Porno (41 page)

Mel as the ‘winner’ goes through her performance with Craig. Simon puts his arm on my shoulder. It feels like slime. — Don’t touch me, I tell him, brushing it off. When Mel’s done the two of us head off together, to the Botanic Gardens, where we skin up and watch men of all ages pass us by, trying to decide whether they watch pornography or not. Then we play Ys or boxer shorts, horse or hamster-hung, trying to judge the quality inside the underpants. And we become louder and stoned, more mocking and abrasive and, gaining a displaced measure of revenge, thus we heal ourselves.

Simon calls round at the flat later. — You did really well, Nikki, that was such a demanding scene.

— It hurt me, I tell him tersely, — it was sore.

Simon looks at me like he’s going to burst into tears himself. — I’m sorry . . . I didn’t know it would be like that . . . it was that mob that came along, those cunts from Terry’s stag club . . . I collapse into his arms. — You did so well, Nikki, but I’ll never put you through something like that again.

— Promise, I ask, looking up at him, loving the feeling of arms round me, feeling so small now.

— Promise, he says.

— Anyway, I tell him, — I suppose that’s brother number five satisfied.

— What about the other thing? Simon asks, and I explain that it’s all in hand.

Because I knew that he would call. After work, he took me out for a meal in a place called the Ubiquitous Chip. I insisted it was there, as I liked the sound of it. Simon, Terry and the others in Edinburgh seem contemptuous of Glasgow and its inhabitants, but I’d been through here a couple of times clubbing with some people from the university and, as a neutral, I find it more atmospheric, friendly and vital than Edinburgh.

The Chip was our second date. On our first, in O’Neill’s, I chatted him up easily and asked him if he felt like moving on somewhere else. We went to a smaller, quieter pub and he seemed quite smitten.

At the end of the evening the poor bastard was walking on air as he accompanied me back to Queen Street to the last train. Allowing him to snog me on the platform, I could feel his erection poking against me. I was far too much of a lady to mention it.

I got on the train and waved him goodbye, as ceremoniously as I could manage. As I watched his figure recede, I started to imagine him slimmed down, with more stylish frames or even contacts and thought . . . no.

So our next date is at the Chip, where I make my pitch. Simon says to me that I should play it cool, but he doesn’t know how besotted this Alan is. — All I want is a printout, of all the customers in your branch, Alan. They won’t know it came from me. I want to sell it to a marketing company. Plus the account numbers.

— I . . . I . . . I’ll see what I can do.

I go to the toilet and call Simon on my mobile and tell him the good news.

— No, Nikki, act coy, anticipate his objections.

— But he’s mad for me! He’s up for it!

— He might be up for it right now, but to pull that off, you would have to be by his side all the time, twenty-four/seven. Are you game for that?

— No, but . . .

— It’s all fine now, but when he’s lying alone in his bed, after having wanked himself silly about you, and the bitterness and self-loathing kicks in, he’ll start getting doubts.

Simon might not know human nature extensively, but he certainly understands the frailer side of it. It made sense. But who could fail to do what their wank fantasy bids? Which man could short-circuit that?

But Simon was correct, Alan
was
having second thoughts already. When I was present, it was fine, but left alone he seemed to come to his senses quickly. When I came back he told me that he could get the names and addresses, but the account numbers, that could get him into big trouble. Why did I want the account numbers for marketing?

What could I say? — I want to sell them to a hacker who can get into the system and clean the accounts out.

— No! I couldn’t!

— I am joking, I laugh at him.

He looks nervously at me, then laughs back.

— I don’t know any authorisation code? Or signature? It just saves the company time on their d-base? Like if they can scan in as many details of future customers as soon as possible, that’s all. I pick up a chip from my bowl. — Lovely chips, I tell him, comforted in the knowledge that the chips here are very good.

48

Whores of Amsterdam Pt 5

E
dinburgh’s like I remember it: cold and wet, even though we’re supposedly out of the winter. I ask the taxi driver to take me to Stockbridge and my pal Gavin Temperley’s flat. Temps was one of my few mates who never touched gear, so he was the one I stayed in touch with. He never had any time for the likes of Begbie.

