When Jed drew up in the alley behind Mitch’s place, he saw an oil-lamp glowing in the kitchen window. He parked his car and walked in through the yard. He knocked on the back door. Then waited, shivering, as the rain tipped off the brim of his top hat and spattered on the ground. He had to knock twice more before Mitch heard and opened up.
Mitch stood under the light in a tartan shirt and jeans that hung off his buttocks. Jed had turned up without knowing what he was going to say, but now he knew.
‘I know it’s late, Mitch,’ he said, ‘but could you do me a tattoo?’
‘What’s wrong with tomorrow?’
‘I won’t be here.’ He saw Mitch hesitating. ‘It’s a pretty simple job,’ he said. ‘No dragons or anything. No fish.’
Mitch stepped back from the door. ‘You better come in.’
Jed followed him into the kitchen. He was still shivering.
‘Go sit by the fire,’ Mitch said. ‘I’ll get the stuff ready.’
Jed took off his hat and sat down by the fire.
Taped to the wall above the mantelpiece was a large-scale map of Moon Beach. Mitch knew the city better than anyone. Jed had seen a street in Westwood that was called Success Avenue, and he’d told Mitch about it. Mitch said there was a street called Failure running parallel. The next time Jed drove through Westwood he looked for Failure, but he couldn’t find it. He reported back to Mitch. ‘There’s no such street,’ he said. Mitch just looked at him. ‘Of course there isn’t,’ he said. ‘Who’d live on a street called Failure?’
Mitch returned. ‘So what do you want done?’
‘You got a pen and paper?’
‘Hold on.’ Mitch rummaged in a drawer. ‘Here.’
Jed scribbled seven numbers on the piece of paper. ‘I want these seven numbers,’ he told Mitch. ‘I want a gap between the second number and the third, and another gap between the third number and the other four.’
‘What’s it supposed to be?’
‘It’s my birthday.’
‘Today’s your birthday?’
Jed nodded.
‘Happy birthday.’
‘Thanks.’
Mitch didn’t ask any more questions. They moved to the tattoo parlour. Jed sat on the green plastic chair while Mitch selected the needles.
‘Blue all right?’
‘Blue’s fine.’
‘Where do you want it?’
‘Here.’ Jed pointed at the inside of his right wrist.
‘It’s more painful.’
‘That’s the idea.’ One small pain to hide the larger one.
Mitch switched on the needle-gun. A buzzing. McGowan and his tools. Zebra walls and all that talk of loyalty. Why hadn’t he seen through it? But then, how could he have seen through it? There hadn’t been any cracks.
Mitch began to talk. About his time with the Angels, about the day he met his old lady, about tattoos. This was unusual, he almost never talked while he was working, but maybe he sensed that Jed wanted the silence filled and knew that Jed couldn’t do it on his own. Jed wasn’t really listening. Odd words and phrases came to him but, like sticks dropped into rapids, they were quickly whisked away. Sometimes he felt himself wince and it was strange because he couldn’t tell whether it was the needle or his memory. In his head he was already driving through heavy rain to a life he couldn’t imagine.
Cats for Drowning
Nathan had been living at India-May’s for almost three years when Donald moved in. Donald was about forty-five, with short hairless arms and a belly that looked hard. His face had an unpleasant shine to it, the kind of shine you get on the walls of places where they’ve been cooking in cheap fat since for ever. He just showed up out of the blue one day while Nathan was working. He’d taken a taxi out to Baby Boy’s grave, and then he’d walked the rest of the way. ‘Five miles along a dirt track in his city shoes, can you imagine?’ India-May had that glazed look, as if she was describing a miracle, a miracle that she’d witnessed with her own eyes. The arrival of somebody new, perhaps it was always a miracle to her. Donald sat beside her, listening with a modesty that seemed sly. A bandage round his head, a cup of tea in his blunt hands, he looked like the only survivor of some great catastrophe, and Nathan could understand exactly why he’d been able to move India-May to tears and why he’d been given a room on the first floor, one of the large ones, for nothing.
Donald came from an industrial town about fifty miles down the coast. It was a town of factories and bars, its streets laid out on a grid pattern, its air a crude blend of oil, salt and gas. (Nathan had passed it once, and remembered a sky lit by ragged flames, torches held aloft by the refineries.) He’d been some kind of engineer. Fifteen years working for the same company. Then a merger, cutbacks at the plant, and he was out of a job. When he walked through the factory gates that afternoon he’d walked away from everything. The wife and kids, the mortgage loan, the car payments. Down the chute with the lot of it. He bought a bottle of brandy at the first liquor store he found and he began to drink. Those bottles, strange how they multiply. He’d drunk his way right from the north end of town to the south, one night in some woman’s house, one night in jail, one night on the porch of a church in the rain. Then he remembered a woman he’d met once on a train, she was singing hymns to the window, he’d been embarrassed at first, half her fringe was missing as if someone had taken a bite out of it, only he knew she’d done it because she caught him staring and laughed and said, ‘I always cut it when I’m loaded,’ and he remembered something about a house, and because there was nothing left to cling to, because it was the only piece of wreckage left afloat, he remembered how to get there too, it was either remember or die.
‘You don’t want to think about that now,’ India-May told him. ‘It was bad, but it’s over.’ She patted his hand. ‘It’s cats for drowning, Donald. Just cats for drowning.’
Donald nodded.
He was quiet to begin with, he just stayed in his room. For days this hush lay on the house like dust. But a change was in the air, a season was drawing to a close. Twilight left, as if he could smell the storm coming. Pete and Chrissie’s baby couldn’t keep its food down. Joan, the mad woman, stopped cooking.
The first time Nathan knew for certain that something wasn’t right was when Donald smashed him over the head with a can of beans. He’d come in after work and found two cans of baked beans in the cupboard. He hadn’t eaten all day, so he opened one of them and cooked it up. He didn’t think twice about it. One of the house rules was, nothing belongs to anyone. That was why India-May could handle being ripped off all the time. So he was sitting at the kitchen table eating his plate of beans when Donald walked in. Donald stood just behind him, that place where you can’t see someone unless you actually turn round, that place where it feels as if someone’s going to sink a pickaxe into the soft part of your skull, Donald stood behind him and took a deep breath, as if he was about to dive under a wave, and said, ‘Those are my beans.’
Nathan stopped eating and thought about it. But there was really nothing to say. Donald knew the rules, same as everyone else. As he began to eat again he heard Donald move towards the cupboard. The next thing he knew he was lying on the floor, half stunned, beans everywhere. It’s not stars you see. You’re too close to them to call them stars. It’s more like planets.
His head buzzed and sang as if power was being fed into it. He saw Donald standing over him, a can of beans in his hand. Those cans of beans, he thought, they’re not safe. Then he thought he could smell Donald’s feet. He wasn’t particularly surprised. Some people, all you need is one look at them and you just know their feet are going to smell.