47. Good, So Good

Positive Hangover Affirmation Therapy

Saturday. 10am.

Moses wakes with a shock, his one eye shut solid with crust, his mouth bent open with drool, his hair on the one side sticking up like the tail of a randy dog. He sucks up the drool, wipes his eyes, looks around him and tries to figure out what happened last night and why he is where he is. The room is unfamiliar, his head as heavy as it could be and still be supported successfully by his shoulders and neck. That pain, that ache, like there’s a big hand clasped to him, is focussing on his neck, and isn’t hangover but is a muscular disloyalty brought on by his sleeping position. The word fuck floats around his head like a dirigible. He attempts to straighten and stand but his legs aren’t there for it and he stumbles back into the leather and stares from there out at the room for a while. He came back with the copper. That was stupid. Vardaman had warned him against, Hence sneaking out and not telling Vardaman where he was going. Of course, he’ll have guessed it though. Why else would Moses sneak off. So, this is the copper’s gaff. It’s not though, is it? It’s her dad’s house or something. The records piled up. The glasses with half-finished drinks in them. The ashtray. Did they even get to the sex? She was nervous? But then he tries to move and he feels the ache in his dick, and he grimaces and puts his hand down the front of his jeans and feels the tenderness of his old chap and he puts his head back and wonders what the hell actually went on in here last night, he obviously got something out of it, although he doesn’t remember a thing about the nature of it. He’s fully clothed. Shoes on. His crotch feels bruised. She must have been some kind of animal. He manages to lean forward, put his head somewhere around his knees. He remembers getting back there. Nice house. The cop fixes him a drink. Her name is Samantha. Is she here? Upstairs, sleeping it off? God, did he pass out just as things got going? Was he that drunk? He put a record on. They talked about Hendrix. He blinks wildly in the hope it will dislodge this ache from the base of his skull. It’s unusual to remember things in the order that they happened, but the strange thing is, when he tries to settle and focus, the brain fog isn’t quite so thick as his body is deranged with physical twists and bruises. This isn’t so much a hangover, as punishment for sleeping on that bastard sofa. He stands and looks down at it. The leather is hard, robust, and the backs and arms are at right angles to the seats. It has some sadistic design behind it. Once Moses’s up, his legs gain a bit of weight to them, and he tucks in his shirt and rolls his shoulders best he can with that ache lingering back up there between them. He glances at the turntable and sees Tago Mago. That was the last thing they played. The music sounds in his mind, as if the band is whispering in a room right down at the base of his skull. And they’re pulling him back somewhere. He was in a brown room with soft amber light. Samantha was sitting at his feet and he was answering her stupid questions. Her favourite album is Disintegration by the Cure and there’s no shame in that but then something else is there. Moses’s hand lifts to his brow. Shit. He’s giving her names. Shit. He’s giving the copper names. Shit. She’s somehow managed to get some list out of him. Someone, anyone, on that list of names will kill him when they find out he’s sold them down the river for a blow job. Shit. Moses runs upstairs and puts his head in every room – it’s an even bigger house than he thought – but there’s no-one to be seen. He takes a long glass of tap water, washes down some painkillers he luckily dug out of a cupboard. Anybody’s guess how old they are, but anything has to be better than this pain. And he crashes out of the front door immediately realising where he is and that he can be at Vardaman’s place in twenty minutes if he walks at a pace. He’s a fucking dead man without Vardaman’s help, although he has no idea how Vardaman can help. And he is there in twenty minutes, down the hill to the sharp bend by the old Queen’s school long closed and boarded with its Latin classes and chip shop lunches, up over the MOT garage and past the Aldi, under the footbridge and up the hill to the barracks, an ice cold sweat dripping down his back and a hacking cough brought up on the hill that actually feels quite good in that damp cold air. He counts his way up the hill as he can never remember if Vardaman’s place is number thirty-three or thirty-five but luckily he can see the computer chair and ashtray through a gap in the curtain of the front window and he’s pretty sure it’s between two pebble dash terraces, one grey, one white and pink. There’s no answer when he knocks. Shit. On the walk over he’s remembered more and every details he knows means he needs Vardaman more and more and that means Vardaman can do less and less for him. He gave up the names of some serious people. Christ, even Paedo Grin could be one for sticking a stiletto between your ribs. Shit. Dead man walking. Second knock on the door and still no answer. He heads up the hill to the lane that leads to the allotments on the hill behind the street, the ones that are overlooked by the barracks at the very top of the hill, beyond the checkpoint, and he goes down the lane between the allotments and the gardens, remembering best he can the time he and Hersh went down this way back in the dead of night that one time. He thinks for a moment. Which one is it? Then he sees the terracotta plant pots. He climbs over the back fence with no little effort and very little grace and stumbles up the path to the try the back door. Locked. He looks up to Vardaman’s window. Curtains drawn. Moses contemplates the foolish option. He doesn’t want to do it. Is this really an emergency or is his hangover giving him the urge to panic? He needs the comfort of Vardaman’s wisdom. He gets up onto the wall. He remembers how Hersh did this. He thinks he remembers. He lifts himself up onto the neighbour’s flat kitchen roof which, when looking down onto it, doesn’t look safe enough for his weight, so he moves quickly back to Vardaman’s garden along the drain line, and up onto Vardaman’s kitchen roof. From there, he lifts himself to the window ledge and taps on the glass. It’s a precarious position, almost everything depending right now on the strength in his shoulders and upper arms. He looks back over his shoulder and he could definitely die if he fell now. It’s what, twenty feet up? But there’s stuff down there. Plant pots and a few upended paving slabs and an ash can. He could break his neck. He knocks the window again. He swings his foot back to the kitchen roof but he can’t get any traction there, so he pull himself up onto the window ledge so he’s kneeling on it and as he tries to turn around on the tiny space to fling himself back down to the roof he leans hard against the window and the fucking thing gives in and he tumbles arse over tit onto the floor of Vardaman’s room and there’s a few seconds of shrieking as Vardaman, in bed with the duvet pulled over his head, curses and throws a pillow at his intruder and is about to leap up and kick the guy in the head before realising quite quickly it’s Moses.

