Insecure Read online

  They’re kind of weird, those pre-kiss moments. There’s the laughing about something in a conspiratorial way, then turning all serious, close the eyes and bob’s your uncle. Then there’s the getting closer, and closer, whilst continuing a conversation about how unsuited you both are and then: bamb! Carrie’s was a long, steady lean towards me, constant pace, her lips puckering as she swayed towards me and then I weaved out of target and she almost fell on the floor, which is why I remember it as a sort of lunge. But that’s unfair on her, because I flirted with her all night, well I sort of flirted. In fact, I don’t know what flirting is, but I think I was trying very hard to instil every gesture with my attraction towards her, that I was up for it...and then I bottled it in the end, so it was stupid and I felt a bit shitty about it because I did like her, a lot in fact, but it’s just she’s…complicated.

  Well, that’s not strictly true.

  Carrie just had too much extra. She has a son, and no matter how much I try and say to myself that it doesn’t matter, it does. I’d have to get on with not just a woman, but also her child. Last time I saw Jack, I was looking after him in the office for a bit and he was a bit blue because his Gran had died (Carrie’s ex’s mum) and he asked me where she went. What was I supposed to say?

  Kids always blindside you with something totally out of context, they have no awareness of the rules of conversational engagement and just plough in there with any old thing that’s on their minds. Why are we her? Why is the sky blue? Do you live in your car? That kind of thing. They don’t soft shoe anything in and expect you to answer questions in infinitum, until they’re bored of course, and then you’ve got to entertain them like a bloody jester in a royal court. But in a way that’s is a great thing about them, they allow you become a kid yourself for a bit.

  But what was I supposed to say? Be truthful: ‘Jack, sorry to break this to you mate, but that’s it. She’s gone, she ain’t gone nowhere except a hole in the ground. All that religious bollocks is just there to make you feel she’s gone on to a better place, but she hasn’t. She’s in Tottenham Cemetery and no one gets out of there. I know, it sucks, but look on the bright side: she’s dead, you’re not?

  Or do I say: Jack, grannie’s playing a harp in a very white version of an Ikea showroom, surrounded by fat, naked toddlers with wings playing small flutes and it’s very, very white, in the belief that Carrie may have brought up Jack in a catholic way? Or that she didn’t want to destroy any hope he had that there was something more than this, that there was some kind of hereafter? It was difficult, and I mumbled something about how she was looking over him and all that bollocks and that seemed to satisfy him.

  Also, Carrie’s ex was also still knocking about, he finished with some lass he’s been seeing and has been trying to woo Carrie back but she’s having none of it, says that it’s made her realize what a tosser he was to begin with. I wouldn’t be able to deal with that.

  Essentially, Carrie has more baggage than Gatwick.

  ‘That really is the truth, Carrie, it’s only been a couple of months, we’ve both been busy and it just seems easier for Rich to come round to mine.’ That was, to an extent true, Rich lived in Islington, alone. I’d never really known him to have a long-term girlfriend, or a long term boyfriend for that matter. It wasn’t something that seemed to bother Rich too much. He threw himself into his work or his social life, and I always felt a bit like the older, boring brother when I came round to the club. I’d been feeling as if this is where the young people of London hung out and I wasn’t really welcome, I suppose. I was always gardening or painting. The house was crippling me, financially, so I figured it was worth spending most of my spare time in it.

  ‘Okay, well, you’re forgiven I suppose. Look, after you’ve seen Rich we’ll have a chat when I take my break.’

  ‘Definitely,’ I said. I don’t think I was completely off the hook, you never are when a woman is concerned, they have memories that could record eternities; but I think I delayed a reaction that would hopefully go to the back of Carrie’s mind. I picked my drink up and went through a door marked private beside the bar and down a corridor which led to Rich’s office. I knocked on the door and opened it. Rich was sitting behind his desk, staring myopically at a laptop computer screen.

  ‘You really should get glasses, mate.’ I said.

