‘Sweetheart,’ I call again in my gentle seduction voice, ‘Please don’t be angry with me any more, please, please, please.’
And then I hear her over in the bedroom, saying something really softly; she’s got a real talent for talking so softly that I go all quiet and calm too. ‘No, no,’ I say, ‘you mustn’t worry, I’m staying here, I’m staying here with you until we’ve got through it all.’
And then she says something else, and I want her to come out of there at last, I want her to come to me, I’ve hidden the shotgun especially, I want her to come to me on the sofa with the shotgun hidden underneath it, and then I want us to sit on the sofa and I’ll rest my head on her chest and she’ll stroke my hair. I let my hair grow especially for her. I’d always trimmed my hair down to a grade one or two. That was to do with the way I’m scared of a lot of people. No, no, it was nothing to do with being scared of spiders. Mind you, what happens when a big spider drops on your head when your hair’s so short, almost shaved off? Does it slip right off again or can it hold on better with its long legs than on a full head of hair? ‘Take the shotgun, sweetheart, and shoot that giant spider off my head please.’
So now I have a real quiff, like James Dean or Elvis, and I have to say I like it much better than that short stubble on my head. I always used to tell myself, well if one of those people you’re so scared of wants to get you one day — and shit, that’s happened often enough — where’s he going to grab hold of you if you’ve hardly got any hair on your head? But I’m not scared any more when my sweetheart’s around, not even of spiders. ‘Please, please, please,’ I call, and my voice isn’t as gentle and flattering now as I like it to be. That stupid fear’s coming back now, and I squat down on the floor, and I crawl over to the sofa, wait a moment, wasn’t I just sitting on the sofa? I wish I could crawl under the sofa where my shotgun’s hiding. And I take my shotgun out from under the sofa, stroke its cool rifle and the smooth wood, remove the twenty-shot magazine, filled up to the top with black.177 pellets; they’ll even break windows and street lamps. I lie on the floor like that for a while, the shotgun next to me, and when I’m lying like this my sweetheart can’t see me, I bet, the table’s above me and there are all these bottles on it too. Loads of juice and a bottle of vodka, 120 proof. So we’ve got pure kiwi juice, lemon juice, undiluted, and all this multivitamin shite. I’ve been drinking the lemon juice straight, for days now. Kiwi tastes better, and I only drink the vodka in tiny sips when I can’t take it any more. Lemon juice is supposed to get rid of the really bad pressure, that’s what they told me, and my sweetheart fetched all the different juices so that the bad pressure wasn’t quite so bad. ‘Sweetheart,’ I call out, pressing my beautiful shotgun up close to me, ‘Sweetheart, I’m a walking vitamin C, please, please, please come out here. Please, please, please.’ I always say please three times and sometimes four times, because I love her so much and I’m totally helpless if she doesn’t come out and stay by my side. But my sweetheart’s angry with me and she’s hiding out in bed, and I can’t understand it because when she was asleep yesterday, I haven’t slept for three or four days now, so when she was asleep yesterday and I started out sitting on the bed next to her and watching her sleep, and when she was asleep like that, my God, she looks so beautiful, she looks so gorgeous when she’s asleep, the face is … no, no, no, why am I saying ‘the face’, it’s her face, and it glows, really glows, her face. And as it’s glowing like that with all the lovely blonde hair all around it, I can’t help but think of Monroe. I told her that once, that she looks a bit like Monroe, her lips and her nose, but she just laughed and said I was crazy, but I think she knows it herself really and she’s proud of it too. Got her hair done the same way, or at least a bit like it. I watched a couple of Monroe films with her to prove it, kept on pressing ‘pause’ and saying, ‘Look, Marilyn Monroe, you and Marilyn Monroe.’
I shove my shotgun back under the sofa; I’m all mixed up, and when I’m mixed up like this my shotgun’s no good to me at all, because then stupid stuff happens with me and my shotgun.
