Get Poor Slow Read online

  ‘I sense I’m being fucked with,’ I said.

  ‘And I sense you’ve been nudging the piss.’

  ‘When was the deadline? Tell me exactly when it was.’ Why was I still bothering to talk? Why prolong the nightmare? The deal was dead. Vagg’s cash had been torn from me like a living limb. There was a bleeding stump where my future had been.

  ‘What’s the difference?’ Skeats said. ‘It’s been and gone.’

  ‘I sent you the second review last night. Was the deadline before that or after that?’

  ‘I don’t follow you.’

  ‘Try harder. It’s a simple question.’

  ‘A moot fucking question is what it is, Ray. Christ, it’s just a book review. What’s your issue? You worried that Vagg might lob round and break your kneecaps?’

  ‘Maybe he’ll break yours.’

  ‘Or make you suck on his shotgun. I liked that line.’

  ‘Christ. I said that?’ Now something was really askew: Skeats was praising my prose.

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  ‘And you didn’t cut it?’

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Because you always cut things like that.’

  ‘Ray, you did write the bloody thing. It’s not like I’ve put any words in your mouth.’

  ‘What’s with the unseemly rush to print? What’s going on? Why did you send me a blank email? Why have you been avoiding my calls?’

  ‘Ray, you’re being paranoid. Listen to yourself.’

  ‘Am I? Why did you send me Vagg’s book in the first place? Why didn’t you send it to Lodge? Did you want somebody to piss on it?’

  ‘Why would I want that?’

  ‘Good question. I wish I knew. Vagg’s exactly the kind of guy you like to starfuck at the festivals. What happened this time? Why the radical change of policy? What did he do, fuck your wife?’

  ‘You want to talk about changes of policy, Ray?’ His tone control was starting to slip, finally. ‘Let’s talk about you. What went on there? One day you think his book’s a titanic piece of shit, two days later you think it’s a masterpiece. What happened in between?’

  ‘So you did read the second thing.’

  ‘I glanced at it.’

  ‘Why’d you bother, if the deadline had been and gone?’

  ‘I did you a favour, mate, believe me. That second thing wasn’t you at all. What came over you? It was just a bunch of empty praise.’

  ‘I thought you were into that.’

  ‘Coming from you, mate, it makes me smell a rat.’

  ‘Sniff harder. Maybe the stench is coming from you.’

  ‘Were you drunk when you wrote that shit, Ray? Are you drunk now?’

  ‘Mildly. What’s your excuse?’

  ‘Ray, this conversation is coming to a close. You want to know what you think of Vagg’s book? Read tomorrow’s paper. They’re printing it already. And next time you want to change your mind, change it faster. Preferably before you file your fucking piece.’

  ‘Let’s talk about this rationally,’ I said.

  ‘Rationally? Look at your watch, Ray. The presses are rolling.’

  ‘Stop them.’

  Skeats just laughed.

  I remember swaying on my feet then, and wanting to be horizontal. And I remember resolving to fight it. If I let myself drop I would lose the rest of the night, and that would be a kind of death. In the morning Liam Vagg was going to wake up with a second arsehole, torn by me. And his cash would be off the table and she would hate me, and that would be that. Ten thousand dollars was a lot of money. I was finally starting to get that, now that the deal had gone to hell. How often in your life do you get a shot at a cold ten grand? Speaking for myself: never. Never before, and probably never again. This had been my chance. Had I blown it? Maybe not quite. Until Vagg saw tomorrow’s paper there was still hope. But I had to stay upright. I had to stay in the game. Defeat always wants you to make things easy for it. If you don’t lie down, you already have half a plan.

  I was in no shape to come up with the other half yet, but I could hardly afford to wait till I was. All I knew was that I needed to hear her voice. When I heard it, maybe I’d know what to do. Maybe I would tell her the truth, or part of it. If I did, maybe she would rise wickedly to the occasion. She’d told me Vagg was delivering the cash up front. What if he’d already done that? Would that make the situation more fucked up than it already was, or less? Maybe less. Maybe we could keep the cash and make it hard for him to get it back. If we made it hard enough, maybe he’d stop trying. Was he so rich that he’d give up fifteen grand without a fight – to say nothing of thirty? Was anyone that rich? I didn’t know. I don’t have the kind of life where you know things like that.

  In my wallet there was a torn slip of paper with her number on it. She’d given it to me the other night before leaving. I dialled the number. What time was it now? Mid-evening. Nine or maybe ten.

  A man’s voice said, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Vagg?’

  ‘No,’ the guy said. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Put Jade on.’

  ‘No Jade here, my friend.’

  ‘Put her on.’

  He hung up.

  I dialled the number again. Maybe I’d got it wrong the first time.

  ‘Yeah?’ It was the same guy. He had a hostile snarl going already, to save us some time.

  ‘Let me speak to Jade Howe,’ I said.

  ‘Brother,’ the guy said, ‘wake up to yourself. Some bitch has given you the wrong number.’

