The Spillway
by Steve Finbow
I’ve been doing it for donkey’s years but this time I’ve got it wrong. Eat it up, she used to say, or you’ll remember what you’ve left while you’re lying in your deathbed. Waiting for hours on this bloody roof with nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and nothing to piss in. Not a sausage Not the price of a cup of tea. Not a pot. Preposterously, I hear the hissing of time outflanking the buses, the taxicabs. My elbow’s giving me jip and my knees hurt something rotten. Forgot the Vaseline, didn’t I? Forgot my kneepads and my balaclava, hair flying in my eyes like a shitload of moths. It’s a terrible job, not exactly churchgoing or working a soup kitchen. My eyes are playing up and all. The right one’s watering while the left has one of those annoying tics, little blinks, shudderings. At least it’s not raining. Not yet. The air is preciously sinuous, corrupt. I’ve memorized the photo but the memory’s fading. Tall? Dark hair? Well built? Arrives in a Jag, I know this. I know this, when he gets here, I’ll know. But was it three o’clock or four? Was the Jag black or blue? In this light, I’ll never tell the difference. He’ll have a driver. He’ll get out the back door, pavement side. Will the driver open the door for him? Will he have to find a parking meter? The walk to the restaurant door is about thirty feet. The restaurant door opens inward. Will there be people to meet and greet? It’s all in my brief and my brief is on the windowsill collecting condensation, the ink slurring and blurring. Like my mind, like my vision. Motions blown up and navigable, the slip of the buildings, windows the colour of lemonade. Now, my last job was easy as pie, peasy, falling off a proverbial. Some know-nothing oik from Russia, or Poland, or somewhere east of Ipswich. Close up and personal. Drunk as a tsar, he was, stumbling around in a back alley, trousers round his ankles. Tart had pulled a quickie, done a runner. Geezer hadn’t time to wipe, zip up. And click, pop, splat. JD. Job done. Textbook. All the above. The London clouds heavy blanket the sky, itchy and stained with birds. Feathers litter the roof. Feathers and things that look like petrified hailstones. Crows protest about the greening of the grey above. No point shushing them. Nothing coming yet so I warm my hands by rubbing them against the sleeve of my duffel coat. That’s better. Cup of coffee would go down a treat. Cup of coffee and a Chelsea bun. Or a blueberry muffin. A scone. Fastest cake in the world. Get it? S’gone. The irregularities of the trees, the leaves, their detachment. The key fit the lock. The stairs were unlit. The roof door was open. The water tank didn’t blink. I opened the bag. Took it out. Assembled in situ. Checked the sighting. The distance. The wind. Lovely jubbly. Except I’m too early, too cold, and over it. All over it. A van pulls out from the service road and scatters pigeons pecking at chewing gum. White vans. Albino beetles scurrying through London’s streets – reckless, afraid of neither cyclist nor bus. I draw a bead – what the fuck does that mean? – on the driver. Arms like hedgehog hams, eggy sweatshirt, mobile in one ear, wax in the other. Shot-putter stance, arm-wrestling the wheel. Useless, Violent, and Thick. The three dwarves. The light is failing, fading, and my legs are numb. I look at my watch, it says 3:25. I’ll give it another 40, then I’m outta here. Natural like.
Still high. After not doing anything. Doing nothing. Nothing doing. Weird that. Through the rectangle of the bus window, finger-shaped gaffs, shameless promises full of dodgy merchandise – should’ve gone to Radio Rentals. He’s radio. A raspberry an’ all. I’m sitting upstairs – so I can see the buildings above the hooky shops, the skinny buildings, so I can see the membrane reflecting like the surface of a swimming pool – shaky momentum. I cracked. The sad surprise of twilight. What a shambles. Startled the pigeons more than the mark. He’s now scoffing down a veal parmigiana or scarfing a zabaglione, the sugared tendrils of calf oblivious to their alternative history. Pigeons’ hearts – SuperBalls in a washing machine. I let it go. The act. I left the roof. Caught the bus by the churchyard. I look at myself in the warped mirror at the top of the stairs. At the same time, I can see the back of my head on the CCTV screen at the front. My head fills the bus. A thin spiral of hair moving to bald like a target, a bull’s eye, my eyes like negative eight-balls, my brow a wide expanse of wrinkle and frown. No incident. The stupid obedience of time. Too bad. But don’t you believe it. Too good. I looked about. I am returning to my parents’ house. I will pretend again the things most take for granted – a job, a girlfriend, a plan. I close my eyes as the bus turns into Pentonville Road. I close my mouth. I run my tongue along the sharp edges of my teeth. Fissures. My left canine is still a baby tooth, the adult replacement sits above it white and angry, the gum stretched to bursting. My right central incisor sharp and jagged, I chipped on a fairground ride – the Twist, the Octopus, I can’t remember which – and my mouth floods with the remembered taste of candyfloss and toffee apple, and I can hear the pop-rattle of the rifle range and the cuddly toy – dog, cat – I brought home for my mother. Into the corner, it settled itself brooding, inanimate. Load. Aim. Fire. Give it time. More details to follow. Compulsion. Experience. Bottles, tin cans, the odd bird or nine. I never leave a clue. No cigarette butts, no fibres. I open my eyes as the bus crosses the canal bridge and my stomach gives a little skip. I can see the spires and the tower. I hoist my bag onto my shoulder and press the red button. Bus stopping. Stopping
If I could have been bothered to look out of the window, I would have seen a building of sand-coloured bricks, its windows and doors boarded with corrugated metal or planks of wood. If I could have been arsed to listen to the goings on, I would have heard the grin and cackle of fireworks, the gigglefit of fire. If I could have made the effort to taste the air, I would have tasted ash and gunpowder, barbecued meats, burned potatoes. But no. I sit alone in a director’s chair, its maroon seat stained with tea and coffee, the backrest made dark from sweat, the armrests worn smooth by the action of my elbows and wrists. I hold a Zippo in my right hand and flick through drawings of the Palace of Westminster.
