34. Penis Envy

Play it Loud

An hour earlier.

Up at Rourke’s Place, Waingard curses the hill she’s had to climb up to get to Aaron’s “secret” second flat. Not so secret, as it turns out. He used to brag about it. laugh behind his wrist at his own girlfriend who already no doubt had to put up with the indignity of being a relationship with Aaron in the first place, then having to have him double down and rent a place like this. What did he get up to here? In all likelihood, very little, but he had some space to sit around and be alone, which to most men like Aaron would be a terrifying prospect.

Waingard stands at the steps leading up to the four-storey house. Third floor up is Aaron’s flat. The curtains are open. She looks around in vain for any signs of CCTV on the road that may have had half an eye on what went on in there the night before. She climbs the steps after taking a moment to catch her breath from the hill and looks at the names on the buzzers. She can spot Aaron’s by the virtue of being the only flat without any information at all. She presses the buzzer for a flat one floor below and when a small voice answers she asks if they can let her in as she’s just moved in to 3b and can’t get the hang of the fob and is wondering if the estate agent has given her the wrong one as she’s had problems with it all day and the clicks before she’s halfway through her spiel and she says thank you and pushes into the lobby.

At 3b, Waingard tries the handle first. She’s been caught out by simplicity in the past. But it doesn’t give. She takes a small leather pouch out of her arse pocket and removes one of several shivs from it. Leaning her shoulder to the door, she enters the shiv into the lock and delicately rotates it until the lock clicks and door moves inwards letting out a puff of stale air from the room like it’s an ancient tomb. And she steps in she sees just how far from ancient tomb the place is, seeing as ancient tombs remain untouched for millennia and even then are often treated with a reverent respect by their looters. This has been shown the opposite of respect. Burglary would have been better for the place, seeing as burglars would have only made any intention to rob a place all the more difficult by trashing the place to this extent. It was more elemental, as if a storm had passed through, smashing furniture and tearing up carpet, ripping wallpaper and shattering glass. The most obvious thing of the whole space, like a centrepiece of some degraded art show, was a sword, an ornamental samurai sword with scabbard discarded at its side, plunged ruthlessly into the oak chest that had functioned as a coffee table between the sofa and the wall mounted flat screen TV. The sword glistened in the light of the streetlamp that loitered just below the window like it was awaiting some Arthurian avatar to come and pull it out and claim some regal appointment.

She stands in the doorway for a moment taking it all in. What did this carnage tell her about what had happened to Aaron? At first, only that he truly thought he wouldn’t be coming back here any time soon. Secondly, that he had somehow connected in a very real way with Moses and Vardaman. To have let them do this, to have invited them to do it, he must have been paying them back for something. Perhaps Moses had been on to something with the self-aggrandising shit about opening Aaron’s mind to the power of critical thought. Aaron had felt invigorated by the session of getting fucked up and deciphering the rabid politicking of the lyrics of Crass. And in return he had welcomed the boys to a workshop on their own primordial machismo. Smashing things up. Seems like a fair trade.

