15. Falling Asleep to Dario Argento

Careful what you smoke

Friday, top of the hill and it’s barely even tea time

Moses does hate the smell of skunk, it knocks him a bit sick, but he’ll never be honest about why he really doesn’t like going to Vardaman’s place; it’s because it’s halfway – only halfway, mind you – up a steep hill, and to climb up it tightens him up from his lungs to Achilles’ heels. It hurts, physically, but also it kills him that he’s let himself go this much. At nineteen he was playing football five times a week for two different clubs – three training sessions and then Saturday league and Sunday league. But football never got him laid, and he never had an interesting conversation about Bowie or the Fiery Furnaces or anything else for that matter with any of his teammates at either Beckley Rangers or Ramblian Rovers. But that hill Vardaman lives on, it reminds him now, in this heat, that he has the starts of a paunch, and his lungs feel as if they were donated by an octogenarian. But there’s another reason apart from the smell of skunk and the altitude. Moses also hates to see Mac, Vardaman’s housemate, a sound technician for the Super Fury Animals, a man who has a job and it’s cool and he works hard and answers the door in his dressing gown scratching his head like he doesn’t know why a person like Moses is in his sphere of life experience. He’s here now, looking at Moses, wondering why the walk up the hill in this heat didn’t just kill him outright. It was Mac who got Vardaman into skunk, and there is always that little wooden chest open on the coffee table. Mac points at it as he walks toward the kitchen, his robe loose showing his small hairless frame and silk boxers.

“Roll one, Vardaman,” he says. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

They take their spots across two sofas, and Mac presents a DVD of The Bird with the Crystal Plumagehe brought back from a gig in Belgium the week before. None of them have seen it yet. Vardaman sees Moses is a funny colour and he opens a window, although curtains remain closed giving the room a shadowed amber hue. It’s cool in the room, dank. There’s a rotor fan in the corner but it’s never turned on as it would blow all the blow all over the place.

“What brings you guys home on a Friday afternoon?” says Mac. “You in trouble?” The DVD makes a whirring sound and Mac skips through the menu of garish murder stills with the long black remote control.

“We’re avoiding Aaron,” Moses says without thinking. He’s drowsy now he’s sitting.

Mac shrugs and sips his tea. That’s another reason why Moses can’t stand Mac – he has no idea who people like Aaron are. He has a life outside of this fucking town.

“Basically,” Vardaman says, exhaling a long plume of skunk smoke and leaning across to Mac with the spliff. “We fucked up, and now this really dangerous guy wants to kill us both.”

Mac thinks on it, holds the spliff at the tip. “Not good,” he says eventually.

“Not good,” echoes Moses. Beads of wisdom. This fucking guy.

Mac takes a smoke, a long one followed by three short ones, and passes it to Moses.

“You know what you should do?” Mac says.

“We’re all ears,” says Vardaman in that deep laboured alien voice of the quickly stoned.

“Kill him,” Mac says. “Pre-emptive strike.”

Vardaman nods although not in a way that suggests he really heard what Mac said.

“Yeah,” he says.

“It’s the only way,” Mac says.

“Probably not the only way,” Moses says, holding the smoke in his lungs and forensically examining the cherry at the end of the spliff before handing it back to Vardaman.

“Nah, trust me, Mo,” says Mac. He’s sinking further into the sofa. “Be bold, man.”

Vardaman seems to have startled. Moses glances over to him and he’s upright on the edge of his seat. He’s contemplating something.

“Mac is rarely wrong, Mo.”

Moses laughs. “When have we ever asked his advice on anything before?”

“He’s a man of the world,” Vardaman says.

“That’s what concerns me,” says Moses.

Mac is upright, his head back on the sofa at a right angle, his eyes lightly closed over. Is he conscious?

“Mac, you okay?” says Vardaman.

Mac raises a hand but doesn’t move or open his eyes. “Late night. Shouldn’t have had that smoke on an empty stomach,” he says, and he seems to drift off.

“You’re missing the film,” Vardaman says.

“We’re not going to kill Aaron,” Moses says, as if he wants to discuss it further but doesn’t want to admit he wants to discuss it further.

“Could do, though,” Vardaman says in that stoned voice. “Would totally get away with it too. Think of all the suspects. Everyone fucking hates him and he’s a drug dealer. Police wouldn’t even bother investigating properly. We’d be doing the whole town a favour and it wouldn’t go unrecognised I can tell you. Free pints for life.”

“Apart from all his clients who will be well pissed off,” Mac says from the depths of his drift.

Moses is having another go on the spliff, not really sure how he got involved in this smoke in the first place. He didn’t want to smoke. Doesn’t really like it. And after a drink it has the power to wipe him out completely. Complacency. It happens.

“I have to tell you something,” Moses says.

“Is it about last night?” Vardaman says. “About your heart-to-heart with Aaron? Did you sell me out? Did you put me up for human sacrifice? Is he going to kill me and spare you? I had my suspicions at the time, I have to be honest. You were conspiratorial. That’s the word. I’m not paranoid. Wahay! I’m not paranoid. Something to be proud of when that comes along, Mo. But… cough… this isn’t about me. This is about who you are as a person. Your character. And you sold me out.”

“I didn’t sell you out, Vardaman,” Moses says, his head getting heavy and his chest growing cold. “I told you everything I remember saying to Aaron. I need to tell you about something I have coming up.”

“Is this your way of telling me you intend to murder Aaron?”

“It is not.”

“Well, you’d better come up with a better plan than that. We have to DJ tonight. You need your fifty quid. We’ve established that.” Vardaman sinks back into the sofa. Mac is snoring on the other sofa, on and off, the odd blurt, the odd whistle.

Moses thinks. Something about the phrasing of what Vardaman just said. “How much do you get?”

“What?”

“For DJing. How much do you get?”

Vardaman turns away from Moses. “Don’t worry about it, Mo. Fifty quid is nothing to be sniffed at.”

Vardaman is asleep. Is he? Or is he pretending?

Moses finishes the spliff on his own. No point in pressing about the money. He’ll be in Brighton next week, a new life, checked out and left.

The room is dark but for the silver fizz of the movie screen. Moses sits and thinks, while the other two sleep, paying no mind to the woman being knifed to death on the tele while a man watches helplessly through an enormous window.