SHORTS
Collected fiction by Chris Page
Psipook
P r e s s
Published by Psipook Press and Publish and Market
Copyright©Chris Page
All rights reserved
Chris Page has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work
This volume published in 2009 by Psipook Press and Publish and Market
The Freebie first appeared in The London Magazine, July 2002
www.psipook.com
psipook@psipook.com
ISBN 978-0-9559588-1-6
The characters and events in these stories are all fictitious. Any resemblance to anyone or anything real is as accidental as it is unlikely.
Cover design by Chris Page and Eiko Page
CONTENTS
The Freebie (short story)
Poems (poetry)
Cats Die (short story)
Bog (blog extracts)
The Freebie
This story first appeared in the July 2002 edition of The London Magazine
BILLY WAS just thinking he ought to call The Enemy when the phone rang. It was The Enemy.
‘Hi, this Justin Lastname of The Enemy here. Can I speak to Billy Freeb?’
The Enemy? Justin Lastname of The Enemy? The Justin Lastname of the The Enemy? Billy was not sure what to make of this. On uncountable occasions in the past howevermany years Billy had not called The Enemy. Whenever he was conscious he thought he ought to call The Enemy, but he never actually did. Now they were calling him.
‘Yeah, this is Billy Freeb,’ he said.
‘How’re you doing Billy?’ asked Justin, brightly business like. ‘Your name has been buzzing round the office lately. We at The Enemy are very excited about what you’re doing.’
Billy was picking his nose. He stopped and said ‘uh.’
‘Yeah, we thought we’d do a short piece on you. Nothing grand just yet, maybe five hundred or a thousand words, a photo. See how it pans out.’
‘Ah.’
‘If, of course, you agree. What do you think, Billy?’
‘Er ... How did you find out about me — my work?’ he mumbled at the edifice of awe and fear that had popped up next to the telephone.
‘Well I have a big memo right here on my desk, Billy. Makes interesting reading, almost enough for a story but without one crucial thing — you yourself, Billy.’
‘I see … As a matter of idle curiosity, do you know why you happen to have a big memo about me on your desk?’
‘Oh, I imagine one of our staffers saw one of your gigs and put your name about.’
‘I haven’t actually done any gigs,’ said Billy. ‘That’s kinda the point, isn’t it.’
‘Oh ...’ the sound of a seismic shift of papers, something heavy toppling, ‘that’s — ’ and the light summery rustle of memo, ‘right. Well, I suppose one of our staffers didn’t see one of the gigs you didn’t do and decided to put your name about. So what do you say, Billy? Why don’t we meet for lunch? I ...’
‘Aaaaaaaaaaagh!’
‘Billy? Billy? You all right?’
The mention of food had sent Billy into peristalsis.
‘Aaaaaagh!’ he expanded, but pulling himself together with an eviscerating drag on his cigarette, he arranged to meet Lastname at an Indian restaurant in Islington.
‘See you there,’ said Billy.
‘Check,’ said Justin.
Great! Fame! And Billy had done absolutely nothing to earn it but think about it! And a free lunch to boot! Not that he ever ate — that was against his principles, or against the chemicals in his blood — but a free lunch means free booze — and that was very for his principles and the chemicals in his blood, both.
But fame. ‘I don’t believe it’ said Billy lamely, the dead receiver still in his hand. ‘Help.’ Abandoning the handset to the floor, he lit a cigarette and stumbled giddily from the hall into his room.
He felt profoundly nauseous. His body didn’t miss food too much so long as he remained supine or drunk, but he was neither at the moment, and now with this adrenaline rush on top of this morning’s quart of black instant coffee and ten Camel, his legs suddenly felt rubbery and he badly needed the toilet.
‘I don’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I refuse to believe it. Someone’s yanking my chain.’ Either that Lucien Savage had put someone up to it — in which case he was dead meat in the Kropotkin Arms — or the call was genuine, in which case he would have to face an interview with the gargantuan Justin Lastname ... and there from, record contracts, gigs at Wembley, TV spots, fame, wealth, an active and varied life — unlimited sex, drugs — everything he had ever wanted. Really, it was a no-win situation.
