The Sleepwalkers, page 14
I Jess think Marcus needs to see a doll.
SPEAKER 1
Yes baby that’s sad funny I can see it.
EVIE MASTERS
Yes, well, eat up, Richard!
SPEAKER 1
Of auntie!
EVIE MASTERS
Yes, Avanti!
RICHARD LAWSON
That was a delicious steak, Isabella.
Thank you.
SPEAKER 3
It was enough for me it was from senior Marcus.
Sound of plates being cleared away.
Silence.
Footsteps.
21:34
SPEAKER 4
Para Carlo.
SPEAKER 5
Okay.
SPEAKER 4
Get your key.
Sound of footsteps.
SPEAKER 3
We live photo?
SPEAKER 5
You’re not fucking serious?
SPEAKER 4
Crystals, silver plate!
SPEAKER 5
This is a fucked-up miss! This cycle path sister tying all the evidence in string because it amuses him and Gibson are hard on.
SPEAKER 4
Family la bush, Christos.
SPEAKER 5
No! Not anymore. Yeah make it more give sleepy walkers a slipping peels and then dumpy down the sea.
SPEAKER 3
Scuzzy! You mess never Mercedes.
Mustard Mercedes.
SPEAKER 4
Shut your mouth, Crystals.
SPEAKER 5
You are a traffic cone, it’s a Bella. This is what the world is now discovering. It is not Claire knew.
SPEAKER 4
Crystals, for God’s sake.
SPEAKER 3
If I could get out of this I would I’m just as chat as you I’m still be paying my own debt.
SPEAKER 5
All because of this goddamn little vampire.
Footsteps.
22:01
The door creaks.
Footsteps.
SPEAKER 4
Be more careful what you say.
SPEAKER 5
I’m not doing this anymore!
SPEAKER 4
Do you have a good choice, idiot.
SPEAKER 5
If this is going to be made into a movie we are all screwed.
SPEAKER 4
You would not dare you’d go to please on.
SPEAKER 5
Yeah? And so with you. All of you.
SPEAKER 3
You are here. Why? And what is the meaning of this? You have been recording us. Why? Please, you must tell me how to switch off and delete.
EVIE MASTERS
Why? I thought you had no secrets here. I thought everything was public and open?
SPEAKER 3
Please.
EVIE MASTERS
That’s mine.
SPEAKER 3
Tell me how can I do it. Then you have back.
EVIE MASTERS
No. Keep it. I have the recording online anyway.
SPEAKER 3
This is an invasion of privacy. You have accidentally recorded very private things.
EVIE MASTERS
Yeah? I bet I’m not the only one. You’ve been listening to us since we arrived. Do you get off on it somehow? And what have you done with a notebook I left in my womb?
SPEAKER 3
Are you coming to bed, Richard?
05:30
SPEAKER 3
You do want me. I do not imagine?
RICHARD LAWSON
You do not imagine.
SPEAKER 3
Please. You would like water?
RICHARD LAWSON
Yes. Thank you.
05:43
SPEAKER 3
You like?
RICHARD LAWSON
Yes I never.
SPEAKER 3
Like this more?
RICHARD LAWSON
Oh yes.
SPEAKER 3
Oh Richard.
RICHARD LAWSON
Where is EV?
SPEAKER 3
I should put this pho somewhere.
RICHARD LAWSON
Is it still the recording?
06:01
Knocking at door.
SPEAKER 3
Yes please wait there.
06:03
SPEAKER 3
Richard. Wake up!
RICHARD LAWSON
What’s happened?
SPEAKER 3
It is your wife. A violin.
RICHARD LAWSON
Oh my God. Is she OK?
SPEAKER 3
They have not found her. I Moscow.
06:07
SPEAKER 3
You will stay here, for only good.
RICHARD LAWSON
Sorry?
SPEAKER 3
Darling Richard I am going to lock you in because you must not go after the storm it is still so bad. EV hasn’t been seen since the airport.
RICHARD LAWSON
I don’t understand.
SPEAKER 3
I will come back with a violin soon.
RICHARD LAWSON
But what about you? What about us?
SPEAKER 3
The patient, darling.
06:12
Sounds of paper rustling.
Sounds of pen on paper.
11:15
Knocking sound.
RICHARD LAWSON
Hello? Who’s there?
11:18
Knocking sound.
EVIE MASTERS
Richard? Richard?
11:22
Knocking sound.
EVIE MASTERS
Richard!
RICHARD LAWSON
Evie? Where are you?
EVIE MASTERS
I’m in the store cupboard next to you. I’m locked on. What the fuck’s happening?
RICHARD LAWSON
What store cubby. Where?
EVIE MASTERS
It’s like some kind of drum cover or something. I’ve been banging on trying to get attention for ages. The door’s locked. What the fuck’s going in?
RICHARD LAWSON
I really don’t know. It’s a Bella said she went to rescue.
EVIE MASTERS
You have to speak up Richard I can’t hear you properly through the war.
RICHARD LAWSON
Well are you rescued where did you go why didn’t you leave a note why are you locked in?