Waingard hasn’t seen much like this before, but it isn’t complicated, isn’t confusing. What she knows it means is that Aaron was convinced he was going away, and high spirits – quaint but nothing wrong with that – meant this was a ritual for him, a celebration of the material nonsense that got him into all this in the first place. Okay, so dealing drugs was never all about the cash, it was prestige and for someone like him a way to connect with other humans. This room, ransacked, marks a tumultuous moment in those human connections. Aaron had probably only really ever felt this good at the end of particularly good sex, or down the gym when he’s just about to pop a blood vessel on the weights. But what did Moses and Vardaman get out of it? They weren’t giggling in the corner, they were in the thick of this, and they weren’t giggling there either. Maybe it was Aaron who was on the periphery, offering the brittle innards of his secret space as a thank you to the boys for introducing him to his dormant intellectual self. Have your way with it, my friends. Waingard steps further in, inspects and admires the detritus of the sunken vessel of Aaron’s former self. It would have started small. She sees a circle of fag burns in the carpet just in front of the stereo. They were sitting on the floor. Crass playing loud. The volume dial on the stereo is all the way up. Bang and Olufson. Is there a chance Aaron’s girlfriend didn’t know he sold drugs? Otherwise why keep this impressive piece of kit away from her? Moses asks where the ashtray is, and Aaron just says stub it out on the carpet. This is where it begins. Moses laughs and looks at Vardaman. Vardaman, out of the two of them, is the one who takes the plunge. He shrugs and sticks his down into the floor. Aaron nods approval. Moses follows suit. Aaron goes last, sure he can’t be mad if the three of them are doing it. Next to the stereo, open, is the CD case for Crass’ second album (she thinks), Penis Envy. A brutal sound, if she remembers it right. It would have shook the walls. Riled them up. Next to the CD is an empty Jack Daniels bottle. High spirits indeed. Taking the edge of the speed or whatever it was they were on. It wouldn’t have been coke. She sees the framed poster of Scarface above the music unit. Never get high on your own supply. There are a few movie posters around. And on the floor by the door to the bathroom is Enter the Dragon, smashed and sliced and on the floor. That’s where the sword came in. Nothing else is slashed though. No furniture, nothing. The sword was used on the poster and then plunged into the oak casket. It was the final move. Between the fag burns and the Arthurian plunge was a series of releases Waingard somehow recognised. Had this been in any other town she might have been out on a limb, but here, in this town, she could smell the familiarity of it. The small explosions leading to the ultimate gesture. All that stuff, pent up inside, and you don’t even know it’s there. She imagines the close eye contact between Aaron and Moses as the cigarette fizzes into the worn shag of the carpet. Go ahead, Aaron says; smash the place up. And the hairs stand up on the back of Moses’s neck as he realises there’s a chance Aaron is being serious. Vardaman scoffs, and gives Moses the look that says don’t fall for it, there’s no way Aaron thinks you’ll do it and if you do anything now he’ll realise what he’s done by giving you permission and there’s no way Aaron is going to admonish himself but he’s going to lift that big old frame of his and make out it was obvious he was joking even though you both shared a moment to confirm that this is no joke but even as Vardaman is trying to convey this with his eyes Moses is up on his feet and shit if he hasn’t swung his left foot straight through the MDF of the sideboard next to the sound system. Waingard examines the puncture. Aaron starts to laugh, but Vardaman knows it was touch-and-go as to which way the big man would follow this up. Vardaman watched as Aaron’s lips smacked and his pug ears twitched. Again. Moses swings his leftie a second time and kicks over the potted rubber plant and the soil spills out. Vardaman doesn’t like the look of this, being a lover of all things alive, flora and fauna, and he goes over and picks up the plant and straightens it. Waingard can see the circular ridge the pot made into the carpet, not realigned, and the spill to its side. Aaron goads Vardaman for this. Tells him it’s his turn to smash something up. Vardaman declines. He’s still not sure about all this, and he sees blood lust in Moses’s eyes who is even now looking around for the next thing to have a go at as soon as Aaron gives the okay. Eventually Aaron has to threaten Vardaman, tells him if he doesn’t smash something then it’ll be Vardaman who gets the boot next and it’ll be through his fucking skull. And Vardaman sees this is where they’re at now. It’s all gone a bit fucked. Moses calms when he hears the threat to Vardaman, and he judges an escalation in violence is the best way to let his old friend off the hook, and he sweeps his arms across the mantlepiece and all the IKEA tat Aaron has accumulated flies across the room. Aaron whoops. Crass blasts. Vardaman is worried now. Waingard sees one armchair untouched. This is where Aaron takes a seat to watch the chaos unfold. Smash it all up, he says. I’m not ever coming back here.

Wait… did he say that?

Waingard surveys the carnage once again. What was Aaron looking at for his eccies in the light fitting? Maximum seven, probably out in two to three. Why so much outrage allowed upon his possessions? He’d be coming back. Did he think he wasn’t? Is that defeatism, pessimism, the low thinking of a man about to be confronted by the real-world consequences of his actions? Or is it the abandonment of a man who knows his cards are marked? She needed to know how he got off that morning. A technicality is one thing, but in a town like this, something has to nudge it to the surface. They had their man. Nobody is squalling over a man like Aaron doing a few years even if the Is aren’t dotted and the Ts not crossed. It makes no sense. Unless it does make sense. Somebody wanted him back out on the street.