Billionaire's Row

Long, empty January days have frozen over stagnant city streets. The sky is pugnacious, casting mysterious shadows within dense walls of rain. I can feel the cold seeping up through the concrete to bite at my wet arse. This is bollocks.

“This is bollocks.”

Sometimes it’s good to verbalize these things.

Ali shivers, “It’s always fucking bollocks.”

A couple moments later, he sighs before uncrossing beaten reebok classics and drawing muddy knees back up to his chest. He’s a proper lanky cunt so his legs cramp up way more than mine. Arguably, he hates being out here more than I do. Dressed in a too-small parka and signature ratty adidas trackies, Ali’s body is a taut pale sack holding thin protuberant limbs, starving and apologetic, as it convulses measly coughs into a single gloved hand. It wouldn’t take much for him to look fairly presentable, a shower, fresh clothes and a couple days in front of a radiator. Not to say I’m looking any better myself. These endless winter months are taking their toll in more ways than one. Mind you, when it’s your turn, it’s your turn.

The rain continues, thick and thunderous; the streets of East Finchley are empty save the showery flash of a black taxi. A dirty face mask coasts toward flooded drains under the rail bridges to our right. Vigorously rubbing my sore eyes – for a moment, I’m on the South Downs looking out over the valley, a rain jacket pulled tight over my face, watching the sun break through similarly tumultuous clouds. On the pavement, our cup tips over, emptying itself of more water than change. I reach forward and grab the cold shrapnel, leaving the sodden cardboard to the rain. Across the road, as if they climbed out of the muck of the deluged drains at the top of the hill, an old man and his dog-rat are shuffling down the street in varying states of damp decay. I watch the breathless todger shamble along, peering dozily into dusty shopfronts. His impatient dog continues, stopping abruptly ahead and sniffing a circle in some shit-inducing dance, before leaving a steaming turd right in the path of its oblivious owner. Impressively meaty at that, for such a small, ragged thing. I feel my lips curl with some sort of sadistic satisfaction, knowing he’s completely unaware of the fresh fate that awaits him. The thought of calling out to stop this unlucky wheezer recolouring his creps leaves my mind as quick as it entered. The dog marks another lamppost, dutifully reserving some of its piss for further property staking, as his owner raises an unsteady foot for the last step. Here we fucking go. He looks down, knowing that it wasn’t the safety of the cold ground he felt under his feet. Watching him flailing his arms, smashing his foot into the ground, I get some weird brain flash of when some kid brought his BB gun into school one day and shot a magpie. He was a pretty good aim. The bird squirmed on the ground for a long while, gasping its little beak as we crowded around it, waiting patiently to watch its plump body deflate a final time.

I swear magpies are meant to be dickheads anyway.

During his tissy, the old pillock drops the dog-rat’s lead. It prances off, flashing its smug arsehole with newfound freedom. I let out a single uncontrollable laugh, startling myself with its volume. The man turns around, scouring the street. He scowls at the steps of the station, tracing them down and looking straight at us. Through us. He continues to search for the verbal assailant further down the hill, wincing as second wave of reconstituted Chappie hits his nose.

Becoming a fixture with the bins, boxes and disregarded shit left in the dirty, disused crevices of London, you learn to accept that people will eventually ignore you entirely. Arbitrary human contact is one of those things you don’t realise you need until bullshit small talk with bored shop clerks, or the senile rambling on the bus about their gecko’s unfortunate dietary requirements, is a distant memory. A shame that revelation only ever comes in absence. Most people are feeling a certain sense of that right now. But it’s not like, when things return to ‘normal’, and people timidly step out of their houses into the fresh air of a familiar world, it will be long before they slip back into streams of mongrelised, oblivious screen-watchers surging toward tube stations and overpriced artisanal coffee shops with the dead, black eyes of a shark on a kill. It’s a funny thing, how good people are at living their lives without taking any fucking notice of it.

