The Death of Bunny Munro (10 page)

‘Hai!’ says Charlotte.

There is a great pumping of blood from Bunny’s nose that splashes down his tie and his jaw yawns open and he makes a sucking noise like a fish. In slow motion, he allows his head to fall forward and watches the bright blood pool in his cupped hands and says, not loudly but with the purest kind of outrage, ‘Fuck!’

Charlotte continues to hop up and down, her nipples as hard as bone.

‘The foundations of Tae Kwon Do are built on integrity, peace and respect. You ought to try some,
Rabbit Man
.’

Painfully, Bunny climbs to his feet, points one trembling finger at her and says, ‘You horrible, fucking slag.’ He says, ‘You mad … ugly … diseased …’ and Charlotte Parnovar grins and swivels and tilts her hip to the side.

Bunny Junior looks at his watch and wonders what is taking his father so long. He looks towards the small semi-detached house that Bunny entered and sees, but does not hear, the front door burst open and his father launched backwards through the air, arms by his sides, like he has been shot from a cannon. The boy watches his father crash land on the garden path and lie there. He sees, but does not hear, the door slam shut. Then, before he has even considered what he should do, the door opens again and his father’s sample case flies out approximating much the same trajectory as its owner, exploding on the path and disgorging its cargo of tiny bottles and sachets all over the tattered lawn.

The boy sees his father lift his head, then roll over and raise himself up on his hands and knees and grasp wildly at the scattered samples, tossing them in his case. He tries unsuccessfully to close it.

Then his father stands, sample case clutched to his chest, but the time it takes to perform this relatively simple act is horrible in its despairing retardation. The boy watches his father stumble down the footpath, pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of his trousers and clamping it to what appears to be a very bloody nose.

Then the door to the Punto flies open and, with a muffled moan, Bunny drops into the driver’s seat. The boy looks on in horror but then has a sudden and overwhelming urge to laugh – the crazy crimson face, the handkerchief, the busted sample case – until he sees that his father’s rabbit tie is spotted with blood. The urge to laugh vanishes and the boy feels a cold grief roar through his chest. He rubs at his forehead with the back of his hand and paddles the air frantically beneath his feet, even though he doesn’t really know why.

‘Dad,’ he says, pointing at the tie.

‘Just don’t ask,’ says Bunny and hurls the sample case into the back seat, but as he does so the case springs open and its contents fly all over the inside of the car. He grabs at them futilely and makes the word ‘fuck’ sound like the worst word in the world.

‘
Fuck
,’ he roars.

Then Bunny looks at himself in the rear-view mirror and actually screams.

‘That muff-munching dyke broke my fucking nose!’

‘Dad,’ says the boy, still pointing his finger at his father’s tie.

Bunny notices that the inside of the windscreen has been decorated with a strange and intricate web of black markings. They draw him in like a spell.

‘What the fuck,’ he says, but his voice has turned breathy and remote.

His outraged body achieves, in that instant, a kind of drugged laxity and he sinks back into his seat, hypnotised. A fresh ribbon of blood unravels from his nose.

Bunny says, again, ‘What the fuck.’

Then Bunny Junior realises what it is about his father’s tie that makes him feel so unhappy and he starts thinking about Rhino beetles and how they are part of the Scarab family and that the males use their horns in mating battles against other males and that they are among the largest beetles in the whole
fucking
world.

‘Pick up that piece of paper, down there, on the floor,’ says Bunny, after a while. The boy thinks his father sounds like a robot or Cyberman or something.

‘Are we going home now, Dad?’ says the boy.

‘Do as you’re told.’

The boy reaches down and picks up the piece of crumpled paper.

‘Here it is, Dad,’ says the boy.

‘Read what it says,’ says Bunny.

Bunny Junior makes a great show of straightening out the piece of paper by flattening it on his knee and then, with a certain ostentation, says, ‘Pamela Stokes, Meeching Road, Newhaven.’ Then the boy looks at his father with a clamped and idiot-sweet smile.

Bunny reaches over and snaps a tissue from the glove box and rolls it into twin plugs and inserts them up his nose. With the sleeve of his jacket he rubs at the dark tracery on the windscreen. Then he stops and looks at the boy.

