Sam Thompson - Communion Town

Two figures were approaching through the shimmer. I couldn’t tell how far off. They got bigger in uneven jumps. My dried tongue fumbled, forming itself around your name, so I’d be ready with the question when they were close enough. Why were they so large but still so far away? Then something slipped, perception ratcheted, and they were with me: one before, one behind.

‘It’s a mystery,’ Don Cherub said, ‘why you refuse to see what’s good for you.’

He checked up and down the waterfront. No one else was in sight. He pushed me up against Dave, who pinioned my arms.

‘My dog learns faster that certain acts have certain consequences. My geraniums learn faster.’

His fist jabbed out. I coughed, then cursed. Dave held me upright.

‘I got nuffin against you, Hal,’ Don was saying, ‘but I got a job to do and you tire me out, see?’

Dave spun me around into the hardly-less-inescapable grip of his brother, who kept talking into my ear.

‘I mean, you could’ve dropped your investigation at any point and spared everyone the inconvenience. But, all right, I can understand you got professional pride of yer own. You got standards.’

Dave rolled up his sleeve. I offered him a grimace, which he socked into the middle distance.

‘What I don’t get, Hal, is what kind of bleeding operation you think you’re running. See, you’re all over town, making a nuisance, getting on everyone’s nerves, an’ you keep running up against me and Dave here. But it ain’t occurred to you to ask why we keep running up against you . You ain’t asked yourself who’s making it worth our while. We ain’t doing it for our health.’

He spun me back into Dave’s embrace. I spat colour on the boards.

‘You got a point here, Don?’

‘Yeh. I got one. Dave an’ me, we view our work serious. We take a job, we do it, that’s all. We was hired to warn you offuv searching for the broad. Fine. We done it. But we ain’t patsies, yeh? We dunt like being in the middle of anyone’s funny games. Each to his own, that’s what I say, day gutsy bus non dipso tandem , but frankly you people turn my stomach. So that’s it, we’re finished. This is the last yer getting. If you find her, you can tell her we done the job like we said we would, but we ain’t doing it no more.’

I’d never seen Don Cherub look so forlorn. It was like watching a pneumatic drill come to terms with disappointment.

‘And,’ he said, ‘you can give her a refund.’

From his pocket he brought a handful of delicate gold bits. He dropped them on the boards at my feet. Then Dave let me go, and the brothers continued along the boardwalk.

10. Perfidy in a Pencil Skirt

The boards had fixed their splintery teeth in my knees. The scattered coins, so familiar and so unexpected, filled my vision for what could have been any span of time at all, filled my clumsy hands; then that sight whirled away. Perhaps my legs were walking, perhaps I was hauling myself along the boardwalk railing like a man on an ocean liner in the kind of storm you don’t survive. But I couldn’t tell you for sure, because I was moving through a new set of dimensions, subtle dimensions of treachery, marked in increments of outrage. I discovered a whole new city, mapping streets of fury and avenues of humiliation and gridlocked intersections of desire.

Betrayal, kid. I’ll grant you one thing, you were an education. Who knew one word contained such multitudes? Who knew that gaining a new fact about the world could make me understand it so much less?

You’d paid the Cherubs. You’d set me going one way and them going the other. Why had you come to me at all? Just what kind of ride were you taking me for? I tasted it over and over, now sipping delicately, now downing draughts, all the time finding new and more complex flavours of betrayal.

Meanwhile my legs freewheeled under me and the city spooled past. Maybe I could find my way to some high ground and from there I could get a good look at what you’d done, glimpse the masterpiece entire. I hadn’t known you were an artist. But you must be the sort that has a special deal with the man downstairs. I contemplated what you’d done with a bitterness that you might as well call wonder, and a joy you can call rage if you like.

By evening I was moving through the streets with the ravaged assurance of a man who’s seen it all and now knows everything. A pair of vulture physicians stalked past, their leather beaks ranging balefully towards me. I didn’t bother to cover my mouth. Some bent-faced scrounger with a flower in his lapel came up to me with a story, putting an arm across my shoulders and prodding me in the chest with his forefinger, so I left him curling up in the gutter. A maquillaged damson clattered after me, yowling abuse, but I turned and snarled at her deep in my throat. She retreated, uncertain.

I veered into a bar and knocked back spirit until I caught sight of a ghastly face staring at me from somewhere in the mirror’s shadows. I yelled for him to come out but there was no answer so I hurled my shot glass into the dark room at random. The bartender had his blackthorn out right away.

I picked myself off the stones outside with a vindictive spring that carried me into the next joint, where I swallowed more spirit till I noticed that the poppet serving needed to be told a thing or two about a thing or two. This decision bounced me right into the next place. I reckoned I was making good progress. But the old head was still too clear for comfort. I set myself at the end of the bar and got to work on that problem.

Over at one of the tables a couple of swells were making rowdy. They kept looking at the door. Their bravado faltered, then redoubled, as a sharp-suited chap swaggered in, shepherding a couple of gussied-up polonies, all long white throats and short fur coats. Himself, he was dressed to the nines with cane and crimson cravat –

No, wait. He wasn’t a chap at all. It was Moll Cutpurse, playing her unfair tricks.

She slapped the two dudes on their backs. The painted consorts tripped along in her wake and sat themselves down at the table. Moll made introductions all round, chucked one of her dribs under the chin, and was on her way out again when she seemed to change her mind.

She crossed to the bar, signalled for a drink, and tilted her glass in my direction.

‘Got to say it, Hal, you ain’t looking great.’

I swivelled my eyeballs towards her under a brow like lead.

‘I hear the job ain’t going so well. Hard cheese, eh?’ she said.

My teeth hurt. Moll grinned matily.

‘Your trouble, Hal, if you don’t mind me saying so, is you take things too serious by half. You make life hard for yourself. You should take a leaf out of my book.’

She drained her glass, nodded to the barman for another, and surveyed the room as if to affirm how swimmingly it was all going.

‘But, see, you think you’re something special. Like what you got to go through, no one else ever went through it. Like we don’t all have these problems. We all meet ourselves coming back every now and then.’

‘Just keep talking, Moll.’

‘Settle down, now, Hal, we’re all friends here. Let me tell you a true story. Happened only the other day. As I walked out of an evening to view the sights of Serelight Fair, I chanced on some poor unfortunate creature in the extremity of his human need. So, call me soft-hearted, I slipped him twenty and thought no more about it. But he wouldn’t let me alone: started following me down the road. Said he had a secret to tell me, something of the utmost importance he had to get off his chest. Begged me to listen with tears in his bloodshot eyes. Said he could tell his story to no one else but me.’