Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [232]
Something on my mind. Peace-fighting, something to do with…ah!
Not a good time – but then, there never would be a good time.
I hurried to catch up with him.
‘Reid, old boy,’ I said, from behind his shoulder, ‘I have a bone to pick with you.’
His shoulder twitched up. He didn’t turn. ‘OK, man. Whatever.’
‘Well, the fact is, Annette told me about, you know, you. And her.’
‘Oh!’ He stopped and faced me.
I stopped, leaning against the railing. Hundreds of feet below, the water gleamed like hammered lead. Reid fumbled out a cigarette, dropped it, picked it up and lit it.
‘What can I say?’ he said. He spread his hands, swayed, and laid his right hand on the parapet. ‘It happened, what’s the use denying it, and it was my fault, and I’m sorry.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘That’s all you have to say.’
‘You’re…’ He drew hard on the cigarette, cupped glowing in his left hand. ‘You’re a good bloke, Jon. She deserves you. And you deserved better of me. I abused your…hospitality, man. No excuse, except it was just fucking…’
His voice trailed off and he looked away from me, out at the distance.
‘Just fucking?’
‘…obsession, man, that’s the word.’ He laughed harshly. ‘I wish I could say it was just fucking.’
He looked back at me. The smoke was suddenly foul in my mouth. I sent the red ember spinning over the side, and watched its long slow fall.
‘But I can’t,’ he went on. ‘I’m not saying that wasn’t wrong, but there was more than that. I once even tried to get her to leave you, if you can believe that. But she wouldn’t, and she was right, and that was the end of it. Over. And I got over her, and she got over me.’
From that moment I’ve known that I’m capable of murder. He had one hand on the parapet, one at his side still holding the cigarette. He was again gazing into the distance. A grab for the collar and the belt, one good heave, and he would be over. It would have been easy, and I could have done it.
He turned to me. ‘That was when she told you, right?’ There was something of admiration and cunning in his eyes. ‘I know, because that’s when all the right-wing shit started arriving, from the Contras and Renamo and East European emigrés and the KMT and the NTS. Mixing it in with the old commies and the libertarians was a neat trick, but I got the message all right. You know some heavy guys, and they know where I live.’ He laughed harshly. ‘I’ve got to hand it to you, Jon, you had me scared.’
I took a step towards him and punched straight for his mouth. It was a good punch – my childhood boxing-lessons hadn’t been wasted – and he reacted with a hopelessly slow, country-boy, haymaking swing.
But his connected, and mine didn’t. I was slammed against the railing. The top edge hit my lower ribcage and suddenly I was leaning away over it, looking straight down. Straight up, for an unreal moment, as my semi-circular canals turned over and the universe followed them round.
And then I was sick. A Mexican meal, a dozen pints, two whiskies, a portion of curried chips and the tar from a score of Silk Cut and one Mexican cigarillo poured through my mouth and nostrils in a cascade that spattered walkways and ladders and disturbed roosting birds before it fell, with literally sickening slowness, visible all the way, to the water.
‘Are you all right?’
I pushed myself away from the railing.
‘I’m all right,’ I said. I blew a fragment of taco and a gobbet of spicy slime from my left nostril onto my fingers, then balled my fist for another go at him.
His eyes widened, but he was looking past me. Brakes squealed. A van pulled up beside us, on the footpath, not on the road.
The door opened and a man in a boiler-suit leaned out.
‘Come on, lads,’ he said. ‘We’ve been keeping an eye on you two. You look like you could do with a lift.’
THE CONQUEST OF VIOLENCE
9
Circuit Judgement