Maybe today, I think.
Looking out the window of my pokey flat, fresh boiling cuppa in my hands, too hot to drink yet, this is where I stand most mornings and let my pompous inner monologue try to inject some meaning into the day. The steam rises to my face, clouding my sight and reaching over my skin. It could help, who knows.
I’ve not long got out of bed at this point. The innate guilt of masturbation has worn off after a spell of scrolling through football gossip and ex-girlfriends’ socials and so ennui forces me to rise. That and Noel, I suppose.
I try to blow on my tea, but no dice. I just end up gurgling spit bubbles into it, and they swirl and pop in the middle of the brew, mocking me. I half scowl and give up, it’ll be drinkable in a minute, so I go back to looking out the window and think about breakfast. Or thoughts of breakfast are pushed into my loaf because I can hear Noel behind me troughing his. I put it off until lunch sometimes, breakfast. Eating’s the hardest part. Morsels of food chewed on the right side only, ushered down the gullet with a reluctant tongue. The arduous task accentuated by constant drooling. Actually, perhaps drooling is the hardest part. People stare.
I’ve thought these thoughts, or something similar every day for the past twenty-five months now. Two years! The first few days were different. Dark, I suppose, but not hopeless at least. Twenty-five long months since Doctor Capollo had forecast “business as usual within four to six weeks, Mr. Sinclair, we’ll get that smile back, hey!” The cunt.
Covid was sound. Self-isolation? Absolutely Boris. No problemo. But the big bad world has opened up again now hasn’t it, no more frolics and furlough, just a cost-of-living crisis and Bell’s palsy.
Maybe today, I think again, pushing matters of state and debilitating physical deformities out of my mind. I take a gulp of my brew, bitter and black, catching myself knocking it back like a shot before it can trickle out of my mouth. I roll my eyes at myself, which stings the left one as Glenn Moore calls out the time to me from the radio in the kitchen, which is decent of him, because I’m approaching a crucial juncture in the day. Eight o’clock. Bus time.
Maybe today.
The bus pulls up right on time, fair play driver. And right on cue there she is. Jogging today, running late. Her soft blonde hair billows behind her, face contorted into a panicked grimace as she waves to the driver to wait. Still beautiful though, blue eyes and red lips, those black tights with a line running up the back of them. I fantasise about the bus driving away, coughing out black smoke from the exhaust in its wake, swallowing her as her hand flops down to her side, dejected and distraught. That’s when I emerge from my pokey little flat, heroic and bold, offering the lady a lift, handing her a handkerchief to dab at her wet eyes. She smiles and thanks me. People aren’t kind anymore she says, you’re a rare find. I crack some joke which she laughs at and my chest swells. Just this way Miss, your carr-i-agé awaits.
I will it to happen, and not to at the same time. Knowing I’d never leave the flat should she miss her bus. People aren’t kind anymore, she’s right. I am, I’d say, but what am I going to do, dribble at her?
I blink with my one good eye, and she’s on the bus. Heading to destinations unknown. Oh well. Maybe tomorrow. Breakfast can wait, I’ve not got much on today, so I sink back into my fantasy as I walk back to the bedroom. It takes a turn now, and she’s really grateful for a lift. So grateful that we agree to have coffee the next day, but she can’t even wait that long, the sort, and we go at it in the back of my van. She’s experienced and passionate and I’m a version of me that exudes confidence. I satisfy her completely and we roll off one another panting, like on TV.
That fantasy doesn’t take long to concoct. It never does, so two minutes later I’m getting out of bed for the second time today, breathing a bit heavier than before with the innate guilt clutching around my chest once again. Noel, loyal Noel, football extraordinaire, trots up to me, white socks padding on the laminate, claws clicking, lead in mouth dropping it at my feet with absolutely no subtlety at all. I’ve normally taken him by now in fairness, I bet he’s been baking a loaf for an hour, poor little bugger.
