Adam Thirlwell - Lurid & Cute

& a gun

It was at this point that in wandered our curious dog. And I was very glad, because a dog is always a distraction.

— What’s his name? said the man.

— Sidney, I said.

— It’s a girl? he said.

— No, boy, I said.

— Fuck you, he said.

— How is it a girl’s name? I said.

— Obviously it’s a girl’s name, he said.

I had no idea what to say to that and so I just said nothing, because possibly this was just the menacing crazy talk that was prelude to us being dismembered or other violations. Or maybe in fact every name is double, and philosophically he was right, which I suppose is possible.

— Sydney, is with a y , he said.

— Oh, OK, I said.

Always in life it’s good to humour people and especially when they mean deliberate violence to you — for obviously I was not convinced that you could spell Sydney with a y , not as a name, but then in life there are so many names and in the end a name is just not important, it’s just a means of identifying something with one sound when that thing is in fact multiple and not really to be identified at all. And if this were all that were to happen then I did think we had got off lightly.

— The money, he said, — is to be paid tomorrow.

— What money? I said.

— Really? he said.

— What money? said Candy.

— The money is not important! I cried.

— No? said the girl.

And she presented a definite gun.

which he cannot deny is in some way a just punishment

I felt a wild smearing sense of injustice inside me, or perhaps more precisely this sense surrounded me, like a cape, and maybe in fact that sense was also fear. When I was criminal myself, I had not been so fearsome! We had been very careful to avoid harm! When we entered the nail salon or canal cafe with our gun we knew that definitely it was not real and also that even had that gun been real we would not have been capable of using it. Whereas this was a very different proposition, it turned out, just because this person was not me. There was no way of knowing how far this gun was just a gesture or a true instrument of massive harm. In general I did feel that people were not such maniacs as to shoot in domestic areas, but obviously I did not know what she was thinking, not at all. Of course I was therefore scared! But not just scared. I was many frequencies at once. Anger certainly was something I was feeling, or a sentiment just like it. And also at the same time I had some expanding sense of karma. For the provenance of these people was very mysterious and could not easily be explained, or at least, there was more than one possible explanation and they were giving me very few clues. But whether they came from the nail salon or cafe or even the small bodega from so long ago, it was obvious that at some point we had made one fatal miscalculation, which was to think that that salon or cafe or bodega would be run by conscientious citizens with impressive insurance deals, rather than, as was perhaps becoming clear, criminal organisations who very possibly were using these operations to obscure their secret financial misdeeds.

— I think, I later said to Hiro, — we made a bad call somewhere.

— In what way? said Hiro.

— I think we may have got mixed up with very bad people, I said.

— It’s possible, agreed Hiro.

— Yeah, maybe, I said.

But then, you can never know, when you enter the world, what dealings the people you are dealing with now have. That’s a principle of all business and in particular perhaps the gangster style. And in this state of large revelation it began to occur to me that the cast list for grievances against me was so vast I did not really know where to begin, like I was responsible for a swarming muddled series — as if everything cartoon on the surface was linked in some vast network of transversals. There was definitely a very long list of people I had wronged, like Candy or Romy or even Dolores — whose messages I did not always reply to, or not at least with the correct adoration, if I was busy with my wife, or my lover — even if obviously I was not thinking that any of this trio were responsible for this armed invasion, but the realisation of the harm I did every day then led to the darker thought that also there was then this additional list of extras to whom I had not done the right thing, like Quincy and Osman and the maid at the hotel, or Caycee, or my friend Shoshana whom I no longer see, then also Shannon or Timeka or Cassity, or the woman in the burger bar with her many children, or the girl in the cafe, or the boy who came to our door with feather dusters, not to mention the owners of the bodega and nail salon and cafe, and their various terrified employees and customers, just as also there were so many people I had not correctly tipped or thanked or remembered their name at gatherings, and it made me frantic not only with guilt but also a sense that therefore in some way they might not only have been wishing me harm but even causing it, and that was why my life was such calamity. Not every light in the distance is an automobile on a distant freeway, and not every fear you can feel approaching is so easily explained. Some fears may have very formless sources — and in this case I was wondering if in fact the entire backdrop of my life was really a vampire waiting to strike. Many people did not like me. They were on the outside, and they wanted to come in. I guess it’s difficult to use words like enemies but I think these sad people should be considered as my enemies, and in fact not just mine but those of everyone around me. For perhaps they were right to hate me, the ghosts ranged in opposition. I was feeling very philosophical in a manner that reminded me of my father, who was given to repeat snippets of his reading like an old-time sage, the whole fortune-telling routine such as: Whatever you imagine is real . Or, perhaps, If you’re thinking about it, then it must be meaningful . My wisdom I think was tougher. Why wouldn’t people want the things that I had? That was the single question and I think it is still the single question. Why should you have what you have for ever? Once you realise that, it’s very hard to think of other people as unjustly envious at all.

even if it becomes far worse than he could imagine

The surprising thing was that normally if a dog walks into a room that’s a cue for general adoration and gasps of joy. Oh such loveliness! Look at his four paws! Whereas now I noticed these two phantoms in balaclavas were eyeing our dog with much malice. The girl still had the gun raised, just precisely raised in my direction, and I was looking away because the spectacle was scaring me very much.

— You don’t seem so very sorry, said the girl.

— Me? I said.

Because I was keen, if possible, that Candy should not know the precise facts of my recent criminal activities. Definitely I was keen, and I think perhaps however this keenness for privacy within my marriage looked different to the people who wished us harm. It looked, I think, like some insouciance or misplaced lack of remorse. And had I known this or foreseen this of course I would have tried to convince them otherwise. But who is able to foresee anything? So that then the girl just turned slightly so that the gun was pointing down at our dog, and the dog was looking up at her in its usual manner, because that is what dogs do, they are not attuned to social precision, they think that everyone loves them. Until the man suddenly said:

— What the fuck, man? Not the gun.

— Good point, she said, and pointed the gun away.

— I mean, he said, — don’t shoot it.

Then the man took the gun from her and just clubbed our dog on the head and our dog fell over, just very awkwardly tumbled, like his body fell before his legs could crumple, and as he did so he made the strangest noise, a little like the noise he made if accidentally you trod on his paw, but much more terrified. Then everything went silent. I mean, he went silent, but it felt like the whole room was silenced, too. There was blood gunked over his eye, and also his mouth went strange, as if to match his voice — like it went slack over his teeth in the way it sometimes did when he was asleep. I cried out but I did not cry out, because Candy was crying more than I was and I wanted to stay strong and brave. Instead therefore I stared very intently at the way the blood was forming from his skull. I know the usual phrase is a pool of blood but I am not sure that pool is right. It was more like now there was an extra surface beside him and that surface was viscous and a deep brown shade of red. Or maybe only red, I can’t be sure. As before, blood was indescribable. It was brown against the green carpet of my parents’ living room and everything was horrified.