The Hunger (2 page)

My favourite hour of the day. The Gym, Soho.

Most people want to get fit. Build some muscle. I don’t. I just want to go fucking mental. I begin with twenty minutes on the treadmill. Sprinting. Then a hundred press-ups on my knuckles
in under two minutes. There’s a reason I do press-ups on my knuckles. I severed the tendon in my right wrist bench-pressing 120kg ten years ago. It hurt. Pain like I’ve never
experienced before or since. The surgeon said the best he could do was to fuse it together again but it would be rigid like a pole. I said no. Then the pain got even worse and I went to him and
asked:

—Can you please cut my hand off?

He said no. But he did the operation and, after a couple of years, it was more or less normal. I can’t bend it fully or put too much pressure on it. Other than that, it’s fine. One
strange thing: I still wank and wipe my arse with my left hand. Which goes to prove that habits can be changed when the pain gets too intense. That thought comes to my mind as I bench press 100kg.
I say to myself:

—That’s a good observation, Lincoln.

Then I forget it and carry on with the circuit: 200 curls, 150 sit-ups, 50kg lat-pulls and on into exhaustion. The last lift: 100kg bench-press. My teeth clench and I scream:

—Push! Push, you fucker! Push!

My eyes get caught in the lights of the gym and I can hear the same words:

—Push! Push! Push!

It’s a woman’s voice. I blink hard and turn my eyes away from the light. I am nineteen and holding my girlfriend’s hand. The midwife continues with her mantra:

—Push! Push! Push!

First the head. Then the screaming, I am holding my son, Lbloodied body, and a few minutes later ewis, in my arms. I think:

I can’t remember the day I got I married. I can remember the day it ended. Lewis was eighteen months old and my life, free and full of possibility, felt like a Dark Desert. This is what I
learned in the Desert:

When I leave The Gym, I walk over to The Club and down a bottle of Rioja and I’m just starting on the shots when Maynard, Terry, Simon and Steve join me.

11 a.m. Four hours earlier

The Boss watches me walk into The Club. I think he hasn’t seen me grip the door handle to stop me falling to the ground. There are only half a dozen offices in the
basement of The Club and they are built from floor-to-ceiling glass panels – of course, he hasn’t seen me! I smile at him as I walk into my office. He smiles back. He’s
thinking:

—You’re fucked, Lincoln.

I’m thinking:

—You’re fucked, Lincoln.

George, Jack and Mark, his business partners and Joy, his secretary, are all there. They’re all in their sixties and seventies and have been together for decades. I’ve been here
three months and it’s fair to say opinion about me is divided:

George thinks I am a cunt and doesn’t want me anywhere near the clubs.

Jack thinks I am a cunt and believes I am the best sales director he’s ever worked with.

Mark thinks I am a cunt and, like any good accountant, doesn’t give a fuck as long as I keep bringing the punters in.

Joy is too nice to think anyone is a cunt.

And The Boss thinks I am a
flash
cunt and I think that is the biggest compliment anyone has ever paid me.

Although the offices are just about big enough to swing a cat in, The Boss has invented his own, unique internal communication system. It’s a fucking bell that sits on his desk, one of
those old-fashioned brass ones where you hit a little knob on the top. Each of us has a number of rings allocated to our name. I am five rings and, as soon I sit down, the bell rings five times. I
squeeze my eyes tight shut as my head feels like the biggest, boomiest bell chamber in the world. I get up and walk ten feet to his office.

—How many times, Lincoln? He is staring at me.

I hate that stare.

If I had to put a name to it I would call it
paternal
and that’s what I hate. If he was a tosser, a typical Soho club owner, all ego and no heart, I wouldn’t give a shit. But
he’s neither. The Boss is a one-off and I love him.

—What?

—Don’t give me ‘what’. Sit down.

I sit down. My chair is lower than his.

—You can’t fool me, Lincoln. I’ve seen it all. You stumble into my office off your head. You can barely stand. How many times have I told you, you’re going to kill
yourself? Worse than that, you’re going to kill off my punters.