“What the fuck, dude?” Vardaman shouts.

Moses has banged his head, but he’s glad it’s not worse, and he squats in the corner of the room and rubs his crown.

“Why can’t you answer your door?” Moses says.

“I should call the police,” Vardaman says. “This is getting to be a habit and I don’t want you taking this route in life, Mo. It’s a slippery slope.”

“I was desperate.”

“I could have killed you. And I still might.”

“I need you.”

“You need to go.”

“What do you mean I need to go. Didn’t you hear what I said? I need you.”

“You didn’t need me last night, did you?”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

“Let me guess: this desperation for my company has something to do with where you ended up last night.”

Moses rubs his head.

“A little bit,” he says.

“Of course it fucking does.”

Moses is taking the admonishment, but also something is niggling at him. Like he hasn’t stood back and seen the whole picture. A vibe. His vision is narrow.

“Are you alone?” Moses says.

Vardaman, now leaning up in bed with the duvet pulled up to his neck like he’s a shrinking violet. “Go downstairs, Mo. And give me a minute.”

Clothes on the chair in the corner of the room. Knickers entangled in the outturned legs of a pair of jeans. Moses vaguely recognises the cardigan unspooled on the floor in a one mound of wool next to them.

“Anyone I know?” Moses says.

The bedroom door opens and Med walks in dripping wet, one towel around her up to the armpits and one twisted around her scalp like a seaside ice cream. She sees Moses hunched on the floor and yelps once short and sharp, her hand to her mouth, and freezes to the spot as if there’s still a small chance he won’t see that she’s entered the room.

Silence between the three of them.

 Moses feels gutted.

Vardaman is wondering if at any moment they all won’t just laugh about this.

“Right,” Moses says and gets to his feet.

“Mo, we should talk about this,” Med tries, but he goes out past her and if she’d been dressed, she may have gone after him, but she’s not, and her and Vardaman just wait for the sound of the front door slamming shut and when it does Med says, exasperated and angry, “How the fuck did he end up in here?”

Vardaman points to the window. “He came in through the window,” he says.

Med closes her eyes. Tips back her head. “You two are such a massive couple of twats,” she says.

And Vardaman offers no objection.