Ten Stories About Smoking (20 page)

[left]
The blonde woman sucks the man’s penis the moment it comes out of the dark-haired woman’s anus. He puts his penis in the anus of the other blonde woman.

[right]
Tammy Fallon has bleached blonde hair and is wearing a purple dress. She pauses then speaks, ‘The families were angered by the court’s decision that no civil
reparations will be lodged against Steele’s estate. This follows allegations that Steele deliberately faked a mandatory HIV test prior to the shooting of the pornographic film
The Lost
Girls
. All performers later tested positive for HIV. Michaels, de La Hoya, and Griffin all died last year.’

[left]
He puts his penis in the dark-haired woman’s mouth. He puts his penis in the vagina of the dark-haired woman.

[right]
‘They were killed by that man,’ a woman says. She is the mother of the other blonde woman. They show a photograph of the dead man. Then a picture of the other blonde
woman. ‘He as good as put a gun to their head and pulled the trigger.’

[left]
He takes his penis in his hand. The three women line up in front of him.

[right]
‘He can’t pay for his crime, but we demand justice,’ a man says. He is the father of the dark-haired woman. They show a picture of the dark-haired woman, then a
photograph of the blonde woman. Tammy Fallon looks serious.

[left]
The man ejaculates over their faces. The three women kiss.

[right]
Then the reporter says: ‘Tammy Fallon, CBS news, Oakland.’

The screens fade to black.

For a moment there was silence. Then the applause came. James, Johnny, Jimmy, Davey, Mickey, Jane and Iola looked almost tearful. As one, the crowd turned to you in
congratulation. As I was brushed aside by well-wishers, I overheard someone say: ‘Sex and death. So simple, yet so . . . expressive.’ Another voice: ‘The use of split screen, such
duality, was inspired.’ And another: ‘It says all it needs to say about our obsession with masculinity.’ And another: ‘The artistic eye is uncanny. It’s naked; both
beautiful and ugly.’ And another: ‘This is one of those moments, you know? A real where-were-you? moment.’

And the applause and the talk overwhelmed me. I went and got myself a drink and sat down. I watched you talk, take the adulation. You glowed in the reflection of their praise, your painted face
ghostly under the lamps. I hardly recognized you at all.

After half an hour, you came over and put your arm around me.

‘Sorry, honey, it’s been crazy. Everyone loves it. Just loves it! What do you think? You love it too?’

I looked down at my drink. ‘I thought it was simple yet expressive,’ I said. ‘That the split screen was inspired. That it was both beautiful and ugly.’

You had a theory that heaven is the constant repetition of the happiest moment of your life.

‘Are you okay?’ you said.

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Go talk to your public.’

‘You sure?’

‘Positive,’ I said. You kissed me on the cheek.

I picked up my jacket. ‘I’ll see you later,’ I said.

‘You’re not going, are you? You can’t go yet,’ you said. ‘There’s loads of people you need to meet.’

‘I’ll see them later,’ I said. ‘I’m just popping out for cigarettes.’

My possessions did not take up much space in the removals van. Six boxes, a suitcase, and a standard lamp I didn’t even like. Mark had a lot of stuff. A cactus, a sofa, a
hostess trolley; a huge oak chest of drawers. Somewhere amongst these items a clock was ticking. I wondered what kind of clock could tick that loudly and resolved to remove its batteries as soon as
we arrived at our new home.

After the van was fully loaded, I sat on the motorized loading bay and pressed the illuminated button. It took me up and down at a steady, even pace. Mark watched me from the pavement, panting,
his hands on his hips and sweat marks already visible on his T-shirt. I took my finger off the button mid climb and jumped off the platform.

‘Come on, Joe,’ he said. ‘Can we please just get going?’

I pushed open the gate and walked through the front door. The flat looked distressed and naked without Andrea’s things; like a clown without make-up. I walked down the hallway where there
should have been a Portuguese
Vertigo
poster and a signed photograph of Sophia Loren. In the lounge where the large mirror she’d bought at a car boot fair used to hang, there was
simply a white space with a nicotine-tinged halo. On the carpet there was a strand of her auburn hair and a collection of stains: red wine, curry, a smudge of lipstick. Could a scientist animate
Andrea from what she’d left behind, I wondered? And if so, would she still go and leave me anyway?

