Shooting Sean by Colin Bateman (CB Creative Books 2001)

'Who the hell are you?' he cried.

'Security,' I said. 'I thought you were an intruder.'

'You stupid fuck! You broke my nose! It's my best feature!'

'Jesus,' I said, 'you're in trouble.'

He began to pull himself up. 'I'm going to speak to the goddamn manager about this . . .'

Before he could raise himself any further I thumped him on the jaw and he sagged back onto his knees.

'What the hell was that for?' he cried.

'Nothing,' I said, and thumped him again. 'But that was for "I Write the Songs That Make the Whole World Sing".'

In and Out by Mat Coward (Five Star 2001)

 

Frank found the DI leaning against the car, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on a journey to the centre of the earth.

“Well, he was surprisingly talkative once he got going wasn't he?” said Frank, as he waited for Don to move so he could get into the car. “I thought you got a lot out of him, in the end.”

“It’s quality that counts,” Don replied. “Not quantity.”

“Aye, right, I suppose so.” Frank jiggled his keys. Don remained immobile. Never mind, thought Frank. I was used to a lot colder up North. “He certainly seems to know a bit about darts, anyway, our Mr. Hall.”

Now Don moved—he span away from the car as if it was red hot, and turned on Frank with a look of deep disappointment. “Frank, he knows bugger all about darts! What are you talking about, all those books? All that twenty-five grammes crap? He’s a pot-hunter, Frank. He’s a mercenary. God, man, Sean Hall doesn’t know the fundamentals of the game! Listen, darts isn’t about stance and grip and all that rubbish.” 

All that rubbish you were going on about in the pub the other day, thought Frank. “It isn’t?”

“Books of finishes, and quarter-finals, and trophies—it’s got nothing to do with all that.”

“It’s more a mental game, is what you’re saying?” Actually, now he came to think about it, bloody London could get cold enough, this time of year, thank you very much.

“Yes, yes, all that, but the point is, Frank, darts is about friendship. It’s about playing the game for its own sake. Look, for instance, there’s no handicapping in darts. Right? Not like golf. Now golf, that’s a game designed for keeping people in their place, a game designed to ensure the continuation of hierarchies. That’s why it’s only played by second-rate businessmen and shit comedians.”

“Right. Shall we get in the—”

“But darts—darts is a democracy. If you get beaten on the dartboard by someone who’s not a quarter the player you are, you’re really beaten—no handicap, no excuses. You see, Frank, darts is the only sport where there’s virtually no element of luck involved. Anything else—football, tennis, anything—you get a lucky bounce and you’re a hero. Or not. But with darts, you’re on your own, and a millimetre either way makes the difference between winning or losing.” Don ran his hands through his hair. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Oh, certainly. You’re saying—”

Don rattled the door handle on the passenger side. “Let’s call it a day, shall we?”

Frank bleeped the lock. “Yes, sir,” he said.

A Few Minutes Past Midnight by Stuart M. Kaminsky ((Mysterious Press 2001)

 

The sunshine was gone again. The sky was gray. It looked like rain in Pershing Square but the small park was packed with people on benches eating their lunch out of paper bags, strollers, and servicemen on leave wandering through the city. Plus the regulars.

The regulars were there. Along with those passing out leaflets on everything from the dangers of drinking beer to the need for a wall along the coast to keep the Japanese from landing, they stood on wooden boxes or overturned trash cans. They insulted the crowd or tried to get those gathered around them to accept Jesus, the end of the world, the promise of Communism, the need for universal celibacy, the dangers of Communism, the threat of organized religion, and the necessary preparations for the brave new world coming after the war.

My favorite over the years had been Gibberish Dave who had come every day for almost two years. Dave had a dark, dirty beard and always wore a ragged suit and a variety of dirt-stained shirts. Dave needed dental work. Shelly had volunteered. I was there. Two years ago.

“I’ll take care of your teeth for nothing,” Shelly had said. “I’ve got some experimental procedures I’d like to try. What do you say?”

“I say, I say, I say,” Dave had sputtered and spat. “I say refurbishing is not always the answer. The stars hold the answers, but the stars don’t speak in words. They speak in codes, blinking. Nazi astronomers understand the code. They’re using the code. Notebooks are full of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Pope Leopold the Second and Dennis Day. If we don’t wake up, we’ll all keep sleeping.”