EVIE MASTERS
What? Seriously?
RICHARD LAWSON
What’s that supposed to mean?
EVIE MASTERS
I left you a long letter.
RICHARD LAWSON
Well where is it?
EVIE MASTERS
Maybe you should ask for a bell and. I inspect she got all of my notes by now or oh my God the dapple little man I bet he got them somehow.
RICHARD LAWSON
The dapple little man why would he have them?
EVIE MASTERS
Because he’s a collector he collects everything that’s what he gets so fun.
RICHARD LAWSON
I’ve been I’ve been writing your letter actually.
EVIE MASTERS
What is it say?
RICHARD LAWSON
It says I’m sorry I’m kind of a long winded way and I suppose it kind of concludes that I do love you.
EVIE MASTERS
How is it possible that I’ve only just realized that I actually do love you too what we done Richard?
RICHARD LAWSON
Is this bad?
EVIE MASTERS
You know how much I hate you as well?
RICHARD LAWSON
I’m sorry.
EVIE MASTERS
And you want to go to her after everything he went to her why Richard?
RICHARD LAWSON
I’m sorry.
EVIE MASTERS
I suppose it’s because she doesn’t know who you really are why are you really are your dog secrets.
RICHARD LAWSON
It’s not like I’ve got anything left to lose.
EVIE MASTERS
Oh for God’s sake when are you going to stop running away?
RICHARD LAWSON
What happened to our CV is it too late could we maybe start again completely from scratch this time?
EVIE MASTERS
I can’t tell you how much I love that I just don’t know how far back would have to go if there even is a time when you’re okay you know I’m not even sure there was ever a time when I was okay I don’t know when I got broke but I don’t know why I thought you could put me back together.
RICHARD LAWSON
It was sort of fun earlier before. Acting the sleepy walkers.
EVIE MASTERS
Why can’t it be like that more often why are we so spiky all the time?
RICHARD LAWSON
Because we’ve always been tragic.
EVIE MASTERS
Utterly doomed yes. Just like heretic his horoscope.
RICHARD LAWSON
Did you know before the wedding I mean that’s what I keep asking myself if you knew and somehow even punishing me.
EVIE MASTERS
What? Of course not. I had no idea. I mean I’ll be mad if I fucking hell is this you still thinking that I’m mad?
RICHARD LAWSON
I mean maybe we can have some therapy and talk about it all you know my father especially and.
EVIE MASTERS
I think they’re gonna kill us.
RICHARD LAWSON
No.
EVIE MASTERS
Yes. It’s too late.
RICHARD LAWSON
Why?
EVIE MASTERS
Because we know what they did.
RICHARD LAWSON
I don’t know anything.
EVIE MASTERS
Are you sure?
RICHARD LAWSON
I mean maybe the story of the sleepy walkers there’s a little suspicious.
EVIE MASTERS
You wreck on?
RICHARD LAWSON
I heard something earlier about a traffic king?
EVIE MASTERS
What? I can’t hear you properly.
RICHARD LAWSON
A traffic cone? With those young people.
EVIE MASTERS
I still can’t hear what you’re saying. I just took hands up to the airport.
RICHARD LAWSON
Who? Hamza? That Arab boy? How?
EVIE MASTERS
We used Christos’s car Hamza is in trouble.
RICHARD LAWSON
Because of the traffic?
EVIE MASTERS
And I gave Crystals the password for my audio transcription but he
September 24th, 2022 (II)
It began
£25 book token that my aunt Sylvia bought for my twelfth birthday.
Paul was already my friend—we took the same bus to our secondary school in Canterbury, and sometimes into town on a Saturday. I wanted to go to WHSmith to buy military magazines with my book token, but Paul thought we should go to “Mike’s Emporium,” just off the Ring Road. He’d heard you could look at dirty books there. I’d already found some thrilling passages in my father’s favorite series of spy novels. But the books in Mike’s shop weren’t like normal adult books. They were mostly secondhand, and sometimes quite old. They’d been loosely arranged into sections called things like “Alternative,” “Horror” and “Speculative.”
The section we most liked was labeled “Counter-culture,” but it may as well just have been called “Porn.” The books were dog-eared and smelled of cigarettes. The first time we went there, Paul found a book about an alien race that kidnapped Earth women to keep as pets. He flicked through the yellowed pages until he found a particularly ripe section, and then passed it to me like a hookah, eagerly watching for my delight and shame as I read about a woman mewling in her cage with desperation to be tamed, and then being fitted with a tail and then paraded naked in front of all the other aliens, who then took turns with her.
It blew my mind. What kind of person would write such explicit, bizarre material? Who bought these books? I wasn’t as keen to go back as Paul was. But every Saturday we’d eventually end up at Mike’s Emporium, in the Counter-culture section. Paul was obsessed. I’m not going to pretend it had no effect on me. It did. But while Paul hoovered up graphic novels about Japanese schoolgirls being spanked by their teachers, I awkwardly searched for more tender volumes that might tell me, for example, how to kiss a girl. There were none.
