Ostrich: A Novel (23 page)

When I open my mouth to reply, my teeth judder like loose xylophone keys. “Why do people say that?” I manage to ask over the clatter of my molars.

“I don’t know,” says Dad after a moment’s consideration, but (thinking about it) I think I do. Then he reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out a shiny silver flask not much larger than a deck of cards.

When I ask him what it is he tells me it’s his Irish percolator. “For making Irish coffee,” he says, when I ask what it’s for. Then he unscrews the cap and passes it over.

“What’s Irish coffee?” I ask him.

“It’s a coffee with no potatoes.” Dad laughs. Then he steadies my hand and guides it to my mouth. “Try some. It’s good for nerves.”

The drink doesn’t taste of much in my mouth, but when I swallow it firebombs my throat and carpets my gut in napalm.
It feels like a sicky burp in rewind, but Dad says it’s meant to and that the first sip is always the worst. “There you go,” he says, as I swig again, and then, when I’m off guard (trying not to vomit), he asks how things are going with Chloe. He laughs again when I don’t answer. “Don’t worry,” he says, taking the flask and gulping back a mouthful. “This isn’t what you think it is. Never mind about the birds and the beavers. I’m not going to embarrass us both by pretending you haven’t done your research. Why do you think I got us broadband?” At this point my face must do something I haven’t authorized, because Dad jokes that I’m free to leave at any time and central locks the doors. I know exactly what’s coming next. It’s the long-overdue Evils of Peer Pressure lecture (the one that Chloe predicted and is now about to become a bullet point in): that I shouldn’t feel compelled to do anything I’m not ready to do just because other people are doing it, that most of the people who claim to be doing things already are almost certainly lying about it anyway, that I should never feel like there’s anything I can’t talk to him about, even/especially if it’s something I don’t want Mum knowing, that there’ll be plenty of time for all sorts of experimenting when I’m older, and really when I think about it what’s the big rush, that now’s the time to enjoy being young and not having to worry about stupid shit like this (he’ll almost definitely swear here so I know he has a vested interest in keeping this confidential, and that anything I might subsequently decide to tell him won’t leave these four doors), that he could certainly tell me a story or two (followed maybe by a story or two), and finally that if I absolutely am sure that I’m ready for whatever it is I might be thinking about trying then
both he and Mum would infinitely prefer I tried it under their roof, where at least they’d know I was safe, than out in the middle of a deserted car park or an abandoned factory somewhere … All of this delivered, of course, in the falsely neutral, strictly nonjudgmental
Are-you-having-trouble-with-diarrhea?
voice Chloe warned me about outside the
NEWS GENT
.

However, in actuality, Dad says none of this. “So …” he says instead. “Are you getting any?”

“Any what?” I ask, managing to sound more innocent than I really am simply by channeling my surprise at Dad’s directness. (Unattributed pronouns in conversation between males only ever refer to one thing. (The classic e.g. is doing it.))

“It’s okay,” says Dad, handing me back the drink. “You don’t need to play dumb with me.” He grins toothily as I take the flask and wipe its mouth on my sleeve. (I think he also bails out of a wink by doubling up so it becomes a blink.) “I know you think I was born yesterday,” he continues, “but, remember, I was young, too, once.”

I leave this contradiction alone and take another swig of the mystery liquid. This time I do discern a flavor before the burn takes over. It tastes like melted licorice, the reassurance of which gives me the confidence to take charge of the situation.

I tell Dad I’m not an idiot, that I know for a fact half the time boys boast about fingering it’s just Prawn Cocktail crisps from the tuck shop, and that even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t matter anyway, because I never have nor would I ever in a quadrillion years submit to the evils of peer pressure.

“So, that’s a no?” says Dad when I’m done.

“Yes,” I confirm. “And don’t worry, I’m not in any rush.”

“Hmm,” he remarks, and takes off his glasses. “What’s the matter, is she frigid or something?”

There follows a different kind of lecture, one that really does sound confidential. While Dad talks, I concentrate on the Irish coffee mix so as to avoid making eye contact. Each sip goes down easier than the last until my mind starts to feel like my mouth after I’ve bitten my tongue (i.e., not big enough all of a sudden for all the thoughts it has to process). Dad’s first time was when he was still in short trousers (if I know what he means (which I don’t)). Looking back now, it was almost certainly a mistake but, as Dad puts it, “Making mistakes is the best bit about not being old enough to know better.”

