Sean Happens 7

We went to see The Poseidon Adventure at the local Odeon. The Spider paid me in and put an arm around my shoulder. We sat in the back seats. His feet were on the tops of the seats in front of us as if expecting someone to complain or kick up a fuss. Nobody did. The ship sunk. I sunk too.

I expected him to be all over me like nit cream. Looking beyond the dark half circles of seats searching for pupils that went to the same school we’d been expelled from, I waited for someone to recognise us. I rehearsed the cool things I’d say to them as we brushed against each other and the way I’d give them a wry wave as we marched down the stairs. I did my best to look doomed.  

The Spider didn’t seem to notice. He almost laughed at something onscreen. Luggage falling on somebody’s head in a predictable way.

I waited, wantonly, careful not to appear breathless and anxious. I wondered when he’d kiss me, or just get me to wank him off and give him head. I was hypnotised by the romance of it all and how it would end our perfect evening.

He showed his good breeding by going to the kiosk and bringing back two oversized hot-dogs covered in tomato sauce. He licked his fingers as he handed me mine in a crumpled blue paper doily. I let him eat most of mine. That was the closest we came to touching.

Locked in a competition of lust and hate, I kept score of how many boys I could have. A marker of how hot and popular I was. But to him I seemed invisibly visible presence. He didn’t even hold my hand of kiss my cheek.

‘See you tomorrow night,’ were the only utterance he’d made all night.

He picked me up in a reddish-purple Ford Cortina near my house. The kind of car regularly seen in Police Watch. I was pretty sure he never had a driving license. He’d never been tested. He cruised down the road, an arm down by the window. Thin Lizzie playing on the cassette radio.

‘There’s nothing wrong with conversation,’ I spluttered.  

But my words were rebuffed in the same way he’d moved my hand away from his knee, dropping my fingers into my own lap as if from a great height. He fiddled with the cassettes and put on Led Zeppelin. The engine roared and the car jumped forward when we got away from the town centre towards the ring roads.

He pulled sharply into a side street and followed it along bumpy cobbled roads, filled with potholes and surrounded by warehouses and derelict tenements. He left the engine running and growling closer to a kerb that fell away to god knows what. A light in the bottom of building signalled someone was living there. When we got out of the car, he lit a cigarette and handed me a packet to light one. Trusting me with his gold lighter. I blew smoke in his direction.  As we got closer, the signage in the window had slipped, but still was readable as café.

Heads turned as we entered. I hugged my arms to shore up the gap between my frilly blouse and red bra. Dining tables were covered in thick oilskins that mopped up grease and anything thickset men sitting with a Sun in front of them opened at the sport pages, with an unfinished plate of chips pushed next to the ashtray and condiments could drop or throw at them.  

The Spider pulled out a chair so I could sit down. He waited for me to be seated before he went to order two all-day breakfasts. The panel of the seat stuck to my shaved legs, and I had to wiggle my pert little bum to get free. The ashtray was already full, but I stubbed out my fag.

The smoke made my eyes squint like Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. And the squat waitress, with square hair and greasy skin, taking my beau’s order, certainly came into the latter category.  

The Spider brought back two mugs of tea. He seemed almost happy. Two all-day breakfasts confirmed his joy.

‘I don’t want anything,’ I told him.

He shrugged as if that was his due and pulled the plate he’d given me closer to his side of the table.

A man with a face like a slab of uncooked beef muttered something about ‘Liberace’.

The Spider held up a hand to signal that he’d need to finish chewing before he spoke. I thought he might even have been playing footsie with me under the table. I tried to seem cool and tucked my hair into the side behind my ear and showed him my best side. I’d been called much worse. But he was just giving himself more room so he could spring up.

He pulled a pistol out of his trouser pocket in a smooth action. Even when I shrieked, I tried to rationalise it. Supposing he didn’t want his leg touched because he was armed. I took a breath, but he didn’t.

The man who’d insulted me cowered down into the seat. The Spider used the handle of the gun as a hammer smashing it into his face and again and again until the waitress jammed her finger on a bell. ‘That’s the café closed for the night,’ she told us.

Other punter muttered to each other, careful not to say anything to The Spider. Sliding past him at the door and out towards the dim lights of the Esso garage forecourt.  

The Spider wiped the pistol on the man’s jumper and turned away. He pulled the seat up and picked up his knife and fork and started eating his way through the two meals.

When he’d finished, the man he’d pistol whipped had staggered outside. The waitress stood too close to The Spider with an intimacy I found unsettling. She whipped his plate away before he’d finished the last of the beans.

‘Bonnie,’ she called him. ‘Time you were taking that young piece of muck home.’

‘I will, Mum,’ he said, picking at his teeth with the prongs of a fork stabbed into his molars. ‘When I’m good and ready.’