‘Nah, not yet. I’m tryna cheer your long face up. I even put up that hotness for you.’ Tristan nods over to the wall. Earlier he had taped up an A3 poster of Lil’ Kim lying spread-eagle across an animal fur rug. Now that’s the kind of girl worth having a broken heart over, not some skinny little blonde from the flats.
Tristan pushes the window open further, in need of air after working himself up with all his talent. Now relaxed, he takes his Rizla from his pocket and what’s left of his weed.
‘Quickest way to get over one girl is to move on to a next.’
‘Outside with that.’ Malachi jabs a thumb towards the front door.
‘You serious? The window’s wide open. You can’t smell it if I sit here,’ Tristan says, demonstrating how carefully he will blow smoke out of the window.
‘I don’t care. Take it out.’
‘Just ’cause you ain’t smoking no more. Why should I have to go out?’
‘Out.’ Malachi repeats as he begins flicking through his books.
‘Whatever.’ Tristan rubs his brother’s head roughly as he passes the sofa on his way out of the flat. Surely one of the benefits of having a twenty-one year old as your guardian should be that you can openly smoke a bit of weed at home. But no such luck with Malachi and that stick up his arse. Still, Tristan doesn’t mind getting out, jogging down to his much-loved spot, between the sixth and fifth floor, where he selects the middle step.
‘I’m more than a thug, girl get to know me, king of the block, T.H.U.G.’
He likes the echo of his voice in the stairwell and imagines how it would sound on a real microphone. He pictures himself in a recording booth, one headphone on, one headphone off, like the rappers in the videos, all his boys drinking in the studio, some girls dancing about.
‘Gimme a kiss, I’ll light up a spliff, take you to Oxford Street, buy you nice shit. Nah, don’t sound right.’ He looks again at his stingy stash. ‘Hard times, hard times,’ he mumbles.
Then he hears something, someone coming down the stairs. It stops. He cranes his neck to look up and down. Nothing. But there’s someone breathing. It feels like he’s being watched, maybe by one of those crazy girls from the youth club. He had stopped going after he got involved with one too many of them. Some even know where he lives; they’re probably stalking him. Though he wouldn’t mind being stalked by the girl with the red weave – she looked like the kind of trouble he could enjoy.
Again, the shuffle of feet, heavy, though, not like a girl. Footsteps. He looks up and down but can’t see anyone. He’s being paranoid, but it pays to be paranoid living around here. Last week some woman got her handbag nicked as she was getting out of the lift.
‘I’ll give that ghetto ghetto love, weed and sex, and some crazy drugs.’
‘No smoking in the stairwell.’
Tristan is startled. His papers flutter to the floor.
‘What the fuck?’ he shouts.
A man stands at the top of the stairs. He looks down at Tristan. He is tall and chubby, and has crazy bright ginger hair.
‘No smoking in the stairwell,’ he commands.
‘You what? You spying on me?’
‘No smoking in the stairwell,’ the man repeats, and his face breaks out into high red blotches. ‘It’s a rule. You cannot break the rules of Nightingale Point.’
‘Fuck off. Go. Go past.’
But the man stands there, straight-faced. ‘No smoking in the stairwell.’
There is definitely something off about him; he’s wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Elvis Presley on it, for a start.
‘Rule breaker. Rule breaker,’ the man chants.
Tristan pounces up the stairs and grabs the idiot by the sleeve of his T-shirt. The man is bigger than Tristan but unsteady on his feet and he topples down easily with a tug. He lets out a small cry as he falls, then grabs the bannister and pulls himself back to his feet.
‘Stop looking at me!’ Tristan shouts. ‘Move. Go before I chuck you down the next five flights.’
The man bends over to pick up his glasses. His grey shorts are too big for him and he gives Tristan an eyeful of his white fleshly arse cheeks before he runs off down the stairs.
‘Fucking retard.’ Tristan picks up his papers and returns to making the spliff. He empties his tobacco in and sprinkles the little weed he has left on the top. But he’s pissed off now. He has nowhere peaceful to call his own, except for this place in the stairwell, and now some dumb fucker wants to talk to him about rules and try to kill his vibe.
Tristan lights up and waits a few moments to enjoy his first puff. It takes him a while to chill out again but finally he relaxes into his familiar routine, lounging back on the step and listening to the muffled sounds of the block.
‘Oh, look who it’s not.’ Mary’s voice echoes from above.
‘Fuck,’ he mutters and rubs the spliff against the steps. ‘Didn’t hear you, Mary. Boy, you’re so silent. Like a ninja.’
‘What you doing, sunshine?’ Her little plimsolled feet patter down the steps till she reaches him. ‘I was looking for you yesterday. Malachi tells me you’re not going kiddie club anymore.’
‘What?’ He laughs and fans the air between them. ‘Youth club? Nah, nah. I’m too old for that, man.’
‘Don’t man me. What is this?’ She pulls the spliff from behind his ear and he awaits the lecture. Mary’s got a lecture for everything these days. It’s almost like when Nan left last summer she handed Mary some kind of oracle of lectures, one for every minor deviance.
‘It’s Saturday. I’m allowed a little relief from life.’
‘Why not go and relieve yourself with a book?’ Mary rolls her head around like the African American women she’s always watching on TV. She leans towards him and sniffs his T-shirt till he moves away self-consciously.
‘What you doing? I’m clean. You know me, fresh like daisies.’
‘You stink like drugs.’
He laughs. ‘Oh my days. Leave me alone. It’s bank holiday weekend.’
‘You don’t work. Every day is bank holiday weekend for you. This is no good, Tristan.’ She holds the spliff in her hands. ‘If you smoke too much wacky backy you’ll get voices in your head.’
‘Is that a fact? Is that what the NHS is training you nurses to tell people nowadays?’
It’s obvious how hard she’s trying to hold a look of disappointment in her creased face, so he hits her with his biggest smile. ‘Come on, Mary, marijuana is a natural product. It’s grows alongside roses and shit.’
‘Don’t shit me.’
Her lips soften into a smile as Tristan laughs. She reaches up and puts the white roll-up back behind his ear. Such a pushover.
‘You come with me,’ she demands.
‘What?’
‘Walk me to the bus stop.’
He groans, knowing this will be Mary’s time to grill him on school, smoking, girls and anything else that needs to be filled in for her regular report back to Nan.
‘I can’t walk you, Mary. I’m busy. Meeting friends and going fair later, innit.’
‘You don’t have a choice. Come.’
She