thatâs what her mother wanted: she wanted her to be a success, get a job. She wanted her to do good in the world.
And if J had thought about it at all, he would have seen that sooner or later Nicky would find someone else more like her and her mother. Sheâd move on and that would be that. And if heâd thought about it he might have felt sad, because he did love her, and wished in his quiet, confused way that he could give her the kind of life she deserved. Not this dumb, fucked-up life they all lived here. The drugs and shit and cops shooting you. Not that kind of life. But a life where people respected one another and you werenât worried someone was going to stick a shotgun in your face and blow your head off. He didnât want someone to stick a gun in Nickyâs face and blow her head off. He wanted her to be happy. He just wished he knew how to make it right for her.
âNickyâs beautiful,â Pope said later that night as they all sat slumped and dozy in front of the TV after the main shows were over.
Rousing, J wondered if heâd heard him correctly, and shivered the way his mother used to when sheâd say someone was walking over her grave. The only things that Pope thought were beautiful were dead. Dead crims, dead rock stars, dead animals. He was like the King of the Dead, and, now that Baz was gone, he thought he was their king as well.
It wasnât a happy thought, and J only let it linger a moment before he threw it into his memory hole, where he vaporised everything he couldnât deal with. He realised, as he sat there looking at the static on the TV screen, that it was where he was now consigning most of his life. It was like a sudden insight that knocked him back into the cushions of the sofa. It was like he suddenly got it. His life. Heâd pulled his own head in so far that he felt like a little ball of fear in the absolute centre of the universe, a black hole of terror dragging everything into it. He felt that he had ceased to be, thatâs what he thought, and had become a zombie being pushed around and directed by forces outside himself. And that didnât make him feel happy at all.
He wasnât happy, watching his uncle lusting after his girlfriend. Is that what he was doing, or was he mentally slobbering on her, like a spider slobbering over a fly it had caught in its web? A sort of masturbatory devouring, half sex and half ingestion? Uncle Pope didnât love anybody; none of them did. All Uncle Pope wanted to do was hurt.
It didnât last long, the vision. Just long enough to singe its way into his mind and memory. Was that really what heâd become? What theyâd all become?
When he woke up the following morning, and remembered Pope carrying Nicky into his bedroom ⦠Was that true? Did that really happen or was it some hallucination, like the spider and the zombies and everything else?
His sense of reality was being eroded, and what would have seemed impossible to contemplate only a few weeks before had started to become commonplace. Perhaps that was the thing that had really frightened his mother about her family: how the mad could become normal. But thatâs the way the world at large worked as well. A new force enters, and slowly, gradually, the world is changed before our eyes without us hardly even noticing. Till one day we wake up, and the things we thought were true have been turned into their opposite, right in front of us.
âYou know why your mum and I didnât talk for so long?â Smurf asked later as she wrapped a tie around her neck, helping J get dressed for Bazâs funeral.
âNo,â he answered quietly, listening.
âWe had a fight aboutâyou know the card game Five Hundred?â
J nodded, but he didnât really. His mother had played a bit, and tried to get him to play sometimes, but he couldnât get the knack of it.
âShe reckoned you could play the joker whenever
And if J had thought about it at all, he would have seen that sooner or later Nicky would find someone else more like her and her mother. Sheâd move on and that would be that. And if heâd thought about it he might have felt sad, because he did love her, and wished in his quiet, confused way that he could give her the kind of life she deserved. Not this dumb, fucked-up life they all lived here. The drugs and shit and cops shooting you. Not that kind of life. But a life where people respected one another and you werenât worried someone was going to stick a shotgun in your face and blow your head off. He didnât want someone to stick a gun in Nickyâs face and blow her head off. He wanted her to be happy. He just wished he knew how to make it right for her.
âNickyâs beautiful,â Pope said later that night as they all sat slumped and dozy in front of the TV after the main shows were over.
Rousing, J wondered if heâd heard him correctly, and shivered the way his mother used to when sheâd say someone was walking over her grave. The only things that Pope thought were beautiful were dead. Dead crims, dead rock stars, dead animals. He was like the King of the Dead, and, now that Baz was gone, he thought he was their king as well.
It wasnât a happy thought, and J only let it linger a moment before he threw it into his memory hole, where he vaporised everything he couldnât deal with. He realised, as he sat there looking at the static on the TV screen, that it was where he was now consigning most of his life. It was like a sudden insight that knocked him back into the cushions of the sofa. It was like he suddenly got it. His life. Heâd pulled his own head in so far that he felt like a little ball of fear in the absolute centre of the universe, a black hole of terror dragging everything into it. He felt that he had ceased to be, thatâs what he thought, and had become a zombie being pushed around and directed by forces outside himself. And that didnât make him feel happy at all.
He wasnât happy, watching his uncle lusting after his girlfriend. Is that what he was doing, or was he mentally slobbering on her, like a spider slobbering over a fly it had caught in its web? A sort of masturbatory devouring, half sex and half ingestion? Uncle Pope didnât love anybody; none of them did. All Uncle Pope wanted to do was hurt.
It didnât last long, the vision. Just long enough to singe its way into his mind and memory. Was that really what heâd become? What theyâd all become?
When he woke up the following morning, and remembered Pope carrying Nicky into his bedroom ⦠Was that true? Did that really happen or was it some hallucination, like the spider and the zombies and everything else?
His sense of reality was being eroded, and what would have seemed impossible to contemplate only a few weeks before had started to become commonplace. Perhaps that was the thing that had really frightened his mother about her family: how the mad could become normal. But thatâs the way the world at large worked as well. A new force enters, and slowly, gradually, the world is changed before our eyes without us hardly even noticing. Till one day we wake up, and the things we thought were true have been turned into their opposite, right in front of us.
âYou know why your mum and I didnât talk for so long?â Smurf asked later as she wrapped a tie around her neck, helping J get dressed for Bazâs funeral.
âNo,â he answered quietly, listening.
âWe had a fight aboutâyou know the card game Five Hundred?â
J nodded, but he didnât really. His mother had played a bit, and tried to get him to play sometimes, but he couldnât get the knack of it.
âShe reckoned you could play the joker whenever
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