Chapter Twenty-Two

We're standing face to face, five feet from each other. People are passing either side. SAY SOMETHING. Something reassuring. I'm not asking you to tell me you do the same, have done ever since your dad ran away when you were five years old to keep you sane and stop you thinking about the things that scare you. I'm not asking you for a life story, I don't care about your name. Just say something to remind me I'm human. He opens his mouth slowly, his brow furrowed, and pauses. "Maybe you need -"
The fuzz over my eyes dissipates, my head shakes involuntarily until I drag it towards the finger pressing into the arm of my anorak. My gaze slides across the aisle, and Pokey-Man looks puzzled. There is a flicker of fear bouncing in the twitch of his left eye.
The rain is streaking down the windows, pelting harder than my heart in its cavern of a chest, all thanks to the rude awakening by the man across the way. The clip in my hair writhes against my scalp, the scarf around my neck flaps rudely against my chest in a desperate attempt to stop me slipping back into the dream. A bell rings overhead; my body is projected forward and there's a shriek. I ensure its not mine, look around me at the faces reflected in the windows until I spy the shrivelled heap on the linoleum. Not a stir among the crowd, save the small, tissue-paper hand clutching a walking stick. It's a long and painful process, several people tut into their newspapers. I don't think it's the headlines that did it.

The handle slides under my palm, so I lean my shoulder against it and force my way in from the cold. Warm smiles from the women at reception. The last gust of wind of the outside world shoots up my spine. I wander through the room, first around the edge and then through the center stands. The paintings blend into each other, a mixture of colours and patterns and textures spiralling over the walls. I stop in front of one. The picture consists of a deep, royal blue coming onto the canvas from the left, swirling and spiralling with misdirection and randominity and a thinner, more spider-like red, falling into place from the right, with an equal amount of misguided confusion before the two lines meet in the centre. They have their dance and blend together to make different and magnificent shades of purple, some more red, some more blue, but each unique and as crazy as the last, and then with an urgency the whole dance stops and the two colours, almost unaturally, shoot off in opposite directions and dissappear. It twists the tendons in my heart and fills up every corner of my lungs. It looks the way I feel. On a canvas. I stare at the card beside it and my eyes well up. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing to attention and my fingers are clawing at the flesh on my palms. It is the way I feel.

The warm smiles of the women at reception quickly morph into bewildered grimaces. They don't understand. I plead my case, but they just stare at me, then at each other, then at the floor. I kick the counter and force my way into the outside world. Halfway down the high street and someone thrusts past me, almost knocking me onto all fours. My eyes are squinted tight, against the rain and the tears and the goddamn pain, swirling inside of me and hurtling into opposite directions. The tramp outside the flatblock looks up hopefully as I dig my hands into my pockets. I don't see his face as I run in the opposite direction, clutching the gallery business card with blue scrawl on the back.

Chapter Twenty-One

It's been a while.
I must say it has been a while.

I open the curtains in my baron, cold warehouse that conforms to a steel-blue bitterness that sort of consumes it. The sunlight trickles in from outside and ignites the walls and the floor and the ceiling. My bed, messy as ever, is a mere collection of fabrics on a simple matress on the floor. Who really needs structure in a bed? I pull on an old tatty shirt-cum-jumper and a pair of tattier trousers. I walk over to a small table by the corner of the room and flick on the kettle. I look at the rather large white canvas that predominantly fills the room. What shall i do today?

The force with which i attack the space makes the blue flick back into my face. The spoils of war, perhaps. I take another violent stab at the canvas with another brush. Strokes of colour so full of paint drip tear drops down the white canvas before two colours meet and dance in the middle of the void before finally shooting off at their own tangents. The picture consists of a deep, royal blue coming onto the canvas from the left, swirling and spiralling with misdirection and randominity and a thinner, more spider-like red, falling into place from the right, with an equal amount of misguided confusion before the two lines meet in the centre. They have their dance and blend together to make different and magnificent shades of purple, some more red, some more blue, but each unique and as crazy as the last, and then with an urgency the whole dance stops and the two colours, almost unaturally, shoot off in opposite directions and dissappear.

The buzzer wakes me from an almost trance like state. The girl from the paper has come to have a look around. Recently, i have sold three paintings to some bigwig and as i paint, shoot pictures and have an almost derilict appartment on the more leftfield side of London, that of course requires me to have the label of one of the art worlds hot new things. Oh, and i have a small beard - i guess that helps. I let her in and she does the talking. I invite her to sit on a small box, as im not really 'one with furniture' as my friends at Ikea would say. While she tells me about herself and what she's writing, i fiddle with my kitchen corner of the room. It's a modest table, about the size of one of those widescreen TV things, with an electronic kettle and some cups. It's next to a small window, on which a little tree grows. I pick one of my leaves and crush it up. After i have enough i put them in a cup and fill it with water. The water turns a shade of midnight purple and i fill up another cup.
"I'm afraid you'll have to suffer one of my teas - i ran out of PG last week"
"Oh that's fine - so, what do you think of the project?"
"Hmm? Oh, Jane said something about a profile? Short thing?"
"Yes, nothing to binding - do you mind of a photographer comes by later on? a few snaps for the spread?"
"Um, yeh, sure thing."
"Great - so, what made you turn to painting?"

The buzzer rang again and in came Juan. He asked me to sit on my box and look into the distance. I was sure they would wrap me up to look like some kind of pretentious enigma who is all-too-holy for explanation. Juan took one of my with the painting i finished earlier today. The interviewer asked me some more questions.
"That's nice - is it new?"
"Yes. I might add some yellow splats here and there. It's all too barron."
"It looks... interesting. Like there's something happening. What do you call it?"
"Oh i hadn't really thought." I paused.

"It's called Edie"

Chapter Twenty

"I think it suits me."
He stares at me with a mixture of despair and disbelief, eyes not quite directed at my face but at my hairline.
"What?"
"You," he says, carefully, "are the only person I have ever met who could not only convince a nun to quit her life's service, but also to give you her habit."
I grin, teeth and everything. "Bless you my child."

We're about halfway down the steps from the ant farm cunningly disguised as the city hospital, when I realise - I don't know why, but it could be the way he's nonchalantly narrating his number of footfalls - that I haven't been counting my life away. How in the hell did that happen? Every nanowatt of brainpower goes into staying on the wagon. Of course, the minute I begin concentrating on how not to start counting, the idea starts building up in my mind, like a ball of snow tumbling down the mountain of my eyes. The movement of the snow hits home the lack of momentum my feet currently have - he's already on the pavement, the hem of his slacks dangling into the murk of a puddle. I tune back into reality and start towards him.
"Three... four..."
Fuck.

"You have to talk to me again."
"What?"
"You have to talk to me again. And stop counting. That doesn't help."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
I manage to step ahead and twirl in front of him. "Since we have left the hospital, we have taken 2,337 steps. You have scratched the same spot on the left hand side of the nape of your neck fifteen times, and we have passed seventy-six lamp-posts. Are you getting my point?"
Once again, that stare. I want to take that stare right off his face. Say something, damnit. Anything.
"Right."
Well, that's something.

Fifty-seven seconds later and he's shufflng from foot to foot, trying to think of something constructive to say without reverting back to his businessman self. Sorry, his ex-businessman self. How could I forget. We're standing face to face, five feet from each other. People are passing either side. SAY SOMETHING. Something reassuring. I'm not asking you to tell me you do the same, have done ever since your dad ran away when you were five years old to keep you sane and stop you thinking about the things that scare you. I'm not asking you for a life story, I don't care about your name. Just say something to remind me I'm human.

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."