The Blueprint (2 page)

Apparently the
vehicle careened over the side of the intersection - the railings
in the distance appear to be dented, and a set of traffic lights
near them is bent over, like a sad tree - then, out of control, the
driver must have ploughed into, and then through, the large glass
building which is somehow affiliated with the university, though I
never quite figured out what the how was. The biggest surviving
chunk of car is now lying upside down a long way inside it. As I’m
gawping, a familiar voice suddenly cuts through the generic bustle
of noise.

‘[
bleep
]!’

Don’t say my
name. No, wait; don’t
shout
my name.

‘Yo,
[
bleep
]!’

Don’t say
yo
, either. I try to squish back through the mass of bodies
and escape, but the owner of the voice has already threaded his way
to my side. It’s Johnny, a friend from university with whom I’ve
shared a house for the past year and a bit, and one of the nicest
people you could ever hope to meet. Neither of the preceding facts
means that I particularly enjoy his company, however.

‘You heard
what’s happened? Some gangsters held up
Marks and
- Jesus,
what happened to you?’

Still
wondering whether it’s not too late to escape, I reply:

‘Put it this
way; the next time someone in Bigg Market asks you for your wallet,
just hand it over.’

He looks
concerned.

‘You
okay?’

I shrug.

‘Don’t worry
about it.’

‘Well you’ve
come to the right place, I guess.’

He turns away
from me, which I find confusing until I realise what he’s about to
do. By that time, however, he’s already halfway through doing
it.

‘Sir? ‘Scuse
me, sir! Excuse me!’ he hollers in the direction of the nearest
police officer, pushing off through the crowd before I can grab
hold of his arm. Feeling my adrenaline level rising again, I duck
back behind the curtain of onlookers. I can still hear Johnny
blabbing.

‘Sorry - er -
madam; no, I’m not trying to get through, you don’t understand,
it’s that my mate’s just been mugged…Yes, I know, we
will
report it, but it was literally two minutes ago, not even that, and
if we do something now, y’know, we might actually stand a chance of
catching
the guy, and - whassat? His name? Yes, it’s-’

I shoot both
hands past the man in front and yank Johnny back as hard and sharp
as I can. As I flit out into the open for that fleeting second, I
catch the briefest of glimpses at the policewoman he’s wagging his
chin with. Whether she glimpses me back I don’t know; I just know I
want to get the fuck out of here as fast as I can.

‘Leave it; she
doesn’t care,’ I hiss into Johnny’s ear as I drag him away from the
cordon.

‘But she was
taking your details,’ Johnny protests.

‘She was only
doing that to stop you yapping on at her,’ I tell him. ‘Can we just
go home, please?’

‘Er, yeah – of
course,’ he mumbles. We walk in silence along Blackett Street,
towards the second-nearest Metro stop. After a long time of
shooting me nervous glances, Johnny pipes up again.

‘Are you
sure
you’re okay, mate?’ he asks. ‘You don’t seem okay.’

I hang the
back of my head against my shoulders and exhale deeply, rolling my
eyes toward him and giving him a sort of sideways smirk.

‘Yeah, yeah,
I’m fine. Sorry, Johnny, it’s just been a bit of a weird day,
y’know?’

He smiles
uneasily back. We lapse into silence once more, but now he keeps
the glances as few and far-between as he can.

The Metro
doors shut, and the stations begin to skip past, one by one. Since
I’m standing up, I can read the news off the iPad of the person sat
next to me.

Chaos in
Newcastle upon Tyne

following
possible terror plot

I feel my
throat closing up, and I look away. The train doesn’t stop at
Haymarket. At Jesmond, a police officer gets on. I tense up.
Further up. Johnny picks this moment to resume speaking.

‘You seen ‘owt
of Charlie today?’

I think the
way that I’m staring into the train window like there’s a gremlin
on the side of the train is unsettling him. His jovial tone sounds
forced.

‘Nope,’ I
murmur, still studying the policeman, getting ready to casually
flick my eyes over to Johnny if he turns his head in my direction.
‘Maybe he’s been at the library.’

‘Are we
talking about the same Charlie, here?’ Johnny asks, with a chuckle.
When I don’t chuckle back, he adds: ‘I was there all afternoon and
I didn’t see him, anyway.’