The winch lifts a metal frame, which, in another’s imagination, could be a ladder turned on its side. The frame swings in the air, tips and awes, steadies, and disappears from view. Leaning on the bookcase, I sight the crane driver with pointing thumb, tickle the invisible trigger with my right index finger. The driver rubs his nose, scratches his cheek. Pied and blue-bar pigeons look on, blinking their orange eyes – Zapruders without film, without interest. Sparrows become magic bullets amongst the scaffolding.
My mothers says,
“Dinner’s ready.”
My father says,
“Hurry up it’s getting cold.”
My mother says,
“I’ll put it in the oven,
My father says,
“I’ll put it in the fridge.”
I think,
“So what.”
“Who cares?”
“Do what you like.”
“As if I’m interested.”
My girlfriend says,
“So long.”
“Be seeing you.”
“I’d say it’s been nice but it hasn’t.”
“Fuck off.”
The long walk downstairs takes me past toys, discarded newspapers, a shoebox. Barefoot, a splinter jabs into the sole of my foot, prickles each time I put weight on it; smarts each time I take a step. Things. My hands in my pockets against the cold, I stumble on the bottom riser and my father looks round, slides something into the top drawer of a kitchen cabinet. Knife. Fork. Spoon. He turns towards me. I thrust a bundle of clothes into his abdomen, shout, “Where’s Sparky?” My father points to a wicker basket in the far corner of the kitchen, it holds a grizzled dog drooling in its sleep. “Wash them good,” I say. My father examines the bundle. Socks. Pants. Shirts. “I will, son, I will,” he says.
My nephew’s toy cars form a convoy beginning in the hallway, ending in the living room. Metal. Plastic. Wood. A thumb becomes a fallen tree. A fingernail a riot shield. A wart a discarded hubcap. “Bang! Bang!” I say to my mother while she knits. “Bang! Bang!” The skin on her neck, dune-like, ripples as she swallows, and she asks, “Are you seeing Jane tonight, dear?” The cowboy re-holsters his gun. The lasso stops in midair. The calf freezes courant. Out of the corner of her sea-green eye, my mother glimpses two Indians – plastic, flesh, running. My mother turns to me. “Nzappa zap,” I say, “Nzappa zap.” My mother smiles and returns to her task. Knit. Pearl. Drop.
“Twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-four hours to go,” rings out on my mobile. I throw it to the floor, let it trill and tremble.
My mother asks,
“Who’s that, dear?”
My father says,
“None of your business, love.”
I say,
“No one. It’s no one.” I grind the thing beneath my bare feet; it flashes and flares, stricken but whole. I snatch it up, soothe it with coos. Turn. It. Off. It fades and dies. Surcease. Silence. Success. Sod off.
My mother says,
“What’s that, dear?”
My father says,
“Come again.”
I say,
“I’m going back upstairs.”
From beneath my desk I take a cardboard box and empty it of old books, files, papers. I stand it on end so that it resembles a stage open at the front to its audience of pile, warp, and weft; its critics of mite, flea, and bug. The doll – my niece’s – is old and its arms are brown and its body is pink and its head is faded and missing an eye. The hair is blonde and matted. I insert a finger into the tight suck of its mouth and push in two jellybeans – one yellow, one blue. I shake the doll. It rattles and burps. I lay it down and turn the box to the wall.
From the desk drawer, I take a diary, mottled marble, black and white. In it I write, “Five others today. Minus one. No more.” I finish with a flourish, a squiggled rivulet of ink.
The windows, obscured by fingerprints of condensation, let in a rusty light. On the floorboards beneath my desk, silverfish surf the dust breaking in grey waves along the foam beach of the underlay, beneath the knap and knot of the carpet edges. I bend over, examine something shiny. I pick it up, hold it to my eye. It could be a contact lens. It could be. It is in fact the flattened body of a ladybird. I wipe the window with the arm of my shirt and look out. I notice the crows and the magpies. Hear the sizzle of the stars, the boom of the moon. Taste the rockets and the flares. I turn off the light. Dark and silent, I listen for the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
March 22nd, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Very cool!
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