—Give me a break, Boss. You know I can fill the clubs better than anyone.

—I’m always giving you breaks. I give you breaks when you shag yourself to exhaustion. I give you breaks when you don’t know what day it is. I give you breaks when George tells
me to kick you out. How many more breaks do you want?

He’s right except for one little word. I don’t ‘want’ breaks. I ‘need’ them. Thousands of them. Now and tomorrow and the day after and every day after that.
Without them I’m in the shit, and I know the more air I pump into my ego, the higher it flies, the more likely I am to fall into some dirty, narrow little gutter where I will disappear
without trace. Some people have even been kind enough to point this out to me. One of them was Frank. He was my boss before I worked at The Club and he ran one of the biggest transport companies in
the country. I was the youngest and best Sales Director he ever employed. I wasn’t drinking too much then. No drugs at all. I whored a bit but other than that I was in a stable relationship.
I bought my first Ferrari, a 355 Berlinetta, when I was twenty-five, and my Mum still has a photograph of me holding a monthly pay cheque for sixteen grand. She told me to use my money wisely. She
might as well have told a Banker to stop investing in strippers. When the money was gone I made a list of
Wise Things I Did With My Money Before I Blew It.
It was a short list. This was
it:

I had him every weekend. I took him to fairs, amusement arcades, played conkers and football with him, cooked him roast dinners, sent paper planes into orbit and I paid his maintenance without
ever missing a month. Not much wisdom, I agree, but enough to keep me sane. When I picked him up in my Ferrari he said:

—Daddy, go fast! Go fast!

When I didn’t go fast, he said:

—Why slow?

The reason was simple. I was in a convoy with my salesmen on a motorway when they began racing each other. Jim, one of my sales managers, was in the lead when he flipped over the central
reservation and flew into the grill of a fucking monster truck. I saw the windows of his car splash with blood as his body burst open like a tomato. I never drove my Ferrari or any other car over
seventy. So I said:

—Slow is better, Lewis.

He reminded me of that a few weeks ago when he found me slumped over a stripper, coke still stuck between my teeth. I said:

—I know, son, I just can’t find the brakes anymore.

When I was Sales Director in the transport business, I managed over two hundred salesmen. I was a Great Motivator. There were prizes and promises and praise but that was never enough. That gets
you liked. What gets you respected, what drives a hairy-arsed salesman to bring in a deal like his life depends on it, is when he thinks his life really does depend on it. I call it the
Power of
Fear
and no one used it better than me. Men in their forties and fifties who’d been selling since they were in nappies would be terrified to come in to work without a deal to their name.
Fear made them my Bitches and Bitches sell best because the price of an unsold lead is more than they can afford to pay.

When one of the salesmen left the company and decided to take the company car with him, I took it personally. He was in the car when I found him. He tried to drive away so I jumped on the bonnet
and cracked the glass with my fist. He pulled over and I dragged him out. He went on his knees and said:

—Sorry, Lincoln. Please don’t hurt me.

I took the keys and left him, crying like a baby, on the side of the road.

When I got back, Frank said:

—There’s no one I have ever met with as little middle ground as you, Lincoln. You’ll end up in the gutter or the stars. I just don’t know which.

The Boss, says:

—Do you hear me, Lincoln?

He points to the photographs on the walls. The biggest stars in the world look down on me. Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Willis, Elton John, Princess Diana. A
pantheon of celebrity with him at the centre of it. He carries on:

—You can do what I did but not if you don’t clean yourself up. Now get out and sort yourself out.

When I’m back in my office, George comes in. He is doing his best to appear calm. He says:

—I don’t know how you hold on to your job. He’s never been like this with anyone in fifty years.

—Because I’m good, George.

—No one is
that
good.

I smile. He is polite because he has to be. I know he wants to smack me in the mouth and I know I deserve it. I am good. I am probably
that
good. But work is just the skin of my life,
taking in enough money to feed the Hunger and that Hunger is the reason I stand on the face of the earth. Nothing else matters.

