He finishes the cigarette and drops it down into the street, watching it fall, the way it glows brightly as it accelerates towards the ground, the way it bursts into sparks on the pavement below. He turns back into his room, unwrapping a stick of chewing gum from his bedside drawer, taking a wallet from under his pillow and emptying out the cash. He sits crosslegged on the bed, running a flat hand across his forehead and through his thick black hair, looking at the folded notes with a bounce and a jig of excitement. He counts the money, again, smoothing the creases, sorting the fives from the tens, stacking them in ten neat piles of a hundred pounds each. He grins, biting his lip, nodding his head and tucking the notes back into his wallet, the wallet back under his pillow. Today he thinks, today today, and he lies on his back, one hand behind his head, the other hand a fist which he kisses and shakes in the air. He closes his eyes, but he doesn’t sleep.
At number eighteen, the boy with the sore dry eyes pulls a shoebox from a high shelf and sorts through the polaroids inside, he picks out a handful and fans them out on the floor like a poker spread. A picture of a lamp-post covered in marker-pen graffiti, Uz 4 Shaf 4 eva 9T7, Izzy is fit signed who, Lee an me wuz busy like bee, Sian equals slag, and so on and so, the soap opera of the street corner marked out in rain-faded initials and abbreviations.
A picture of a fly-posted garage door, poster layered upon poster, streaks torn through the layers of dates and venues and djs and bands, the top corner peeling off under the weight to reveal bare metal.
Empty drums of vegetable oil piled up outside a curryhouse like tins in a nineteen fifties supermarket.
A traffic jam at night, beaded white lights stringing down the road like christmas decorations, rain splashed on the camera lens.
Dark dribbles of blood in a pub carpark.
He picks up the camera again and carries it through to the bathroom, he takes a picture of himself in the mirror. He blinks, tightly and painfully, laying the camera down and holding the palms of his hands to his eyes, screwing his face up, rocking his head.
The colours in the polaroid wake into the light, his selfportrait taking shape while he searches for eyedrops, his blind hand like an addict in a medicine cabinet, knocking over shampoos and deodorants and razors.
In the back room of number seventeen, the girl with the glitter around her eyes is lying awake, chewing gum, looking at her sleeping friends. She knows she’ll be awake for some time yet, her brain is piled high with powders and pills and the muscles in her legs are still twitching from the dancefloor. She looks at the girls on the bed, the one curled around the other, protectively, she watches their shoulders and breasts rise and fall, shifting gently into position, she thinks about the piercing in the short girl’s tongue and wonders if it’s true what they say. The stereo is still playing, very quietly, she watches the small green lights bubbling up and down with the music, she listens to the singer going doowah doowah, I love you so, oohwoah. She feels the good strong weight of the white-shirted boy’s arm across her chest, she tilts her head forward to kiss it. The music goes doowah doowah I love you so, and she thinks about the two of them. They haven’t spoken about it, they haven’t said what will we do when we leave here, do you want to come with me, let’s work something out, and she knows that this means they will quickly and easily drift apart, into other people’s lives, into other people’s arms in rooms like this. She is surprised that this doesn’t make her feel sad. She listens to the music, she looks around at the things people dropped when they fell asleep or went out of the room, she kisses the boy’s arm again and she feels only a kind of sweet nostalgia. She wonders if you can feel nostalgic for something before it’s in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowoah doowoah.
In the bathroom of number eighteen, a face looks out from the polaroid, wide-eyed, composed. A young man, early twenties, a smooth round face, straight nose, full lips, pale hair losing thickness around the temples, a buckle of skin folded below each eye. It’s a good picture, and in a moment he will date it and place it with the other objects he has collected together on his bedroom floor, a magazine article, a half-finished crossword, a twin-bladed razor.
But for now he has his head tipped up to the ceiling, a capful of solution bathing the dryness of his eyes, one hand gripping the sink until the ache subsides.
It’s light that makes his eyes hurt, mostly, bright or sudden light, and the dust in the air. It’s a rough prickling sensation, like sandpaper pressed up against the skin of his eye, a dryness he can mostly soothe by blinking rapidly, squeezing moisture across the surface.
It’s worse in the city, with all the dust and the dirt, and it’s worse in the summer, with the long bright days, but usually it’s bearable, usually he doesn’t notice and he just keeps blinking away that gritted feeling. And if it gets too much, like it has now, he comes to his bathroom and bathes his eyes, and it’s a relief like finding a spring welling up in the desert.
He puts the eyedrops back into the cabinet, scratching the back of his hand, he picks up the camera and the selfportrait and returns to his bedroom, he wonders what else he might hide away with this collection. And he thinks about the girl at number twenty-two.
In the street, the front door of number thirteen is swinging gradually open, a young boy who can barely reach the doorhandle is peering around the door, his hair is sticking up and he is still wearing his pyjamas. He climbs onto a bright red tricycle which is waiting for him on the front path, he pushes all his weight onto the pedals and he creaks out of his garden and onto the main pavement. He looks back at the still open front door, he looks ahead of him to the main road, he puts his head down and he pedals, slowly at first, bumping and wobbling over loose paving slabs, picking up speed.
A streetcleaner whirrs past, brushes spinning and skidding across the tarmac, grit and glass and paper skipping up into its innards. The driver stares sleepily ahead, sunglasses curled across his face, lips mouthing the words of the song on the radio, I’ll be there for you, when the rain starts to fall. As he passes number nineteen he glances across at a girl sitting on the garden wall, a girl in a red velvet dress wearing very tall boots, she has her face arched up to the sky and a boy in wide trousers is gently kissing the tight curve of her throat. The streetcleaner whirrs away around the corner and the girl takes the boy’s hand and bites his little finger. He makes a noise, a soft noise and his eyes are closed and his stomach is like it was left behind over a humpbacked bridge and she says shall we go now and they both stand.
They hear voices then, shouted voices crashing down from the attic flat of number twenty-one, a woman’s voice shouting no but listen will you, listen to me, it’s not okay is it you shit you weren’t thinking about me were you you just went off out and did what you wanted to do it’s always about what you want isn’t it you selfish fucking wanker and what about me what about me she screams and the woman between the washing in next-door’s backyard stands and wonders how these people manage to shout at one another so much and still walk in the street with a hand in a hand. Shut up says the man’s voice, just shut up, shut up shut up will you please shut the fucking fuck up please? and his voice rises and rises until it sounds almost like the woman’s and it cracks and it breaks.
The girl and the boy outside, they look at each other and they hurry away down the road, and when they turn the corner the street is empty and quiet again.
The street is empty and quiet and still, the light is brightening, shadows hardening, the haze of dawn burning away. The day will soon burn with a particular brightness, hot and lethargic and tense. Later, it will rain, hard, suddenly, and the hot tarmac will steam and shine as water streaks across the surface into the gutters. And windows will be hurriedly closed, and people will stand in doorways, in shocked silences. But now, in this early beginning, it is dry, and the street is beginning to warm, and people sleep, or lie restlessly awake, or make love and sleep again.