“And eating,” said Shelly. “But not with those teeth.”

“Teeth that bite are bilious,” Dave whispered.

“Here’s my card,” Shelly had said, handing Dave a card. “Come see me.

“Soup and steak?” asked Dave.

“Tuna sandwich and Pepsi,” said Shelly.

Dave never took Shelly up on his offer, but week after week, Dave kept coming to Pershing, losing a tooth now and then, making less sense each time I heard him until one day, I began to think I understood him. That’s when I stopped listening.

Surviving Sting by Paul McDonald (Tindal Street Press 2001)

The Start of Something

Joolz and I got together at the Walsall Town Hall disco in 1979. She'd been going out with a mate of mine, Brainy Kev, for some time but had recently put an end to the relationship.

'I've put an end to the relationship,' Joolz screamed, trying to make herself heard over the thundering funk rhythms of James Brown. 'I've chucked the bastard!'

'Why?' I shouted, watching in dismay as a fleck of my saliva flew from my mouth and landed with a silent splick in her tequila sunrise.

Knackers, I thought.

'He changed when he bought his new coat,' she bawled.

I knew she was referring to Brainy Kev's duffel coat. It was a charcoal duffel with a tartan lining purchased in preparation for his first term at university. He was going to read theoretical physics at Manchester. The coat was a symbol of his new life and status as an 'intellectual'. He deserved to be chucked.

We were sitting next to one another in the bar, a little way from the dance floor. Joolz had been dancing and her bare shoulders glistened with sweat. So did her cleavage. Trying not to stare at it was like having a plastic cup in your hand and trying not to do a Jimmy Durante impression. In those days my TNT testosterone kept me in a permanent state of arousal. My eyes followed girls like helpless puppies.

"Rising Damp": A Celebration by Richard Webber (Boxtree 2001)

Eric Chappell's storytelling skills were honed in the playground through necessity. 'I started telling stories at school as a way of avoiding being bullied,' he says. 'The school I attended in Grantham was tough and if you aren't popular for something people tended to pick on you. I was quick with my tongue so kept out of trouble by being entertaining.’

Born in the Lincolnshire town of Grantham in 1933, Eric grew up in an environment not particularly conducive to budding writers. ‘I come from a working-class background and my mother didn’t really approve of writing; she thought it unwise to put something on paper in case it was held against you at a later date,’ explains Eric. ‘Being a discreet lady, my wanting to write worried her a bit.’

However lacking the household was in terms of literature, Eric had a happy and caring upbringing and adopted his father’s enthusiasm for sport ‘Dad was sports-mad and that’s where he got his drama from — he didn’t need books.’ It was Eric’s teacher back in the 1940s who helped him explore and develop his interest in story writing. ‘We had to stand up in class and tell stories, and the first time I did it I spoke for an hour — I couldn’t stop; all these words just poured out of me. I based my story on all the different books I’d borrowed from the library, although I added some ideas of my own. All the other kids enjoyed my stories so much I was asked to do it on a weekly basis.’

As the school years passed and Eric moved on to secondary education, other interests took priority. ‘Sport took over as time went on,’ he admits, 'and we did little serious English at secondary school, so any thought of writing took a back seat for awhile.’ It wasn’t until Eric had left school and started working for the East Midlands Electricity Board that he returned to his stories. 'I was in my mid-twenties and studying accountancy, which was pretty soul destroying. I wasn't a good bookkeeper. I was fine with the essays on law and economics, things like that, but struggled with my maths and accountancy. I got very depressed and failed my finals, so I thought, "Sod this! I'll do what I want to do with my life." '

Kismet by Jakob Arjouni (Melville International Crime 2001)

May 1998

Slibulsky and I were crammed into the china cupboard, emptied for the purpose, of a small Brazilian restaurant on the outskirts of the Frankfurt railway station district, waiting for a couple of racketeers to show up demanding protection money.

The cupboard was about one metre twenty wide and seventy centimetres deep. Neither Slibulsky nor I would be giving the clothing industry cause for concern about the sales of their XL sizes. Furthermore, we were wearing bulletproof vests, and when it came to the crunch we hoped at least to get a pistol and a shotgun into position where we wouldn’t shoot ourselves in the foot or blast our own heads off. I could just imagine the racketeers entering the restaurant, hearing pitiful cries in the corner after a while, and opening the cupboard door to find two total idiots squashed inside, arms and legs flailing helplessly. And I pictured Romario’s face at this sight. Romario was the owner and manager of the Saudade, and he had appealed to me for help.

