16. Oh, You Pretty Things

Feeling like a microwaved turd

Friday, pub o’clock

Vardaman is awoken by a loud snapping noise. It’s the downstairs bathroom door lock opening. Mac has just had a shower. He has a party tonight to go to in Cardiff. Moses is asleep at the other end of Vardaman’s sofa, in a sitting position, his head back, the dead spliff butt sticking out of his fist. He wakes as if it’s the crack of dawn stretching his arms up and yawning wide, but on checking his watch it’s 7pm and they need to eat and freshen up and get back into town.

“I feel like a microwaved turd,” Moses says wiping dribble from his cheek.

“Have a shower, man,” says Vardaman. Then he sees Moses’s shoes. “Mate, have you walked dirt through on the carpet. What the hell?”

Moses rubs his eyes, tries to get his bearings.

“Sorry. I must have stepped in the mud when I went out the back earlier. You two were asleep and I thought I was going to whitey, so I went had took some breaths out the back.”

“Well, wipe your shoes. Mac will go nuts if you drag dirt through here like that.”

Moses holds his hands up in apology and tiptoes out through the kitchen to the garden. Vardaman can hear him kicking and scraping his shoes against the skirt of the wall. Moses is thinking, as he always does whenever he’s anywhere near that garden, about the time Hersh fell off the roof and smashed a terracotta plant pot – it broke his fall. He calls in to Vardaman through the open door. “Hersh out tonight?” he says.

“Probably,” Vardaman says. “He said last night he was going to a gig and then he’d meet us in the pub, I think.”

“What gig?” Moses says, as in what gig that we aren’t going to.

“Over the Centre,” Vardaman calls. Moses can see Vardaman through the window and Vardaman doesn’t know it, and there’s something not quite right about him, like he looks fresh, like he hasn’t just woken up. Vardaman’s looking into the mirror on the living room wall, slapping himself in the cheeks, mouthing something to himself. What the fuck is the matter with him?

But Moses needs to clean his shoes. He’s bent double, and he doesn’t notice Vardaman is at the back door now glaring down over him.

“That’s not dirt from out here,” Vardaman says.

“It must be,” Moses says, slightly confused at the accusatory tone.

“No. That’s soil,” Vardaman says. “It’s all fucking clay up here, which is why Mac puts everything in pots. Nothing grows.”

“Remember when Hersh fell off the roof and smashed that terracotta pot?” Moses says straightening up and letting out a big puff into the cooling shadows of the back garden.

“Of course I remember it,” Vardaman says, not amused. “He was trying to climb through my bedroom window while I was having sex with a girl.”

“You locked the door on us,” Moses says.

“Yes. Because I was having sex with a girl.”

“We wanted another drink.”

“I had to pay for that pot,” Vardaman says.

“Why didn’t Hersh pay for it?”

“Because it’s Hersh. No big deal.” Vardaman takes a step back. “Come on, brush your teeth if you want, but we have to go.”

Moses has one last kick of the soil off his shoes and goes back in. “You’re not worried about Aaron waiting for us in the pub?” he says.

“Do you think that sleep has vanquished him?” Vardaman says sliding on a fresh t-shirt from a pile on the computer chair in the corner of the room.

“This is all a bit of a nightmare,” Moses says.

“If we stay in the Pips, and then stay in the club, he won’t be able to do anything to us. We’re safe. And maybe it’ll give us some time to reason with him. Seriously, how did your shoes get so muddy?”

“Must have been the walk up here earlier?” Moses says. “Are you okay? You seem a bit on edge.”

Vardaman takes a deep breath and for a second Moses thinks he’s about to say something, but he doesn’t. “I’ll phone a taxi,” he eventually says and goes over to the phone by the front door.