The owner, Mike, was about forty or so. He had slicked-back gray hair and wore gold flesh tunnels in his stretched earlobes. He had a tiny tattoo of an upturned cross just under his left eye, and his arms were festooned with colorful scenes involving swords, flowers and big-breasted women. He wore Nirvana T-shirts and thick, black-rimmed glasses. He sometimes sat tuning his electric guitar while we browsed. Sometimes he played complex solos. Other times he sat with an unlit cigarette in his mouth, counting money from his till. I can’t remember any other customers, but there must have been some.
For the first few weeks we went in there, he didn’t approach us. He’d nod a “hello” sometimes, or give us a tight smile and a shrug that I wasn’t sure how to read.
But then one day he put down his guitar and sauntered over to us.
“You kids ever gonna buy something?” he said. “You’re bankrupting me here.”
Of course, we’d never actually bought any books from his shop. How could we? Where would we have hidden them?
“Sorry,” I stammered.
“Ain’t a library, you know,” said Mike. “And I don’t want stains on my merchandise.”
He laughed after he said that, and his laugh was croaky, as if there was something wrong with him.
“You boys wanna help me with some boxes?” he asked. “I’ll pay you a fiver each. And I won’t throw you out for not buying anything.”
It sounded like a fair enough deal.
The boxes were heavy. I tried not to notice that they were full of old-fashioned shiny porno magazines. Some of them had terrible titles: Asian Babes; Big and Busty; Cockade. This last featured topless women on its cover. I tried not to look as I piled up the boxes in Mike’s storeroom. But Paul couldn’t wait to start flicking through the magazines, laughing at the men with their blond mullets and the women with their shiny leotards and acid-wash miniskirts. There was something dirty about the pictures that I didn’t like. Everyone had a lot of pubic hair and wore clothes like my grandparents. But Paul was so enthralled he didn’t notice Mike watching him from the top of the dark staircase.
“Sampling the merchandise again are you, boys?” he said, smiling.
At first a lot of it seemed funny. Back up in the Counter-culture section of the shop, Paul became particularly amused by a series of thin dystopian novels where naughty teens would be discovered out after curfew and spanked with regulation paddles. Perhaps it was to his credit that he preferred his thrills to come in prose or line drawings rather than photographs. Or maybe it was simply that what he liked was too explicit to be photographed very easily.
Paul loved spanking. He was obsessed with the film Secretary. He used his dad’s Blockbuster card to rent it one weekend when we were about fourteen. Suddenly all his jokes and references were about that film, or the stupid dystopian novels. He was always giggling about “The Enforcer” or getting “paddled.” You more than anyone know what Paul’s like with an in-joke. Back then he was just as merciless and obsessive. The only difference is that I was his special compadre then, not you. I was probably slower and less fun though, even then.
Were you ever frightened of Paul? Perhaps you should have been more careful around him. He was repulsive toward most people, but if he liked a person he allowed them to believe he was a creature they’d tamed, that only they understood. He was always like that with you. And I know you had your little secrets that didn’t include me, your shared references, your dark wit I never quite got. I just never understood what was so funny about the word barnyard, I suppose. Or what you both found so hilarious about Mr. Ed the Talking Horse. You were so comfortable with Paul, though, and I never understood why. Especially since our terrible wedding.
Did he ever tell you that his mother left him and his father when he was fifteen? Perhaps a therapist would connect that with his objectification of women, and his need to think of them as sluts, but as you can see, his tastes and peccadillos had begun to develop long before she went.
One rainy Saturday in Mike’s Emporium, Paul discovered a series of graphic novels—all in French, for some reason—with very explicit drawings.
“Enjoying the stock again, boys?” Mike asked, sauntering over. He was swinging his shop keys on a long chain.
“Oh yeah,” said Paul enthusiastically, with a wet little grin.
“Your parents know you come in here?” Mike asked.
“No,” I said. “Well, not really.”
“You wanna make some more pocket money?” Mike said.
“How much?” asked Paul.
“Wow, good question. The wrong question, but a good one. Let’s say two hundred?”
“Pounds?” I said, incredulous.
“Sure,” said Mike. “Always better than dollars. Worse than euros, though.”
“Doing what?” said Paul. “Moving more boxes?”
“You should’ve asked that first,” said Mike. “Now you can’t say no when I tell you what it is.”
“Why not?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes. “Because now you know what it’s worth.”
This made no sense, but Mike had this aura about him and it sounded plausible at the time. It was the first time—not the last—that Mike really scared me. Something in the way he said it. His thin smile.
“Do you go to school with girls?” he asked, still playing with his keys.
“No,” I said, at the same time Paul said, “Yes,” and glared at me.
Mike chuckled. “So one of you tells the truth and one of you is a liar. Like the Barber of Seville.”
This made no sense to either of us. As everyone knows, the Barber of Seville is a paradox in which the barber shaves those men who do not shave themselves.
“I’ve seen your school uniforms. I know you go to the boys’ school.”
“Why did you ask, then?” said Paul, crossly.
“Wanted to know if I could trust you. And I can’t, so.”
