Lolito (9 page)

The wine arrives. I pour a glass and down it. I order beef in green pepper and black bean sauce, three bowls of chips, and prawn crackers. When the prawn crackers come, I line four up on the table and give them names. I eat the Alice one. It tastes stale and chewy. I move the Aslam cracker into the gap. I eat it too.

*

There isn’t a fortune in my fortune cookie. There’s a bad joke: What do you get when you cross a creek and a river? Wet feet.

*

The waitress wakes me up and asks me to leave. I tuck the thirty pounds into her breast pocket, flatten my hair and go outside. At home, I collapse and open the computer. There’s an email waiting. From Macy.

RE: something

Etgar,

I hope this doesn’t sound weird, and I’m sorry I didn’t say something before, I was worried that it would sound weird, and now it definitely does sound weird. If you think it’s weird, forget I said anything. Please, hon. I really enjoy playing with you and don’t want to fuck it up.

I’m coming to London in two days.

It’s for a business meeting that’s been planned for months. Meeting retailers and that sort of thing. But if you had any free time, I’d love to meet up. I know we barely know each other but I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to touch you.

Actually, since your first picture I imagined us meeting in London when I came for this meeting. I imagined you meeting me off the plane, and fucking me in the train station toilets.

My train gets in at six in the evening. I don’t have any meetings that day so maybe we could spend the night together then.

Talk later,

Macy

PS: attached something to prove something

It’s an .mp4 attachment. I download and play it. Macy’s face fills my screen. She stares into her computer. She’s doing a
don’t be afraid of me
smile.

‘Etgar,’ she says. ‘I’m not a man. I promise.’

She’s wearing a thin, white vest top, and the wine-colour straps of her bra are visible. There are smudges that look like oil under her eyes. She presses a key and disappears.

I stare at my hands. I want mouths to appear in my hands and I want the mouths to talk and tell me what to do. Would she be able to tell I wasn’t a mortgage broker? Wait, what? I can’t go to London. I can’t. I could. The money Gran left me. I can’t go and have sex with a woman from the Internet. It wouldn’t work. Amundsen’s here. I’m staying. I’ll tell her I’m busy. I’ll tell her it’s mortgage-broking season. Everyone wants their mortgages broken this time of year. I’m swamped.

Do something.

I go into the kitchen, fill a pint glass with water and down it. There’s half of the cider left. I refill the pint glass with that. My stomach panics and settles. Amundsen comes in from the garden. He’s holding a dead rat in his mouth. His snout is damp with red. The rat lands between my feet and Amundsen sits back, wagging his tail, eyes wide with pride.

‘Can we just –’ I say. ‘Can you put that somewhere else?’

He doesn’t put it somewhere else.

‘I’m proud of you. Now go and eat it or something.’

He doesn’t eat it. I pick it up by its tail and carry it through to the garden, throwing it as far as my arm will throw. It cartwheels in the air and lands near the compost heap.

16

My phone wakes me up. Mum. I feel bloated and brain dead. I’m on the sofa, under a yellow towel, two empty crisp packets, and Amundsen’s forelegs. The sky looks like it’s mid-afternoon and verging on rain. I press
accept.

‘Hi,’ Dad says.

‘Hi, Dad.’ It’s unusual for Dad to talk on the phone. He says it’s dishonest, and that there are too many secret rules, like how you have to wait for the other person to say hi first.

‘Your mum made me call.’

‘What’s she doing?’

‘I’m not entirely sure. She appears to be playing some sort of coin game with Alena’s family. A kind of flicking game. They’re flicking the coins.’

I relocate to the windowsill. Amundsen rises, sniffs his paw and lies back down. ‘What’s Alena like?’

Dad makes rustling sounds. His breathing deepens. ‘They’re too close. I’ll tell you when I get back.’

‘Yes or no that they’re hilarious together?’

‘Absolutely yes.’

‘Okay.’ I picture Uncle Michael in a tuxedo, awkwardly pushing his mouth against the mouth of a woman who doesn’t understand anything he says.

‘Did you kill or set fire to anything?’

‘Not yet.’

‘And you’re okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Should I check anything else?’

‘I don’t know. About Amundsen maybe.’

