Chapter Nineteen

This is so confusing.
I'm sat here in this hospital waiting room where the stench of old people (the stench of death) haunts the cobwebbed corners of every inch of this place. I knock the sleep from the corner of my eyes. It's 8:35AM. My hands are dirty and so are my elbows. I'm waiting for this rookie kid-doctor to get back and tell me what's what with me. Here he comes. What kind of Doctor wears Converses?
"So Grandpa - tell me your story once more"
Arrogent prick. I told him about my change of state of mind. I told him about the coincidental journey i'm on with some crazy thrift store saviour. I told him how i keep passing out for no reason. I told him how i felt dizzy in the cafe. I told him how i came out of the restroom spinning. I told him how i landed on my companion, grabing her for support, gasping for help, before falling to the floor and passing out again. I told him about the darkness. About being alone in nothingness.
"Well, you've got a fucked up head - that's one thing. I'll give you the basic - fluid on the brain. contained in something like a bubble. Not much of it, but enough to cause, like, a black cauldren of all the physical side-effects of a mid-life crisis, coupled with nausia, delerium, all that stuff. A pick n mix of the weird and the wonderful, ha-ha"
Patronizing jack-ass. Laughing at his own, almost lyrical, cleverness. At least when doctor's talk to you in jargon you feel slightly respected.
"So you dont actually know whats wrong with me then?"
"Nope, ha-ha. But not to worry. Take these."
A pick n mix of pills. One to keep me sedated, one to keep me normal. This little piggy stops the fall outs. This little piggy helps me get home. This little piggy gives me side affects and this little piggy will send me to the nut house.
I leave this guy and go to find her. She's talking to a nun in the waiting room. I overhear some of the chat...

"But, if he was coming back, do you think he'd want to help us? Do you think he cares? Do you think he'll find it flattering that we worship the thing he was killed on? I mean, you don't go shaking hands with one of those joke buzzer things when greeting the ghost of some poor soul from 'the chair' do you?"

Only one person i know can go to a hospital and try and talk a nun out of 'the habit'.

Chapter Eighteen

The saxophone is still squealing that god-awful 'tune', although the band left hours ago. When it was still dark, probably; right now shafts of sunlight are splitting my head open, glaring through the patches in the black tape covering the windows. Dust particles swim about in the suffocating air, dancing in their spotlights, settling on his matted hair and the table around it. He hasn't stirred for the twenty-seven minutes I've been awake, though the silence should have been enough to send him shooting up in his seat. I don't want to move because I know the second I do, the pain that is slowly brewing in the back of my skull will shift to whichever part of my cigarette-smoke-soaked body it thinks it can cause the most damage.

Six minutes after I have gently shifted my ass to its other cheek and a sharp ache has swept down my neck and spine, his face finally turns to my direction as I light a cigarette. His eyes barely open but I can sense, behind the glaze, a questioning.
"Where the hell am I?"
Ten points to me. "In the club."
"Still? How?"
"What's with the questions? What are you, the one-man Spanish Inquisition? You passed out. The band left. I fell asleep, thanks to your riveting companionship. Now we're awake and it's morning and I want bacon. That enough for you?"
Without waiting for a response, because I am hungover and could give Oscar The Grouch a run for his money, I almost slide off the chair and onto my feet, nearly crawling to the door, and crack it open. The sunlight almost blinds me, and the deafening crunchandthud behind me hints that there was no almost about it for him back there. There's a scrape of chair legs on lino as he heaves himself to his feet. "Where are we going?"
I don't bother to answer, just step out into the daylight and hobble the fifty-six steps to the nearest greasy-spoon.

Over the course of fourteen minutes, he spends nine and three-quarters of them staring at me quizzically. I spend them split between staring at my espresso and out the window. Suddenly, I catch sight of someone and dive to the door like a bull at a gate. The frame digs into my palm and i grip it with one hand and swing round the door-frame, an impressive pole-dance for someone with a hangover quite like mine. I don't bother to tell him where I'm going; I'll be back in a second. I throw my arms around their waist, feel their spine dig into my chest. A flitter of worry goes through me but I brush it away and nuzzle my face up to his ear. His hand falls to his groin, but he slides his fingers into his pocket and flicks two tickets towards me, the way a street magician shows you the card you picked but didn't tell. I nibble his earlobe and skip back into the cafe. The table's empty. I don't move, but my eyes flit around the room. I catch a few eyes and sympathetic looks away, and stride to the table. It's OK, there's still a puddle of thick black tar in the mug, and no nearly-divorced-ex-business-who's-decided-to-find-himself would leave that much caffeine in one place, especially if they bought it. Sure enough, head down, he stumbles out of the bathroom with an embarrassed face, and takes hold of my elbow in the manner of a policeman. He tugs me to the pavement without a word.

