Stuff (The Bristol Collection) (4 page)

“You’re right.” Now Perry was squinting, as if that extra head of Mas’s was doing something fascinating. More so than just being an extra head, that was.

Mas leaned back against the metal rail, hoping it was as tough as it looked. “So, what exactly did you lure me out here for, sailor? Coz much as I admire the architecture, I can’t see bugger all from down here.”

“Oh, of course. Follow me.” Perry turned to the spiral staircase and started up.

“My pleasure,” Mas murmured, getting an eyeful of lean buns, almost close enough to reach out and sink his teeth into.

Chapter Four

Not for the first time that day, Perry wondered what on earth he was doing. Inviting a total stranger up to his private garden? What was he thinking? But it would look weird if he turned around now. And besides, that giant thug down the road had looked like he meant business, and if that business resulted in Mas suffering, Perry would never forgive himself. Something about Mas stirred up his protective instincts.

“Quite a view from here,” Mas said when they were halfway up the stairs.

“You should wait till we get to the top, then.”

“Oh no. I like it here just fine.” Mas’s voice took on that warm, slightly sing-song tone that did something peculiar to Perry’s internal organs.

He turned, only to find Mas staring hungrily at his rear. “Do you mind!”

“Not at all.” Mas smiled cheekily. “How could I possibly mind a bum like that? It’s perfect.”

“It is?” Perry’s cheeks heated. How could anyone have the audacity to be that forward? “Don’t be ridiculous. Men don’t have attractive derrieres.”

“Ooh, talking French to me now? You’re such a romantic. And you’re wrong. Nothing against women’s bums—quite literally in my case—but there’s something just right about a lean, muscular pair of buttocks.” The gleam in Mas’s eyes was so devilish, Perry almost threw his hands back to cover the buttocks in question. But that would be admitting Mas had him rattled, and he really wanted to keep his cool.

Cool. Perry glanced at Mas’s artfully tousled curls and effortless way of making even that polyester uniform look like he’d just wandered off a catwalk. As if Perry had ever been anything approaching cool. That probably wasn’t even the word they used anymore. The really cool ones. They’d say something so achingly hip Perry wouldn’t have a hope of understanding them.

So instead of responding to Mas’s teasing, Perry turned and carried on up the stairs. It would be simpler on the roof. Mas would be distracted, and Perry could get back to whatever it was he’d been doing. The carp. That was it.

He’d get back to the carp. That would calm him down.

“So this is your flat up here, is it?” Mas asked as the staircase took them past the second-floor windows.

“Mostly storage on the first and second floors. My living quarters are in the attic, but I’ve got a workshop on the first floor.” Perry was glad he’d kept his curtains drawn. Wouldn’t do to have Mas peering in and commenting on his total lack of interior design skills. That and the clutter.

“Workshop? What sort of stuff do you make? No, wait a minute, let me guess… Something to do with leather, maybe. I can totally see you stitching, I dunno, gloves or something.”

“I do sometimes work with leather.”

“No way! It’s not kinky shit, is it? I know this couple who are into all that. Bet Jos would love a handmade collar all of his own.”

Gracious! “I don’t make that sort of thing.”

“What do you make, then?”

“Do you always ask this many questions?”

“Meh, usually. Unless you can find a way to shut me up. I can think of one really good one, but like you said, you’re not into boys in that way.”

Perry prayed for deliverance, even though he hadn’t been to chapel for years, and he’d never believed in the monotheistic deity in the first place. “Does every conversation you have have to lead to a sexual innuendo?”

“Now who’s the one demanding answers?” Mas didn’t sound annoyed, as his voice had that lilting tone to it again. But for some reason, annoyance was ratcheting up inside Perry.

“Forget it,” he said.

“Nah, it’s all right. You’ve probably got a point. And that isn’t a knob joke, honest. Not that you haven’t got a point. Or at least, I assume you’re not a trans-man. I can generally tell. Not that they aren’t hot in their own way. I mean, the whole gender-bending thing is a turn-on.”

