Before I Could Write - Part 14 and a Half

Okay, this is the last entry into the 'Before I Could Write' series, for now at least. How much more can I really torture both The Readers and The Self with the writing follies?

I wrote this story during the first year of university. I believe it was for Valentine's Day. I think our tutor, Sheenagh Pugh, set it as a challenge with prizes.

However, since her class was at 9 a.m. on a Monday, I missed quite a lot of them, because I barely slept at night during that time and had usually only drifted off a couple of hours before, so either overslept or was just too knackered to make the hike down the hill from halls to lectures. So although I wrote a story inspired by Valentine's Day and handed it in, I failed to turn up to the class in which it was read and discussed, so I have absolutely no idea what people thought of it. Which kind of made writing it at all a fairly fruitless exercise.

I did get a free book the next time I turned up to class though. I don't know if this meant I 'won' or if it was more of a 'participation' trophy. I have a feeling the latter is more likely, given that people rarely seemed to actually hand anything in at all.

Me, aged 19 but slightly older than in the previous post. Fun fact: that piece of paper says 'Crow' which was an in joke that I have recycled in my MS Working Title: Timing

So, here is the mysterious story that I don't know what other people think of. Enjoy. Or not.

Personally, I actually like the way this story is written, it's just that it has too many basic plot issues for it to be salvaged into anything I could actually use as a professional writer.

As The Story Goes

There are two main rules for writing a short story: a) don’t have too many characters and b) don’t have a twist.  I understand rule a) because people get confused as to who’s who.  There were seven of us originally and three cops, but for the sake of this story I’ll snip it to four.  Three of us and one of them.  I’ll share out the lines.  I have to keep me in of course, because if I cut me I wouldn’t be here to tell the story and this would be the last line.

* 

So I’ll make my part a bit juicier to create a reason for me to be in there.  Now the confusing bit.  No twist.  This tale’s got one but it’s not what I’d call a twist so much, more a progression of the plot.  To be honest I don’t see the difference.  When you get a story you’re not meant to know how it ends; if you knew that you wouldn’t bother getting there, so aren’t all endings twists?  But I don’t want to be breaking the magic story rules so I’ll tell you the twist.  It turns out Mason isn’t a cop at all but the guy that got blown off by Gabriel and Tommy two weeks before.  And it’s not much of a twist because I worked it out half way through the meal.  Gabriel?  Tommy?  Meal?  Well…

* 

It was a St. Valentine’s Day thing.  Tommy hated it.  Said American businessmen concocted it to make more money through card and flower sales.  Businessmen who, by the way, wouldn’t be bringing anything home for their wives that night.  If they came home at all and weren’t fucking a bimbo half their age.  Tommy said that if you actually loved someone you would express it every day of the year; you didn’t need any special holiday.  Valentines were shallow people who used the fourteenth of February as a cheap excuse to reinforce a farce.  He said it like that, except more monosyllabic.  Except it wasn’t a cheap excuse, it was expensive.  That was his point.

Gabriel was the opposite.  He bought his girlfriends expensive gifts.  But never chocolate.  He bought them presents to buy them into bed.  If he bought chocolate he was providing them with an alternative to sex.  He said.

I was flattered when I got an invite to have dinner with them on 14th February.  I hoped they wouldn’t go on about business.  Business is a non-dinner-table topic.  Particularly when you’re in the business that duo were in.

There had been a big deal going down on the first and they got everyone involved.  In this story that’s me since I snipped the gang out.  This is where I lose consistency.  It was a big deal but there’s no gang.  I’m the gang but I wasn’t there in reality because I’m nothing to do with all that.  And that’s why the cops used me later because I wasn’t involved.  And if I met the guy, it wouldn’t make sense that I didn’t recognise him later.

But in this case, I was outside the club.  It’d been raining but it dried up as I left the shadows.  My footsteps echoed as I located the shifty guy on the other side of the street.  I flicked my hair and lit a cigarette.  Playing it cool.  The guy came up to me.  Looked a mother’s boy, peeking out from under a cap.  We didn’t check each other for guns but we knew exactly where the other had theirs.  I eyed him.

