Ten Stories About Smoking (10 page)

BOOK: Ten Stories About Smoking
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He slapped the bar hard. David felt the contagious nature of the laughter.

‘I never really . . .’ David said, suddenly realizing how stupid he’d been. ‘So what the—’

‘What the fuck is going on? Good question, pal, good fucking question.’ He sucked on his bottle of beer and moved his stool closer to David.

‘Through there is some woman singing songs written before these people’s grandpappies were born. She’s Cold War Chic, Miss Amelia, and all these are her Cold War Kids.
That’s what they call themselves, Cold War Kids. It’s all just make believe. Just a bunch of phoney fucking rich kids dressing up in their grandfathers’ suits and their
grandmammy’s petticoats. They run around pretending like it’s nineteen-fifty-two, or maybe it’s nineteen-fifty-five, I can never remember. Last week they had a pretend
three-minute warning and all of them spent the night in the fallout centre in the basement. Happy fucking days, right?’

Flagstaff drained his beer and beckoned the bartender over. ‘Check this out,’ he said with a smile.

‘Say, bud, can you get me another beer and maybe some of those cheese crackers you do?’ The bartender nodded. ‘Oh and can you confirm the exact year it is? I’m going a
bit senile, you know?’

‘For the last time, Mr Flagstaff,’ the bartender said, ‘such talk is strictly against casino policy.’

‘You see!’ Flagstaff said. ‘What a bunch of fucking phonies.’

Flagstaff laughed and despite himself David joined him. He saw himself sitting there, slack-jawed, and realized how stupid he must have seemed. They clinked glasses and Flagstaff bought another
drink. They fell into an easy conversation about why young men and women would want to relive years that they hadn’t experienced.

It was the kind of discussion he would have once had with John: light, funny, but with just enough seriousness to keep it from frivolity. They were the conversations which would end with John
telling a truth, a long rambling truth about his life. The fact of his mother’s death, his workaholic father, his easy infatuations and the guilt he still felt about Helen. The abortion, the
dreams that had been crushed under the weight of his own expectation and his own laziness.

David would listen and offer no advice save for a comforting nod, or the occasional ‘I see’. But that John, the John who talked with a soft candour, late at night, had long since
been boxed up and packaged away. There were no doubts now, no uncomfortable barking dogs in the back of his mind, just dates and times and plans and resolutions. And when he thought about it like
that, David realized how wrong he’d got it all.

‘I should get going,’ David said. ‘I’ve left my friend and . . . I just need to get back.’

‘Gee, Dave, I’m hurt. I thought you were sticking around for my act.’

‘I’d love to but . . . I really need to get back.’

‘Gimme a cigarette,’ Flagstaff said. ‘I’ll give you a sneak preview before you go.’

Flagstaff took a Zippo lighter from his pocket and lit the cigarette. He inhaled once then blew out a perfect circle, then a perfect square, then an equilateral triangle. David was stunned, a
memory coming back fully formed.

‘Oh my god, you’re the smoking guy!’ David said. Flagstaff looked up at him and smiled the widest, maddest smile David had ever seen. Flagstaff kept smiling and blowing squares
and circles and triangles.

‘Must be twenty-five years ago, now,’ David said, ‘but I remember it so clearly. Remember
you
so clearly. You had long hair then and this big old beard and you blew all
these shapes. Impossible shapes. It was the best thing I ever saw on
Paul Daniels’ Magic Show
, I mean honestly.’

Flagstaff’s smile faltered, then disappeared. His eyes went dark and narrow. It felt like the whole room had gone silent.

‘Don’t you ever mention that cocksucker’s name around me, okay? Ever.’

He blew out a Star of David.

‘Daniels . . . Daniels is a fucking louse. A bald fucking dwarf with a rug that wouldn’t fool a drunk Ray Charles.’

He knocked back his drink and blew a pentagon. David must have looked alarmed, so Flagstaff put a hand on his arm.

‘Look, Dave, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so . . . I don’t know, but it still cuts me right to the quick. Twenty-five years later and still it cuts me. See, I was
supposed to open for Daniels on his world tour. Back in eighty-three. Two hundred dates worldwide, television specials, you fucking name it. He gives me the contract and I push him for more of a
cut of the door. The management, they give me a little extra but not as much as I wanted. I tell them that I’m a draw, that I’m selling ’em out every night. My manager tells me to
take the deal, that I’ve pushed them as far as they’ll go, and I say I’ll think about it. That weekend I go out and get high. Get so high I don’t remember nothing about it,
so high no one finds me for a week. My manager’s all trying to hush it up and he’s pretty certain that Daniels’ people haven’t found out. We do a rehearsal show and I
fucking rock the joint. And that’s when Daniels sees how much the audience loves me. The putz got scared. I mean he was real scared, jealous as all hell.’

He blew a perfect hexagon and laughed.

‘Or at least that’s what I thought at the time, right? I’m not naive, even back then my act was, shall we say, not without its controversy? But fuck it, the deal was on the
table and I should have taken it. Should have bitten Daniels’ fucking hand off, but ha ha, I knew best. Guts of the young, right? Only a fucking idiot would have pushed it. Everyone was
telling me to sign on the line that is dotted, but I was too busy playing a pissing contest with a midget magician. By the time I’d calmed down, Daniels had already won and had offered the
slot to some fucking trapeze artist or something.’

He shook his head and blew a complicated series of shapes that eventually formed the American flag.

