Read by Max Berendt
One of the first things he said to me, before any of that other crap about the fixes and fiddles and scams that he runs. I always get value, he said. I always make money. My greed is more powerful than anything else.
Step 1: Look at youself. Look youself in the eyes.
I glance at myself in the polished chrome pillar I'm leaning against and then back down at the crumpled script in my hand, lit by the tawdry phonelight. I'm stood in the middle of a newly developed plaza. There's some nice mosaic paving and a cinema and a water feature that looks ill at ease with its surroundings, despite those frolicking spurts of water that bounce between hidden nozzles. The excessive lighting in the square makes each of the exits more ominous; menace seems to lurk outside this oasis of regeneration.
I read on:
Step 2: Look youself in eyes, you is strong, you is MAN!
Step 2 seems remarkably similar to Step 1, but I do as I’m told. I don't look strong, I don't look man. I look weak. Not like Mariusz, the man whose broken English rings around my head. Mariusz would never be nervous, Mariusz is better than me, and he knows it. I turn back to the street, gentrification verges in Walthamstow but hasn't bloomed. These are still Mariusz' streets, they were as soon as he got off the boat.
Step 3: You know…(he’s written my name here but as I don’t want you to know my name we’ll call me A4, because that is what he calls me). You know A4, there is appreciation in my side for you because in my side I feel that we have the bond. The adhesive trust bond. You are doing these things because I have wisdommed you, but you must be adhesive to that wisdom. And you are. You TRUST and it is… transcendental to me!! Now, A4, spot yourself a place next to the machine, I have engineered for you a drawing to enable such positioning.
On the page, a rudimentary sketch with an X in the middle reflects the point at which I am stood. Mariusz is still learning to write English, but as he explained to me, he doesn’t need to be taught, no-one can teach him anything. He does however, own a thesaurus.
Step 4: Now, you must be picking the mark. Ah screw you conjugating and screw you tenses. You know what I mean A4. I am the colossus of literature, like your Shakespeare but significant amount less homosexual. Pick the mark. Pick the mark now. Let’s get this showed on the road. And light up cigarette so you can be distinguished from paedophile.
I look around for a suitable victim and accidentally catch the eye of a middle aged man coming out of the cinema with his two children. I light a cigarette. Mariusz is right, it’s OK to hang around outside looking shifty if you’re smoking. The notion that I am having to actively avoid looking like a paedophile outside a family friendly entertainment venue brings me to how I got here.
There are times when you're on your own and you want a coffee and you walk into a place thinking you can just get a coffee. When that place is on the edges of London and there's no Starbucks it could be someplace like the place I walked into. He was sat at a table, I wasn't even sure if he worked there.
‘What you want?' he said.
‘A flat white,’ I said.
‘Like you,’ he said, ‘you're a flat white,’ and he laughed. ‘You're A4.’
‘I'm not A4,’ I said.
‘Like paper,’ he said. Then he stopped laughing. ‘You muthafucker,’ he said. ‘Sit down A4,’ and kicked out a chair.
That's how I met Mariusz. He didn't work there.
'Get this muthafucker a flat white,’ he shouted, ‘without the flat, or the white.’
When the coffee was placed in front of me it looked like treacle.
Mariusz was just staring. ‘You know, my friends come to this country and stand outside your fucking Wickes superstore on the Seven Sisters Road, and wait to be picked up by any bargain basement construction fuck who want cheap labour without paying the taxes. You know what we get for that work, for standing in a car park and getting in the back of any van that comes along? Less than minimum wage. You know how many men I know got in the back of a van and didn’t get back out of it? You know who cares?’
I didn’t know what to say. ‘No,’ I said.
‘What do you do A4, that you is able to wander round Walthamstow in the middle of the day, no worries for you.’
‘I'm a freelance writer.’
‘I too am a writer A4, I am much vocabularied.’
‘Oh good!’ I said. ‘I only write for accountancy periodicals, I'm not a proper writer. I just moved here.’
‘How much you make periodically writing about accounts?’
‘Not much. That’s why I had to move out here.’
‘So how you keep your woman in the styles to which she accustomed?’
‘I don't. I don't have a woman.’
‘Where you move from?’
‘Hampstead.’
‘So you like the homosexual yes?’
