Print Room

He fell back heavily into the chair. As his arse hit the cushion of the decaying red lounger he realized that the remote control was on the table, far away. Just too far.

Defeated again he closed his eyes and thought of photocopying.

Miriam Angel D’Abo. Mrs.

She made one of life’s chores feel like the third pint on a Friday. Who knows what could happen? Where it all might lead? It seemed unfair that such beauty (Miriam, not the third pint) should be locked away in the bowels of the dreary college, sat preening in the murk of the print room.

Chinks of light he called them, those rays that made life bearable, which changed a trudge to as manly a skip as he could manage.

Past the A level art crap in the lobby.
Skip.
Past the principles office.
Tosser. Skip.
Left at the disabled lift (how much?).
Skip.
On again past the gents, to Miriam.


“Harry”
“Miriam”

He paused. Shifted. Forced his unused memory to store the information. Clear the decks! Move the TV trivia, the Beefheart albums, all that fucking sport! Seconds to get it;

Tight pencil skirt. Grey.
No tights. Skin!
Flat shoes. Can’t see her toes.
Black black skin.
White teeth, white blouse. I’m white!
Eight ball head, hair? Not much.
Heart hurts.

“Can I get these for Friday, I mean Thursday?” Friday was too far away.

“Thursday or Friday Harry?”

“Thursday”

“See what I can do”


Today is only Tuesday.

Fifteen Houses

Fifteen Houses

Fifteen fucking houses.

The grey one, he’d told me. And I was looking at fifteen grey fucking houses.
Can’t be the one with the car on bricks. He’s too clean for that. Wouldn’t have no car jacked up in public like that.
Got no kids. Not that one then. Toys out front.
Two down. Thirteen grey houses.

I almost called him, on the way in from Queens, but carried on with the radio instead. WKMA had six in a row that meant something to me. Doesn’t happen often. I’d forgotten how good …………. could be.
So I didn’t call him.

Thirteen grey houses.
He aint Mexican. Looks like a Latino house right there, and he aint no gardener. Two more.

Joey Marran was the first man I ever actually saw carry a gun on his ankle. I just got a glimpse once as he slid out of a four seat table in a diner called Heaven. There it was, sat in some leather holster right above his ankle.
“Watcha got there Joe?” I’d said and he’d shrugged it off with a drop of the shoulder. Didn’t ask again.

Later, a couple of months say, we’d got in on a take from a new housing project. Low end stuff, bricks, cement, tiles. Too much carrying we both thought.
“Gotta be better ways Ron”. That’s what he’d said.

Eleven grey ones.

Would ya look at that? Door wide open. Fucking crazy in this neighbourhood. Too careful for that, our Joe. Far too careful. He’d grilled that guy on security for a few bagsa lousy cement. More than once. Wouldn’t leave no front door open like that. Probably car keys on that table in the hall.
Too late to change my ways.

I got a one in ten now. Not my kinda odds. Never gonna get rich on those odds.

Watch it Ron, those four on the corner, pretending you invisible. Well, I aint and they know it. Reckon my size will be enough.
Let’s see what they got.
Ten feet away.

“Fellas”

Nothing back. What do you expect?

“Looking for Joey Marran’s place”

Got em sussed. Three look right back at me, blinking. The fourth, wiry motherfucker on a low bike, spits and looks away, says
“that’s him right there” and nods at Joey coming down his front steps.

“Hey Ron” he says, shoulders up, moving across the street. The four move off, behind the bike. Nothin happnin’.
“Hey Joe”I say.
“What you doin’talkin’with them motherfuckers Ron?”
“Lookin’for you Joe”
Ï’m up from street corners Ron” he says, sticking out a hand. As I shake it I realize. Kids toys on the lawn.
“You got kids?” I wanna know.
“Hell no!” he says with a smile, “but nobody gonna shoot up a house with them lying right there in view, are they Ron?”
“You aint Mexican?” I ask the white man in front of me.

I aint never been no detective.