Chapter Seventeen

She's got our night played out in her head like a playlist.
She's done up in some charity-shop rag-doll throw-together and I swear that skirt has been made from a cut off from some curtain in some lifestyle magazine somewhere. Of course, she had to do me up. I'm in some hideious chocolate brown shit-stain shirt that I assume a male guest at the B n B left there. Maybe out of sheer distaste. I got to keep my black slacks and shoes but she insisted on a tweed tie. She's got a slick black suit jacket that transforms half way down into two little coat tails. Underneath this is a frilly purple-grape silky shirt complete with a paisley-cravate that matches her paisley-patch skirt which uses more acidic colours than your traditional octogenarian's paisley pattern. I suspect even a 60s Camden would reject us as a little too much.
She has taken me to this Jazz-Bar-Cafe thing. There are cobwebs in the top corners of the walls and low level lighting so everyone looks like a character from a bad 50s detective film. Shadowy and filled with mystique. At the other end of the lounge is a jazz band. Three men in bad suits, one on drums, one double-bass and one sax. There's a piano, but no pianist. We are at a small table facing the bar, which is occupied by some weathered old beatnik who looks like he's had one-too-many all the time. He's got the mandatory beatnik beard - sharply cut and stinking of pretentiousness. How can you have a pretentious beard? I don't know - that just seems to be the term most people use to discredit someone when they can't think of an actual reason. We were in our normal odd silence that she relishes when she turned to me and started the conversation.
"So - what's your deal?"
"Well - I got thrown out of my house by my wife, and whereas most men would try and win her back and regain their life, I've decided to go into a bit of a tailspin."
"Why did she kick you to the curb?"
"I don't know. I just went to a bar and tried to assess my life. Y'know - think outside the box. All that existential crap. Then You happened, and I find myself here"
"Do you regret leaving your life to follow me around?"
"Well - First of all, Wasn't it you who followed me around?"
"Isn't this music terrible?"
"It's not too bad... kind of, well, the blues I guess."
"Blues? If I ran over a tortoise and I recorded whatever noise a tortoise makes when being run over, be it a yelp and a squeal or a crunch and a smoosh, and then played that noise backwards again and again with an out of tune sax played over the top, I reckon it would have more life in it than this"
"You're not a fan then"
She gets up out of her seat, goes over to the bar and whispers on the barman's ear. He goes off and pours two shots of what looks like scotch, and as she walks back here with them, the barman goes over to the band and whispers something in the bass player's ear. She sits back down.
"This is more like it" and as she knocks back her shot, the band start playing Take Five, my favourite jazz song ever. I smile, she knows why, and I pick up my glass.
"Here's to jazz"
I knock back the shot, my head hits the table, and I pass out.

Chapter Sixteen

"Edie."
"Mother."
"Don't you have anything to say?"
Oh, I have lots to say. 8734 words, to be precise - I've had this speech prepared for years. However, now is not the time. I/We need somewhere to stay and as I/We have no-where else to go, it would be best if I keep my script to myself for the time being. So, I simply stare at the floor and say nothing, while mother huffs and puffs around the room, plumping the pillows roughly, in the manner in which one would beat a dusty rug that one was not particularly fond of. She finally sighs down into her armchair, stained with wine and god-knows-what-else, arranging herself so she can glare at me more comfortably. I don't want to sit down, or look up, or move from my spot on the carpet, but I don't want to stand here under scrutiny either. I can feel her gaze burning into my skin, from top to toe as she looks me up and down, takes in the sight of her only child, the prodigal daughter who has at last returned. Mother reaches into the cabinet by her side, eyes still focused in front of her, and I hear the familiar key in the lock, and the chink of glass. Three steps to the door without looking back; I didn't come here to watch this again.