‘Well?’ he says.

‘Well, what, Dad?’ says Bunny Junior.

‘Well, are you the bloody navigator or what?’

Bunny Junior opens the A–Z.

‘Is Newhaven a nice place, Dad?’

Bunny rotates the plugs in his nostrils, pats at his bloodstained tie, smoothes down his hair and enacts a bizarre performance with his fingers that the boy is unable to interpret.

‘Bunny Boy, you’re gonna love it.’

On an enormous plasma-screen TV that sits in the far corner of a living room in a small maisonette in Newhaven, Bunny thinks he can see, at the very edge of his vision, new CCTV footage of the Horned Killer careening through a stampede of shoppers with his trademark trident. But Bunny cannot be completely sure as a wedge of late-afternoon sunlight has moved across the screen and obliterated the image. He can detect, however, in the colour-bleached pixels, a now familiar sense of terror – he recognises the crowd’s horrified screams – and he wonders, for a split second, how close to Brighton this crazy fucker actually is, as he says to Pamela Stokes, ‘We offer a line of highly indulgent, high-performance skin care that combines the best of over a century of achievements in dermatological research with sensually pleasing, luxury formulations.’

Bunny thinks that Pamela Stokes looks like she has walked out of the all-time fucking Mr Whippy of one of Poodle’s wet dreams. She wears a blood-coloured halter-neck top stretched over a boob job from Mars and a black denim skirt with an arabesque of emerald glitter on each thigh. Her eyebrows are fine and perfectly arched. The look on her face suggests that there is nothing she hasn’t seen, her eyes, bottomless wells of
experience. On her left cheek she has a tiny V-shaped scar, as if a small bird had pecked her there.

‘What happened to your nose?’ she says.

‘You don’t want to know,’ says Bunny, and he touches gently the plugs of blood-soaked toilet paper. ‘Suffice to say the other guy looks a lot worse,’ he says and waves away further comment except to say, ‘at least I still
have
a nose.’

Bunny leans forward in his armchair and continues his pitch.

‘This comprehensive collection works in synergy with the skin’s natural rhythms to help defend against signs of premature aging and provides unprecedented skincare benefits …’

‘Are you all named after cute little animals at …’ and Pamela points at the logo on Bunny’s sample case with a hot pink Day-Glo fingernail, ‘… Eternity Enterprises?’

‘Hey?’ says Bunny.

‘He told you where I lived, didn’t he?’ says Pamela, looking directly at Bunny.

‘Well …’

‘What was his name?’

‘Um … Poodle,’ says Bunny, as he twists the cap off a miniature tube of hand cream. He sighs. What a fucked-up day, he thinks. Had all of womankind had the painters in on the same fucking day?

‘What did he say about me?’ says Pamela.

‘He said that you were a most accommodating customer.’

‘Did he now?’ says Pamela, and Bunny’s eyes mist at the drama of her lungs filling with weary air and releasing a compunctious sigh.

‘Most obliging, he said. Generous, even.’

Bunny notices a giant baby-blue rabbit wrapped in cellophane perched on the mantelpiece, but before he has even
had time to contemplate the extraordinary synchronicity of this, Pamela, who looks as though she has been forced to make some unpleasant and ill-fated decision, sinks back into the sofa and says, ‘Tell me more about the hand lotion.’

‘Well, Pamela, this rich, hydrating, age-targeting lotion softens the skin and exfoliates surface cells for a smoother …’

Pamela reaches under her skirt and with a subtle upward shift of her hips slips off her panties. They are as white and blank as a snowflake.

‘… Um … younger look. It is formulated with a relaxing fragrance …’

Pamela hitches up her skirt and opens her legs.

‘… that inspires feelings of … comfort and … calm,’ says Bunny and he notices a sculpted domino of black fuzz balanced on top of her gash like a pirate flag or a Jolly Roger or something. He closes his eyes for a moment and imagines Avril Lavigne’s vagina and tears run down his cheeks.

‘Are you all right?’ asks Pamela.

‘It’s been a hard day,’ says Bunny, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

‘I’ve got a feeling about you,’ she says, not unkindly.

‘Yeah,’ says Bunny.