Fiver

“Easy, easy, for fucks sake Dan!!”
Mat slapped the side of the transit and the break lights flashed to say that the driver got the point.
“You managed to get from fucking France to here, don’t fuckin back it into the fucking garage”
Mat mouthed a terse reply through the driver’s window.

The cladding had already been on the house when the Robertson’s moved in, but somehow it just seemed to confirm to the rest of the close what kind of people they were. The house matched the family, transit vans in the middle of the night. Mat didn’t care. Even if he’d noticed that only in their window did the cross of St George hang during the European Championship, it signified nothing to him. He lived his life in a torrent of emotion, driven on by expletives and cigarettes. He was rarely sarcastic, often confrontational and asked lots of questions like “What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?” and, ironically, “Are you taking the piss?”

The van now inched towards one of the tall, white, unblinking herons that stood guard over the pool. They’d been the result of one of Karen’s Sunday afternoon shopping sprees.
“For a fucking heron?” had been Mat’s response when told of the price. Had he realized that that was for a single bird, Karen had expected the more common “Are you fucking mental?” Even so, they rarely argued about money. He liked to make it, she liked to spend it.
They’d met, when both fifteen, on a market. He, pairs of white socks in one hand, ladies briefs in the other, had been shouting suggestively at passers by. Middle aged women, hunched from the damp cold of the rotting Victorian market hall, had reeled in mock amusement from the sheer brazenness of this fuzz faced fifteen year old.
“Mrs., Mrs., here you go, give yer ‘usband a treat! Three for a fiver, three for a fiver!”
Unsurprisingly, Karen had succumbed to such pressure to buy and bought three pairs of briefs for a fiver. He had given her a free pair. Four days later, in her brother’s old bedroom, and while her parents were pushing a squeaky trolley around Asda, Mat and Karen had sex. He gave her her money back when the elastic went on her new knickers.

The heron survived to stare wide eyed into another day and Dan slid down from the driver’s seat, rolling his thick, fat neck from side to side and shaking his legs as if they were covered in water.
“Fucking long way” he said, watching Mat examining the watching herons.
“Uh, huh” was the only response to be offered.
Both men, jeans, trainers and t shirts, made for the rear of the vehicle. Almost as if waiting for the other to act first, they stood expressionless facing the grimy double doors.
“Go on then” said Mat, in a rarely used pre-fuck fuck-free whisper usually reserved for Karen. Keys, fished from sagging jeans, slipped into the lock and magicked the treasure chest open. Both men took a step back and surveyed all.

50,000 cigarettes, 86 bottles of Irish whiskey, 256 litres of beer, 4 digital cameras, 80 pairs of men’s designer jeans in a variety of sizes, 1 box of smoky bacon crisps, 10 flower garden tea towels, 3 tins of magnolia paint and, nestling amongst the denim, a mushroom shaped wooden seat for the garden.

Fifteen feet above them, as Karen tossed and turned in a half empty bed, Mat decided to make sure that she never saw the mushroom. Before you fucking know it there would be fucking fungus all over the fucking garden. What’s the fucking point in that? He had a feeling that the herons agreed.

Colours

It was unusual for any kind of breeze to be blowing through the city at this time of year. The city was braced for change. The flags of the respective candidates blew stiff in the wind and their unpaid volunteer wavers appreciated the cool air and the dramatic impact a fluttering flag might have on a floating voter.

For 5,000 pesos a day I’ll wave whatever they want thought Francisco. I’ll wave at passing cars and dogs, whatever they want. His eye was caught by Daniella, absent mindedly wafting a banner whist talking to a friend. I’ll wave goodbye to her soon enough he thought. All these guys, unpaid, and for what? To get a suit elected?

The group moved off, a blue t-shirted uniformed rabble, lacking direction but working for the right. The unpaids kicked over the A framed banners of the enemy, people in cars stopping to pick them back up as the blues left the square. The election would be close and Francisco would spend the momentous day drinking 5,000 pesos worth of beer in the garage of a friend, barely remembering that the world was changing around him.

