Jungle Shark: Short Stories by Steven Loton Read online

  The season came to an end, and the team had survived the relegation battle. It was two p.m., and the sun was burning the concrete pavement. Jack was sat in the pub, reading a newspaper when a man entered. He was dressed in a leather coat, and beneath that was a pink ironed shirt. He looked around then sat to Jack’s left.

  “You Jack Cherkamp?”

  “Nope,” Jack turned the page. “Got the wrong guy.”

  The barman put a pint down, “Put that on ya tab, Jack?”

  “Sure,” said Jack turning to the sports section.

  “But are you actually going to pay this tab, Jack?”

  Jack looked up into the barman’s face. He had these scared little eyes, a rounded head, two-day beard and no soul. He had no wife, four children, a mortgage and a secondhand car. He voted labour in hope that there would be some change, but there never was. He still kept on voting labour.

  “Sure,” said Jack, “Ill pay it when I leave. You got a problem with that ‘coz I can take my business elsewhere.”

  The barman nodded and wiped a rag across the bar and off into a corner.

  “So, Jack,” said leather coat, “I have a proposition.”

  “Can you spell it?”

  “Yeah. Can you?”

  “Nope,” replied Jack, folding up the newspaper. “Let’s hear this proposition then.”

  “We want to drag you out of retirement again. But this time, we want you to play for the champions of the league.”

  “Can’t, friend.” Jack took a swig of cool beer. “Retired.” He belched. “Now please exit the pub.”

  Leather coat pushed a piece of paper across the bar. Held kept his finger pressed down until Jack looked. Then he removed his finger.

  “Take a look.”

  “I don’t want your phone number, friend. I’m not that way inclined. But it’s two 2015. Feel free to act as you will. This isn’t North Korea.”

  Leather coat stood up and walked off chuckling to himself. He stopped at the door and removed a handkerchief from his inside coat pocket. He covered the brass door handle and opened the door, slid out.

  “That fella is a real arsehole,” said the barman. Then he grabbed the piece of paper and balled it up. “I’ll throw this in the bin for ya, jack.”

  “Put that down,” demanded Jack.

  The barman did just that. Jack unfolded the paper and had a look. Then he removed his wallet and started peeling notes off.

  “Hey, Jack, you paying your tab, eh, I knew you would, you’re a good man, Jack.”

  “There’s also a big tip there,” said Jack throwing the notes down on the bar top.

  The barman counted up the note and said, “Doesn’t seem like a big tip at all. Hey, want another pint, Jack?”

  “Can’t,” said Jack. “Looks like I’m back in training.” He grinned.

  Then Jack stood up and walked toward the door. He pulled his coat sleeve over his hand and twisted the door handle. His car was parked in the supermarket car park. He found it, got in and let all four windows down. Then he drove along slowly pissing all the other drivers off.

  Neverending Night

  Made it up onto the ridge, looked down said, “Oh oh, oh I can’t do it, man.”

  And I took another swig of Jack, but there was a hippy motherfucker behind me screaming in a high-pitched voice,

  “Jump, mayn, jump.”

  I looked down, and the girls were already swimming around NAKED and waving their arms beckoning me down. NAKED. The water looked calm, so I puffed out my chest just like James Bond did, I thought, hell, life is an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Those girls were giggling and splashing, and suddenly I felt brave, cool, ready, lithe, so I sucked in my gut, stepped once, felt a crumble beneath my heel, slid backward, put my arms down, righted myself, fell forward, rolled and dropped off the ridge, falling through the night air. I suddenly felt alive, the stars flashing passed me, I could have been Batman, but Batman couldn’t fly, he was a useless superhero, and I hit the freezing water with a splash and sunk LOW LOW LOW, my nose filling with water, and all I could see was black or nothing, and there seemed to be no bottom. Christ. I flapped my legs and started pushing myself back up, but my lungs were about to split, and I couldn’t even see the top or see anything. I had no air in me. I thought about death, then women, specifically women, and not having enough of them, then finally I broke the surface and popped up choking and gasping for air. I floated on my back, inhaling deeply. The girls around me were calmly doing breaststroke.