‘Did you walk it?

‘Yes.’

‘Okay, I’m going now.’

He hangs up.

I stand at the window and pinch my cheeks. Amundsen nuzzles the backs of my knees. A cornflake-colour squirrel darts along the branches of our elm tree, shakes its head and disappears behind a cloud of leaves.

‘Breakfast.’

In the kitchen, I make coffee, put toast in, and fill a bowl with dry dog food. All the tripe is gone. Amundsen eats quickly and runs several laps of the garden. I butter the toast, pour out coffee, and arrange everything on the table.

I open Mum’s computer and read
Guardian
articles about rape law, piracy and ecological disaster. Heavy, distant things that will never enter this kitchen. I sip coffee. It tastes like tinned soup, but makes the tiny people in my body start to sit up and yawn and add milk to cereal.

Sarah Wakely is sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Elliot Venn loves fat cocks and not logging off fb.

Thayyab Ahmed is starting pre-drinks a little early methinks.

I click on Alice.

She’s sitting on the deck of a catamaran, cradling a cocktail glass and smiling. She’s by a boy the colour of hazelnuts. His hand is around her shoulder and his fingers are dangling by the pits of her collarbones. I go to the alcohol cabinet, take another red wine and decide to finish it all on the sofa while blowing saliva bubbles and watching
Storage Wars.

17

The wind in The Outside has muscles. It’s kicking at the branches of trees and hurling leaves at windows. There’s a little water in the wind. A man passes me, carrying four Tesco bags fat with food. I run and fall. My knees burn. The man turns his head and keeps walking. I get up and keep running. I don’t look into the houses. I run and my head gets hot. I’m angry.

Fuck you, Alice.

Fuck everything.

I sat next to you in church while you bit your fingers and cried. I stayed awake with you watching documentaries about potential afterlives. I carried your dad to his car. I epilated your bum. I shampooed your hair and painted your toenails and now you’re sunbathing with hazelnuts.

You kissed Aaron Mathews.

You held his dick in your hand.

Fuck you.

I collapse onto the grass at the park, in the same spot Aslam and I fell after the party.

After I tried to hit someone for you.

The tall buildings are capped with bright lights. Yellow and orange and red. The broad cement shoulders of the hospital are glowing. There’s half a moon and thin strings of cloud. A plane cuts diagonally through them.

I call Alice.

‘I’m calling to say you’re a massive stupid walrus bitch.’

‘Etgar?’

‘Stupid sea animal go back to the sea.’

‘Etgar, please.’ Her voice wobbles.

‘You ruin everything.’

‘Let me talk.’ It sounds like her cheeks are filled with water.

She’s crying. I am too.

‘Manson family sexy orgy with hazelnuts.’

‘What?’

‘I know everything.’

‘What is everything?’

‘Fuck you I’m so sad.’

‘I am too.’

‘You’re just sad you got caught. You got fingered and then sad. I just got sad. I want to be fingered by Aaron
Mathews’ great hands that he punched my face with. He put his hand in your vag then punched my face with it. Fuck you.’ She’s crying. I’m carrying on. ‘He punched me with your vagina and infidelity. I thought you were Alice but you’re not. You’re something else. You’re a walrus and I hate you.’

‘Etgar.’ Her voice is small and wet.

‘Etgar. Etgar. Etgar. Etgar. Etgar. Etgar. Etgar is hanging up the phone now, bye for ever.’

I stand up and pull at my hair. Clumps of it come out in my hands. My eyes blur. A police car runs past and for a second everything is blue.

18

Two days before the start of secondary school, I Googled
how to shave
and cut my chin so deep it made me dizzy.

I was eleven.

I went in for the first two days, felt like a coin lost down a sofa, and stopped going. I didn’t like being on the smallest team in a school of towering boys. The boys didn’t look like boys. They looked like lions next to Dad and the girls looked like models with real breasts and painted fingernails. They were not mums.