I acquiesce and pick the lead up. He doesn’t need it on, he knows where we’re going as well as I do. He knows where his bread is buttered as well for that matter, he’s not running off anywhere. Smart dogs, Collies. So, I snatch the bobble out of my hair and muss it around my face before we head out. I do that now, it’s a thing. Not vain, like, but it hides a bit more of my face. I used to be a short back-and-sides man before all this palaver, but deformities change a person. I snatch a pair of sunglasses off the mess that is the coffee table as well, even though there’s no sun to speak of. That’s a thing now too. People probably think I’m a right dickhead when they see me coming. In fact, I know they do.
‘Hey up, here comes Slash,’ I hear them mutter from their benches outside the pub. Bastards. But whatever, man. I suppose the derision is better than pity. ‘Slash’ though? Come on, I look nothing like him, do better, man. Alex Turner was wrong; rock and roll is dying in front of our eyes.
The old man gives me a buzz as I cross the road, Noel at my heels.
‘We still on for today, Ry?’ he asks.
‘Yeah, sound, just walking the hound,’ I say.
‘Nice one,’ he says and hangs up. We’re a family of few words, and he either didn’t notice, or couldn’t care less about my perfectly contextual rhyme of a response. Miserable sod.
Nice to be back on good terms with him though, the old fella. Getting long in the tooth now, or he would be if he had any of his own left. Didn’t open the door to me for a week when this palsy thing kicked off, him and the old dear. Told them I wasn’t back on the gear, but what can you do?
‘Aye, we’ve heard that one before!’ I remember him shouting through the letter box in that thick, Scottish, accent of his. I suppose they had. But I wouldn’t have popped round to their gaff if I was coming up, would I? Daft cunt.
I do miss it, I suppose. Sometimes. Can’t beat getting off ya box with your mates. It takes so long for the fear factor to disappear, realising a sniff or a pinger won’t kill you off straight away. Then you get cocky. That’s dangerous. Then, something like this happens and the fear is right back with you. Funny old life. Nothing stronger than a bit of cheese for me these days I reckon.
I realise my feet have carried me around the green and back home, Noel in tow as I consider the intricacies of my relationship with hard drugs. Noel’s satisfied now, and he says as much with a low gurgle when I open the door for him. Straight back to his bed for a post-walk doss. Life of Riley, that dog. I fling myself on the sofa and grab the grinder off the coffee table, reasoning a quick spliff will give me an appetite, and I’ve got to eat after all, haven’t I?
I’ll drop Mrs. Pullman a text in a sec and let her know I’ll be round a bit later than planned. She won’t mind. I give Dad a bell telling him I’m running late and he gives me an earful, ‘effing and blinding all over the shop, so I win him back over with the promise of a bacon butty from the caf. He relents and hangs up. I skin up.
***
‘All right Matt?’ I ask an hour later, the bell on the café door tinkling as I close it behind me.
‘Hullo mate! Long time no see, how ya bin?’
A nice guy, Matt, despite what the girls in the shop next door say. Can’t be friendly anymore, can you?
‘The usual?’ he asks, not waiting for an answer.
‘Twice please mate, promised the old man one un’all.’
He chuckles good naturedly.
I spot a table in the corner and head over to avoid any more small talk, instinctively I sit with my back to the door and flick through the paper someone left while I wait.
The bell on the door tinkles again right as I’m skimming past page 3, pretending not to look. A stray blob of spit leaks out of my mouth as I do so, and I know I must look like the staunchest of perverts. Cuffing my mouth and looking around red faced to see if anyone noticed, I hear a familiar voice at the counter.
‘Matty! All Day Breakfast to gew please cocka,’ he boomed, as if everyone in the café needed to know what he wanted.
The flush creeps up my face, hot and sickly. Still hunched over the paper, I sneak a glance behind me, a furtive look over my shoulder with the good side of my face hidden between chunks of hair. What an emo.
Jacko is standing at the counter waiting for his ADB-to-go scrolling through his phone. It’s Thursday today and the Wolves played in the cup, so he’ll have been up the town last night I reckon, now in here to soak it up before ambling in late to work. He’ll get away with it though, the jammy git. Plus, it must help working for daddy. Matt catches my eye from behind the counter, and I see he’s about to point me out to Jacko, but I shake my head frantically, and he gets the hint. He’s back to his griddle without a word. Nice guy, Matt. I turn back to the paper and stare at an article about the Horizon scandal without taking it in.
