Emma Unsworth - Animals

My hand shook as I held my cigarette.

‘The libertarian in me wants to agree with you,’ Jim said. ‘But it’s not as simple as legalise drugs and they become safe.’

‘It’s a start. Out of interest, are you presenting this as a health issue or an organised crime issue?’

‘Both. Besides, people on drugs are wankers. Especially coke. Coke is the worst.’

Tyler emitted a squeal. ‘How do you NOT KNOW I’m on coke right now?’

‘Because you’re asking me a question,’ Jim said. ‘Ever noticed how someone on coke doesn’t ask a single question?’

I thought about making coffee and taking through Jim’s big shiny cafetiere and the pretty little pastel cups.

‘I’d better get home,’ Tyler said. ‘I’m up at six.’ She got up, put on her jacket and looked at me. ‘You’re staying here then?’ She smacked herself on the forehead. ‘Of course you are. Sorry, force of habit.’

‘Let us call you a cab,’ I said.

Oh, that ‘us’! She flinched and I instantly regretted it. I made a point then of saying ‘I’ in every subsequent sentence. I’ll go get my phone. I do have a number in here somewhere. I’ll come outside with you. I’ll meet you at the station after work.

‘Have a great time in London,’ Jim said. ‘Look after each other.’

‘Oh, we will. Shame you can’t make it, but don’t worry, I’ll be your stand-in.’

‘You’re welcome, Tyler,’ Jim said, turning to stack the dishes.

I stood in the road smoking long after the cab had gone, thinking about her travelling through the city towards the opposite outskirts, the streetlights sliding over the window in front of her peering face.

Tyler was waiting for me outside Piccadilly. Shades on, smoking, reading a paper, a carrier bag by her boots. As I reached her, a sports car screeched away from the drop-off point, tyres searing the tarmac. I jumped and dropped my bag. ‘Oh no stop please come back I simply must have sex with you,’ Tyler said, folding the paper. She was in a good mood.

On the train she emptied the contents of the carrier bag onto her tray table. A quarter bottle of vodka, four cans of diet coke, two pork pies. ‘We need to get these in while we can,’ she said, unsheathing a pie. ‘Jean has turned practically macrobiotic. There will be nothing to eat except beansprouts and dung.’

When we arrived at Euston we sat down for a smoke at one of the wooden picnic tables in front of the station. I was enjoying my London cigarette. I’d never been one of those Northerners who hated the South. Big cities comforted me: the cover, the chaos, the hollow sympathy of the architecture, the Tube lines snaking underground. London could swallow you up, in a good way. There were times when I’d been broken and being subsumed into a city had made me feel part of a whole again.

A copy of Nuts magazine had been left on the table. Tyler picked it up and began flicking through. ‘Oh this is abysmal. Abysmal! You know what this country needs? Another world war. Something on the doorstep to knock things back into perspective. A recession clearly hasn’t been enough. This week’s stripper is an air hostess! An AIR HOSTESS! Get her in a nuked-up plane over the Middle East — see if she feels like whipping her norks out then.’

‘I thought we agreed it was wrong to slam individuals for the perpetuation of—’

‘Oh, you think her real name’s “Vikki”? She’s a symbol! An allegory! That’s all we have, and people celebrate these symbols as though we don’t need a complete economic restructure. I despair, I really do. It’s all completely fucked.’

‘You watch porn!’

‘Well, that’s different — that’s already there, like meat. You might as well.’

She tore the magazine in half and threw it to the ground. I sat down. There was a woman reading a book on the other side of the table. She looked at me and went back to her book. Tyler pushed the fag packet towards me. I pulled out a fag and sparked up. ‘Let’s get a drink before we head to Jean’s. These station pubs are hideous, though. Threadbare seats and homemade vodka. It’s like capitalism never happened. Let’s finish these and go somewhere louche en route.’

A wasp zigzagged past my fag and I jerked backwards. The insect landed on the table and began crawling towards a sticky patch of something. The woman across the table quickly shut her book and bashed the insect to a pulp, hitting it ten times at least. Tyler watched. When the woman had finished, the wasp was a mass of black and yellow on wood. Tyler tapped her fag in the parasol hole. The woman recoiled, as though a cigarette was worse than a wasp.

‘NOT A BUDDHIST, THEN?’ Tyler said.

I loved her. I did. Sometimes.

We stopped at a pub called The Approach in Hackney, sat out back smoking and sharing a bottle of rosé. The wine was disgusting — every time either of us sipped any we gagged.

‘Why do we keep trying with rosé?’ I said.

‘Because it feels like a compromise when you don’t know whether you want red or white. Rosé, you think, it’s the natural choice, straight down the middle. But it’s not, it’s fucking shit.’

The barman came and cleared some glasses off the table. ‘I’ll bring you ladies an ashtray. You’ll have to move your bags, they’re blocking the fire escape.’

Tyler looked at him as though she was imagining the true horror of a blocked fire escape. She leaned down and gave the bags a few bashes until they were flush with the chairs. The barman stood over us, clutching a spray of dirty pint pots. ‘What’s in them, anyway?’

She looked at him. ‘Blow-up dolls and ketamine.’

‘You’re lucky this isn’t an airport,’ he said. ‘Oh talky hand, you’re doing a talky hand at me, well that’s polite.’

We had another bottle before we left — rosé again. (Tyler: Might as well, I can barely taste the fucker any more. )

By the time we got to Jean’s in Bethnal Green we were somewhere between wedding-drunk and wake-drunk. Christening-drunk —a new one, I thought to myself joyously as Jean opened the door with a lint roller in her hand. The baby peered from her side, squinting in the crook of Jean’s arm like her dark half.

‘Lola!’ Jean said. No one had called me that for years. It reminded me of nights out with Jean, years ago. The two of them singing to me in stupid English accents: I met her in a club down in Old So-ho. I hugged Jean carefully around the baby. ‘Whew!’ she said. ‘You guys smell of… fun.’

‘We stopped off to refresh ourselves,’ Tyler said.

‘Where?’

‘The Approach.’

‘Great,’ Jean said, but she didn’t look as though she thought it was great. I started to feel self-conscious. I was staying at her house: was it rude to turn up drunk now she had a baby? The baby. It was staring at me emotionlessly. I thought of Lisa Bonet’s baby in Angel Heart . Yellow eyes and pointing…

Tyler released a heraldic fart as she crossed the threshold.

‘Oh, do please try and contain yourself, Tyler,’ said Jean.

‘Jean’s a shadow of her former glory,’ Tyler whispered loudly. ‘They don’t even chill wine around here any more. They keep it in a rack so you have to plan ahead if you want any.’

I stepped into the hall. Jean closed the front door. ‘Everyone’s in the kitchen,’ she said. On our nights out, now deep in the past, she’d lasted the longest despite being the youngest. In Nebraska she’d dated a man who cooked crystal meth in his garage ( Your whole brain gets pins-and-needles and you don’t sleep for days ), and she’d been living in New York on 9/11—had run away there after the meth-chef dumped her for her best friend. Got a job at a gallery in Chelsea. Was always in work early. That day she was in for eight. What was it like? I’d asked her, the ghoul in me elbowing past the human. ‘Oh, I was heartbroken at the time,’ she deadpanned, ‘so it sort of passed me by.’