Goodnight Steve McQueen (15 page)

All day long.

The post is mainly bills. A red one from British Gas, a black

one from British Telecom and a small brown paper parcel decorated with glitter that turns out to be from Kate. It’s a pamphlet on reiki. It has a note pinned to it. Dear Danny, it says, really cool that you seemed so interested in this. Matty thinks it’s all a load of rubbish. Give me a ring some time and let me know what you think… xx Kate.

And then I find it. Tucked into the folds of a take away pizza menu. A postcard. From Alison. It’s a picture of two fat men in traditional Belgian dress and they’re drinking giant flagons of beer and slapping each other’s podgy thighs with their outstretched hands. I turn it over to read the message.

Weather is here, wish you were lovely. Miss you loads, Alison xxx.

Just over a week and she’ll be home. I suddenly can’t wait to see her.

Alison is coming home tomorrow. I like the sound of that. I think I’ll say it again. Alison is coming home. Tomorrow.

I’ve done everything right this time. I’ve booked a posh restaurant for Saturday night, blagged the whole weekend off from Kostas and filled the fridge with six different flavours of Bacardi Breezer. Maybe I should have one now, just to see whether they’re OK. I’ve never tried the watermelon one before and I’m quite keen to see what it tastes like. Ugh. Disgusting. Disgusting in a pleasantly sickly, mildly alcoholic sort of way. I wonder if the cranberry one is any better. Hmmm. Not bad. Not bad at all. Maybe if I mix them both together.

Anyway, it’s going to be a top weekend. Kostas told me about this swanky restaurant in the West End that all the celebs go to, and we’re going to take taxis everywhere and go on to a late bar and I’m going to pay for everything on my credit card. Well, why not? I mean, if that nice bloke at Barclaycard is willing to put up my credit limit by another two hundred quid, then why not make use of it? Come to think of it, it’s easier getting credit now that I’m in debt than it ever was when I was solvent. Honestly. I get new offers every day: leaflets from Access and Goldfish and Amex and glossy ten-page catalogues from Egg. They all say exactly the same thing:

Dear sir, we hear you are very badly in debt and a loser. We would like to offer you one of our platinum cards so that you can plunge yourself still deeper into destitution and penury. How’s about it? Best wishes, your friendly neighbourhood bailiffs.

PS: we hear you own a very nice Blaupunkt stereo (with turntable) and a vintage Statocaster guitar. How would you feel about us coming to collect them in the middle of the night and selling them off at auction for a fraction of their real worth? Just an idea xxx.

Still, bankruptcy is a way off yet: I’ve got just enough left for some flowers and a haircut and a packet of Featherlite condoms.

Why did I come in here? What possessed me? I knew this was a bad idea. I knew I should have stayed in Crouch End and gone to Hair on the Hill. This place is way too trendy. Everyone’s listening to Arab Strap and reading Dazed and Confused and I’m beginning to wish I’d stuck with my regular barber, Mr. George.

“Hello, my name is Patio and I’ll be your hairdresser this afternoon.”

“Right, good, nice one. Hello.”

“You look a little tense, yeah, how about a nice vodka and cranberry juice to help you chill?”

I hate that. I hate it when people tell you that you look tense. Because I’m not tense. I mean I wasn’t, but I am now. The very act of Patio suggesting that I am tense has made me tense. Still, a barber’s that serves drinks while you get your hair trimmed can’t be all bad, can it?

“Is everything OK?” says Patio cautiously. “You’ve gone a bit pale.”

“No… I’m fine. Wow… interesting haircut… looking good.”

“You sure?

“Oh, yes. Absolutely’

“Good.”

“Fine, then.”

“OK, fine.”

I’m lying. It looks terrible. Mr. George would never have done the whole haircut with a Bic razor. I mean, what is he doing? Why is he slicing into my hair with the edge of the blade like that? Why did I say yes when he suggested I go a bit shorter on top? That’s it. I’ve had enough. I look like a toilet brush. I’m going to say something. I am.

“Urhuumm.”

“Sorry?”

“Urhuumm,” I say again.

“Is something wrong?”

“Weller … I was just wondering … I mean, obviously you’re only halfway through and it’s not going to look like this when it’s finished … is it?”

“You don’t like what I’m doing?”

“No, it’s not that… the thing is I usually don’t have it quite so short.”