The minutes eek by. Jacko hasn’t said anything since he put his order in, thank God for hangovers.
‘Bacon and egg, twice, well done bacon…?’ Matt’s Mom calls out from behind the counter, lisping through the gaps in her teeth.
Shit! Now what?
‘They ay back yet, Mom,’ I hear Matty say quietly to her. I dig in my pocket making sure I’ve got a decent amount of coins to stick in the tip jar.
Five minutes later Jacko is walking out the door. Barking into his phone which has some poor sap on loudspeaker at the other end, and I wait for his silhouette behind the clouded glass of the shopfront to disappear before getting up to go to the counter.
‘Cheers for that mate,’ I say to Matt who’s still busy busting eggs onto the griddle that seems as if it’s been bubbling away non-stop since 2005.
‘No worries.’ He winks.
He doesn’t ask for an explanation as he grabs a rag from the counter, wiping his hands before handing me my sandwiches over with another huge yellow grin. He gets it. Had his fair share of shit too with those rumours. Keep your circle small man. A lesson hard learned sometimes.
I drop a few quid in the tip jar and am back in the van en route to old grumpy bollocks ten seconds later, wiping my eye that smarts every time I step into the sunshine, still hungry because of Noel’s puppy dog eyes from the passenger seat scamming me out of half the bacon out my scran as I hastily ram the rest down my gullet like an awkward bird.
***
A new day. Friday, I think, although they all blur into one. It’s half seven, so my phone tells me, and as per, I’m dossing in bed, a rapidly hardening clump of tissue discarded next to me, the empty feeling creeping back in. It’s becoming far too habitual, this is. I must get it under control. Starting from now, I pledge. Ejaculation embargo. A video flicked up on my phone the other day of some woke arsehole banging on about the benefits of semen retention. Reckons he can run a marathon and jump over a mountain and all that shite. So even my algorithms have got me pegged. Fuck you Zuckerberg.
Noel pads in from the front room and hops onto the bed. I snatch my kegs up, unwilling to be found in a compromising position by a fellow male. He sniffs at the tissue and looks at me, head cocked and an accusatory glint in his eye. I resent this but give him some fuss anyway until he curls up next to me.
‘We’re both men of the world,’ I say to him.
He whines, ‘Or were, at least, sorry.’
Fast forward twenty minutes, and once again Noel is in the kitchen, scoffing like a good’un, loud and carefree. Loves his fodder, that dog. At least one of us does. I’m in the bathroom, poking at my useless face in the mirror. Sorry, not poking,
‘Just five minutes a day can make all the difference, Ryan,’ I hear Doctor Capollo say in my head. I glance at my phone. Two minutes down. It flashes right as I look at it and tells me a courier has delivered my parcel. Two minutes will do for today I reason, and I hot-foot it to the front door and there on the mat lies a small package, nondescript to the highest degree. I snatch it up and tear it open, marvelling at the digital age. We do live in the best of times man, despite it all, an era where drugs can be delivered right to your doorstep is indeed a time to be alive. The Gods bless Telegram.
It has its other uses, aside from technological autonomy. I haven’t had to buy off any of the scrammels around here for months now. It’s a legitimate boost for my mental health as well, I genuinely believe it. No need for that hardcore skunk they all smoke in the alley at the back of the flats, the stuff that smells like Snoop’s dog bowl and knocks you off your bonce all day. I can find a nice mellow hash now, to get me through. I’ve missed hash. The old man still takes exception though which is rich. He’s been a bit of a dog in his day, God knows…so does everyone else for that matter. Even Scotland couldn’t handle him, so he’s wound up down here. He never noticed yesterday though, and he put a shift in to be fair. I’d only planned to mow Mrs. Pullman’s lawn, but if a man wants to trim hedges, let him trim hedges I say! See him more these days now he does the gardens with me sometimes, and he’s still at it, loves a drink that man. So he can go and bollocks.
I’ve torn open the package, and rolled a fat one immediately, not for right now though, I’m not that deranged. But just as I put the finishing twist around the end of it and lay it gently on the table, I hear the weather from the radio in the kitchen. Rain from noon. Balls. Gardeners worst enemy. Better get a shift on if I want to make any paper today, it’s already after eight and Mrs. Wright’s is half an hour awa…
Shit!
