Ten Storey Love Song (6 page)

7 Reece Mews
along his desk, the one with all the grimy oil-painty photos of Bacon’s hideout. Through the telephone he hears lots of muffled bumping, which is Bobby jumping about the flat with glee. The Artist thinks he’s speaking to some sort of hero or guardian angel. They arrange a date to meet up, Bobby scribing NEXT SATURDAY on the skirting-board with Georgie’s Love That Pink lipstick, just as the girl herself trundles through the door in her Bhs stuff. She squirts her stinky work shoes onto the carpet, finding a space on a sofa arm until Bobby’s off the phone, then she gives him a big hello hug. Bobby the Artist gives her a welcome-back snog on the lips, then bounces on the balls of his feet telling Georgie about the weird man on the phone and the exhibition and the Bacon. He’s got the football-size eyes of a five-year-old, and Georgie starts bouncing too with the excitement of it all and the fact the creaky floorboards are quite fun. She’d forgotten all about Mrs Fletcher harassing her this morning, and she grins two pink crescents all proud of her boyfriend. In a way Bobby feels weird getting so over-the-top about ‘fame’ and ‘money’, but the way the world works you do need pennies in your back pocket, and there’s no way he wants to die with this stupid world not knowing his name. In a torrent of inspiration, Bobby claws for his sable brush and whips jiggedy-jaggedy lemon yellow bits into each of the Angels’ hair, getting put off for a split-second when his tummy has a wee rumble. Bobby the Artist hasn’t eaten for days, his appetite suppressed so much by drugs a bite of sausage roll yesterday afternoon had to be spitten out, but now every little squeeze from Georgie reminds him just how empty he is. His cheeks look like black triangles as he kisses Georgie so up close – usually the mop-top hides all signs of malnutrition, and bad skin. Georgie, mirrorballs hidden by eyelids, spins Bobby onto the floor and gives him a big fat smackeroony anyway. She loves her boyfriend and she loves him getting back on his arty farty feet again, and the two of them roll around in the sweeties and the paint and they knock over Bobby’s water pot, and the two of them are a mess and all. On an ordinary comedown this sort of behaviour would annoy Bobby, but today he’s got London drooling at his feet, and he gives Georgie another huge huggle. She laughs, spinning him into the new painting, and suddenly he does get a bit tetchy and says, ‘Actually, that’s enough. I’m fucking starving. Howay.’ Georgie doesn’t really notice her boyfriend’s topsy-turvy emotions, she just keeps beaming and does a little squeal and says, ‘Ooh, I know what you can have! It’s a special occasion, after all!’ She scampers through to the kitchen and empties her work-bag onto the breakfast bar, cascading cut-price pick-’n’-mix and stolen bags of crisps like a crunchy waterfall. She tears open bags of Haribo and paper barber-shop bags of candy, chomping and smiling all the time like Minnie Mouse or Miss Piggy on Methylenedioxymethamphetamine. Her face is the sun breaking through her two cloudy cheeks. To celebrate Bobby’s success, she ‘cooks up’ a sweety full-English breakfast for them both, which consists of: Starmix fried eggs, cola jelly-beans for sausages, pink shrimps for bacon, red Skittle tomatoes, two tiny toffee hash-browns, a fingerful of pink Nerds for baked beans, yucky Blackjack black pudding, two ready-salted KP Squares for toast, served with a Starmix milk bottle on a paper plate. Georgie’s forehead twitches with hilarity as she brings Bobby the Artist his meal, with a dishcloth folded over her forearm like a proper waitress. Bobby gets the hystericals and loves her all over again, clearing a space on the shitty carpet for the plates. You have to eat the sweety full-English with your fingers, and it gets scoffed in an instant, Georgie being really adventurous and combining tastes, for example Nerds on Squares (beans on toast), shrimp squashed on jelly-bean (pigs in blankets), or a Skittle either side of the Blackjack (just gets rid of the taste of a Blackjack). Bobby picks at his food piece by piece, hands all shaky and white. Afterwards he gives Georgie another smooch, and for ten seconds his life is perfect and if he were to die right now (for example his heart bursting, so full it is with glittering red bloooood) he’d be in too much rapture to notice. But then ten seconds later he’s hungry again – the sweety full-English isn’t known for being very filling – but there’s fuck-all in the cupboards, unless you like eating bread sandwiches. Bobby’s not the sort of house-husband to go pushing a trolley round Lidl very often; in fact, at times he can be quite a bad boyfriend, since living the bohemian dream involves not cleaning the apartment or washing the dishes or buying more milk when they run out of milk. He just wants to paint and be merry! Bobby the Artist sits there in the middle of a Stonehenge of canvases, feeling his belly grumble, and he wonders if Georgie would mind him eating her instead. Randy bastard. Eyes beaming, Georgie giggles as he creeps his hands up her legs like pervy spiders, and in all his light-headed derangement Bobby starts cackling too. He tugs down her Sooty and Sweep knickers. Georgie’s a bit shy to open her legs dead wide because she’s got a few in-grown hairs and all that, but she