Jonah shot up in the back of his hand and tossed the syringe aside on the kitchen table. That was just like Jonah. No consideration for anyone else around him. He sat sucking the blood that beaded up from the tiny puncture wound. Sarah took the syringe and gently placed it on the table in front of her. She picked open the cellophane wraps of H with her fingernails and used a bent desert spoon to cook it up over the gas burner on the stove.
‘You shouldn’t throw it around like that,’ she flashed an irritated glance at Jonah. ‘Other people have to use it. You’re not throwing the dog a bone – get some manners!’
‘And why don’t you get fucked, bitch? It’s my house, innit?’ He replied without even making eye contact. Jonah had on a fake fur leopard skin coat over a black shirt. His cropped bleach-blonde hair was all roughed up. He kept his hair short, I guessed so that it was easier to don the long red wigs. By night Jonah was a red-head. He worked the clubs as Susie Rouge. He didn’t seem to do too badly out of it. He didn’t have a bad pad. Not tidy, exactly, but it wasn’t a stinking, filthy pit either. It was in a nice building in Chelmsley Wood, about eight or nine miles outside of Birmingham city centre. Jonah always managed to remain self-sufficient, sustaining himself and his habits. And I don’t mean just the drugs; he was also something of a bastard for the rent boys. He was forever picking them up around Hurst Street – around the gay triangle as it was known – and bringing them home with him. I saw his act in the upstairs room at The Institute night club but I couldn’t remember much about it as I lay sprawled on a beer stained sofa towards the rear of the venue drinking Grolsch. I think he was funny, he drew a big crowd and I recall them laughing a lot between songs. Jonah’s current act was some kind of old time French cabaret parody. He referred to himself as a showgirl rather than a drag queen.
Sarah took my left hand and held it as she tenderly tapped and felt around my arm for a vein with her other hand before sliding in the needle and pressing the plunger. She gently extracted the needle and wiped it off between her thumb and forefinger. The H seared through every sinew in my body. I felt like ice-cream melting in the sun, sliding into the dark cracks. I took Sarah’s tube of Savlon antiseptic and dabbed some on my arm.
Sarah wasn’t wearing a top. Her small breasts were exposed with dark nipples partially glimpsed through her long black hair. She was thin, China-doll pale. When she stretched I could see her ribs like a delicate work of filigree, her body tiny as a bird. I thought Sarah was beautiful and I felt like I could watch her for hours. But I became a little uncomfortable watching her roll up the leg of her faded Wrangler jeans and spike herself in the ankle. She had on these glittery pink sandals and her toe nails were painted bright red. Sarah was a model, a well paid one, and she always tried to inject herself where it wouldn’t show. Because she was so slightly built she always appeared to be so feminine and vulnerable. With her pretty brown eyes she was natural as a flower, mostly unaware of my gaze. Though sometimes she seemed to notice me watching her and when our eyes met she would smile as she sucked on the Dunhill cigarettes she smoked. Sarah liked to smoke. She smoked a lot. Of course I realised how easy it is to be fooled by a woman’s beauty. I knew Sarah wasn’t in the least bit vulnerable. I knew she carried a .38 in her hand-bag; what she called ‘the equaliser’ should she ever find herself in ‘a little situation.’
‘Is he always this volatile?’ Sarah asked me rolling her eyes towards Jonah, who sat there sneering. Sarah tossed me a Dunhill. I wondered if Jonah’s feelings of animosity towards women were grounded in an intense envy of their beauty. Just like how women can be bitches to each other; except that his spite manifested in a more masculine kind of aggression. Jonah looked like a girl but I noticed for the most part his body language could be decidedly masculine.
‘Yeah, mostly he is,’ I nodded and flashed Jonah a forgiving smile that I hoped would defuse him to some degree.
Everyone is different, I suppose. When most people take heroin it sedates them. It sedated me. I would lie there without the slightest will to lift a finger. Like those people in Finland or Sweden or wherever it is, floating in those warm salty spring lakes. But Jonah could turn nasty. He was of a vicious disposition that was at odds with his graceful features; the slim nose and long eye lashes. I don’t think he really knew what he was doing when he would hit out, either with his malicious tongue or sometimes with his fists. He was much nicer when he donned his wigs and became Susie Rouge. Perhaps he felt more at ease with himself that way.
‘Talk about me like I’m not here you pair of fucking phonies,’ Jonah said. I didn’t know what he meant by phonies but I laughed. I always found that it negated the situation to not take Jonah too seriously. If you did that he usually ended up laughing at himself. I never suspected his spiteful streak was born of real hatred but more out of extreme sensitivity. He spent a lot of time feeling hurt by the actions of others, so when he childishly lashed out no one knew what they had done to deserve it. He slid off his stool, went to the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of milk. He tore open the corner and swigged from it before returning it to the rack in the fridge door, slammed it shut. ‘You pair of fucking phonies,’ he spat again.