. . . .

‘Slibulsky?’

‘Hm?’ Brief, unemotional. The sweet he was sucking clicked against his teeth.

‘What did you have for supper?’

‘Supper? What do you mean? Can’t remember.’

‘

You don’t remember what was on the plate in front of you a few hours ago?’

He cleared his throat, the way other people might give a little whistle or roll their eyes, indicating that they’ll try to answer your question in friendly tones, but naturally it doesn’t for a moment interest them.

‘Let’s see … oh yes, I know. Cheese. Handkäse. That was it. Gina went shopping this morning and …’

‘Handkäse with onions.’ And you can’t get much smellier than Handkäse anyway.

‘Of course with onions. You don’t eat cheese with strawberries, do you?’

I put a good deal of effort into giving him as contemptuous a glance as I could in the dim light of the cupboard.

‘Didn’t I tell you we’d be spending some time together in this hole?’

‘Yup, I believe you did mention it. Although I remembered the cupboard as kind of larger.’

‘Oh yes? Like how large? I mean, how big does a cupboard have to be for two people, one of whom has just been stuffing himself with onions, to breathe easily inside it?’

In what little light filtered through the keyhole and some cracks in the sides of the cupboard, I saw Slibulsky make a face. ‘I thought we were here to scare off some sort of Mafia characters? With our guns and bulletproof vests, like the good guys we are. But maybe Miss Kayankaya fancies running a hairdressing salon instead of a detective agency?’

What did I say to that? Best ignore it. I told him, ‘I’ve got sweat running down my face and into my mouth, I have a feeling your stink is condensing, and I don’t reckon the good guys have to put up with other people farting.’

Slibulsky chuckled.

Cursing quietly, I bent to look through the keyhole. I could see Romario’s bandaged arm the other side of it. He was sitting at the bar doing something with a calculator and a notepad, as if cashing up for the evening after closing the restaurant. In fact he was too nervous to add up so much as the price of a couple of beers. They’d paid him their first visit a week ago: two strikingly well-dressed young men not much older than twenty-five, waving pistols and a note saying: This is a polite request for your monthly donation of 6,000 DM to the Army of Reason, payable on the first of each month. Thanking you in advance. They didn’t say a word, they just smiled – at least until Romario had read the note, handed it back, and believing, not least in view of the sheer size of the sum, that he was dealing with a couple of novices said, ‘Sorry, I don’t see how I can go along with your request.’

Whereupon they stopped smiling, shoved the barrels of their pistols into his belly, crumpled up the note, stuffed it into Romario’s mouth and forced him to chew and swallow it. Then they wrote Back the day after tomorrow on the bar in black felt pen, and went away.

How to be Good by Nick Hornby (Penguin Books 2001)

I am in a car park in Leeds when I tell my husband I don't want to be married to him any more. David isn't even in the car park with me. He's at home, looking after the kids, and I have only called him to remind him that he should write a note for Molly's class teacher. The other bit just sort of . . . slips out. This is a mistake, obviously. Even though I am, apparently, and to my immense surprise, the kind of person who tells her husband that she doesn't want to be married to him any more, I really didn't think that I was the kind of person to say so in a car park, on a mobile phone. That particular self-assessment will now have to be revised, clearly. I can describe myself as the kind of person who doesn't forget names, for example, because I have remembered names thousands of times and forgotten them only once or twice. But for the majority of people, marriage-ending conversations happen only once, if at all. If you choose to conduct yours on a mobile phone, in a Leeds car park, then you cannot really claim that it is unrepresentative, in the same way that Lee Harvey Oswald couldn't really claim that shooting presidents wasn't like him at all. Sometimes we have to be judged by our one-offs.

The Anatomy School by Bernard MacLaverty (W.W. Norton & Company 2001)

'OK - it's not Banquo who fucks things up, it's MacBeth,' said Blaise. He too was chewing at the stem of a piece of grass now, biting fragments off it and spitting them out. 'We are all like a man rowing a boat. We have our backs to the way we're going. We can't look ahead, can't see the future. All we can see is the past behind us.'

'Very good,' said Kavanagh. 'But not so the canoeist.' They all laughed.

