‘God, I never
had you down as the jealous boyfriend type.’
‘I never said
she was my girlfriend.’
‘Well,
whatever you kids are calling it, if you see
me
as a threat,
you’re standing somewhere between “9/11 was an inside job” and
“Martians are stealing my pubic hair” on the paranoia scale.’
Charlie nods,
more to himself than to me, and lights up a cigarette. A few times
he slows his pace and takes it out of his mouth without inhaling
any smoke, but then he quickly frowns, shakes his head and shuffles
on again. Eventually he plucks up enough courage to say what’s on
his mind:
‘Have you ever
been in love?’
It’s my turn
to slow my pace.
‘I - uhm - I
dunno, really. I-’
‘You didn’t
let me finish,’ he interrupts. ‘Have you ever been in love with
someone who you, like,
fucking hate
?’
‘Can’t say I
have; I always thought the two were mutually exclusive.’
He doesn’t
answer, so I leave him to his thoughts. The lab is closing in on us
and he hasn’t finished his cigarette yet. I don’t want to be forced
to wait outside, where we might be seen by prying eyes. I don’t
want to tell Charlie to ditch the fag either, though, what with the
sulk he’s got going. It’s with no small amount of relief, as I’m
mulling my options over, that I see him flick the butt aside,
half-smoked. This brief hit of good karma lets me swipe the stolen
card against the lab’s entry scanner without the idea that it might
not work even crossing my mind. As the glass doors
swoosh
open, Charlie and I bow our heads into our chests, and pull the
black balaclavas out of our back pockets in unison. The headgear,
if I’m honest, isn’t necessary - the chances of there being CCTV in
the lab are slim at best - but I’ve been getting caught up in all
this ‘Sundance’ role-play. Embarrassingly so, now that you mention
it. Not that you did.
‘So why do you
hate her?’ I ask. I draft the sentence out in my head before
uttering it to make sure that I don’t accidentally use someone’s
name, on the off-chance that this place is wired for sound.
‘There’s
something off about her,’ he replies, with a meekness that seems
off in itself. ‘I don’t think she is who she says she is.’
‘You got any
evidence for that theory?’
‘…She hasn’t
seen
Star Wars
, for one thing.’
I forget about
the whole Solid Snake, stealth mission thing we had going, and I
burst out laughing.
‘Well case
fucking closed! You know, Liz refused to come when they screened
the original trilogy at the art-house cinema the other month. Maybe
they’re in on it together? Maybe they’re gonna rob our broke asses
and elope to Sunderland with the proceeds?’
‘I’ll ask you
this nicely: stop being a cunt,’ he replies, in a sterner tone than
the one in which he usually calls me a cunt. ‘You don’t understand;
she hasn’t seen
anything
. Hasn’t heard of
Pulp
Fiction
; not heard of
Back to the Future
; can’t name a
player in the England squad; even fucking Harry Potter, man. I
mean, sometimes it’s like we’re speaking the same language, but we
still can’t understand a fucking word the other one says. You were
there when she was watching
X Factor
, right?’
‘When she
asked who that flat-top guy with hitched up pants was?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Alright, I’ll
grant you, that
is
a bit weird. She’s probably just one of
those hippy, free spirit types, though, right? Refuses to listen to
any band with more than four fans, unless it’s The Smiths.’
‘She hasn’t
heard of the Smiths, either.’
That one
stumps me, I must confess.
Over the last
few weeks, Phoebe has gradually been replacing me as Charlie’s
coffee-date companion of choice. As might be guessed from the
gaping void of emptiness where her pop-culture lobe should be, a
coffee-date with Phoebe does not feature much discussion of the
incompatibility of Freudian psychoanalysis with
Inception
or
the implications of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum
mechanics on the
Terminator
franchise as one with me does.
Phoebe has never been a great one for discussion. What she
is
one for, however, is action. Action, and casual
psychopathy. While this combination does make it easier to
understand why Charlie’s romantic feelings for her are somewhat
marred by the fact that he’s also fucking terrified of her, it does
mean that she’s good for an anecdote or two.
The most
blatant example of the aforementioned psychopathy was committed on
the afternoon before Stephen’s party. Charlie, perhaps in a bid to
keep things interesting, had switched from taking Phoebe to his
usual haunt - Starbucks - and instead took her to Shakeaholic.
