Goodnight Steve McQueen (3 page)

“Bet she won’t be saying that when you’re on Top of the Pops.”

“Exactly. Take tonight there were three record companies down there tonight.”

“To see you?”

“Well… no, they were there for the headline band. But they might have seen us as well. You never know.”

“So have any record companies ever been down to see you?”

“Yeah, a few. I mean, we’ve had a lot of interest. My last band nearly got a deal with Polydor. It’s just a matter of time really.”

“That’s so cool. How much money do you think they’ll give you when you get signed?”

“Dunno, really, depends on the advances and the points and all that.”

“What’s points?”

I’m not entirely sure I like the way the conversation is going so I decide it’s time to turn things round a bit.

“What about you?” I say, handing her the half-bottle of Absolut. “What did you want to be when you were a kid?”

“Honestly?

“Honestly.”

“Oh, I can’t say it. It’s too embarrassing.”

“No, go on, I won’t laugh, I promise.”

“It’s stupid really,” she says. “I wanted to write detective novels. I wanted to be Agatha Christie. I mean, imagine that, how unrealistic is that?”

And she takes a long swig of vodka and gazes out of the open window on to the street.

“But that’s your favourite thing about me. The fact that I haven’t given up, that I haven’t been sucked in. The fact that I haven’t succumbed to the whole fast car, porcini mushroom, power suit, Arena Homme, designer bog roll thing.”

“Like me, you mean?”

“No, not like you. I mean, you wouldn’t get in Arena Homme. You’re not a Homme.”

“I’m serious. That’s what you think of me, isn’t it, that I’ve copped out, joined the rat race, gone over to the other side?”

“Of course not. You’re different.”

“How am I different, Danny? How?”

Because you’re Alison.

She thinks we should go to bed. She doesn’t think we’re getting anywhere. She thinks we’re both too tired and too drunk to say anything sensible and she doesn’t want us to get things out of proportion. We can talk in the morning, she says. She’ll go in late. Everything will make more sense in the morning.

You know you’re in trouble when your girlfriend starts saying things like it’ll make more sense in the morning.

“How you feeling?”

“Great,” I say, hoping she can’t smell my breath from her side of the bed.

“Not too hung over?”

“No, not too bad, really.”

“You’re lucky. I feel like an elephant took a dump in my head. I’m gonna make some coffee. You want some?”

“Yeah, coffee, that’ll be great.”

The sun is streaming through the net curtains, there’s a warm breeze wafting in from the road, and I’m smoking my first Marlboro Light of the day in Alison Poole’s bed. I can’t believe my luck. I can’t believe how great she is. I feel like I already know everything about her, everything I’ll ever need to know:

“What is this, Twenty Questions?1

“Come on, I want to know everything about you where you grew up, what your parents did, who makes you laugh, what clubs you used to go to on a Saturday night.”

“Oh God, it’s really boring. My parents are both doctors, Dad’s in orthopaedics…”

“Bones, right?”

“Yeah, bones, and Mum’s a psychiatrist.”

“Shit. Does that mean you’ve been shrinking me out all night?”

“No way. I don’t know the first thing about it. I reckon most of it’s bullshit anyway. I mean, why is it always your parents’ fault? Why is it every bloke who’s even remotely fucked up always blames it on having an overbearing mother or something?”

I nod sagely at this point.

“I mean, I think you make your own life. You can’t go on blaming your parents for ever, can you?”

“No,” I say. “Certainly not.”

“So where did you grow up, then?”

“Epingham.”

“Epingham?”

It’s near Lincoln. More of a village really. Farms, cottages, church fetes, everyone know’s everyone else’s business you know the sort of thing.”

“No, not as such…”

“Well, I couldn’t wait to get out. Sometimes I think my life only started when I moved down to London. There’s only so many weekends you can spend drinking Snakebite and getting chatted up by pig farmers in Mustang Sally’s before you start to go a bit mental.”

“Mustang Sally’s?”

“Yeah, Lincoln’s finest it’s either that or the Ritzy.”

“Sounds like a riot.”

“Well, it wasn’t, believe me. They’re not as idyllic as you think, these small towns. There’s all this pent-up aggression everywhere. Honestly, I saw more pub fights on a single Saturday night in Lincoln than I did the whole time I was living in King’s Cross.”

“So where did you study, then?”

