The Canal (7 page)

The last I’d heard of Mike McCooty he’d made millions importing discontinued Adidas trainers to feed the consuming habits of the burgeoning Indie and Retro markets. The other lad: I have no idea; he could be dead for all I know.

“I, er, know nothing about them, sorry … about cars in general …”

“It doesn’t matter that you don’t know. Really, it doesn’t. What matters is that this was it …”

“
It
?”

“The real deal … 
The car
 … The car of my dreams … The car I’d been waiting for all my life. I owned nothing else in comparison …”

“Tell me about it then.”

“The car? Or what happened?”

“The car … and then what happened.”

“It’s an Audi TT 225 Quattro Coupe. It’s a powerful little machine able to explode from zero to sixty in six point six seconds flat. A top speed of one hundred and fifty-one miles per hour. Although, I’m positive I’ve pushed it further. It’s specified in pearl-effect black with a grey leather interior. But the wheels—perfect seven and a half by seventeen inch rims. People would turn heads whenever I sped by. It’s really my ultimate machine. You should see the engine—seventeen eighty-one cc’s in size, gleaming all year round.”

“Your pride and joy?”

“More than that.”

“I don’t understand …”

“It’s simple: we are technology—we rival nature. We are able to mould ourselves into something superior. Put simply, my car means more to me than any other thing I can think of …”

“But you sit here every day …”

“I haven’t set foot behind a wheel since it happened …”

“Since what happened?”

“The day I hit that man …”

“Was it …?”

“What?”

“Was it a …?”

“Hit and run?”

“Yes.”

“Yes … it was.”

“Did he …?”

“What?”

“Did you …?”

“Kill him?”

“Yes …”

“…”

“Did you kill him?”

“…”

“Did you?”

“Yes, I
killed
him.”

I sank into the bench. I could feel each grain, each fibre of it beneath me. She seemed to perk up; her back straightened, her posture a textbook example.

“I got out of the car and looked at him. He was dead. Crumpled. Bleeding. His eyes were open. He was facing me, his blood-red face. It was like he was looking at me, right at me, but I knew he wasn’t … I knew he was dead. And he was smiling. He was smiling. I swear he was smiling. And I knew no one else could see us. And I knew I could just drive away without being seen. I knelt down beside him, I could smell him. I can remember that smell right now … Beer, cigarettes … 
pubs
 … I wanted to kiss his wet lips, crinkled and split as they were. For weeks after I hit him, after the news reporters and newspapers had long forgotten about him, I polished my car over and over. I had it repaired under a railway arch in Hackney, near London Fields. Cash in hand, no questions asked. I polished my car. I polished it until no trace of that night could be detected. I became obsessed with making it shine. I awaited sunny days. I wanted light to shine from it. That night, after I hit him, I took a kitchen knife, a small vegetable knife for paring, and cut my arm … a small incision. I let the blood drip down to my fingertips, I let it drip until I felt numb … until I fell asleep.”

She turned to me. She inched closer to me. We were almost touching. I noticed something in her eyes that I hadn’t noticed before: there was life in them; they were fizzing, intense, real. She looked excited. She looked alive. Her eyes weren’t the dark pools of emptiness and sorrow I was led to believe they were. I could see past all that. If she
would have cried at that moment her tears wouldn’t have been silent, they would have been noisy, vibrant tears—tears that mocked anyone who tried to wipe them away. I wanted to touch her face, her smooth skin, her cheek. This incredible urge raged within me. I wanted to kiss her. When she continued with her confession, it felt like I was melting into the bench. It felt like nothing else mattered, like nothing around us actually existed. And then it dawned on me as she continued: her eyes were elsewhere.