A blob of
sweat trickles down my ribs. I attempt to hide the dampness of my
shirt by sidling closer to the handrail. My palm is wet, and it
slips down far more quickly than I’d anticipated. My knees wobble
as I try to maintain balance. The cop twitches. I feel as though
I’m breathing too loudly, so I stop breathing entirely. I’m too
scared to chance another look in the window. My lungs hurt, but if
I open my mouth now then I’d gasp and draw attention to myself. I’m
going red, I think. I wish I’d at least inhaled before I started
holding my breath. I count down the seconds.

‘Next stop,
West Jesmond,’ says the computerised voice. As I shuffle towards
the door, I keep my neck set in concrete, but my eyeballs are
darting around in their sockets, trying to see if the police
officer is getting off at the same time as me.

‘This isn’t
ours,’ Johnny says to the back of my head. I sense an opportunity,
and spin around to face him. As I do so, I see that the police
officer is now standing much closer to the door than he was
previously.

‘Think I’m
gonna go and see Liz,’ I tell Johnny, thankful for the excuse to
breathe.

The train
begins to lose momentum.

‘Oh,’ Johnny
replies. ‘No worries. Tell her I said hi.’

‘Will do.’ I
can’t work out if it’s paranoia and peripheral vision playing
tricks, but I’m sure the policeman is getting ready to leave the
train at high speed. I can’t say I blame him; I’ve got one and a
half carriages worth of head start. Suddenly a light bulb pings
into existence above my head.

‘Do you mind
taking my bag home for me?’ I ask Johnny, quietly.

There’s no way
he’ll look inside it, right? Why would he?

Either way, I
suppose it’s better that Johnny looks inside than the police
officer.

‘Yeah, no
problem,’ he replies.

I let the
strap fall from one shoulder, but I don’t pass it over yet.

‘Cheers.’

As the train
begins a sharp deceleration I shrug the bag off my other shoulder
and catch it by the straps in my hand. I can feel the weight of the
revolver inside it. Still, I don’t hand it over.

The doors open
and I’ve dropped the bag and I’m walking as fast as it’s possible
to walk without accidentally sprinting. I can’t tell whether it’s
the policeman’s footfalls I can hear behind me, or whether it’s
just the pounding of blood against my eardrums. No sooner have I
rounded the corner, out of the station, than I find myself tearing
away into the darkness.

The Big, If Not
Necessarily Bright, Idea.

‘Those who
dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake by day to
find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous
men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it
possible.’

• T.E. Lawrence
  

THE INCITING
INCIDENT

Since I am,
more often than not, the first one in our four-man household to get
out of bed and the second-last to set out for lectures, over the
last year I’ve become intimately familiar with Charlie’s morning
routine. So much so that I can tell exactly what the lazy bastard
is up to just from the different noises that come crashing through
the sitting room doorway.

Bippippipp!
Bippippipp!

That’s his
alarm clock going off. Charlie is one of the few people in the
world who needs to set an alarm to make sure he wakes up by
midday.

Keerrreuuughkk…WHUMP!!

That’s him
falling out of bed as he stretches over to his chest of drawers, in
a desperate, sleepy lunge for the snooze button. Sometimes I like
to move the alarm clock just a few inches out of his reach, because
I know that this will inevitably cause him to fall out of bed.
Yesterday was one of those times.

‘FUCK!’

That’s him
giving voice to his bewilderment at suddenly finding himself on his
bedroom floor.

Clunk!

That’s him
trying to stand up and careening into either his doorframe or his
chest of drawers. He’s still not quite awake, bless him.

‘MOTHER
FUCKER!’

Okay. He’s
probably pretty well woken up, now.

Psssssshhhhh…Thunk!

That’s him
putting the kettle on.

Zerrrp…Zerrrp…ZeeerChing!

BANG! BANG!
BANG!

That was him
attempting to use the tin opener, and expressing frustration at
said task’s level of difficulty. Charlie, as I’m sure he’s willing
to admit, has a pretty short fuse when he’s gone eight hours
without a cigarette, even if he’s spent those eight hours sleeping.
For this reason, I’m not going to go and wish him a cheery
good-morning just yet.