“You look nervous,” I said.

“I didn’t come here to talk,” he said.  “Give me the…”

“Cool it.  You get nervous and your heart beats faster.  You knock ten years off your life.”  I flicked my head towards a tiny door in the side of the building.  “You go in there.  No, don’t look at it.  You take a walk round the corner.  When you get back you go in there.  You’ll meet a nice guy called Frank.  He’s gonna talk you through the whole thing.”  I licked my lips.  “Hey, Chris.  It is Chris?  You’re cute.  I like you.  Don’t mess this up.  I’d hate you to get… hurt.”

Poor Chris didn’t mess up.  Gabriel and Tommy never intended to give him anything.  Except a bullet if he started asking too many questions.  He handed over the cash and was given a holdall which was checked but switched after it was done up.  All because Chris used to work for a guy who slept with Gabriel’s girlfriend.

*

Two days before the 14th this cop comes up to me.  I’m looking in the window of a dress shop.  At this gorgeous purple number, with one strap and a boa.  He taps me on the shoulder, says he needs to talk to me.  He says he knows what business Gabriel and Tommy are in and he doesn’t care.  But turns out they’re planning to do away with this guy who knows they’re planning to do away with him.  They’ll both get killed.

The way to help them is if I can get them to spill the beans.  I need to get the exact details of the deal.  That way the police can arrest the guy before he kills Gabriel and Tommy.  The cop is asking for my help because Gabriel being my brother and the brief engagement with Tommy means I must care about their welfare.  Says all I have to do is get them to talk.  Not so difficult.  They love the sound of their own voices.  This cop gives me his card.  Mason, that’s his name.  Says he’ll visit me before the date.

Gabriel comes to meet me after Mason’s gone.  I tell him how much I like this dress.

“That thing?  On you?  You don’t have the looks for it.  Wear that black thing you got.”

“What black thing?  I have one black dress.”

“Then wear that,” he says, like I’m stupid.

“I wore that to our mother’s funeral.”

“Do you think I want a detailed history of all your clothes?  Women.”  He says ‘women’ like it’s a rhetorical question.

I can dramatise it.  Say he beats me to the ground and says I’m not to go spending no more of his hard earned cash on myself.  But that’ll be over-egging my point.  Right?

Then it’s the 14th.  I try to look as nice as possible but I have to wear trousers.  I respect the memory of my mother, even if she made a few mistakes.  Gabriel, for example.

I’m wired.  Mason meets me before Gabriel and Tommy show up.  Tapes all this stuff to my chest.  Anyone lifts up my top and I’ll look like a talking doll you have when you’re a kid.  One day you open its back and the illusion is ruined.  The illusion will ruin me in this case.  But no one’s about to lift my blouse.

Gabriel and Tommy pick me up and we go to this fancy restaurant.  We don’t speak much on the way.  I try to please them but I’m not good enough.

We sit and order.

I don’t remember what they have.  It’s probably:

“I’ll have your lasagne.”

“Not me, all that cheese.  Ain’t good for you.  I’ll have steak.  And I don’t want no tomato in the salad.  I hate tomato.”

Then Tommy slaps the waitress on the rear.  It’s allowed because they’re big tippers.

“She’ll have the salad,” says Gabriel, taking the menu out of my hands.

I’ve eaten all my lettuce fifteen minutes into the meal but the guys are still stuffing their faces.  My stomach gurgles.  I’m pushing my hand on it but I can’t stop the rumble.

“Gabriel, you’re cheerful tonight,” I say.

“Why shouldn’t I be?” says Gabriel.

“Well, you’re on a date with your sister,” says Tommy.  This is hilarious apparently and they both laugh.  The waiter who’s topping up our drinks laughs too.  I don’t get it.  “Nah, nah, you’re a catch.  Reall-leh-leh-leh.”  Here again they laugh.

I smile.  “Why don’t you have a date tonight, you two?  It is St. Valentine’s.”