  Rich slowly looked up, a little smile on his face, ‘don’t you fuckin’ start.’ He got up, walked round his desk and gave me a big bear hug, ‘hey, Dan, this is a surprise. I’ve just got to finish this off.’ He tapped a couple of keys on his (very expensive) computer, and looked down at some notes he’d scrawled (he had terrible handwriting) on some scraps of paper.

  Rich’s office was all glass and old teak, and was pretty large. You could see that Rich had had it done up so that it looked like a professional office, with lots of open space and storage for files and books. But Rich was as untidy as I am and the place was full of things that Rich either couldn’t be bothered to put away or had just found. Rich liked collecting things, anything; old chairs, bits of electrics, toys, funny drinks, those stupid executive toys (those balls on strings, that swing and hit the other balls, now an executive toy classic, stood on his desk), games - anything. Rich’s house was even worse, it was like a fifteen year old gone mad, obsessed with pinball machines and Pirelli Calendars. I looked around and the only new thing I could recognize was a large table sized arcade machine, standing dead in the corner.

  ‘What’s that?’ I pointed to the arcade machine.

  Rich turned round,’ Oh that, it’s a footie game. I’m gonna fix it up and have it as a coffee table.’ Rich always had good ideas like that, and the club was full of them. He put small televisions above the urinals (and in the back of the doors of the ladies) that showed MTV: the area at the back that held a medium sized dance floor was sealed off from the rest of the club by pneumatic doors that kept the noise out (but proved to be really annoying if you sat next to them) and on Sundays the place transformed itself into a mellow eatery that showed football and supplied the Sunday papers (Rich said that on Sundays the place was renamed the Rugger Club, and wanted to stop it but realized that he still had a few regulars who liked it). Rich should’ve been in advertising,

  ‘May I?’ I indicated Rich’s Magic box. Rich liked to smoke pot and I thought, guiltily, that it was half the reason why I saw him so often.

  Everyone should have a Magic box to keep their pot, Rizla and skins in. It’s like a irrefutable law of the etiquette of smoking weed. I used to have one, but now it holds garlic in my kitchen, sign of the times I suppose. I began the difficult process of building a joint. No one ever teaches you how to do it, you just learn it from people in a very slow, observational way. Someone skins up somewhere and they do it in a different way than you do. Some people use small Rizlas and build Heath Robinson-esque zeppelins, that involve welding, and tearing and twisting. Some use rolling machines, popping exquisitely rolled cigarillos out of it like side show conjurers. I just go for the traditional Kingsize Rizla (blues for preference) and one of my business cards (that I designed, with the specific purpose of being good roach material - I chose exactly the same weight and type of card that Rizla uses for it’s packs, Rich bet me that I wouldn’t do it) for roach.

  A guy that I lived with taught me, in a considered and practiced way reminiscent of how Blue Peter would have taught one how to make a present for Grandma with the inside of a bog roll and some wrapping paper. I went to a party with Rich once and it was full of Rich’s mates, all aged around twenty or so, and the build standard on show almost brought a tear to my eye. At one point I gathered a small group for an Intermediate Workshop in Joint Construction, and I held them, rapt, and showed them the dark arts of single skin rolling. It was quite weird and at one time there were people craning to see what was happening, it then marched on to a competition involving charts and testers and it got quite messy and ever since then his mates have always seen me as one of them, which made me feel
quite good about myself knowing that I could still connect with yooff.

  Anyway, Rich nodded his approval and continued to tap at his computer. He definitely was squinting a bit. Rich was shorter than me, but a bit cuter, had a cheekier grin and a glint in his eye. But he was really...studied. Everything he did seemed to contain a lot of deliberation and thought,, and when people were speaking to him they always felt they had his undivided attention, because he seemed to take whatever you said really seriously. This was in fact true, he did listen to everything you said, but he certainly didn’t give you his undivided attention: he seemed to have extra brain power than he used for conversation. Sometimes, I was never really sure what Rich thought about.

  ‘There.’ He shut the laptop, ‘sorry about that, just had some loose ends to tie up. So, how you been?’

  ‘Great, and you, how’s business?’