The Boss said once:

—I see a lot of me in you.

And that’s how I survive. I am his mongrel child, a bastard mix of charisma and chaos, who looks as if I might just about make it until I fuck up and everything is wasted.

Esurio walks in and rests his right hand on the ornate silver skull that sits on top of his cane.

—We’re still employed then, and the day is young.

—Give me an hour and I’ll be with you.

—Make it sooner, Lincoln. You know how impatient I get.

9 a.m. Two hours earlier

I am back at the flat, my body glistening with sweat.

The girls are still in my bedroom so I shower and leave. My hands are shaking and my head is full of shit. I try to look straight and fix on a point at the far end of Old Compton Street. I
can’t even hold my gaze. I need a drink. Some coke. A drink. A line. Anything to take this feeling away. I want to be sick. I have a meeting at The Club. I can’t let them see me fucked.
I catch my reflection in a window. I think I look better than I feel. Grey suit. Open-neck shirt. White handkerchief. All I need is a drink, a line, to make the suit sparkle. I can see Esurio
standing outside Cafe Boheme. He is holding the door open for me. I walk across the road.

—Thanks, man.

—My pleasure.

I go downstairs into the toilet and pull a wrap out of the inside pocket of my suit. By the time I’m walking up the stairs I feel more like myself. I’m sure the day will be good.
Esurio is still standing outside by the door. When he sees me coming he pushes it open.

—Better?

—Yes, thanks.

I walk across the road to an off-licence. Coke is good. Two shots of vodka will make it immense. As I leave the shop and make my way to The Club, I raise a bottle to Esurio. He raises his
hat.

—Here’s to a beautiful day!

I smile at him. I love him. I hate him. He is a pest. A parasite. He never leaves me alone. I try to remember how we first met. I can’t. It feels like he’s always been with me. When
I was a kid he was more ghostly than he is now. It was like I could see through him. There was the time when I was fourteen. A year after my Dad died. I was being bullied at school by a kid called
Mitch Walters. He was a tall kid, a boxer. No one messed with him. Before he died, Dad said:

—No one ever pushes us around, Lincoln. No one.

My Granddad Bob said:

—We’re fighters. Hit him back. Just once. So he knows he can’t mess with you. Then leave him alone. He won’t touch you again.

The next day I was at school. Mitch Walters was drinking a cup of hot chocolate. I snatched the cup out of his hand, threw the liquid in his face and punched him once.

—Just once, Lincoln.

Then, faint against the red brick of the school wall, I saw Esurio. Half his face was missing and so was most of the left side of his body, and it was like I could see through the rest of him.
His voice was a waspish whisper, not as strong as it is now:

—Hit him again and again and again. Feed me, Lincoln, feed me.

I saw fear in the kid’s eyes. I was a rabid dog. In seconds his head was like a ball on a spring. It spun in all directions as one punch then another clattered against his head. I knew I
was going to kill him. I could not stop. I wanted to splatter his blood on the schoolyard. Rip out his guts and impale them on the fence. Then he stopped moving. Esurio waved his hands
extravagantly:

—Wonderful! Wonderful! Carry on like this and we’ll be partners for life!

Mitch survived. He wore a bandage around his head for weeks. His left ear was shattered and he will never hear properly again. Whenever he saw me he lowered his head and hunched his shoulders.
His smile was the grimace of the defeated. Everyone thought I was insane. They were right. No one bothered me ever again.

A year before I beat the fuck out of Mitch Walters, my Dad died and Esurio was with me there too. I was running through a caravan park where we were staying when Dad dropped dead of a heart
attack. I rushed into our caravan to get Mum, but she had already seen him collapse through the window. When I came back out again a man was trying to resuscitate my Dad. When I got to my father I
could hear Esurio:

—We’ll be fine from now on, Lincoln, fine. Just the two of us.

I turned to see where the voice was coming from but all I could see was a faint outline of a black morning coat a few yards away, with the white of the caravans and the blue of the sky pushing
through it to create a messy patchwork of colour.