Everything You Need: Short Stories (3 page)

Spike made a big, slow performance of removing his jacket and hanging it over the back of a nearby chair, revealing he was wearing a tight T-shirt underneath, no sleeves, of course — his standard response to this kind of heckling. It got a giggle from the girls but he knew immediately it had only been half-smart. Two of the women started ogling his body rather obviously, and all three men (only in their late twenties, Spike guessed, but already running to seed) might as well have had the words “We hate you even more now” written across their faces.

He soldiered on, running a few basic coin routines and disappearing a handkerchief. The girls lapped it up. The men scowled. One went out front of the pub to have a cigarette and on his return made a point of standing to the side of Spike, evidently hoping to be able to catch him palming. Usually if this happened Spike took it as a sign it was time to leave. The girls were still loving it, however — and being free with the pound coins, too, pressing a few upon him after every trick rather than waiting to given him something at the end as was usual. Spike was aware they were doing this as if he was a male stripper at a hen night, and that this was likely to antagonize the males in the group yet further, but found he didn’t care. He realized he was tired of the stupid people in this city, in this entire land. He wanted to call it a night. He wanted to go home. But
really
home. Not back to his shitty room and its grey promise of doing all this again tomorrow.

‘Yeah yeah, it’s fabulous, mate,’ one of the men said, the one who’d make the first quip about Spike’s sleeve. ‘Very fucking clever. You should go on X Factor or something. But we were talking, okay? Run along now.’

Spike smiled. ‘Fair enough. Just one more, though, okay? You’ll like this one.’

The man rolled his eyes and looked like he wanted to enter an altercation, to get tough in the hope of impressing the womenfolk, but one of the others — the man who’d gone out for a cigarette — held up his hand.

‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Amaze me.’

I couldn’t amaze you, you bastard
,
Spike thought,
you’re too dead for that
. He had the sense not to say this out loud, but not enough sense to stop what he did next.

He got one of the girls to pick a card, write her name on it — which was Karen — and return it to the pack. He then involved the entire group in shuffling, cutting, messing the deck around, producing the card as if by accident a couple of times, as a prelude to the real trick — and then had Karen tear it into four pieces. He put everything into the performance, being as charming as possible, turning The Thing up to the max, and even the guys were getting into it. Two of them, anyway — the guy who’d demanded to be amazed was sitting back, watching, his beady little eyes on everything Spike did.

Spike ran the routine round the houses, stretching it out, and then set up the big reveal — getting the Karen girl to close her eyes and pick a card from the pack at random.

She turned it over, clearly expecting it to be the one she’d written her name on... but it wasn’t.

Everyone looked confused. One of the guys laughed harshly. ‘Fucked it up, haven’t you mate.’

Spike held up his finger for silence.

‘I
may
have,’ he admitted, tentatively. ‘Magic’s unpredictable. But sometimes... sometimes something else happens. Sometimes the magic does its own thing. Now usually... yeah, usually, that card you picked should be your card, madam.’

‘Madam?’ shrieked one of the other girls, and the table laughed. ‘She’s a
right
madam!’

‘Sometimes, though,’ Spike said, ‘sometimes the card slips into the future. It shows us what it
thinks
is going to happen. Or
could
happen, maybe. And...’

He hesitated, turned to the ‘Amaze me’ man, who was still sitting back in his chair, arms folded, still unimpressed. ‘You feeling comfortable, mate?’

‘What?’

‘Just wondered. You’re sitting a bit awkwardly.’

The man opened his mouth to make fun, but then seemed to realize that he
did
feel uncomfortable. He adjusted the way he was sitting.

‘Thought so,’ Spike said, nodding. ‘Feel a little tight around the... well, I don’t know how to put it. Around the
private
regions? Do you? That what it is?’

The group sniggered – even the other two guys. Five or six people from other tables had joined the crowd now, too, standing in a ring around them.

‘Maybe something got stuck down there,’ Spike said, and by now there was no humor in his voice. It was soft, considered, serious. ‘Maybe you should check.’