I press my ear to each of the doors in turn, and push open the second, the one i hear movement behind. Thankfully, he's in no compromising position, just pacing back and forth across the room, five steps to the left by the window, five steps to the right by the door. He doesn't stop when I wander in and lie across the bed, my back against the headboard and my hands behind my head. I watch him for forty seconds, back and forth, over and over, until I turn my head to the window. The sun's almost behind the horizon, and the time has come to get out of this place. I suddenly have an idea, it appears like a lightbulb above my head and I start quietly cackling to myself. Before he can ask what's going on, I hop off the bed and crack open the wardrobe, hoping everything I want is still in here. I throw a couple of garish paisley dresses and chicken fillets onto the bed, followed by a box of make-up. He looks at me, his face a question mark.
"Get your kit on," I say. "We're going out."

Chapter Fifteen

She brings me to this old B n B in the middle of this place. How does she know where we are. I suspect she's got contacts in every town in the country. She just seems like that kind of person. The girl all the guys want but only for one night.
Lust not love.
The sex - not the morning after.
But something about that fact intrigues me ever so slightly. It kills me to admit it, but i'm starting to take a shine to this crazy ghost.
She opens the door and walks in, for the first time looking hesitant. She creeps into the hallway of this haven for all things dusty. The whole place looks slighty royal, but like it has been left unmaned for a decade or two. Like someone loved it, but lost interest. Maybe that's what happened to my leader here. What kind of a person would get close enough to this ghost to be able to make the choice to lose interest?
A stately middle-aged woman walks out of what could be the lounge/bar area. Her hair stood rock-hard on her head, like the kind of rock-candy sticks you get at the beach. Her face-paint make-up looks like Van Gogh's shirt sleeve after a day at the canvas and her scent is an elegant mix of bad perfume and bad B.O.
Edie walks up to this woman, dumps herself in front of her and grunts, without looking her in the eye. The woman looks Edie in the face with a certain bemusment (none so like the bemusment going on inside my head)
"Hi Edie"
"Hi Mum"

The lounge is smoky and serves as a hideout for Edie's Mum in the daytime. My guess is that this place doesn't get much business and there is no Mr. Edie's Mum to be seen. Mum knocks back another G & T, albeit more G and T.
"So - you've come back"
"Yeh well I got lost"
"Oh. And you're friend?" She motions towards me
"He's my pimp"
"Oh Edie, please. Hello, my name is Caroline and welcome to my house"
"Hi, I'm..."
"You're not allowed to speak to her" interrupts Edie. Her mother looks startled by this.
"Edie, please"
"You - go up to room 3, it's upstairs, the key is behind the desk out there. I'm going to kill my mother and then meet you up there. Do it now if you don't want to become an accessory."
I get up and leave. On my way to the keys I wonder whether Edie was kidding when she said she was going to kill her mother - they certainly seem to have a history. But then, who doesn't with their parents. I wander up the stairs that creak with every step and I let the dust wander up my nostrils. As if i have a choice.
I step inside the room and shut the door behind me. It just gets better and better.

Chapter Fourteen

"If you're going to have an Alien moment and shoot something out of your stomach, or any other orifice for that matter, then kindly turn your head."
He stares at me as if I'm something from space, or one of the bad guys from Star Trek. "You look like you're about to empty your guts of something. I'm just warning you not to empty it over me. Vomit and denim is not a good look."
I have no idea where I'm going - in my defence, this place has changed a hell of a lot but if my memory's not deceiving me, there's a reasonable B 'n' B 2,483 steps from the station gates. At least, there was. So he's wandering along behind me like a puppy dog without the eyes, staring at my face long enough for me to notice that I'm almost counting out loud. I hold my lips still, nod my head a little like I was singing a song and carry on my own sweet way. Evidently, he has no idea where he is, let alone where I'm taking him, and in all fairness, i quite like the feeling of power that gives me. A little bit of a buzz, one could say.

The place has had the guttering changed from black to white, to match the rest of the street's plastic facade; aside from that and the foot and a half long flower bed overgrown with weeds which were once fuschias and daffodils, little has changed. The sign on the front door announces vacancies with a manifest promise of fleas and poor service from Basil Fawlty incarnate. My 'companion' makes to peer through the window, but the curtain of grime stops him from taking in the moth-eaten furniture inside. I know it's still there. I can already tell. The sofa, facing the TV, four steps from the door, which leads into a hallway with a broken grandfather-clock from when one of the regulars had a dispute on the landing. The stairs still have the same old dent in from his fall on the step third from bottom. Upstairs will be three doors, leading to matchbox sized bedroom with the scarcest amount of furniture - it would be minimalism if it wasn't so soul-destroying.

