Nick at the station

Nick felt like shit. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead like gelatine as he punched the bastard code into the machine for the third time. The tapping of his forefinger on glass of the digital display sent shudders up his spine. Yuk yuk yuk. I’m sorry but the code you entered is incorrect. He screwed up the sweaty piece bit of newspaper onto which he had scrawled the magic number and letter formation. A glance at the station clock told him he was fucked. He kicked the ticket machine and called it a cunt. A woman hurried past with a toddler. You’re a cunt too he thought. Everyone was a cunt. The whole world was a cunt. The man at the machine next to him was a cunt. The girl with braids and the latte was a cunt. Café Ritazza was a cunt. The rubbish bin was a cunt. The trainline.com was a cunt. The bloke with the Blackberry Pearl and beige raincoat was a cunt. In fact he was so much of a cunt that he was even a cunt when Nick wasn’t upset. Nick glanced around for more things to call a cunt. That’s when he saw Dean. He nearly wept.

Nick didn’t know how he knew Dean. It was possible he didn’t. It would be just like Dean to make friends with Nick without his consent. Dean was a social rapist, forcing himself on you, breathing his rancid coffee breath, bearing down as every fibre in your body cried Please make it stop now!

Nick tried to avoid Dean’s googly stare. Where was his phone? He could pretend he had to answer a call. A blokey pocket pat told him he’d left that behind as well. Awesome, that’s just peachy he thought. Then Dean was upon him.

- Hullo Nick, fancy seeing you here buying a ticket at the ticket machine on the station concourse. Huh-Huh.

Nick was momentarily stunned. A conversation with Dean was always horrendous, but in between them you forgot how and why. Spelling out the obvious like that was the clear sign of a mental. For about three months a woman called Cheryl had e-mailed Nick every time he posted a blog repeating back pretty much everything he’d said but in the second person. So if Nick had said “today I went to a party and got pissed and fell over,” she’d write to him and say: “Nick, I did so enjoy reading about how you went to a party and got pissed. I thought it was funny too how you fell over.” At first he’d found it quite flattering, mainly because nobody ever wrote to him about his blog, but after a few weeks it was just intensely weird and upsetting. Cheryl had no reason to talk to Nick, she had literally nothing to say to him, but she still did it. An anecdote vampire, sucking in and regurgitating his banal life until it was beige and tasteless like Dairylee. But Dean was much worse than Cheryl. Much worse. Nick grunted.

- Yes, it’s good luck my spotting you. I’ve been wanting to talk to you…

Dean was about Nick’s height, perhaps a little taller, with a ribbons of lank shoulder length hair. Not just any hair. Ginger hair. Nick had no idea why a ginger would grow his hair. Sure Gillian Anderson pulls it off. And that Kate Nash isn’t bad either. But neither of them has a mole that resembles a baked bean on the end of their nose. And they’re not into world music.

- Yes, I’m putting on a concert, Dean started, a little more hesitantly, it’s going to be wild. He did a little laugh, the kind of laugh a dying baby might do.

At this point Nick realised he hadn’t actually said anything yet and felt kind of bad. That’s what he hated most about Dean. Dean made him feel bad. Nick hated Dean for the same reasons every kid at Dean’s school hated him. He hated him because he was ginger and smelled and didn’t like the same bands Nick did. The most horrible, base reasons there were to hate someone and that just made him hate himself more.

- Cool. He ventured, fake smiling all the way. Got a flyer?

Dean was way ahead of him on this one. He had swung his bag round his shoulder and was clumsily trying to open it with it still on his back, his neck craning like one of those kids in wheel chairs with cerebral palsy. Dean’s claws burrowed past cling-film wrapped sandwiches and a flask (who uses a flask?) and pulled out a piece of paper. He handed it to Nick.

