Daft Wee Stories (7 page)

‘All right,' she said, shrugging and shaking her head.

That was very diplomatic of her, considering. She was starving. He'd told her he was taking her out for a meal, so she made sure she didn't have that much for lunch and she kept away from the snacks. Now she was starving. Done up to the nines on a Friday night, starving, in a scrapyard.

Any other couple would be arguing like fuck at this, but they were loved up to the eyeballs. They'd been seeing each other for five years, but it was like they had only just started going out – it was still fresh and fun and surprising. That was mainly down to Marty, and the fact he was a bit of a dafty. The things he'd do, the things he'd say. It was like he just didn't have a clue, about anything. She found that out quite early on, when they first went to see a film together, with him leaning over every minute to ask who was who and why was this and how come they were doing that. He was just so fucking stupid, it used to do her nut in. But eventually it was one of the main things that kept them going through thick and thin, because the pair of them would have such a good laugh together, mainly at Marty's expense. And no wonder. The amount of shite that went over that guy's head, it was hysterical.

Marty got out the motor and walked over to some guy in a hard hat at the wee portacabin office in the distance. Claire watched in the rear-view mirror as Marty said hello to the guy, before doing that same thing that Marty always did at the start of any conversation with a stranger. He just stood there saying nothing, trying to find the right words to say before saying them, his mouth open, his eyes looking up and to the right, like a schoolboy that had just been asked to do some hard-as-fuck sum in his head. He never used to do that, but Claire had taken the piss out of him so much over the years for the things he'd say. The howlers he would come away with in front of the telly, the questions he'd ask, the comments he'd make, the stuff that revealed that he just didn't get it. Claire would turn her head towards him and say, ‘Tell me you're joking,' but there he'd be with his face all red. So these days he just learned to keep it zipped until he had a wee think beforehand. Or sometimes he just kept his thoughts to himself.

Marty eventually started explaining whatever it was he was trying to explain to the guy in the hard hat. The guy looked at his watch, nodded, then turned to walk away. Marty reached out his hand for a handshake, but the guy didn't see, so Marty pretended that he was actually putting his hand out to then bring it up to his face for a wee scratch of his chin. Claire laughed. Nice try, she thought. He was such a clown, he really was. He was like Stan Laurel or something.

The scrapyard claw crashed through the roof, taking off her left arm and a few of her ribs. For a split second, she wasn't sure what had just happened. She glanced at Marty through the rear-view mirror, as if he'd be able to shed some light on the situation, but he looked like he didn't know what was happening either. His hands were on his face and he was screaming, like that guy from that painting, she couldn't remember its name right now.

The claw's grip began to tighten, crushing the sides of the motor and her along with it. Her organs were squeezed out the hole where her arm used to be, like a tube of three-stripe toothpaste. Marty looked on, frozen to the spot, as the claw lifted the motor towards the crusher. He turned to shout at the guy in the crane, but nothing came out. Nothing. And he stayed like that, speechless, as the motor was dropped into the big machine that squashed his vehicle and girlfriend into a one-metre cube of metal, plastic and sludge.

‘Claire! Oh my God, Claire!' he shouted, finally finding his voice. The guy in the hard hat ran from the crane; he didn't know what the fuck was going on, but he soon worked it out. Him and Marty ran over to the bleeding block of steel.

‘Claire,' said Marty quietly. He didn't know what to do. What was he to do now?

He turned to the guy in the hard hat, slowly.

And smiled.

The hard-hat guy started getting worried. Very worried.

But it was all right!

Because what the crane guy didn't know was there was this programme called
Jinxed
. It was a hidden-camera show, a bit like
Candid Camera
or
Beadle's About
or
Punk'd
. They'd do a big practical joke, then the film crew would appear at the end, along with the presenter who'd say, ‘You've been jinxed!'

Claire and Marty had watched it the other night. It was another one that Marty didn't quite get. He just wasn't sure about one or two things. Pretty fundamental things, as it turned out. He was going to ask Claire at the time, but he didn't want her to take the piss again. Anyway, he reckoned he got the gist of it and how it all worked.

The guy in the hard hat ran away to phone an ambulance. And the police. Marty glanced around for the film crew. They were nowhere to be seen.

