The Glister (22 page)

ELSPETH

A
T THIS POINT IN THE STORY, ELSPETH IS THOROUGHLY PISSED OFF. IF YOU
asked her about it, she'd say she was annoyed because her boyfriend has stood her up again, and she really needs a shag, but the truth is, she's worried. And pissed off too, of course. If he had any sense at all, she thinks, Leonard would come to her with his troubles, not Jimmy van Doren. If he needs someone he could trust, then surely
she
is the one—but as far as she can tell, he's gone off somewhere with Jimmy and that gang of his, out to some sewer on the headland, probably, to live with the rats and the mutants. Or maybe it's the girl he's gone off with. What's-her-face? Eddie. As she heads out to the old plant, not quite sure why she's going and with no real hope of finding anyone, Elspeth is telling herself that she wouldn't be surprised if Leonard was shagging that weird little bitch because, let's face it, he's the type—can't walk past a sick puppy without petting. Still, if
that's
what he's up to, it's not as bad as getting all comfy with Jimmy, because Jimmy van Doren is
not
the kind of person you go to when you're in trouble. Of course, if you haven't got any troubles to speak of, he'll be happy to make some for you. Elspeth had asked him about that, when she was still seeing him. Why he liked to see people suffer. Why he hurt them for no reason.

“It's a gift,” he'd said. He had a big grin on his face. “A gift—and a public service.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Sure,” he said. “People feel comfortable when they're unhappy. They know it's as much as they deserve.” His eyes twinkled. “When things are good they start to worry. They don't know what to do with themselves. The world suddenly seems strange and frightening and they long for something they know. Something familiar—like pain.”

Now, unless Leonard is going for some kind of care-in-the-community shag, Elspeth is pretty certain that he and Jimmy are out on the headland, getting into more trouble, and maybe comparing notes. You should always judge a person by the company he keeps. After all, that was what first drew her to Leonard, because he didn't keep company with anybody—he was his own person. He had his books and his films and such, and that was it. Elspeth had never really gotten into that, but she was happy he had something, ‘cause it must have been hard for him, looking after his dad by himself all those years. His mum had been a really nice woman—a real looker, too—but after a while she just couldn't take it anymore and she'd run off with some guy she met at the dentist's or something.

Leonard never likes to talk about her, of course—which is fine, because Elspeth has never been very big on the empathy thing. She's not that into reading or films, either, though she did give it a try. Leonard would borrow videos from John, the dope-smoking nut job at the library, and they would watch them in his room, on some old video recorder Leonard had rescued from the landfill, but Elspeth couldn't see the point. There was never any plot, the dialogue was all in French or Japanese or whatever, and the subtitles were all fuzzy, so you could hardly make them out. All the time they were watching this stuff, she would be wondering what was so wrong with good old-fashioned Hollywood movies, real stories with real people in them, like that Bill Pullman in
While You Were Sleeping.
Elspeth likes Hollywood, she doesn't think there's anything wrong with just sitting back and letting yourself be entertained. TV is good too—even some of the soaps are well acted. But these films Leonard got from John? She still has nightmares about the one where some guy is walking around on a piece of wasteland with a big black dog, and the camera just closes in slowly on a piece of glass or a book or something, while somebody you can't see talks offscreen and there's water everywhere and that's it, only it goes on for four hours—in
Russian.

Leonard had been trying to educate her, of course. He'd try to get her to read books. The classics:
The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina
—there we go with that Russian shit again—and
Moby-fu
cki
ng-Dick.
She just took one look at
Anna Karenina
and laughed. “Are you kidding?” she said. “Look at that thing. If you dropped it on your foot you'd break your toe.”

He almost laughed at that, but he kept on at her anyway. That was the thing about Leonard, he really cared about all this stuff. He was worse than John the Librarian. “It's one of the best books ever written,” he said. “You should give it a try.”

“It's one of the
longest
books ever written,” she said. “I'll give it a miss.”

She did try D. H. Lawrence, but the smart money said he only did one good book, and that wasn't in the library. When she asked John why, he just snorted. She told him she wanted to read the classics, to improve her mind and all that. She'd said how she thought she'd start with
Lady Chatterley's
Lover,
‘cause of the psychology and stuff. That made John laugh. “We don't have that,” he said. “We
have
got
Valley of the Dolls,
though. If it's classics you want.”

Elspeth doesn't want classics, though. Not really. What she wants— what she really
likes
—is porno magazines. Not just the hardcore stuff; the polite,
Forumy
type of thing is good too. Because, as she's tried telling Leonard a few times now, you can learn a lot from porno mags. You learn about different positions and things you can do to make sex more exciting, obviously. But you also learn a lot about people. Which is what Leonard could do with. If he'd stuck to reading porno, or
Story of O
or something, he might have more common sense, and he wouldn't be out somewhere with Jimmy van Doren and his little gang getting into trouble.