smiles serenely as Bobby’s fingers slither up her cellulite. He slips his tongue into her sweaty cinnamon fanny, and all those feelings of starvation disappear down her minge-hole. Georgie aahs. It’s a bit annoying getting shagged straight after a gruelling shift at work, and it’s a shame the sex organs have to be so close to the poo organs – they can really stink sometimes. And the same goes for Bobby – he hasn’t showered his mouldy sausage for a while, and she decides not to suck him off. She kisses his whiffy-fanny lips instead. And now for a cameo appearance from Mr Condom! He comes leaping out of his packaging, then Bobby and Georgie jump around gleefully on top of each other for about half an hour. It’s intense! Bobby finds Mr Condom annoying though – he’s a bit like an over-attentive waiter on your first date, but Georgie’s scared of STDs and small children and she insists on him being there. Georgie’s incredibly cautious about everything – she just wants a lovely comfortable life with no big shocks or scares, whereas Bobby favours a mad look-Mam-no-hands! sort of life. But whatever, the sex is still great. Bobby gets his own back on Mr Condom by suffocating him with white custard, then he screws him up in the bin with all the other gritty Mr Condoms. He goes for a wee in the bathroom – a foamy spunky one – then frog-jumps next to Georgie and swings his arms round her four or five times like Stretch Armstrong or just someone really really in love with their girlfriend. Over in the bin, Mr Condom sighs. Georgie’s feeling a bit cold now all in the nude, and she gets changed into an old fairy costume and guzzles down a few jelly-beans. Her favourites from the Jelly Belly range are Peach, Plum and Juicy Pear – it makes her feel like she’s eating up the tower blocks. ‘Dessert?’ she enquires, throwing Bobby one. Bobby nods, then he nuzzles her neck and says he loves her and Georgie grins and says it too. ‘I’m so proud of you, hun!’ she squeals. Bobby the Artist scours the carpet for a post-fuck fag, but all the packs are empty, and he hasn’t got the guts to ask Georgie for a borrow. Money, you’re such a pain! On top of selling canvases, occasionally Bobby gets commissions to paint murals for libraries or hospitals or kids’ homes, but it’s such a chore having to do it sober – the one time he dropped acid painting the Accident & Emergency, Bobby’s brush spewed a load of porno doctors and nurses with syringes in their heads and patients racing naked on medicine cabinets. A day later it was covered sick Infirmary Green again. Bobby blinks, bingeing up a rollie out the stinky ashtray. He hopes to God this Lewis magics him some money soon. The last ‘real job’ Bobby ever had was working the fork-lift trucks at the B&Q Warehouse on the Portrack Lane Ind. Est., stacking bits of wood and garden furniture, drinking cups of tea and listening to the Fall’s ‘Industrial Estate’ on his dinner-break. Surely to fuck he can get by without fags and drugs for just a little bit. He’s got paintings to paint! Wheezing on the old rollie, Bobby the Artist pulls on his boxers again then washes his one-inch DIY brush and mixes up peach-pink on the pocked palette. To get peachy pink, you need three parts Cadmium Red to two parts Titanium White to one part Yellow Ochre. Then comes the tricky bit: applying it to the Angels’ lips and cheeks without making them look like absolute harlots. Watching him work, Georgie straightens the white tutu, wondering who the hell all the girls are but she’s not jealous. She has a few more Jelly Bellies, then plops through to the bathroom to give her minge a good old clean-out and sort her hair. She likes Mr Condom, but she hates his latex aftershave. In the front room she hears Bob put on My Bloody Valentine – lots of fuzzy-wuzzy songs perfect after a shag or during a painting. ‘Loveless’ actually reminds Bobby of his ex-girlfriend Gabrielle – the sex between them was great too but without much emotional content (to be honest, he found her pretentious and boring), and he used to enjoy putting on records after they’d shagged more than doing the deed itself. The song ‘Loomer’ oozes out the square speakers like pink lava, and Georgie comes back in the lounge all sleepy with just fake candy energy bubbling in her tummy. Surprisingly she’s not absolutely obese, although she’s always moaning to Bobby about her love-handles and big bum and shimmery cellulite – perhaps it’s all the running around at work and all the running around after Bobby that keeps her somewhere in shape. However, Bobby glares at her gobbling more and more jelly-beans, and in his gobbledygook imagination he thinks Georgie looks a bit like a piglet. The fact she goes on about her weight so much only fuels the image in his head even brighter. He adds a bit extra paint to Georgie’s cheeks then wipes it out with a paper towel, knowing she’ll only kick off if she’s immortalised chubby in one of his paintings. Bobby the Artist chews his brush. Two weeks ago he read Dear Deidre in the
Sun