The thought of drugs helped to steady his mind.
He had to get rid of this deeply settled sensation of poison and incipient death, get clear-headed, get on top of the situation. He did this by making another pint of black coffee and pacing round his flat drinking, smoking and retching.
He reasoned his next job was to find out whether the call from Justin Lastname was straight up. With this new task he took his pacing into the spare room of his spare, lopsided flat.
The spare room was unused except by himself. He would sleep there once or twice a week when that Lucien Savage squatted Billy’s own bedroom, overriding Billy’s own squatter’s rights in order to do sex in Billy’s bed to whomever. That whomever was invariably a very recent whomever whom Savage had just met — perhaps just minutes before — in Billy’s neighbourhood, from whom he wished to keep his own proper location a secret and/or whom he couldn’t wait the length of time it took to get across town from Stoke Newington to do sex to.
Savage hated Billy because Billy had a two-bedroom squat which he refused to share with anyone, because it was the only squat in the world with a telephone, and because Billy’s universally connected parents had found the gaff for him and sent round a council workman with keys and a claw-hammer to open it for him. Billy’s parents had done this in the hope of keeping him off their backs and out of their pockets. Indeed, with Billy safely stowed away down here in Hackney they might be able to make that move to Richmond without him finding out where they had gone or even noticing.
Savage would usually show up between one and six in the morning and put upon Billy’s sleepy-stoned-drunk head while propping the unconscious whomever against the doorframe. Billy would put his foot down: not this time. Invariably the argument would get round to the flat theme and Savage’s line would go like this:
‘Listen, man, you’ve got all this space here which you jealously guard, which you— .ﾊ which you squat like a Tory. You’ve even got a telephone that you never use, for Christ’s sake — I mean what’s the point of having a telephone if you never talk to anyone? You’re a bloody hermit, Billy, you don’t deserve friends. Look, if you won’t let anyone live here, why not just be a human being once in a while and let your mates dip a finger in your manna?’
Savage was not rankled because he was without adequate accommodation, having talked himself into an overly generous share of someone else’s squat in Kentish Town, and neither did he believe that Billy was taking space that could be better used by any of London’s tens of thousands of more deserving people. Savage was rankled simply because he was that kind of guy.
‘I’ll tell everyone in the Kropotkin that Mummy had your squat cracked for you,’ Savage would threaten. Savage knew a lot of things. He was a stockbroker and in order to trade his shares — his cathode blips, his abstracts, his non-products; like an air traffic controller trading radar contacts — it was imperative that he knew an awful lot about different things. Dragnetting for knowledge, he ended up knowing a lot of things that were not strictly relevant to his trade. Thus, for example, he knew that Billy had not come by his squat by the usual ritual of crowbars, Loony Brew, sweats, and cold nights on raw floors. In fact, he knew a lot else about Billy, almost everything in fact. He knew so much about Billy partly because they had grown up together, and partly because he was secretly shagging Billy’s mother.
With this Kropotkin threat Billy always gave up arguing. Of course, Savage could simply have said ‘Mummy, Kropotkin’ as soon as Billy opened the door, sending him to the greasy, malodorous sleeping bag in the spare room without debate, saving everyone a lot of time and precious calories, but that would have been no fun. It was no victory unless you rubbed your opponent’s nose in the futility of opposition. For his part, Billy could have surrendered the moment Savage rang the doorbell. However, he was strongly possessed by an optimism derived from an over-active compensatory fantasy function, and this optimism consistently told him, adamantly, without any apparent irony, and without any obvious reference to the unencouraging mountain of precedents, that this time he would fend Savage off.
It was this same mechanism that allowed him to believe that his outward lack of activity was in fact tightly coiled potential.