“Well, what d’you want me to do, stick it back on for you?”

“No, obviously not. I was just thinking that maybe now might be a good time to stop cutting. Maybe now might be a good time to think about moving on to the drying phase of the haircut.”

“Stop cutting?”

“Yes.”

“And leave it like this?”

“Yes.” “All ragged like this?”

“Well—’

“Because I think you look loads better already,” he says, pushing the remains of my fringe into a jaunty sideways spike. “And you want to make a good impression, don’t you? When your girlfriend comes home.”

“Yeah,” I say, imagining Alison spotting me on the platform and being too embarrassed to get off the train. “I suppose it looks a bit better than it did.”

“Of course it does,” he says, running his comb over my head like he’s searching for nits. “I don’t know where you usually get it done but it looked like you’d been letting the family dog have a chew on it or something.”

“OK then,” I say, finishing off my second Sea Breeze and thinking about ordering myself another. “Maybe you’re right. I could use a bit of an image change now you mention it. I’m sure it’ll look OK when it’s finished.”

“Of course it will,” he says, rubbing his hands together and juicing up his electric clippers. “And now we’ve come this far, how’s about we take you a little bit shorter on the sides?”

I walk up Dean Street with an itchy neck, a near-naked scalp and a much lighter wallet in my trousers. Fifty quid. Fifty sodding quid for a lousy haircut, a painful head massage and a couple of piss-weak cocktails that I thought I was getting for free. Still, no point in moaning about it now; I’m determined not to let anything spoil this weekend. I’ll just go for a quick look at the secondhand guitars in Denmark Street and then I’ll buy some flowers and head back to the flat to make a start on the tidying up.

There are two types of tidy in this world: me tidy and Alison tidy. Me tidy involves doing the washing up, pouring a splash of bleach down the bog and piling the week’s newspapers into a heap on the coffee table. Alison tidy is something completely different. I’ve never been able to work out exactly what she does. It’s weird. It doesn’t seem to involve that much extra cleaning, it’s more to do with putting everything back in its proper place: the way she arranges the cushions on the sofa, the way she arranges the pillows on the bed, the way she puts everything away in the kitchen cupboards and hangs up all the mugs on their shiny silver hooks. I know she’s got some anal kind of arrangement involving the storage jars on the kitchen shelf but I can never remember exactly how it’s supposed to go. Is it spaghetti then lentils or lentils then spaghetti? Maybe

the spaghetti’s not meant to go up there at all. Maybe it should go in the cupboard with the rice. Yeah, that looks better. That makes much more sense.

The other thing about Alison is that she’s always throwing things away: the newspapers (before I’ve had a chance to read them), the TV guide (before I’ve had a chance to find out what’s on TV), and any packet of out-of-date food that she suspects I might be particularly looking forward to. She also has a habit of throwing away my Studiospares catalogues and my back issues of Q. And my copies of Sound on Sound. And my clothes. And my plectrums. And any piece of soft furnishing that we’ve had for longer than six months. I can’t keep up with it. She must have spent a fortune on throws and lampshades and cushions, and the thing is I quite liked the cushions we had when we first moved in here. Must remember not to tell her that, though. When I said I preferred the last bedroom lampshade to the one she’d just lugged all the way home from Habitat it sent her into a bit of a rage.

There. I’ve done it. I’ve cleaned the place from top to bottom. I’ve even changed all the sheets and swept underneath the cracked bit of lino on the kitchen floor that gets all the bits of cheese stuck in it. It looks good. It looks like a hotel. A cheap one. In Torquay.

I arrange the flowers as artfully as I can which is not very artful at all on account of cutting them way too short for the vase and put them on the chest of drawers in the bedroom. I’m knackered. I keep thinking that there’s something else that I’m meant to do but I can’t remember what it is. Maybe I should have another one of Alison’s Bacardi Breezers to perk myself up. Maybe I should make some green curry and see if there’s anything on the telly about clitorises. Maybe I should get an early night; I’ve got to be up by midday, I’ve got to make sure I’m at Waterloo by half four.