I push open the door with the smallest amount of contact, and walk on in.

Chapter Thirteen

Who is this person?
Whoever she is, she got me off this train and now we're left on this platform, alone together, and it's all a bit awkward. For Me anyway.
She's got this air of ignorance about her. She blissfully looks onto the distance, thinking to herself, fiddling with something, as if she does this all the time.
"So - What's your name?"
"Today? Today I'm Edie Travers"
"OK. Nice to meet you Edie Travers." I hold out my hand to shake hers but she just looks at it for a second and then picks it up between two fingers and shakes it like one would a mouse to see if it was still alive. Then she goes back to fiddling with her something.
"Don't you want to know my name?"
"No - do you have a pen?"
"Um, no I don't. What are you doing?" She doesn't answer.
She's got a little book in her hands. A small leather bound notebook that's very ragged. She lifts her top up a little bit and removes a small black eye pencil from between her skirt and her belt. She scribbles something down in the book, rips out the page, folds it up and puts the book away in her back pocket. Then it hits me - who has a skirt with pockets?
"So Edie - what's going to happen next?"
She looks at me. Dead set centre in the eyes.
"Now? Now we go to town"
And she started walking towards the exit. She couldn't possibly know where she was going. I noticed her mouth moving away while she walked - like a small fieldmouse scurrowing away with some food - and she looked a bit like she was counting something. All of this was new to me, but the headache i've been harbouring for a while now isn't.
We didn't talk on the way to 'town'. I didn't want to interrupt whatever she was doing. I followed her around trying to sort out my life in my head and I wasn't too fussed about little girls who liked to follow me after saving my life. And I guess she did, save my life I mean. I wonder what would have happened had I not met Edie Travers? But I didn't. She met me.
We were approaching civilisation and leaving the carbon-copy suburbs of this place with no name. Where is she taking me? Does she even know? God - I feel so ill... What's going on inside me...

Chapter Twelve

He tries to push the door shut against me, but I wait two short seconds and shove my shoulder against the panelling. I hear the sound of fist on wall as he fall back, and before he can kick the door into me I slide round it and lock it. The cubicle's barely two foot square, and we're practically pressed nose to nose. He's obviously just washed his face; I can see the scarlet flakes of skin where the handsoap's rubbed it raw. His breath still smells of beer and some kind of meat. We're there for a good seventy seconds, standing so close I can see the bloodshot lines criss-crossing his eyeballs, until he turns his head away and manoeuvers onto the toilet seat. I attempt to perch on the edge of the sink, the fourteen inches of space not enough to cope with the bulk of my ass. The only sound is the rumbling of the wheels on the track, the occasional squeal of the brakes as we hit the corners too fast.

Finally, he asks me what I'm doing here. I tell him, with a small smile, that I'm surprised he can remember who I am. He doesn't look impressed with that comment, for three and a half seconds his mouth is twisted into a grimace which could rival Ann Widdecombe, but his shoulders slacken and he forces it into a smile.
"That's determination."
"Why did you follow me?"
"It would have been rude not to. That, and I have nothing better to do."
He makes for the door, then stops, realising my legs are so close that he will have to touch them to get out. I swing them over to the toilet and he unlocks the door, as silently as he can. He pulls it open an inch and peers round. His head comes back like a naughty child caught ear-wigging, and there's a degree of panic written across it.
"Relax," I say, and move to unbutton his daks.

He looks unconvinced with the finished result.
"Relax," I say, "I've done this a million times."
I take his hand and pull him through the door, straight into Simon, looking concerned. He takes a good long look at our rosey cheeks and unzipped flies, then back into my eyes. I wink at him, and apologise for barging into him, we were just a bit distracted. Then I hold out my hand, and ask him if there's a bin anywhere. He holds out his left hand, to recieve the rubbish he thinks I'm holding; an empty crisp packet, a squashed juice carton. As the train pulls into the station, the grind of metal covers the obscenities he barks as he feels the damp rubber in his palm and we shove past him through the door. If he had wanted to get close enough, he'd find out the damp was just handsoap.

