, why don’t you? Look at yourself, man. You’re covered in puke, you’re bleeding. You stink like you’ve been sleeping in your clothes.”
I wave a hand at him. “You selling or not? ’Cause if you’re not, I’m leaving. I can’t be doing with this shite. I’ve got places to be. And yeah, I’m stinking. But you
lecturing
me’s not going to get me clean, is it? You want to talk about fuckin’ ethics, we can do it some other time when I’ve had a shower and I’m not in such a hurry. Until then, could you please do what you do best and get me my fuckin’ pills?”
Greg looks at me, takes another draw off the spliff. He shakes his head, looking at me like I just asked him for crack. Hands me the spliff as he walks out the room. I take a puff on it, then a deeper drag, hold it in my lungs as long as I can. Calm me down, whatever it takes. My gut revolts against the taste and I cough out the smoke, grab onto the back of the couch. I notice gob on the upholstery, wipe it off with my free hand.
I ease myself round, put the spliff back in the ashtray and stick an Embassy in my mouth. Light it with a shaking hand. I can feel the back of my neck start to prick now, a knot above my eyebrow.
Greg better hurry back soon. I don’t know how long I can smell myself and the smoke in here before my head goes too light to stand. I look around at the wall.
There’s a bloody mark on his paintwork.
Greg appears, bag in hand. He holds it out to me. “That’s the last of it.”
“You doing me that lot?”
“Same price, take it off my hands. You’re the only bloke I get it for. No call for codeine, but you know that.”
I reach for my wallet. “You’re doing me a favour then.”
“Nah, you’re doing me a favour.” He presses the bag into my hand.
I give him money, try to smile. “Always glad to help out.”
“That’s not the favour.” He tucks the cash into his back pocket, crosses to his chair and slumps into it. “The favour is, you don’t come round anymore.”
“Come on, man.”
“Alright, so it’s not really a favour, I’m telling you. You don’t come around anymore. You want to score, you find someone else willing to put up with your shit.”
“What, because I’m a bit worse for wear? The fuck do you get off, Greg?”
He looks at the end of his spliff, blows the rocks aglow. James Taylor’s still trying to mellow everyone out, but there’s a place for his brand of homespun porch-folk, and this isn’t it.
“Greg,” I say. “C’mon, mate. You wouldn’t believe the day I had. Trying to work this fuckin’ case, I got all sorts of bizarre shit happening to me—”
“I don’t care,” he says.
And that’s it. Final word on the matter.
“We’ll talk about this later,” I say.
Greg doesn’t say anything. I push off the couch and guide myself to his front door. I’m already trying to calculate how long these pills are going to last me, but mental arithmetic was never my strong point, especially when my head’s in the shed.
Lucky for me I don’t have a long walk back to my flat. Any longer, and I’d be in serious trouble. I pull myself along the railing, bent double. When I can make out my front door, I tuck the pill bag in my pocket and grab the prescription bottle. I’ll need to take the rest before I get in the flat. I’ve still got a shitload to do before I’m needed at the Lads’ Club. I fumble with the child-proof cap, can’t get the fucker open.
“Fuckin’
open
.”
I flick the cap, feel the bottle flip out of my hand. Swipe at it, trying to catch, but the prescription bottle spins into the air. I touch with the side of my hand but can’t get my fingers to close. The bottle drops over the railing.
I watch it fall, spinning. Then it connects with the concrete, bounces out of sight.
Doesn’t matter. I’ve got a bag of pills here. I take two, one at a time, slow and sure, then head for home.
My phone’s ringing when I push into the flat. I dump the pills on the coffee table.
“Hello?”
“A courtesy call, Mr Innes.” There’s the sound of heavy machinery in the background. “Just to make sure you’re still coming to the grand opening tonight.”
My fucking brain’s gone foggy. I have to take a second to think about what I’m going to say.
“Course I am. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“I heard a pause, Callum.”
“Then you’re going fuckin’ mental, mate.”
“You remembered, didn’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
Paulo yells at someone in the club. “Lift and place the fuckin’ table against the wall, don’t try to fuckin’ hump it there.” Back to me: “You promised me you’d be here, Cal. Means a lot to me, this does. And from the RSVPs, it looks like we’re going to be thin on the ground.”
“What happened?”
“This march,” he says. “Got people too scared to leave their houses. Hang on a second.”
He puts his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and yells at some more people. When he comes back, he sounds distracted.
“You know what, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.”
“Who you got helping you out?”
“The usual lads. Would’ve thought by now, all this time I taught ’em how to smack people, they’d be able to take simple fuckin’ instruction on where to put tables. But no, these lads are fighters, not movers. And you, you’re positive you’re going to be here?”
“How many times you going to ask me the same question, Paulo? When d’you need me there, mate?”
“We’re not starting till seven.”
“So six thirty, right?”
“If you could. And I expect you to be presentable when you turn up.”