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

Yolanda returned quickly and sat back to enjoy the drink.

— I’ll start to mount it later, she said as I reluctantly dragged my own carcass off that cool floor and into the chair by hers.

I pointed at the big dog.

— That’s Marco, she said, — one of the best pieces of work I’ve done. He was such an angel, honestly, Raymond, the sweetest puppy you ever met. Somebody poisoned him, I don’t know who, but I have my suspicions, she spat, thinking, I guess, of one of her would-be property-developer neighbors. Things must have got pretty ugly at one time, but I was sure as damned that Marco’s puppy years had long passed when that big sonofabitch cashed in his chips. — Anyway, she said, more breezily, — I decided to bring some more of them up from the basement for you to have a look at.

This had all been a great education for me, but it had taken some time and with LA and the Volkswagen shoot on the horizon, I reckoned that commodity was getting a little scarcer. I quickly got settled and asked her about the husband she had before Glen Halliday.

— Larry Briggs was an alderman in town. Ran twice for state senate. The horniest sonofabitch I met, she said fondly, before her tone soured. — Problem was quite a few others knew him that way too. The main difference between Larry and Glen was that when I found Larry was after the ranch, for the water, it came as absolutely no surprise.

— What happened to him? I raised the cool, clear glass of liquid gold and contemplated it for a moment, then put it to my lips.

— Who knows. I reckon he ran away with some damned slut who fell for his smooth talk. That type never was in short supply. He’d had it here. After two failed state senate attempts nobody wanted him on their ticket. I wasn’t going to fund his drinking and womanizing, so he left. Last I heard he was down in Mexico. The strange thing is that in a roundabout way, I met Glen through Larry. She now sounded a little wistful. — Glen was doing a film about the water politics of Arizona and he talked to Larry and some other would-be developers. Came out here to see Larry, who by that time was gone. So we struck up a friendship. It was platonic… well, drink-based at first, and she reached for the bottle to recharge her glass. — I knew he was a lush from the off, but he was fun back then. I think at first he liked it here, liked being away from LA, which he always loathed, though he was always flying up for meetings.

— What about New York? How did he feel about the spiritual home of American independent cinema?

— Not a whole heap better.

That kinda made sense to me. All people who live in LA do is to say how shit it is, even if, I suspect, half of them don’t mean it. In New York they all tell you how great it is and I suspect that half of them ain’t properly convinced either. — I thought they’d be more understandin of what he was trying to achieve there.

— Perhaps at one time. Yolanda shook her head. — But I got the impression that he resented the new breed of independent filmmakers that were working there. I think it was because they were getting things done while all the doors were slamming in his face, she explained and she started, for the first time, to talk about Glen’s work and his future ambitions.

That ol coyote had eaten into our time but it was still a good session for me, I got the best stuff yet from her. But then things changed kinda sudden when I told her about the car-ad shoot and that it would be a few weeks before I saw her again.

Yolanda looked at me like I’d just announced the death of her firstborn. I’ll be darned if that blood didn’t just drain from her face. — But I will see you again, won’t I? she squealed.

I was pretty much taken aback at her reaction. — Course you will… that is, I mean, if you feel I ain’t just wasting your time. You’ve told me so much already, I—

— Please come back, Raymond, she begged, hoistin herself up outta that chair as I started to rise with her, — there’s some other stuff I have to tell you about Glen, some things I need to show you.

— Yes, I sure will, Yolanda… But can’t you tell me now?

— No, no, no, she said, with a brisk shake of her head, — we don’t have the time and I must let you go while I tend to our coyote friend.

All the while, though, I had noticed that after comin back from the basement the last time, she had let her hair down. At the time I had a horrible feeling it was for my benefit. This was confirmed when she gave it a fancy ol shake in my direction. Once upon a time that gesture and the accompanyin smile might have broken some buck’s heart into pieces, but right now it was grotesque in its ugly ol desperation. I couldn’t keep the repulsion outta my face and I guess she kinda caught it.

— I’m so lonely, Ray. So damn lonely. I was, even with Glen, she sobbed, shakin her head miserably.

— Yolanda…

— But you will come back to me, won’t you, Raymond? she implored again, steppin forward to grab my hand in hers. Her grip was surprisingly strong. This close I could see ol-hag spines of hair sproutin from under her nose and on her chin. — I’ve so many more stories I want to tell you.

— You bet, Yolanda, and I pulled her close to me and we hugged for a little while. But in that embrace I felt the sorry despondency on her part and, in turn, I must confess I felt pretty damn sad for her. But when it came to say goodbye she was already distracted, staring off into space, light years away. I let myself out.

When I got outside, I twisted my Dodgers cap round to cover my neck from that sun creepin up behind the house. That asshole Barry had arrived and he was carryin a silver tank on his back, which seemed to continually explode in the dazzling sunlight. He was comin round the side of the pool and we couldn’t avoid each other. Our eyes met in a now mutual sneer and I held it, forcin him to break off first, his shifty eyes contemplatin God’s earth.

It was a sad-ass victory but in spite of that it flushed me with triumph for a bit, as I climbed into the Cruiser and took off, Brad Paisley’s ‘Waitin on a Woman’ fillin up the car sweetly as I got out onto the interstate. At a station I filled up on gas and struck out for LA. Proper. I drove hard for a bit, trying to make good time on the highway so that I could goof off part of the journey along the back roads. A long red twilight, broken only by south-headin doves in flight for the river, stretched out before me as I slid off the interstate. I loved passin through them small towns, all the time hearin the thud and cranking of digging machines, and as the night fell, the barking of dogs and the mariachi music, while the low trees, covered as they were with insects, clicked, snapped, and whirred their own little tunes.

When I got to LA I was pretty beat but still runnin on adrenalin. The shoot went well. I got to be back behind a camera, and I’d forgotten how much I loved that. The concept was simple, the kind of shit that me and a million other would-be filmmakers could pull off with style and panache, without sweat touchin our ass cracks. What we basically did was to parody the car chase along the concrete dried-out LA riverbed in the movie To Live and Die in L. A . We emerged onto the streets outside a hospital and our faggot model jumped out with his heavily pregnant ‘partner’. We finished with the byline: ‘For Little Things That Just Can’t Wait’. None of us was foolin ourselves it was too smart or original, but then again it was an ass-fucking car ad. The big difference was that this time I wasn’t the bitter stiff in some Hollywood bar looking up from his stool at the finished product on-screen, saying how easy that shit was and how the guys who did that stuff were assholes getting paid top dollar for jack. I was the guy doin it. And they cut that damn check in time and whatever anyone said it felt pretty fuckin good.