  ‘Good, picking up a bit since the summer, thinking about opening something else - I’ve got a bit of spare dosh now, want to do a bistro. what do you reckon?’ He took the joint, and reached up behind him, ‘some guy I know gave me this, says it’s the bollocks.’ He handed me a bottle of wine, it was an old Syrah. ‘Fancy polishing off a couple of glasses?’

  ‘Why not, it’s the weekend.’ Rich opened one draw after another, looking for a bottle opener. ‘ah, fuck it.’ he twisted the top wrapper off and proceeded to push down the cork with his finger. His face crinkled up in concentration, I squinted in trepidation. The cork popped down and sent a little squirt of wine over his desk and the computer, ‘bollocks’, said Rich.

  ‘I’m not sure about the bistro, it’s not very you,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t say that, there’s loads of money in squeezing punters for overpriced food, and this bloke,’ he lifted up the bottle,’ said there’s more where this came from, says he’s got a great contact on the continent.’

  ‘Is it kosher?’

  ‘Who gives a toss?’ He took out a couple of tumblers from a cabinet. ‘He said you should always drink good wine out of cheap glasses, it makes the experience of tasting wine more truthful,’ he gave me a wink as he said this and poured two good glasses of wine, clinked his glass against mine, ‘tell us what you think, you know more about wine than I do.’ That was utter shite. Rich could smell anything that had intrinsic value within a couple of hundred feet.

  ‘It’s very good,’ it was, ‘how much?’

  ‘Two score a case.’

  ‘I dunno what that means...it’s good though.’

  ‘I’ll put an order in. You see Carrie when you came in?’

  ‘Course. Had a little chat.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Shut up Rich, there’s nothing going on...honest.’ Rich swirled the wine around in his glass.

  ‘She’s right for you man. In fact, she’s perfect for you. She’s a doer, you ain’t, you need someone like her just to give you a kick up the arse every now and again.’

  ‘Hmmm…’ I said. I had thought about it a lot, but me and women just don’t seem to mix at the moment. I think I need to get my life sorted before I share it with anyone.

  The problem is that I have lost a little bit of my career drive. I used to love what I do, really relish the work. But the everyday drudge of creating copy for nasal inhalers has lost its lustre, it would, wouldn’t it? I almost envy my boss who barrels into work everyday, pumped by the opportunity to dazzle with another furniture commercial – how does she do it? She must take drugs.

  Even the shoots have become humdrum and I used to love them: the glamour of working with actors and cameramen; lights flooding green screen, coved studios and the catering truck clattering it’s generator all day filling cups of coffee and dishing out bacon sandwiches. But I found out that actors who worked the advertising rounds were no De Niros and the technicians labelled most of the shoots my agency did as ‘glorified pack shots’ – which they were – and on site catering was about as depressing as it sounds. By four o’clock I’d be itching to leave.

  I’m treading water at work, just taking the check and one day I will get busted. I almost hope I will. I told Rich this.

  ‘Twat,’ he said blowing out smoke, ‘you just need to get some loving? Yeah?’ He prodded the air with the joint, ‘Carrie, man, she is itching for you…’ he blew kisses at me.

  ‘You are such a knob sometimes,’ he grinned.

  ‘Sorry that work is doing your head in, just leave.’

  ‘I can’t do that, I have bills to pay. A mortgage.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Fuck it, sell the house,’ he grinned at my reaction, ‘it’s just brick and mortar. Sell it and go into business with me.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘The bistro business, I need a partner to get that working,’ I cringed. Rich laughed, ‘why not? ‘Bout time I got to order you about.’ He poured us some more wine, and I was starting to feel a bit squiffy.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’d do if it were me. I’d piss off to the country, buy a small cottage and live off your equity. That’s what I’d do, you haven’t got any ties.’

  ‘You? In the country? You’d go mental in the country.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Rich, picked up his wine and looked into space. ’ you’re probably right…I could use another investor in this place, help set up the bistro. We could be like a family business or something.’