Billy could call Savage, find out by oblique means whether he had made the Lastname call. He could address Savage as Lucien. Savage hated the name Lucien, and insisted that people call him Savage or, better, Sav, because Sav was reminiscent of savvy, which kind of means suss. However, this plan was fraught with danger and required some careful thought. Hell, he could just call Justin Lastname at The Enemy. That was the only sure way to find out. Yes, that was what he would do. With that, his nausea intensified, and without thinking he fled the flat.
A little later, bolstered by a very rapid can of Stupor Brew and wearing a second in his hand, he made the call expecting to be greeted with indignation and outrage. Billy was risking his life with this manoeuvre: one harsh word could be the end of him and nearly had been on many occasions. A less than doting word or look from the staff at the local burger joint where he went for the free smiles could condemn him to bed on a vodka drip for a whole week. Instead, after a suitably important time on hold, he found himself talking to the same Justin Lastname.
‘What’s up, Billy?’
Once Billy had laboriously explained that the cat he did not have had mistaken the big dog-eared memo pad on which he had not written the name and address of the place they were to meet for the big dog-eared Persian that had never lived next door — on which Billy’s cat would have certainly had a crush had they both existed — and had raped the note into illegibility, they reconfirmed the time and place of their meeting,
‘Cheers, Billy. Thanks for calling,’ said Justin.
Now Billy’s elation was unrestrained. He drained his can in one, and while he waited beerily by the phone for a whole two minutes for Savage to call so he could say ‘Sorry Lucien, can’t make the pub for lunch, I’ve got to see Justin Lastname about the band,’ he reflected that The Enemy could not have called at a better time. Yesterday was Giro day and he still had nearly twenty pounds left, and he was at a relative peak both mentally and physically. Then he stumbled into the toilet, threw up and fainted when he tried to stand.
By the time Billy arrived at the restaurant he was in much better shape; he had got himself together.
He had got himself together with an unpretentious but proficient bottle of red — something with Graves on the label — while sitting on the big mausoleum in the middle of Abney Park Cemetery. The fog — like everyone in London, a late riser — laboriously and reluctantly lifted itself off its dense mattress of trees and shrubs and grass and sloped off to find a quiet spot in which to while away the day. Billy toasted the dead, he drank himself normal, and as he did so he even managed to lose the feeling that the Lastname call had placed in him that he had been caught in flagrante delicto with a sexual fantasy by the very object of the same.
Striding up Upper Street from the wrong bus stop, soiled wine glass stowed in the pocket of his old overcoat, there was even a spring in his step. The spring came not from his undeniably light spirit, but from the persistent rubberyness of his legs, one or other of which would occasionally spring the wrong way causing him to go down on one knee to make gentlemanly proposals to lamp posts, passers by or clouds. Compared to lying unconscious on the toilet floor, head wedged between bowl and wall and pillowed by a pile of grey, shredded newspaper, he was doing very well indeed.
The restaurant was not crowded but neither was it quiet. A small group of off-duty BT engineers were filling the empty tables and chairs with an overflow of laughter and shouting. They were enjoining one of their band to eat two whole tablespoons of lime pickle on one narrow wedge of papadam. Billy stood inside the door looking for Justin Lastname who was not there.
‘A table for one, sir?’ inquired a waiter.
‘I’m meeting someone,’ said Billy. ‘I believe we have a reservation.’
‘Name?’
‘Lastname.’
‘That would be helpful, sir.’
‘No, the name is Lastname. Lastname is the surname.’
‘We don’t have Lastname on our list, sir.’
‘Er, try Justin.’
‘Mr. Justin? No, I’m afraid not.’
‘No, Justin’s not a last name, it’s Lastname’s first name. Justin Lastname — that’s his full name.’
‘And your name, sir?’
‘My first name or last name?’
‘We do have a reservation in the name of Enemy.’
‘That’ll be it, sir,’ exclaimed Billy, stumbling in his much unused restaurant etiquette. ‘I mean ...’
‘This way Mr. Enemy,’ said the waiter.
Billy took his window seat and ordered a bottle of wine to further calm his nerves.
‘Freeb!’ said Billy, slapping his head when the waiter left.