I run to the window just in time to see the bus trundling away towards the town. ‘Fucks sakes man’, I say to no one, wiping a sliver of dribble from my chin. Maybe tomorrow.
I flat out ignore Noel’s hints for a walk and storm into the bedroom to get dressed, smudging a layer of guilt over whatever else is going on in my breadbox. He can come with today, old Wrighty doesn’t mind dogs.
Skipping that all important first cuppa, I’m out the house five minutes later, toast in hand, ushering the hound into the back of the van.
***
‘Ooh, he is a clever dog isn’t he,’ Mrs. Wright says.
Noel is staring up at her, head cocked waiting for her to kick the ball at her feet back to him.
‘He’s no fool,’ I say, cuffing some errant spit from the corner of my gob. ‘You’ve got a job for life now.’
I wipe my brow with the back of a dirty hand and spear my spade into the soil. A telltale click in my knees as I get up from the floor forces me to contemplate mortality. I’ll ache tomorrow. Still though, I ponder as I watch Noel running rings around a ninety-year-old, it’s good living really, man. I congratulate myself daily for getting out of that rat race shit at Jacko’s Dad’s firm, almost grateful my face slipping gave me a nudge out of the door. I’m still busy secateuring as the first drops of rain start to leak out the sky, the patter on the leaves is right therapeutic though, so I crack on.
‘Don’t you worry Mrs. Wright, I’ll be done in ten!’ I call to her when she fusses. ‘I’ll be out of your hair soon.’
I did give the poor old mare a scare when I first knocked on to see if she needed a gardener. Used to it now like, but the taped-up eye making me look like some sort of pirate – actually, yeah, a lot like a pirate, I think, not completely displeased. Like Robin Williams when Tinkerbell tells him to blend in, all drooling and limping. Ha! Not that I’m a swashbuckler, hay fever and Bell’s palsy are a poor, poor mix, man.
Noel hops into the open van telling me he’s had enough, so I start packing up. I’d be stuck in an office for another three hours now once upon a time, pretending not to think that geezer from IT wasn’t an arsehole as he mumbles instructions to some poor sap in a cracked drone, his monotone punctuating an otherwise speechless room. Clicking keyboards and the constant whirring of modems such a staple that you forget to hear them, listening only to the vulnerable rumble of stomachs as watching bashful eyes flit up from paperwork. Well out of all that.
Mrs. Wright hands me a cheque for services rendered before I go. Fucking ball ache man, but she always looks so proud to be handing it over, her liver-spotted, veiny hands shaking, shaming me into silence. So that’s me heading into the precinct to cash this sucker at the bank. A smoke will have to wait another half hour, but I’ll drop Noel on the way so he can have a rest from doing nothing.
***
God I hate this. Queues. We’re hunter gatherers, man, what sick bastard invented the queue.
I shuffle a step or two as the little people behind their glass windowed counters beckon punters forward. Bloody cheques. Bloody Mrs. Wright. Banks in the daytime are refuges of the damned, no one but pensioners and the destitute milling around. Clerks trying to look important. I hate it. It’s always very bright in there. I’m acutely aware of my sunglasses. Hands clenched into fists deep in my pockets. I should have sparked that spliff at home before I took this on.
I look at people, convinced they’re staring at me. Do I look too shady? Do I look like a bank robber?
Shit. Don’t think that! As bad as thinking about bombs at the airport. Can they see into my mind? Do they know what I’m thinking?
‘Next please,’ comes a pleasant voice. The old fella in front of me shuffles forward.
‘Next please.’ A few seconds later.
I slouch over looking at my feet, cuffing at my mouth and drawing spit across my tongue in what turned out to be a far too loud, self-loathing act. Now they’re looking.
‘How can I help you sir?’ I look up mumbling something about cashing a cheque and put it in the little dip in the counter.
‘I’m sorry sir, can you say that again please?’