  I towelled off while the others were dressing and passing the bottle around. Jen was smoking a wet cigarette, and we climbed into Ricky’s VW Kombi van, and he turned the key three or four times, pumping the gas. No luck. And someone behind me screamed, “YOU NEED A PUSH!” But nobody was moving, so I said, “You chicken-shit motherfuckers have no guts,” and I got out, went ‘round back, yelled, “PUT IT IN FIRST, TAKE THE HAND BREAK OFF, I’LL SHOW YOU WEAK ARSEWHORES.” And I started showing them how a real man operates. But after four minutes of pushing, the Kombi hadn’t moved AT ALL, so I just lay on the ground, panting, and eventually Jake walked around and started tapping my face, “Hey, man, wake up, wake up, you cool, mayn?” Coming too, I said “Whazzer, uh, wahzzer, ah…” Then Zack attempt to push the Kombi, but Zack’s arm looked like it had never EVER seen a push-up. So Ade got in on the action and started pushing, and Ade was a big, black powerful Nigerian man, with a lot of mouth, but he could also back it physically.

  I remember that time two years ago when I first met Ade (bearded) in a bar and he had all these girls around him and his charm was oozing out, and I HATED that, so I walked over said, “Yeah, yeah, man, that’s an old joke, ya need some new material, ha ha ha ha, ho ho ho.” But no one was laughing with me, in fact it became pretty silent, so I drunkenly said, “Look, man, I box, don’t fuck with me.” And I started throwing some shadow punches. Real slick. Surprisingly, he playfully said, “So do I, let’s spar.” Suddenly, the girls were really interested in him, or seeing him whoop me, but I was hammered and I STILL considered myself the smartest man in the room, so when he said, “Lets go outside and tussle!” I replied, “HELL NO, I only fight WHITES AND ASIANS, I don’t need to get my shit snapped up by a BLACK guy. I do have brains, ya know.” I held my breath, and Ade started laughing loudly, wrapped his big arm around me and kissed me. JEZUS that was close.

  And now here he was rolling up his sleeves, and he put his shoulder into the back, and amazingly the Kombi budged, then rolled, and Ricky had his head out of the window, looking around while pumping and turning the key, and finally the engine kicked over and chugged into life. There were whistles and screams of joy. It didn’t take much to please drunken poor jobless lifeless people.

  We all climbed back in, and Sally was now on my lap. There were no seatbelts, and Sally was gripping onto me while Ricky was swerving all over the road. Her gyrations were driving me insane, but I wasn’t fifteen; I had to act like a respectable person. So instead I said, “Are you comfortable, Sally?”

  “I would be, but there is something poking into my bum.”

  “Ah, well you’ll have to excuse me, I apologise, but I’m only a man, a mortal.”

  “No it’s that seatbelt buckle down there, look.”

  She pointed just to make sure I knew what she was on about.

  Somehow we made it back to Ricky’s, and he parked in a disabled bay, and the back door to the Kombi flew open, and around thirty-three drunken people fell out onto the street.

  Ricky rented a warehouse in the back of some darkened garage in South London, and there was no heating, but there was overhead lighting, and the beers were always cool because the warehouse was always cool. So I grabbed a Sol and jammed the metal cap onto the edge of a wall and snapped the lid off, foam spraying up. I eased it with my thumb.

  Well it didn’t take much for Zack to draw his guitar out and start strumming, and a little gaggle of females sat cross-legged in a circle on the floor, buying into his bulls
hit.

  One said, “Oh, I LURVE this song.”

  Another, “Oh, he wrote it.”

  The next, “It’s about…LOVE.”

  The ugly one said, “I wish he would write a song about me.”

  That guitar-playing hippie motherfucker was getting to me, so I walked out into the cool night, swigging beer, looking up in the deepm dark sky wondering, where the fuck were fucking pigeons at night? Pigeons sleep? I must have been deep in thought, because a voice spoke from behind me,

  “You seem preoccupied, you’re a poet, aren’t you?”

  Without turning I replied, “Nah, no longer fuck with that.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  And from the dark night, she walked into my lamppost-lit patch of light, and her face was one helluva face, and her body was one helluva body, and her backside was one helluva backside, and her breasts, well, her breasts were average.

  “You’re Clarke, right, the writer?”