Because then I get up and go to the window. With my shotgun. And then I open the window and cock my beautiful shotgun. It goes clack-clack. Then I position the shotgun and aim at the street lamp. And it’s not as if it’s just any old street lamp; it’s one of those disturbing street lamps, one of those lamps that never stop annoying you. And don’t anyone try and tell me street lamps don’t annoy you. This one annoys the hell out of me. The damn thing’s broken. Shines all day even though you can’t see it until it gets dark. The street lamps only go on at a certain time, but this damn lamp is totally out of sync, and that doesn’t just get me mixed up, it drives me crazy. So the gun’s positioned, I take good aim, and then my finger’s on the trigger. And then I feel that all I have to do is move my finger slightly so the.177 pellet hits the street lamp. And I don’t pull the trigger straight away. I always make the most of the moment before I pull the trigger. Not just with the shotgun and the street lamp. And that’s why my sweetheart’s mad now and not talking to me and hiding in bed so all I can see is her nose. Oh, that nose. I always want to tweak it, just a little tweak with one finger. Her gorgeous nose could make a nose fetishist of me, though I don’t even know what a nose fetishist does. Honey rose, honey rose with your beautiful nose. I had a woman once, I didn’t have her for long, just one night and not even all night long, and in that half or quarter of a night she kept on calling me ‘honey’, but she probably said that to all the guys, and I have to admit … ‘Sweetheart,’ I call out, ‘Sweetheart!’ and I’ve had about enough now.
Yes, I made a mess of things while she was asleep, I have to admit it. I couldn’t stick it out. And what does she know about what it’s like when you can’t stick it out any more? But Jesus, that’s no way to behave, hiding under the covers in the bedroom. So I pull the trigger. I only have to move my finger a tiny little bit. And then there’s a bang, but not like I was shooting a real carbine, it’s just a short, dry pop! — and then there’s a fraction of a second before I hear my lovely little.177 projectile hitting the street lamp. But that damn street lamp’s a tough one. I can hit it as many times as I want, it just won’t break, and it shines and shines and drives me round the bend. The protective glass around the bulb’s just too tough, too thick, too solid, too stable, too protective, but then that’s what it’s there for. So I close the window again. Put the shotgun away, suddenly feel utterly sickened by the shotgun, utterly sickened, starting in my feet and rising incredibly fast, so fast that I only just manage to wrench the window open, lean over and puke out of it. I hear it slapping onto the pavement, and I wish I could puke in a curve high enough to hit the street lamp. I wipe a hand across my chin. Smells of lemons. And now the lemon smell rises slowly from below, and I close the window again quickly.
She’s crying. She’s crying softly in the bedroom, heard me shooting and puking. She cries so softly I can hardly hear it. She’s actually very strong, or she’d long since have given up on me, long since have chucked me out, and I’d be sitting back in my little one-room flat. And it wouldn’t end well there, oh no, never. But it’s all ended well now, I believe that, I believe that so firmly it almost hurts. I wouldn’t make it without her though, and it’s doing my head in that she’s crying because of me now, because I’ve been so weak again and I’d promised her never to be weak again, and all the juice she got for me, and all the pills, garlic capsules, hawthorn, ginseng, valerian (high-dose), St John’s wort, as if all that shite could do me much good, but she said it’d help me, so I want it to help me, and it’s doing my head in that she’s crying because of me now. And I want to go to her and tell her she doesn’t have to cry any more because of me and I’ll never be weak again, really and truly, honestly. But my shirt’s covered in puke and I’m so scared she’ll send me away if I sit down next to her. Or that she won’t say anything at all, that’d be even worse — me sitting there next to her and her not saying a word, and the tears, it breaks my heart to see tears in her eyes. Marilyn Monroe should always be smiling. And I go to the table where all the packets of pills are scattered between all the bottles. A sip of vodka, just a tiny sip, I’ve earned it now, haven’t I? It’s just as a disinfectant really, because of the puke. I screw the cap off the bottle, but before I drink I take a few of the pills and put them on the palm of my hand. ‘Sweetheart,’ I call out, ‘I’m taking your healthy pills!’