Musclebound Page 2

Chapter 2

  I left Milo in the Enemy’s car. He didn’t come with me. I said, ‘No-good fuckin’ pup.’

  What use was he anyway? He was too young and green to work, and he ate like a horse.

  ‘She can keep you,’ I said. ‘I never wanted you anyway.’

  I walked on. I didn’t care, I DID NOT CARE. NOT.

  But the pavement was rocking, and the walls were waving like a flag in the breeze. And before I knew it, I didn’t know which way was home. Well, sneer if you like, but that happens. Even when you’re stone-cold sober. You schlep along thinking of this and that or nothing at all. You turn this way and that, or you forget to turn at all, and there you are – lost.

  Lost is what I was.

  I came out on a main street but it didn’t mean nothing to me. It could of been any old street. It was well lit, but the lights were blurry and swinging in the wind. Except there wasn’t no wind. I thought I was going to puke up again but then I saw a garage, still open, on the other side. And I thought maybe they’d have a can of Special Brew to settle me guts.

  I crossed. Slowly. Even at four in the morning there were cretins whizzing by – zip-zap. Not one of them keeping to the speed limit. And I thought, this here road’s a dangerous place when you’ve had a little drink and you aren’t feeling too hot.

  And then, woo-eee, a bright red Carlton swooped round me like I didn’t exist and swung into the garage. It came so close it nearly took the coat off my back.

  ‘Bastard!’ I yelled. But no one heard. No one cared. I might as well have shouted at a post.

  ‘Bastard,’ I said, and I hopped on to the pavement.

  ‘I’ll have you,’ I said, and I stepped over the chain into the garage forecourt.

  I was going to have it out with the driver of the Carlton. I was going to pick him up by the armpits and say, ‘Oi, pus-bottom, watch where you’re going.’ But by the time I got up off the floor and kicked the chain for tripping me up, I saw the driver wasn’t in the Carlton no more. He’d gone inside the booth, and he’d left the driver’s door open and his motor running. Which is exactly the same as saying, ‘C’mon, Eva, here’s a nice red Carlton all warm and ready to take you home.’

  So I said, ‘Ta, very much. Sorry I called you a pus-bottom.’ I jumped in and shoved the stick in first.

  At the same time, the driver stuck his head out of the booth and shouted something. I didn’t catch the exact words because I was too busy revving up and moving out. But what happened next was very weird. As I swung past the booth, the passenger door slammed shut. I hadn’t noticed a passenger. And then another man, who I hadn’t seen before, walked out from the booth and pointed a stick at me.

  I thought, why’s that dink pointing a stick at me? And I’d hardly finished thinking that when the passenger-side windows shattered. Kerash-kerunch. Glass everywhere. I was so startled I nearly whacked into one of the petrol pumps.

  I went, nought to sixty, out of the forecourt, right under the nose of a Safeway truck. I was sweating and swearing but, do you know, I was half a mile up the road before I realised what shattered the windows.

  The dink wasn’t pointing a stick at me. He was pointing a sawn-off shotgun. The windows didn’t just shatter. The dink shot them out.

  Can you believe that? Some bastard shot at me. Me. Just for borrowing a Carlton. Who the hell’d do a thing like that?

  If he didn’t want his motor borrowed, why didn’t he just remove the keys like a sensible person?

  Shit. He could of killed me. Fancy that, EX-WRESTLER SHOT. What a headline that’d make.

  Suddenly, I was so shook up I couldn’t drive no more. I pulled into the kerb.

  There could of been a bleeding stump where my head should be – think of that next time you pick your nose and worry about hair-loss.

  By now I was feeling sick but sober. The cold air from the smashed windows whistled straight through one ear and out the other. There wasn’t nothing to be done about that, but I jacked the heater up to max which at least warmed my toes.

  I drove off again. Slowly. I’d have to dump the motor fairly smartly. Even politzei with only half a brain cell would notice two missing windows and pull me over. I checked the mirrors. No politzei. Yet. It was a nasty night, but even nasty nights can be made nastier. All you need is one nosy copper. A nosy copper’d bounce me into jug quicker than you could spit – slightly flibbed on the boozometer, driving a borrowed Carlton without insurance or a licence – you name it and I could get bounced for it.

  The important thing was to get off the main road and a bit closer to home – wherever that was.

  I got off the main road.