“What was her name?” I ask, with words that feel fuzzy round the edges, but Dad says that’s not the point. The point is, he says, she was great practice for when he
was
old enough for it to mean something.

“Which,” says Dad, “is what this time now’s for. So when you are grown-up you can really hit the ground running. And”—here I can feel him stop looking at me, and from the corner of my eye watch as he attends himself to a smudge on his glasses lens—“if your friend Chloe isn’t the sort of girl who’s willing to make a silly mistake, then that’s a lesson she’ll probably never learn. And in which case maybe you shouldn’t be wasting your time on her.”

Instead, Dad says, I should be concentrating on the girls with the worst reputations, or, short of that, the ones with the lowest self-esteem. How do I spot the ones with low self-esteem?
he asks himself, rhetorically. “That’s the best part. You’re teenagers. Everyone’s got low self-esteem!”

When I reach for my seatbelt the second time, my hand’s still out of focus, but this time it’s not down to any oscillations. I can almost feel the loose connection somewhere between my retinae and my brain. On the plus side, though, I am no longer shaking, or rather I’m shaking with anger in the exact opposite direction that I’m shaking with nerves and the two things cancel each other out. I don’t know what right Dad thinks he has to go poking around for details of my private life, but it’s exactly this flagrant disregard for privacy that proves I was right to keep him under investigation for as long as I did.

He waits until I’m out of the car to deliver his closing argument. “Remember,” he says, leaning across the empty seat to roll down the window (and by doing so erasing the raindrop tableau (and committing metaphorical mass spermicide)), “there’s no need to tie yourself down to anything at this stage. No man in the history of History has ever lain on his death bed and wished he’d loved less.”

Then he leaves and I am alone.

All of a sudden, I have never seen this street before in my life.

Then, just as suddenly, I’ve never seen any street.

I steady myself on the looming stalk of a cold metal flower. Above my head, it hums and blossoms into a full moon. Silver static falls across the white background of the glaring satellite and lands softly on my face. It feels light and calming and new. But then I hear a roar. In front of me, lit like a runway by a gallery of moons on sticks, is a pathway. From its near side a shiny bug-eyed monster bares a grille of teeth and flaps its eyebrows from side to side. When it sees me, its eyes light up.

(Slowly) it charges.

Without thinking (because I can’t), I dart out across the course of the lumbering beast and strike it on the snout. It squeals with surprise and stops in its tracks, and I tear off down
the passage without looking back. Behind me I hear a string of words I almost recognize. They sound like a leg of lamb falling repeatedly on someone’s foot. Then, nothing. Then:

Vaf!

Vaf! Vaf! Vaf!

Which is a word I know.

I lean on a stalk and remember to breathe. As quickly as it left, my memory returns. The metal flower is a lamppost. Moreover, there is something tied to it. A sore, disheveled, chewed-up creature with patches of skin showing through thinning fur and a tail pebble-dashed with teeth marks. Around its scrawny neck, as though its head were a bulb, is attached a white plastic cone.

“Vaf!” it says (which is French for
Ruff!
), and tilts up its head to look through the falling precipitation. Slowly but surely the cone starts to fill. For what feels like a very long time I watch this graceless creature catching rain before I realize that I don’t remember what it’s called. All I have in my mind is the shape of the word. It looks like god.

Then someone says my name and asks if my mum dropped me off. Backlit in the doorway of the bungalow I’m standing in front of is a gangly silhouette with a glass in one hand and a stick of chalk in the other. He puts the chalk to his lips and sucks color into its tip. Then he doubles over, coughing. He looks like he’s trying to suck himself off.