“I would polish my TT most days, every day sometimes. I couldn’t stand the London grime, the pollution. I would wipe it away constantly. My car had to be pristine at all times. I wasn’t affected, there was nothing wrong with me. There was, and is, no meaning in my constant attention to cleanliness. I just wanted my TT,
my car
, to be clean. If I saw other TTs on the road that looked newer, cleaner, I would turn back, or pull up at the nearest car wash. Mine had to be cleaner, the cleanest …”

“But it was only a car …”

“It was … 
is
 … my car … 
my car
 …”

“I don’t understand …”

“You don’t have to. It’s all very simple. We were fused: my self … my car … fused. Atomised. I would polish my TT until I could see every wrinkle in my face when I peered into its finish. I had boyfriends who would become jealous of the time and attention I dedicated to it. They would complain to me. It wasn’t their fault, they could have never have understood.”

“Okay, okay … So, if you loved the car so much, then why did you end it all by …”

“By running into him?”

“Yes.”

“Because I could.”

“You must have had a reason.”

“No. No reason. Just impulse.”

“Impulse?”

“Yes.”

I’ve always been able to understand impulse. It is something that is instantly recognisable to me. It is something that is tangible, that I have felt, intrinsically, throughout my life. Even as a young child I understood impulse. I understood that there were no real reasons to my actions, as much as anyone else’s. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a violent man, but, on impulse, I have acted violently. Such violent impulses have happened only twice in my life, and both incidences involved me hitting other people. The first time it happened I was a small child, I can hardly remember it. All I know is that it happened in a park, by a sand pit: I hit another child playing in the sand pit. The second time was a number of years ago. It involved my then closest friend. I will not mention his name here. We had been drinking happily all day and were walking home to the flat we then shared together in Hackney, near the elevated railway lines. We weren’t even arguing, and nothing had rankled within me. I just had the sudden impulse to hit him—maybe it was something he said, I don’t know. I hit him on the side of the head with my fist, a drunken right hook, executed with little, if any, technique that somehow landed with force and knocked him off balance. He fell sideways, landing awkwardly on his arm by the curb. His arm snapped like a twig. I am positive I heard the snap. He was in incredible pain. I don’t think I felt guilty at the time. I calmly escorted him to A&E. We sat next to each other in silence. People were shouting at nurses, teenagers were puking into buckets, drunks were lighting up cigarettes. Overworked doctors ran amok. He moved out of the flat shortly afterwards, and we have never spoken to or seen each other since. I often think
of that night now; it haunts me when I am alone; it visits my dreams. The clear sound of his ulna snapping: it visits me when I walk down the street, or at home washing the dishes. I cannot escape it. It is obvious to me now that most acts of violence are caused by those who are truly bored. And as our world becomes increasingly boring, as the future progresses into a quagmire of nothingness, our world will become increasingly more violent. It is an impulse that controls us. It is an impulse we cannot ignore.

“But I don’t want to talk about impulse just yet …”

“No?”

“No … I want to talk about Jonathan Richman …”

“Who?”

“He is a musician … 
The Modern Lovers
 … He wrote what is considered to be the first ever modern punk record …”

“Oh, what was it called?”

“
Roadrunner
. It’s probably my favourite song of all time. Do you have a favourite song?”

“Not really …”

“I was …”

“What?”

“I was listening to it when …”

“When what?”

“When I hit him …”

“But why are you telling me all this?” Why? Why me? What’s the point in telling me all this in such detail? What’s the point?”

“…”

“Well? Why? What’s the point in telling me all this?

“…”

“…”

“Music is important … It is integral to our understanding of things.”

“
Things
?”

“Yes. Things. Stuff.
Everything
.”

“Oh.”

“That song … 
Roadrunner
 … has stuck with me for a long time. I just knew that it would be around on such an important day.”

“Why?”

“It had to be …”

“But, I don’t understand …”

“I’ve told you before, you don’t have to
understand
. There’s nothing
to
understand …”

“We’re going around in circles …”

“That’s not a concern of mine. But just to listen to that song as you’re hurtling down an open road. Such an amazing feeling … Really. It’s originally about route 128 in Boston, a circular like the M25, although, it’s not exactly circular. Travelling north or south is just the same as travelling round and round in circles anyway, isn’t it? Anyway, it is Richman’s car journey I’m interested in, the journey he undertakes throughout each version of the song … 
the same song
 … There are many versions of it.”