***
I sat in Solihull police station, interview room number one. The two C.I.D detectives sat opposite me. DC Kershaw and DCI Wallace. Wallace sat well back in the plastic chair, affecting a relaxed demeanour. His light green shirt had a black stain near the breast pocket where the ink in his pen had leaked. I had travelled for over an hour on the bus to get there in the wet Birmingham morning to answer their questions. I wasn’t under arrest nor, I didn’t think, even under any suspicion, which is why I assumed they’d left the door open to help me feel more at ease. Kershaw only looked to be about thirty-two but he’d already got some grey appearing at his temples. He loosened his grey tie and leaned forward with his elbows on the table, watching me intently with his head cocked to one side, offering the occasional encouraging nod. They were like two actors who had well practiced their styles. The tape was running but I doubted I was going to be much help. A uniformed officer carried three plastic cups of coffee in on a tray. Kershaw put the three drinks on the table and slid one towards me.
‘... So, Mr. Karzoso, this was just the three of you?’ Kershaw asked.
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ I replied.
‘So the three of you were at Jonah’s flat and there was no one else present? No visitors or anything like that while you were there? Did the telephone ring at all?’
‘No.’
‘You were in the kitchen. And then what happened?’ Wallace cut in, running his hand over his receding hairline.
‘Then...’ I said. ‘The three of us watched the Wacky Races on Jonah’s video.’
***
I was sitting on the chair with my legs up, crossed like I was still a school kid sitting on the floor in morning assembly. Sarah reached over and lit my Dunhill for me.
‘Look at our little Marky,’ she giggled, pinching my cheek. ‘He looks like a little frog. A little smoking frog.’
I looked across the table at Jonah. ‘You still on the juice?’
‘I tried it, man, but it’s not like shooting horse. Methadone is like health food,’ Jonah laughed. ‘Meth is like low-fat chocolate. It just don’t taste as good.’
‘So what’s the score?’ I asked.
‘It’s for people fooling themselves they’re gonna get off the horse. There’s no fucking score, man. Same thing as fat bastards drinking carrot juice and shit like that, convincing themselves they’re gonna get slim.’ Jonah fell silent, his eyes dropped to the floor. A dark cloud came over his face. ‘But no one ever does. Pretty soon they’re off that Linda McCartney shite and back on the McDonalds,’ he looked back up at me and shook his head. ‘No cunt ever gets off. There’s no fucking score... we’re all zeroes, Mark.’
Jonah had every single episode of the Wacky Races recorded on VHS tapes. They were unlabeled and would then be shuffled on the floor and one of them plucked at random and put in the video player. It was a little party game of Jonah’s. The tape would be put in the machine and we had to place bets on the race winner. The series featured a total of 34 races in all and Jonah had put them all on separate tapes. It was fun really.
With the initial orgasmic rush beginning to subside and the H now warming through my tissues like hot treacle the three of us went through to Jonah’s living room. Jonah had crashed out the cold cans of Carling and through pin-hole eyes we sat down to watch the Wacky Races. We each chucked in a fiver a race. Jonah lay on his stomach on the floor, watching the TV with his head propped up in his hands, kicking his legs. Me and Sarah sat close together, sinking into the soft leather sofa. I could feel her body pressed against me, the heat of her flesh, as if we were melding into one. I had my arm around her and I curled my hand around her small torso and casually played with her nipple. We watched three races; Jonah won one of them and Sarah won two. I didn’t get a slice of the pie and lost my fifteen quid. ‘My poor little frog,’ Sarah smiled. In the third race Sarah laughed at Jonah who’d bet on the Slag Brothers and when the wheel of their Bouldermobile fell off he slapped our stake money across the room and screamed, ‘Oh fuck off! No way, man! I got this one last week!’
***
After Sarah and I left that day I never saw Jonah again. A few weeks later it was in the newspapers. He was found in his flat. Someone had plastered his brains up the wall. He’d been blasted at point-blank and whatever was left of him had been left wrapped in a sleeping bag.
‘Anything else you can think of?’ DCI Wallace asked me, squinting.
‘I know Jonah liked the rent boys,’ I drained the last bit of coffee. ‘And I know he’d seriously fucked off some dealer down town... you know... owed him a bit of dosh. But nothing I’d call serious. Jonah wasn’t a bad bloke, really.’
As I got up to leave and was putting my overcoat on Kershaw said, ‘You should be more careful who you’re knocking about with, son.’ He piled together his notes. ‘Next time it could be you somebody makes a Jackson Pollock out of.’
(c) UV Ray 2010