Still, she thinks, that's his problem. Hers is that she needs a big fat seeing-to. But that's not available, so she decides she'll take a wander down the old farm road on the East Side to walk off the frustration. It's a nice day, all sunny and clear and, for once, the air smells sweet, like summer in a normal place probably smells, so she heads on down along the hedge line, past the landfill, and out along the dirt road that runs down to the shore. She doesn't expect she'll see anyone out there, but she's not half a mile down the track when she comes across this bloke she's never seen before, some pikey by the look of him, cooking something over a bonfire. She stops a minute and gives him the once-over: and it turns out he's not a pikey at all, he's actually quite nicely dressed, for country-style anyway. In fact, from this angle, he looks quite handsome, with nice light-to-sandy-colored hair, not quite blond, though she can't see his eyes and she knows you should always go by a person's eyes. Still, he looks nice and she can also see that he's got a vehicle, a homely old green van parked over on a patch of wasteland, not far from where he's making a fire. He doesn't have a dog, which is good. Pikeys always have dogs. Usually the dog is nicer than the bloke, especially if it's a lurcher. Though she has to admit that she's generalizing a bit now. Anyway, she goes down the track a few yards, till she's just upwind of the bloke, and she sees that he's making some kind of stew. He's got a big bottle of Fanta or suchlike on a little mat, and a cup and some bread and he's making this stew, maybe rabbit stew, though if he's got any sense, he won't go eating any of the rabbits round here. He's completely absorbed in what he's doing, so he doesn't see her till the last minute. She gets to sneak up on him and deliver her best line before he knows what's hit him. “Want a blow job, mister?” she says, just as he turns round. He really is handsome, with a kind face and clear, blue-gray eyes.

He looks a bit startled by this, or maybe it's just because he's looking up into the sun. Then he laughs and stands up, wiping his hands down on his jacket. “Well,” he says, “if I'm honest, I probably do. But not from you.”

She's a bit offended by this, of course, but she acts casual. “So what's wrong with me, then?” she says, putting on her best who-gives-a- shit-what-you-think-anyway face. Only she does give a shit, of course, because she really is in bad need of a fuck, and if Leonard's not up to it, this guy can happily stand in.

The man laughs again. “There's nothing wrong with you,” he says. “It's just that you're only a little girl. You're just a kid, and you shouldn't be wandering around the countryside offering your services to complete strangers.”

“I'm eighteen,” she says.

He shakes his head. “I doubt
that
very much,” he says.

“You want me to prove it?”

“How would you do that?”

She grins. “Come over here and I'll show you,” she says.

He laughs again. “No,” he says, “you don't need to prove it.” He takes a quick look to check on his lunch. “Are you hungry?” he says, hunkering down to give the pot a stir.

Now that he mentions it, she is hungry, ‘cause she didn't eat before she came out, being in such a rush to meet Leonard, but she's too randy to think about food. This guy has got her all restless and wet, it's like something out of D. H. bloody Lawrence. Probably. Still, she's glad to accept what's on offer and they can take it from there. “I'm
starving”
she says, with a bit too much emphasis.

He looks up at her and shakes his head. “Sit down, then,” he says. “I'll not send you away
starving.”

She doesn't know who he is. Not at first. But when she asks him what he's doing here, he tells her about the moth survey thingy, and she realizes that he's the one Leonard told her about. Which wouldn't stop her from shagging him, of course, but he genuinely isn't interested. She pushes the envelope a bit on that, but he just keeps laughing her off. She tells him he can do anything he likes—she's never met a bloke who didn't go for that. If you say to them, all soft and submissive-looking,
you can do anything you like,
they usually just go straight to automatic and then you can just about do what you like with
them.
Not this bloke, though. He's a nice guy, and handsome and all, but he's a bit dim. It's not like she wants to
marry
him or anything, and she's told him she's eighteen so he's fully insured against any legal comeback. Of course, he could be gay. Maybe he likes Leonard. Or maybe he's just some simp going about the countryside catching butterflies and counting them. Which, when you think about it, isn't such a bad deal. Gets you out and about. Better than living here. Which, in turn, gives her an idea. They're sitting by the fire now, eating his homemade stew. She doesn't know what's in it, but it tastes all right. “So,” she says, going all nice-friendly-conversation, no-big-agenda on him, “where do you come from? You're not from around here.”

He shakes his head. “I'm not from anywhere,” he says. “Or maybe I'm from all over. I even lived here once.”

“Here?”

“When I was a kid.” He glances off toward the plant and it's like he's looking back through time. He seems like the kind of person who can see what he talks about, what he remembers. Not just words or thoughts, but pictures. “My old man worked here a few times,” he says.

“Really?” Elspeth doesn't know of anybody working here who didn't stay right here. “What did he do?”

“He worked for Lister's.”

“What's that?”

“George Lister and Son,” he said. “One of the companies that built the plant. He helped design it, then he came back, when it all closed down, to help decommission it.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“He helped to shut it down.”

“Oh,” she says. “He'd be popular, then.”

The man gives a rueful smile. “I don't think so,” he says.

“So, what's it like?” she says, to get him off this subject. She wants him a bit more cheerful.

“What's what like?”

“Out there. You know. In the real world.”

He laughs. “It's
all
real,” he says. “But it's different. It varies, place to place.” He looks around. “Wherever you go, this is the best of it.”

She laughs.
“This?”
she says. “You have
got
to be kidding.”

“Well,” he says, “not exactly this particular spot. But the open air, the land. Places where you can sit quiet, or just get on with your work, and nobody bothers you. You don't find that very often.”

“Tell me about it,” she says. She leans forward and rests her chin on her wrist: warm, sympathetic, interested. She can do that stuff in her sleep, if she needs to.

He laughs. “Anyway,” he says, like he's avoiding a question she hasn't asked him yet, “I'm almost done here.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” he says.

“So you're leaving?”

He nods. “Soon,” he says.

She nods. She's about to give up, at this point, because she can feel him slipping away, but she gives it another try. “Can I come with you?” she asks him.

He looks surprised, but he isn't really. “Why would you want to do that?” he says.

“To get away from here,” she says.

“What about your folks?”

“Don't got any folks,” she says, which isn't quite true, even though it is really. “Look, all I want is a lift. I won't jump you or anything.”