‘I think things are going to get a whole lot worse.’

‘I know,’ he says, with a sudden and dizzying awareness. ‘That’s what scares me.’

Pamela pushes her hips forward.

‘Do you like pussy, Bunny?’

There is a soft, sucking sound as Bunny’s bottom lip drops open. He experiences a great, cinematic rushing-away of the years.

‘I do,’ he says.

‘How much do you like it?’

‘I love it.’ He feels the evaporating of a massive psychic weight as his life tunnels backwards.

‘How much do you love it?’

‘I love it beyond all things. I love it more than life itself.’

Pamela readjusts the position of her hips.

‘Do you love my pussy?’ she says

She slips a long curled finger into her vagina.

‘Yes, I do. I love it beyond measure,’ says Bunny, in a tiny, uncomplicated voice. ‘I love it till the cows come home.’

Pamela chides him gently.

‘You wouldn’t lie to me, Bunny?’ she says, her left hand splayed and circling like a pink, amputated starfish.

‘Never. It is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

Pamela slips her finger out and it glistens as she beckons to Bunny and says from deep in her throat, ‘Well, come and get it.’

Bunny slides from the armchair and drops to his hands and knees and with movements that seem newborn and unpractised he crawls across the worn carpet of her maisonette – a tube of hand cream clamped in his fist, a fucking rocket in his briefs and a little trail of plashed tears behind him.

Quasar – a distant compact body far beyond our galaxy, which looks star-like on a photograph but has a red shift characteristic of an extremely remote object. The distinctive features of quasars are an extremely compact structure and high red shift velocity corresponding to velocities approaching the speed
of light. They are the most luminous objects in the universe – thinks Bunny Junior – and he brings his knees up to his chest. The boy believes that if he remains where he is, in the Punto on Meeching Road, Newhaven, his mother will eventually find him, and even as he thinks this he becomes aware of a shift in the air and the smell of his mother’s hand cream. He feels the feathery touch of her hand on his brow. He can feel her trace his profile with an index finger, down his forehead, between his sleeping eyes, along the length of his nose and onto his lips, where she presses her finger down in the approximation of a kiss. Bunny Junior hears a voice – either his or hers, he is not sure which – that says, ‘You … are … the … most … luminous … object … in … the … universe,’ and he feels a gentle folding of the air around him.

‘What’s the capital of China!?’

Bunny Junior awakes to the smell of hand cream and the retracting flutter of his mother’s fingers. His father sits beside him, panting and super-charged, his jacket off, his shirt open, his powerful pomaded hair crazy and all over the shop. White foam has collected in the corners of his mouth, his nose looks like a small, injured tomato and his eyes are energised with a wild joy.

Bunny Junior sits up and grabs at the empty air in front of his face.

‘Mummy?’ he says. ‘Mummy?’

‘Eh?’ says Bunny.

The boy rubs the sleep from his face. ‘Beijing,’ he says.

Bunny enacts a little stunt with his index fingers.

‘What’s the capital of Mongolia?’

The boy opens and closes boxes in his mind, but he is groggy with sleep and this takes time.

‘Come on! The clock’s ticking,’ says Bunny, who is now frantically combing his hair in the rear-view mirror.

‘Ulaanbaadar,’ he says, ‘formerly Urga.’

Bunny stops combing his hair and for some reason does an impersonation of Frankenstein’s monster, then mimes electricity coming out his ears and exclaims, ‘Ulaanbaa … what?!’

‘Ulaanbaadar, Dad,’ says Bunny Junior.

Bunny lets forth a great infectious laugh and slaps his thighs and lurches over, grabs his son in a headlock and knuckles the top of his skull.

‘My son, the bloody genius! You ought to be on the telly!’ shouts Bunny as he twists the key in the ignition and veers into the road. There is a blare of car horns and Bunny says, pulling at the crotch of his trousers, ‘Fuck, it’s good to be back on the road!’

‘That took a really long time, Dad,’ says the boy.

‘What?’

‘You were in there a really long time.’

Bunny turns into the Brighton Road and says, ‘Yeah, I know, but if you want to come on the road with me, the first thing you got to learn is
patience
. That is the first and fundamental law of salesmanship, Bunny Boy. Patience.’