Daniella liked all things safe. She liked locking the door. She liked the green man. She had always listened attentively during the fire drill at school. Shoe laces were tied and retied. She read of a 14 year old who was prosecuted for downloading free music from the internet. It was clear warning.
Francisco was not safe, unsafe, even dangerous. How he lived his life made a mockery of her rules. He had no laces in his trainers. He weaved in and out of moving traffic, narrowly missing the impending. He dodged, but mainly ducked. He’d try a door to see if it was unlocked. He was noise, fear and power. Tick. Tick. Tick. Francisco.

It would never last. Life would wrestle him away and she would have to pin her colours elsewhere.

Heaven

There it was again. Craaack! Like wood splitting. It reminded Henry of the sound of a cricket ball makes when you hit it just right. No, that’s not it, similar, but different.

He sat up in bed and pulled back the curtain, felt the cold air on his nose. The garden was swamped in darkness, the distant lights of the tower blocks making orange and yellow arrows towards heaven. Henry thought a lot about heaven. At first they’d told him that Maggie would be in heaven (one woman, who smelled like the boys changing rooms at school, said “she’s gone to a better place”, and for a second Henry thought she meant somewhere like Hampstead). Later, he found out that you could only get in if you’d been good, and then worried that Maggie would have to wait outside, sitting on a cloud or something.

She hadn’t always been good. She pulled the curtains down once and then drew on them in pink felt tip pen. Later, Dad explained that the heaven thing was a bit like Christmas – Santa gives you presents if you’re good, but you’ll probably get them anyway, even if you don’t like kissing your Nan or you get vinegar all over the bloody tablecloth.
“Like going down the Lion?” asked Henry. “Mum says you can go down the Lion after you’ve made your sandwiches for work tomorrow, but you go anyway?”
Dad said no, it wasn’t like that at all.

Craaaaack!! – again! That was from our garden, definite.

He thought about waking Mum, but she would just wash his face and make him go back to bed. Henry stared up at Thierry Henry, the super hero permanently frozen in cool celebration, blutack beginning to soak through the poster.

Kicking the duvet away with his preferred left foot (the right one is just for standing on, hahaha) his feet hit the floorboards with a thud. It sounds like elephants when you’re downstairs. Henry could hear his father snoring as he padded along the landing, using the banister for guidance. Down the stairs, fourteen steps, miss the third, jump the last two. Always the same.

The sight of his school bag in the hall gave him the shivers, and, fighting an urge to swing his trusty left peg at it, he danced past and into the kitchen, like arriving late at the far post.

Pwooaar. His Dad’s jacket, lying limp on top of the washing machine. He wasn’t allowed to bring it into the house after going down the Lion. He wasn’t allowed to bring any people from the Lion into the house either, presumably because of their stinky clothes.

The arrows into the night sky were less clear from the kitchen, but still arrows all the same. A blue light blinked on the cooker. Henry remembered a cartoon where a golden light bulb appeared above a dog’s head. This meant that the dog had an idea, it was something to do with a bone or something about………….
Craaaaack!! That came from the shed didn’t it? Didn’t it? Wasn’t it?

The backdoor opened without its usual groan. Ignoring the path, Henry crept along the border, bloody hell the flowers! Those pink ones they’d all cooed over! Extinguishing life as he went, and with the black earth between his toes, the skinny ten year old arrived at the shed sooner than he’d hoped (probably offside, hahahahaa). Even though he didn’t like the rubbery smooth stickyness of his wellies on his bare legs, he now wished he’d put them on. He’d come home from school one day and his wellies stood alone by the backdoor. Maggies had gone. He remembered when Dad had painted “MM” on her wellies in liquid paper. Emenem, M and M’s, Maggie May.

The next craaaaack was so loud that Henry leapt high into the air, his head probably going right through a small cloud, nowhere near the gates of heaven, but high enough to get his head on an over hit cross.

Mirror

The large guilt mirror, bought by her mother, had seen most of it. Hanging on the right of the unusually square shaped hall it had witnessed the fighting, the fucking, and the killing. Standing slightly too close to its cold gold frame Stephen parted his dirty hair, brushed it straight, then parted it again.