  He hung up again. I stood there listening to the dead line. For some reason I believed the guy on the phone. He could have been anyone, but for some reason I believed him instead of her. She’d given me the wrong number, and not by mistake. Why was I so quick to think her a liar? Maybe I’d been rubbing shoulders with Skeats too long. This was getting to be a bad, bad night. I had a sense of things coming apart, of being caught in something I didn’t understand. That made me want to talk to her even more, but how was I meant to do that now? All I knew was her name, unless that was a lie too. I was running out of ideas. A bad one came to me. Maybe she’d given me the right number but had got the last digit wrong. I tried a few variants. Different people kept picking up. None of them was her. I think I got the first guy again.

  After that a worse idea hit me. Maybe she’d left her number with Skeats. I rang him to find out. He didn’t answer.

  And then I was standing in the glow of my laptop, punch-drunk but still doggedly in the fight. The internet: last resort of the damned. Her number had to be on it somewhere. Everything was on it, if you knew where to look. Probably you’d find film of her sucking some guy’s dick on there, if you were willing to put in the work. Why not? There’s film of every other girl doing it. Next to that, a phone number wasn’t much to ask for. I don’t know how much time passed while I looked for it. Cyber-time moves weirdly, like plane time, like casino time. I don’t know where or how I found it, either. All I know is that I did. Did it resemble, in any way at all, the number she had given me? I wish I remembered. But there are many things I wish I remembered. All I can say is that I found it. I must have, because some time later, in the frigid wash of the screen’s light, I found myself standing with a phone to my ear and her on the other end of it.

  ‘Wondering how I got your number?’ I asked her.

  ‘I gave it to you.’

  ‘No you didn’t.’

  She thought about that. ‘Are you drunk?’

  ‘Profoundly.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Ray? Has something gone wrong?’

  ‘Not at my end. How about at yours? Has Vagg paid up yet?’

  It was a simple question, but she seemed to pause before answering it. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did he double it?’ I hadn’t liked that pause.

&nb
sp; ‘No, but it was worth a try.’

  ‘So you have it now? Fifteen in cash?’

  ‘I’ve got it. Are you okay? What’s the matter? Have you done the review?’

  ‘It’s done. It’s in.’

  ‘That was fast. When’s it coming out?’

  ‘That I can’t say.’

  ‘Did you call him a master craftsman?’ Her voice sparkled. She sounded almost innocent, but maybe everyone’s innocent when measured against me. She thought it was all over. She was thinking about her five grand.

  ‘Why don’t you come here now?’ I said. ‘Bring the cash. We’ll celebrate.’

  ‘What’s the rush? I’ll bring it tomorrow. We can pour it out on that big old bed of yours and fuck on it.’

  Yes, she was enviably free of care. She felt like playing around. I didn’t. My tone was turning putrid.

  ‘That sounds so good I want to do it now,’ I said. ‘Tell me where you live. I’ll come there.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘You sound strangely adamant about that.’

  ‘It’s late, Ray. Plus you are way too drunk to drive.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

  ‘Plus someone’s coming over, if you must know.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘No one you need to worry about.’

  ‘Christ. I wasn’t worried till you said that.’

  ‘Go to bed, you dirty old man. You sound like you need to.’

  ‘Who is he?’ I said.

  ‘Who says it’s a he?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘I’ll come up tomorrow night, Ray. I promise. Maybe I’ll bite you again. I got the feeling you liked that.’

  I listened to her trampy little playful voice and knew she’d never use it on me again. She still thought we had a future, but I had seen the damage below decks, the ruinous hole ripped by Skeats. If I was going to get one more night with her, tonight would have to be it. And maybe we could still get something out of this, if I told her the truth. I still wanted to do that. I still craved her wicked input. But I wasn’t enough of a fool to try it over the phone. We needed to be in the same room: me, her, the money.

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’ she said.

  ‘Why’d you give me the wrong number?’

  ‘Maybe you dialled wrong. Maybe I gave you my old number by mistake.’

  ‘You don’t strike me as a girl who makes mistakes.’

  ‘Ray, you’re starting to weird me out.’ She sounded baffled. The magic was leaking out of our relationship, but I had to press on.

  ‘You wouldn’t be going cold on me, would you?’ I asked her. ‘Now that I’ve delivered the goods?’

  ‘No, but if you don’t shut up I might start thinking you have a dickish side.’

  ‘Say something to reassure me,’ I said.

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘It didn’t work. Try something else.’

  ‘Ray, it’s late.’

  ‘Not too late to entertain this other prick.’

  She let that one go.

  ‘Something’s up,’ I said. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me. I can hear it in your voice.’

  Again she hesitated. That left me alone with my fears for a while. Whatever she was about to say, it couldn’t be nastier than the things I was thinking.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I did tell you one little lie.’

  I waited.

  ‘I haven’t got the money yet.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He hasn’t paid up yet. Listen. When you asked me if he had, I didn’t know why you were asking. I thought – I didn’t know if you’d done the review yet. I thought maybe you’d lost your nerve. So I lied. That was bad. But Ray? That’s all. I’m telling you the truth now.’

