Pirate Cinema (8 page)

They began to coo and call and I thought
That must be Jem. About cacking time.
But when I looked out, it wasn't Jem: it was a huge, shambling man with long dreads and a black duffel-bag that he hauled as if it weighed a ton. He was wearing scuffed boots, greasy blue-jeans, a beaten wind-cheater -- he looked like a tramp. Or maybe a killer who hunted tramps and dismembered them and carried them around in a duffel bag.

And he was headed straight for the pub.

I mean, it wasn't like there was anywhere else he could be headed for. The pub stood alone in the wasted field, like the lone tooth in a bleached skull. The man bounced when he walked, dreads shaking, arm penduluming back and forth with that weighty bag.

My first thought was that this was some kind of goon sent by the owner to beat the hell out of me and toss me out. But there was no way that the landlord could know what we were up to. Jem hadn't even put up the sign yet.

Then I thought he must be a dealer, alerted by the lookout. Maybe one of these loose floorboards disguised a secret stash with millions in sugar or smack or something even more exotic -- a cache of guns?

Then I thought he might just be someone who had got here before us, someone who lived here and did such a good job of covering up for himself when he was out that I couldn't find his nest.

Then I stopped thinking because he was standing at the door, thudding rhythmically with a meaty fist, making the whole building shake. My guts squirmed with terror. I thought I'd been afraid before, but that was the nameless, almost delicious fear of something in the dark. Now I had the very pointed, very specific terror of a giant, rough-looking bloke hammering at my door. I didn't know what to do.

Seemingly of their own accord, my feet propelled me back downstairs into the pub's main room, where my headlamp was the only light. It made sense, right? After all, when someone knocks at the door, you answer it.

He was still thudding at it, but then he stopped.

"Open up, come on!" he shouted in a rough voice. "Haven't got all bleeding night."

I cowered in one of the snugs.

"Jem, damn it, it's me, open the goddamned door!"

He knew Jem's name. That was odd.

"Jem's not home," I said in my bravest voice, but it came out like a terrified squeak.

There was silence from the other side of the door.

"What do you mean he's not home? I just crossed the whole pissing city. Jem, is that you? Look, mate, I don't want to play silly buggers. Open the damn door, or --"

My balls shrank back up against my abdominal cavity. It was a curious sensation, and not pleasant.

"It's not Jem. He should be back soon. Sorry," I squeaked.

"Look, I'm the spark, all right? Jem asked me to come round and get you switched on. I've got loads of other things I could be doing, so if you want to sit in the dark, that's up to you. Your choice." A spark -- an electrician! Jem hadn't mentioned this, but he *had* said something about getting the electricity switched on. I'd assumed he'd meant convincing the power company to switch us on, but that wasn't really Jem's style, was it?

Cautiously, I made my way to the door and shot all the bolts and turned the lock.

The man loomed over me, at least six foot six, with red-rimmed eyes. He wasn't white and he wasn't black -- but he wasn't Indian or Pakistani, either. He smelled of machine oil and sweet ganja, and his free hand was big and knuckly and spotted with oil. He pushed past me without saying a word and strode boldly into the middle of the pub.

He sniffed disapprovingly. "Doesn't half pong, does it? My advice: scatter some fresh coffee grounds right away, that covers practically everfing. But I bet this place has a evil great extractor fan in the kitchen, you run that for a couple days and you'll get it smelling better." He turned to face me. "You'll be wanting to close that door, Sunshine. Never know what sort of villains are lurking around in bad old east London."

I closed the door. I was still wearing my headlamp, and its beam showed my shaking hands as I worked the locks.

"I'm Dodger," he said as he clicked on a big torch and wandered behind the bar with it, shining it underneath the counter. "The spark." He stood up and headed for the kitchen. "You ain't seen the mains-junction for this place, have you?"

"No," I managed, still squeaking. "I'm Trent," I said. "I'm Jem's friend."

"That's nice," he said. He was in the kitchen now, and I could hear him moving things, looking behind things. "Lucky you."

"It's got to be in the cellar," he said. "Where's the door?"

"I don't know," I said. "I just got here."

"Never mind, found it. Come here, Jem's friend." He was kneeling in the middle of the kitchen floor, torch in one hand, the other gripping the ring of a trapdoor set into the floor. I accidentally blinded him with my light and he let go of the ring and shielded his face. "Careful, right? Christ, those headlamps are utter toss." He handed me his torch, heavy with all the batteries in it. "Shine that where I'm working, and not in my eyes. Douse that ridiculous thing on your noggin."

I did as bid, and watched in fascination as he hauled and strained at the ring, lifting the trapdoor and letting it fall open with an ear-shattering crash. A ladder descended into the darkness of a cellar. "Okay," he said, "mission accomplished, time for a break." He fished in his pocket and brought out a packet of rolling papers and a baggie of something -- weed, as it turned out, strong enough to break the stink of the pub as soon as he opened the bag. "Let's improve the air quality, right? Hold the light, that's a good lad." He laid the paper on the thigh of his jeans, smoothed it out, then pulled out another and carefully joined it to the first, making a double-wide paper. He sprinkled a mammoth helping of weed into the center of the paper and then quickly skinned up a spliff so neat it looked as if might be factory made. He twisted the ends, stuck it in his mouth and struck a match on the floor and lit it.

He toked heavily and let out a huge cloud of fragrant smoke. "Want some?" he said, holding out the joint and streaming more smoke out of his nostrils.

Like one of those kids in an advert about the dangers of peer pressure, I took it and smoked it. As I inhaled, my mind was filled with paranoid fantasies about all the things the grass might be laced with: horse tranquilizers, rat poison, exotic hallucinogens, synthetic heroin. But it tasted and went down like the weed I'd smoked every now and again at school. I took one more sip of smoke, careful not to get the paper soggy, and passed it back.