For three months, I missed fifty per cent of school. Dad left the house at seven. Mum at eight. I carried my duvet downstairs, lay on the sofa and watched documentaries about natural disasters, genocide and notorious serial killers. I went up to the loft and sorted
through Dad’s old records. I sold several of them on eBay and spent the money on Lili Six, sensuous massage in the comfort of your own home. I didn’t have any sensuous massages in the comfort of my own home. Lili repeatedly called school and told them I had a bug/food poisoning/tonsillitis. She explained that I was born prematurely and so was prone to sickness. Lili called me ‘chick’ in the mornings when we talked over the phone. She told me about premiership football scandals and I told her about Ted Bundy.

Eventually, someone, somewhere, became suspicious, and school called one evening while Mum and Dad were in the living room, watching
Casualty
and eating After Eights. They made me come downstairs and sit between them on the sofa. I didn’t feel scared. I felt calm. My parents don’t shout. They used to, when they still had sex, but stopped when they realised every argument ended the same way, with everything being fine.

‘Are you being bullied?’

‘Are you stressed?’

‘Are you gay?’

A pause.

‘Why would being gay mean skipping school?’

‘It’s a tough thing to come to terms with.’ Dad blinks and pulls his earlobe. ‘Very daunting.’ Mum stares at him.

‘I’m not gay.’

Dad has been suggesting this on a regular basis since
I was nine. He doesn’t know how to react to male humans who are scared of things. He thinks that being scared is for women, gays and the under-nines.

‘It’s okay if you are.’

‘Well, I’m not.’

‘Well, you can be.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’

I had to go to school every day after that, otherwise they said they’d expel me and I’d move to a school with metal detectors and drug dogs. I did all of the work we were given quietly and quickly. I got good marks for Mum. I didn’t care about good marks. I cared about bed and beer and Daniel Clowes. I spent a lot of time in the places people who don’t have anywhere to go spend their time.

I met Sam in the toilet at lunchtime. He was sitting in a cubicle with his laptop, playing online poker and eating Haribo.

I met Aslam in the trees by the bottom of the field. We were both there to smoke. He gave me some of his beer and told me about a guy who made a porn with a girl but then he cut the girl up and had sex with the different parts.

I met Hattie in the library. She was by the reference books, reading
Ariel
and sniffing. I thought about maybe fingering her until she introduced me to James.

We started doing breaktimes together under a spruce tree next to the language block.

Alice didn’t appear for another year. When she did, it was at the bottom of Chris McDowell’s garden, midway through a party he was holding while his mum took his dad to London for a kidney operation. I was nauseous. I was looking for somewhere to hide.

‘Hi,’ I said.

‘Hello.’

‘I’m Etgar.’

‘I know. You’re friends with Aslam. He called Eliza fat once. I punched him.’ I sat down in the grass next to her. Not too close. In case she hit me. I remembered The Eliza Incident. I remembered she’s called Alice Calloway and she’s in the year below us and she’s severely attractive. I remembered Aslam’s eye looked like a pork scratching.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Sometimes he does-a not-a do-a the thinking.’

‘Was that an Italian accent?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Yes. Um. Why are you out here?’

‘I came with Lydia but she’s getting with someone. I don’t really know anyone else I want to talk to.’

‘Do you want me to go?’

‘Are you going to rub your face against my tits and shout “huzzah huzzah”?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Probably not. I’m not even-a doing the talking well. Sorry. I’m drunk.’

‘Are you the one that hides in cupboards?’

‘No, that’s Sam. He’s not hiding. He just gets tired.

‘Cool.’

We stayed where we were and talked. We talked about who did the motorboating (Ellis Langton) and who shat themselves on the 86 and who had a Pokemon tattoo on their calf. We talked about school. We talked about which teacher is gay and which teacher had been castrated and which teacher got drunk and did anal with a year eleven on the Paris trip. We talked about Vonnegut. We talked about the Olsen twins. We talked about Slipknot.

Alice wasn’t scary. She was good at doing talking. When I asked her about something she asked me about the something too, and she didn’t stop until I gave an opinion that wasn’t beige. I don’t know why. She liked to talk about things other people think are disgusting. She’d read
Wetlands.
We thought the same things were gay.

‘Wait here,’ she said. She got up and went. I thought, she’s definitely not going to come back. I was too boring. She’s going upstairs to sit on the face of a boy more muscular and emotionally mature than me. I should have told jokes. I should have flexed.