I look up, wiping a stray tear from my eye away beneath my sunglasses. The twenty-something guy behind the glass is slouched in his chair, a look of cold appraisal in his slightly narrowed eyes. Not rude enough for comment, but just enough for you to know he sees you, like he’d see the shit on his shoe. He sits up straight now running a soft hand through his slick, gelled back hair. His name badge flashes in the light. ‘Sebastian’. Yep, sounds about right. Prick.
‘Cash a cheque please,’ I say, even though my requirement is perfectly obvious. A small dabble of spit bubbles collects at the corner of my mouth and I breath it in quick sharp.
Plebastian notices and casts a sideways glance at his mate in the little window next to him. My face burns as I follow his gaze and a tight but hollow feeling swells in my chest before it sinks and stays somewhere just above my pancreas. I’ve found bus-stop-girl.
She, busy with her own customer just widens her eyes a bit. Giving one of those grin-grimace things where your mouth gets bigger without actually smiling before resuming her patient conversation with a little old lady next to me who had been getting steadily more bamboozled by the chip-and-pin in front of her, her little blue savings book in hand.
It’s a terrible thing, to have hope taken away from you. Losing my nerve at home in front of the window day after day I can kid myself. Nah, not the weather for it today…. Nope, ganj-over, tomorrow though, deffo…. No, tomorrow’s the day, meant to be sunny… But when you’re faced with it; the thing you want; the thing you fear; and it doesn’t go anything like you imagined it, well, it throws you. All those tarts on Instagram talking about ‘meet-cutes’ or some rubbish, that’s not happened now has it. Not now bus-stop-girl, breath-takingly-beautiful, intoxicating, blue eyed bus-stop-girl has seen me dribbling and crying, trying to cash a twenty-pound check. She’s seen the real me. The true Ryan Sinclair. Not nice, not chivalrous, not handsome or clean even.
Sebastian from the bank, I hope you fucking drop dead tomorrow.
***
Fuck it. I’m doing it man. No more ‘maybe today’. I look at the clock although I know the time full well. Quarter to eight. Noel keeps looking at me, he doesn’t know what’s going on, though he’s pleased breakfast was prompt today, he’s staring at me like I’ve gone out. Even more so when I go and give him some fuss, which I never normally do to such excesses this early in the morning. He loves it though the simpleton.
‘Good boy,’ I say over and over again, mushing his cheeks and tickling his tummy. It’s all coming up Ryan today man, I can feel it. I’m groomed and respectable, no ripped and dirty gardening clothes here! The sun’s even shining, so I don’t need to feel like a tit in my fake (but very believable) Ray-Bans. Sound. Brushed my teeth without looking up, trying to avoid my face in case I bottle it.
Five-to. Now or never Mr. Sinclair.
‘Come on, Noel,’ I say heading out the door. I snatch the bobble out of my hair as I close the door and obsessively stoke my beard. She’s at the bus stop already and my heart flutters as I cross the road to where the number ten pulls up. She’s standing away from the rest of the queue, that soft blonde hair glowing in the sun, blowing in the breeze.
I stand next to her, Noel at my heels, pretending to inspect the timetable on the bus shelter. Pretending not to notice her, I think of the bong sitting on the coffee table, lamenting the ridiculous decision to leave it alone this morning to quieten my fucked heart. She’s looking at her phone, straight backed and elegant. I should bottle it, dash back home, or get on the bus in silence and hot-foot it off at the next stop.
‘Get a grip of yourself, man!’ I mentally slap myself. I’ve got this far. I steel myself. Keep it light. Keep it casual.
‘Oh, hey,’ I say turning to her. ‘Hey’…I hate myself. ‘You work at the bank, yeah? Behind the counter?’
She looks up, smiles and says ‘hello’, and ‘that’s right’. Not exactly forthcoming though, not leaving much in the way of an opener. Beautiful smile though.
‘Yeah, I was in there yesterday,’ I continue. ‘Your mate cashed a cheque for me. Sorry about that…cheques…’ I raise my eyebrows in exasperation. Or eyebrow at least. That must have looked weird. Fuck.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she says with another smile. The kind of smile you give to a mental person at a bus stop who you want to go away.