I felt an arm on my shoulder. Mark was modern like that and I shrugged him off. I went into the kitchen, a room cleaner than it had been for the whole time we’d lived there. I turned on
the tap and then turned it off again for no good reason. Outside the window, a crow had landed on the thin, rusting balcony.

‘A crow,’ I said. ‘Crows? Aren’t they bad omens?’

‘No,’ Mark said and sighed. ‘That’s ravens, Joe. Or magpies perhaps. Not crows. Definitely not crows. Now come on, it’s time to go.’

I went into what was once our bedroom. It was dark in there and it smelled slightly funky; no longer fragranced by Andrea’s perfume or those room deodorizers she always bought. I looked
down onto the street. The old man from the corner shop was talking to a woman holding a plant pot. A kid whizzed past on a bike and an old man in a suit and tie paused to tie his shoelace. A youth
in sportswear talked loudly on his phone, his dog brushed and brutish alongside him. Andrea used to say she loved this part of town because it was both belligerent and beautiful; beautiful and
belligerent, just like her.

I sat down on the bed, remembering the day we’d moved in; those first few moments. In this room, I’d complained bitterly about all Andrea’s stuff. ‘Surely,’
I’d said, my hands full of pillows, ‘you don’t need all these cushions.’ She’d said nothing and instead started unpacking a large cardboard box with ‘Hats’
written on it in marker pen.

‘What’s funny?’ Mark said.

I looked at the floor and then at the window.

‘Sometimes nothing,’ I said. ‘Sometimes everything.’

It poured with rain as Mark drove the van across the city. It was hard to see more than a few feet in front and for a moment I imagined us skidding off the road, down an
embankment, dying in agony as the neatly stacked boxes of our possessions were punctured and slashed. Mark leant forward in his seat, the windows steamed, his eyes on the brake lights of the cars
in front. We stalled at an intersection and Mark furiously tried to get the van back into gear. A woman walked along the pavement, so wet through now there was no point in her running for shelter.
The freezing rain beat down on the cab. I sat staring at the
A-to-Z,
hoping that our new home was nowhere near here.

We pulled up outside a pebble-dashed terrace some moments later. There was a front garden slick with leaves and litter, three windows with drawn curtains, an aluminium front door. It had a kind
of horrific normality, as though beyond its anonymous facade bodies were buried or child pornography was filmed. I thought about sounding the horn to give Mark a scare
–
he was always
jumpy – but thought better of it.

My new bedroom looked out over the street. The walls were a sort of claret colour, the flooring dark wooden boards, slightly bowed as if they had come from a galleon. On the
west wall two enormous wardrobes dwarfed my clothes and under the window there was an old scarred table with a brass desk lamp and a pub-stolen ashtray set on it. I hung a picture on the free wall,
an advert for Michelin tyres I’d had for years, and put the final unpacked box in the wardrobe.

I didn’t leave the house for two weeks. Mark got me what I needed and didn’t ask too many questions. Mostly I was working, lines of code spewing from my fingers, but sometimes I was
thinking. I spent a lot of time listening to foreign radio stations, country stations, classical stations, any kind of radio that didn’t remind me of her. My favourite was an American oldies
station, not for the songs so much as the adverts: the car dealership offers, the swap meets, the impenetrable politicking on clauses 7, 11 and 14.

When he was in and lonely, Mark would sit on my bed with a beer or a glass of wine and tell me about his day. I would grunt and nod, play Minesweeper or maybe go back to the coding. He wanted me
to talk to him honestly about how I was feeling; he didn’t think it was healthy to be in the house all the time, fogging up the bedroom with ash and cigarette smoke. I would neither agree nor
disagree with him, and after a while he’d give up and go downstairs to watch the television or something. He always asked if I wanted to join him, and one evening I surprised myself,
genuinely, by accepting.