  “I work a real job, but if it helps to call me a writer, go ahead.”

  “I read your stuff;, I really like it.”

  “Statistically, someone has to.”

  “I write too, but mostly poems. You wanna hear?”

  “I’d love to, but I’m sure you don’t carry your work around.”

  “Oh yes, I do. Wanna hear?”

  I took a deep pull of beer while looking over one helluva body.

  “Sure.”

  And she unfolded FOUR pieces of lined paper and started.

  “The moon is an open mic.

  We must sing to the moon,

  Like we are singing into a mic.

  The heart is an open pen.

  We must draw with a pen,

  Like we are DRAWN to love.”

  And so on and so on it went. It took a good twenty minutes for her to wrap it up, and during the reading a drunken fellow had already pushed a cold beer into my hand. On page three, I quickly motioned him for another. I was wavy and looked up at the clouds told her, “Oh, a storm is threatening.”

  “Really?”

  “War, baby, it’s just a shot away.”

  “Yeah, I agree. It’s terrible what’s happening in Iraq.”

  “The floods is threatening my very life today.”

  “What?”

  “Mad bull lost its way.”

  “Excuse me?”

  But Zack heard it, and he started strumming wildly, hunched over the guitar, shaking his long blond hair to the Rolling Stones singing “Gimme Shelter.” And that was the type of music I could actually tolerate, so I took another good long pull of beer, swig of Jack, hit of Gin, lick of vodka, belt of J-A-M-E-S-O-N and took her by the hand, led her into the warehouse. The guitar strings echoing around. We were the only ones dancing, but it was close and intimate movements. Like fish. But sexier.

  She didn’t know the song, so I spouted again, “Love, sister, is just a kiss away.”

  And she tiptoed up and kissed me gently, but I was so numb from the liquor and substances that I didn’t feel anything, and her face looked almost different so close to mine, but she had beauty, yes, a wild, rare, uninhibited, UNLEASHED beauty, and she took a step back and started shaking her body to the music. I had never seen dancing like that. My mind was fine, but my thoughts were drunk, and I was in no fit state to be making such decisions, but I took the ring from the chain on my neck and slipped it onto her finger. What a corny move.

  Zack carried on strumming out songs into the night and early morning, and Ade rolled a joint and was taking long tugs then looking at the burning end of the joint, praying it wouldn’t finish. He was only holding an eighth, and he had already rolled two joints. Sally was doing her hippie dance, and Jake was in the corner flat out, passed out, and Ricky was running around half naked trying to drum up some coin for petrol. He wanted to buy a gram, but he didn’t even have enough for petrol, how the hell could he afford a gram?

  I never tired of dancing with her and she kept shaking her dress around her ankles. It seemed like she had had dance lessons, and we found ourselves running outside just as the skies opened up and started hammering down. We were just running and running. No idea where we were going, but we were running like we had some goddamned place to go. We ran, we ran, we ran, until we found shelter.

  Then the neverending night started all over again.

  Midnight Wolf

  My insecurities had been working away at me for some weeks now, and I found it difficult to look people in the eyes while talking to them. My allergies were playing up, and I was due an appointment at the optician’s. My head wasn’t straight. I had thoughts running through my mind like a riot, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I gulped.

  I was in this American-themed diner sucking on a strawberry milkshake. It was the grand opening of a fashion label. There was an oddly strange hue in the air, and paparazzi were outside. I had a strange feeling something was going to happen. There were crowds of people milling around, and a couple of waitresses were buzzing about carrying trays of nibbles. No one was touching the miniature hot dogs or the other bites. An overhead light was blinking, and a jukebox was playing.

  I had already written my piece for TANK Magazine, and I was sitting alone in a booth, contemplating suicide. A body broke off from the crowed and slid into the seat across from me. She pulled the hoodie from her head, revealing thick, wet lips and cheeks like mountain peaks. Orange tiger eyes and dark hair dyed a deep red. She slouched back into the seat and drummed her nails against the table.

  “You know me?” she asked while looking in the opposite direction.

  “Uh huh,” I mumbled while sucking on my milkshake.

  She leaned in and spoke up. “You know me?”

