Emma Unsworth - Animals

Oh god oh god shall we check the fridge?

Well if he hasn’t got any fucking milk he’s unlikely to have any fucking wine, is he?

I guess not.

Hey.

What?

I’m just thinking.

What?

Well unless he’s got it on him which is unlikely it must be in here somewhere.

Do not even think about it. Do NOT even think about it. Tyler. Tyler. Look at me. No. Listen THAT is how people get shot and die. Sit your ass back down I mean it.

Ohhh he doesn’t seem the type to have a gun… What?

From her seat across the table in the beer garden, Tyler eyed me like the superior being I knew she knew she was. She was up in the stratosphere, one arm around Space and the other around Time, looking down on the world and saying You haven’t got a clue, not a fucking clue . It was a cosmic can-can I wanted in on. Wanted . Therein lies the crux. The knowledge of non-addiction was, ironically, grist to the mill. That was how it went: down, down and down, deeper and deeper, until I reached, as I always reached, the final pre- fuckit outpost. The saloon on the edge of the desert. The 40,000-league crab shack. The brothel on Pluto.

This is my will.

Tyler leaned in saucily, breasts first. ‘You know it’s really good when it scares the shit out of you,’ she said. ‘I had to stop myself from roaring in the bathroom earlier. Like this,’ she tipped her head back and waggled it from side to side, ‘RAAARRRRRRR.’

I rolled out of bed and leapfrogged around the square metre of rough carpet, lifting balled papers and carrier bags, looking for clothes. Eventually I found some: a clean t-shirt and — gusset sniffed — some just-about-acceptable jeans. I stuffed random toiletries and — even more randomly, a bag of decomposing grapes (For Health) into a bag and called a cab. I usually walked to Jim’s, it took twenty minutes or so, but time pressures plus Bambi-legs made walking as unlikely as successful social interaction.

The cab company sent a minibus. Oh great, typical, I thought when I saw its hollow bulk chugging away by the kerb. Te-rrific . If there’s one thing sure to amplify the existentials it’s a minibus ride across town on your own. I nodded at the driver as I heaved the sliding door open. Threw my bag across the seats and climbed inside. Didn’t put my seatbelt on. The cab smelled of hot fabric and pine. Four empty seats stared back at me. Another four empty seats behind. I found my phone in my bag and called my sister.

‘Minibus, is it?’ Mel said when she answered.

‘Eh?’

‘You only ever call me when you’re in a minibus after a big one.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yep.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Where are you?’

‘At the folks’. Dad had chemo again this morning.’

‘Oh god. Is he—’

‘It went fine. He’s resting.’

‘They didn’t hear you say that, did they? About the minibus after a big one .’

‘No, but even if they did I doubt they’d give much of a shit right now.’

‘Course. Sorry.’

‘Look, drink some water. Get some sleep.’

‘I’ll try.’

I hung up feeling wretched, and then wretched for feeling wretched, and then proud for feeling wretched for feeling wretched. I asked the cabbie to stop at the Co-Op opposite Victoria (the tenner rolled itself up in the plastic money-tray, I unrolled it, it rolled itself up again — I got out without waiting for change). In the supermarket I scuttled to the meat section, past the cold huddles of vegetables and uniformly stacked pasta and rice. Nothing smelled of anything. In the meat fridge there was a pack of mutton that had been discounted and I picked it up without thinking. What else should I get? A bottle of wine. A Shloer or something for Jim (fuck’s sake). Bread. Milk. Fags. Loo roll. Cooked chicken. Crisps. Credit card the lot and worry about it next month, if I was still alive. I bought too much and when I pulled the bags off the counter I swayed with the weight and thought I might vomit. Oh god, no. I looked around. There were never any bathrooms in these little supermarkets. Could I feasibly get outside and find somewhere discreet? The last time I’d vomited was before Jim had left. He had a late flight so I’d stayed at his, drinking wine on my own and playing Portal 2 on his PS3. At 2 A.M. I was starving and there was nothing in so I staggered to McDonald’s in St. Ann’s Square in his canvas espadrilles (did they ever record for Google Earth at night, or was that just during the day? Mortification). I bought too much food and ate it walking back, and then — schoolgirl error — got in bed too soon. The internal tide turned and I knew there was only one way it was going to go. Just thinking about that night made vomiting inevitable so I paid quickly and left the shop. Around the corner I leaned against a wall and dropped my bags. The glass bottles rang against each other. The sound, and the lurch of worrying about them breaking, made me even sicker. Jim’s street was about five minutes away, towards the arena. Did this require another taxi? Yes, my stomach said, yes it did. I reached for the wall and pressed my palm flat. I retched. Nothing. Sometimes a retch was worse than a gip. I tried not to think about food or fun of any kind and definitely not Jim. My nerves surged. You know that feeling. You feel pins and needles rushing and wonder if it means you’re healing.

When I felt like I could move I walked to the rank outside the station and got in the front cab. The driver was nice enough about the shortness of the journey. I think he saw the panic in my eyes. When I got to Jim’s I walked up the steps at the front of his building (he lived on the ground floor, mercifully) and let myself in.

He’d had a key cut for me in January and the plan was for me to move in when we were married but I couldn’t see it yet. Cohabitation. Would I have to contribute to the décor, posters in clip frames, that kind of thing? Was Athena still open? I loved Jim’s place but it didn’t feel like home. Still, where did? Not Tyler’s. Tyler’s was Tyler’s. Maybe when I made some money I could rent my own flat opposite Jim’s and we could wave to each other over the road, like Woody Allen and Mia Farrow across Central Park. That would be romantic. Or lonely — would it just be lonely?

My phone started to ring. Expecting it to be Jim, I hunted through my bag and cleared my throat. The screen said ICE. In Case of Emergency. My parents’ house. Dad, probably. I watched the letters flashing. His body. My body. What I’d done. What he hadn’t. Oh, the shame of raiding my body’s chemical joy-stores! I was no better than a looter. When it stopped ringing I noticed the time on the screen. I had just over an hour.

I put a pan on the hob, heated oil. Sliced onions. Fried spices. Tipped the mutton in. I’d never cooked with it before but I knew that it was basically the same thing as lamb, the archaic name reassuring. Dickens probably did a lot with mutton. The steam from the searing meat made me feel like I might vomit. I stepped back and flicked on the extractor fan in the hood over the hob. I added ginger, garlic, curry powder. I turned down the heat and went for a little lie-down on the settee. When I felt up to it I went back to add water and tomatoes to the pan. There. That could sit awhile. Next: washing. But first… Jim had some rehydration salts in his medicine cabinet. I took a glass from the cupboard and tipped a packet of rehydration salts into it. The salt sat at the bottom of the glass in a little pile. It looked like cocaine. I took the glass to the sink and turned on the cold tap. Water twisted out in a clean, violet-edged ribbon.