‘You've been jinxed!' shouted Marty.

But still no film crew appeared. And where was Claire? He hoped this didn't take too long. They were supposed to be going for a meal.

Daft Marty.

The amount of shite that went over his head.

It was hysterical.

I'm in a shop. An electrical shop. The kind that sells tellies and cameras and things for your computer, that kind of place. And I'm at the counter being served. I won't bother telling you what I'm buying, you wouldn't be interested. I'm not even interested. You buy stuff, hoping it'll make you happier, but it never really does. Well, it does a wee bit, but not as much as you were hoping for.

Anyway, I get served by the guy. Looks about twenty-eight. And his wee name badge tells me his name is Stevie.

‘All right? Let me take that for you, mate,' says Stevie, and gives me a smile and a wink.

That did something, that. What he did there, that smile and a wink. I don't know what it was exactly, but that did something. It wasn't a big, giant smile. It wasn't a big fake Disneyland smile where we're all pretending we've worked everything out and nobody dies any more. It was just a wee smile, that kind of smile where you keep your mouth shut and tense up your cheeks. Friendly, but considerate. Considerate of my feelings. He thought I'd maybe want a smile, but he was considerate enough to not ram his joy down my throat with a cheesy Cheshire-Cat grin.

Then there was the wink. In case the smile seemed too reserved, the wink made up for it. But it wasn't too bold. It wasn't the kind of wink that puts you on the spot. Sometimes a wink can do that, it can make your brain freeze, you don't know what to do. But it was just a quick wink. Then he looked down to the counter, that's the important thing. Immediately after winking he looked down to the counter, right away. He didn't stay looking at me waiting for a reply wink or to see what I thought. He just gave me it. He gave me that wink with no expectation of anything in return, like a gift. Then he looked down.

And he called me ‘mate'. He could have called me ‘sir'. Some people like being called ‘sir' or ‘madam', it makes them feel like they're being treated with respect, like they're a member of the royal family coming to look at a factory or launch a ship. Some people like it because it creates a distance, which makes things a bit easier and less personal when complaints or demands are made, it makes it easier for both sides. But Stevie called me ‘mate'. Not because he feels I'm undeserving of respect, but because he knows I don't need it. Nor did he do it to get familiar with me so that I feel uncomfortable making complaints or demands, but to make me feel like I can tell him anything. We're mates, after all. Not real mates, obviously, but for the duration of this wee thing we've got going on, we're mates just like any others.

Stevie's all right.

He beeps the barcode with his laser gun and reaches under the counter to pull out a poly bag. He flaps the bag up and down to open it up, but in doing so he wafts a leaflet off the counter and down onto his side of the floor. I watch him as he bends over to pick it up, and what I see makes me like Stevie even more.

It's not that I like him even more because I'm watching his arse. I am watching his arse, but that's not it, it's the whole thing. It's the way he's bending over. He's bending over in that bow-legged way, his knees slightly bent and pointed outwards, and his upper body bent right over. I don't know what it is about him bending over like that, it's like there's something open about it. I know that ‘open' isn't the best word to use, because it makes you visualise him bent over with an open arsehole, but that's the only word that springs to mind. Open.

It's the way you imagine people to bend over in the wild, or in the jungle. You sometimes see programmes with Amazonian tribes where the men wear nothing but a wee piece of cloth tied around their waist. And every now and then, there's a shot of one of them from behind, somewhere in the background, bending over to pick something up. Cock, balls, arse, the lot, there it is, they don't give a fuck. They don't give a fuck because they've got nothing to hide. And that's the same with Stevie here.

I've sometimes seen guys like that in changing rooms, back in school, and in gyms when I got older. They're not stressing out trying to cover up their genitals with a towel, they know the sky won't fall if somebody catches a glimpse. With them, it's a towel between the legs, drying their no-man's-land with a heave-ho, heave-ho, right in front of you, mid-conversation. And I know they wouldn't mind if I did it as well. And why not? No formalities, no pretension, no lies, no borders, no barriers. Open.

Stevie's all right.

He picks up the leaflet, puts it back and goes to stick my thing in the bag. But then has a look at it.

