Friction (29 page)

Colin is going shopping because he needs more supplies for the funeral. On the wall of the One Stop convenience store an Antiporn protest is being advertised on a large poster. The poster has been made in haste with a marker pen and a photocopier. It reads: ANTIPORN. EMERGENCY PROTEST. 3 p.m. MALMAISON HOTEL. Below the poster is a sleeping tramp. A trickle of piss leaves his groin, bound for the gutter. But Colin doesn't notice any of this. He strides into the shop and begins collecting magazines from the shelves. He gathers up all the celebrity magazines he can manage, which is nowhere near all of them, and takes them up to the counter.

‘Hello, mate,' says the lad at the counter. He's Chinese and seems unnecessarily intelligent.

‘Hello,' says Colin, miserably, as if he's been told his entire family has been set on fire and he's demanding confirmation. Really? Are you sure no cousins survived?

‘OK, sir, would you like a bag?' says the Chinese lad, tearing one from beneath the counter.

‘It's probably about leading a good and useful life, isn't it?' says Colin, squinting, talking to his pelvis.

‘I don't know, sir, but perhaps, yes.'

‘And, of course, I'm going to be a murderer.'

The Chinese lad smiles absently. Casual confessions of murder aren't abnormal in Withington. And, in any case, behind Colin a queue of people is beginning to snake.

‘OK, could you type in your pin, mate?'

Colin types in his pin number, his eyes computer screens. He allows the carrier bag to be threaded on to his wrist like a weighty bracelet.

‘Ha . . . a good and useful life . . . ha.'

He takes one step out of the shop, then another to his left. His head feels like it's got a lagoon inside it, like his brain's a small island in the middle of a beautiful lagoon. He pictures Rebecca, waving from his lumpy brain, a red sarong around her waist. I've buggered it. He leans back against the wall, then scrapes his way to the pavement where the tramp sleeps. By beating up Rebecca I've buggered it. Bollocks.

Could I wake him, the tramp? wonders Colin. Could I wake him up and get him to help me? The tramp stirs, emitting odour as he does so: piss, shit, smoke, semen, soil. Life itself. Colin sits on his magazines, legs bent, hugging his knees to his chin with both arms.

It was wonderful the first time Rebecca came round seven months ago. She was angry for a while, but she was there, at least she came. He had shared his rice and peas with her, watched her as she ironed her clothes, straightened her hair and, yes, finally, watched as she undressed before they . . .
how can I describe it? Did it? Had it? Made it? Fucked? Screwed? Loved? None fits quite right, not for Colin. ‘Schemed' is perhaps the best word. He schemed a foetus into her, then destroyed it before it could be born and become incredibly disappointed. Yes, for even the womb is a source of disillusionment, believes Colin. All that warmth and bobbing about quickly becomes banal. ‘We must kill it quickly,' he'd said, ‘before it realises.'

But none of this matters now because of Rebecca and her various deceits. Colin coughs into his fist, noticing, as he does so, the blood marks on his boots. Beside him the tramp's eyes open, like barn doors, to reveal eyes the colour of haystacks.

‘All right, mate?' asks the tramp, reaching for his crotch to confirm he's pissed himself.

Colin nods, looking into the tramp's ageless face with envy. Yes, envy. Better to have pissed yourself and have a face like a brimming ashtray than have a house with a sink and a dying pregnant girl beneath it. Colin knows this by now. He's realised. But life's a waterslide and we're born with sunscreen on our backs, there's no stopping us, we just slide to the end. He has to get back. He's gathering his magazines and getting up from the ground when the tramp seems to cough half his face off, then speak.

‘What do you do, mate?'

What do I do? wonders Colin. What kind of a question is that? What do I do? He doesn't reply. He begins to scurry away. What I do is I . . . I . . . well . . . I get them pregnant because . . . well . . . and then abort because . . . mate . . . I guess. What a weird question. Yes. I do things. I blame happiness. I blame happiness.

For the first time in a long time Colin thinks of his job
at the university last year. What do I do? All the names he'd processed, the new students; their hobbies, desired living arrangements, study choices, all those fucking hobbies, all those fucking names. So much leisure. Colin begins to march along the pavement like a soldier parading on some nostalgic-looking street in China. He's sending his legs firing out in front of him with military precision, clutching the celebrity magazines like he could massacre the whole street with them at any moment. He's shouting orders like a general.

