The Horse with My Name by Colin Bateman (Headline 2002)

It was cold and dark outside. I went up the plank. It wasn’t a plank, of course. It was like boarding an aircraft. I did a quick tour. I bought a McDonald’s strawberry milkshake and then went to the newsagent and asked for a packet of Opal Fruits. The girl looked at me and I groaned and said, ‘Starburst.’ She nodded and lifted them off the shelf. ‘They used to be called Opal Fruits,’ I said. ‘They changed the name because the Americans call their Opal Fruits “Starburst”.’

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘And do you know why they call them Starburst?’

‘No.’

‘Because the astronauts took them into space. Existed on them. They’re packed with fruit juice. There’s a dozen square meals in this packet, and all for just thirty-two pence.’

‘Thirty-five.’

I handed her the money. ‘You’re okay. You’re young. You don’t remember. The glory days of Marathons and Pacers and Toblerones.’

‘We still have Toblerones.’

‘Yes, but they’re the size of fuck all. Used to be you’d break your teeth on them. Like Wagon Wheels.”

'You couldn’t break your teeth on a Wagon Wheel. They’re soft.’

Behind me a man in a blue tracksuit said, ‘No, I know what he means, Wagon Wheels used to be huge.’

I looked from him to the shop assistant and sighed. ‘Maybe they still are. Maybe we just got bigger.’

We all nodded sagely for several moments .  .  .

To Catch a Spy by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 2002)

 

When there were no other visitors around, I talked to the gorillas or the chimps. The gorillas paid more attention. I leaned on the railing and looked through the bars.

“I’ve had a hell of a day,” I told the big gorilla.

He kept eating, but he looked at me intelligently. I took it as a sign that he didn’t mind if I continued.

“Someone tried to kill me,” I said. “Someone is threatening to kill a couple of my friends. A Nazi. I mean the guy holding them who tried to kill me is a Nazi.”

“That’s how you got all scratched up?” came a raspy voice at my side.

“Yeah.”

The gorilla found a banana and delicately peeled it, still looking at me.

“You think you had a bad day,” came a raspy voice again.

A thin woman in a cloth coat too warm for the afternoon had moved up to the railing without my seeing her. Her hair was white and wild. She had clear light blue eyes and a smooth face. I couldn’t tell how old she was. She clutched a big blue purse to her chest.

“I slept in the park, a little shed behind the Greek Theater,” she said.

I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just nodded and went back to looking at the gorilla. He was now staring at the thin woman.

“Look at them,” she said. “Place to sleep every night. Someone feeds ’em. Don’t have to work, worry about where the next meal is coming, where to bed down.”

“They give up their freedom for that,” I said.

She cackled.

“Put me in a cage with a place to sleep and three squares and you can come and talk to me whenever you like about Nazis trying to kill you.”

“I was talking to the gorilla. I mean, about the Nazis.”

She shrugged and leaned her chin on the purse.

“Go on,” she said. “I talk to ’em too. Say, if a cop comes by, don’t tell him I tried to put the bite on you.”

“You didn’t,” I said.

“I’m working up to it,” she said. “Cop comes and real polite ushers me out of the zoo if I’m puttin’ on the bite.”

“We’re just fellow animal lovers,” I said.

“And both maybe a little nuts,” she said. “Nazis trying to kill you. You come back from the war shell-shocked, something?"

“Too old for the war,” I said.

“So was Milton,” she said, “but he volunteered and they took him. Want to know why?”

“Why?” I asked, and the gorilla and I waited for an answer.

“Because he had a special skill, my Milton, which is something I don’t got. Milton knew barometers, thermometers, all kinds of meters. Worked for the city. Not this one, Newark, New Jersey. Then he got himself killed on a ship somewhere and left me bubkas.”

She looked at me.

“Is that a sad story?”

“Very,” I said.

“Sad enough to make you kick in a few bucks?” she asked.

“Sad enough,” I said, pulling out my wallet and fishing out two singles.

She took them and plunked them into her purse.

“That’s one of my better stories,” she said. “Depends on the customer which story I use. True story is even too sad for me to tell myself. Won’t tell that one for five, even ten bucks. Rather starve. This is the point where you tell me you gotta go. You’re late for something.”

“I’m not late for anything,” I said.

She was looking at the gorilla again.

“Got any kids?” she asked softly.

“No.”

“Good,” she said. “You lose ’em, you lose your heart. Know what I mean?”

“I think so,” I said.

“Gorillas,” she said, looking back at the two animals. “They look so smart. Like they’re thinking, working out some big problem. You think?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” she repeated and ran a hand through her wild hair. “Listen, I gotta go get something to eat. It’s been good talkin’ to you.”

“Same here,” I said.

“And stay away from those Nazis. They’re bad news.”

She walked away, a slight limp. I watched her head down the hill, her eyes toward the ground. I looked at the gorilla. He was watching her too.

