Irvine Welsh - If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

Emboldened by this lady’s candor, I asked without thinkin, — Who do you think was?

— C’mon, darlin, you know the answer to that as well as I do, she chided, but she looked at me like she was genuinely let down. And she was right to be; it was the performance of an honors graduate asshole. In her mind I now either had balls of jello or the savvy of a virgin in a bordello. — Ms Sandra Nugent, she said slowly, her look of judging compassion makin me feel like the teenage daughter of the house who stormed out screamin ‘fuck you’ only to return in tears with a swollen belly six months later.

I knew full well, as did any undergrad who took an elective in American independent film, that Sandy Nugent was universally regarded as Halliday’s muse. She was the actress who starred in some of his finest movies: Ditchwater Creek, Mace, A Very Cold Heat . Over the years they had what the likes of Entertainment Weekly might call ‘a tempestuous on-off relationship’. She killed herself back in ’86, in a roach motel in a scuzzy part of Florida. They found her with the contents of a strip mall drugstore still bubblin in her gut long after her ass had gone polar.

I’d researched Sandy extensively, prior to meeting Yolanda. The only public comment he made on her death had lost Halliday plenty of friends (sadly, I was learning that he seemed to specialize in that art). Talkin to a London magazine at the Edinburgh Film Festival back in 1990, he said, ‘Nobody likes to see a good piece of ass wasted.’ Of course, Glen Halliday was a chronic drunk by then. I know that ain’t no excuse for that kinda talk, but I sure as shit also know that it can be a reason.

Glen Halliday was one of the most talented and underrated filmmakers I had come across. But the more I learned about him the less enamored I was by the guy. It seemed, and not only from Yolanda, that the magic was in the movies, not the man. And while I know more than most what ol John Barleycorn can do to a fella when things ain’t goin his way, my hero was starting to sound like a guy who had his head up his ass.

He married Yolanda ten years after Sandy’s death, then he himself apparently died of a heart attack, right here in Phoenix six years after that. Obviously the thing with Sandy, though they never tied the knot, really did seem to be Glen Halliday’s big one, but she wasn’t for tellin. Also, most of their mutual associates in the world of independent film had been pretty damn guarded.

But not all of them; back in New York, I had met Jenny Ralston, one of Sandy’s best friends, who’d been mighty obligin. Jenny had been mentored by Sandy and had a respectable list of indie credits and the odd Hollywood B-movie to her name. She was a dark-eyed beauty, finer than frog hair, and, maybe guided a little too much by her perspective, I’d regarded Yolanda Halliday as just a crazy afterthought, a place for drunken ol Glen to lay his tired head in this period of dark decline. But now somethin was eatin at me. I was darned if some strange loopy voice wasn’t whisperin in my ear that it was this relationship with Yolanda, ol Miss Arizona herself, that was going to be the key to unlocking the Glen Halliday enigma. Perhaps this strange woman was slowly becomin more interestin to me as I was gettin a little disenchanted by her most recently deceased husband.

As we kept yakin, me tryin to keep her interest by tellin her about my life past, and the one present with Pen, which interested her more, Yolanda seemed to be strugglin. I’d no idea how many gins she’d had before I’d called round and the booze seemed to be gettin to her. I soon got to reckonin that it might be best to wrap it up for the time being. — I really enjoy chatting to you, Raymond, she slurred, — I feel like we’ve really connected.

— I really enjoy talkin to you, Yolanda, I told her in all honesty, despite bein a mite concerned at the way those crazy eyes kept holdin me in their gaze.

I thanked her for her time and made to leave, as I had somewhere I needed to be. I fixed another appointment to see her, then headed back to the car. The pool was still ocean blue and the pool guy, skinny but muscular in his yellowin wife-beater, glanced at me for a second with hard, suspicious eyes, before turnin and rakin more gunk from the pool’s surface.

I got into the car and drank my second bottle of water. I called Pen on her cellphone but it was switched off, as was her habit. I hooked another bottle into the holder on the dashboard. The road was dead as Yolanda’s pets and I made good time before pullin into Earl’s Roadhouse, the bar where Pen was playing. It was still pretty damn early and I could feel that ol lush pull tuggin at me, insistent as a mall brat beggin his momma for candy. Surprisingly, for a night owl, it was always in the daylight hours when the draw was strongest. But I guess there’s nothin like walking sober into an evening bar full of drunks to convince you that you’re makin the right lifestyle choice.

I ordered a soda water with lime from Tracey the bartender. I liked her. She had a very cold dykey thing going on with the guys who came in. It just intrigued them and made them hit on her all the more. And hit on her they did, cause that gal always dressed like a million bucks. Not in an obvious way, cause she wasn’t one for puttin much flesh on show, but pretty damn classy all the same. She liked me, approved of the way I treated Pen. She told me as much one time, when she was a little drunk. Not in that hittin on you type of way, just in a mature sense of genuine appreciation. Tracey put Pen up on a pedestal. I reckoned I knew that pedestal well enough and once told Pen that I thought Tracey might be a girl’s girl.

She just laughed in my face and said, — Baby, she’s as straight as they come. For an older guy, you still ain’t got much of a clue about women.

She wasn’t too far wrong. Reckon all the women in my life had kinda said the same thing at one time or another. Jill made that point frequently, and much less charitably than Pen. My agent Martha had recently said similar stuff about Julia, the heroine in the first draft of my screenplay Big Noise . Or maybe she was a bit more blunt: ‘She isn’t a cardboard cutout, honey, she’s a little paper-thin for that.’

Sure enough, a few days later we spotted Tracey throwin gutterballs at Big Bucky Boy’s Bowling with some strike-hittin real-estate-sales type of guy who was probably married, but definitely fucking her. I felt like even more of a sleazeball than this asshole looked.

It was more than just women. I guess I outta have known a whole heap more about people than I did for a fella with my ambitions. And my crazy, conceited ass thought that by doing this book and a possible documentary on Halliday, I’d grow to understand the master’s mind, and somehow be able to unblock the writer in me, and become the great auteur that he was. But it was fanciful bullshit, and Yolanda Halliday was proof of that. After a couple of meetings I still didn’t know what that ol gal’s thing was.

The bar started to fill up, nine-to-five sorts who looked like they’d put in a hard day’s work; forklift drivers, grease monkeys, retail clerks, and office types, all lookin for what everybody has looked for in places like this since folks first sat down and chewed the shit together.

Pen came in dressed in a leather jacket and tight jeans, her hair tied back in a blue ribbon lookin kick-ass rock chic. She’s seventeen sweet years my junior, and her perfume smells good as she greets me with a melting smile and throws her arms around me. We kissed long, hard, and hungry, then softened it up a little and it tasted real fine and I could measure the goodness in life in the sweetest drips from those big red lips. And I knew I was lucky cause every guy, every sweaty workin stiff in that shithouse of a bar wanted to be me at that point in time and if they didn’t then they goddamn well should have.