‘I’m a gardener, see. Some of the old’uns prefer it, you know.’ I’m battling on. ‘Ryan, by the way…’ I offer my hand.
She stands there, phone in hands looking blankly at me. ‘And this is Noel,’ I gesture, looking down to my right. Then to my left. A flash of panic bursts in my chest, I spin around, but he’s nowhere. No sign of him in the road either.
‘Noel!’ I call out. ‘Did you see where my dog went?’ I ask bus-stop-girl, my voice cracking.
‘No, I’m sorry.’ she says, sounding anything but sorry.
‘Did you see my dog mate?’ I say to the bloke behind her, a dribble of spittle escaping from my mouth.
‘Nah mate,’ he answers as the bus pulls up, he steps on. Kindness really is dead, isn’t it.
‘Noel!’ I shout again, over the hiss of the bus’s brakes.
I’m spinning round, manic like, eyes darting from one end of the street to the other, no sign of him anywhere.
‘I hope you find your dog.’ says a small voice coming from behind me. I turn to see her stepping on to the bus, a quick guilty glance back as she taps the card reader and heads for a seat. Stuck up cow. A dashed dream and a dog down! Good, loyal Noel. My last friend.
The bus pulls away, and the smoke from the exhaust clouds and stings my eyes. Coughing and wiping them, I look over at the door to the flats, but Noel isn’t there either. Maybe he’s gone to the fields, I reason, it’s the right time of day for it. So I leg it up the street towards the precinct, but I slow to a quick walk after a few paces, eyes darting in all directions, an errant tear running down my left cheek, but I forget my face for once and let it run, all traces of self-consciousness abated. Still scanning the road around me I pull out my phone, thinking I better draft in my Dad to help me look. I’m cycling through my contacts, getting to his number as I round the corner of the street. Pressing ‘call’, I lift my phone to my ear and look up. I stop dead, mouth agape.
‘Hullo?’ my Dad answers the phone. ‘…Ryan, what is it man?’
I pause, transfixed. ‘Nothing, Dad. Sorry. Speak later.’
‘For God’s sake, man! Ye worried us, I’m trying to have a shite here for fucks sa…’ I don’t hear the rest, I slowly lower my phone and hang up the call.
There in front of me, a few yards down the street is Noel flat on his back, paws in the air.
Wriggling and writhing, enjoying a tummy-tickle from the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. She’s crouched down over him, long dark hair – a bit wild looking, blowing in the wind and big white smile plastered across her face, accentuating her cheekbones.
‘Noel!’ I bark sidling up to them both.
She looks up and then stands, still smiling. ‘This your dog?’
‘Yeah.’ I say, stroking my beard compulsively. ‘He is.’ Noel gets up and wanders over to me, smug and lazy.
The girl folds her arms and watches as I bend down to fuss his flank, in a half relieved, half exasperated way.
‘Noel?’ she asks (Noel looks up.) ‘Oasis fan?’
‘Yeah,’ I say again, half-smiling and stroking my beard even more, conscious as ever of my face.
‘A dog person and an Oasis fan. You might well be my new favourite person.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. God, that sounds lame. ‘You know, for finding him, like.’
‘I think he found me, to be honest, but no problem. Is it worth a drink or what?’
‘I’m not really drinking that much at the minute to be honest.’
What! Why did I say that! What a tit.
She raises an eyebrow.
‘I can still, you know, drink coffee and stuff,’ I garble. ‘I’ll show you if you want?’ I flick my chin behind her towards the caf.
She turns to look behind her and then looks back at me, a smile in the corner of her mouth as she tucks a long lock of that wild hair behind her ear. ‘Yeah, go on then.’ she says turning and heading towards the café.
I bend down to give Noel a quick pat on his side. ‘Good dog,’ I say. Smiling.
[Image Credit : Photo by Janis Dzenis on Unsplash]
Jake Findlay lives just outside Wolverhampton with his wife, two children and a constant succession of small mammals. He began writing during lockdown, shoehorning the odd sentence in between home schooling and the day job.
He now has slightly more time to write something down when the Wolves aren’t on the TV. He likes the pub, flawed characters with dark senses of humour, and the sixties. He dislikes getting run over.
