'Fuck the feds.'
John bowed down to the table, ran his nose across a long section of it, and then bolted back and to an upright. His eyes, wide open and startled into supplication, darted ritualistically to the point in the corner of the room where two flicks of turquoise paint had been splashed up from the wall onto the white of the roof. Paz sat uncomfortably in the chair he was sitting on. One of his feet was too far forward and he looked as though he were set to run out of the room at the slightest provocation. Paz had no reason to be worried. Nobody was about to burst in on us. Nobody knew who John was. Maybe that was why he always put on such a show each time I called around to pick up my weekly shopping. Tony Montana had the floor.
'Fuck 'em. If the Feds come knocking, fuck 'em.'
'Knocking? Mate, "Feds" don't knock. They just break the fucker down. At least they do in the films.'
The proposition was a good one — high returns: low risk — but he wasn't going to sell me it. I liked John and I liked meeting him once a week to hear his show, break a little bread, and do a couple of lines with him. And I liked that after the show, I went my own way until the following Friday. For 2 years our little comedy had been playing itself out just like that. We had become good friends over those 2 years and I was well aware that jump between the 2 of us and my making some very serious money was at just 1 remove. John never flaunted that, but he always made it clear that if I ever wanted to go there, he would gladly open the door to More. Sometimes he got a little impatient.
'Fuck that. Whatever. If the Feds come breaking the door down, you don't know shit. Some guy from Royal Mail, Parcel Force, Bullshit, whatever, came knocking at the door with a package to be signed by Joe Fucking Bloggs, and you thought, fuck it, why not?'
'And they'll just believe that shit and apologise for taking up my time.'
'Who gives a fuck about what they believe? It's all about what they can prove.'
Ex-girlfriends. Rum. Coke. Violent disagreements. Pills. Fountain. Waking up on the floor of my flat after that first night 2 years earlier, I couldn't have imagined how that random night would develop itself into so much more. The shoes sealed it. They were wet and uncomfortable. They were his.
'Listen, Sam, you're making good money now, you're fucking around with your boys, getting high 3 or 4 times a week, banging your dirty birds; but how much dough have you got in your pocket come Monday? Where is it that you're going with this, son? Look outside. Look in my driveway. Jeep. BMW. Nice, right? Now, look out on the street. What the fuck is that you've pulled up in? That fucker looks like one of those spastic buggies the old folks get from the council when their legs can't get them down to Tesco anymore. Do you even need a driving licence to drive that?'
I liked his humour. He was a funny guy. Our second meeting, to exchange sodden shoes, had descended into another of unflinching nastiness. The drink and drugs ran as freely as on the first night, although the second time we managed to stay out of water. Upon returning to his flat on that occasion, John appeared in the living room after a few minutes of banging and cursing in the pitch black of his garden. He deposited a plastic Tesco shopping bag onto the living room table. The packed content gave of a dull thud on impact with the wooden base. John slumped down into the armchair next to the sofa on which I was sitting, and, with closing eyes, mumbled, 'I know how many are in there.' I filled all available pockets with the pills from the bag, without leaving a dent, picked up the shoes I had come to collect, and took a taxi back to my flat. I was fixed for Ecstasy for a month, and as I struggled to prevent the tablets spilling down the sides of the back seat in the dirty cab, I realised his friendship was going to be a little more beneficial than I had imagined.
Nights out always went like that and I always enjoyed John's company. The feeling was mutual and he wanted to do more for me. Being the provider of my sole source of income was not enough. He wanted me to take it to the next level with him, to start running my own show, and that wasn't a surprise: friends look out for one another. It was a friendly offer, but I had no intention of taking the bait, despite his verbal histrionics.
'Get another one of them down you, son.'
It was an offer that was also a challenge. A challenge that Paz didn't look ready for. It wasn't intended as a challenge, it was just that John had lost his coke perspective a long time ago. Normally if somebody were to offer you a line of coke, it would be difficult to discern exactly where on the surface in front of you you were supposed to direct your nose. A close up inspection would reveal a slither like a disjointed spider's leg waiting ingenuously to be sucked up. In John's flat that was never a problem, and the thought of a little spider's leg was often preferable to that of the reality of taking on the long, fuzzy arctic centipede that sat slovenly on the black table top.
'What the fuck is that? Do you not know that Paz has a sensitive nature? If he has a go at that, I won't hear the end of it for the rest of the night.'
'What are you talking about? Let's have a look at that. Bollocks. That's fuck all. He's winding me up, isn't he, Paz? Go on, son, fill your boots.'
A pale shade of grey at the best of times, Paz's skin hit new heights of opaque iridescence. He hovered over the line, his eyes opened wide at the sight, pupils constricted involuntarily, betraying his fear of taking it on. He laughed unconvincingly.
'Yeah, what's up with you, Sam? That's right that.'
Paz didn't look right as he jolted up and back from the table as though electrocuted, producing a whelp as his body attempted to snort and heave simultaneously. On the table remained roughly half of what had been the polar creature's girth. I racked it together tightly with the Matalan discount store card by my side, and snorted up the remnants. All the power and glory of heaven are yours. Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the highest.
'Right, son, we're going to have to get off.'
'The game's about to start.'
'I know, but I've got to get this back home and sorted out — got to get paid.'
'"Got to get paid." If you took me up on what I'm talking about, you wouldn't need to worry too much about getting paid.'
'I know, and I appreciate the offer, but I don't think that's right for me at the moment.'