When I get there, a girl, twenties, very good-looking, is just leaving. Temps looks coy. They’ve obviously been arguing. — Eh, sorry ah didnae introduce ye there, he says as we go inside. — That wis Sarah. Eh, ah’m no number one in her hit parade right now.

I was thinking to myself that I’d settle for just a fuckin chart position in it.

I put my bags down and Gav and I hit the pub, then go for a curry. This curry house is good and cheap, and it’s popular with couples, but also groups of pished-up boys. There’s a couple of nice curry houses in the Dam but there’s not the curry culture over there. When you see the group of noisy, drunken nutters a couple of tables away from us, you think that’s possibly for the best. Fortunately, I’m sitting with my back to them, so I can enjoy the brinjal bhaji and prawn madras better than Gav, who’s got tae face their loud, tedious antics. After a bit we get too pished tae notice them. Until I go downstairs for a slash.

On my way out the toilet my heart stops and flies up into my mouth. A bam, fists balled, comes running down the stair straight at me. I freeze. Fuckin hell . . . it’s him . . . I’ll block him and smash him, coming down on his leg and . . .

No.

It’s just another radge aggressively barging past me, but I’ve no ill-will. In fact, I want to kiss this particular sociopath just for
not
being Begbie. Thank you, you fuckin heidbanger.

— You wantin a photae? eh asks as he passes me.

— Sorry, bud, just thought ye wir somebody ah knew for a second, I explain.

The nutter mumbles something, then heads off to the bogs. For a second I think about going in after him but check it. One thing that Raymond, my shotokan karate instructor, drummed into me was that the most important thing to learn about martial arts was when
not
to use them.

After the nosh, Gav and I head back down to his and we sit up into the night, drinking, telling tales, talking about life and catching up in general. There’s something in his demeanour that saddens me. I feel horrible for feeling this way about him and I’m not being superior because I really fuckin like the boy, but it’s as if he’s come face to face with his limitations, without learning to love what he’s got. He tells me that he’s on the same grade in the Department of Employment and that’s as high as he’ll get. He’s been knocked back for promotion so many times he’s stopped applying. He reckons that he’s had his card marked as a peever. — Funny, when ah started there, it was compulsory to be a drinker. A reputation for hanging round the pub showed you were social, a networker. Now you’re marked down as a jakey. Sarah . . . she wants me to jack it aw in and go travelling with her, India and all that stuff, he shakes his head.

— Go for it, I tell him, my voice charged with urgency.

He shoots me a look like I’ve suggested he take up child-bending. — It’s okay for her tae suggest that, Mark, she’s twenty-four, no thirty-five. There’s a big difference.

— Fuck off, Gavin. You’ll regret it fir the rest of your life if you don’t go. If you dinnae, you’ll lose her and still be in that fuckin office in twenty years’ time, the shakey jakey, the sad cunt they all dinnae want tae be like. And that’s as good as it gets, they might kick you into touch anyway, for the flimsiest of reasons.

Gavin’s eyes hollow and glaze and I suddenly apprehend how humiliating and violating my drunken rant is to his ears. You used to be able tae talk like this, tae rip people up for shite paper about work, but they’ve all got so precious about it and with us being older the stakes are now higher. — Ah dunno, he says wearily, raising the glass to his mouth, — sometimes ah think that ah’m jist too set in ma weys. That this is it, he pronounces, looking round the well-decorated and furnished room. It’s an excellent Victorian Edinburgh flat; bay window, big marble fireplace, sanded floors, rugs, old or replica-old furniture, colour-washed walls. Everything’s immaculate, and you can tell that the mortgage on this place is the real reason he wants to stay. — I think I’ve maybe missed the boat, he declares, in gallows cheeriness.

— Naw, just go for it, I urge. — Ye kin rent this place oot, I tell him, — it’ll still be there when ye get back.

— We’ll see, he smiles, but I think we both know that he won’t, the stupid fucking cunt.

Gav picks up on my contempt and says: — It’s easy for you, Mark; ah’m no like you, he almost pleads.

I’m tempted to say, how the fuck is it easy for me? It’s all in his head. Yet I’ve got to mind that he’s my host, and my friend, so I content myself with saying: — It’s up tae you, mate, you’re the only person who can live your life and you ken what’s best for you.

He looks even gloomier considering this proposition.