‘What is this anyway?' he asks.

‘It's like a media streamer thing,' I say. ‘You can put all your music and films on it and watch it from anywhere in the house. Hopefully.'

‘Ah, right. I could do with something like that. I didn't know we had it. I suppose I should, since I work here!'

He has a wee laugh.

I love this guy.

It's the way he just laughed at himself for not knowing what his shop sells, even though he should. It's like he doesn't care. Not in a bad way, not in a cocky or arrogant way, but in a way that helps me relax and makes me less uptight about how the world should be.

Because there comes a point, I think, when you realise that the world isn't as orderly and in control as you might like it to be, that it's in fact held together with Blu-tack and Sellotape and the wheels are about to come off at any moment. It can be quite a scary realisation, that, enough to make most people panic. But here's Stevie here, and he's laughing.

We need people like Stevie. We need him to laugh, so that we can laugh. If you're ever stuck in a lift, or holed up in a loft to escape the zombie hordes, or looking through a telescope at the asteroid coming to wipe us out, you're going to need somebody like Stevie. You're going to need him to laugh. Because if Stevie can laugh, I can laugh. If Stevie doesn't care, I don't care. If Stevie can admit to a customer that he doesn't know what his shop sells, despite knowing that it could lose him his job, his wages, his house, his girlfriend, well … fuck it. Fuck it. In the happiest way possible, I say fuck it all.

Now Stevie's asking me if I want to buy something, something that I don't think I need, but I said yes. I don't know what it was; I wasn't really listening, I was smiling. Could have been batteries, even though the thing doesn't take them. Could have been some insurance thing that sticks an extra hundred quid on the price, even though I've already got insurance. Could have been anything. Fuck knows.

And fuck cares.

Cos see Stevie?

Stevie's all right.

I have these burglars. They burgle my house.

Or so they think!

It started a while back. I can't remember the first time they did it, but they obviously enjoyed it so much that they decided to do it again, and again, and again. It must be like a pair of comfy old slippers. Each time they smash one of the windows and invite themselves in, well, it must be like a trip down memory lane for them. I can imagine them casting their minds back to that very first time, and all the times thereafter, reminiscing, telling stories, filling the house with laughter at my expense. Aye, I can just imagine them thinking about all those memories wrapped up in that very house.

And they'd be wrong!

See, I got myself an alarm. That's how it began. I decided to get myself an alarm, just to give these chaps a subtle indication that I didn't want them around, that I'd rather have the house to myself, thank you very much. But when I went to the shop and saw the prices of these things, these alarms? Jeezo! The guy said to me, ‘Well, you can't put a price on peace of mind.' But at that price? I think I'd rather be robbed! Then I said, ‘Here, hold on, what are those alarms over there? They're not even half the price.' The guy told me that's because they were fake. Oh, I liked that. These burglars thinking my alarm was real when it wasn't, I liked the idea of that very much. The guy recommended against it, he recommended getting the real deal, but no no no. A fake one, please. That would show them. I don't like lying, but for breaking into my house, my private property, that's what they get.

Anyway, it didn't work. They must have seen right through it, the way those experts on
Antiques Roadshow
can spot a phony from a hundred yards. That's prisons for you: universities of crime, aren't they?

So I went back to the shop and complained. The guy said, well, he did recommend getting the real deal, and that it would have saved me money in the long run – a right smart arse. He tried to punt it to me again, the alarm, the real one, but this time he also advised me to get some cameras, all that CCTV carry-on. My God, if I thought the price of the alarm was bad, the cameras? He was obviously trying to get me while I was down, it was worse than being mugged at knifepoint. Then I said, ‘Here, wait a minute, what are those cameras over there? Why are they so cheap?' And he told me it was because those were fake, just like the fake alarm. Oh, I liked that. He advised against it, but then again, he would: commission. No, I'll just have the fake one, if you please. I couldn't wait to get it home. I just imagined the burglars seeing the flashing red light and running for the hills. I just pictured them watching
Crimewatch
that night, biting their nails down to the knuckles, waiting for their faces to appear. But their faces wouldn't appear, because it was a trick! And it would serve them bloody right.