“The Bench”

“My jaw hurts,” Nicky says.

“Well don’t move it,” I say.

I look at Mikey. He grins and lights a cigarette.

“We had a good one last night then, boys?” I ask.

My memories of the night before pretty much end when we stumbled off the train into Edinburgh Waverley station. And they are showing no signs of returning in the near future.

“Got in a scrap with some nutters on the way back, didn’t we.” Nicky fingers his jaw. He is that pale he looks like some kid has used sky-blue tribal paint to decorate the ridges of his nose. “Plus, I found a bag of coke in my sock this morning.”

Nicky is from South London. He has cocaine and Mayfair’s for breakfast, and a punch-up and a police chase by noon. But only on the weekends.

“Except it’s not coke,” says Mikey. “Tastes like fucking peppermint.”

“Whatever it is,” says Nicky, “I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know if I bought it, stole it, found it, or traded it. Fuck knows.”

His hand returns to his jaw. “My jaw hurts,” he says again.

“Stop moving it then.”

His high-pitched cockney whine is starting to piss me off. This also might be down to the fact that I am feeling utterly fucking vile—it is cold, damp, and they have pretty much dragged me up here to sit outside the Edinburgh University Student’s Union to ‘meet’ girls when I’d rather still be in bed nursing this mother of a hangover.

Mikey catches my eye, “Where’s the women around here then?”

Mikey is from Bournemouth, has the charm of your drunken uncle at a wedding, and seems to think that any shot I buy him is really snake venom.

I check the time, “Mikey it’s ten in the morning, we’re here shivering on a bench outside the SU of a University none of us even go to, drinking Fanta and chain smoking. They are hardly gonna be queuing up to massage Nicky’s jaw, are they?”

Nicky kicks me under the table. “Pointless anyway. I only came up here to see some tits. And at the moment, if I cast my rod into the sea of clunge, all I’m gonna catch is an old boot.”

“Like a steak from Wetherspoons,” Mikey adds.

“But then I suppose I could tempt them in with my charm and excessive

merchandise,” and Nicky takes the bag of powder from his sock and puts it on the table. The bag is ridiculously big for the size of its contents. It’s more like a sack.

“What are you gonna say?” I ask him. “ ‘Alright darling. If you show me your boobs I’ll give you some sherbet I stole off a kid last night’.”

“It tastes like peppermint,” he says, “not sherbet.”

“You need to go back to bed,” I say. “You’re missing the point.”

But instead of taking my advice, Nicky opens the bag, sticks his snout in like a racoon, and sniffs—

He emerges with a wrinkled nose and one eye open. He passes the bag to me, “It’s not too bad actually. Better than last night. Tuck in.”

And so I stick my own nostrils in the bag of fuck-knows-what from fuck-knows-where and snort. Whatever it is, it makes my eyes water. But it does more to wake me up than the Fanta and cigarettes.

I pass it to Mikey. “It has the texture of flour. I think I might honk up a cake in a minute. Nicky, are you sure you didn’t buy this from an off-licence, pour it in a slightly suspicious bag, and try to pass it off as cocaine in the nightclub?”

“Nah, James got it, didn’t he.”

Mikey emerges from the bag with powder on his eyebrows, “I thought you didn’t know where it came from?”

“I’ve just remembered. James gave it to me outside the toilets.”

“Hang on,” I say. “Where the fuck is James?”

The two of them look around as if expecting him to be suddenly sitting next to us. Then they both shrug.

“We lost him on the way home,” says Nicky.

“In fact it was him who got us in the fight,” adds Mikey. “But anyway, you were the last one to see him.”

“Mikey, that girl over there has a better idea of what happened last night than I do.”

They both spin around to have a look. The girl in question, who has just come out of the SU with a coffee, sees them looking and walks quicker.

“Ask her if she wants some flour,” I say to Nicky.

He rubbs his jaw again, frowning. “Forget the flour that might or might not be cocaine, forget the fight, forget James. I think we need to decide what to do with these,” and he takes a set of keys from his jacket pocket.

“Where did they come from?”

“Fuck,” says Mikey. “I forgot about the car.”

“Car?” I say. “What car? We don’t have a car.”

“It’s just an old Astra,” says Nicky. “We couldn’t find a taxi rank, so I think we just borrowed a car.”

“What do mean, borrowed? Are you saying we walked past an old Astra with the keys in the ignition at stupid o’clock in the morning and decided to borrow it?”

“Yep,” says Nicky.

“Fuck. Which one of us drove?”

“Well James wanted to,” says Nicky, “but as he doesn’t have a licence anymore, hasn’t driven for a year, and crashed last time he did a bit of drink driving— I drove instead.”

“And you still crashed,” laughed Mikey.

“Hang on. So James was still with us at this point?” I say.

“Yeah. The fight happened outside the kebab shop. We procured the car to get there.”

I light a cigarette and spit out a chunk of congealed cocaine/flour that has dripped down the back of my throat. “So not only did we steal a car, but we drove it to a kebab shop—”

“Wait,” says Mikey. “Nah, it was a Maccy Ds. I’ve got half a cheeseburger in my pocket.” And he pulls out a crumpled, red-stained wrapper. “Breakfast!”