Today is starting out very well indeed. I managed to trump the shower by jumping out a millisecond before the water turned cold and I narrowly avoided answering another tedious phone call from Kate. She’s been trying to get hold of me all week to find out what I thought of the pamphlet she sent me, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to shake her off. It’s my own fault the longer I go without telling her that I couldn’t give a toss whether my moon was rising in Mercury or setting in Sainsbury’s car park, the more she thinks I might be into it. Still, not to worry, much more important things to consider: like what I should wear when I go to pick up Alison from Waterloo this afternoon.

Try on all six of my clothes, take them all off, put them all on again and have a look under the bed to see if there’s anything that I’ve missed. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for. Something clean, obviously; something that looks like I’ve made an effort but doesn’t make me look too gay. Something slightly scruffy but still suitably hard. Actually, everything I put on makes me look hard now on account of my excellent number 2, haircut. I’ve decided that I quite like it, except for the fact that it’s exposed a couple of grey hairs at the sides. When did that happen, then? When did I start getting grey hairs at the sides? Maybe I could try dyeing them. Maybe I should see if Alison still has that box of L’Oreal Born Blonde in the bathroom. Maybe I should put my underpants on my head and see if it makes me look anything like David Ginola.

Spend a quality moment in front of the bathroom mirror wearing my underpants on my head and telling myself that I’m ‘worth if in an “Allo “Allo French accent before deciding

that I look a complete cunt and going back to the wardrobe to put on my Brownies T-shirt and my navy-blue hooded top. Perfect. Why didn’t I think of that straight away? Never fails to please.

For once the traffic in central London is fairly clear and I arrive at Waterloo Station with time to spare. Alison’s train isn’t due for another half an hour sol buy myself a stale chicken tikka sandwich, pop into W.H. Smith’s to read through the latest issue of Sound on Sound and spend a few minutes checking out the columns of horny Parisian women pouring off the Eurostars on to the dusty platform. They look incredible: tight skirts, high heels, skinny waists and tiny, low-cut Tshirts clinging to their snobby, ‘no chance, mate’ tits.

I have a thing about Parisian women. Ever since a gang of long-haired Gallic, super-sluts came to visit our school on a language exchange scheme in the summer of 1986. They were fantastic. They smoked Gitanes. They thought we were all wankers. They kept the entire fifth form including half of the teachers in a permaaent ball-aching lather for the whole two weeks they were there. Especially Colette. She looked like a cross between Sylvia Kristel in Emmanuelle II and 0 from The Story of O. I wonder if Alison has learnt any French while she’s been in Bruges. I wonder if she fancies renting The Story of O. I wonder if she’ll notice that I’ve had a haircut.

“You’ve had your hair cut.” “I know. D’you like it?” “Yeah, you look cute.” “Cute?”

“Yeah, you look about twelve. It’s cute.” “Not hard?” “No.”

“Not even a bit’?“I “No… not really.” “What about if I go like this?”

“Nope. Now you just look like you’ve got a bad case of wind.”

I relax my eyebrows, unsnarl my lip and go into a bit of a sulk. That does it. I’m definitely going to have Patio killed. He’s definitely going to the top of my list.

“Hey,” she says, attempting to cheer me up, “I’ve bought you a present.”

“Wow,” I say, pulling off the wrapping paper and taking a look inside, ‘the European Parliament building made entirely out of chocolate fondant icing. You really shouldn’t have.”

We’ve been home less than three and a half minutes and Alison has already scored a hat trick.

“But whyr

“Why what?”

“Why would you want to put the spaghetti in the cupboard?”

“Er … to go with the riceT

“But it’s got its own jar. It goes on the shelf.”

“Yeah, right, I forgot.”

“OK, but look, it looks much better out, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, I see what you mean,” I say, stepping back and rubbing my chin. “It looks great. Really sets off the lentils.”

“And what’s this?”

“Oh, nothing, it’s from Kate. It’s just some pile of old nonsense about reiki or something.”

“I can see that, but what’s it doing here?”

“Kate posted it to me. She came over to organise this gig we’re doing at her art colle—’

“Kate came over beret’

“Yeah. Why?”

“No reason. Was Matty with her?”

“No, er… she was on her own.”

“Right.”

“Danny.”

“What? What is it?”

“Have you been using my computer while I’ve been away?”

“Er… yesr

“I thought so.”

“Why? What’s wrong with it? I haven’t broken it, have I?”

“No.”

“Shit, I didn’t spill Bombay Mix into the keyboard again, did I?”

“No.”

“Well, what then? Why have you got that look?”