Beep. Beep.
Beep. Brrrrreeeeeuggggh…

That’s the
microwave. I assume he’s given up on cooking anything and has opted
to have last night’s leftovers for brunch instead.

Plunk. Plunk.
Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk…Kahchook! Kearrreeekk…

That’s him
traipsing past the living room and going outside - not closing the
front door behind him - for the first of his dodecadaily nicotine
fixes. Sure enough, a cloud of smoke and vapour soon starts to
drift past the living room window. As a train pulls into the Metro
station opposite our house, I can hear him trying to entice one of
the Wednesday morning walk-of-shamers, tottering home in bare feet
with pairs of high-heels hanging limply from their arms, into a
conversation.

‘Hey!’ he
shouts. ‘Just because I’m dressed this way, it doesn’t mean you’re
allowed to look at me like I’m some kind of sex object!’

‘Oh fuck off,
you prick,’ the girl groans back in return, her voice heavy with
hangover and post-coital regret. Charlie tries again with the next
one.

‘Hey! Just
because I’m dressed this way, it doesn’t give you the right to look
at me like I’m some kind of sex object!’

He’s never
been a great one for variety. Remarkably, though, his second
attempt goes over a lot better than his first one. I suppose if you
tell enough people you’re the second coming of Christ you’re bound
to hit upon some disciples eventually, provided that you do it in a
confident-enough voice. The second girl seems far more at ease than
her predecessor, as though she gets heckled by half-naked boys on a
regular basis.

‘I was looking
at you like you’ve got a spare cigarette, actually.’

I see her hand
floating in the window as Charlie offers her the pack. I squint to
make sure I’m seeing it right. I think,
think
, she’s got a
naked woman tattooed on her hand, one leg stretched down her index
finger and the other bent, with its knee resting on the knuckle of
her thumb.

‘Now, forgive
me if I’m wrong here, but you seem like the kind of lady who
appreciates cheap booze and loud music,’ I hear Charlie say.

‘Y’know, I
should be offended by that, but I just spent a forty-five minute
train journey with an old woman glaring at me like I was handing
out abortion clinic flyers, so I’ve decided that mankind’s opinion
isn’t worth my time.’

‘I couldn’t
agree more,’ Charlie replies, in a proud and happy voice. ‘Hence
the attire. All I’m saying is, if my talent for sniffing out
boozehounds and Clash fans has steered me right, you’re exactly the
sort of person who should come down to see my band at the
Governor’s Arms on Saturday night. And if I’m wrong, you can always
start chucking bottles at the stage. Since you also strike me as
the type to enjoy a bit of casual vandalism, it’s a win-win
proposition.’

Silence.

‘Come on -
help me out,’ Charlie presses. ‘The more pretty girls there are in
the crowd, the easier it is for me to pretend I’m a famous person.’
He’s always been a big believer in telling girls they’re pretty. He
thinks it’s less tawdry than saying they’re fit, and less
disingenuous than saying they’re beautiful. He thinks ‘beauty’ is
too important a word to let his penis define.

Again, there
is silence. The sound of it makes me feel awkward, even with the
pane of glass keeping it safely outside. Moments like this make me
thank God I’ve got Liz.

‘There’s my
number. Text me the address,’ I suddenly hear the girl say. I take
back my thanks and curse God instead, because I know that if I’d
been in Charlie’s shoes he wouldn’t have treated me quite so
favourably.

After finally
closing the front door and going to shuffle around in the kitchen
some more, Charlie makes his entrance into the living room,
carrying a pizza box and clad in his red Y-fronts with the Soviet
hammer and sickle emblazoned over his package. The major impetus
for this purchase was to irritate Freddy, our housemate. Freddy is
one of those guys that only seem to exist at universities, who
maintain that communism would have worked brilliantly if it wasn’t
for Stalin’s habit of murdering anyone who looked at him sideways.
But more about him later. Freddy, I mean, not Stalin. Across
Charlie’s stomach is a phone number hastily scrawled in black
lipstick. He stands in front of the mirror for several minutes
deciphering it and transferring the data into his mobile.

‘Does that
look like a one or a two to you?’ he asks.