Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh [133]
What chews Sick Boy up the most, however, is the state of Spud and Renton. They were obviously smacked out of their eyeballs. It was just like these bastards to fuck up. Renton, who has now been clean for ages, since long before he packed in his London job and came back up, could not resist that uncut Colombian brown Seeker had supplied them with. It was the real thing, he had argued, a once-in-a-lifetime hit for an Edinburgh junky used to cheap Pakistani heroin. Spud, as always, had gone along for the ride.
That was Spud. His effortless ability to transform the most innocent of pastimes into criminality always amazed Sick Boy. Even in his Ma’s womb, you would have had to define Spud less as a foetus, more as a set of dormant drug and personality problems. He’d probably draw the polis onto them through knocking a salt-cellar out of the Little Chef. Forget Begbie, he bitterly reflects, if one cunt is going to mess up the gig, it’ll be Spud.
Sick Boy looks harshly at Second Prize; this nickname resulting from his drink-fuelled fantasy that he could fight, and the attendant disastrous results. Second Prize’s sport had not been boxing, but football. He was a Scotland schoolboy international star of remarkable ability, who went south to Manchester United at the age of sixteen. By then, he already had an embryonic drink problem. One of soccer’s unsung miracles was how Second Prize had managed to wring two years from the club before being kicked back to Scotland. The conventional wisdom was that Second Prize had wasted a great talent. Sick Boy understood the harsher truth, however. Second Prize was a mass of despair; in terms of his life as a whole, footballing ability was a frivolous deviation rather than alcoholism a cruel curse.
They file onto the bus, Renton and Spud moving in the smack-head’s freeze-frame manner. They are as disorientated by the sequence of events as they are by the junk. There they were, pulling off the big one, and heading for a break in Paris. All they had to do was to convert the smack into hard cash, which had all been set up by Andreas in London. Sick Boy, though, had greeted them like a sinkful of dirty dishes. He was obviously in a bad mood and Sick Boy believed that the nasty things in life should be shared.
As he climbs onto the bus, Sick Boy hears a voice call his name.
— Simon.
— No that hoor again, he curses under his breath, before noting a younger girl. He shouts: — Git ma seat Franco, ah’ll just be a minute.
Taking his seat, Bebgie feels hatred, fused with more than a twinge of jealousy, as he watches a young girl in a blue cagoul hold hands with Sick Boy.
— That cunt n his fuckin aboot wi fanny’ll fuck us aw up! he snarls at Renton, who looks bemused.
Begbie tries to define the girl’s shape through the cagoul. He’d admired her before. He fantasises what he’d like to do with her. He notes her face is even prettier when understated without make-up. It is hard to focus on Sick Boy, but Begbie sees his mouth turned down and his eyes opened wide in contrived sincerity. Begbie gets more and more anxious until he is ready to just get up and drag Sick Boy onto the bus. As he goes to haul himself out off the seat, he sees Sick Boy is coming back onto the vehicle, staring balefully out of the windows.
They are sitting at the back of the bus, beside the chemical toilet which already smells of spilled pish. Second Prize has cornered the back seat for himself and his carry-out. Spud and Renton sit in front of him, with Begbie and Sick Boy ahead of them.
— That wis Tam McGregor’s wee lassie, Sick Boy, eh? Renton’s face grins idiotically at him through the gap between