Animals Read Online Free PDF Page B

involved (I
know
, impossible, but throw me a toe-bone here). Jim said I might be able to play the piano with my feet, that he’d teach me.
    Jim. I missed him in a physical way, like a thirst. Missed his mouth and his composure and his steady loving eyes. I didn’t buy the whole ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ spiel. I was with Rochester on the matter: a cord was tied to my ribcage at one end and tied at the other end to Jim’s, and the further away he got, the thinner the cord stretched. Memories helped and didn’t help. What had he said to me the other day?
We are not defined by how we are but by how we try to be.
    What if you try too hard to be everything?
I countered.
    Lie down
, he said.
Lie still.
    I finished my whisky, picked up the glass and got to my feet. I walked to the stairwell and up the stairs. As I walked past my desk I checked my phone. Two missed calls. Tyler. I called her back. She answered on the first ring.
    ‘I’m outside a city-centre drinking establishment and there’s a chair opposite baying for your ass.’
    ‘I’m writing, remember.’
    I heard her suck on a cigarette.
    ‘Fine. I’ll still be here when you change your mind.’
    The bloodrush of temptation. An alfresco drink (and a cigarette at the same time, a rare luxury) with my best friend on a sunny eve. In March, too. How many evenings like this did we get in March? If that wasn’t an oasis in the wilderness then –
    ‘Are you on your own?’ (As if I could somehow make this about compassion …)
    ‘Only until you get here.’
    Ohhhhhhhhh. She cajoled me like an over-confident boy at the bus interchange. She was persistent. She was cocky. She was
good.
    ‘Jim’s back in the morning.’
    ‘So just come for a couple.’
    ‘Ha! That’s a good one.’ I inspected my fingernails. ‘Anyway, I’ve already had a whisky and a beer.’
    ‘You do know that beer
isn’t even alcohol
.’
    Another drag on her fag. She was enjoying this. The practice scales of her siren call. I said: ‘Don’t you have work at seven tomorrow anyway?’
    ‘Baby,’ (‘Baby’, was it? Three drinks at least, likely on her fourth) ‘I’ve got work at seven tomorrow every day for the rest of my life, serving mochafuckingchickenlattes to people counting off the days in little coffee stamps. What gives?
Only
the fact that there are nights in between.’
    And there it was, as always, swinging my way: The Night. With its deals, promises and gauntlets, by turns many things: nemesis, ally, co-conspirator, master of persuasion. It tosses its promises before you like scraps on the road, crumbs leading into the forest: pubs, parties, booze, drugs, dancing, karaoke …
    Here, kitty.
    Here, kitty kitty.
    Whatever your peccadilloes, The Night knows.
    I looked at my laptop, at my desk with its dirty mugs and fag-ash archipelago. The grubby keyboard from eating on the job. The dimp-filled saucer (had I smoked that much today? Holy fuck). The hob lighter I used as a lighter. The Marlboro packet with the take-heed photo of the bloke with the big neck tumour and bigger moustache (Tyler:
Difficult to say which of those disturbs me more
…).
    I said: ‘I have £1.72 to last me until payday.’
    ‘Are there no notes on the towel rail?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Check underneath.’
    ‘I did, yesterday.’
    ‘Well, I’m buying. Correction: I have bought.’
    She hung up. My laptop screen flicked to sleep mode, displaying a bashful black-and-white photo of Jim sitting outside a pub the previous year, a half-drunk pint of Guinness in front of him. It was a confusing sign: half-warning; half-endorsement. I chewed my thumb. I’d need a shower and something quick to eat although I could always get something when I got there, yes that made more sense. I could throw my jeans on, a t-shirt, cardigan, trainers – no need to dress up. No need for much make-up. But then … Didn’t I want to be full of the joys of productivity and rejuvenating sleep tomorrow? I could make