Trainspotting - Irvine Welsh [59]
— Ah have to go, she said firmly.
Dianne departed, leaving Renton feeling empty and confused. He got onto the couch, pulled the sleeping-bag around him and zipped up. He lay awake in the dark, trying to define the contents of the room.
Renton imagined Dianne’s flatmates to be dour bastards who disapproved of her bringing someone back. Perhaps, he decided, she didn’t want them to think that she would pick up a strange guy, bring him back and just fuck him like that. He bolstered his ego by telling himself that it was his sparkling wit and his unique, if flawed, beauty, which had swept her resistance away. He almost believed himself.
Eventually he fell into a fitful sleep, characterised by some strange dreams. While he was prone to such weird dreams, these disturbed him as they were particularly vivid and surprisingly easy to recall. He was chained to a wall in a white room lit by blue neon, watching Yoko Ono and Gordon Hunter, the Hibs defender, munching on the flesh and bones of human bodies which lay dismembered on a series of large formica-topped tables. They were both hurling horrendous insults at him, their mouths dripping with blood as they tore at strips of flesh and chewed heartily between curses. Renton knew that he was next on the tables. He tried to do a bit of crawling to ‘Geebsie’ Hunter, telling him that he was a big fan of his, but the Easter Road defender lived up to his uncompromising tag and just laughed in his face. It was a great relief when the dream changed and Renton found himself naked, covered in runny shite and eating a plate of egg, tomato and fried bread with a fully clothed Sick Boy by the Water of Leith. Then he dreamt that he was being seduced by a beautiful woman who was wearing only a two-piece swimsuit made out of Alcan foil. The woman was in fact a man, and they were fucking each other slowly through different holes in their bodies which oozed a substance resembling shaving foam.
He woke to the sound of cutlery clinking and the smell of bacon frying. He caught a glance of the back of a woman, not Dianne, disappearing into a small kitchen which was just off the living room. Then he felt a spasm of fear as he heard a man’s voice. The last thing Renton wanted to hear, hungover, in a strange place, wearing only his keks, was a male voice. He played at being asleep.
Surreptitiously, under his eyelids, he noted a guy about his height, maybe smaller, edging into the kitchen. Although they spoke in low voices, he could still hear them.
— So Dianne’s brought another friend back, the man said. Renton didn’t like the slightly mocking intonation on the term ‘friend’.
— Mmm. But shush. Don’t you start being unpleasant, and jumping to the wrong conclusions again.
He heard them coming back into the front room, then leaving it. Quickly, he pulled on his t-shirt and jumper. Then he unzipped the bag and threw his legs off the couch and jumped into his jeans, almost in one movement. Folding the sleeping-bag neatly, he stuck the settee’s displaced cushions back where they belonged. His socks and trainers were smelly as he put them on. He hoped, but in a futility that was obvious to him, that nobody else had noticed.
Renton was too nervy to feel badly wasted. He was aware of the hangover though; it lurked in the shadows of his psyche like an infinitely patient mugger, just biding its time before coming out to stomp him.
— Hello. The woman who wasn’t Dianne came back in.
She was pretty with nice big eyes and a fine, pointed jawline. He thought he recognised her face from somewhere.
— Hiya. Ah’m Mark, by the way, he said. She declined to introduce herself. Instead, she sought more information about him.
— So you’re a friend of Dianne’s? Her tone was slightly aggressive. Renton decided to play safe and tell a lie which wouldn’t sound too blatant, and therefore could be delivered with some conviction. The problem was that he had developed the junky’s skill of lying with conviction and could now lie more convincingly than he told the truth. He faltered, thinking that you can always take the junk out