“I thought this was going to be a nonsexual conversation?”

“But you asked me if everything had to lead to a sexual innuendo. What’s that demanding if not proof of the pudding?”

“You could try to disprove me. I’m sure you can’t always have twisted every conversation towards sex.” They’d reached the top of the stairs. Perry stepped over the stone parapet and leaned against the side of the dormer window.

Mas looked like he was about to answer, then he turned and gasped. “You were so fucking right about the view! Wow, I had no idea you could see Nelson Street from here!”

Perry hadn’t been entirely sure about the street art project down there to begin with, but over the years, he’d grown to love the giant paintings. There was a plethora of murals in the near distance too, in the maze of back streets and alleys his building looked out onto—no shortage of graffiti in Stokes Croft, after all. “I love the view. It changes every week. Every day, sometimes. You see these amazing paintings someone must have spent hours over, and then the next day someone else has obliterated it with something completely different.”

“Yeah, but that’s what’s so great about ephemeral artworks, innit? You’ve gotta make the most of them while they’re there. Kind of a metaphor for life, I reckon.”

And just when Perry had Mas pegged as the male equivalent of a flirtatious bimbo, he came out with a word like ephemeral and an insight like that. Perry stared into Mas’s eyes, his mind busy adjusting to the new information. “Do you have an art education?”

Mas snorted. “Hardly. Not unless you count GCSE level. It was my best subject, though. Especially as I went to extra life drawing classes at the local college. My teacher got me in. All the rest of the students were middle-aged women, but we all appreciated the model. Brad, his name was. Had dreads and a load of hippie necklaces on, but he was hung like a fucking mule. Good thing the teacher insisted we wore these enormous painting smocks. I reckon he was just as excited about Brad’s crown jewels, the pervy old queen.”

Perry shook his head.

“Oops.” Mas grinned. “Yeah, I see what you mean about all conversations leading to sex. I didn’t know it had become that bad a habit.”

“I’m sure it’s fine in certain contexts. Just, maybe not when meeting a new acquaintance for the first time.”

“Acquaintance? And there was me thinking we were friends now.”

Perry flushed, but he was determined to make his point. “Especially when that acquaintance is a straight man.”

“Hmmm… And I’m the bastard offspring of Jay-Z and Rihanna. Give it a rest, boy-o. You’re not fooling me.”

“I’m not trying to fool you! For Pete’s sake.” Perry turned his back to Mas and began climbing up the side of the dormer window. There was a good foothold at the bottom, almost as if it had been designed for that. It wasn’t until he heard a harshly indrawn breath from behind him that he realised what he must look like to Mas, his rear sticking out.

Did Mas genuinely find him attractive, or could he not help himself from flirting with any man? Cherise always paid Perry compliments, but then again, that was all part of her job, wasn’t it? Perhaps he could ask her next time he visited. Or then again, perhaps that would make him look desperately needy. No, he didn’t want to give off that impression.

“Careful as you come over,” Perry cautioned. “Don’t want any of the tiles knocking out of place.” Perry made it to the top of the dormer window and then over the peak of the roof to the central valley. The flat topped section between the pitched roof at the front and the one at the back was only a few feet wide, but he’d made it into a little oasis of calm. The valley ran down the whole row of the terrace, but the section above each separate building was divided by a wrought iron grill shaped like a sunburst. Mas had been right. Like the wrought iron staircase, it was another example of the way people used to pay attention to detail, lavishing time and attention even to the bits of a building that hardly anyone would ever see. Unless people were more into roof-clambering back in those days. Somehow Perry doubted it.

“Wow, what is all this shit?” Mas was climbing over the top of the roof.

Perry was about to retort that it wasn’t shit, when he caught the look on Mas’s face. Genuine wonderment, if he wasn’t mistaken. Okay, that kind of reaction he could handle. “Just some projects I didn’t have room for anywhere else in the building.”

