11. Smash It Up, Yeah

The mysteries of the heart (to heart)

Friday, not far off two

They’re out the door almost before Mike the Elder is, shouldering past him with Vardaman saying, “Don’t tell him you’ve seen us,” and Mike the Elder hunching his shoulders to the unwelcome heat and wagging his finger. “If he asks, I’m not lying, boys. Not to Aaron.”

“And if he doesn’t ask?” Vardaman checks as they part ways.

“If you owe him money, boys, he’s going to ask, isn’t he?” Mike the Elder says.

“Thanks, Mike,” Moses says. “Knew we could count on you.”

Mike the Elder flicks them the V as they head up the hill. Every man for himself when it comes to Aaron.

“What are we supposed to do?” Moses says.

“Go home?” Vardaman says.

“Fuck no. My parents are home, and I can’t just go and lay on my bed waiting for Aaron to find me.”

“Try not to be dramatic. He’s not an international assassin. He’s a doorman from the Loft.”

“Asking some dickhead where I live isn’t beyond him though, is it?” Moses says. He’s stopped now. They’re up the top of the road from The Railway, round the corner by the roundabout opposite Aldi and there are a lot of cars about.

“We should get off the main road,” Vardaman says.

“See; you are worried,” Moses says.

“Of course I’m worried. Worried that bumping into him is going to be less fun than avoiding him. We should go home. Come to mine.”

“I can’t. The smell.”

“Cheeky fucker.”

“The skunk,” Moses says regretfully. “That sweet sticky smell. I will definitely puke.”

“So… puke.”

Moses gives Vardaman a glance that ends the exchange there and then. They make their way back down from the roundabout and before they’ve really thought about it they’re heading back across the footbridge over the rail tracks to the high street.

“What did you two talk about anyway? Your heart to heart?” Vardaman says. Moses is a little out of breath. The approach to the footbridge has steps that spiral longer in the space between them and not a man, woman or dog alive has ever reached the end of them without being tricked into breaking into a canter.

“If you want the truth, Vardaman, I don’t honestly remember. What do any of us ever talk about? I took the tactic that he has a soul, a heart, and he has a mother who loves him, and that prison will be a chance for him to grow. I told him to join the library, read some Jean Genet – I think I spent quite a bit of time spelling that out for him, like I got stuck on the importance of him reading Genet. I told him he should read The Lady of the Flowers and he said that sounded like a definite book he’d get an arse rape for having in his cell, so we moved on from that quite quickly. Lady. Flowers. I could see he was getting angry. I moved on from the book talk.”

“What was it like to put your skin on his skin?”

“The head-to-head? It was very brief but you’re sticking with it, I see.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever touched him,” Vardaman says, his mind wandering.

“His skin was soft, is that what you want to hear?”

Vardaman seems happy with this.

They’re the other side now, back down by the high street. The Pipistrelle is calling them both, door small and dark, the gap-toothed mouth of the mock Tudor frontage. Some details of the previous night are coming back to them both in fades of isolated scenes. What had Moses said to Aaron when their heads were touching? Vardaman watched them from the other side of the room. God, what a fucking mess they’d made. Aaron had orchestrated the whole thing. Boys, Aaron had said filling the doorway to the flat with his lumpen frame, let’s smash this fucking place apart. They started nervously, Moses pushing over a chair, Vardaman throwing cushions across the room, but then Aaron dropped his heel through a heavy coffee table and the glass and tiles cracked apart like crazy paving and it all got wild from there. Or something like that. It’s difficult to remember exactly, the details and the order of things.

“We’re taking a chance going back in there, aren’t we?” Moses says. It’s only been a little over an hour, as it is.

“We’re taking a chance only if he’s looking to fuck us up,” Vardaman says. “We haven’t really considered that Aaron might have had so much fun last night that he’s looking to carry on partying with us.”

They stop just a few feet short of the doorway to The Pipistrelle and nod at each other the dawning of this idea. The sun hangs above them like an interrogator’s lamp. That could be it. In fact, now it’s been said out loud, it seems the most likely explanation. Aaron has no friends, no confidants, and that’s what Vardaman and Moses proved to be on the night. And he wants to celebrate his good luck with his new friends. Obvious when you think about it.