  There was something quite nice about the offer, but I thought I’d tell Rich my last piece of information, about Pat’s computer and the riches it may hold. About the bank, about the passwords. I just needed to get it off my chest and for someone to tell me straight off that it was a bloody stupid idea, that it was the dumbest thing they ever heard: get real, get with the program, that all services to cloud cuckoo land had been cancelled, seek alternative means of travel.

  So I told him.

  Rich laughed long and he laughed hard. He’d stop for a bit, look at me and start laughing again. I got the reaction I had been expecting and to be honest I was a touch relieved. Relieved that someone was going to tell me that I was an idiot, it was a stupid idea and I really should start thinking about getting a proper job.

  ‘So, Dan, who were you going to do this job with then?’

  ‘Well, you for starters and then I thought you’d know a few people and go from there…’

  ‘Me? Why would I want to rob a bank?’

  ‘Well, the bank holds a lot of money – especially in it’s computer system, I thought that you’d be interested, because – well – you’re kinda dodgy. Know what I mean?’

  ‘What the hell do you mean by dodgy? I run a club Dan, I don’t rob banks.’

  ‘Come on Rich, on a scale of dogdy-ness, I am pretty low and you are a bit higher. Take this wine, where’s it from? Who’s selling it to you? Fuck off it’s kosher, this is off the back of a lorry.’

  ‘Honest, it’s totally above board’

  ‘Really? Really, really?’

  ‘Well, almost. I’m not paying tax on it, and apparently the vineyard was doing a clearance sale because of liquidation or something.’

  ‘Exactly. When we were kids, that bike you had, where’d you get that? And that time when you were selling eighths in the park for a tenner a bag, where’d you get that?’

  ‘Okay, fair enough – but still, robbing a bank? I really wouldn’t want to run the risk, I’m doing alright, I’ve got money. I may do a few shady deals on the side – everyone in the trade does – but you have to.’

  I studied the joint, rolling it between my fingers and looked through the smoke at Rich. He sat looking at me, swirling the wine in his glass, taking tentative sips.

  ‘It’s a lot of money Rich, that’s the only reason I even contemplated it. How serious is the offer of me getting into the Bistro business?’

  Rich and I had agreed so many times to go into business together and I suspected that this was another case of two drunk brothers hatching a plan that wouldn’t happen.

  ‘Dead serious, we’ll get fucked up tonight and then on Monday
we can start sorting it out and get on with it and forget about you getting into the armed robbery business.’

  He filled the glasses and raised his own, ‘this calls for some kinda toast. Lets drink to the future and all that, never know, might not have to sell your house.’

  We clashed our glasses together and drank. I was feeling drunk, stoned and happy. I had got some things off of my chest and felt the tiller a bit firmer in my hands.

  ‘How much money?’ asked Rich.

  ‘What? I dunno, we’ll work that out on Monday. I’m too fucked to work this shit out now, Rich.’

  ‘No, no – you said that this bank had a lot of money – how much money?’

  ‘You’ve just been laughing your tits off for the last quarter of an hour and now you want to know how much the bank holds?’

  ‘I’m just interested. I’m interested in why you’re interested. I don’t want to make you out to be Snow White or anything, but you are about the most squeaky clean bloke I know.’

  ‘I’m not that squeaky. Does Snow White smoke weed?’

  ‘I’m sure Dopey had a stash,’ I laughed. ‘Pot don’t count, everyone smokes pot, even the rozzers smoke pot. Why did you even consider it? You’re really not the type, and you’re not that desperate for money, you’ll never starve.’

  ‘I’m not exactly flush,’ Rich raised his eyebrows, ‘but it’s not really the money …it seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity and I’ve never really done anything that exciting…just seemed to me that all the people who get busted for this kind of thing are meatheads who couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag…but you and me Rich,’ I tapped the side of my head, ‘we’re smart, we’re clever. We could use guile and subtlety and pull something like this off, no problem.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s that easy, Dan.’

  ‘I know that, but if the key to the safe lands in your lap, it makes you think – it’s like the hardest part taken out of the equation, the bit that takes know how about explosives and safe cracking and all that shit.’ Rich laughed again.