He’d liked the hall immediately. On first viewing the house had been disappointing. “It reminds me of school’’ had been her damning comment, thrown back at him as he’d lingered in the lobby. The squareness of the rooms, along with a sense of the place having been discarded at the end of a people filled day, gave it an educational air. Mrs. Reetner, the present owner, had contributed to the learning by filling her conversation with facts that were to be of no use to anybody in future life. “We used to have a grandfather clock here” she chimed, “we brought it over from my father’s place on my brother’s trailer”. The kitchen smelled of past baking glories, the rest of the house simply smelled. Under her breath she’d whispered “cat piss”, and he’d wondered how she knew.

Now, seven years later, Stephen stood in the very same hall. He still liked it. He liked the way it let you stay when you first came through the front door. It didn’t force you down a long straight road, forcing you to go somewhere else or choose an exit. At first viewing it didn’t appear to offer you any continuation of your steps other than to turn and simply walk back out the way you had come in. The kitchen door was hidden someway to your left, and the living room was around the L – shaped corner in front of you. It cried out for a seat, or two, and the Canadian piano stool (sent by her Uncle Joe who made them) had looked perfect. Departing guests would start new conversations by accident, forgetting it was time to leave, dropping their car keys back into their trouser pockets and purses. Items were left by accident, bags, scarves, newspapers, supermarket bags.

Life had always seemed to gravitate to this space. He remembered, now parting his hair on the other side, how they had sat on the hall floor and opened their Christmas presents. It had seemed the perfect place, the tree was there, and the noise from next door was at its least intrusive. She had been pleased with what she’d found underneath the cheap wrapping paper. It had proved that Stephen understood her, knew who she was, reinforced her own opinion of herself. Edward Lear nonsense proved she had a sense of humour and adventure, and simple cosmetics in plain packaging proved a certain elegant feminine sense of moderation. The small wooden heart shaped box filled with condoms had confused both the giver and receiver as it was ripped from its wrapper. Stephen remembered the sense of fun wrapping it, and the confused look on her face as she opened it.

The noise had started in the first week. At first neither of them commented on it, looking away from each other, composing their own truths. Soon though, it came out. She’d started it. “That’s not right is it? I mean that amount of noise? I mean, hearing a cough through the wall? That’s not right?” Later, he’d hated her for making it real, giving it life, giving it a name.

It got worse. The child’s heavy running footsteps down the hall, the music, the fighting, the fucking. They heard it all. Later, he heard spoons being dropped into the cutlery drawer, windows being cleaned, shoelaces being tied, vinyl records being slipped back into their dog eared sleeves. She heard none of this, only the voice that asked her why it was her that had to cope for two, he couldn’t do anything without half cocking his ear toward the invisible intruder and waiting for it to start. It surrounded him and robbed her.

Unattended

The furrowed brow hid her happiness. She did neither of the things an onlooker would assume from the concern spread across her face – she was not wrestling with some nagging problem, nor was she acutely interested in the surface of the table she appeared to be studying. There was a decision to be made though, and the longer she prevaricated, the warmer the glow of satisfaction that spread through her tired body.

Tracing a line through the spilt sugar A. mused on the unlikely chain of events that had brought her this far. She would tell people, I’m just a normal girl, I like to be at home. This had always been true. From an early age her parents had had to entice her from the house. Threats and promises were used for school days. The weather was the reason on weekends.
“Look at all your friends out there in the street Angelito! Such a lovely spring day. Where are your shoes?”
She had always assumed that the children in the street were there simply because their homes were unpleasant, different to hers. This made her father’s shoe search seem cruel and unnecessary. She took to hiding her shoes in the dog kennel, until one day he ate a left trainer and a right flip flop.