Shakeaholic, for those of you who a.) aren’t from the north of
England, and b.) can’t decipher lexical clues, is a sort of Bertie
Botts’ Every Flavour milkshake establishment. More importantly for
this tale, though, it is also an establishment whose entrance lies
at the top of a flight of about ten or fifteen concrete steps.
This being the
first Saturday in the school holidays, it’s hardly surprising that
Charlie and Phoebe arrived to find a gaggle of thirteen year-old
kids queuing in front of them. And, because thirteen year-olds are
generally horrible people, it’s hardly surprising that one of them
was making a spectacle of himself.
‘Oi, lend us a
quid,’ demanded the spectacular kid - the one with the tracksuit,
the belly and the slicked-back hair - in a voice several octaves
lower than the one he would use in front of his mother. The ‘Oi’ in
question was a gangly youth who, until that point, had been
standing apart from the rest of the group, quietly inspecting the
list of flavours. His long neck suddenly stood erect, and his eye
caught the short kid peeking at him from behind the armpit of the
fat kid. The midget wore a gleeful, anticipatory grin.
‘I was - umm -
I’m not sure I’m gonna have enough change,’ he muttered.
‘Stop being
such a stingy little prick,’ Fatty spat back, ‘No-one even wanted
you here anyway, so make yourself useful.’
‘I can get a
small one if you need the money,’ Gangly conceded, in a meek little
voice.
‘I don’t
need
your fuckin’ money,’ Fatty returned. ‘You’re the one
whose mum’s an alkie skank; you’re the one that needs money.’ He
turned to the midget. ‘I think we need to start a Jim fund, so the
smelly little prick can afford some new pants. Don’t we?’
‘Yeah!’ the
midget acquiesced, so the fat one dug a couple of coins out of his
trousers. He plucked the pound out of his chubby palm and put it
back into his pocket, then held up the two pence in his forefinger
and thumb.
‘Here you go;
buy yourself some pants, stinky,’ he sneered, and threw the coin
against the gangly kid’s cheek. The midget clutched onto him, as
though he could no longer stand up from the sheer hilarity of it
all. Looking satisfied with his day’s work, Fatty waddled out
through the door. He stopped at the top of the stone steps, looking
out over the Christmas shoppers, and lit up a cigarette.
Gangly hung
back as his companions made their departure, taking a moment to
fight off his tears and reconcile himself to his meagre lot in
life. When he eventually trudged off in Fatty’s direction, Phoebe
told Charlie that she was going to buy some fags, and to meet her
around the corner, and to get her one of ‘those peanut butter
flavour ones’. Charlie, as he is now wont to do around Phoebe, did
as he was told.
As Phoebe came
up behind the fat kid, who was loudly making some boasts to the
girls in his entourage, she appeared to notice that her shoelace
was untied, and bent down to rectify the situation. Fatty, too
caught up in his delusions of grandeur, didn’t notice that she also
took a moment to tie a lace from each of his shoes, one to the
other. Just a single bow; tight enough that a sharp tug would cause
him to trip, but lose enough that the same tug would pull the knot
undone and destroy any evidence of her action. Foul play
accomplished, Phoebe hopped down the steps and made her way around
the corner, to the off-license.
Charlie,
feeling disappointed that he and his girlfriend weren’t going to
sit down and share conversation over their milkshakes, after all,
trudged out of the shake-shop and down the steps. As he heard
Fatty’s latest boast go up an octave and transform into a squeal,
he turned around. As he heard the first
crack
of skull
against jagged concrete, he dropped the drinks. As he saw the blood
leaking out of the lump now crumpled and unconscious at the foot of
the steps, he felt sick, because he knew who had made it happen. As
he saw the crowds run towards the lump, looking afraid for his
life, even the gangly kid following suit, Charlie could only stand
and stare, because he knew he was partly responsible.
‘
What the
fuck did you do?
’ he hissed at Phoebe, when she emerged from
the off-license with a fag already pinched between her teeth. He
made sure that he hissed quietly enough that no-one would hear.
‘I don’t
know,’ Phoebe replied. ‘What
did
I do?’
‘
You know
what I mean!
’ Charlie hissed. ‘
The kid around the corner!
You might’ve fucking killed him!