  “Sure,” I told her, finally making eye contact. “You’re Dora Katowski, the supermodel.”

  “I gotta get out of here,” she insisted, “but I can’t.”

  She nodded at the paparazzi outside, whose cameras were already flashing at nothing in particular. The waitress approached, and I waved her off.

  “Can you help?” she kindly asked, with her eyes peeled wide open.

  “No.”

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked, raising her voice.

  “Listen, Dora, I’m not special ops. I’m a writer.” I sucked the remainder of my shake and dabbed the corner of my mouth with a napkin.

  “A secretary?” she asked, leaning in.

  “No-Like they pay me to type shit.”

  “That’s what a secretary does.”

  I sighed. “Ah hell, let’s go,” I said, grabbing my bag and sliding out of the booth.

  She pulled her hood up and followed me closely. I walked round the back and through the kitchen. Two sweaty cooks were talking in rapid Spanish. One was chopping, and the talker pointed a meat clever toward me.

  “Exito, por favor?” I asked.

  “I speak English,” he said. “The back exit is through there.” He gestured with the cleaver.

  “Gracias,” I bowed.

  I gently pushed the exit door open and peered through. The coast was clear. I took Dora by the hand and slid out into the street. One paparazzi immediately spotted us, and he snapped. Then he waved his buddies over, and they all started dashing toward us on foot. Their camera equipment was dangling, and it looked impossible for them to catch us, but somehow they were gaining. We hot-footed it sideways, then ducked into an alley, found a bin and crouched down. I looked at Dora (just above her eyes.)The alley smelled like a piss box. It was real romantic. The paparazzi stopped, looked into the alley, then they carried on running into the distance. We had shaken them off without a tail.

  “All right, I got you out,” I told her getting to my feet. “You own me an interview.”

  “You have to do something for me first,” she said, reaching out her hand.

  “Shoot.” I dragged her to her feet.

  “You have to help me find the wolf.”

  “You checked the zoo?”

  “I’m se
rious.”

  “You’re strange.”

  “I’m beautiful.”

  “You’re cuckoo, but I’ll bite. What’s this wolf?”

  “You’ll know it when you see it,” she smiled. “Let’s go.”

  And this time she took me by the hand, and we rushed along, hailed a cab, slid in, and the cab man snapped on the radio just as she pulled a quarter bottle of Jack Daniel’s from her waistband. She hit it and passed it to me. Then she started up with her backstory. Bipolar. Suicide head. Pill popper. One half-sister. Dead father. Mother still working in Eastern Europe. Model scout discovered her when she was fourteen, walking the streets. Now she’s on twelve K a shoot. And there I was still getting paid by the word. Shit. We worked away on the bottle, passing it back and forth until it was finished.

  Then she pulled out the mobile and started flashing the photos. I saw the family home-a small hut in some decrepit village. There were a couple of retarded family members, the younger brother looked like a real special case. A small farm, with one dumb horse named Rocket. She had a lot of photos of her previous life. I saw them all, and I began to contemplate suicide once more. Finally, the show was over.

  The cab pulled up as the evening set in, and we stepped out, drunk on the purple streets of London. Both strangers. Her flat was in an apartment block on the fourth floor. Her place was at back, and there was just enough tilt in the hall for some music to hit me. When she opened the door, the music came roaring out, and there were two hippies sleeping on the floor. I stepped over one, and I poked my boot into the other one’s gut. He burped, rolled over and fell back into a deep sleep.

  Dora started pulling clothes from her drawer and throwing them over her head. She was desperately looking for her pills, and I really wanted her to find them. There she was, Dora Katowski, the most beautiful woman in the world, according to Vogue magazine, and she was a total lunatic. Just one single light bulb, dangling from the ceiling, lit up the whole flat. She found her prescription pills, capped the bottle and tilted it back. I handed her a beer, and she swallowed them like they were candy. There were paintings hung across the walls that she claimed to have done herself. It looked like the work of a five-year-old, so it was possible they were indeed done by her hand. She was one of the strangest and definitely the most beautiful women I had ever met. She seemed to have no care about what people thought about her, and I wondered how much of it was an act and how much was really her. She was one of those people who radiated life, and you just followed in her shadow, cruising along with the ride.