AS BAD AS IT GETS
by Adam Parry


Charlie was in the park.

The rain had stopped, with it the night had fallen. He restlessly made his way across the dark, muddy grass his Caterpillar boots squelched noisily, and a brutal wind across the exposed park forced him to huddle deeper in his dark, puffer jacket. Charlie saw there was no-one about, no men.

Too cold even for students. Stoically, he pulled out his last cigarette. Why did I come all the way here? What a waste, Charlie thought as he lit up. Yet, the last time had been so different. The guy, Paul, or something had given him cigarettes and money for a half-score, afterwards, Charlie never asked or expected. Perhaps, Charlie thought, he'd parked his car by the Cathedral and was on his way here now. But he waited until long after the cigarette-end was as cold as his fingers and whisked away by a wind, before he came to a decision.

I'll go to Thick Larry's. Froghall wasn't far. He adjusted the ear-phones in his cold ears and stuck on a compilation and followed his white breath out of the Park. He didn't look up when a pair of stuck up students passed on the gravel path. He could not stand their look of hate, but walked on half-blind in the music that buoyed him on filling his head with caricatures and colours. In a bright-red dress, his pale, bony sister danced wildly with his other friends, stickmen and cartoons, misshaped and perfected by the music as they cavorted about a blazing pyre that burnt away their disease and illness as they danced and sang and became whole. But by the time Charlie got to Froghall the batteries had run down, the music petered away, the only colours now bright streetlight on the windy street.

He went into Thick Larry's close and up, tiredly to the second floor and knocked in the dark of the landing. Lewy came to the door like a disgruntled off duty butler and reluctantly admitted him into the gloomy flat. In the sitting room, lit only by the football on the telly, he could vaguely see four people. Charlie perched anxiously on the edge of the sofa. In the flickering light the only person he didn't recognise was a scrawny guy with eyes almost popping from of his head. The others, Lewy's brother Malkie was swearing at the television while alone on the armchair sat Thick Larry. All about him was the debris of Larry's light supper, a rainforest of chip supper wrappers, cartons from the Chinese and the discarded bright colours of innumerable sweet wrappers lying about like the clothes of hasty lovers.

Charlie put the kettle on like one familiar with the sink full of crockery and half eaten chicken drying out on the draining board. He went back through and asked for a cigarette but strangely for a bunch of chain smokers they didn't have any. He raided the ashtray and waited for the kettle to boil. Slowly the hiss of the heating water took away the sound of Malkie swearing, his hostility like a black aura about him, Lewy was shrunk into the sofa, as if he really didn't like football but was watching only because there wasn't anything else to look at. The rising sound of the kettle blocked them out from Charlie's thoughts, filling him with unspecified hope.

From the gloom Thick Larry's disembodied arm slide over the arm rest his stubby fingers offering Charlie a joint, but suddenly Malkie said: 'Don't give him that we'll all get AIDS'. And the rat-faced man perched over the edge of the sofa, quick as a rattlesnake took the joint and gave Charlie a scowl.

'Does anyone else need coffee?' Charlie asked.

'There isn't any'
..
'Or tea', some voice in the quarter-light said. Charlie left not too long after that, back out in the rain. He began to walk, toward the beach, for no particular reason, but only because he usually went this way in an aimless pilgrimage, stopping, though, at no holy sites. The houses all looked the same in the rain and as he passed, his pace quickening, he wondered why they people loved their fragile, cardboard boxes against the wind, why they decorated them and loved them and wasted so much money on them when they were all the same as the one next door and the one next door to that, he couldn't understand why they bothered. The wind took him down Urquhart Road, towards Alan's bed-sit who always had coffee, but as usual the lights were on, but Alan wasn't home, or more likely was shagging somebody. He could let me in to make a cup of coffee at least, and buzzed again angrily. He turned towards Marydolls, but halfway there changed his mind, for the wind from the sea blasting into his face urged him back to the Park.