‘No I’m not homosexual, just single.’
‘Don't you want a woman?’
‘I suppose.’
‘So what you doing about it?’
‘I don't know, dating websites.’
‘You English pricks with your dating sites and slippers. Get some balls, pig balls! You make no money, that why you rely on your hand for your onanism, yet you pay a dating website. I tell you how to get a woman, and I'll relieve of some money for the trouble, but at least my methodology will be the success. You tell me what kind of woman you like A4. Other than the ladyboys yes, haha… But first, we smoke.’
We'd been smoking shisha layered with weed through a hookah for about four hours when one of his mates got so fucked he fell head first into a table when trying to stand up. He came up pumping blood out of an eyebrow. The rest of them fell about, I couldn't help but smirk. ‘Now you are sore,’ laughed Mariusz. ‘You sore like an eagle.’
‘No, it's not the same sore,’ I began, but swiftly gave up. I had little recollection of anything that had taken place, other than giving Mariusz ten pounds for the benefit of his extensive knowledge.
‘So, A4. Now I have your money, you come back tomorrow and I give you your instructions.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Ok.’
Step 5: You pick one yet A4? Let me incrementally support you in these travails. You have two sorts:
1. You have to be quick with this one, she’s coming from the bus stop or the tubular train, she’s going straight for it, no messing around. When you see her you must be instantaneously decisioning. She’s not hanging around.
2. She is different, wandering around, probably waiting for someone. You know with her when she check her phone, then she check her purse. Then you know.
So which one is it A4, who will it going to be?
As an interesting aside at this time I shall henceforth enable you with the additional anecdote of my grandfather and grandmother and the momentous occasion of their initial coupling. When my grandfather was young and virile and he first saw my grandmother he was very excited in his loins, for she was overly sumptuous a shape of ladyness. So he was not inactive in his pursuiting, he did not cogitate excessively. He went to my grandmother and he said to her, you o’ thing of divine arousal, I would want you, and I will like to take you to the talkies and woo you not inconsiderably this very evening at 7pm. And she agreed. And later that very evening at 6.50pm he was early to meet her because he was supernaturally excited, so excited that his little man was no longer able to remain little. But while he was waiting another girl walked by, any girl, not divine like my grandmother and indeed according to my grandfather this other girl was particularly abhorrent to behold. How you say, ugly like Chewy The Brick. But my grandfather was so enflamed in the sex stick that he went with this beastly wench and missed the appointed liaison with my grandmother altogether. Oh no, you would cry, how will it now come to pass that my grandfather and grandmother will be adhesive eternally in the bonds of love? And you would be correct to cry because as it eventually came to pass, my grandfather never saw my grandmother again. That beastly wench that he went with instead, because he could not wait ten minutes, it was she who was indeed my actual grandmother. Like you say, the early bird catches the worm, yes. Except the bird is an ugly woman and the worm is a dick. Ha ha.
I ask my grandfather if that is why me and my brothers are all as ugly as Chewy The Brick and he says yes, but then he hits me in the eye and says that even though my grandmother is ugly as Chewy The Brick, it is very insulting to him to say so. As my grandfather now always says, pick wisely and with unanimity A4.
I pick my mark. She loiters, lit up by the lights that spread a comforting glow from above. She's waiting for someone, she just doesn't know it's me yet. I chose her because she's wandering. A number 2 for Mariusz. It's cold but I like what I can see of her wrapped up face. And the way she playfully twists the zip in her fingers summons feelings of shared jokes whispered into ears, lips touching and … I get ahead of myself.
The next day, today, when I went back to pick up the envelope I'd paid £10 for, Mariusz had a black eye. He wore it well, it just made him look more menacing. ‘I told you I'd get money out of you,’ he said and whacked me playfully round the face with my purchase. It stung but I tried to hide it. ‘This here is your nine steps to a healthy fuck life,’ he said.
‘So Mariusz,’ I asked, feeling the barriers between our respective cultures had broken down. ‘What exactly is it that you do?’
‘I'm a landlord A4.’
‘Whose landlord?’
‘Lots of people's landlord. You know the trick A4? I don’t own the flats I rent out.’
‘Who owns them?’
‘The council, that's the trick. When the people the council rent them to move on, those people rent them out to me. The council never know.’