'Not right for you at the moment, what the fuck? Are there other options on the table? I know what it must be — fuck, what an idiot I am — Chloride has offered to take you on shifting lead in shifts 6 days a week. I will not stand in your way, son. Congratulations. Who could refuse a 45 hour week in a factory, with night shifts thrown in, all for less than 20 grand a year?'
'Pack it in, John. You know that I'm no Chloride Boy. I'm just happy with what I've got. I don't want to rock the boat, as the say.'
'They say a lot of stupid shit. I'd give you 10 grand in product if you do this, and that'd just be for starters. We trust you and want you to take on more responsibility. He was asking me about you last week, wants to know when you're finally going to go up there to meet him.'
'You see, this is what I don't want. I know where all this leads, and I'm not sure that I want to go there. I don't think it's for me.'
'Bollocks. You were made for this: a real Mr Cool. You look like butter wouldn't melt, but in town you've got the biggest meatheads falling over themselves to have a drink with you, and, on top of it all, you've got a bit of the devil in there, too.'
'Are you trying to fuck me, John?'
'There you go. I should be at your throat for that cheeky shit, but coming from you, I'm actually wondering whether or not I do. You'll be jumping up into my thoughts the next time I knock out a mix to my Tera Patrick DVD.'
'John, I love you, and I appreciate it, you know that. I just don't think it's for me.'
'Well, you're a stubborn bastard, but you know there's no pressure. I'm just looking out for you. We'll just continue as before.'
Too much talk dulled the coke, but as we emerged back into the tight, brisk cold of the street, it came on in a fresh rush of hungry anticipation: the senses alive and ravenous of the new scene. It was daytime but there was no sun in the sky, at least not one that could be seen from beneath the cloud. A soft drizzle fell, and the street and its houses were shrouded under a thin film of grey. The outlines of the objects on view were defined as though resting on top of an imperceptible backdrop of black and white mesh — like a spider's web or the material of a lady's silk stocking — the colours above all solid and dead; immutable pastels which were in perfect accord with the place and inextricably linked with this life: Manchester. There existed some kind of dull beauty that was numbing and painful in its acceptance, and everybody I knew played their part in its construction without ever speaking of it or trying to understand what it was that made us all so suited and doomed to such an uninspiring destiny.
'Why are we just standing here like a set of dicks?'
'Sorry, Paz, do you want to get in the car?'
'What do you think? It's locked.'
I reached across and placed the tightly packed rectangular brick into the glove box in front of Paz. He winced and shifted his feet into uncomfortable right angles as though bracing himself for a violent impact. I turned the engine over and sat waiting for the car to warm a little. The engine struggled to run correctly, and revved itself incessantly when in neutral; a repetitive whirring that never failed to have Paz squirming in his seat. He reached out his hand for the comfort of the arm rest and gripped the malleable black plastic tightly. He swallowed hard and looked determinedly out through the windscreen.
'What do you think?'
'What do you mean, what do I think?'
'About what Montana was going on about.'
'He's off his fucking head. Why did he keep saying "feds"? Does he not know what country we're living in?'
'Too much gear, too many violent films. But what do you reckon? You could come in on it.'
'No chance. You get caught with the weight he's wanting you to sit on, you'll be looking at 15 years. 15 years or somebody deciding they don't trust you to keep your mouth shut, and you go missing, or have a little accident.'
'And if the "feds" don't break the door down?'
'You're laughing. Put the cash towards something legit and get yourself a nice gaff on this street.'
'That's a good idea. If I move up here, I won't have you knocking at my door every night.'
The street on which John lived was in one of Salford's few rich enclaves and Paz felt uncomfortable in those surroundings. The red-bricked Victorian buildings and the Oak Tree lined roads were anachronistic to the standard reality of life that dropped beneath the low a couple of miles in all directions. To the eye it was a world that was much different to the one we came from, but it wasn't one I ever aspired to. Hiding back behind the trees and long driveways, I knew that the reality behind the thick walls was not too dissimilar to that of our neighbours on the estate where we had spent all of our lives. Different post codes, same shit. Users, thieves, drunks, perverts, worshipers, molesters and any other extension of fear that you could find in the council housing of our own neighbourhood, existed here, too. The slight variation was that here people usually ran in opposite directions from their fears than they did in the place we called home. On the estate people flocked to the church or the pub, here demons were more likely to be dealt with in silence and isolation and turned in on themselves, or exorcised and passed on to others to deal with.
I'd been behind the expensive locked doors. 2 blocks from where we sat, a half-senile, 65 year-old woman weighed out weed and counted off pills for teenagers; the collapse of the family business forcing the son's childish hobby to be expanded in order to keep up and maintain appearances. Round the corner from that sadness, a steely air of resignation hung in a bitter silence as husband and wife exchanged forced pleasantries whilst hatefully blaming the other for the madness of their only daughter and her exile to a private facility for the insane.
John was right, I had no direction, the car was a piece of shit, and I had only a few pennies to play with at the end of each week, but I saw no alternatives, no need to be chasing the More. Forced to sit still and face the reality of the world outside the window, I saw only a horizon less void of grey. A steady rain of hopelessness tarnished everything and everybody. There was no escaping from this other than to look the other way and to dive into your own personal oblivion.
'Are you trying to send me under?'
'What? Fuck, Paz, what is it?'
'Sam, for fuck's sake, let just make a move, please.'
'Alright, let's go to work.'
Check out another excerpt from Murmur.
Simon Friel is an associate editor of both Scartissue Magazine and Barcelona's free cultural monthly newspaper BCN Week. He is also a contributor to Rocket Magazine. His fiction and poetry have appeared in many places, including Cherry Bleeds, Ping Pong, Sein Und Werden, Dogmatika and Side of Grits.