Iain Banks - The Crow Road

A waiter was approaching from behind her, I noticed, without taking my eyes off hers; I felt the grin broaden on my lips. The waiter would distract her, especially as she had ordered the meal and was obviously paying, and anyway she almost certainly hadn't heard the waiter approaching.

Ash reached one hand out across the table and spilled my brandy into my lap.

Just as I was reacting, going "Wha —!" and jerking forward, Ash turned smoothly to the waiter and with a broad smile said,

"The bill, please."

"It does look like I've pissed myself!" I protested as we walked back to the flat. "Those people were definitely laughing at me."

"Oh, shut up, Prentice."

"You're telling me to shut up!" I laughed. The July night was warm and muggy and the traffic rumbled like thunder down Great Western Road. "You throw drink all over me, expect to sleep in my flat tonight and you tell me to shut up!"

Ash paced purposefully on, long flinging strides I was having difficulty in keeping up with. She was still glaring, though straight ahead now. I noticed people coming towards us weren't getting in her way.

"I didn't throw the drink, I tipped it," she told me. "And I'm only coming back to the flat to get my bag, if that's the way you feel. I'll sleep in the car. Or find a hotel."

"I didn't!" I protested, waving my arms and running after her as I saw the possibility of getting into Ashley's increasingly attractive body slipping away from me. "I didn't say that! I just don't like being told to shut up! I'm sorry! I mean, I'm really sorry I'm annoyed that you spilled — or tipped — drink all over me!"

Ash stopped so suddenly I wondered where she'd gone for a moment. I turned, looked, and went back to her, standing looking furious in the light of a Spud-U-Like,

"Prentice," she said calmly. "You've practically exiled yourself from your family and your home and your friends, you think you've failed your finals but you say you've no intention of sitting your re-sits even if you have; you've no money and you haven't even been looking for a job; you're getting done for shop-lifting and you're acting like such a fucking dick-head you seem determined to get shot of the last few pals you do have left… and all you can do is make smart-ass remarks."

I looked through her bright red glasses into her light grey eyes and said, "Well, so far so good, certainly, but let's not count our —»

She stamped on my right big toe, forcing me to produce an involuntary and appallingly undignified yelp. She stormed off; I half limped, half hopped after her.

"Let's not count our vultures before they're hatched, eh?" I laughed. She powered on, ignoring me. I hopped after her. "Spare a shekel for a healthy beggar?" I cackled. "Able was I ere I saw Michael; where can you land a Palin? And in what?"

Ash kicked my other shin. Wonderful girl; didn't even seem to break stride.

She disappeared into an off-licence. I waited outside, rubbing my shin and inspecting the damage to my Docs; luckily the scuff on the right toe didn't show up the way it would have with polished boots.

Ash reappeared with a bag; she swept past me, briefly showing me the bottle of Grouse it contained. I skipped after her down the street. "After trying the fluid on a small unnoticeable area, you now wish to wash all of my trousers the spirited way, am I right, madam? Now; will you swap these two bottles of warm urine for that one bottle of our product?"

She shook her head, not looking at me. "You and I are going to get filthily drunk, Prentice, and if by the time we get to the bottom or this bottle I haven't got some sort of sense out of you I'm going to break it over your thick fucking skull." She turned, beamed a toothy non-smile at me for about a micro-second, then strode determinedly on.

I tried to keep up. I looked at the bottle in the bag. "Couldn't you just leave the whisky, I'll drink it all, wake up in the morning — no, make that the afternoon — with a head that feels like you hit me over the skull with the bottle, and you sleep in the car ready for that long and demanding journey down the notoriously dangerous A74 tomorrow?"

Ash shook her head.

We got back to Grant Street. I looked up, saw some lights on in the flat. Maybe, I thought, Ash would be so turned on by the sounds of frantic coupling emanating from Gav and Aunt Janice in the bedroom that she'd tear my clothes off. Or maybe Norris and his pals would distract her from this crazed idea of getting air-locked drunk by suggesting a friendly game of cards.

Ash followed my gaze. She held the bottle up in front of my eyes. "Ready for this, Prentice?"

"Drink doesn't solve anything, you know," I told her. "Just dissolves brain cells."

"I know," she said. "I'm working on the principle that most people are okay unless they get muroculous with drink, when they become arse-holes; you're behaving like an arse-hole now, so maybe drink'll make you okay."

I tried to look as sceptical as I could. "I bet you believe in crop circles, too."

"Prentice, I believe you seem determined to fuck your life up, and I just want to know why."

"Oh," I said brightly. "That's easy; my affections have been rejected by the one I love and her carnality is being most thoroughly investigated by my elder and smarter brother on a more or less hourly basis, so I am spurned and she is spermed; my father believes his children should be free to make up their own minds, but preferably only out of the spare-parts that he provides… And apart from that… I mean the exams and getting nicked and stuff… Well," I sighed, looking up to the night sky, where the clouds were starting to blot out the few stars that the city lights did not obscure. I spread my arms wide."… I'm just a waster."

Ash looked at me. I could see her chest move in and out inside the light cotton jacket. "Naw, Prentice," she said quietly, after a while. "You're just a bairn."

I shrugged. "Maybe. Come on." I indicated the close. "Let's get as drunk as you think we have to, and you can tell me all the reasons I'm so childish." I glanced at my watch as we headed for the stairs. "Better get started, though; we've only got all night."

We climbed the stairs, reached the flat.

"You know," Ash was saying, breathing hard and looking down the stair-well as I opened the door. "I don't know anybody who lives in a flat who doesn't live on the top floor."

"Friends in high places," I said, opening the door to Janice Rae.

Aunt Janice was clothed (shirt and jeans), which made rather a refreshing change, and standing in the hallway. She looked distraught. Her eyes were red and her mascara had left what appeared to be a diagram of the Los Angeles freeway system down her cheeks. Beyond her Gav stood looking awkward and sheepish. I glanced from Janice to Gav and back again, while Janice looked at me, lip trembling.

Let me guess, I thought; they've finally done it; they've broken the bed.

"Oh, Prentice!" Janice said suddenly, throwing herself at me and enveloping my upper torso in a hug that would have done credit to a grizzly. I wondered what had brought this on, and how to peel Aunt Janice off. What must Ashley be making of all this? (She'd be getting jealous, with any luck.)

Janice pulled away; I could breathe again, and promptly did so.

"Oh, Prentice," she said again, holding my head in both hands and shaking her own. Her eyes closed, she turned her face away, released her hold on my cheekbones and let me go on into the hall. Gav stood by the hall table, shifting his weight from side to side and glancing nervously down at the phone now and again.

He avoided my eyes.

I took a couple of steps forward, then heard something whispered from behind me, and looked back to see Janice hugging Ash, almost violently.