‘And who do you rent them out to?’
‘There’s lots of entrepreneurists that want to take advantage of prime retail space in the middle of the city. You want to know what you can get in my shops?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘You want to know A4, I know you do.’
I nodded.
‘Let's say you've got, £150. I could do any of these for you. One hour and a half minutes of sex in a tower block brothel, including two blows and unlimited coming. One hundred fifty litres of untaxed diesel; one bud from a cannabis factory; eight pairs of Pumas; one re-activated gun; one fake passport; two fake driving licences or half an attack trained pit bull dog.’
He was enjoying this. ‘I wish I hadn't asked,’ I said.
‘You live a sheltered life A4, you come back after you've had a good bouncy sexiness and we do some coke.’
I left feeling like the barriers were back up.
Step 6: When she is picked, you must to be ready. Stop bumming that fag (haha) and prepare for imminent action. When she starts towards the machine you need to make your move. From your position it should be simplicity for you to reach the machine before her.
The mark checks her wallet and looks around. This is my time, this is my moment. I stride out of the shadows towards the machine just as she makes for it. But I’ve timed my move perfectly and she’s already deferred to my position by the time we join the queue. She never even questioned my getting here just before her. There’s one guy in front of me, tapping buttons and inspecting the screen. I’ve got time to pull the script from my pocket and scan down to the next step.
Step 7: You get out £150 cash. Not £20 or £ 40. Not a 4 pack of Stella and frozen San Marco pizza amount. You get out £150, because the classification of lady that you want to be enamoured with you needs to know that you can buy 2 grams of coke and get a taxi home. That’s the man you are, 2 grams of coke and a fucking taxi man. When you push that button and your card has popped out. That's it. You done. You walk right away from that machine like a man who got important fucking things to do. Got that A4, you leave and let that motherfucking money flow out of that machine just as she is presenting herself to it. And she will cogitate to herself, who is this man with the massive pig balls who releases £150 big ones from the machine. He is the sort of man who can buy 2 grams of coke and afford a taxi home.
I’m at the cash point, I’m pushing the buttons, but it feels beyond counterintuitive to take my card and leave. People talk of doing it all the time but I can honestly say that I’ve never even come close. But this is the whole point, this is why I’m here. I can feel her behind me, maybe stood a bit closer than you would expect the next person in the queue to be, maybe she already feels the connection between us. I could just lean back and touch her. The machine beeps, my card pops out. I look at it. Hesitation flickers in my mind. Then Mariusz’ voice shouts ‘DO IT!’ in my head. And I do.
Step 8: Walk away, do not look back. Just keep walking until she comes to you, and when she does, you make sure you know what you going to say.
I know what I’m going to say. I’m going to say, ‘Thanks, it’s nice to know that there’s still some good people in the world, people who do the right thing and don’t take advantage of others. Hey, what do you say I buy you a drink to show my appreciation?’ And she’ll say, ‘That would be lovely,’ and give me a look that acknowledges what we both already feel. Just like Mariusz’ grandfather, we'll both already feel it in our loins. I hear footsteps behind me, my shoulders tense. I fold up the script and stick it in my pocket, hesitating only briefly to consider that there was no Step 9. A hand taps me on the arm and I turn round to face her. She’s even prettier than I thought. My heart leaps.
‘You forgot this,’ she says. In an Polish accent.
I look down. She’s not handing me my money. She’s handing me a note.
I take it, and she begins to walk off.
‘But…’ I say.
She smiles over her shoulder at me and then turns away.
I open the note.
Step 9: I’m sorry A4. I like you, so cogitate on this lesson, because that is what this is. Think of all the things you could have had for £150. Now you sore like an eagle, but you take my advice and soon, soon you will fly like the dolphin.
(c) Rob Passmore, 2015
Rob Passmore lives in Hackney but likes going to other places. When forced he works in social housing. He is currently entering short story competitions as no-one will publish his novel and he can't be bothered to write another one.
Max Berendt studied drama at Manchester University and trained at Mountview. Max’s theatre credits include The Trial (BAC: Total Theatre Award), Peer Gynt (Arcola), Journey’s End (West End), The Devil is an Ass (The White Bear). Max works regularly as a voiceover artist.
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