’
‘I didn’t kill
him,’ she shrugged. ‘I just tied his shoelaces together.’
I throw
Charlie’s concerns about psychopathy and pop-culture illiteracy to
one side for the moment, because I’m trying to get my head around
the filing system they use in this place, and I’m keeping an eye
out for anything that’s on my shopping list.
‘Think I’ve
got peroxide over here!’ Charlie yells from the other side of the
lab.
‘You’re in the
bit where they do experiments,’ I call back. ‘They’ll notice if we
take that; and, besides, we need to buy in bulk.’
‘How much of
this stuff are we planning on taking?’ he asks, poking his
balaclavaed head around the corner.
‘Here’s the
list,’ I reply, taking it out of my pocket, scrunching it up into a
ball and chucking it over to him.
‘I’m not a
numbers man,’ Charlie shrugs, not even glancing the list over. It
gashes me somewhat to have ruined my perfectly folded piece of
paper for him, for him to then not even read it. ‘How deep a hole
is all this gonna burn?’
‘Let’s just
say that if we fancy a trip to New Zealand when we’re done with the
robbery, we’ll have shaved a couple-thousand miles off our
journey.’
‘Good; I could
use a holiday.’
I give him a
wry smile.
‘Well, you do
live a very stressful life…’
‘Fuck you,
man.’
‘You’re not
getting cold feet, are you? This whole thing was your idea.’
He marches
across the laboratory floor towards me, only stopping once he’s
well inside my comfort zone.
‘That gonna be
your defence in court? Just following orders?’
I keep smiling
as he gets closer, even beginning to lean towards him myself.
‘I’m not gonna
need a defence, because we’re not gonna get caught. You said it
yourself. Follow my plan, and you’re good.’
Charlie’s
shoulders sag.
‘What the fuck
do I know? I also said I was gonna be famous.’
‘What happened
to the whole “exercise your God-given liberty” thing you had
going?’
‘Fine, it was
my idea. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t a stupid idea.’
‘Well I now
owe a potentially murderous drug-dealer five-hundred quid thanks to
you, so I’m afraid it’s an idea that we’re going to have to follow
to its conclusion.’
‘So much for
liberty,’ he mutters.
THE DREAMERS OF THE
DAY
Quick
question: if you were threading your way through a city with a
revolver tucked into the waistband of your jeans and a balaclava
rolled-up to your hairline so that it doesn’t show beneath your
hood, what album would you have playing on your iPod? The oncoming
situation is far too serious for pop-music, obviously. It can’t be
anything too introspective, though, either: An Ian Curtis mind-set
is the last thing you need when you’re metres away from acts that
would prickle the guilt-strings of anyone whose last name isn’t,
well, whatever Phoebe’s last name is. You might imagine that rap,
specifically gangster rap, would be the perfect choice. Upbeat
tales about crime paying well and the joys of gunning-down home
invaders; what could suit the mood better? That’s what I thought,
initially, but then it came to selecting an artist. Tupac comes
dangerously close to introspective at times, and Biggie’s best
album begins with a scene of him leaving prison - not a reminder
that you welcome when you’re trying to psyche yourself up for armed
robbery. Everyone else, in my white, middle-class, English opinion,
is just a less-good version of one or the other of those two, and
this is no time for the best of the rest.
So what does
that leave? In the end, I went with the Sex Pistols. Scuzzy and
aggressive enough that you want to hold up a middle-class
stronghold at gunpoint; deluded and stupid enough to make you think
you might get away with it. By the time I’ve narrowed down my
soundtrack, however, I’m already reaching the edge of university
territory, so I have to shut it off five seconds into track one.
Not far from my mark I stop, lean against a lamppost and check my
watch. I had to buy a cheap digital one, because I haven’t owned a
proper watch in so long that I’ve forgotten how to tell time, and
Charlie refused to steal me one. Three and a half minutes until
go-time. The others should all be in place – though I suppose
there’s a great many possible futures lurking inside that
should
. Charlie should be getting into the car park right
about now; he needs the extra time in case a suitable getaway
vehicle takes longer than expected to find. Besides, I’ve always
found that I need to tell him to meet me half an hour earlier than
I intend to turn up somewhere, and I’m not stupid enough to think
he’ll miraculously improve his timekeeping skills just because
being late today might result in all of us going to prison.