“You’re not fooling me. You’ve got plants and everything. How the hell do you get water up here for them? Must be a bloody nightmare, keeping them alive. But they’re not just alive, are they? They’re flourishing. And really…green.”

“I like green.” The urge to defend his little garden overpowered Perry’s manners, and he snapped, “If you don’t like it, you can head back down again.”

“Hey, don’t get your knickers in a twist.” Mas put his hands out, as if warding something off. Perry’s rudeness, perhaps. “I love green. And geraniums are lush. I just…you know, it’s a bit OCD or something. Just having one kind of plant.”

Perry glanced around, trying to figure out just what this must look like to an outsider. At least Mas seemed preoccupied with the flowers rather than picking holes in Perry’s artifacts. “I find the smell relaxing. And I only ever brought one plant up here. The rest are all cuttings.”

“You have green fingers.”

“Hardly. Geraniums will root in pretty much anything. And they don’t need watering as much as some plants, so they’re a good choice for up here.”

“And you’re absolutely terrible at taking compliments.”

If Perry’s face glowed any hotter, he’d have to dunk his head in the water butt. “I’m just not used to them.”

“What, your folks never praised you while you were growing up? Or teachers? You seem like the kind of bloke who’d have been top in the class in pretty much everything. Not like muggins here. All I learnt at school was how to give head, and that was— Oops! Done it again, haven’t I? You know, the innuendo stuff usually goes down better when everyone’s been drinking. Maybe that’s what we need up here. A beer or two.”

“I thought you wanted to keep an eye on that man outside your flat.”

Mas’s face fell. Blast, Perry hadn’t wanted to upset him. It was just he didn’t have any alcohol in the place and he really didn’t feel like explaining the whole allergy issue to Mas right now. Most people seemed to want to commiserate with him when they found out, but since it really wasn’t an issue for him, it was hard to know how to respond.

“So, you some kind of astronomer, then?” Mas fiddled with Perry’s brass telescope. “Or is this more piratey gear?”

“It’s not really useful for anything now. No lenses.”

“But you’ve still got it hanging around.” The mechanism squealed as Mas attempted to spin it on the stand. “Hmm, could do with a bit of lubrication. Shame I left all mine at home. Mind you, that’s all water based, and I’m guessing you probably need oil for this. Hey, I like your clockwork cockerels. Or are they seagulls? Hard to tell when they’re all cobbled together out of bits of old junk.”

“They’re chickens.” Perry absentmindedly petted one of his scrap-metal menagerie. Surely it should be obvious, what with the way he’d fashioned their wattles out of carefully cut sections of cogs.

“Picked them up secondhand too, did you?”

“Something like that.” He’d found the component parts that way. What on earth would Mas make of Albert when he saw him?

Perry blinked, then went to lean against the front pitch of the roof, where he could get a bird’s-eye view of the street. His garden plainly wasn’t big enough for two. It felt crowded, and he couldn’t block out the awareness of how close Mas was standing. Closer than was strictly necessary, although perhaps he’d end up in the geraniums if he stepped back.

“Bloody hell! What the fuck is that thing? Is that a body?”

Okay, now Mas had seen Albert. Perry turned to see him brushing back the geraniums that had all but hidden him from view.

“Oh my God. It is as well.”

Albert crouched there, his bones lacquered in shades of iridescent black, the wire-work wings sprouting out of his back giving him a mischievous air, like he was about to take flight. Perry had wired the plastic bones into position, and he loved the way Albert looked like he was sniffing the air. Whoever had decided skulls were sinister was plain wrong. They were beautiful, especially when they gleamed like that.

“It’s hardly a body,” Perry corrected. “The frame is a skeleton, but not a real one. It’s one of the polyurethane ones they use in classrooms. I wanted to have a practice go before using a real skeleton.”

“A real skeleton?” Now Mas was giving him a look of pure horror. “Where would you get one of those from?”

“Not from a living breathing human, if that’s what you’re wondering. But you can buy old ones occasionally at auction. Old wired-up ones hanging from stands. They’re really in demand, but I did manage to find one once in an old attic.”