Summertime

There's something strange in the air today.

I can feel it on the edges of perception. A tingle on the skin. A brightness to colour. A weight that has lifted. A change in pressure. Everything is lighter, crisper, more defined. The wind has died away. The gusts that have been a feature of the past week, blowing gales down the wind-tunnel that is my road, have dispersed and now the sunshine can warm me as I walk along Bernard Street towards the car wash nestled beneath Hyde Park Terrace.

Dave is waiting there in his beaten-up red Fiesta, sixties psychedelia playing softly on the stereo and wafting from his open window. He sees me coming and gets out. He's a large man and it takes him a while to unfold from behind the wheel.

"Hey, Pynch," he says in his lazy drawl and engulfs me in a hug that squeezes the breath from my lungs. I have to tap on his back a couple of times before he lets go. "I heard what happened…" he starts to say but I cut him off.

"Don't worry about it," I tell him and rapidly change the subject. "Did you get it?"

"Sure," he says and reaches back into his car. He produces a small, clear, plastic bag with a small brown lump inside and dangles it between two fingers. "Was a bitch to get hold of though. I'd try and make that last if I were you. Dunno when I'll be able to get any more."

He hands it to me and I take it, open the bag and sniff what's inside. It smells like woodchips and stale cider. "Brilliant," I say and stuff it into the pocket of my jeans. "Are you hanging about?"

"Nah," Dave says. "I said I'd try and get back down to Nottingham before 6 and it's already gone 5."

I look at my watch. Ten past 4 it says and I say as much to Dave. He laughs at me, calls me a muppet and explains that the clocks went forward an hour last night. British Summer Time is here.

I wonder if that's what's throwing me off today.

Dave offers me a lift but I decline - there are other errands to run before the weekend is out and he's not going in the same direction as me.

It's dark by the time I get home. A crescent silver sliver hangs in the sky. The streets seem eerily calm and empty, even for a Sunday night, and I amble up the middle of the road without fear. So few illuminated windows on my street. Where is everyone?

I reach my door and the cat trots out from the bushes, starts to wind itself around my ankles. "Evening, puss," I say and reach down to scratch it behind the ears. It makes a half-hearted attempt to bite me which I all but ignore.

I open the door and the cat darts in ahead of me, vanishing off into the kitchen. I wander through to the living room and empty my pockets onto the coffee table. Three baggies, one envelope and a small cardboard box about an inch and a half square. A good haul, a successful day.

Only one thing missing.

I'll have to go and see Annie this week.

Meow

I struggle the plastic sack from the bin. It's stuck to the inside and does not want to come loose. After much shaking, and kicking the bin several times, it comes free, tearing slightly but fortunately not enough to split it open and dump its contents over the lino.

I tie off the top, ignoring the potent stench of rotting food wafting from within, and take it out the back door to the patio where the wheelie bin waits hungrily.

And I stop.

There is a cat, sat on the lid of my bin, staring at me with yellow distrust. A black cat. Entirely black save for a single white smudge, like a tear, beneath its left eye. I have never seen this cat before - as far as I'm aware, it doesn't belong to any of my neighbours.

"Shoo," I tell it.

It squints at me, pupils narrow to slits.

"Shoo!" I say again and follow it up with a backhand swipe.

The cat doesn't react. If anything it settles even more. Definitely not one of the neighbours' cats - every single one of them is terrified of me and runs off before I can get even close.

"Fine," I huff and reach a hand out to lift the lid.

The cat lashes one clawed paw at me and I draw back quickly. A deep rumbling growl comes from its throat.

"What the fuck is your problem?" I ask the cat rhetorically.

It replies with a lazy flick of its tail.

"Mardy little shitbag," I mutter and carry the bag back into the house. I drop the rubbish on the floor next to the empty bin and fetch a new bag from the drawer. A glance out of the window and the cat has vanished from its perch.

I grab the bag again, open the door and jog out to the bin. I throw the lid open, chuck the rubbish in and slam it closed with far more force than was strictly necessary. Then I head back inside and make a cup of tea, putting the fresh bin bag in the bin while the kettle boils.

I wander into the living room with my cuppa and there on the couch, in my usual place, is the cat.

"Oi!" I exclaim.

The cat just looks at me with sleepy, half-closed eyes then drops its head back down on its paws.

I put my mug on the coffee table and reach down with both hands to pick up this feline intruder.

Fast like lightning this time, its claws scratch my index finger and I flinch away, jam my wounded digit in my mouth. I taste the sharp coppery tang of blood on my tongue.