“North London Uni. I did English. I’m just finishing a postgrad in marketing and information technology.”

“Wow, that’s er… that’s…”

“Yeah, I know, pretty dull stuff.”

“No, no, it’s very… interesting.”

“Well, I did think about doing journalism for a while but… I don’t know, this seemed more practical, I suppose. And I’m quite into the computing side of things, especially all the Internet stuff. I reckon the Web is going to be pretty huge.”

The only thing I know about the Web at this point is that spiders make them so I say:

“What about medicine? You didn’t fancy being a quack like your old man?”

“No way,” she says, grimacing at the thought. “I practically faint at the sight of blood. It used to drive my parents completely mad. I remember sneaking into my dad’s study when I was little and having a look at some of his medical books, really gory stuff, you know people with half their heads hanging off, kids with the skin peeled back off their arms and legs. I almost threw up on his desk. Honestly, I

don’t know how people cope with it. And anyway,” she says, “I’ve had enough of hospitals to last a lifetime.” “Why, you’re not ill, are you?”

“No, not me, it’s my younger brother. He’s schizophrenic.” “What, like two personalities?”

“No, nothing like that. But he was sick a lot of the time, just used to disappear somewhere into his head, he’d go quiet and untouchable and there was absolutely no way of reaching him, and other times he’d be totally manic, he’d stay awake for days on end, couldn’t get him to go to sleep, and he’d start obsessing about things. He became convinced there were aliens in Mum’s rose bushes once, and another time he thought Dad was making a nuclear bomb in the shed.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, ‘that must have been pretty rough.” “Yeah, well, he’s been a lot better lately, they’ve pretty much got his drugs sorted out.”

“Was he ever violent or anything?” “Violent? God, no, Rufus wouldn’t hurt a fly.” She looks vulnerable suddenly. She’s hugging her knees to her chest and I can see where the summer sun has brought out the freckles on the bridge of her nose. She suddenly looks very young.

“So,” I say, changing the subject, ‘did you have a pony, then?”

“No! No, I didn’t. Shit, I did not have a bloody pony.” “I bet you did. Girls like you always had ponies.” “What do you mean girls like me? You cheeky fucker.” “You did, didn’t you, and one of those hats and the tight trousers.”

“They’re called jodhpurs, idiot.” “I was right, ha, I knew it … I was right…” She’s hitting me now. Hitting me with a cushion like she wants to kill me, but she’s laughing as much as she’s shouting and she finally runs out of steam and comes over to sit next to me. She smells of perfume and tobacco and fresh sweat. “My turn, my turn now.”

“Go on then, ask me anything you like.”

“I’m thinking. I’m thinking. Oh, I know, what was the name of the first girl you kissed?”

“Vivian.”

“What was the name of the last girl you kissed?”

“Joanne.”

“What sign are you?”

“No idea. What sign is November?”

“Not sure. Aquarius, I think, or is it Cancer? I don’t know. It’s bollocks really, isn’t it?”

I smile and pass her the remains of the joint.

“Come on then, what else?”

“Oh, I don’t know, em… what’s your middle name?”

“Danny.”

“Danny? Isn’t that your first name as well?”

“It’s a long story,” I say.

Alison undresses quickly and gets into bed. She plugs in her mobile, turns off her laptop and rolls over to switch out the bedside light. I can hear the soft shoopshoop of her breathing as she starts to drift off to sleep. I wait for her to say it. It’s one of those stupid codes we have: one of those things she does to let me know that she’s not cross with me any more. And then she says it: quietly, sleepily, under her breath.

“Goodnight,” she says. “Goodnight, Steve McQueen.”

“Wow! Why did you change it? God, I wish I was called something like that. I think you should use it all the time. I would.” “Trust me, it only sounds good when you’re stoned.” “Yeah, but it would be great when you were booking flights and restaurants or stuff, wouldn’t it? Imagine their faces. They’d be bound to give you the best table, and there’s nothing they could do because it really is your name.”

It’s not true. I tell her about the night me and Vince took magic mushrooms and tried to blag our way into the premiere of Highlander II, and nearly got ourselves arrested:

“So I’m shouting at Sean Connery at the top of my voice, Sean, Sean, it’s me, don’t you recognise me? It’s me, Steve McQueen, back from the dead. Sean, turn round. Turn round, and get them to let me in, or I’ll tell the whole world you were always a fucking baldy bastard.”

