Ross Raisin - Waterline

He goes up to the first stairhead, where there is a door with a crumpled plastic file pinned on it. A piece of paper inside. Back in 10 minutes . It doesn’t look likely. Probably it’s too late the now to get somewhere, but just then a man appears on the stairs behind him, another Turk, by the looks of him.

‘Have you lost your key?’

‘No, I just, mean, I was hoping to get a room.’

The man leads him up the next flight of steps, fishing a bunch of keys from his pocket, and unsnibs a door.

‘Single room?’

He nods.

‘Single room is £25.’ He stands there scrunching the keys down by his side. Ye reckon he wants the money up front, well? Mick gets out his wallet.

‘Whereabouts is breakfast served?’

‘No breakfast.’

‘Eh? No breakfast? It says “Bed and Breakfast” on the sign outside.’

‘No breakfast.’ He takes his money and leaves.

No breakfast, then. Mick stands at the door and takes in his room. Poky, a stale clinging smell, the same peeling wallpaper as the corridors, and what looks like a giant shite-mark on the carpet. It’s better than a shed though, so nay point complaining. There’s no curtains, instead a grey veil pinned over the window with an orange glow coming in one side of it. He climbs onto the bed, which seems clean, and is that tightly tucked it looks vacuum-packed. He lies on top of the covers. He should be doing a stock-take of the situation, he knows, but his head is aching and it’s hard to think clearly, so he lies there just, the eyes closed, vaguely aware of a streetlight buzzing outside, and at one point the rumble of a train going over the bridge.

Later the night he has to pee, the need for it building and building until it’s too uncomfortable, and he gets up. He waits at the door a while, listening to make sure there’s nobody about, then he comes out, and up the next flight of steps to a door marked BATHROOM. No that he wouldn’t have telt it by the smell: sharp, sour, mixed in with bleach, the bottle of which is left out, sat on a ledge under the sink. When he’s done he comes back in his room and snibs the lock.

Morning. He lies there a long time. His stomach is uneasy, and the whole of his body is aching like he’s just come off a back shift. The streetlamp is turned off and daylight sifts dirtily through the window veil, exposing the room. That scunnery brown streak on the carpet, he can see now that it’s a scorch mark. Christ. Ye dread to think.

A noise outside the door makes him jump. Somebody pounding down the staircase. Quietening down the next flight, quieter, then silence. His heart is racing at the suddenness of it. Just a noise. It was just a noise. Somebody running down the stair, it’s nothing out the ordinary. But he is panicking and it’s a struggle to get control of it as he presses the side of his head into the pillow, hearing the thump of blood in his ear. That’s just the problem but — it is out the ordinary. No like he hasn’t heard people running down stairs before, but no here , no in this place he hasn’t.

Just a noise, just a noise.

But he’s got nowhere to put it. A fucking noise, man — they’ve gone by now — but it’s bouncing around inside him, unable to come to rest because everything else is jumbled up and bouncing around together, and he can’t act or think normally because what is fucking normal? Answer that one. What is normal? There isn’t a normal. He swings his legs over the bed and sits up. Everything racing and rushing. He is sucking for breath but it’s no good, sitting up is making him feel boaky, so he lies back down again and gives up trying to stop it. Thoughts hurtling in, he can’t keep them out. She is normal. That is what normal is. There, he’s said it. But now everything is birling around and it’s all to fuck because that’s the thing he’s been trying to steer clear of, thinking about the wife, and now he’s let it in and there’s no controlling it. She is ordinary life — she’s as much a part of him as his legs or his stomach — and without her all the rest has lost the plot. The stomach fucking especially.

Cry, man. Just bloody cry. Nobody’s watching. But he can’t let himself — it’s there, he can feel it in his throat like a furball, retching and stuck, but he’s too feart to let himself. It’ll just make him the worse. And then he definitely won’t be able to stop, he’ll be here the whole day bloody greeting.

There are voices in the room below. So what? He’s staying in a Bed and Breakfast — well, a Bed — what do you expect, he’ll have to deal with it just. He can’t hear what they’re saying but it sounds like there’s a few of them, a family, because there’s a baby shrieking or crying or making some kind of a racket. He gets up off the bed and pulls the table that’s under the window over to wedge against the door. Then he gets back on the bed. No television, so no easy way to ward off the brain, except for sleep, closing the eyes and sleeping, he could sleep all day, he could sleep forever.

Later he goes down and gives another £25 to No Breakfast, who counts the money carefully and slides it in his pocket.

That night he sleeps fitfully, in and out, a lot of it just staring at the orange glow through the window.

The people down the stair are arguing. A woman shouting. It goes on for quite a long time and then there’s a door shutting and it goes quiet. He needs to get some food. No easy thing going out into the day but. What he needs to do is just blank everything out, kid on that he isn’t actually existing and do the zombie walk to wherever the shop is. Nobody knows him anyway. That’s what he has to tell himself. Nobody knows him.

He finds a Costcutter after the bridge. There is a radio playing but he can’t hear the words. He gets a damp pasty in a packet from the fridge, a couple of lager cans and a sandwich for later. He doesn’t look up at the man as he pays. Another guy by the door as he goes out, sat behind a kiosk like some silent gremlin, selling phonecards.

The next few days he slips into a routine. Out to the shop in the morning, and forcing the food down when he gets back. Then sleeping and drinking and keeping the brain quiet until he has to go down and give No Breakfast his money. The wee patter between them: how’s it going, pal? Oh, not too bad, thanks, business pretty steady at the moment thanks to you and as well the family downstairs. Good, good, I’m pleased. Clutching for a normal. It is some kind of an ordinary, however crap.

He opens the Southside News and gets to the page:

Major hotel chain, UK airports: Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, London Heathrow. Staff wanted, all departments: Housekeepers, Food and Beverage Assistants, Breakfast Chefs, Kitchen Porters, Reservations Assistants. Live-in positions.

Work. Work is what he’s came down here for, and work is what’s going to get him back onto his feet. Spend too long without employment and what else are you going to do but occupy the whole time alone with yourself until the brain is turned to mince? That’s another reason he’d never go on the broo. Work is busyness at least. So he needs to get off his bahookie and get some, get on the keel and give Robbie a call, because this keeping him in the dark cannot go on. And so what if he’s never been a kitchen porter before? He can do it, he can lie if he has to, and it’s perfect, really: something different from what he’s done before, no reminders. Plus as well the money situation: he’s running out.

He washes himself, or tries to anyway, with what little water he can bleed out of the shower head. Afterwards, a good examination of the face in the mirror. He could fine well do with a shave, but he doesn’t have a razor. Still, it’s long enough now that he has a decent beard on. A respectable beardie man, a Sean Connery type, that’s the way he should look at it. Although being honest, respectable is probably up in the air when they get to looking at his clothes. He’s got on the shirt and trousers that he had in his bag, but the problem is that both of them are crumpled as a toad’s foreskin. See what he should do, he should probably give a phone down to room service and ask No Breakfast for a lend of the iron. He forces a smile at the idea of it. He feels okay. He feels fine. He is going to get on.