“Whatever,” I say. “How the fuck did we not get stopped?”

“Nicky is lucky,” says Mikey. “That’s why he always does the drink driving.”

I think about it— about all the drunken nights I could actually remember. “That is true,” I say. “Although completely illogical and ridiculous. Plus, didn’t you crash the car anyway Nicky?”

“Nah, it was just a scratch.”

I looked at Mikey.

“Yeah, it was just a scratch. You were asleep in the back anyway.”

“Not surprising. I was fuck-eyed. I still don’t understand why I don’t remember anything at all, though.”

They look at each other.

“What?”

They look at each other again. Mikey starts laughing.

“What?”

“Erm,” begins Nicky, “we may have sort of put something in your drink on the train when you went for a piss.”

“Fucking cunts. What the hell was it?”

“Well, we thought it was Viagra,” says Mikey.

“It obviously fucking wasn’t, was it? Why did you put it in my drink?”

“It’s your birthday, innit,” says Nicky.

“Yeah, two days ago.”

“Don’t blame us. Your old man gave it to us when we were in London. He said to put it in your drink before we went out. He thought it was Viagra, so you better inform him it isn’t before he goes missing too.”

“That old bastard,” I say. “But I suppose I should have seen it coming. On his last birthday, I put an ecstasy pill in his JD and Coke.”

“Brutal!”

“Yeah, we have a liberal relationship. It sometimes get’s out of hand.”

I light another cigarette. At least I am alive. And to be honest, Nicky’s drunk driving is fucking scary, I don’t like fights, and I probably made a fool of myself by taking my clothes off or something—so all in all, my old man had done me a favour.

“Well, that’s one riddle sorted,” I say. “But we still don’t know how we came across the bag of flour in Nicky’s sock, or where the fuck James is.”

“Don’t forget the car,” says Mikey.

“What about it?”

“Me and Nicky can’t remember where we ditched it before getting home.”

“Well I assume you would have driven right to the hotel door?”

Nicky nods. “We did! But it wasn’t there this morning.”

*

James turns up about half an hour later.

Still wearing the same clothes, looking like he has spent the night in a hedge, and sporting a black eye, he casually walks up to our bench and sits down next to me as if this was all arranged and nothing out of the ordinary has happened.

“Where the fuck have you been?” I say.

He yawns—“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean ‘what do you mean’??”

“Give us a fag. I’ve lost mine.”

Mikey hands him a cigarette. Nicky holds the bag of cocaine/flour out to him.

“What’s that?”

“The drugs that you gave me last night.”

“Oh yeah.”

“James, where did you get that shit from?” says Mikey.

“Found it in a coat.” He blinks—somehow he has managed to get powder in his eyelashes. James is a Geordie and a nutcase with serious nasal problems. Of the chemical type. Although he has somehow managed to bag himself a model for a girlfriend.

“Whose coat?” says Nicky.

“Well I thought it was mine. But the dude in the cloakroom gave me someone else’s by accident.” He adjusts his jacket. “It’s not bad actually.”

“It suits you more than the black eye,” I say.

“Yeah,” Nicky punches him in the arm. “Thanks to you mouthing off, I’ve got a busted jaw.”

“The fucker stole my chips. And you should have ducked.”

“Nicky, stop moaning. I want to know where this Geordie bastard has been all night.”

James sticks his nose back in the bag. When he comes up for air, he says, “You lot drove off without me. I couldn’t remember where the hotel was so just started walking down a road. Then the pigs pull up and search me.”

“Why?”

“Dunno. Probably cos I was walking in the middle of the road.”

“Well it’s a good job you put Nicky in charge of the cocaine/flour,” says Mikey.

“Yeah, all they found on me was fifteen condoms.”

“Why did you have fifteen condoms on you?”

James jerks a thumb at Nicky—“That twat made me buy about eight packets in the toilet. Seemed to think we were gonna get lucky at the party. I had to convince the coppers that I wasn’t looking for a prostitute.”

“What party?” I say. “We didn’t go to a party.”

They look at me like I have just said I am a raving homosexual and want to give them all blow jobs.

“He doesn’t remember anything,” Mikey says.

“Of course I fucking don’t. You twats spiked me.”

“I think that’s where we borrowed the car from,” says Nicky. “In fact, yeah it was—James you stole the keys from that girl’s mantelpiece.”

“The car that could be anywhere,” I say.

“What do you mean?” says James. It’s just down the road. I kipped in it.”

“You did what?”

“I was wandering around lost for ages, and I just stumbled on the car we borrowed left half on a curb with the driver’s door open. Climbed in and fell asleep. And I think you crashed it, Nicky.”

“Nah, just a scratch.”

“Well it’s a fucking big scratch.”

We all light cigarettes. A bunch of arsehole degenerates, of the worst sort. Nicky says, “My jaw hurts,” again, James puts his nose in the bag, and Mikey goes to get more Fanta.

*

In this manner and over the course of the remaining day, the situation unravels—until once again there is nothing left to unravel at all, save the immutable question of why we are so powerless to stop behaving like such a bunch of reprobates in the first place.