Keys, Money, Phone, Plans to Get Home

- Yeah, go on then. Just one to wet the willy, eh… 

 

My knees feel like bouncing orgasms, or as if they’re in some way deeply connected to my eyes, which are now closing. Is the cabbie looking at me weirdly? Think he might be. Gentle landing. I see darkness, but I can see it all - the night’s sky is dull compared to this: speak to me, radio waves, teach me your eternal truths. 

… and with the new management we’re looking towards a bright future, but that remains to be seen…  

Agreed, Mr. Jones, well said! 

This is what I’ve been waiting for, it’s been too long my friend, too long. In this blackness I can feel it, the strain at the side of my temples. My eyes roll back behind closed lids. I think I’ve just melted in my seat, maybe it’s piss but I can’t be arsed checking. It won’t be too long until we’re there: Upper Parliament Street, Jamaica Street, Kitchen motherfuckin’ Streeeeeet - I’ll just wait until I get inside to go to the bog. The road is bumpy, bumpier than I’ve ever known it to be, though that could be attributed to my heightened awareness of everything around me and the… 

- Mills. A quiet voice interrupts my analysis, a whisper. It’s Vi, sat on the other backseat.

- Yeah? 

- Remember to put the baggy in your balls. 

- Why? Oh… 

It’s hard for me to maintain any form of conversation at the moment as I can’t differentiate between my knees, mouth and the base of my skull, but I know what she means. The whisper said it all: keep this on the DL. Nodding with abandon (and a little gurn) I reach into my trouser pocket and feel for the flimsy bag, skirting around my keys and loose change. Suddenly alert to any danger, I grip the baggy, slide it out and carefully shove it into my pants, all the while keeping my third eye on the cabbie’s rear-view mirror, half expecting him to turn around in a full policeman’s kit. He doesn’t. Now my third eye rolls back to join the other two. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, having plastic tickle the bottom of your scrotum, but it’s worth it if it means not getting your gear taken off you before you’ve even made it in. Well that problem is solved now and it’s time to settle back into the rush. 

 

  。。。

 

An hour ago feels like forever as I sit in this spaceship of a body, gripping to my seat and shivering with pleasure. The drama over who was picking up and which one of us was getting the cash out had been as tense as ever. I’d managed to wriggle out of texting Levi like usual, which meant that I also negated the responsibility of getting in the car and actually picking the gear up.

- Well I did it last time. I don’t see why I should have to do it every time. Jonny said, laying his position out to us all almost as immediately as the topic was raised.

- No you fucking didn’t, you dick, I did. Vi corrected him.

- Did you fuck. I was the one who got Levi’s number. A bit of a rogue point to pull out at this moment in time as we’d been using Levi for a good two or three months now, but it just went to show Jonny’s logic of absolutes in full swing.

- The fuck does that even come into it? Jonny just shrugged in total resignation to the fact that he was completely right. 

- I’m not doing it. I did it last time. Vi knew it was time to give up on him and she also knew that, deep down, she really wanted it to be her that got into Levi’s car, there just needed to be the right amount of resistance put against the notion.

- Milo? Come on Milano.

- I’ve not got his number anymore, I said, new phone. - … And I’m getting in the shower anyway so I won’t be about when he gets here. 

- Typical-fucking-Millsy: never picks up and always wants his own. This was just play fighting, all part of the routine and shortly followed by - And I suppose I’ll be trekking to the cashy too? 

I pouted my lips and batted my eyelids.

- I’ll transfer you now, though… The only acceptable response.

- Sound. So what are we all having? And we called out our requests like a Chinese takeaway. 

 

1g Coke - Jonny 

2g Ket - Communal 

4 pills - Me and Vi

1g Mandy - Communal 

£150. Sound.

 

Levi and I had only met once before and it had involved him believing he’d been short-changed, which he had, but not on purpose. I’d given him thirty quid when he was expecting forty, it was a complete accident and I did genuinely intend on giving him forty, I just couldn’t find the extra tenner in my pocket as I left the house, so I thought I’d firm it and hope he wouldn’t notice. But he did notice. When I’d got the baggies in my hand, I moved to get out of the car and there was a tug on my sleeve with enough force to pull me back into the seat, I looked down and saw a big black hand, the size of a frying pan, clinging firmly. Oh fuck, I thought… 

- Think ah’m some kinda mug, mate? His deep voice sounded like a subwoofer filled with grit, not the kind of voice you want to fuck with. 

- What? He knew that I knew that he knew exactly what he was on about, but out of natural impulse I went into ‘who...me?’ mode. Baaaaad idea. 

- Come on, la. Tha’s noh forty theh. Can’t ye count? His teeth, whiter than white, started  twitching.

- S-s-sorry mate, I thought I’d given you it right. Patting my thighs as if to suggest I was feeling for the extra tenner. He just stared. 

- Give it a rest, pal, ah know your game.

- Honest, mate. I really thou- 

- Ya don’t come in ‘ere n try to mug me off, mate. It don’t werk like tha. The grip showed no signs of loosening and by this point I was staring into his mahogany eyes, unable to do anything but freeze. - Ah’ve goh the merch, you’ve goh the cash. Tha’s how it werks. Trapped in his thuggish gaze more helplessly than I was locked in his brand new Mercedes A Class, I tried to reason.