“St. Valentine’s?  Listen to her.”  That’s Tommy.

“Reason is, sweetheart, that we need to discuss some business tonight but if we didn’t turn up in a restaurant on such a special day as this…”  Tommy pulls a face; remember he hates Valentine’s.  “…It’d look suspicious.  What with our reputations.  But we can’t exactly talk business in front of a date, can we?”

“You invited me because I won’t talk,” I say.

“You ain’t to listen,” says one of them.

There’s more to it than that but what do you care?  The point is they start talking business but as soon as they start with the details my stomach’s rumbling out of control.  I get up and excuse myself.

Gabriel says, “Well, don’t be forever.  You ain’t impressing no one.”

They don’t check which way I go, so I go out front.  Outside is this minivan.  The door slides open and I climb in.

“What are you doing?” cries Mason.

“I don’t know,” I stutter.

“Your stomach’s making noise.  I can’t hear a thing.”

“It’s not my fault,” I say, “I’m hungry.”

“You gotta eat.”

“I can’t; I’m on a diet.”

He’s surprised.  “Why?  You don’t need to be.”

“Yes, I do.”

And then it’s, exactly in these words, “But you’re beautiful.”  Definitely those words.  Then he says a whole bunch of other stuff.

I order a big meal.  Gabriel is, “What the hell do you want that for?”

I say, “I’m hungry.”

Tommy says, “I thought you were on a diet.”

I tell him I’m not.

“Well, you should be.  You’re enormous.”  And then I think fuck ’em.  I think it all the time but right then I mean it.  I eat loads of that meal.

They talk for ages about nothing.  About the thing at the place and that shit.  I eat.  Any minute they’re going to say something concrete.  But then this stupid singer comes over.  Says they’ve requested a song.

Says in this stupid voice that her name is Valentine.  Sure it is.  But Gabriel and Tommy like her.  Tell me to be quiet.  I’m not saying anything but I think I’d better chew quieter.  I’m meant to steer their conversation but how, when it’s all in code?  Say, ‘Yeah, by the way, what’s the thing and where does he live?’

Valentine sings.  It’s good stuff but that’s not what the guys appreciate.  Afterwards when she’s been passed from lap to lap, Tommy says, “Valentine, that’s a pretty name.  Greek.”

She’s all awed but I say, “It’s Latin.”

“I told you to shut the fuck up,” says my brother.

I say, “But it is.  You studied Latin.”  But I shut up as it turns out.

Then, while Valentine is talking, Tommy leans over to Gabriel and says something.  Something about Donovan and this warehouse.  Not that I’m going to repeat that.  But I catch it all.  And so does Mason.

*

This is where the twist would come in if it were going to.  The whole it turns out Mason was Chris and not a cop—he wasn’t trying to nail this Donovan; he was going to do business with him—so when he heard the details he drove there—got in before Gabriel and Tommy—who never intended to kill Donovan, by the way—Chris got rich and gave up the business—early retirement somewhere sunny thing.  But you knew that.

And the happy ending.  Not that stories must have one.  If we take this genre to be short story, I’ve only read one that ended happily and that still involved someone getting killed.  The other genre would be the kind of story you tell round a campfire and those end as gruesomely as possible.  But I like happy endings.  It goes like this:

Gabriel and Tommy had a prank organised, to lighten the heavy business atmosphere.  A big cake was wheeled in and this guy jumped out with a splurge gun and splurged everyone.  Only it wasn’t some guy with a splurge gun.  It was a different guy and he had a real gun.  Like in the movies.  And everyone was killed.  The whole gang and all the associates.  Except of course none of them were in this story.  And neither was all the shit that they had done.  But the point is the bad guys got killed.

I didn’t.  The reason I didn’t is because I wasn’t in the restaurant at the time.  I was in a minivan, driving west with a guy who wasn’t called Mason or Chris and who’d bought me this gorgeous purple number, with one strap and a boa, for St. Valentine’s Day because he thought it suited me.

The End.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What do you reckon the rest of the class thought of that while I was peacefully snoozing away?