Musclebound (2 page)

Milo stuck his wet nose into my hand, and I let him. He’s only got me. He was a motherless prawn, barely a week old, when I took him in. I stuffed him up my jumper for warmth and I took him home, and I’ve been a mum and dad to him ever since. I fed him on Whelpie and saved him from Ramses and Lineker countless times. And for why? ‘Cos I’m soft-hearted. That’s for why. It’ll be ages before he starts earning his keep, and meanwhile he’s eating me out of house and home, and costing me time and trouble. He’d better turn out to be the best guard dog ever – that’s all I can say. ‘Cos if he isn’t, I’ll skin him and make a fur waistcoat out of his useless hide.

‘Hear that?’ I said. ‘A waistcoat. So you better buck up your ideas.’

‘Hip?’ he said. But he said it quiet. So I let it go. Like I said, I’m soft-hearted – I’ve got a dog who talks too much, but do I complain?

Let me tell you something. Last week I was in a normal poor folks’ car-park. I won’t say why – it’s none of your business. But it was late and it was cold and I wanted a ride home. And, just sitting there, all alone, was this little red Vauxhall Astra. So I thought, well, the owner’s too pissed to drive it and probably took a cab home anyway. And someone who can afford to get drunk and pay for a cab ain’t gonna grudge me a ride. So I borrowed the Astra.

Now, normally, I just borrow a car. You can have your stereo, you can keep your coat, your umbrella, your bag and your briefcase. I ain’t a thief. And I don’t do no damage neither – just what it takes to get in and get started. What’s more I usually leave it cleaner than when I find it. A borrowed car needs a bit of a wipe-down afterwards.

But this time was different. I got in all clean and tidy, and I started up without totally wrecking the steering – well, what do you expect if you don’t fit an immobiliser? Everything was as it always is – except the owner had left a tape in the slot. And you know what came blasting out the speakers? What made the hair on the back of my head pop up? It was that music. My music. ‘Satisfaction.’

It’s
my
music. It is.

When I was in the ring. No, when I was outside waiting to come on, that was the music I was waiting for. I didn’t hear it in my ears – I heard it through the soles of my feet. I heard it in the pit of my stomach.
Ba-ba ba-ba-baaa da bad’n bad’n
. Just like that. And I’d come crashing out, snarling and howlin’ like a wild animal. And the crowd’d turn and snarl and howl back at me.

It’s mine, that music.

Well it
was
mine.

But you know the weird thing? I hadn’t ever heard the song. I only knew the
ba-ba ba-ba-baaa da bad’n bad’n
bit, ‘cos that’s what they played over and over for me while I got to the ring. They never played the words. And I never thought to find out because, if you must know, if it ain’t heavy metal it ain’t music, and that’s a fact. Mr Dirty Deeds chose that music for me, and he’s an old man with no taste. He’s the wrong generation.

So there I was, freezing my arse off in a high-rise car-park, all set to do a quick quiet exit, and all of a sudden, out of the speakers comes this
ba-ba ba-ba-baaa da bad’n bad’n
. It frightened the life out of me. I was banjaxed. It was like a sign. A sign from hell.

I should’ve turned it off, ‘cos when you’re borrowing an Astra you don’t drive it off with a million mega-decibels honking out
the sun-roof, do you? You do not. Well, maybe
you
do – but then you ain’t got my brains. But I didn’t turn it off. Well, I couldn’t find the right knob quick enough. Then when I did find it I didn’t want to. Because, you know what I found out? I found out it wasn’t a song about satisfaction at all. It was a song about
no
satisfaction.

Which showed me what a floppy dick Mr Dirty Deeds was. He chose me a song called ‘Satisfaction’ which was all about frustration and ‘Baby, better come back later next week, ‘cos you see I’m on a losing streak …’ And it was really angry and bitter. And so was I. So I kept it playing till it was over.

Later, when I dropped the motor off, I kept the tape just in case there was another sign from hell for me.

And there was one. Really truly. It was called ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, and it was all about
me
. Except I’m not Jack. I’m Eva.

But Jack and Eva both got hags for mothers. We both got the strap. And now we’re both drowned and washed up and got spikes through our heads.

But we’re all right.

Well,
I’m
all right. Bugger Jack. ‘Cos in the song, he doesn’t whine and he doesn’t cry. He yells and carries on, but he’s all right. And that’s me too.

‘Herf,’ said Milo.

‘Shurrup,’ I said.

‘Eva,’ said Anna Lee.

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘What you doin’, creeping up on me like that?’

‘Creep?’ she said. ‘I opened the gate and walked in. You didn’t hear me. Milo did. You didn’t.’

Talk about creeps – Milo was all busy kissing her hand and wagging his no-good tail.

‘Eva,’ she said, ‘you’re drinking on the job.’

‘Kiss my arse,’ I said. ‘This ain’t drinking. This is just a slurp to keep the cold away.’ Well, if you get caught with a can of Special Brew halfway to your gob you can’t say it’s coffee cake, can you?

‘I’m taking you home,’ said Anna Lee, the Enemee.

‘You’re takin’ me nowhere.’

‘Home,’ she said.

‘Now,’ she said.

‘Get a move on,’ she said.

And somehow me and Milo found ourselves in the back of her white Peugeot speeding down Jamaica Road and she was saying, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘What?’

‘It’s the end of the line. You blew your last chance.’

‘I blew nothing,’ I said. ‘Stop the car.’

‘What for?’

‘Stop!’

I almost fell out into the gutter. And I couldn’t stand it no more. I couldn’t stand for that tight-arsed hoity-toity to see me throw up.

I ducked round a corner and puked up over the hood of an XRI.

But I didn’t go back. I’d had it with the Enemy. She thought she was giving me the boot. She wasn’t. I was giving her the boot. Work for her? I’d rather stick my head under a commuter train.

I should’ve thrown up in her Peugeot. I should’ve thrown up down the back of her neck. In her handbag.

Fancy that! Giving a sick person the boot. Some people got no heart. No heart at all. I wouldn’t go back if she begged me.

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.

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.