We’re in fits now, we’re corp sing from the dope and the vodka and the mountain of sexual tension, and suddenly she just reaches over and kisses me. Typical that it was Alison who made the first move.

It wasn’t the best sex either of us had ever had but it was pretty spectacular nonetheless. She was perfect: confident and sexy and uninhibited, and I remember lying next to her as we fell into a hazy post-coital sleep, and that was the very first time she said it.

“Goodnight,” she said. “Goodnight, Steve McQueen.”

“You’re late.”

“Sorry, Kostas, I’ll make up the time.”

“Well, you’d better had, I got A Fistful of Dollars, A Fistful of Fingers, The Good the Bads and the Ugly and A Town Called Bastard and I don’t know if they is supposed to go in Kongfoo or Porn.”

“Westerns, Kostas, they’re all westerns.”

“What, even A Town Called Bastardy

“Yeah, Kostas, especially A Town Called Bastard. You might like it, actually. Telly Savalas is in it.”

“Telly Savalas is a very nice actor. There’s nothing wrong to say about Telly Savalas. Why you don’t like Telly Savalas?”

I give up. Sometimes you just can’t win.

I’ve worked in Kostas Videos in Crouch End for about five years now and it suits me fine. I do three days a week, alternate evenings and the odd weekend, and it gives me all the time I need for the band.

There have been quite a few changes since I started. It used to be that we were the only video shop for miles, and then they opened a pair of Blockbusters one in Muswell Hill, one on the other side of the Broadway and if it hadn’t been for me, Kostas would probably have gone out of business there and then.

It was a total mess. He never had enough new releases, he never remembered to check if the rentals had been returned on the right day or not, and he was forever sending people home with the wrong film in the right box. It made them furious the only reason they put up with it was because

there was nowhere else to go. And then the Blockbusters came along.

He tried everything: lowering the cost of the films, offering two for one, giving away free popcorn and crisps, but nothing worked. When his halloumi kebab promotional night failed to pull in the punters Kostas finally held up his hands. And then I had a brilliant idea.

“We’re going to go specialist, Kostas.”

“What you mean, like porns?”

“No, not porns. I mean, yes, some porn, but the good stuff Russ Meyer, sixties sexploitation, stuff like that. We’ll do rare stuff, stuff people can’t get hold of anywhere else. Art movies and old classics, foreign films and black-and-whites, Indian cinema, Frank Capra, John Waters, Charlie Chaplin… I don’t know. What do you think?”

“Will it keep the shop open?”

“It might.”

“Then we give it a go.”

It took a while to catch on but within six months people were coming from all over North London. We could get anything they wanted in forty-eight hours, and by the end of the year we’d built up a library of rare and interesting films that kept most of the punters happy without having to order in at all. The business was saved. Kostas was saved. He even came up with a brand-new logo for the front of the shop:

KOSTAS VIDEOS, NOT JUST THE SAME OLD CRAPS.

People seemed to like it.

We’ve built up a fiercely loyal clientele over the years. Most of them I know by name, but out of everyone Sheila is probably my all-time favourite. She must be eighty if she’s a day, but she’s completely mad for martial arts movies. She’s seen every one we’ve got (twice) but she still comes in three times a week to choose herself another tape. Regular as clockwork, right

after she’s had her second cup of tea at Hot Pepper Jelly. We let her take them out for twenty pence a day.

“Afternoon, Daniel. How are you today? I missed you yesterday, didn’t

I?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t working yesterday, Sheila. What can I do you for?”

“Oh, I didn’t like this one much,” she says, handing me back a copy of Young and Dangerous 3. “Not nearly as good as Enter the Dragon.”

“Well, nothing’s as good as Enter the Dragon.”

“Quite so, but perhaps you have something a little more… feisty. This one had much too much talking in it. Not enough fighting, you see. I like the fighting bits the best.”

Till see what I can do.”

I head off to the kung fu section to find her a copy of The Bruce Lee Story and she decides to follow me. She seems bothered about something.

“Now then,” she says, searching for her glasses at the bottom of her Budgens carrier bag, ‘you don’t seem quite your usual self today. You seem a little off colour to me. Am I right?”

I know there’s no point in lying to her so I say, “Yeah, you’re right, Sheila, I’ve had a bit of an argument with my girlfriend.”