Pete Sloss shows me in, tells me to keep my shoes on, and offers me some of his drink, which looks like apple juice, which I don’t like. Then he tells me to follow him. The carpet is beige and coarse, the cheap sort you get on kindergarten
classroom walls. Set into it is a faded gray trail of children’s muddy footprints that leads us all the way to the living room. There, sat in a coven on the floor around a black-labeled glass bottle, is the party. It is only six people. 66.66
^r
% look up and mumble hello. The other 33.33
^r
% is an older boy (probably fourteen) who looks like David but more so, and Chloe Gower. When she sees me she drops her chin and stares down into her own glass of apple juice, which is coddled in the intersection of her crossed legs, which she draws together like bellows when Pete slops down next to her. (As if on cue, he emits a plume of smoke.) I take a seat across from her, between Beckie Frogley and Gemma Overton, which completes the circuit and brings the older Driscoll to life.

“Everyone know the rules,” he asks flatly, like it’s an order, clamping a fat hand over the glass bottle. “Ones is tongues, twos is flat hands, threes is fingers. Boy gets boy you spin again, girl gets girl you don’t.”

“James?” asks David, quietly.

James lifts his hand off the bottle and uses it to thump David on his BCG scab.

“Arrgh!”

“I told you not to call me that. My name’s ptk.”

“Peter Kerr?” asks Susie Beckman, on behalf of everyone.

“ptk,” says Driscoll Senior. It sounds like bubbles bursting in a pot of thick soup. “That’s what I’m changing it to. When I’m eighteen. Try and shout it.”

“What?”

“Go on, try.”

Susie tries. More bubbles burst. “Oh, wow.”

“See.” He beams. “You can’t. It’s impossible. And if they can’t shout at me, then good luck trying to stop me.”

“Stop you from what?” asks Susie.

“Yeah, what?” says David. And then, once he’s got his answer, “Arrgh! Stop doing that!”

“Who goes first?” asks Gemma Overton, who used to be respectable and likable before she realized people liked and respected her more when she wasn’t.

“I do,” says James, and spins the bottle. It lands on Chloe. Everyone laughs except me, Chloe, James, and Pete, who is too busy raking back apple juice. “Practice,” says James, and spins again, this time harder. I watch Chloe as the bottle rotates. Her face is a salad dressing made with Relief and Humiliation. She shudders, and for a second they blend together to make something new and unrecognizable. However, the Humiliation is oil, so before long it rises to the surface. Just in time for the bottle to nominate her again. This time Pete laughs, too.

“Arrgh!” remarks David, because his brother has punched him a third time.

“Fuck off! It hit your knee,” says James, which is a lie. “That’s interference.”

“It didn’t!” squeals David, eyes starting to glaze.

“You know I know pressure points.”

“I didn’t touch it!”

“You did, kind of,” mediates Susie, which means to be between two positions, which she literally is. “It sort of like
brushed your knee,” she adds, sort of like brushing James’s knee.

“I didn’t see,” says Pete, unhelpfully, and burps.

“So shut up,” says Gemma Overton.

“You can kiss me,” says Beckie Frogley, to anyone who’s listening.

Chloe says nothing.

“Maybe you should spin again,” I say.

Chloe looks at me for the first time since I arrived.

“You are the worst person in the world,” says her expression.

James spins the bottle again. However, there is something wrong with it because it stays perfectly still. No one else notices, though, because instead the room spins around it. It stops with Susie in the hot seat.

“That’s cheating!” shouts David. “You cheated!”

“How?” asks Susie, plumping up her breasts and pointing them at James.

Then they kiss with tongues.

(It is only two people locking heads and probing a hole in the other’s face. (But then again, you can do that with anything.))

Then it’s Susie’s go. This time I can’t tell what’s spinning (the bottle, the room, or my head), because either way, the entailment is the same. All I do know is when whatever it is (that’s spinning) stops (spinning) the bottle is pointing to the gap between David and James. At first no one says anything except for some vowels. Then Pete Sloss suggests a “Three-some!”
which I think is his version of The Judgment of King Solomon. However, both Driscolls stand their ground, so Susie positions herself behind the bottle and lowers her head to the carpet to look along its length for the purposes of extrapolation, except that’s not a word she would know. To do this, she closes one eye, which technically I suppose might mess with her depth perception and explain why she nudges the bottle with her nose in the direction of the older Driscoll, who is simultaneously shuffling around toward its decree.

David doesn’t say anything (too heartbroken), and this time they use hands.

“Get some room!” shouts Pete, which sounds like something he’s only half heard.