It was a long way to the Park without music, without cigarettes, Charlie's hands were numb with the cold when he got back there and his feet heavy with walking. He sat down on the nearest bench, still wet from the most recent rain, yet to him the hard, wooden bench felt like a luxury leather sofa, he could almost sleep.

From the direction of the car park by the Cathedral a figure appeared. Charlie looked that way briefly, but was distracted by bats flying over from the University. Probably another stuck-up student not worth wasting his thoughts on, his became distracted by the night about him, the stars watching down, unwatched as clouds thickened edged with the city's glow. When he looked again the silhouette had disappeared into the lightless areas of the park. Charlie closed his eyes, dipped his chin like a pigeon into the warmth of his jacket and got the surprise of his life when a voice in front of him spoke.

His eyes shot open and saw and the dark-haired man, Paul, from before, just standing there, apologizing for making him jump. Charlie wiped the bench with the sleeve of his jacket and Paul sat beside him. Cold and silence separated them, yet there was a relaxed smile on Charlie's face now and Paul, fidgeting upon the seat not in nervousness, but almost bursting with some unknown energy, as if were Charlie to touch him, blue fire would spark from them.

They smoked a cigarette before it started to rain, when they ran to the car park, heavy hailstones kicked into the gravel at their running feet, the few cars left in the cark park had become the percussion section in a new orchestra, while as quick as they could slipped and slammed into the sanctuary of Paul's car.

'That was mad. I don't know what I would've done if you never came along.' Charlie said. In the wave of impressions that rushed over him as he sat in the plush car was warmth accentuated by the battering hail on the roof, its smell of fresh, clean air and an almost unassailable feeling of safety. Reaching for the proffered packet of Dunhill's Paul lit it up, Charlie's self-satisfied smile illuminated as the younger man held the lighter up a little longer than necessary.

Charlie reached his hand over the demarcation between them of the hand-break, but Paul coughed slightly, startling him and he was handed a small photograph.

'What's this?' Charlie squinted short-sightedly, Paul switched on the car light, but he could see from his expression, it meant nothing to him. 'Who is it?' He could see it was a child, a boy, but the colour wasn't right, or the light or just his eyes, but there was something familiar, not the boy, but the buildings in the picture, which touched something from his youth, something he couldn't return too, as if time as well as those buildings had been demolished. He asked again: 'Who is it?'

'It's me'.

'Oh. You were cute, why are you showing me this?'

'Because of this one.' The first photo fell on to Charlie's lap as he took the next one, he drew on his cigarette, smoke stung his eyes the cowl of blue smoke, smoging the details of the two figures, almost to his relief as an unexpected and unnamed fear began to take hold of him. He took the photograph with the tips of his fingers and willed his hand not to shake. Then he looked at it, squinted at it, properly.

As he looked Paul began speak more words than Charlie had heard him say so far in their two encounters: 'You used sing to me, fly away Peter, fly away Paul. I always remembered, do you remember. Come back Peter, come back Paul. I was so small then, I don't know how I still remember.'

'What do you mean, what is this?' Charlie helped himself to one of Paul's cigarettes. 'Did you know about this the last time.oh God'.

'No, but that's what made me remember again, the song playing in my head. It was always your voice, I looked out the picture. I didn't want to believe it, but it was you, in truth it was you, singing to me, your hands flying me up and around. We can accept it.'

Charlie sat hunched into himself, thinking over and over like a mantra. What am I going to, what am I going to do? Yet somehow the words blurted out of his mouth, with a mouthful of spittle and the pain in him. Paul, took hold of him and cradled him while he wept, the old photographs forgotten by Charlie's boots. He told his father that he had come to the park every night looking for him since that first night. Paul said he would look after him.

The hail had long since stopped battering. When he asked Paul if he could put on some music, Paul laughed. He put on the music, the same as earlier, and similar pictures, or cartoons screened in his head but this time there was only Charlie dancing. The blue green fires were extinguished, pain burnt away, because now as he danced and he sang it had become day.

(C)2003 Adam Parry