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

Tracey saw her come in and set her up a beer.

Sure enough, one of the ol boys caught an eyeful of that divine denim-cased rear and darn near tumped his beer. Then his mean ol eyes took their register of my own weather-beaten face, and seein that it wasn’t much younger than the battered-lookin thing that greeted him in the mirror each mornin, fixed me a bitter scowl. I just gave him back a shit-eatin grin that said: Yeah, I know I’m maybe a little too old and these days definitely a load too straight for her, but it’s me she’s goin home with, so fuck you, buddy.

Then I ignored that sorry old fool and held up my cellphone to Pen in a playful reprimand.

— Yeah… I know, she said, tilting her head to the side, — I forgot to charge the bastard up.

— But I’m the possessive type, honey, I gotta have you on call, twenty-four/seven.

She opened a couple of pop-out buttons on my shirt and put her hand inside, rubbin at the hairs on my chest. — Yeah, I know, and I love it.

— Not as much as me, baby, I told her.

She raised a sculptured brow. — But you got another woman in your life right now, the one you’re spendin all this time with, she teased. — How’s this Halliday woman then? Bet she was a looker, huh?

— As she keeps tellin me she was once Miss Arizona.

— Before they started keepin records, right? Pen laughed and took a big suck on her Pabst.

I felt somethin rise in me a little and forced it back down, smilin back thinly at Pen. She didn’t mean nuthin by it, cause that gal ain’t got a bad bone in her body. All she was doin was repeatin my own silly jokes back at me. But somehow disrespectin Yolanda just didn’t sound right no more.

Funny thing was that I guess that I was kinda gettin to like that old gal. The woman had shown me great courtesy and hospitality, but desire, no sir, no way, you have got to be jerkin my wire. Why, Miss Yolanda had at least a good thirty years and a bad eighty pounds on me. Having undergone every plastic surgery procedure known to man, her face was almost paralyzed; the last time I saw something that looked like it, it was perched on the side of Notre-Dame cathedral over in Paris.

And to my shame, I had said somethin along those lines to Pen after I first met her, set that ol gal up as a figure of fun. I dunno why. Always tryin a little too hard to be a smart-ass, I guess, then regrettin it after when the folks you shit-talk don’t turn out to be so bad after all. But then the static thump of tubby fingers on a microphone head interrupted me from my thoughts.

Earl was a big and feisty ol boy, always wore those two-button brocade vests of the type JR used to sport, so damn snug you wondered how they stayed fastened, and I never saw him without his big Stetson hat. He was up onstage and he introduced Pen to a great big cheer. Then she got right up there and just blew them all away. I’m darned if that gal couldn’t rock the hell out of a joint. It might have only been a sleazy little dive bar where if somebody left the door open the throatful of heat and dust that followed them in made everybody suck down another cold one quickstyle, but she was headin for bigger things, no doubt about it. But I liked it best when she put down the Gibson and picked up the twelve-string acoustic and set her sweet ass on that stool and sang those soft honey-sugar ballads of hers. They broke this old wreckage’s sorry heart and made me want to set up just one little beer to cry into. But I knew where that would lead and as long as I had her in my arms I sure didn’t need me none of that.

I loved this dirty little dive so much and the only damn reason was her. I’d first come in to Earl’s six months ago, just after I’d moved to Phoenix, to try and start this damn book on Halliday. It just wasn’t happenin up in that lonely apartment, so I got out for a while and drove around a little, endin up just out of town, in this place. I found it was always better to pretend to write in the corner of some bar rather than in an empty apartment. Sometimes a face or a comment overheard could lay down the bones of a character or a snatched conversation trigger an idea for a plotline. Even though I wasn’t drinkin I still couldn’t break that particular habit.

I hadn’t been in long when she sat down next to me at the bar and asked me for a cigarette. I told her that I was sorry but I didn’t smoke, and was moved to add that right now I wished more than just about anythin that I did. She laughed and said that maybe I could buy her a drink instead and I was delighted to do so. After takin note that I was passin on the liquor, she looked deep into my eyes and said, ‘Well, you don’t smoke, or drink, but do you…’ and she skipped a beat, took a long drag on the cigarette that Tracey had given her, those big brown eyes full of mischief and asked, ‘… listen to rock n roll?’

When I told her I most certainly did, she got up on that stage and played me some. I guess I fell in love with her right there and then, and it’s been that way ever since. I started hangin around Earl’s and then another couple of bars she played, and we just began seein each other. Then, when the rent was up on her apartment she just moved her stuff into mine. One night when we was lying on our backs in bed, looking up at the ceilin after just having made love, she said, — You know, I think I’m gettin better, maybe growin up a little. I got a boyfriend who ain’t an asshole.

I quickly quipped, — Just add alcohol, honey, but grinnin at her through the darkness, I was thinkin, maybe it’s ol Raymond Wilson Butler here who’s the one that’s getting better. Cause sure as shit there ain’t gonna be anymore alcohol.

I was researchin the Halliday book and bangin out my screenplay of Big Noise , which took up a lot of time, but I liked to go out with Pen when she played. Some of those bars were rough dives, and although she could look after herself, I guess I worried about all sorts of things, from guys hittin on her to perverts and stalkers.

But that night she was sittin alongside me in the Land Cruiser, a little tired after the gig, maybe a little drunk after the six Pabsts and four Jack and Cokes she’d had. (I couldn’t help countin, I’m conditioned to do this now.) She said to me, — You know, if I came home with a guy like this before, I’d be all tough and bitter. Now I can be exactly as I like, in that I don’t have to think about it.

We went to bed and slept in each other’s arms. We would wait till the mornin before making love.

The next day Pen headed out to the bookstore, while I got back to Big Noise , and pretended I was a real writer. I wrote me a long list of what the problems with my first draft were. The main one, and I guess what most of the others kept comin back to, was Julia, my hard-assed Texan matriarch. Yeah, my agent Martha Crossley was right. She was thinner than a wet piece of newspaper. Problem was, I just didn’t know who she was. At first I thought of her as based on my own momma, then a twisted version of Jill, and at one stage I even considered that she just might be Martha. Every time I clicked on my laptop though, I had the feelin that I was making this thing worse instead of better. I sat until my head throbbed, then went to the DVD and watched Ditchwater Creek for the hundredth time.

I realized that it was almost lunchtime and I’d achieved nothin. I tried to call Pen to meet for some lunch but her cellphone was off again, so I called in at the store. We went to a pretty gross place in the mall, where minimum-wage kids dispensed poison to the other storeworkers and housewives present. It was good to see her comin toward me, that wild mane of hair fightin to get free from the black velvet band it was tied in, and those bangles, bracelets and rings danglin from her wrists, fingers and ears. I needed to talk to somebody, and there was nobody like her.