  And then I began to wonder. What was the shit with the shooter doing in a petrol-station booth at four in the morning? Well, you don’t need a sawn-off for ten gallons of unleaded and a packet of cheese and onion crisps, do you? And you don’t leave your engine running when you fill up. Or your doors open.

  You only leave your doors open and the engine running if you want to make a very sharp exit.

  I braked hard. It was worse than I thought – I’d borrowed hot wheels, and there would be two very pissed-off villains not a million miles away. And at least one of them had a shooter.

  I sat for a minute. My head was spinning. And then it occurred to me to sniff around and find out exactly what I’d borrowed.

  And what did I find? Oh man! You’ll never guess. Never – ‘cos I’d never of imagined it, even in a six-pack fantasy.

  I found a Puma sports bag, and man oh man oh man, had those two cowboys had a good night? Had they ever!

  The Puma bag was stuffed to the zip with dosh. Money. Just money. Big, big money. More than I’d ever seen in my life. Thousands and thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Thousands of hundreds of thousands. Smackeroos times a zillion.

  I gaped at it. I gawped at it.

  I stuck my nose in the bag and nuzzled it. It smelled sweeter than chocolate ice-cream.

  I stroked it and it was softer than a cat’s belly fur.

  I crooned to it and it answered back. It said, ‘Take me. I’m yours. I’m all yours, babe.’

  Well, what’s a girl supposed to do? What would you have done? And don’t tell me you’d of done any different. Don’t. ‘Cos I’ll never believe you in a month of Sundays.

  I didn’t even think about it. I mean, what was there to decide? I’d just lost another job. I was down on my luck. So was I going to leave a bagful of zillions lying around for some bugger who didn’t need it half as much as me? Was I going to let it sit there, getting cold, so it could say, ‘Take me, I’m yours,’ to someone else?

  You don’t know me very well if you think that.

  Chapter 3

  My two big dogs, Ramses and Lineker, have a wooden shed and a wire pen all to themselves. In the daytime, when the men are working in the yard, when all the crushers and cutters and lifting gear are whining and clunking away, I’m asleep in my pit. Then Ramses and Lineker snuggle down in their shed and kip too. But if any one of those men goes a step too close to that pen Ramses wakes up and goes bounding out to the wire, hackles up, gnashers bared, and tells me all about it.

  ‘Ro-ro-ro,’ he goes, like a bass guitar. And that wakes Lineker who goes, ‘Yack-yack.’ And that wakes Milo, who says, ‘Hip-herf.’ And that wakes me.

  So what I’ve got is a totally fool-proof warning system against anyone coming too close to me and my dogs.

  At night, when the men have gone and the machinery’s closed down, Ramses and Lineker roam free. And I pity anyone who climbs over the gate or crawls through the fence into our yard. Dogs is territorial animals. And so am I. If you want your throat mangled, come on in, I dare you.

  It took just two nails and a hammer. I nailed the Puma bag high up on the wall of the dogs’ house. I nailed it high in case that fool Lineker took it into his cretin head to have some chewing practice.

  My teeth were chattering – rat-a-tat-tat. I felt smashed again. I couldn’t walk in a straight
line.

  I was rich. I was stinking dirty filthy rich.

  It was what I’d always wanted.

  I cried like a baby.

  Go on, laugh. But I sat on the dogs’ bedding and howled.

  Every crisp crinkly crunchy note in that Puma bag was mine. Mine, all mine.

  If you haven’t ever been on your uppers, if you haven’t ever lived in hunger-town, if you haven’t ever really truly wanted – you won’t understand. So go away and suck on fish food.

  It was nearly morning, nearly the time when the yard comes alive. I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. There was almost as much in my head as there was in that Puma bag – and I was counting it.

  But at last the rhythm of the crusher took over. Bad’n, bad’n, it said. Just the same as ‘Satisfaction’. And I went to sleep with bad’n, bad’n thumping in my brain like a headache.

  Which really did turn into a headache when I woke up – a bad’n. But I almost enjoyed it, because I was thinking, ‘Now I can straighten everything out. I can buy me own gym and get fit again.’

  It wouldn’t be the same as Sam’s gym, where I used to work out – the one Mr Deeds kicked me out of. It’d be better. I’d have a personal trainer and a sauna kept ‘specially for me. I’d sweat the poison out of my system. I’d sweat the extra weight off. I’d be lean and hard. I’d be mean and tough. And I’d be in charge. Oh I’d be a bad’n all right. Believe. A lean, mean, bad machine.