‘Check what?’

‘That everything’s okay. Go on — stick your hand down there. Down your trousers. Won’t be the first time today, I’ll bet.’

More laughter from the girls, and a couple more people drifted over from a nearby table. Amaze Me man was glaring angrily at Spike now, no longer wanting to be the center of attention but knowing that something was up.

‘Twat,’ he muttered, but then — making a show of how jolly okay he was with doing it — he stuffed his hand down the front of his suit trousers. ‘Happy now?’

Then he frowned, and withdrew his hand much more slowly. It re-emerged holding a folded up playing card.

The others around the table fell silent.

‘Ah. That’ll be the problem,’ Spike said, cheerfully. ‘Like to open it for me? Tell your future?’

The man unfolded the card. Stared at it for a long, pregnant moment, and then threw it down on the table.

It landed face up, the girl’s signature obvious for everyone to see. ‘There you go,’ Spike said, into the stunned silence. ‘Looks like maybe you
will
get Karen in your pants tonight after all.’

The crowd’s reaction was...
very big
.

Spike held out his collecting bag and listened to coins raining into it. He kept his eyes on the man he’d just embarrassed, and by now Spike was smiling again.

‘Amazed yet?’ he said, and winked.

H
e left
the pub immediately afterward, walking up the street and around a couple of corners to his next intended venue. As soon as he got inside, however, he realized he was done for the night. This pub was virtually empty, the atmosphere dead. That could actually be the best environment for what he did, when he had the energy to create the mood himself: right now, he did not.

He got a pint of strong beer and went and sat in the quietest corner. If he was finished for the night, he should go home. He didn’t want to. Going home meant going past the alleyway with the doorway and finding he couldn’t really go home. His room wasn’t home.

For the first time in weeks he wondered whether there was anything else he could try. There must be places in this city where people like him collected. Meeting points. Notice boards. Ways of getting in contact. Not everyone came here on solo missions. He’d heard rumors of sleepers, too, who lived here for longer periods in case of urgent need of mobilization. Not spying, but spies all the same. The problem was that he didn’t know any of them, or where they might be. If he’d thought this through properly before he came then he could have tried to see if there was any lore on the subject, something specific to London (though of course if he’d thought it through properly before he came, he
wouldn’t have come
). None of the books he’d pored over in shops and libraries here contained anything beyond old, mangled superstitions. Hampstead Heath had nothing. It was dead under all of the Thames bridges. The remaining scrap of the Stone of London — wedged into a nondescript wall in The City — no longer had any power at all.

It was like being in a dream where you can’t wake up. A dream in which you’ve left your home, having come to despise it, but then realize — with the heart-piercing intensity you only get in dreams – that you were wrong.

The first pint was followed by another, and one more. He lost count after that but he was still sitting in his corner in a now-empty pub when the gangly Australian barman called time. By then Spike’s mood was atrocious, and half of that was knowing how stupid he’d been in the previous pub. The way he earned his living was precarious. If he blew it he was in very serious trouble. He couldn’t do anything else. He’d have no money. He’d be wholly lost.

‘Finish up and piss off,’ the barman said, when he came by the table for the third time.

Spike looked up. The man took a hurried step back. ‘Seriously, it’s gone time, mate,’ he muttered, then retreated behind the counter.

Spike finished his last half-pint in one swallow and got unsteadily to his feet. As he wove his way past the bar he saw something sparkling on the floor, and bent down to pick up a ten-pence piece.

‘See a penny, pick it up,’ the barman said.

Spike nodded, but only to himself. He slipped the coin into his back pocket and lurched toward the door.

T
hey were waiting
for him ten feet away down the street. They must have been there a while because they looked cold and impatient. Men with real courage might have come inside the pub to find him, but these were not that kind.

‘Hello, magic boy,’ the first one said.

Spike half-turned back toward the pub, but he’d already heard the barman locking up from the inside. The three men were walking closer to him now.

‘Look,’ he said.