“There’s more than one version?”

“There are many versions. All are a homage to the turnpike, the industrial park, the North Shore, the South Shore, the Prudential Tower, the Sheraton Tower, the everyday nothingness of the peripheries of Boston, noting each as he passes them by over and over and over again. I’ve read about the excitement he used to feel speeding over the hill, catching sight for the first time that day of the radio towers in the distance. He’d see beauty in these humdrum things … I used to drive listening to him, I used to look
for the same things, the same type of beauty he did … It was everywhere I looked … I see that, too,
I do
, that same beauty in things … the ordinary things.”

“I know you do …”

It seemed as if we were melting into each other, her scent enveloping me, soaking into me like never before. I wanted to say so much to her; I wanted to do so many things with her; with no one else. I wanted nothing else to exist, so we could get up and walk somewhere together: a pub, a café, a park, even a gallery. Anywhere. I wanted to do something.

But I couldn’t.

I was truly spellbound.

I started to think about those teenagers who attacked me, the Pack Crew. I wondered what they might have been doing at that precise moment. My body was aching all over because of them. They had acted on that same impulse. They had chosen to harm me, to hurt me for no other reason: boredom. They were bored. They always would be. They are never ending.

I wondered to myself what they would do with themselves if only they knew what I did: I hoped it would be nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

“You’re thinking about why I hit him, aren’t you?”

“No … I’m thinking about something else … Those …”

“I hit him because I knew it would feel good … I was hypnotised … I truly was. I knew what I had to do … I just knew.”

“How can it
feel good
? How can something like that
feel good
?”

“You can’t imagine how good it feels. To wipe something out. To wipe something out completely.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’ve never done it.”

“Where did it happen?”

“In the outskirts of the city, Blackheath way, on a lonely road … the light pollution from the city filling the night sky in the distance. It looked like it had been painted on by some amateur.”

“What did?”

“The light in the sky in the distance. It looked faked,
inauthentic
 … I loved it because it was still real.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“The man?”

“Yes, the
man
.”

“I know lots. Before I hit him I knew nothing. Now I know everything. It was in the papers, on the local news. I found out all I needed to know about him.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I
had
to … I’ve never been caught. No one knows it was me. I have escaped my punishment … for the time being, anyhow. I needed to find out about him in order to understand his life … He was a pointless man, a meaningless human being. One of many. A security guard at a bank in the city. He’d worked there for twenty years. He was divorced, a small family. He was close to his son and a couple of lifelong friends he used to drink with. He was a season ticket holder at Charlton FC. That’s it.”

“What was his name?”

“Haven’t you listened to a
word
I’ve said to you?”

“Yes, that’s why I ask.”

“T____ E_____”

“Don’t you feel any guilt?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know … Maybe I’m scared?”

“Just tell me why you did it.”

“I had to do it. I saw him and … I had to obliterate him from my life. I had to make him obsolete. There was no other option … It felt good, butterflies in my stomach, that type of thing, some call it a
buzz
 … My god, the sound of the engine as I approached him, dropping a gear, there was nothing I could do except hit him.”

“Stop!”

“Why?”

“It’s just too awful. You killed a man!”

“
He was already dead before I hit him
.”

“What does that mean?”

“He didn’t matter.
We
don’t matter. If you could have felt what I felt behind that wheel—just the rumble, the slight tremor of surface movement, of things, bitumen, passing beneath me. The speed … the engine growling … We are limited. We need something more, we need that added extra in life. Technology provides all we need. Technology dominates a large part of our unique relationship with the exterior world. I have never wanted to hide behind technology. I have always wanted to use it, to control it, to display it. It has always puzzled me why one would want to hide one’s hearing aid away from the world. Why do that? Do you understand? It is an extension. That’s all. Part of us … All of us should understand that technology will be the death of us, not our saviour … It’s leaving us all behind. I am just repeating the obvious.”