"Fine, fuck you," I go and sit in the armchair on the other side of the room and sulk, still sucking on my wound.

We eye each other suspiciously.

This could be the start of a beautiful friendship…

On the tiles with Leon - Part 3

Leon has no idea where his shirt might be and the bouncers refuse to let us back in the club for his jacket so I lend him mine.

I flag down a taxi and, as it pulls up, he burps and yaks up a lump of something large, and wet, and orange - orange! – and the taxi pulls away again without stopping.

“Cheers,” I tell him. He stands there, swaying, looking me with bleary, blinking eyes.

“What?” he says, lacking any kind of comprehension.

I shake my head and continue looking for a cab. Leon wobbles over to me and starts touching my face. I swat his hands away and do my best to hold my temper.

"What the fuck have you taken?" I ask him. He just laughs, like the very question is the most hilarious thing he's ever heard.

By the time I manage to attract another cab Leon is babbling incessantly in no language I recognise, and I am grateful that he is, at least, doing it quietly. I may actually be able to get him home without freaking out the driver.

It’s as I get him to his door that he turns his head to me and says, “I don’t have my key,” with a sudden level of lucidity that is remarkable.

I prop him against the wall and work my magic on the lock. Then, with a firm push, the door swings open and I turn to Leon and tell him, “it’s just as well you’ve got a Yale. I only know how to do that on a Yale.”

Without another word he weaves his way into the dark house. There comes a crash from deep in the shadows and I sigh wearily, kick the front door closed behind me, and follow him in, my fingers tracing the walls looking for light switches.

I find him in the living room where he's clearly managed to pull a bookcase over and, more from luck than any judgement, managed to avoid it crushing him. Now he's slumped sideways on the couch, head lolling back, speaking in tongues again.

I wander through to the kitchen, cross to the fridge in the uncertain flicker of a dying strip light, and find a couple of beers. I take one - it's the least Leon can do - and head back to the living room, popping the ring pull as I go.

I settle into an armchair and watch him. He continues to mumble to himself, occasionally writhing around. At one point he struggles out of my coat and flings it away. I just sit and drink and listen to the rhythms of his jabbering, rising and falling like waves.

Soothed, I start to drift off.

My eyelids droop.

My head lolls.

Then I snap back awake again. Something that Leon has said has punched through the gathering fog and hit me squarely in the chest. A name. A name that I haven't heard for years.

I'm across the room in the blink of an eye, before the abandoned beer can even hit the carpet, and I'm shaking Leon by the shoulder, asking him to say it again, screaming in his face to repeat himself. But he doesn't stir. Eyes open but glazed, focused on nothing. Mouth opening and closing silently now. The scratches down Leon's torso are still oozing slightly but now they look less like scrapes and more like shapes, figures, characters in some lost language.

Fear cracks my ribcage and grabs my heart, squeezes it tight.

I can't think straight. Too much booze makes my head swim.

I have to leave. Leon will be fine. I put the waste basket by his feet, in case he's sick later in the night, then I grab my coat and hurry out the door, back into the chill of the night.

On the tiles with Leon - Part 2

Now the sinking I feel is entirely Leon’s fault. Another two, maybe three minutes and I would have been out of the door, flagging down a taxi, probably even already on my way home to a comfortable bed. Now I’m duty bound to help.

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a nice guy. After all, if I could only care less, I wouldn’t be sucked into other people’s dramas so readily, so willingly…

Shouting into my phone, ignoring the evil looks from those around me, I try to get Leon to tell me where he is. The phone just goes dead in my hand.

I ask the people around me, the ones that might know Leon – and many people know Leon and his famous muttonchops – where he is but nobody knows. The most promising idea is that he has gone outside to smoke.

I head outside and get blasted by cold as soon as I step out the door.

I shove through the pockets of smokers clustered by the entrance, huddling together for warmth, neon penguins in their trendy clubware, hands rammed into the pockets of skinny jeans, shoulders hunched against the wind. I can't see Leon anywhere and all my enquiries are greeted with blank stares.

I try to phone him again but it just rings on and on.

So… I try using my intuition. I turn left, the wind at my back, and walk down the street. At the corner I turn left to get out of the wind and that's where I find Leon, lying on the ground, shirtless, flailing weakly, rolling gently from side to side, huge scratches weeping blood down his chest and arms.

"ferchrissake," I mutter. I follow it up with a loud, clear, "Leon?" but only manage to elicit more rolling and some pathetic mewling. I kick the sole of his shoe and bark his name.