“You could have offered her a carrot,” I said.”

Slim Jim Baxter: The Definitive Biography by Ken Gallacher (Virgin Books 2002)

 

The day following Jim Baxter's death a Scottish Cup semi-final took place at the new-look Hampden Park, now known more formally as the National Stadium, where Celtic were meeting Dundee United. At the Celtic end of the ground a banner had been draped from the stand by the Parkhead fans as they remembered, with respect, their old tormentor. It read 'Slim Jim. Simply The Best’ as the supporters even went out of their way to acknowledge the unofficial Ibrox anthem. It was a straightforward, sincere and moving message and one that Baxter — who, of course, had had little time for the sectarian divides in his adopted city of Glasgow — would have appreciated. The tribute at the semi-final, which Celtic won 3-1 on their way to a domestic 'treble', was a public recognition of his standing on that issue and an indication that his Old Firm rivals respected and honoured his views

It was also a genuine salute to one of the greatest footballers the country had produced. He was, after all, a man whose skills crossed all boundaries and whose talents were savoured by soccer connoisseurs around the world He may never have lost that distinctive singsong Fife accent even though he had been away from the coalfields which spawned him for more than forty years, but the language he spoke on the football field needed no translation.

His tragic death at the age of 61 came after years of illness and followed a shorter spell of less than three months' suffering after he had been warned by doctors that he had only a little time left to live. As a footballer his career had been one of near-constant controversy, and that was something that dogged him even when he had long stopped playing and had had an earlier brush with death seven years before.

A Working Stiff's Manifesto: A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine That Fired Me, and Three I Can't Remember by Iain Levison (Random House 2002)

I have a job. Here we go again.

In the last ten years, I’ve had forty-two jobs in six states. I’ve quit thirty of them, been fired from nine, and as for the other three, the line was a little blurry. Sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly what happened, you just know it wouldn’t be right for you to show up any more.

I have become, without realizing it, an itinerant worker, a modern-day Tom Joad. There are differences, though. If you asked Tom Joad what he did for a living, he would say, “I’m a farmworker.” Me, I have no idea. The other difference is that Tom Joad didn’t blow $40,000 getting an English degree.

And the more I travel and look around for work, the more I realize that I am not alone. There are thousands of itinerant workers out there, many of them wearing business suits, many doing construction, many waiting tables or cooking in your favorite restaurants. They are the people who were laid off from companies that promised them a lifetime of security and then changed their minds, the people who walked out of commencement with a $40,000 fly swatter in their hands and got rejected from twenty interviews in a row, then gave up. They’re the people who thought, I’ll just take

this temporary assignment/bartending job/parking lot attendant position/pizza delivery boy job until something better comes up, but something better never does, and life becomes a daily chore of dragging yourself into work and waiting for a paycheck, which you can barely use to survive. Then you listen in fear for the sound of a cracking in your knee, which means a $5,000 medical bill, or a grinding in your car’s engine, which means a $2,000 mechanic’s bill, and you know then that it’s all over, you lose. New car loans, health insurance, and mortgages are out of the question. Wives and children are unimaginable. It’s surviving, but surviving sounds dramatic, and this life lacks drama. It’s scraping by.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. There was a plan once, but over the years I’ve forgotten what it was. It involved a house and a beautiful wife and a serviceable car and a fenced-in yard, and later a kid or two. Then I’d sit back and write the Great American Novel. There was an unspoken agreement between me and the Fates that, as I lived in the richest country in the history of the world, and was a fairly hard worker, all these things would just come together eventually. The first dose of reality was the military. I remember a recruiter coming to my house, promising to train me in the marketable skill of my choice, which back then was electronics. I remember the recruiter nodding vigorously and describing all the electronics that the army was currently using. They would train me and train me, he said.

Hell to Pay by George P. Pelecanos (Little Brown 2002)

Garfield Potter sat low behind the wheel of an idling Caprice, his thumb stroking the rubber grip of the Colt revolver loosely fitted between his legs. On the bench beside him, leaning against the passenger window, sat Carlton Little. Little filled an empty White Owl wrapper with marijuana and tamped the herb with his thumb. Potter and Little were waiting on Charles White, who was in the backyard of his grandmother’s place, getting his dog out of a cage.

“It don’t look like much, does it?” said Potter, looking down at his own lap.

Little grinned lazily. “That’s what the girls must say when you pull that thing out.”

“Like Brianna, you mean? Your girl? She ain’t had no chance to look at it, ’cause I was waxin’ her from behind. She felt it, though. Made her forget all about you, too. I mean, when I was done hittin’ it she couldn’t even remember your name.”

“She couldn’t remember hers either, drunk as she had to be to fuck a sad motherfucker like you.” 

Little laughed some as he struck a match and held it to the end of the cigar.