- Yeah, there will be three musical acts and I’m going to compere and do some of my poems

Concert? Musical acts? Poems? Who says things like that? Nick desperately scanned the piece of paper for even a solitary word that looked in some way cool. It was just so boring, even to glance at. It made Nick feel sad, like seeing someone buy non-ironic items from a charity shop. There could be no doubting who had made this tawdry excuse for marketing. From the clipart header to the phrase “we will be collecting donations for Mind,” the flyer screamed DEAN! DEAN! DEAN! and all with the same nasty coffee breath.

- Looks wicked, man. Sometime died inside of him. I’d love to make it, it’s just … I think I’m working.
- It’s on a Sunday afternoon.

Of course it fucking is, Nick thought, only Dean would put on a gig on a Sunday afternoon. I bet church would be better.

- Yeah … I knew that, I know that, he faltered, then, Owen’s got us on some new blue sky shtick. Thinks our we’ll be more creative if we brainstorm on the weekend.

That sounded pretty convincing. It was exactly the sort of thing Owen would do. Stupid Owen with his tank-tops and use of the word ‘lateral.’

- Oh that’s a shame. Especially after you missed the other concert I put on. How is your dad by the way?
- He’s bearing up. It’s not every day you get mauled by an Irish Setter.
- I thought he got hit by a bus
- Um … Nick took a moment to compose himself and then said with pitch perfect solemnity, yeah, it’s not really been his year. Fuck you RADA I do have the ‘faculties.’

Nick was able to shrug Dean off with relative ease after that. He was such a clichéd little creep. He even limped when he walked. Ginger and a limp! All the world’s a stage, Nick thought, and the playwright’s fucking appalling. His attentions turned back to the problem in hand. His dad’s birthday party. There was absolutely no way he was going to make it back to Braintree now. Next train didn’t leave for another hour and the bastard incorrect code represented the last of his money. This wasn’t good. Not after last time.

He aimlessly walked onto the escalator that led up to McDonalds. His stomach felt like chewing gum. His eyes felt funny. Stepping outside into the rain it actually hit him that he wasn’t going. He couldn’t go, he had no money, he was late already. Mum would go apeshit. What did it matter anyway? Dad would be glad he hadn’t made it. One less argument about The Mail. Sixty years old and he still thinks immigrants are … nevermind.

Nick made a prison rollie and stood grimly dragging under the golden M of the picnic table umbrella. The ‘Gerkin’ loomed tragi-comic overhead. Half Dallas, half dildo. When he was younger his dad had worked for the firm that built Canary Wharf. Canary Wharf was the most tangible, the most understandable of his achievements and for years whenever ‘dads’ were mentioned Nick would boast “yeah my dad built Canary Wharf;” or sometimes, “my dad designed Canary Wharf;” and occasionally, when proud, freckle-faced boys needed to be silenced, he’d say: “Yeah, well my dad invented sky scrapers.”

And yet Nick didn’t actually have any idea what his dad did for the company, or even if he’d been involved in Canary Wharf at all. He just needed ammo for boasting rights. He didn’t know it like he knew the brown sweater with the hole in the cuff, or the way he’d come home from work in the rain smelling of trains and the morning’s aftershave. He didn’t know it like he knew his mahogany trouser press or the brass bowl for his change, or the rough touch of his cheek when he kissed him goodnight. And Nick never asked. Even now, as he pulled the mangy cigarette from hip to coldsore he had no idea. He just had a vague, sun-shiny image of his dad, younger, on a building site, clipboard in hand, directing other boys’ dads, a crane static in the background.

The memory almost made him feel better about the whole affair. But was it enough to feel pride for an ideal? Wasn’t that all just totally selfish? I love the ‘you’ I imagine in my head, but I’m not coming to your party, so fuck you. Maybe right now his dad was imagining a clean shaven son reading The Times on an electric train, all cling-film sandwiches and flasks of tea. Shit, maybe his dad would have been happier with Dean for a son. Christ, Dean. Nick flicked the scuzzy butt and stepped out into the rain.