This time his eyes roll to look at me and he holds his arms up and open as though to embrace me, a stupid grin plasters itself across his face.

"Pynch!" he says. "Fuckin' Pynch! I fuckin' love you, man."

I sigh and take his hand, haul him to his feet. He grabs me in monstrous bear hug, pinning both my arms to my sides, and leans all of his weight into me. We both stumble a few steps and I step off the kerb to keep from falling over, only to have a cab blare its horn and swerve wildly, missing me by inches.

“Leon,” I say gently in his ear. “Let go of me.” But he doesn’t.

In fact, he appears to be rubbing himself against me.

I have no choice.

I pinch his nipple.

Hard.

He leaps away with a squeal, rubbing his chest with his hand. I watch him stagger backwards and collide with a low wall. And I wince as he tumbles a lazy cartwheel over and vanishes.

On the tiles with Leon - Part 1

As I get older I worry about things I never thought I’d find myself concerned by.

Things like my humanity. Something I’d always taken for granted. Something I’d assumed, by default, that I was a part of. But the older I get, the more detached from the rest of mankind I feel. Older… certainly no wiser… but sometimes feeling less like I ‘belong’ with every day that passes.

I wonder whether I’ve missed my opportunities for growth by now. Perhaps I should have found myself a wife. Perhaps I should have spawned. Perhaps this would have made me a good and productive member of society. Perhaps it would have drawn my attention away from these dark things…

Perhaps I would still be this boy in a man’s body, simply burdened by other cares, other responsibilities – a wife, a child… mouths to feed, people to provide for… People to keep safe.
Something I can barely do for myself.

But there is no way of knowing and still it tugs at the back of my mind that perhaps I’ve disappointed the people that made me… the mother I hardly knew, the father that died before he could teach me to be a man.

It’s times like this that I wonder about these things - standing in the middle of dancefloor, jostled by the drunken youth I used to consider myself a part of, feeling utterly disconnected from everything around me.

Leon snorts at me, tells me to shut the fuck up, that at least I’m still in my twenties, that I, at least, still have time. Then he tries to tell me I’m at odds with these people because half of them are off their heads on a variety of drugs – ecstasy… cocaine… ketamine… speed… any cocktail thereof… who can tell? All pupils look the same when they’ve dilated, engulfed the iris, darkness taking over the eyeball like some expansionist dictatorship – and I’m simply drunk. And then he tries to convince me to pop a pill of some unknown and unknowable variety. I decline – too many experiences turned bad.

But perhaps that’s it. Perhaps I’m not operating on the right pharmaceutical levels.

Or perhaps it’s just too soon. My own internal chemicals are still all shot to hell.

“It’s been weeks, dude,” Leon says, doing his best to dance in miniature. “You’ve gotta get past it, man. Fuck her. Live your life.” Then he can’t hold it in anymore and he’s off, weaving, jerking his body to the beat, every pounding moment expressed through a convulsion of his spine or a wave of his arms. And he’s gone, dissolved into the dancing mass.

I shrug it off, struggle my way to the bar. I can’t believe that the fact that I haven’t taken anything is why I feel so at odds with the revellers around me. These people so clearly having fun… flaunting it in front of me… All I can summon up is irritation – jostled by idiots that spill their drinks on me… tread on my feet… barge into me without a word of apology… look at me with hollow expressions that judge me…

I so desperately want to feel a part of this, but I don’t. And I drink steadily to numb this feeling of isolation. Even though this drink is probably what has driven this wedge. Or maybe this drink. Maybe this one. Maybe each and every one.

I check my watch and can't quite work out where the last few hours have vanished to but the collection of empty beer bottles racking up on the floor next to my chair may hold the key.

This last bottle is almost empty and I’m readying myself to leave when my phone buzzes in my trouser pocket. A call from Leon. I put it to my ear and jam a finger in the other. I can still barely hear him but it sounds like he's whispering, "fuck… Pynch… fuck… help me…"

Fag break

I have to approach seven different people before I find anyone willing to give me a cigarette. I fondly recall a time when it was easy to find somebody that generous - whatever happened to the brotherhood, the fellowship, the unspoken bond between smokers...? Time was a selfless act like giving away a cigarette would karmically ensure that were you ever to run out, somebody would reciprocate. All smokers knew this - though you would be forgiven for not giving away your last one - it goes with the territory: welcome to The Cancer Club. Here is your membership card… This is the club charter…

No more. Generous smokers are now a dying breed.

So I sit on the wall outside work, kicking my heels against the brickwork and rolling my hard-won cigarette, unlit, backwards and forwards between my fingers.