‘Table tennis! Polo! Orienteering! Gilbert and Sullivan! Snowboarding! Art! Travel!'

Shouting at the top of his voice, Colin is drawing attention to himself. It's a bit of a laugh actually. A few lads in tracksuits are chuckling and even the elderly snigger, given the harmless nature of his words. People are cracking up as he walks down Wilmslow Road bellowing at the top of his voice.

‘Football! Theatre! Socialist politics! Drinking! Rock climbing! Ballet! Knitting! Rugby! Swimming! Monasteries! UFOs! Computer games! Sex! HAHA! Tudor architecture!'

‘Sounds like a busy day, son!' shouts an old man, humorously, as Colin arrives home to check on the pregnant girl he's been kicking to death. She's fine, though, still gurgling away as he unlocks the bathroom door and sets down the magazines.

‘Rebecca?'

Rebecca's eyelids lift to reveal a roadmap of intricate red lines sketched over the whites of her eyes. He notices she's taken one of his towels from the rail and covered it in blood. Bit annoying.

‘It's about leading a good and useful life, isn't it,
Rebecca?' he says, prodding her cheeks with his fingers, forcing her awake.

‘Am . . . bu . . . lance . . . you're . . . a . . . a . . . goodboy,' gurgles Rebecca, eyes like gobstoppers.

‘Yeah,' continues Colin. ‘It's all about being busy during the day. I get it now.'

‘Ple . . . ase . . . C . . . olin.'

‘But bitches like you messed it up. You were more than just beautiful . . . and you know it.'

Colin perches himself on the side of the bath and begins to unpack the celebrity magazines.

‘And so this has to be a funeral. But I've bought you your food and your magazines.' Colin's voice is a cheerful scream. He's bounding about now, preparing his party. When he's happy that all is as it should be, he emits a satisfied sigh. Then he turns to face Rebecca, a panini in each of his hands.

‘Eat, Rebecca . . . it's time to eat.'

‘
THERE MUST BE
a back door!'

‘They're covering every exit, sir. The police are on their way.'

Justin's trapped inside the Malmaison; it's entirely surrounded by Antiporn protesters. Justin assumes they were tipped off by one of the journalists, Franchesi perhaps, but more likely the woollen-skinned bitch from the
Mail
. He swings his car keys round his fingers, scratching at his shaved head. Rebecca. The voices of the crowd thunderclap all around the foyer:

‘MURDERER! MURDERER! MURDERER! MUR DERER!'

And as the crowd shakes their fists, they howl. Through the hotel's dark glass the faces of the protesters can't be made out, only the dropping of their jaws and the craning of their necks. The flashes of the cameramen and the camerawomen. Justin stares at the young porter standing beside him. What does he make of all this? The porter avoids his gaze.

At the front door, the shadow of the crowd becomes disturbed; it begins to separate like a parting sea, like a tank's being driven through the throng. The police, assumes Justin, hands dancing by his sides in the manner of an athlete preparing to sprint. But no, it's not the police. An enormous figure jostles its way through the most devoted protesters at the front and bangs on the glass of the front door with a gammon hand.

‘Let him in,' shouts Justin, shoulders hunching and relaxing, fists clenching and unclenching at speed. The security staff unlock the door and squeeze the colossus through, then slam the door in the frenzied faces of the mob, their fingers blistering at the glass, forks of lightning streaking from each extremity. While the door is open the voices amplify, screeching with a commitment and fanaticism of footballing proportions.

‘MURDERER! MURDERER! MURDERER! MURDERER!'

On entering, the gigantic man brushes down his suit and smiles that familiar smile; each cheek rising like calf corpses being winched.

‘Oh my boy, my dear, dear boy.'

‘Hello, Frank.'

‘What could they possibly have against a child like you?'

Justin ushers Frank under a spiral staircase. The fat bastard's jittering about with excitement. He can't wipe the smile off his face; it'd be too big a job.

‘Frank, I need your help. Rebecca's in trouble. Colin's got her down in Withington and I think he's fucking flipped. He's a lunatic.'