Blaise joined his hands and cradled them behind his head and said, 'Where do you think we'll be three or four years from now?'

'What a crass question,' said Martin.

'It'll be easier looking back. Three or four years from now you'll say - remember that day we mitched off to the Waterworks.' They thought about this in silence. Clouds covered the sun and their shadow could be seen moving on the hills. The water sounded continually at the lake edge.

Stone Cold Red Hot by Cath Staincliffe (Allison and Busby 2001)

My first impression of Roger Pickering was of nervous tension. He stood on the doorstep, hiding behind his fringe of light brown hair, eyes cast anywhere but at me.
"Sal Kilkenny?" He managed to get my name out.
"Yes, MrPickering. Please come in."
I led him along the hall and downstairs to my office in the cellar. With the self-absorption of the painfully shy, he made no small talk, no comment on our location, and politely refused coffee.

This Little Ziggy by Martin Newell (House of Stratus 2001)

We have no extradition treaties with the past. That is, we can't bring our younger selves back into the present to account for our doings there. At best, all we may have are a few scribbled notes on faded paper and perhaps a handful of faded Polaroids to tell us that events ever really happened at all. These recollections begin in the late summer of 1964 and end in the early spring of 1975. They are not, therefore, an autobiography as such.

Border Crossing by Pat Barker (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2001)

Three children were saved that day. A man glances up from his newspaper, see what's going on, acts on what he sees. Accident. A more interesting news story, a thicker coat of dirt on the bus window, a disinclination to intervene, and it might have ended differently. In tragedy, perhaps. It might have. He didn't know. It was his good fortune not to know.

Little Green Man by Simon Armitage (Penguin Books 2001)

It was the start of the summer. I was sixteen. I got a job in a cardboard-box factory, worked eight till seven every day and Saturday mornings as well. It was a shit job with shit pay, but there was nothing else to do, and anyway I was saving up for America. Stubbs and the others, they'd still got a year to do. It was the holidays but I only saw them at night, a game of soccer in the schoolyard before it went dark or a bottle of cider in the bandstand. Then it was winter - they'd got their homework, I'd got my cardboard boxes. I was wishing my life away, waiting for my friends. Twelve months went by, until the day arrived. At three-thirty I turned up at the school gates with the same lighter. The summer stretched out in front. A summer like the year before last, the five of us going wild all over again. Then America, me and Stubbs and the rest if they wanted to come. Thumbing it from state to state. Occasional jobs. Getting into situations, getting out of scrapes. That was the plan, and today was the first day. I waited, but Stubbs didn't show. He'd sloped off across the playing fields. Like a traitor. And Tony Football went by on the top deck of a school bus, looking the other way. Like a thief. And Winkie was ill. I clenched the little green man in my fist, dug my nails into the jade. Only Pompous turned up, his blazer torn to shreds by the rest of the morons in his remedial set.

'Barney. Throw me the lighter.'

'Where are the others?'

'No idea.'

'Where's Stubbs? I told him I'd meet him here to do the business.'

'I don't know, all right? But he's not going to want his jacket tatching, is he?'

'Why not?'

Not if he's staying on next year. What's he going to come to school in - his vest?'

Hieroglyphics by Anne Donovan (Canongate Books 2001)

Ma mammy thoat ah wis daft, naw, no daft exactly, no the way wee Helen fae doon the street wis. Ah mean she didnae even go tae the same school as us an she couldnae talk right an she looked at ye funny and aw the weans tried tae avoid playin wi her in the street. Ma mammy knew ah could go the messages an dae stuff roond the hoose and talk tae folk, ah wis jist daft at school subjects, the wans that that involved readin or writin oanyway. Fur a while efter she went up tae see the teacher ah got some extra lessons aff the Remmy wummin but ah hated it. She wis nice tae me at furst but then when ah couldnae dae the hings she wis geein me she began tae get a bit scunnered. A hink she thoat A wis lazy, and ah could never tell them aboot the letters diddlin aboot, and oanyway, naebdy ever asked me whit it wis like. They gave me aw these tests an heard ma readin and tellt ma ma ah hud a readin age of 6.4 an a spellin age of 5.7 and Goad knows whit else, but naebdy ever asked me whit wis gaun oan in ma heid. So ah never tellt them.

(From the short story, 'Hieroglyphics'.)