I gave up smoking for her. Almost two years now, without a single puff. And all done by willpower alone. No patches, no gum. No hypnosis, no support groups. Just willpower. And the desire to please, to impress - she gave up smoking a month before I met her and inspired me by her example. I had always said that I would be willing to quit for the right reason. She had certainly been reason enough. Or so it had seemed.

In any case, I hadn't wanted to mess anything up between us by still puffing away while she struggled through her own cravings.

A dutiful boyfriend or a doormat wuss? It seems to matter very little now that she's gone.

What matters is the powerful self-destructive impulse to start smoking again.

…the crackle as it burns, the scratch down my windpipe, the lazy twirl of blue smoke in the air…

I tuck it behind my ear. I'll save it. Maybe smoke it later.

Bill - Part 2

I'm not paying attention, my mind preoccupied, and I miss my stop. I get off the bus at St Lawrence Road and stroll back towards the M1. I find Bill standing at the corner of Newburn Drive. Smoking. Of course. I try to ignore the craving that rears its ugly head.

Bill doesn't acknowledge my presence at first. Instead he pinches his cigarette off halfway down and tosses the glowing cherry to the gutter.

"You're late," he says in a gruff voice without even looking at me.

"Yeah, sorry, the bus was late," I tell him.

He looks at me accusingly as he tucks what's left of his cigarette behind his ear. "Next time get an earlier bus," he tells me quite categorically. He adjusts the satchel slung over his shoulder, turns away and strides off. I trot after him.

I follow him down to the banks of the Don in silence - Bill is not much of a talker. Standing by the river, I watch as he fishes a cup from his bag and half shuffles, half slides down to the water's edge. He dips the cup in and comes back up to join me. He takes a large mouthful of the dirty water and swills it round like it's mouthwash before spitting it back at the river. I try my best not to make a face.

"Yep," Bill says as if I'd asked him a question and flings the rest of the cup away. I stick my hands in my pockets and wait patiently while he puts the cup back in his satchel. "Come on then," he says and heads off towards Meadowhall.

"Look, Bill," I say after another minute of walking in silence. "As much fun as it is for me to watch you drinking sewage, was there something you needed to see me about?"

"Yeah," he replies without looking at me. He fishes in his satchel and pulls out a small wooden box. He hands it to me. "I need you to look after this for me," he says.

"Okaaaay…" I say, turning it over in my hands. The wood is densely grained and varnished to a high sheen; there is a single small keyhole on the front but no key. "Do I need to know what's in this?"

He stops abruptly and looks at me appraisingly. He scratches at the week's worth of grey beard growth on his chin. He looks older. His wrinkles have deepened. His skin is tanned like weathered leather.

"No," he says and walks off.

"And that's all you needed to see me about?" I call after him.

"Yes," he calls back.

A moment later he is gone and I am left wondering how long it'll be until the next bus arrives.

Bill - Part 1

The sunshine is warm and fuzzy, as though refracted through frosted glass, and makes everything appear in soft focus.

My hangover is not what I feared it would be this morning, and a couple of dry-swallowed aspirin should keep it at bay. But I still feel shattered and would give anything to still be sound asleep, even in my bed… so large and empty…

But that's not my decision to make. Arriving home late last night, I found a note through my letterbox. A single piece of plain white paper, folded over once, emblazoned with a single word: 'Tomorrow'. No signature, no return address, just a thumbprint in the same red ink. Bill Huntsman… It's been a while.

I stop off in town and pick up a coffee from Starbucks. Just going to such a chain makes me feel a dirty, but I only have a few minutes before the number 69 bus is due to arrive at the Arundel Gate interchange and without caffeine I'll be asleep before I reach Tinsley. Since I don't fancy waking up in Rotherham, I bite the bullet and order myself a large espresso and load it with four sugars.

I sip my coffee while I wait for the bus and I people-watch to pass the time. Spring appears to have sprung. Everywhere I look people have forsaken their heavy winter coats. Sunglasses have blossomed on the faces of passers-by. Young girls flaunt their legs.

And everywhere I look I see her. The same cropped bob hairstyle becomes a repeating motif. The same bouncy confident walk flounces past me from every direction. At first glance, her face superimposes on every girl I see. For a moment I feel like crying. A swell of emotion that rises up from my gut and threatens to overwhelm my very stoic public façade. I bite it back but my eyes still prickle and blur. I yawn, largely to try and hide my feelings.

I want a cigarette.

The bus is late and I really want a cigarette.

