Читать книгу The Cheek Perforation Dance - Sean Thomas - Страница 12

Lifting his coffee-bar-type soup cup full of takeaway Chinese soup Joe blows low; then sips; then grimaces. Patrick:

— Something wrong with the soup?

Joe shakes his head, lowers the cup:

— Yeah no … yeah

— What?

— This soup. It’s that stupid healthy Chinese shit

— Yeah?

— With no monosodium glutamate

— … So?

Joe sits forward on the sunlit Soho Square bench, gazes mournfully into his soup:

— I like MSG …

Joe goes quiet, as he gingerly sips. Patrick looks at Joe. Then Patrick says:

— You know, sex is in many ways the monosodium glutamate of life

Joe:

— Oh God

— It makes what would otherwise be unpalatable palatable, it makes the boring samey noodles of life that extra bit

— OK shut up – Joe says, then he says – Anyway why did I buy soup? It’s thirty degrees in the shade and I buy soup? Man

From his side of the bench Patrick clicks his tongue, in empathy. Then Patrick returns to his own takeaway tray of sushi. Patrick can sense Joe watching on, hungrily, enviously, as Patrick chopsticks a smear of translucent tuna belly, briefly dips the fish in a little plunge-pool of soy, then deftly drapes the result between his lips.

Joe:

— You know your gran sucks your pants?

— Uh-huh

— She told me in bed last night

— Right – Patrick says – Right … Well …

— Yeah?

— Your girlfriend told me your cock looks like a weasel with a goitre on its head

— What girlfriend? – Joe shakes his head, says – How is she anyway?

— Sorry??

Joe, tutting:

— Your girlfriend, the rich one … you met her in a bookshop two months ago, you’ve been sleeping with her ever since – Slowly – She’s OK, yeah?

Silence. Patrick contemplatively stirs a few stray grains of rice around his little puddle of soy. Then he says:

— Tits are too big

Joe:

— As if

— No they are, too big, and too … firm

— Don’t

— Too firm and too good, wasted on me, those big creamy

— You cunt, Skivington

— Oh, I forgot, you like big ones, don’t you?

— Suck my cock

— Actually – Patch relents – I was thinking of bringing you in on the tits, as a kind of, breast consultant

— Kind of bomb disposal?

— … professional tit wrangler …

Together they shout:

— Breast whisperer!!!

After that the two of them grin. Then Patrick eats some more rice as he sidelong watches Joe. His friend is staring out onto the sunlit lawns of a crowded Soho Square garden. Kneeling sideways on a rare space of lunch-time grass is a young mother with her baby. Joe is silently regarding this pietà. The mother is kissing her baby’s foot, sucking its toes. Joe seems to nod approvingly at this, then he says:

— So, are you falling for her?

Patrick, with a mouthful of salmon roe:

— … not sure – Swallowing – She’s a package

— Yeah?

— Yeah. Pretty, sexy, rich … bit Jewish

— Nice legs, shame about the faith?

The sound of some shirtsleeved office lads arguing fills the air. Patrick looks at Joe. Joe looks at Patrick. Joe says:

— Sorry about that

Turning his face to the sun, Patrick nods and in a vague voice says:

— How about you, any progress with the redhead?

— Nah

— Not at all?

Joe shrugs:

— They all like want someone with a big car and … no crack habit

— Sticklers

— Nit pickers

— So you’re wanking a lot? Bashing the bishop …?

A pause. Then Joe says, in an odd voice, above the sound of a bike courier’s yowling radio:

— It’s true to say the upper hierarchy of the church has come in for some criticism

Patrick thinks for a while about this, sniggers for a second, then says:

— You’re still missing that last girl aren’t you? The last one

— Sally-Ann? My little Sally-Ann?

— That ugly smackhead with no arse

— Yeah, Sally-Ann …

A car alarm makes a horrible noise. Patrick tuts. Wiping some sweat from his forehead with a forearm, checking his watch as if he has something to do, Joe starts on a slow speech:

— Y’know, I remembered something this morning, when I woke up, alone again – Joe tilts his head, goes on – When we were, like, together, me and Sal, she used to do this thing – Joe pauses, and turns his eyes on the middle distance, as if toward the distantly heard sound of a much loved pop song

— When I was asleep she would do some smack and then roll over and kiss me and blow the smack smoke into my mouth – Joe makes a wry sad face – Which meant, like, I wouldn’t have to wake up, like, clean, so I wouldn’t have to suffer reality even for a fucking minute in the morning

Patrick sits on the bench, wondering what to say to this. Not knowing what to say he joins his friend in looking out across the Square at a group of toenail-painted secretaries sharing a packet of organic crisps on the grass. At length Joe says:

— Wish I had some fucking smack now …

— Really?

— Yeah, really

— So why don’t you? Just buy some?

As if to assist Joe in his purchase, Patrick points his Pepsi-can-gripping hand across the Square to a markedly deserted corner of the sunlit lawn. Where a gaggle of obvious drug addicts is lying, under a single big dirty blanket, like a family of Victorian street-Irish. Next to the addicts stands a stack of unsold, or stolen, Big Issues. Patrick watches as Joe shrugs at the prospect, as if to say ‘why bother’; then Patrick returns his gaze to the tribe of drug addicts. Like a troupe of Aborigines in an outback Aussie town, Patrick thinks. The junkies. They are the Abos of London, following the songlines of their addiction around the twilit streets, moving from waterhole to waterhole, moving from chemist to dealer to dodgy doctor, following their ancestral and mysterious routes around the underworld of the city … Which makes me, Patrick thinks, running away with himself now, which makes me Crocodile Dundee, a man who understands their ways yet is not of them and yet who

— You’ve not shagged her yet have you?