He took another gigantic toke, then one more. He passed it back to me. I didn't seem to be feeling any effects, so I drew in a deep double-lungful, handed it back, then took it again once he'd done with it. We'd smoked it half-way down and he waved at me and croaked, "Keep it, mate, gotta do some work." I still wasn't feeling it, which was weird, because normally I was the first one to get all silly when there was a spliff going around. Shrugging, I toked some more and held the lamp while he went down the rickety ladder. I felt pretty cool, I must say, all edgy and "street," smoking this geezer's spliff in a pitch-dark squat. Just a few days before I'd been a lad from the provinces and now here I was in the great metropolis, doing crime, cutting capers, and hanging out with new mates who called themselves things like "Dodger."

It was
epic
.

Dodger was down in the cellar, and he called to me to shift the light over to the panel he'd found. He scratched his chin meditatively as he contemplated it, and I noticed that the beam of light I was shining was flickering a little, and swirling a little around the edges. Maybe it was dust in the air. Dodger wasn't complaining, so I didn't say anything.

Working with the same neat efficiency he'd applied to skinning up the spliff, Dodger started to take tools out his bag. First, some kind of big meter with a pair of alligator leads he touched to different contacts on the board, working with precise, small movements. Then he nodded to himself and drew out a toolbelt that he slung around his waist, taking from it a bunch of screwdrivers and working on the plate with them in turn until the entire junction box came free of the sweating, rough brick wall. Now he brought out a spool of wire and snipped off a meter-long length, stripping the ends. He went back to work with the screwdrivers, and I squinted to see what he was working on.

"Eugh," he exclaimed, and reached a gloved hand into the space behind the junction box and withdrew a handful of dry, papery, furry things. "Mummified mice," he called. "Little bastards had a chew of the wires and got a surprise. Lucky thing I spotted 'em before I got the juice back on -- dry as they are, I wouldn't have been surprised if they went up in flames like old leaves."

He dropped the mummified rodents to the dirt floor of the cellar and went back to work, grunting to himself and calling on me to shift the light this way or that. There was something funny about his voice, a weird quality imparted to it by the dead space of the cellar or something, and I snorted a small giggle.

"Right," he said, "one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, aaand..." He snapped a huge switch and the lights all through the pub blazed to light. "
Go cat go!
" I fumbled the torch and squinted against the sudden light. Then there was a loud
pop
and the pub was plunged back into darkness. I smelled a bonfire smell of melted plastic.

"Right," Dodger said again. "Right. That's how it's going to be, hey? Get that light back on me, mate, this one's going to need some major work."

I groped for the torch, which had stayed on when I dropped it, and discovered that I couldn't maintain my balance. I toppled onto the filthy floor, narrowly missing a headfirst plummet down the trapdoor and ladder. I sat up gingerly, head swimming, and found the lamp. "I think," I said, around a thick tongue. "I think maybe I smoked a little too much. Just a little..." I trailed off. My hands felt like they were encased in boxing gloves, and I could barely feel my face, and it was all brilliantly hilarious.

Dodger made a rude noise. "Christ, you're not half a little nancy, are you? Thought you northerners were supposed to be hard as nails. Just sit there and hold the light, will you?"

I did, and three more times, Dodger switched on the mains and three more times there was a loud crack, smoke, and sudden darkness. The third time, there was even a little fire in the wiring, which he snuffed out with a small chemical extinguisher. This fire seemed to indicate that the job was much bigger than he'd suspected and he went to work in earnest, using a wrecker's bar to knock loose several bricks and dig deeper into the conduit that led into the cellar.

The weed pressed on my arms and legs like lead weights and I found my head drooping to my chest, my eyelids closing of their own accord. I dozed off and on in a slow, giddy, stoned stupor. The lights blazed on and popped out in an irregular rhythm as Dodger made his erratic progress, each event rousing me momentarily. I was woken up properly by Dodger thumping on the sole of my shoe with the handle of his screwdriver, reaching up from the cellar, shouting, "Oi! Oi! Get the door, son!"

I blinked my eyes and listened. Someone was clattering at the door in a jaunty rat-a-tat-a-tat, using something metallic like a key ring to beat out an uptempo ditty.

I walked to the door on feet that felt like they'd grown three sizes, trying to shake the weed off my mind and limbs.

"Who is it?" I shouted.

"Prince Charles," Jem said. "I've come to give you a royal medal for service to England. Open the damn door, son!"

I worked the locks with stupid fingers and swung the door open. It was full dark outside, which made the interior fluorescent tube lights seem as bright as the sun. Jem stepped back, nearly dropping the pizza boxes he was holding before him. "Sorry," he said. "Had some business to attend to. Took a little longer than I thought. Looks like Dodger found the place okay, though?" He jerked his head at the lights and handed me the pizza boxes. They wafted out a smell as intoxicating as any perfume, cheesy and greasy and salty and hot and my mouth flooded with so much saliva I nearly dribbled it down my front.

"You didn't tell me anyone was coming over," I said, hearing a note of accusation in my voice. I wanted to say,
He scared me to death. Thought he was here to murder me!
But I also wanted to be, you know, hard and street and that.

Jem snorted and shut and bolted the door, shucked out of his oversize parka and draped it over a chair. Without it, he was as skinny as a broomstick, arms like toothpicks and legs like pipe-stems. "Said I was sorry, didn't I? I thought I'd be back before Dodger showed. You don't need to be scared of him, old bean, he's a pussy-cat, Dodger is."