Paddy's Day

At a quarter to six, I put the kettle on and throw teabags into two mugs. I leave them to brew and watch the clock. The minute hand ticks to ten to and the doorbell rings. Right on time.

Sara is unnaturally good at timekeeping. I honestly don't know how she does it but if you arrange to meet her at a specific time she always arrives at exactly the right time.

The right time by your clock.

It's uncanny. I've tried winding the clock forwards by as much as twenty minutes, she simply arrives twenty minutes early. Wind the clock back and she arrives late. Test her with more than one timepiece and she splits the difference. It's like magic, but no magic I know.

I open the door to an angry young woman. Sara bustles past me, straight down the corridor and into the living room, cradling her handbag in both arms. I push the door closed and go back to the kitchen to finish making the tea.

Sara is a hardened tea drinker. The bag has to have at least five minutes to brew and she drinks it without frivolous luxuries like milk or sugar. Like I say, hard-core. I mean, I like mine strong but even I need a splash of milk in there to take the edge off.

I carry the tea through to the living room where Sara is still unwrapping herself from her scarf, huffing and puffing in irritation. I don't ask, I just put the mugs on the coffee table, next to the needles and tubing, and go over to the telly and flick it on.

"God!" Sara exclaims as she slumps into an armchair.

"Everything alright?" I ask as I lay down on the couch and roll up my sleeve.

"Not exactly," she says and then comes over to me and takes my arm. She moans about her boyfriend, Richard, while she ties off my arm. I look away while she messes with the needles and the tubing and don't look back until I can feel the rubber against my arm.

Sara is a nurse. And an absolute natural at finding veins - this time I didn't even feel the needle going in, but there it is and my dark red blood is flowing nicely into the bag.

"There you go," she says as she holds the tube in place with a strip of tape. I can feel it vibrating against my skin in unison with my own pulse.

She sits back in the chair and fishes in her vast, amorphous handbag for her cigarettes. She lights one and picks up her cuppa.

Twenty minutes of bitching and another round of tea later, Sara clamps off the tubes, takes the needle out of my arm and seals the bag of blood she's just drained from me. I sit holding a wad of gauze in the crook of my arm.

"It's Paddy's Day today," she says as she passes me my warm blood pack. She's much calmer now, the venting has done her good.

"I had heard." I go through to the kitchen, chuck the pack in the fridge and grab a plaster from the drawer in the corner.

"Fancy a pint?" she calls through to me. And I do.

We head into town together and wind up at the Wetherspoons by Barkers Pool, where we both drink several pints of Guinness. Sara never ceases to amaze me - I've never seen a girl down the black stuff with such relish. "Irish roots," she tells me with a nod and a wink.

I'm tipsy quickly. After my fourth pint I fall over and crack my head on a bench. Sara can't stop laughing, even while blood I can ill-afford to lose trickles down my face. Her laughter is infectious though and soon has me giggling like an idiot.

Then the bar staff politely ask us to leave.

Waking up alone

I wake up a good forty five minutes before my alarm is set to go off. Unable to return to the sweet, dreamless sleep of moments ago, I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling. All of my thoughts are of her. My hand, outstretched, lays palm-down on what was her side of the bed. Still is her side of the bed to me, even though she has not slept in it for almost two weeks.

I don't move until the alarm clock begins its interminable chiming and even then it's only to press the snooze button. I can afford to torture myself for another nine minutes.

Nine minutes that pass all too quickly. I drag my weary body downstairs in search of breakfast but there is no cereal left, and no clean bowl to eat it from if there was. The fruit juice smells a tad sharp but I drink it anyway, straight from the carton, and head upstairs to shower, swirling and sloshing the dregs between gulps.

A joyless shower that does little to cleanse or refresh, I towel off and pad, naked, back to my room where I stand in front of my open wardrobe and stare at the clothes within.

Specifically I stare at her clothes. Several changes of clothes - thongs, tights, vest tops - all folded neatly and nestled on the shelf I cleared for her. Several of her dresses hang like vampire bats from the rail.

In my junk room I select a box and empty the contents onto the floor. Mostly rubbish - old letters and bank statements, unrecycled magazines, flyers for nights and gigs never attended, forgotten photos that have stuck together in solidarity - and memories from childhood packed up tight and cleared out of the parental home but never unpacked, never welcomed to the new life. The box will suffice.

Once all her clothes are packed away I place the box in the hallway, by the front door, mark it with my trusty Big Black Pen: HERS.

Then I get ready for work.

I am half an hour late.