  I went down Mandala Street market for my breakfast. It was three in the afternoon, cold and grey. But I had a bunch of twenty-pound notes in my pocket to keep me warm. I bought a couple of burgers and a bag of chips at John’s Burger Bar.

  ‘In the money?’ John said, when he took my twenty.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ I said. People can never keep their nozzles out – always got to comment.

  ‘Only I ain’t seen you around lately,’ he said. ‘The girls was saying you’d had a thin time.’

  ‘Times change,’ I said. ‘And you can tell those toms to keep their snouts out an’ all.’

  ‘Always nice doin’ business with you, Eva,’ he said. Fart-face.

  I’d take my custom elsewhere. That’s what I’d do. I’d go up West and eat at the Café Royal off of china plates and tables with tablecloths on. No more styrene cups and greasy fingers for Eva Wylie. Eat my dirt, fart-face, you won’t see me again.

  But stuffing my face with burgers reminded me of Milo. Last I saw of him he was sitting all warm and stupid in the Enemy’s car. He betrayed me. But now I was ready to forgive him. If the Enemy thought she could drive off with the dog I’d hand-reared from a sprat she had another think coming.

  Besides, she owed me money.

  Just because I had millions and zillions of my own didn’t make her owe me any less. I don’t freeze my arse off all night in a car-park for nothing, you know. I ain’t stupid.

  So I went round to see her.

  To look at, her gaff is just like a dentist’s office. There’s a cream door with a plate that says Lee-Schiller Security. You walk in and there’s a secretary sitting behind a big office desk. There’s a waiting-room with a sofa and two comfy chairs.

  So I walked in and the old secretary bird said, ‘Good afternoon – oh, it’s you, Eva. Have you come to collect Milo?’

  And that’s the trouble with old secretary birds – they want to know all your business.

  ‘Where is she?’ I said.

  ‘Anna?’ she said. ‘She’s with Mr Schiller. But don’t go in. They’re busy.’

  So I gave the top of her desk a little tap – just to remind her she wasn’t anyone. She jumped, and said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t hit things, Eva.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t stick your beak in my breakfast,’ I said, and I went past her.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘They’re busy.’

  But I wasn’t mad really. I was too rich to be mad. Money soothes. Have you noticed that? There ain’t much a little dosh can’t cure. I could of bawled at her the way I usually do, but I only said, ‘Fuckin’ shut up,’ quite sweetly, as a reminder. Gelt is good for your disposition.

  I walked straight into the Enemy’s office and found her and Mr Schiller sitting side by side, drinking tea and studying ledgers.

  ‘Afternoon, Eva,’ Mr Schiller said. He’s sort of all right, but you can tell by the way he holds his mug that he used to be politzei too.

  ‘Oh bugger,’ said the Enemy.

  ‘Hip-herf,’ said Milo.

  ‘Shurrup,’ I said, ‘and get over here where you belong.’ He had been sitting at the Enemy’s feet, looking for all the world like he was her dog. That really gets up my nose – when people suck up to my beasts. She wouldn’t have a hope in hell with Ramses. Ramses’d rip her foot off.

  Milo didn’t even move – the sod.

  Suddenly I was a fist on two feet. I said, ‘Gimme my pup.’

  ‘Take him. He’s yours,’ the Enemy said, ‘but if you think you can walk in here shouting the odds, you can walk right out again.’

  ‘You’d love that,’ I said. ‘You owe me money.’ I had her there. She couldn’t deny it.

  ‘I’ll pay you. When haven’t I?’

  ‘Now you’re shouting,’ I said. I was stone happy.

  ‘And why not?’ she shouted. ‘You’re so full of shit your eyes have turned brown.’

  ‘Please!’ said Mr Schiller. ‘Calm down, both of you.’ He paid me in cash out of his own pocket. Which shows what kind of bloke he is. But the Enemy looked like she was having a tooth pulled. Which shows what kind of a cow she is. It almost made my headache go away.

  ‘Call this money?’ I said. ‘Exploiting the worker, I call it.’

  ‘You call what you did work?’ she said. ‘I call it getting drunk on the job and snoring.’

  ‘Who the fuck cares what you call it?’ I said. ‘I did as much work as you paid me for.’ And I turned on my heel and made a smart exit.