‘No,’ one of the other men replied. ‘We’ve done enough looking, thanks very much. Completely manked our evening, you did. Any one of us could be screwing any one of those birds by now, if you hadn’t fucked it up.’

‘It was just a little magic,’ Spike said.

‘No,’ said one of the others.

It was the man who’d gone out for a cigarette, the man who’d told Spike to amaze him. He’d gone around behind while Spike was concentrating on the pair in front.

‘My uncle used to piss about with magic,’ he said. ‘Boring cunt, he was, but he wasn’t bad at the tricks. Tried to teach me, too, so I know how it works. I know the tricks. But what you were doing
wasn’t
tricks, was it?’

Spike eyed him cautiously. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He could see the other two men didn’t understand either. ‘Of course it was tricks. I’m a magician.’

‘I don’t know what you are,’ the man said, thoughtfully. ‘But you’re clever. I caught you using a thumb tip early on, but I didn’t say anything because the way you used it was... weird. It was like you didn’t actually need it. Couple of the things with the coins looked dodgy too.’

‘What’s a thumb tip?’ one of the others asked. The man ignored him.

‘But then that last trick,’ he said. ‘That’s when I knew for sure. That was impossible.’

Spike tried to laugh it off. ‘It’s just practice, mate, that’s all.’

Amaze Me shook his head. ‘No. There’s no misdirection in the world could have pulled that off. You never came anywhere near me. You fucked up. That was actual magic.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Spike said, trying to laugh it off, ‘but it’s time for me to go home.’

He started backing away but he was too drunk and the men had missed out on what they’d believed was a trio of easy shags, and had no intention of going home without a fight as recompense.

Suddenly all three were in fast movement.

Just before he passed out, his head in the road, gasping from another kick in the stomach, Spike saw a black cat sitting in the shadows on the other side of the street. For a moment its eyes looked a sharp grey, and then something stranger seemed to happen. It raised one of its paws off the ground and dropped it, raised it once more and dropped it again, in a chopping motion.

Spike lost consciousness a split second later, however, so this could just have been his imagination.

H
e made
it to the alleyway. The door was locked, of course. He knelt down in front of it, resting his bruised cheek against the coldness of its battered surface. It was soothing. For a moment he thought he could smell something through the keyhole, the scent of fresh new grass warming in Spring sunlight.

He fumbled in his pocket, wincing against the pain in his fingers, and found the ten pence he’d picked up earlier. He wedged it into a crack in the old brickwork.

‘I found a penny,’ he whispered, ‘and picked it up. All I want is a little luck. I’m sorry. I messed up. Don’t leave me here. Let me come home. Please.’

Nothing happened. Eventually he hauled himself laboriously to his feet and went home.

H
e couldn’t work
the next day, or the one after that. He spent the weekend in bed, staring at the wall. He didn’t eat. Late on Sunday afternoon he walked far enough to get a coffee. It made him feel sick. He returned to his room and went back to bed. He dreamed of forest clearings and hills covered in clover. He dreamed of mountains sparkling in harsh moonlight. He woke in the middle of the night to find his face wet with tears.

When he woke on Monday morning, however, and experimentally waggled his fingers, he found that — while painful — they moved well enough. Probably he should take another day off, but he didn’t want to. It wasn’t even about the money. It was about a dumb and stupid plan that had grown in his mind over the weekend. Unlike most of his mistakes, he acknowledged this one was dumb and stupid right from the start. He didn’t care.

He got dressed. He went out onto the streets. He walked to the nearest café and ate what he could. He’d long ago found that most things here disagreed with him, and so he did not order eggs or bacon or sausage, though all smelled good. He had a piece of toast, no butter — which also made him feel nauseous — and a stewed tomato. The tomato tasted like hot water. The bread like old leaves.

He walked into Soho, not thinking much. He walked past the newsagents and noticed that the box of firewood outside was much fuller now. The new logs looked fatter than the first lot he’d seen, as if chopped from a different tree.