‘Thing is that a few months before, back when we were still friendly, Daniels had warned me about throwing things away. We were backstage in the bar, after the show you saw. We’d had
a few drinks and I was asking him how a such a short, ugly dude like him had managed to get a prime-time television show, a sexy blonde and a two-hundred-date world tour. He turns to me and says:
“You know what, Flagstaff, I don’t know. All I do know is that you only get one talent in this life. Whether it’s god-given or comes from your genes or your DNA, I don’t
know either. But Flagstaff. I do know that you only get one talent. Only one. So you best make the most of it while you can.”’

The smoke faded and he blew on the end of his cigarette. He chuckled to himself.

‘Not much of a philosopher, that Daniels, but he was right. Maybe if I’d listened I’d have signed that deal and racked up enough money for my retirement and then I
wouldn’t be here telling fifty-year-old jokes, blowing smoke ring elephants and jacking off in my dressing room. Listening’s always been a problem for me. I hear, but I don’t
listen.’

Flagstaff rolled his cigarette in the ashtray, then put it out. David thought of John, the old flat, his Canadian girlfriend and all the times he had listened, every time he’d given a
well-placed hand on the arm, or offered the softness of ‘I understand’. David said, ‘I’m good at listening, actually. It’s what I do best, I suppose.’

To this Flagstaff just laughed, patted David on the back and said so long. By his drink a pale smoke trunk and a pair of tusks hung in the empty air.

An hour or two later, David opened the door to his hotel room. John was curled up in an easy chair, rocking slightly. He was in his underwear, his hair ruffled and an empty
bottle at his feet. He didn’t seem to notice David come in.

‘I’m sorry,’ David said. ‘I lost track of time. I went for a walk see, and before I knew it I was out in the middle of nowhere, I mean, really lost . . .’

David wanted to tell John all about Flagstaff, about the casino, and its clientele, but the words died on his lips. He could see that his friend was shaking, his body stuttering in the
twilight.

‘Are you okay?’ David said. ‘What the hell happened?’

John looked at his friend and then to the floor. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ John said. ‘I don’t ever want to talk about it.’

Underground

For several years he had spun a solid and convincing story about an inherited sleeping disorder. It had been passed down, he claimed, on his mother’s side of the family
and it meant he often woke up screaming, or was unable to sleep at all. It wasn’t anything to worry about, he’d reassured her with his arms hooked over her ribs, it was just a part of
him, like his height or his shoe size. ‘Doctors call them the night terrors,’ he’d said with a wry smile. ‘Makes them sound like some old aristocratic family, doesn’t
it?’ She’d laughed a little and then kissed him. He slept right through that first night, and slept for many nights afterwards.

Some weeks later, when the attacks first began, Jean felt prepared for them. She woke instinctively and immediately tried to calm him. She held him tightly and felt the erratic beat of his
heart; she stroked his hair and told him that he was safe, that she’d got him. Peter lay in her arms immobile. When she tried to hold his hand it did not easily yield and when it did, it did
so grudgingly. She spoke softly, reassuringly, saying the very first things that came into her head. She talked about her dreams and her ideas for the house they would own; the cars they would
drive, the places they would visit. And she held him close until he eventually drifted off to sleep. This went on for months. By the time they moved into their three-bedroomed house, however, she
had become accustomed to his screams and shudders, and neither now woke her in the night.

Her father and mother had been a pair of sometime insomniacs. As a teenager, she was used to getting up in the night and seeing one or other of them sitting on the sofa, perhaps reading a
magazine or sipping a hot drink. Sometimes she would stay up with them; other times just get a glass of water and take it back to bed. She always thought this was normal, so she was surprised to
discover that her first husband could sleep through just about anything. She’d always found this somehow creepy. ‘I was dead to the world,’ he’d say and she’d think
what a perfectly horrible phrase: so chill and unpleasant. That the marriage lasted less than a decade was not solely down to his sleeping, though she couldn’t help but believe it betrayed a
fatal flaw somewhere deep in his character.

Peter’s flaws were more obvious, apparent from the moment she first met him. It was the company summer party and he had been coerced into attending by his boss. Jean had never seen him
before – he was a consultant – and he looked uncomfortable. He was dressed in a slovenly suit, with persistent flakes of dandruff on his shoulders, pricks of sweat on his top lip. They
were in a garden under attack from an abundance of greenfly. An unfortunate woman in yellow was covered in them, dots of them sticking to the fabric of her dress. Jean was standing next to him when
they both saw the woman – Kathy from sales validation – lose her patience and try to brush all the insects from her skirt.

‘I bet you’re glad you didn’t wear yellow,’ Jean said to him.

‘Quite,’ he said. ‘It would clash terribly with these shoes.’ He smiled, quickly. Jean was quietly disarmed.

She introduced herself and they talked about work. Jean made spiteful comments about her colleagues, pointing out their indiscretions and unpleasant habits. He laughed and sipped at his wine,
commenting where it seemed appropriate. When there was no one left to dissect, Jean suggested that they leave the party, discreetly and separately, and reconvene in the car park. She went first and
Peter finished his wine, wondering whether she would still be there in five minutes’ time.

The car park was deserted and she stood by a wooden fence, talking on her telephone. Her summer dress exposed her legs, her wedge espadrilles making her look taller, a lazy gust of wind
fingering her hair. As he walked towards her Peter buttoned up his jacket, then unbuttoned it. When she noticed him she ended her call and told him she knew of a restaurant nearby: it
wouldn’t take long to walk. She linked her arm with his and they chatted about how strange it was that they had not met before.

BOOK: Ten Stories About Smoking
9.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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