Tony Black - Loss

It churned my stomach.

I wasn’t like them.

They were weak. They were the societal chaff. The dregs. The limp-willed. Losers. All with a sob story of how they got into such a mess. How they just couldn’t stop themselves. How they needed AA to keep them on the straight and narrow.

My relationship with the sauce wasn’t about support. Or substitution. Or lassitude born of a hard life. I drank because I wanted to. And now I stopped because I wanted to, I told myself.

It was a simple pay-off. I could stop when I wanted and I could start again when I wanted. I controlled it; it didn’t control me. To admit the opposite was to give up on the game of life.

I put the bottle back in my coat pocket. I was exhausted. I thought to grab a wrap of speed, but I’d left the lot in the car. I knew I was too hyped for sleep. My mind was awash with thoughts of Michael and of the police investigation, of fat Davie Prentice and of a dose of Czech workers, and one Czech lodger.

I needed to unwind.

I ran a bath. Climbed in.

I was soon far enough gone to feel my mind pull up to its new preoccupations. Nothing was fitting into place. If this was a jigsaw, I wouldn’t have more than a couple of pieces stuck together. Sure, there was something going on at the factory — Davie’s denials, and the sight of Vilem lording it about, only confirmed my suspicions. That angry worker, Kerr fella, might turn up some answers when we gave him a knock but I wasn’t hopeful; had my suspicions he’d be given a good few reasons to keep schtum.

I leaned out of the bath, grabbed over my tabs that I’d sat by the sink. I lit a red-top, caught the familiar Marlboro stench.

Davie Prentice was, for sure, as wide as a gate. But I didn’t have him down as a killer. Taking up that kind of damage took bottle and fat Davie had none of that. The suggestion that he might even be mixed up with someone who had the cobblers required to put a bullet in a man didn’t square with the devout coward I knew him to be. If Davie Prentice was mixed up in my brother’s murder, he was being fucked over too, worse than any Calton Hill rent boy.

I turned the sum of my thoughts over to my subconscious, zoned out in the warm water. In no time I was comatose, dead to the world.

Had been crashed out for God knows how long when I got jerked back to reality. The bathroom was in darkness, the water freezing as Debs stormed in and pulled on the light.

‘What the fuck is this?’ she yelled.

She held something in her hand, but my eyes wouldn’t adjust to the sudden brightness. ‘What, what is it?’

She slapped the item into the bathwater; the little wraps of speed fell out of the baggie. I tried desperately to pick them up.

‘Gus, how could you?’ She started to sob. ‘I trusted you.’

She couldn’t look at me, turned and fled.

The wraps were a bust. No way back for them. Let the lot go down the plughole with the bathwater. When I dressed, Debs was sitting in the living room, there’s a phrase, stony-faced.

In the time I’d known her, I’d seen every expression there is to see on Debs’s face. I’d say there were some I would never want to see again, and prayed I never would, but this one was perhaps the expression I knew least how to deal with.

Said, ‘Sorry.’

Her look went up a notch in intensity, almost a wince — an ‘Are we here again so soon?’ God, it wounded me.

Added, ‘I am, truly.’

She stood up, raised her hands, dropped them again. ‘Gus, I can’t take this any more.’

This shithole flat of ours was too small to hold the tension. You couldn’t have a barney when there was nowhere to run off to, slam doors behind you. I went for the mainline: ‘Well, what do you want me to say or do? Tell me, I’ll do it.’

She walked to the kitchenette, filled a glass with water from the tap. The dog watched her as she moved. I did too. A bellicose look burned in her eyes, kind that kept the whites permanently on display. I admired her ability to keep her anger in check; I never could. She slammed down the glass. It wobbled on the counter, some water spilled over the brim. ‘I don’t know what you can say or do, Gus… you’ve said and done it all before. But bringing wraps of charlie into our home.’

‘It was speed.’ I knew I should have kept my mouth shut.

‘I don’t care what it is — it’s drugs!’

Fuck. Hoped she wasn’t gonna go Nancy Reagan on me, start the just say no spiel. I sighed, knew I was onto a loser. I dropped myself in the chair. Truth told, I didn’t have the heart, or the passion, for another row. I wanted to make her see I was contrite, but I wanted her to know I was hurting inside for reasons I could do nothing about. I wondered if she’d forgotten about Michael for a second, but I knew Debs better than that: this was all about my brother. She was wondering where it was leading me, and us, to.

Debs raised the glass again, sipped. I watched her put her hand through her hair. ‘Look, Gus. I’m sorry too.’

I turned to face her. ‘You are?’

She came round the edge of the counter, crouched before me. ‘I know you’re hurting.’ She took my hands in hers. I didn’t want her, or anybody’s, sympathy. My pain was my problem. I removed my gaze. She said, ‘I just don’t want you going back on the drink. You said you’d stay clean.’

‘I am clean… more or less.’ I pushed my luck: ‘I think you’re making a bit of a fuss over nothing.’

She sparked at that. ‘Well, I don’t!’

I got up, went to the other side of the room. We’d drawn our battle lines; I didn’t like where this conversation was going. When she shouted and threw things, I could handle it. When she locked me out, no trouble. But the close control freaked me out. My father had tried to control me with beatings and harsh words and it never worked. I didn’t do control.

I picked up my tabs.

‘Where are you going?’

‘For a smoke.’

Outside on the stair I fired up, got about a third of the way down the smoke when a gadgie with a mop and bucket showed. He wore a black and red Adidas coat like the footy managers have. ‘All right, mate.’

I gave a non-committal nod.

He had a beanie on and it stretched the corners of his eyes. I saw some tats on the back of his neck when he lowered the bucket. ‘There’s, eh, cash due for the stair cleaning.’

I drew on my smoke. ‘What’s this?’

‘Been a stair meeting and that… Three pounds, chief.’

‘Three pounds… this weather. I don’t think so.’

He started to get twitchy, kept rubbing the tip of his nose. ‘It’s three pounds.’

I knocked the tip off my tab, crushed the embers under my boot-heel. ‘You’re getting bugger all out me.’

He looked scoobied, not sure what had happened.

Inside the flat I watched him through the spyhole as he tapped up the auld wifey at number three. She handed over the cash without complaint. I shook my head.

Debs had prepared for my return. She put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. She’d been at the lip gloss in my absence, said, ‘Look, Gus, I know you’re not equipped to cope with, y’know, the news about Michael.’

There was a whole other row waiting to go up once she heard of my moves to root out his killer. Swearing off the drink was only one of her ultimatums that I’d signed up to. Not looking for trouble was another; and of the two I’d say the latter was the one she placed most store by. If I wanted to keep hold of Debs this time, I had to play by her rules. Only, since Michael’s death, I just didn’t know how that was going to be possible.

‘He was my brother, Debs.’

‘I know.’

‘I can’t just forget he existed.’

‘I’m not asking you to.’