The Department of Propagation run coach trips. For a small fee, they’ll run you to the coast. If you don’t mind a bit of pollution, you can hose each other down in seawater and conceive in the ocean. Of course, the French know exactly what we’re up to. They steer their boats up to edge of the minefield and shout at us through megaphones:
“Hey, Cow Burner! ’Allo, Cow Burner! Hey, farkin Little Mermaid! Are you ’aving sex with your wife? You must smell pretty bad to make your ugly babies underwater! Come to France! We sell you some soap!”
Our prostitutes wash in beer. Rachel wouldn’t because she was too tight with money. So the first thing I do with my water is pour a bucket of it over my head. Then I go straight to Lucas’s house and give Laura a sponge bath.
The rest of the water goes into storage in the garage. I cover the containers with a tarpaulin, rig a shotgun cartridge to a trip wire and run it across the doorway. There are men pretending to be from the electric company putting new surveillance equipment into my house and I watch one working with a suspicious look on my face.
“Why are you putting a camera in my bedroom ceiling?” I ask. The guy installing the stuff, he starts lying to me, telling me the camera is a ‘power regulator’ or some such crap. I let the matter slide, and our man walks out thinking he’s got one over on me. But I know exactly what it is.
So the afternoon finds me strolling through the market stalls in the Westminster ruins. I thread my way between the punters and the spivs and the tables laden with fripperies that no doubt somebody died for somewhere along the way. I see people selling the clothes they stand in. I see people selling the clothes other people stand in and employing various nefarious tactics to obtain them. I’m wearing a stab-proof vest, a cricket box and, just for devilment, I’ve got Velcro bands holding rings of inverted fishing hooks in my pockets. I snag two ‘dippers’ and send them off squealing with their hands bleeding and my bootprint on their backsides.
Eventually I find what I’m looking for. And what’s in my bag? Why, it’s the camera. And who wants to buy it? Why, the self same guy who installed it in the first place.
Because my life cannot follow any logical path, my workshop’s transformed itself into a dental practice. I walk in. I walk straight out again. I don’t remember a waiting room. I don’t remember a receptionist. I don’t remember the people queuing up to register. I’ve packed in drinking and it occurs to me that I may be having a seizure. Then Calamine steps out wearing a surgical smock.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Sometimes,” he says, “it’s just not worth explaining.” And he doesn’t – just leads me into a room. I walk into what I think was my fibreglassing area to find an increasingly manic Calamari masked and holding pliers, with his boot on a fat man’s chest. He appears to be extracting teeth. Or, at least, attempting to.
“But it looks so easy on television,” he cries, his voice like a suppurating wound. He clanks something into a kidney dish. “You, boy! You were a surgeon!”
“Not a dental surgeon,” I say hesitantly.
“Don’t be a sissy.. Come over here and rip this man’s teeth out!”
“Mmmfff, mmmnnnffff!” insists the chair-bound man through a mouthful of cotton wool.
“Or I could just punch them out, Sir,” Calamari offers, “but where would the fun in that be?” And he croaks like a blood-spattered gargoyle, rolling his dilating eyeballs. “No. Let the boy do it! He skinned the body, didn’t he?”
“With respect, Calamari,” says Calamine, less-than respectfully, “let’s leave it and get the real dentist back in.”
“But that’s just defeatist talk.”
“Jupiter’s got the shakes today,” Calamine continues. “First day on the wagon. Probably seeing pink elephants. Bad time to let him near anything with major arteries.”
“Why? He looks like he’s used a mop before.”
“With respect, this was meant to be a purely recreational activity. It would be best if we kept it non-lethal.”
“Oh, to Hell with you, spoilsport!” And he throws down his instruments and stamps what’s probably a cloven hoof. “I thought this would be fun! Well, damn it!”
There’s a muttered exchange. I don’t know what’s said, but the fat man’s unceremoniously ejected into the waiting room – his mouth still stuffed with cotton wool and whatever else seemed necessary at the time – to mutter gas-addled nonsense at people so desperate for dental treatment they ignore him. Calamine may be playing the voice of reason in this charming little vignette, but he’s in no mood to be nice to yours truly. Calamari smiles mirthlessly, miles away in some dream world of violence and rough sex. Where’s his morals I wonder? But, given I’m experiencing the delirium tremens and not one hundred percent sure I’m even awake, well, you could accuse me of splitting hairs. Calamari seats himself in the dentist chair and swivels his body and pickled onion eyes toward me.
“I’ve been promoted,” he tells me, to Calamine’s obvious chagrin. “And this is my little celebration. We’re experimenting with the notion of Fear,” he explains – failing to explain anything. “Or, at least, we were. It seems someone here present doubts the validity of our endeavours. Someone who wasn’t promoted because he couldn’t be trusted to follow procedure.” He glares at Calamine who shuffles grumpily. “But I’m not a bitter man,” he spits unconvincingly, “so I’ll let it slide this once….Just this once.”
“Thank you, Sir,” says Calamine through barely-suppressed contempt.
Calamari clutches a sheath of papers in his claws. He flicks to an index card and holds it up to the vari-tint lenses of some uncharacteristically geeky half-moon reading glasses. I imagine what a fat, muscular owl would look like if it was plucked and you crayoned bulging veins all over it.
“So I guess you’ll be wondering what this is all… about. Well, I don’t think I’ve truly got the measure of you just yet, so let’s see what you’re all about first, shall we? Now, I’ve got your file here. Let’s see… Hugo James Jupiter. Pompous name for a peasant, isn’t it? Born June the blahdy blah, year two thousand and blah, blah, blah. Mother, deceased – death by… Death by… Well, that’s a Hell of a way to go isn’t it? Saw the whole thing did you? Bet that screwed you up?”
“Yes,” I answer. “It’s fair to say it did.”
“Father, deceased. Also insane. That figures. Grandfather, pyromaniac. Three convictions for fire-raising, including the burning down of a butcher’s shop. Now why would someone want to burn down a butcher’s shop, I wonder?”
“I was told he was some kind of militant vegetarian.”
“You mean, ‘militant vegetarian, Sir!’” he spits. I look to Calamine. He shrugs. I figure it’s better to play along.
“Militant vegetarian… Sir!” I say, the words rankling.
“You see, I doubt that,” he continues, “because, according to this piece of paper, he was apprehended carrying a toasting fork and a large bottle of tomato ketchup.”
“I have nothing to say to that… Sir.”
“Wearing a ‘Kiss The Cook!’ apron.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Age ten to sixteen – children’s home. And then you were adopted by your Aunt, a Madame Salome. Now, I’ve heard of her.”
“Lots of people have, Sir.”
“Popular lady.”
“Again, I…”
“Have nothing to say, yes.”