  She was wrong if she thought that would soothe the fire in my mind. Instead she’d supplied it with a lifetime’s worth of fuel. I knew now what she sounded like when she lied. She sounded, when she was lying, exactly the way she sounded when she wasn’t lying. The needle of her voice hadn’t fluttered. That meant anything she said could be untrue. Suddenly there was no ground under my feet. Maybe she was lying about having lied. Maybe she did have the cash. Maybe she was planning to take off with it right now.

  ‘That’s who’s coming over tonight,’ she said. ‘Him, with the money.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s doing an interview or something, and he’s coming over when he’s done.’

  ‘Is he coming before midnight?’

  ‘Why? You worried he’s going to show me his tattoos?’

  It was meant to be a joke, but I didn’t laugh. You need to see their faces when they say things like that. Over the phone any horror seems possible. Maybe Vagg was with her right now, with his hack’s face jammed right up between her thighs. Maybe she had a fistful of his ponytail, riding it like a pommel while he put a few more of those bruises on her.

  ‘Is he coming before midnight or not?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably. Why?’

  ‘Because I told you a lie too,’ I said. ‘You told me one, I told you one. The review’s in tomorrow’s paper.’

  I listened to her think about that.

  ‘How’s that even possible?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s happening. The paper goes online at midnight.’

  ‘Okay. But so what? Why’s that a problem?’

  ‘Because if it gets published before he pays, he might screw us and keep the cash.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Don’t worry. I trust him.’

  ‘Why would you trust a man like that?’

  ‘I just do.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t like the review?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Because I told you two lies. The review’s not as great as I made out.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Her voice tightened around that question like a noose. Finally she was as interested in the conversation as I was.

  ‘I’m saying I had to keep it plausible. I had to throw in a line or two of stick to make it sound like me.’

  ‘A line or two? Shit, we can live with that. You had me worried there.’

  ‘Still, I want to be there when he turns up.’

  ‘Ray, relax. If it sounds like the real you, that’s good for us. He knows that. He’s not a total numbskull. He only writes like one.’

  ‘Tell me where you live.’

  ‘Ray, you’ve done your bit. Leave tonight to me.’

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘I’ll tell you one day when you’re not hammered.’

  ‘I can’t wait that long. Tell me now.’

  ‘Don’t come here, Ray. Don’t, okay? Go to bed. When you wake up, it’ll all be over.’

  That was the last thing she said to me. And it was the last thing she should have said, if she really wanted me to stay away.

  *

  The next part gets hazy. Events were cascading. The world was collapsing around me. I had to grab a falling shard of it and ride it through the night, and catch all the other shards before they came down. I remember standing in the light of the laptop and looking for her address. If I’d found her number on it, her address had to be there too. And I guess it was, because the next thing I knew I was out on the road. The road was the last place I should have been. I don’t need to be told that. I’m the one who had to be there while it was happening. It isn’t relaxing, driving in that state. The car gets all heavy. It drifts. It feels like a parade float. You have to keep working, all the time. I remember the darkness seeming darker than usual. There was a shadow on the road in front of me, thrown by the headlights of the car behind. It looked like
the shadow of my car. It was the shadow of my car. I checked my headlights. They were not on. Somehow I’d got that far without them. I lit them up, and the guy behind me beat a startled tattoo on his horn. I gave him a few blasts back but he had a point. No headlights: that scared even me, even then. The trouble with being that far gone is that you don’t know how far gone you are until you do something like that. And by then you’re out on the road, doing it.

  Don’t come here. I remember thinking about the way she’d said that. I was ready to hear the worst in it. I remember wondering how much I really knew about her. I thought about the way she’d looked into my eyes while tonguing the flesh of my thumb. Was it possible to fake that? Either I was hurtling towards the answer or I was hurtling towards having no answer forever. Drug-fogged as I was, I had the sense to be terrified by that.

  I remember being in some all-night roadside coffee place. Was I lost? The place had orange plastic tables. A girl of about Jade’s age sat at one of them. I remember swaying over her and saying things, asking her to look at my face and tell me if a girl like her would sleep with a man like me for fun, without some added angle or inducement. I begged her for an honest answer. Was it plausible? Or would money have to be involved?

  I remember being back on the road. My jaw buzzed as if a shovel had hit it. I tasted blood. My right hand hurt too. Either I’d hit myself in the face or I’d got in a fight. My hand hurt more than my face. I remember wishing it had been the other way around. Conceivably, the girl in that clean, well-lighted place had turned out to have a boyfriend. If she had, it was more than conceivable that he’d hit me. It had been shitty of me to hit him back, but I had to hope that I had. It was the loftiest option on offer. At worst I’d traded blows with the girl, and won. I remember telling myself to turn around and go home before anything funkier could happen.

  And then the recording ends, and one big reel turns emptily on its spindle, and the full reel slaps the rollers with its tongue of dangling tape. The next thing I remember is this: I am driving into the city in the light of dawn. The sun’s coming up ahead of me. Why am I still on my way there? How lost did I get? A shameful chunk of the night has gone astray. A fifty-minute drive has taken me seven hours. What happened to all that lost time? Did I go somewhere else on the way? If I remembered then, I’ve forgotten since.