He was a little early; it could not be said that the journalist was late. Billy lit a cigarette and composed himself. He wondered whether any of the big men laughing across the restaurant had heard his conversation with the waiter, had heard Lastname mentioned and was impressed. He wondered if any of them had even heard of Justin Lastname. None of them were looking at him in any manner, impressed or otherwise. They were impressed with the lime pickle and were negotiating with the waiter for another bowl, even though they were already sweating quite profusely. Maybe they would be more impressed later when Justin himself, who they would surely recognise from the TV, came in and sat at Billy’s table.
On the other hand, Billy mused, maybe the loud men hated music and never ever watched TV. Maybe they spent every spare hour in Indian restaurants drinking lager and making their brains bleed with lime pickle and vindaloo in which case they would have no idea who Justin Lastname was.
If they hated music, they would probably like Billy’s.
In a sudden outbreak of affection for everything in the universe, Billy wanted to go over and talk to the men about music. He wanted to tell them that their laughter and the purple veins bulging from their red foreheads were forms of music in themselves. They were happy, they were preoccupied, he left them to it.
Billy’s wine had arrived. Lastname had not. It could now be said the journalist was late. He sighed and stifled a gag. He lit another cigarette from the one he had just finished. He drank some wine.
Justin Lastname came in.
Billy stood. They shook hands.
‘Billy Freeb.’ said Lastname, sounding a little impressed and sizing Billy up. ‘How’re you doing?’
Billy wondered whether he should say “Nice to meet you”.
‘What’s up,’ he said.
The BT curry club fell silent and looked round. They were clearly impressed that Billy was meeting Justin Lastname for lunch. Billy was really very impressed that he was too.
‘Let’s eat,’ said Justin.
Lastname’s physical presence confirmed what Billy had suspected: he was a big man. Short and skinny, what he lacked in physical stature he made up for in pandimensionality; he was big in five or six dimensions, maybe more, and when he had parked himself and his other-realm protuberances into a seat, he looked uncomfortably wedged in, far too big for the table or the restaurant. He would have looked more at home reclining on a comet between solar systems thought Billy.
Talking of comets — those eyes! Those eyes that preceded him everywhere! He had brought them with him today — the full pair, the big, too wide, slightly bulging ones that were wild and keen and savvy as a nocturnal predator’s. Hyperanimated, Lastname’s eyes were like those of an owl that had strayed into a pet shop full of gerbils. Oh yes, feral and hungry, thought Billy, and they had done some things, those eyes. You could see it in them and around them in the taught blast lines that radiated from the craters of their orbits. They had seen some life, they had seen some parties, they had seen some shows. They had put on some shows too, fronted many a show put on by E, C, LSD and ESB. And not just his eyes, his face holistically carried his life, the sum of Justin Lastname (what baggage! Billy traveled light): thrusting assurance in his beaky nose, appetite in his tomato-splat mouth, momentum in the friction-tanned leather of his skin.
No mere manic street preacher, no simple mind, no pretender, he lived by his words. Always more than a man at work, he was kraftwerk, wonder stuff, a blur. The most incisive hack since Brutus’s was hailed as a mother of invention, ever provocative and never simply read; he was to musicians everywhere kingmaker, slayer of iffy pops, anthrax to sheep on drugs, airheads, lemonheads and radioheads; the difference between nirvana and pavement. Auteur, proclaimer, mapping the musical swells in living colour, he was a credit to the nation, the hack who can. Take Justin Lastname or take that!
As a result, Lastname was not only the most respected writer for the most respected rock journal in Britain and a presenter of at least all the TV shows for the under twenty-fives, he was a recording star in his own right, had a column in the Sunday Telegraph and had just been paid an undisclosed sum in the upper six-figure range to write a novel he had not even begun to think about yet.
They ordered: samosas, onion bhajias and chicken tikka to get warmed up; vindaloo for Billy, phall for Justin; bindi bhaji, saag bhaji, alur dom, biriani, and pullao for balance; plenty of naan, roti, chupattis, and papadams to fill up on; chutneys chilli, onion and mango, and vinegared chillies for a bit of oomph. On some macho impulse to prove they could eat something that would not actually induce delirium, they asked for raita, and as an afterthought, for the sake of authenticity, dhal. Finally, Billy ordered a bottle of Mindanao-deep St. Emilion (‘88) to add some 3D to the spices.