Right As Rain by George P. Pelecanos (Warner Books 2001)

You're not the first person who's thought of those things. So why isn't anyone talking about it for real?"

"Cause you put all those politicians down on the Hill in one room and you can't find one set of nuts swingin' between the legs of any of 'em. Even the ones who know what's got to be done, they realize that comin' out in favor of drug legalization and handgun illegalization will kill their careers. And the rest of them are in the pockets of the gun lobby. Meantime, nearly half the black men in this city have either been incarcerated or are in jail now."

"You tellin' me it's a black thing?"

"I'm tellin' you it's a money thing. We got two separate societies in this country, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots is gettin' wider every day. And the really frustrating thing is -"

"No one cares,' said Quinn.

"Not exactly. You got mentors, community activists, church groups out there, they're tryin', man, believe me. But it's not enough. More to the point, some people care, but most people care about the wrong things.

"Look, why does a dumb-ass, racist disc jockey make the front page and the leadoff on the TV news for weeks, when the murder of teenage black children gets buried in the back of the Metro section every day? Why do my own people write columns year after year in the Washington Post, complainin' that black actors don't get nominated for any Academy Awards, when they should be writin' every goddamn day about the fucked-up schools in this city, got no supplies, leaking roofs, and fifteen-year-old textbooks. You got kids walkin' to school in this city afraid for their lives, and once they get there they got one security guard lookin' after five hundred children. How many bodyguards you think the mayor's got, huh?"

"I don't know, Derek. You askin' me?"

"I'm makin' a point."

"You gotta relax," said Quinn. "Guy your age, you could stroke out . . ."

"Aw, fuck you, man."

Aberystwyth Mon Amour by Malcolm Pryce (Bloomsbury 2001)

'So Bronzini and Llewellyn would have had plenty of enemies, and Brainbocs wouldn't say boo to a goose?'

'Just about. Although even Brainbocs had a few enemies.'

'Really?'

'Brainbocs got a Saturday job working at the rock factory - helping out in the R & D unit after hours. He became interested in the great age-old puzzle of rock manufacturing, called D Quincey's Theorem. It's very complicated, but basically it concerns the attempt to change the wording of the letters midway through the rock. You know, it starts off saying Blackpool and then after a few mouthfuls it says Zanzibar or something. It's one of the last great challenges of the rock-marker's art. And he cracked it. Just like that. Sat down with a pen and paper and a set of log tables and worked it out. So then the management make him head of R & D and within a week - and the kid is still in school, don't forget, hasn't even done his O levels - within a week he'd found a way of computer type-setting the letters. Saved a fortune: twenty old-timers were thrown out of work the same afternoon. Entire factory closes down on strike. The Unions say, "Get rid of the kid, or you'll never make another stick of rock in this town" So they fire the kid. His parting shot was forty cases of rock that said "Aberystwyth" and then after two mouthfuls read: "I've pissed in this rock".'

Tepper Isn't Going Out by Calvin Trillin (Random House 2001)

"I wouldn't have thought you were a reader of the East Village Rag." Tepper said. "Is there something I've missed about you all these years?"
My niece sent it to me," Gordon said. "She lives on Rivington Street. I don't know if that's included in what they call the East Village. We still call it the Lower East Side. You don't even want to know what she paid for the apartment. A co-op. A co-op on Rivington Street! I told her that her great-grandparents worked sixteen hours a day just to get out of Rivington Street. What was cooperative about those buildings when they lived in them was the bathroom. Now whatever miserable cold-water flat my grandparents lived in has probably been made into a co-op. For all we know, that may be her co-op. She may be paying thousands to live in the place her great-grandparents worked themselves to death so their children wouldn't have to live in. What a city."

Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich (Metropolitan Books 2001)

Guilt, you may be thinking, warily. Isn't that what we're supposed to feel? But guilt doesn't go anywhere near far enough; the appropriate emotion is shame - shame at our own dependency, in this case, at the underpaid labor of others. When someone works for less pay than she can live on - when she, for example, goes hungry so you can eat more cheaply and conveniently - then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The "working poor", as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else. As Gail, one of my restaurant co-workers put it, "you give and you give and you give."

Someday of course - and I will venture no predictions as to when - they are bound to tire of giving so little in return, and demand to be paid what they're worth. There'll be a lot of anger when that day comes, and strikes and disruption. But the sky will not fall, and we will all be better off for it in the end.