Read Animals for Free Online Page A

just thinking.
    What?
    Well unless he’s got it on him which is unlikely it must be in here somewhere.
    Do not even think about it. Do NOT even think about it. Tyler. Tyler. Look at me. No. Listen THAT is how people get shot and die. Sit your ass back down I mean it.
    Ohhh he doesn’t seem the type to have a gun … What?
    From her seat across the table in the beer garden, Tyler eyed me like the superior being I knew she knew she was. She was up in the stratosphere, one arm around Space and the other around Time, looking down on the world and saying
You haven’t got a clue, not a fucking clue
. It was a cosmic can-can I wanted in on.
Wanted
. Therein lies the crux. The knowledge of non-addiction was, ironically, grist to the mill. That was how it went: down, down and down, deeper and deeper, until I reached, as I always reached, the final pre-
fuckit
outpost. The saloon on the edge of the desert. The 40,000-league crab shack. The brothel on Pluto.
    This is my will.
    Tyler leaned in saucily, breasts first. ‘You know it’s really good when it scares the shit out of you,’ she said. ‘I had to stop myself from roaring in the bathroom earlier. Like this,’ she tipped her head back and waggled it from side to side, ‘RAAARRRRRRR.’
    I rolled out of bed and leapfrogged around the square metre of rough carpet, lifting balled papers and carrier bags, looking for clothes. Eventually I found some: a clean t-shirt and – gusset sniffed – some just-about-acceptable jeans. I stuffed random toiletries and – even more randomly, a bag of decomposing grapes (For Health) into a bag and called a cab. I usually walked to Jim’s, it took twenty minutes or so, but time pressures plus Bambi-legs made walking as unlikely as successful social interaction.
    The cab company sent a minibus. Oh great, typical, I thought when I saw its hollow bulk chugging away by the kerb.
Te-rrific
. If there’s one thing sure to amplify the existentials it’s a minibus ride across town on your own. I nodded at the driver as I heaved the sliding door open. Threw my bag across the seats and climbed inside. Didn’t put my seatbelt on. The cab smelled of hot fabric and pine. Four empty seats stared back at me. Another four empty seats behind. I found my phone in my bag and called my sister.
    ‘Minibus, is it?’ Mel said when she answered.
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘You only ever call me when you’re in a minibus after a big one.’
    ‘Do I?’
    ‘Yep.’
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘It’s okay.’
    ‘Where are you?’
    ‘At the folks’. Dad had chemo again this morning.’
    ‘Oh god. Is he –’
    ‘It went fine. He’s resting.’
    ‘They didn’t hear you say that, did they? About the
minibus after a big one
.’
    ‘No, but even if they did I doubt they’d give much of a shit right now.’
    ‘Course. Sorry.’
    ‘Look, drink some water. Get some sleep.’
    ‘I’ll try.’
    I hung up feeling wretched, and then wretched for feeling wretched, and then proud for feeling wretched for feeling wretched. I asked the cabbie to stop at the Co-Op opposite Victoria (the tenner rolled itself up in the plastic money-tray, I unrolled it, it rolled itself up again – I got out without waiting for change). In the supermarket I scuttled to the meat section, past the cold huddles of vegetables and uniformly stacked pasta and rice. Nothing smelled of anything. In the meat fridge there was a pack of mutton that had been discounted and I picked it up without thinking. What else should I get? A bottle of wine. A Shloer or something for Jim (fuck’s sake). Bread. Milk. Fags. Loo roll. Cooked chicken. Crisps. Credit card the lot and worry about it next month, if I was still alive. I bought too much and when I pulled the bags off the counter I swayed with the weight and thought I might vomit. Oh god, no. I looked around. There were never any bathrooms in these little supermarkets. Could I feasibly get outside and find somewhere discreet? The last time I’d vomited was before Jim