Chapter Eleven

Little cash - Big Problems.
It's like that scene in the movie when the character has a shock revelation and all is great and well and dandy. But then what? We always cut - what's next? Well the great self-discovery moment is over and i've followed my impulses and found myself at a train station - but reality checks in and i'm penniless. Of course, as a mid-life crisis is really just a second adolescence with more grey hairs, the teenager in me decides to be daring, and i jump onboard.
I don't like that term mid-life crisis. For a start, i don't feel like i'm at the middle of my life. Why is my life set-up like that anyway? Like i've been working up to this point in my life and it's all downhill from here. Why is it called a crisis? Why is it such a bad thing? Re-discovering yourself should be great! I mean, i feel more alive that i have in years. I've broken out of the repetition of the daily grind and i feel like i'm actually living my life. Maybe when she kicked me out, it wasn't so bad. It wasn't even that long ago - as i said before, life moves so fast we can't even see it.
I'm in my seat. Just to piss everyone off i think i'll stow-away first class. I mean - if you're going to cheat someone out of something, make it worth it. I can see my opponant coming a carriage away. Right - let's see if i can remember how i used to do this. I get up and calmly wall down the aisle. I have nothing with me so i dont have to remember not to leave any trace of myself at my seat. I don't run, but i don't take my time getting to the end of my carriage. As i clutch to the door to the little toilet i check back to see if he has seen me. He looks quite jolly. He's got this suit on that's somewhere between navy and royal blue, i don't know what it's called. His name badge says "Simon". He's got a reddish face which is interrupted by a bristly brown moustache. He looks so earnest as he looms over the seats that it almost seems a shame to dupe him. Almost.
I dash into the toilet and wait. In this brief moment of reflection - i say reflection because wherever you stand in this tiny little coffin of a room you can see yourself in the grubby mirror - i wonder exactly what it is i'm going to do? I need to get away somewhere. I need to get a job, but not a kind of job that becomes the spear-head of my life. Just something that allows me to do things i want to do. I want my job to be the sideshow to my life, not the main act. The warm-up. The support band - not the headliner. Otherwise, what is there to live for?
I hear Simon's jolly boundering tone go by. As i said, i almost feel bad. I step out of the little cubicle thinking, I don't want to have to do this again, well, not again on this journey or i'll never get any rest. I think i'll cut while i'm ahead and get off at the next stop. Shit - where is the next stop? What fucking train am i on?

Chapter Ten

I only meant to leave for a few minutes. I woke up and, having watched his eyelids flicker for only three minutes and twenty seconds (one hundred times in two hundred seconds - a pretty hectic dream for such a soon-to-be-hungover state), I managed to crawl over the threshold of the bathroom. Taking a piss, clutching the rim of the sink for support, I caught sight of the wall tiles and started counting away. Old habits die hard. Twenty-three and my vision started to fur around the edges. I couldn't see the lines between them, so I couldn't reach the end. I had to get out. He was still lying on the bed, as though I'd taken a twelve-inch mallet to him. I hadn't had the chance; he'd been out the minute his balding head had touched the starched pillow. I, on the other hand, counted the flowers ingrained in the carpet: the number of bouquets, their petals and leaves and finally, the stems that linked the clumps of greyish-green together. Each consecutive number was accompanied by a sip from the closest bottle to my ass-groove in the mattress, until my arms and eyelids were too heavy to lift. I kept my eyes to the pavement and I just didn't stop; by the time I'd walked in a circle back to the room I had counted three thousand, two hundred and fourty-nine steps and the bed was pressed and ready for the next guests. I snuck out before anyone could say I hadn't paid my dues, and whaddaya know - there he was. Sixteen metres in front and gaining ground... I didn't call his name. I just traced his steps to the tube for two-hundred and thirty-nine seconds of pavement. He didn't notice me behind my paper, thirty-two pages of death and disaster that I wasn't going to read, eyes on stalks over the edge, waiting to see where he got off.

Who dumps their suit with a tramp and walks around in linen? It's three-thirty now, too late for lunch but too early to start drinking. His journey along the high street has come to an end, I can see it by the way he's looking around him for somewhere to go. Then, without warning, he takes a sharp left as if he didn't know he was going to do it either. The train station? Looks like I had you pegged in the wrong hole.