  The only trouble was I forgot Milo. Which spoiled it a bit. I had to go back in and drag him out by the scruff of his neck.

  ‘Just get over yourself,’ the Enemy said. ‘Come back when you’ve straightened up.’

  ‘Don’t hold your breath,’ I said, and I went.

  Who the hell did she think she was – telling me to straighten up? Me. I had more oil in my oil-can than she’d ever see in three of her miserable lifetimes. I had it nailed to the wall of my dogs’ shed. It made me somebody. Somebody she couldn’t touch.

  She’d never make me sit out in a car-park all night again. Never. She’d never take my time like that no more. She’d never steal my precious hours, minutes and seconds out of that little bag of time which is my life and throw them away like they was rubbish. Tick, tock. They may be tick-fucking-tock to her, but they’re chunks of my life to me. And now I’ve got dosh, I can spend all my tick-tocks how I like, not how she likes.

  ‘It’s all your fault,’ I said to Milo. Because it was. If he hadn’t stayed with the Enemy instead of coming with me, I’d never of had to go and get him. And if he’d left when I left, I’d of never had to go back. Then I wouldn’t have had to hear her say, ‘If you got paid every time you cocked up, Eva, you’d make a very nice living. As it is …’

  But I didn’t wait to hear the rest. Who needs it? I don’t.

  Chapter 4

  There’s no point in having so much moolah that it oozes out your ears unless you can swank about it. That’s why I went to see my ma.

  My ma isn’t hard to swank to ‘cos she doesn’t have a pot to piss in. Anyone’d look good compared with her – ‘specially when she’s suckin’ on a jar. Which is practically all the time.

  But she is my ma, and I’ve got family feeling for her. She’s different, though. She’s got about as much family feeling as she’s got savings in the bank – and that means none at all. And if I’ve got a grudge against her, that’s for why – look no further.

  Do you know I’ve got an older sister I haven’t seen since I was eleven?
Yes I do. People think I’m all on me own – no family. Well that shows how wrong you can be. I got a sister. Simone’s her name. It’s a pretty name – as pretty as she was last time I saw her. And as I say, I ain’t seen her since I was a nipper.

  Why ain’t I seen her? Good question. It’s a good question with a bad answer. My ma – our ma. That’s the bad answer.

  My ma is such a bad ma she couldn’t keep a home together for more than a couple of weeks at a time, and she didn’t give goolies for her own kids. So we got took off of her. And did she care? Did she – bollocks. Out of sight, out of mind – that’s Ma’s motto. Never mind we was sleeping eight to a room. Never mind we was getting our legs strapped, never mind the food was cat vomit, never mind it was so cold you could see your breath indoors. No, never mind all that, so long as she could suck on a bottle and score a few quid off of man-trash.

  Well, now I’d scored more than a few quid. I was jumpin.

  Ma thinks I’m a downer. She thinks I’ll never make nothing of meself ‘cos I ain’t a looker. She could’ve been proud of me for being the London Lassassin. But was she? She was not. She was shamed. That’s my ma. I make myself tough, I win fights, I give the crowd what it pays for. And my ma is shamed. She didn’t never come to watch me fight. Not once.

  ‘Ooh no,’ she says, ‘I don’t mind seeing the blokes if they’ve got nice bods. But I don’t want to see no daughter of mine make a spectacle of herself. Not with a bod like yours, Eva. It ain’t for display.’

  Encouraging, huh? I don’t think about it. If I thought about that crap I’d top myself. I’d die on my feet.

  I stopped. Milo bumped into the back of my legs.

  I said, ‘Why’m I thinkin’ crap, Milo?’

  ‘Hip?’ said Milo.

  ‘I’m on a roll,’ I told Milo. ‘I’m on the up. It ain’t never happened before but this time there’s good mojo working. And I’m going to ride it. Believe.’

  And I walked straight into Value Mart and bought a lottery ticket with one of my brand-new silky smooth twenty-quid notes.

  I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m crazy. I got squillions, so what do I want with more? Know what? I ain’t crazy. OK, I got squillions. But clever folk like me keep their squillions. They make their squillions work for them. And that’s what I was doing. Because, with good mojo buzzing, my lottery ticket would win for sure. And I wouldn’t of wasted a quid, would I? I’d of bought more dosh for a quid. Geddit? So now who’s crazy?