“I’m talkin’ about this gun, fool.” Potter held up the Colt so Little, firing up the blunt, could see it.

“Yeah, okay. Where’d you get it at, man?”

“Traded it to this boy for half an OZ. Was one of those project guns, hadn’t even been fired but once or twice. Short barrel, only two inches long, you’d think it couldn’t do shit. But this here is a three fifty-seven. They call it a carry revolver, ’cause you can carry this shit without no one knowin’ you strapped. I don’t need no long barrel, anyway. I like to work close in.”

“I’ll stick with my nine. You don’t even know if that shits works.”

“It works. Yours jams, don’t be askin’ me for mines.”

Potter was tall, light skinned, flat of stomach and chest, with thin, ropy forearms and biceps. He kept his hair shaved close to the scalp, with a small slash mark by way of a part. His irises were dark brown and filled his eyes; his nose was a white boy’s nose, thin and aquiline. He was quick to smile. It was a smile that could be engaging when he wanted it to be, but more often than not it inspired fear.

Little was not so tall. He was bulked in the shoulders and arms, but twiggish in the legs. A set of weights had given him the show muscles upstairs, but his legs, which he never worked on, betrayed the skinny, malnourished boy he used to be. He wore his hair braided in cornrows and kept a careless, weedy thatch of hair on his chin.

A Working Stiff's Manifesto: A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine That Fired Me, and Three I Can't Remember by Iain Levison (Random House 2002)

The hard part is learning the route. I'm working Philadelphia's Main Line, once again servicing rich people, many of whom have mansions for houses. Families of three or four live in eighteen-bedroom castles, with new sports cars in every driveway. I drive around and wonder what these people do for a living. Where do the rich come from? Do all these houses belong to geniuses, inventors of rocket engines and cures for diseases? Did they have one great idea, like Post-it notes, and capitalize on it? Is there some fascinating story behind this great surplus of money, or have they simply inherited a factory that makes toenail clippers for the armed forces?

One thing's for sure; they believe they deserve it. I don't know many rich people, but I've met enough to know that even the ones who were handed a trust fund think of themselves as special, not lucky. They reinvent the past to include details of their own forbearance and fortitude to anyone who'll listen, and someone always will because they're rich. It's always more entertaining listening to the rich, because there's always a chance you'll be asked along to the Bahamas or given a sports car for the weekend. The fact that they're usually stingier than the people I hang out with takes a while to sink in.

The other great fact about rich people is that their kids are always fuck-ups. Not the kind of lovable fuck-up who works down at the gas station and tells you he can fix your car and then destroys it. No, rich kids are shady. They're the kind that dream up a brilliant illegal plan, just to show their dad a thing or two; then when you all get caught, they beg their dad for a great lawyer and never talk to you again. They were born into money, and they know money will take care of them. This security gives them a whole different value system, one the rest of the world never quite gets.
These half-empty houses, I notice, are mostly dark and quiet, like the set from Citizen Kane. Housewives putter around in the kitchens, and I see their coiffed heads through the window as I hook up my hose to their oil fills. They are usually alone. They never wave. The third great fact about rich people is that they don't talk to the help. Lady Chatterley's Lover was bullshit.

Goodnight Steve McQueen by Louise Wener (Perennial 2002)

My name is Steve McQueen and I'm a bitter man. What on earth were they thinking of. calling me Steve? Didn't they realise it would ruin me? Didn't they know I'd be tortured? Didn't they understand it would be impossible for me to live up to? Did they hell. It was my mum's fault, of course, she was obsessed with him. The only reason she married my dad in the first place was because of the name. It didn't matter that he was a geography teacher. It didn't matter that he was bald at the age of eighteen, fat at the age of twenty-two, and dead at the age of thirty-three and a half. Mum had what she'd always wanted. She'd married herself a genuine McQueen.

I was three years old when my father died - he had a heart attack on a field trip to an ox-bow lake - and for a long time I actually thought Steve McQueen was my read dad. I remember my mum sitting me down to watch The Towering Inferno when I was five - spooning down my second helping of Heinz spaghetti hoops - and feeling really proud. We both clapped at the end. What a guy. He'd even managed to save Fred Astaire and the cat. What a guy. What a dad.

Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin (Little Brown 2002)

- "Where will you be working from?"
- "I thought we might find a spare office at St Leonard's . . . "
- Siobhan's eyes widened. "You think Gill's going to go for that?"
- "I hadn't really thought about it," he lied. "But I can't see a problem . . . can you?"
- "Do the words 'tea,' 'mug' and 'lob' mean anything to you?"
- "Tea mug lob? Is that a Cocteau Twins track?" He won a smile from her. "So you really were just driving around?"
- She nodded. "It's something I do when I can't sleep. Why are you shaking your head?"
- "It's just that I do the same thing. Or I used to. I'm that bit older and lazier these days."

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi (2002)