I decide the next day that I’ll get out and about. I put on a hat to cover my distinctive red hair and I wear the glasses that I only use for football games or the movies. I’m hoping that this, plus nine years’ ageing and filling out, will be an adequate disguise. In any case, I’m keeping well away from Leith, the most likely area for the Begbie associates who personally know me. I heard that Seeker was still living at the top of the Walk and I stupidly head there, to my second depressing encounter.

Seeker’s bottom row of teeth is wired together in a metal brace. It makes his sinister smile worse than ever, like that Jaws guy fae the Roger Moore Bond era. Gav Temperley told me that a squad, Fife or Glaswegian, depending on who you talk to, came through and tried to extract his teeth. I’m glad that they failed, his deadly smile was a work of art. Temps said that Seeker had got grisly revenge on most of the boys involved, one by one. It might be bullshit. What is true is that he’s one person I know I could be seen around with that might buy me some sort of insurance from Begbie’s old crew. Perhaps.

Seeker treats me like I’ve never been away, immediately tries to sell me junk, and seems surprised when I decline. As we sit in his house I swiftly become astounded at my own idiocy in coming here. Seeker and I had never really been friends; it was always purely business. He had no friends, just a block of ice where his heart should be. I’m surprised, too, although he still looks big and hard, just how little physical fear Seeker inspires in me now, and I wonder if that would also be the case with Begbie. What is chilling about Seeker is his quiet, mirthless depravity. He pulls out, from under the couch, what looks like the top of a Monopoly box, turned upside down. I can’t quite believe what I see on it; some used condoms, filled, but just lying there, strategically placed.

— The week’s work, he grins in that slow, death’s-head stare, sweeping his long hair from his face. — That wis a wee bird ah brought back fae the Pure, he coldly tells ays, pointing at one of them. They looked like dead soldiers on a battlefield, a holocaust. I widnae have liked tae have been in the room when they were fashioned.

I never really know how to respond under such circumstances. I check a David Holmes flyer from the Vaults which is on his wall. — I’ll bet ye that was a good night, I remark, pointing at it.

Seeker ignores me, indicating another condom. — That wis a student bird fae Substantial. English lassie, he continues. And for a brief moment, I have a sense of them actually being women, melted and diminished into a strip of pink rubber by some laser that comes from Seeker’s cock. — This yin here, he points to one, which is tinted brown, — was a bird ah met in the Windsor one night. Fucked her aw weys in every hole, he tells me, before hissing out the standard sequence: mooth, fanny, erse.

I could see Seeker on top of some daft wee lassie, him fucking her erse, her gritting her teeth in pain with the warnings of parents and mates about keeping the wrong company a ruthless soundtrack to her pain and discomfort. Maybe she might even try to snuggle up with the cunt after, in order to con herself that it was all her choice, a real collusion, not something akin to rape. Maybe she’d just get the fuck out as soon as she could.

Seeker’s pish-hole-in-the-snow eyes flit over to another condom. — That wis a right dirty wee hoor thit ah fucked big time . . .

He was well known for trying to get birds to bang up. Mikey Forrester and him would give them skag and then fuck them while they were bombed. They loved getting lassies hooked then fucking them for fixes. I’m looking at Seeker and thinking how people let badness adopt them, narrow and define their possibilities for so little reward. What’s he getting out of it all? A poke at a corpse.

So that’s my posse now: a clapped-out junior civil servant and an old smack-dealing acquaintance that Begbie hardly had any contact with. No, I can’t wait to get away. I call my ma and faither, who now live out at Dunbar, and arrange to go and see them. As I head out, Seeker goes: — Mind, if ye change yir mind n fancy a bag . . .

— Aye, I nod.

I head out and look down the Walk, Leith both tempting and repelling me. It’s like being by a cliff, where you feel compelled to go to the edge, but you’re terrified at the same time. I think of an egg roll and a mug of tea in the Canasta, or a pint of Guinness in the Central. Simple pleasures. But no, I turn the other way. Edinburgh’s got pubs and cafés as well.

I phone Sick Boy who’s still fishing for my Edinburgh abode, but there’s no way I’m trusting him with it, and I don’t want Gav hassled. I ask him how things are and he’s high about the film and his progress with the scam. Then he gives me some distressing news about Terry Lawson. — Are ye gaunnae go up visit him this affie? I ask.