- I’ll run in and get the rest for you, mate, I think I must’ve left it on the si- A tug and I was nose to nose with the giant who, for all I knew, ran half of Liverpool’s drugs empire. I nervously gave off a smirk - stupid idea, fucking stupid stupid stupid idea. 

- Think this a joke, la? Think this is a fockin joke? Suddenly there was a real fury in his voice and this was all far too real. His other arm moved to grip me by the scruff of the neck, pulling my jumper up to the base of my throat and restricting airflow.

Surely I wasn’t about to be murdered by a fucking drug dealer? This doesn’t happen to people like me. This kind of thing only happens in New York to fictitious characters with guns and money, not to little Oscar Milson on Bartlett Street, who’s using the lowest reaches of his student overdraft to buy a bit of weed. 

- N-no! Honest, I’m sorry, I’ll go get the money. I’ll run in and grab it now. I-I know where it is… I was then completely at his mercy, no way out. This wasn’t the kind of bloke who’s just messing around, he was completely for real and he thought he was being taken for a mug. He’s probably done time, actually I’m pretty sure I heard Jonny say he’d heard the guys at Airdale telling someone that Levi had just got back out after a year inside. I could barely breathe now and the lack of oxygen was sending me a bit west.

Suspended there, my neck in line with the headrest, it wasn’t humiliation I was feeling, it was pure fear. Fear that I’d gone and fucked it all up for absolutely nothing. That I’d be that one cunt who got murdered by a gang of balaclava-covered scousers and dumped in the Mersey up by Otterspool Promenade, after having been brutally tortured with crowbars and tasers: Where the fock is me fockin money? Do ‘is fockin ‘ead in lads, let’s fockin ‘ave it. People would read about me in The Tab. My friends would read it. The police would crack down and it would be me that everyone would blame for stopping the fun. I’D BE DEAD. What would mum think when she heard about it? She’d always told me to never get involved with it and here I was, about to be killed by some schizo gangster just for trying to fit in. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be anywhere but here. I wanted to go back home. I want my mu… 

buzz buzz buzz.

BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ.

The hand let me go and I fell what felt like six feet back into the front seat, slipping a little bit on the leather as I landed. Gasp. Looking down I saw the phone, its small screen lighting up the dark car with an itchy blue light as it vibrated against the expensive plastic of the cup holder. Levi did the same and reached for it. I don’t know what it was, or who’s number it must have been, but thank you. Thank you thank you thank you thank you, because at that moment… 

- It’s time you fock off now, mate. 

Phew.  

Disorientated from the adrenaline, I moved in a clumsy limbo and picked up the baggies which had fallen into my lap, all the while using my other hand to feel around for the door handle. Did I even want the drugs anymore? I didn’t know. It was out of convenience that I put them in my pocket, not even contemplating whether or not this was a good idea considering the fact that I’d just tried to rip off the bloke who was selling them to me and he’d nearly killed me over it. Our eyes met again, stopping me in my tracks. 

- Don’t think you’re offa this one, mate. Ah’ll be back to get ih and ah want twenny. Now fock off.

I darted out of that car like a cat escaping oncoming traffic and slammed the door behind me, running quickly to my own front door. Safety. Well not really that safe because Levi knew where I lived, but safety for the time being.  Panting, I sat on the doormat and tried to compose myself before Vi or Jonny came out to see who’d just shut the door with such force. Whether I was sweating or crying I couldn’t tell, I was just glad to have made it out of that car intact. Vi crept out of her bedroom and stood at the top of the stairs in her penguin-patterned dressing gown, looking down at me with the confusion of a mother whose son is having a nosebleed, a valium haze. 

- What the fuck is going on, Milo?  

I told her about the whole ordeal and tried to pass it off as if it wasn’t really that much skin off my nose, when in actual fact it really fucking shook me. She knew and I knew that I couldn’t see Levi again and we formed an unwritten agreement that from then on I was in the clear when it came to picking up. I haven’t heard from him since - it’s been a month now - and I gave Vi twenty quid to pass over to him next time she picked up, so I’ve assumed my tick has been cleared. The weed wasn’t even that good, just cheap. 

So you can understand why I was less than keen to get back in touch with the bastard tonight. 

 

  。。。

 

But here we are now, back in the cab and I’m twitching with excitement, nearly stratospheric. Two more turns and we’ll be outside. Everything that has happened today has been leading up to this: waking up late; eating nothing; necking a load of 500ml Red Stripes whilst racking up lines of mandy on Vi’s mirror and blasting Jungle Jungle by Bladerunner out of Jonny’s new PA system; ordering a cab, coming up. It has all led to this. I’ll open the door of the disused cotton factory and be drenched in the sticky atmosphere of drug-induced sweat and drum and bass music. The floor will become me and I will become the floor as time becomes obsolete and we all begin moving to the same rhythm as if it was what we were born to do. Responsibility vanishes and ecstasy flourishes. This is what it’s all about. We’re here.

I’m up, I’m up!