The automated drone of an announcement reminding passengers not to leave baggage unattended reminded her not of her fake Louis Vuitton shoulder bag, but of him. He seemed ever present, there or not there. He had collected all the pieces of her and put them together to make somebody new, something new. An us, a togetherness she had not known or experienced before. He listened, he talked, he collected. Now it was made and seemed whole. She would marry him and let their children play inside all day, whether the sun shone or the rain clouds gathered.

Traffic Lights

Of all sixteen, number nine had a quality about her I find difficult to forget. The instinct to cling on to life is common, and something I witness amongst my chosen, but, number nine, almost from the beginning, showed an understanding of her future that was both prophetic and profound. The undignified thrash for life, the fear, the pleading, the sheer pain, was absent. In its place was a removed tacit comprehension of what lay ahead for her and me. Her eyes did not say stop doing this. Her eyes were alternately weary and bright, like a stop go traffic light for my process.

I left her on the top of a flat roofed building. Burying her would have done her a disservice.

Kieran

Kieran had loved a girl called Magda Avelina. She broke his heart with heat and ice, a remote Latin princess. The climate changes destroyed his love and melted his confidence and capacity to give himself unconditionally. In the place of one true love he settled for marriage with the next woman who drifted into his peripheral vision.

Still, years later, the memories of MA haunted him like the death of a child, a joyous body wave of sadness and pain. His marriage fed and clothed him, but never did it nourish or cure him. This he sought through alcohol, self medication and violence. He had given MA all of him, and she had been unmoved, expressionless. Simply, he had not been enough and now he raged at the world. He could not look in the mirror for fear of another broken and cut hand.

Losing the briefcase like that had engulfed him in an ocean of darkness. Over the following weeks, fighting for the light, struggling to breathe, the robbery had created in him an insistent fury so powerful that he feared for himself and all around him.

That night, outside the metro, he had not been good enough.
Again.

Kieran knew that what he craved must leave him with nothing but a fleeting sense of achievement, before hitting the sea floor, finally closing his eyes to the light above.

Kitchen Table

Once, a man came home from a bar late at night and sat down at the kitchen table to write. The words spilled out of him onto the plane white paper; fragments, memories, jokes, quotes and bit part stories.

Rather than becoming tired and sleepy because of the ale and the late hour, he found that the words sobered him and he worked on till morning, filling page after page.

Finally, exhausted and thirsty, and with the birds outside announcing the new day, he rose from the table. Passing his wife on the stairs coming down for her breakfast, he went to bed.

His wife, on seeing a page of hand written pages on the table, momentarily forgot all thoughts of bacon, sat down and started to read. So shocked was she at some of the writing, and without even a cup of tea, she packed her bags and left.

She was gone before he woke up.

Umbilical Chord

Claudio slid out of the shadowy Metro doorway and into the light. As if burnt by the pale yellow glow he twisted slightly and slid back. This nervous half step of a dance would go on for a while yet, until the guy came along. The right guy, maybe a little drunk, stale bar air clinging to his crumpled work suit (just a fucking uniform thought Claudio), phone clamped to his ear, yes, just getting on the Metro now, yes I’ll eat when I get in.

Usually, it was too easy. All over in seconds. Guys don’t shout or scream. In an instant the shock strikes them dumb. Some, in a rush of alcoholic outrage, take a few quick steps forward, as if attached to the laptop bag by an invisible umbilical chord. But, the chord breaks and the weight of their lives pulls them back, their expensive shoes rooted to the ground, unused to such action.

By then Claudio is gone, a faceless blur, a statistic, the proud owner of seventeen pages of spreadsheet containing variances in the price of manufacture of anti viral drugs throughout Europe and America – due in tomorrow.

Never, ever, look back, Claudio reminds himself. Not at school, not at the bagless guy, not at what you did last week. Put your head down and run. If you hit that brick wall you just go right through it and don’t stop till your front door slams shut behind you and the two year old on the sofa looks up and says “papa”.

Who Am I?

My name is PA Behan. I grew up in a small town of no significance. I am not famous.

I have lived in this house for a long time.

The stories on these pages live in a small brown case in my attic. I do not read them to anybody. I never finish them.

Please read them and leave a comment.

Thank you very much.