Bunny guns the engine and overtakes a maroon cement truck.

‘It’s like those bloody Zulu warriors in Africa or wherever.’

‘Natal,’ says the boy.

‘What?’

‘South Africa.’

‘Yeah, fuck, whatever. The thing is – if a Zulu warrior wants
to spear an antelope or a zebra or something, he doesn’t go stomping through the bush with his boots on and hope the antelope is gonna stay put. Right? He has to employ, what is known in the trade as stealth. Stealth and …’

‘Patience,’ says Bunny Junior and compresses a smile.

Bunny begins to beat on his chest a solemn tattoo with his fist and his face gathers in intensity.

‘You become one with your prey … and move quietly, stealthily, towards it and then …
Wham
! … you stick your spear right through its bloody heart!’

Bunny slams his hand on the dashboard for dramatic emphasis, and then he looks at the boy and says, ‘Why are you doing that loopy thing with your feet?’

‘You left your tie behind, Dad.’

Bunny’s hand rises to his throat.

‘Shit,’ he says, softly.

‘You left it back at the last house,’ says the boy.

Bunny punches his son playfully on the arm.

‘Ah, well, Bunny Boy, you tell me a Zulu warrior that ever wore a bloody tie!’

The Punto is now heading west along the coastal road and the boy watches the sun as it falls beyond the horizon and casts the sea in yellow gold, then pink gold, and then an ethereal, sorrowing blue.

‘Aren’t you going to go back and get it?’

‘Shit, no, I’ve got a suitcase full of ties!’

‘Mum gave you that tie,’ says Bunny Junior.

Bunny scratches his head and turns to the boy.

‘OK, son, this is serious. This is the real deal. This is one of those moments in life when you’ve really got to listen and, young as you are, try to understand. There is another law of
salesmanship that I haven’t told you about. It is the absolutely crucial law. It’s even more important than the patience law. Any salesman worth his salt will tell you the same thing. Now, do you want to know what it is?’

‘OK, Dad.’

‘Well, stop flopping your feet around and I’ll tell you.’

‘OK, Dad.’

‘Never go back. All right? Never, ever, go back. Now, do you want me to tell you why?’

‘OK,’ says the boy, and all down the coastal road the streetlights come on and the boy sees an awesome, mystical majesty in it.

Bunny looks gravely at the boy and says, ‘They may renege on the order.’

‘Might they?’ says the boy.

‘Yes, believe me, it happens,’ says Bunny. ‘OK?’

‘OK, Dad,’ and they smile at each other.

Bunny turns his headlights on and they pass a billboard – a topless Kate Moss, in a pair of Calvin Klein jeans – and he recalls a conversation between Poodle, Geoffrey and himself, down The Wick. Poodle, who kept throwing back tequilas, sucking a lemon and licking the armpit of the girl sitting next to him, said, ‘Well, if you include the haunches, I am definitely a leg man.’ Geoffrey, who was sitting there like King Tut or Buddha or somebody, cupped his own considerable breasts and said, ‘Tit man, no contest.’ Then they looked at Bunny, who pretended to give it some thought, but didn’t really need to. ‘Vagina man,’ said Bunny, and his two colleagues went quiet and nodded in silent agreement. Bunny loves Kate Moss, thinks she’s cool, vanishes her Calvin Kleins, hammers the car horn and thinks, ‘I’m fucking back.’

‘I know where she bought that tie, if you want to get another one,’ says the boy.

Bunny slams his hands on the wheel of the Punto and looks all around him and says, ‘Close your eyes. Go on, close your eyes and don’t open them till I tell you.’

The boy puts his hands in his lap and closes his eyes.

The Punto takes a sudden, violent swerve into a roadside McDonald’s and screeches to a halt.

‘Now open them,’ says Bunny, and the boy can hear the trembling madness in his father’s voice. The light from the giant McDonald’s sign illuminates the boy’s face, coating it in gold, and Bunny can see a little yellow ‘M’ reflected in each of his son’s eyes as he throws open the door of the Punto and steps monstrously out and into the early evening light.

‘Now, tell me you don’t love your dad!’ he roars.