‘You've sent your beloved into the arms of a lunatic? Oh, Justin.'

‘I think he might hurt her,' says Justin, harshly, desperate to make Frank see the serious side of this. Frank's hands meet in the middle of his chest, resting on his huge gut. Fingers fiddling with each other. His smile flickering like a looped image, cycling unrealistically.

‘I'm afraid I shan't get involved, Justin,' he says, slowly and almost seriously. ‘I must maintain a distance from your other activities, for the sake of the White Love brand and our business venture. We really shouldn't meet in person any more.'

‘She might die, Frank.' Justin grabs Frank's arm and instantly regrets having done so; it feel like a bladder. But there's no convincing Frank. He doesn't like saving people because he's a twat.

‘I'm sorry, Justin, but I shan't get involved. I'm making you a great deal of money. You'll have half a million on the first month's sales alone. It really is my time at last.'

Justin's halfway through figuring out why half a million quid means nothing to him when the front door bursts with neon yellow. He takes the long way round Frank and walks towards the police.

‘I'll take care of Steve, my boy. Good luck,' shouts Frank over his huge shoulder.

Justin doesn't listen. He approaches an officer with his arms outstretched. The officer frowns.

‘It's gonna take at least an hour to get this crowd dispersed, son.'

IT'S HAPPENING. REBECCA
bleeds and Colin kicks, Steve is mad and Justin's trapped. And Carly, dear Carly, is where she has been for several months now: locked in the Green Quarter apartment with the Sex Machine.

After hours with the machine, Carly hums while breathing. She's too weak to separate her lips. She draws air in through the sides of her mouth then releases it slowly though her nostrils with a high-pitched and wistful hum.

She slowly removes each of the pleasure-pads from her body. Smoke rises from her nipples as she frees them from the machine's electric grip. The skin between her legs is scorched black. Her hair is falling out. From certain angles she looks noticeably bald, her enlarged forehead falls like melted wax to her patchy eyebrows. Then her eyes, hollowed hard; lids the texture of biscuits.

‘Oh, darling,' she murmurs, entwining her legs among the wires and straps of the Sex Machine – darling: White Love 1000.

She hasn't left the house in six weeks. She barely eats.
Her limbs are flesh golf clubs, hardly capable of allowing her to stagger out of the bedroom. Frank has masterminded the cover-up operation. He can't afford bad press in the months prior to the UK launch of the White Love 1000. And Carly is certainly bad press. Her parents were told she had a sudden attack of moral heartache and that she's currently involved in aid work in Sudan. But she isn't, not at all. She lying on her bed waiting for her body to cool down. So she can start again.

A layer of dust has settled on the room. A layer of grey on the always-silent hi-fi and the abandoned screen of the television. Where did all this come from? wonders Carly, utterly confused by everything but the machine. Steve is rarely here. He's always out, she knows not where. She is always in. There's no other way to describe this place. It is Carly's lair.

She scurries to the floor, leaving the machine to recover on the bed. ‘Distraction,' she whispers. ‘I need distraction.'

After using the machine Carly has to find ways of killing time. Ideally she'd never turn it off, but in rare logical moments she knows her skin would blacken further and it's likely she'd pass out. So she must try to give herself periods of recovery.

She crawls to her dressing table and begins fondling the objects that she finds there. She can't remember many of their names. She knows that the small bottle containing thick pink liquid had something to do with her fingers. But she can't think what. The colours of her make-up seem awkward to her now. She reads their names and wonders what it was she had once seen in the various shades. 314 Hot Lilac. 28 Sheer Blossom. 49 Violet Magnetique. 30 Foxy Lady.

She throws the make-up down and pulls open a drawer. Inside she finds a stack of greasy paper. She knows what this is. She's sure she's seen it before. She smells it and feels her memory returning, it smells of stale sweat. But, no, she can't think. Can't remember. Each sheet is incredibly creased, somehow memorably. There are different colours, immense amounts of detail on each side. She compares the different designs, lines them up and stares. But it's useless. She can't work out how they could possibly be used.

‘Twenty pounds,' she reads from one, the words awkward on her tongue. ‘Twenty pounds,' she says again, allowing the piece of paper to fall.