As the waiter skipped away, Lastname placed his pocket tape recorder on the table between them.
There was an expectorant pause. Billy apologised.
‘Shall we?’ asked Justin with raised eyebrows and a gleam of devilry in his eyes.
Billy assumed an interview posture. He had never been interviewed before but he knew all about it from The Enemy and from the TV and it was, in truth, not a wholly unrehearsed move. Moreover, this was just one in a whole repertoire of postures he would be employing this lunchtime. This opener was a very relaxed, very low slouch over his place mat with the glass of wine suspended between thumb and forefinger, hovering near the crown of his head.
‘For sure,’ said Billy.
With a much-ado flourish, Justin hit the play button on the tape recorder.
‘Billy,’ began Justin, ‘you’ve kept a very low media profile for a long time. Why break the silence and agree to an interview now?’
Billy thought about this carefully. ‘Justin,’ he started, ‘I haven’t kept a low profile for an awfully long time. I’ve carefully maintained no profile at all. I’ve kept a zero, a subzero media profile. In fact I’ve made absolutely no attempt to get my profile in the media at all, nor have I felt any need to project myself publicly,’ he lied. In reality, Billy had tried to call The Enemy almost everyday in the past howevermany years, but was each time forbidden by his howling, gibbering fear function. Each day, Billy sat on the floor in the hall by the telephone, neutralising his fear centre with napalm strikes of vodka or Loony Brew, or buying its silence with gifts of fine wine or single malt scotch. When he came round, hours or days later, on the floor, curled round the legs of the telephone table, his fear function would be his only still-active faculty. Far from exorcising this little monster, all the years of struggle and alcohol had only strengthened it. The bugger obviously like a drink; so did Billy and they achieved the kind of detente where they agreed to destroy each other indefinitely because they did not like the alternative of not destroying each other. A bit like the Middle East.
But what the hell? The Enemy had called him. It was meant to happen.
‘I’m breaking radio silence now,’ he went on, ‘because I’ve reached a point in my personal and artistic development where it becomes necessary to break that radio silence.’
‘Check,’ said Lastname. ‘So this new openness toward the media is a change in strategy.’
‘Not at all. It’s merely the one strategy unfolding.’
‘Are we going to see a media blitz now?’
Billy did not answer immediately. He changed pose: he straightened, drank, leaned forward with his weight on his elbows, and his forearms neatly folded on the table in front of him overhung by his Tweety Pie rib cage. He made a conscious effort to look absorbed and forgot what the question was.
‘Ideas,’ he began once he remembered where he was, ‘have a life of their own independent of the progenitor. You have an idea and kick it out into the world and you can no longer say “this is my idea”. You can say “I gave birth to this idea, spawned this idea”, that’s OK, you can say that. You can’t say this is my idea except in the sense that you had that idea. It’s like becoming a parent. If you have a child, it’s yours only in the sense that it issued from you, but when it gets to say, seven or eight, it’s going out by itself and you don’t even know where the hell it is or what it’s up to anymore. It’s totally got a mind of its own. It has nothing to do with you anymore and to assert possession is an act of denial. Like, my project was conceived way back and since then it’s been working as much on its own as I’ve been working with it. I suppose it must be a strong concept because it’s embedded itself in the human psychic field, replicated itself and finally manifested itself as a memo on your desk suggesting you call me.’
‘Right,’ said Lastname, making notes on his linen napkin, which may have been questions to ask Billy later or the first draft of his novel.
‘Now, you see, things are that developed, the concept and myself have entered a dialogue. It learns from me as much as I learn from it. Progress and development come from the mutual dynamic interplay which is, by its very nature, an unpredictable thing.’
‘So, ah, you don’t know whether you’ll be thrusting yourself into the public eye.’