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

I made my excuses and prepared to embark on that long and lonely drive back into Phoenix. It was then that Yolanda went kinda weird on me. Pulling herself up out of that old chair, she teetered toward me. — Please stay a little while longer, Raymond, she begged, — I really like talking to you…

She took a stumble forward and I had to catch her and steady her or I swear to God her ol blubbery beauty queen butt would have ended up on those cold tiles. — Hey, come on, Yolanda, you just had a little too much sauce and you’re a little tired, I smiled, tryin to make light of things. — Maybe you should lie down. I can all come back tomorrow now, y’hear?

Her face was now rodeo-assed red and her big, watery eyes not much far from the same as she looked up at me and pleaded, — You’ll bring a tape of your girlfriend singing and playing her songs?

— Sure, if that’s what you want.

— I’d like that, she said, as she steadied herself. — It’s so good that the both of you have a talent. A talent can never be allowed to go to waste…

— Well, we’re both tryin, I guess. I smiled at her and made my excuses and left.

By the time I got on to the road it had gotten plenty dark, which I didn’t mind. Just drivin in that silent night, sometimes I could feel the past fadin in my synapses, and blowin through me, like a howling ghost across that desert. It made me want to stop, so I got out for a while, just to look up at that silver moon. It settled my brain, and made me focus back on the things that were important to me; Pen, my work and specifically the Big Noise screenplay and the Halliday book, in that order. The key to it was that it had to be a book about Halliday, not about an old gal with four husbands, sitting out in exile in the middle of nowhere.

When I got to the apartment, Pen was waitin up. I was tired but she wasn’t and that gal wouldn’t say no. Then afterwards, my head was buzzin and she was soon fast asleep. — You’d best check the messages… she said as she fell into a slumber, — gonna miss you, boy bridesmaid… or is it bride…?

I looked at her, tried to shake her awake. She just turned around, eyes still shut, mouth a little open and murmured, — The voicemail… you gotta check it…

I did. To my delight and astonishment, Martha had called from LA, telling me that I’d been offered the car commercial I was being touted for! It paid big bucks, and for three weeks’ work — one recce, one filming, one post-production — it would keep me on the Halliday book for around six more months. On the downside I guess it meant that the next draft of Big Noise would have to wait just that little longer again, but nobody, least of all my agent, was holdin their breath for that one.

I thought about ol Glen Halliday, who would have laughed in their faces and talked about the integrity of the artist to some post-grads in Austin or Chapel Hill for two hundred bucks, his gas, and a couple of nights’ free minibar at the local Holiday Inn. Or so I thought. More likely he got Yolanda to supplement things by writin him out a check. I sure wasn’t going to turn into that version of Halliday. Pen worked long hours at that bookstore during the day and the gigs in those shitty bars at night and I was determined I wasn’t going to be no kept man. And this was as near as damnit a six-figure check for three weeks’ work. I wasn’t even gonna debate with myself the possibility that I might say no.

I couldn’t sleep, so I sat up and looked at my notes on Halliday. Just who in hell’s name was this sonofabitch? A Texan who loved Texas but hated what it had become: a place where Ivy Leaguers and religious nuts could wave the flag and we’d fall in behind it and fight pointless wars for their oil. Or perhaps he was just another scumbag hypocrite who used people, women, for what he could get out of them; an insecure actress whose head he fucked more than her pussy and a crazy heartbroken ol gal sitting on a gold mine in the desert.

In the mornin I said a sad goodbye to Pen and packed up for the long drive to LA. It would take me two days. I was driving out to see Yolanda first, then I’d take the interstate. En route at a gas station I picked up the newspaper and checked the terror-alert coding (orange) and the burn limit (fourteen minutes).

Passing Earl’s I saw the pool guy, Barry I think she said his name was, going in with his buddy. Something made me stop and get out and follow them inside. I checked out his pickup truck in the lot outside as I went by; an ’88 Chevy with a sticker in the rear window: ‘Ass, Gas, or Grass — Nobody Rides For Free.’

I squinted as I got into the almost empty bar: dark and cavernous after the blindin light outside. Barry Pool Guy and his buddy were shootin eight ball in the corner. I sat on a bar stool for a spell, readin the paper and watchin some of the play from the previous evenin’s ball game. After a while, Pool Guy came up and bought a couple of beers. — Hey, you work over at Mrs Halliday’s, I said.

— I work a lot of places, he snapped back, an ugly ol leer distortin his mean face even more.

I shrugged and turned back to my paper. The kid was an asshole. I finished my club soda and left the bar and climbed back into the Land Cruiser and took that long and dusty drive out to Yolanda’s. It wasn’t a comfortable ride. The confrontation with the kid at the bar was eating at me; it was minor pussy stuff, especially when I think of the situations I got into when I was full of liquor, but I was annoyed at puttin myself in a position where I could be rebuffed in that manner.

Anger burned me, and I guess I wasn’t concentrating too much on the road. I heard a swish, then a thud, followed by an almighty clatterin sound tellin me that I had hit something. I stopped and saw the outline of a doglike figure splayed out in the road. It was a coyote, and by the looks of it a full-sized one. I approached the sonofabitch warily, but it seemed to be dead. I pushed at its head with my boot. Yep, it was gone. But the gray-and-yellow body looked unmarked by the impact of the car; it wasn’t torn open, and I could see no blood from the mouth, ears, or eyes. It looked like it was asleep, as if it was an ol pooch curled up in front of the fireplace, cept its eyes was kinda half open.

Suddenly I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching over my shoulder. My heart sank as I turned and immediately realized it was a goddamn police car. One patrolman got out, and started moving slowly toward me in a loping John Wayne stride. Evidently he was worried that I still didn’t take him for a grade A1 asshole, so he kept his shades on as he addressed me. — Goin a little fast, ain’tcha?

— I wasn’t aware, officer, I—

— License and vehicle registration please.

I figured it would be pointless arguing so I complied and produced the documents. He took off his shades to study the paperwork and smiled at me. He was a country goofball; a snide, pig-eyed mutant with a small, petty heart masqueradin as a good ol boy.

He looked back at his partner in the car, a fat guy who was munchin through what looked like a taco (I knew there was a Taco Bell a couple of miles along the highway). This guy shot me a look that said, ‘If I gotta get my lardy ass out of this car, there’s gonna be big trouble.’

— We got ourselves a little problem, John Wayne grinned, exposin big, capped teeth. — This coyote fella, he’s listed. Means a shitload of paperwork for me, all these environmental types gonna be up in arms. How far you goin, mister?

— I’m just over to Loxbridge, I—

— Fine. That’s in the next county, out of my jurisdiction. Now what say you just get a hold of this roadkill and stick him in the trunk of your nice big car, and when you cross that county line, maybe a respectable few miles inside, sling him out by the side of the road? Then I can get on with doin the things folks in this county want me to do.