(Alan Blunt the Cunt donates his newspapers sometimes for Bobby to paint on) and she said boys often expect their girlfriends to look slim and perfect, but in fact curves are the natural shape for rearing children and whatnot. But then again on Page 3 you’ve got skinny ninnies with their knockers out. Bobby the Artist has a bit of a cough, and he’s just about to thin Georgie down with some white spirit when the front door goes rat-a-tat-tat and he staggers over to it, mop-top flopping this way and that. It’s Ellen from upstairs, and she stands there in the hallway wearing a clingfilm shellsuit and a sad expression. ‘What’s up?’ Bobby the Artist asks, rolling up his sleeves. ‘Oh nowt,’ Ellen goes, but you can tell she’s holding back and she dips her eyelashes and says, ‘Well, actually it’s Johnnie. He’s been weird. You know he put Angelo Bashini in hospital the other night? Well he just seems dead uptight, like, I was wondering – if it’s not too much trouble – could I stay here tonight? He’s not at home and I’m worried he’s gone mad, and I think Mandy’s out with Dave, and Pamela’s mam and dad are back, and I don’t want to be alone …’ Despite the comedown, Bobby reacts a bit too ecstatically and bangs the door wide open and smiles just as wide and says, ‘Sound, Ellen, howay in! Make yourself at home.’ Bobby leads Ellen through to the lounge and, although Ellen’s been round loads of times for happenings and drugs and borrowing sugar, he says to her, ‘Keep your shoes on if you want, this is the living room, soz it’s messy, I’m painting and that, bathroom’s over there, kitchen’s through there, have what you want, you can sleep on the sofa if you like, I’ll move this.’ Bobby the Artist drags ‘The Angels’ (244x233cm) off the pink couch and into the bedroom, then he plumps the fuchsia cushions and points where Ellen should park her bum. Ellen sits down, rustling skinny clingfilm fabric, grinning at Bobby being so weird and welcoming. On the floor, Georgie stares up with tired gobstopper eyes. A big orgasm on top of an eight-hour shift always knocks the poor girl for six, and she can hardly stay awake while Ellen retells the story of Johnnie going round Angelo’s, knocking him round the flat, feeding him a razor blade, the shenanigans with Gary Rhodes, but missing out the bit about her shagging Angelo of course. Bobby the Artist gazes, listening intently, thinking a razor blade through the eyeball might’ve been a more lasting punishment but perhaps he’s been watching too much
Chien Andalou
again. Ellen tells them Johnnie’s been alright to her but he’s clearly in a fiery mood and today he’s gone missing from Peach House and he won’t answer his phone and she doesn’t know what to do, but thanks a lot for letting her stay. Bobby the Artist looks at her from his standing-up position in the doorframe, nodding in random places, thinking about her Golden Ratio face and the prospect of her possibly posing naked for ‘The Angels’ (244x233cm). Ellen oozes more sex than a sloppy de Kooning, and at times Bobby wishes he was single again and free to feel the completely different caresses and crevices of a completely different girl. It worries him that he’ll never kiss another pair of lips ever again. Ellen feels a bit uncomfortable what with him staring at her so much and Georgie dying on the carpet, and after a bit of creaky silence she shuffles on the sofa and asks, ‘Oi, what time do youse usually get up, cos I’ve got to sign on at half ten tomorrow.’ Bobby the Artist clicks out of his trance, slightly paranoid in case Ellen’s telepathic, but then he smiles and says, ‘Oh, I dunno, I’ll probably still be awake by then, I dunno … my sleeping’s a bit fucked.’ Ellen blows out a little laugh, then looks at Georgie at the bottom of the carpet and the worker bee says, ‘Well, I’ve got the dentist at ten tomorrow, so I’ll leave with you, if you want.’ Georgie’s rabid sweety-eating has resulted in her having a mouth full of silver and white fillings, big lumpy fissure seals and the odd rotten hole or brown crack in her molars, and tomorrow she’s in for another two drillings. She hates the dentist – in total, since she was ten years old, she’s had twenty-seven fillings, five teeth pulled out, plus a horrid old brace when she was fourteen. Nowadays her smile’s pretty straight and you wouldn’t know all her teeth are riddled with mercury and whatnot, but it’s her mouth that causes her most grief in life. Bobby does all that bloody gurning and he’s never even had a filling, lucky old so-and-so! Georgie’s dentist tells her she’s got soft gnashers and the deepness of the molars make for more crap getting stuck in than normal, but she’ll never give up eating sweets for a man whose breath always smells of onion. Laid all crumply in her fairy outfit, Georgie pops another peach jelly-bean down her neck, enjoying the flavour, but the thought of getting her teeth buzzed tomorrow makes her all shaky and sad and her tummy feels fizzy with nerves. ‘I didn’t know you had the dentist, pet,’ Bobby the Artist says, although it’s typical of him to forget everything, and Georgie guesses it’s the drugs killing off all his brain cells and generally turning him into a stupid person. She’s too shattered to argue, though, and eventually she heads off to bed feeling depressed about the dentist and depressed that Bobby forgot and depressed that Bobby’ll be up all night talking to Ellen, and she depresses the mattress and the bronzey pillow when she finally flops naked into bed. Bobby doesn’t mean to be a dozy cunt. He’s just excited to have a guest in the house, and he tries to run around the flat offering Ellen cups of tea or mouldy toast or Georgie’s sweets or half a binge, but Ellen’s just happy to be safe four storeys high in the sky.