Patrick thinks hard, says:

— Of course I have

— So why aren’t you totally in love?

— Did I tell you – Patrick says – About my idea for a new hobby?

Joe sighs:

— Mn. Go on then …

— Well – Patrick takes a drink of his warming Pepsi, takes another shot of it. And then another shot and then a third shot before slowly burping most of the next sentence – I’m thinking of buying an Alsatian dog and a long leather coat and getting my head shaved and then going up to Golders Green Station and shouting out ‘SCHNELL! SCHNELL! SCHNELL!’ at people as they get off the train

— Why aren’t you crazy about her then?

— OK … – Patrick sighs – She’s got thick ankles

— Thick ankles? Jesus! Dump her!

— And the drug thing, her drug history, it’s a problem

— The fact she hasn’t ever done drugs?

— Exactly – Patrick goes quiet and pensive. Then he goes on – But that’s not it, that’s not the real problem. I do really like her, you know … I mean … – To fill the gap in his thoughts Patrick steps down from the bench, and goes to an overfull Soho Square rubbish bin; after carefully balancing his empty sushi tray on top of the enormous pile of rubbish he returns and sits back on the bench and says – Even though we’ve got less in common, or not as much as some … I like her … precisely because sh … sh …

— Sh?

— Because she’s different. Smart. Cultured – Seizing the theme, Patrick runs with it – Really. She’s amazing. She knows all about art, and politics, and history, it’s incredibly refreshing – Examining the tan mark where his forearm meets his rolled-up white shirtsleeve, he says – Maybe I’m just too used to Soho ladettes smoking rollups and farting, do you think that could be it? – Patrick looks over at Joe; Joe nods, says:

— So it’s the hooters then?

Patrick:

— No, I like them big, and I love the arse

— So what the FUCK?

— I know, I know … – Patrick sighs – I knowwww – Feeling the heat now, he unbuttons another one of the buttons on his expensive white shirt and then he slumps back to let the sun run its fingers through his chest hair. After a few seconds, feeling properly relaxed for the first time this lunchtime, Patrick admits – Actually I think I know what it is

— ?????

— Yes. I think – Struggling to be honest – I think I just … like … girls to be … shorter, poorer, younger, and stupider than me

— She’s certainly shorter than you

— Ta, Joe

— And – Joe says – She’s a lot younger, isn’t that enough? Not enough dimorphism?

Patrick stalls, does not reply. For a moment the college friends are united in quietness, experiencing each other’s post-lunch metabolic low. Patrick is thinking about perhaps saying something else. Right now Patrick thinks he would like to confess to Joe that what he really needs is for Rebecca to be more submissive, because he’s now realised he needs something sexually very submissive in women, something more than Rebecca has so far given him. Then Patrick decides he can’t be arsed to talk about relationship stuff anymore. Instead Patrick looks idly and languidly at a beautiful girl in lowslung jeans and silver navel ring, as she swings her hips through the Square towards Oxford Street. For a full minute Patrick watches the girl’s walk. Then he swerves to take in another chick just behind that one. Then he looks back at the first one. And her friend.

Stuck by lust to his bench, Patrick regards his own reaction to the girls, the parade of girls. Mostly he loves this, the constant catwalk of London, the fugue of female beauty, the sweet repetition with minor variation. But at this moment he also resents the power, he resents these girls’ power and fame and the way they get in clubs for free, like members of some manufactured boy band … like unwarranted celebrities with no real talent …

— Dying for a smoke

— What?

Joe pats his pocket, rueful:

— Need a cig …

— So … smoke one?

— Can’t, man

— Given up?

Still rueful:

— Boracic

Silence, traffic-thrum, Patrick’s hand reaches for his own pocket:

— You want to borrow some cash?

— Nah – Joe surveys the Square, as if looking for a different benefactor – I already owe you enough – Joe’s face is wide, sad, honest, wry – Anyway. I start some temping job tomorrow

— Shipbrokers?

— Shipbrokers …

This sadly spoken word some kind of signal, Patrick checks his watch and says:

— OK. Better get going … Got the lawyers round

— Going over the contracts for the club?

— Yep, some hitch with the survey

— … what’s it like being more successful than me?

Patrick replies:

— I’m not

Joe replies:

— Haddaway and shite

Now the two of them are up. Now the two of them are up, out the Square, and walking over the road towards Greek Street. Halfway across they come to a stop. Barring their way is a builder’s lorry making beeping noises as it reverses. Using the moment Patrick looks down Greek Street at yet another building site: at the place where a building is going up behind a vast theatre curtain of plastic. Watching the moving girders and big yellow machines and men in red plastic hats carrying lengths of scaffolding, Patrick says:

— I remember when all this used to be fields

— Yeah?

— When I first lived in London there was … a meadow here, with sheep … and fallow deer …

Joe, nodding:

— God yeah, and there was, like, a little stream down there, and that’s where there used to be that shepherd with his long clay pipe, right?

— Yep. And that – Patrick gestures, vaguely – That Starbucks coffee house, that used to be a little glade with crab-apple trees, and we used to make cowslip bells. Right next to that van, remember?

— Seems like yesterday

The lorry circumvented, the two friends cross the road and pace more briskly, until they come to the junction where they part. Jabbing his friend’s arm Joe says goodbye and good luck and then angles away and then jogs down the street towards Charing Cross. Watching his friend go, Patrick thinks about his friend’s drug habit for a second and then Patrick turns and walks, and sees, strolling towards him, a very pretty blonde girl, a beautiful blonde girl who gives him the usual feelings of resentment and sad yearning and powerlessness and why don’t I ever get girlfriends like that … until Patrick realises it’s Rebecca. His girlfriend.