The rain starts harder. Lucky this pitch was free, or we’d already be wet through. An ugly, stained concrete ceiling mirrors the pavement above us, offering partial shelter beside the steps of the station. Not so much a good thing. It takes longer for the blanket to get justifiably soaked, so we’ll be out freezing our dicks off for longer and will still return with empty pockets. I couldn’t bring my phone out because of the weather; it’s in fucking bits already and if I lose my music that’s game over. I start humming the spacey guitar riff of Open Heart Surgery again, wondering if Anton Newcombe was singing about a woman or drugs.

Ali throws his arms up in childish exasperation. “All the shops are fucking shut. Do we have to wait?”

“We should.” As soon as the statement leaves my lips, I can’t justify it.

“What’re you expecting? Everyone to suddenly come out at once with looser wallets than before?”

“And you’re not?” I snort, the sarky cunt.

“Mate – there’s been like three people in the last hour.” He kicks the empty cup to the road as a taxi roars by, splashing dirty black water inches away us.

“What else is there?” I say, straightening my legs out and tempting fate.

He huffs, disinclined, pulling the blanket up to his chest and sticking his cracked bottom lip so far out, I can see the grim banners of skin flapping in its dry corners.

I’d never say I don’t rate Ali. We’ve always hit it off pretty solid and never really beefed, not like some of the others. But he is a fucking bitch, always moaning and sulking like a dog with its tail up its arse. He’s too quick to call it quits but he’ll learn. Fresh meat feels more defeat, that’s what Mick would say, in a gruff Scottish voice strained by fags and drink - back when I was quick to call it in, sick of long days and longer nights in the cold Smoke. We’d walk to Tottenham Hale to meet his mate Andrew, who lived in a small box room looking over the Wilko car park. Every time we went, he’d be right in the midst of some absolute fucking crisis. Once we turned up and found his door open. He was sitting at the opposite side of the box room, trying to fire the rounds of an empty, decrepit pistol at us. There was a sodden brown sock tied in a torniquet round his leg and a pile of white powder on a Nil by Mouth DVD case beside him. This guy fully sees himself as some Ray Winstone character, a right horrible cunt. Not that time. Some kids had slashed his leg open with a utility knife. He managed to get away but was sure they were coming to finish him off. Mick reassured him there was no way they could know where he lived. He was good like that. We managed to get Andrew to set the gun down, somewhere within reach. When we suggested hospital, he indignantly tied the rag tighter, mumbling about needing a bottle, as dirt and blood mixed in streams down his leg. We stayed the night in his yellow shoebox, waiting for a go on the sniff as we watched him sift erratically through the violent bits of the English gangster films he had on DVD.

Walking back across North, preparing to sit through the cold after a sleepless night like that, takes a special kind of determination.

Ali turns to me with a pleading expression smeared over his pitted face, “I could murder a pint.”

I laugh out loud at the thought of it. “Even -”

“I know. Still.”

For the next while, we sit imagining crisp golden liquid on our lips and the comforting fit of a pint in the palm. I find my hands rummaging my pockets, searching for the change. I’ve succumbed to the comforting thought of a little warmth and whatever zoot we could muster out of the carpets. Ali leans forward, stretching the stiffness from his back. As he does so, his jacket slides down to his elbow, revealing a long, bony forearm covered in cuts, burns and bruises. I locate the day’s earnings.

“Sixty whole English pence.” Rubbing my dry, red hands together, I’m up fairly promptly off the ground. “Fuck it. That’s enough of a success story for today. I just hope they’ve had more luck. What do you reckon the time is?”

It’s not a long walk back but it still takes me a while to bring myself to step out of cover and brave the rain. There’s no point straying too far from home when there’s nobody anywhere.

With hoods drawn over our heads and the tube station behind, we start walking home. So much water has pooled under the bridges that we have to hug the wall, jumping to not get soaked past our ankles. Fucking litter blocked drains of London, now full of more face masks than fag butts. Ali pulls up under the edge of the final bridge.

“Les’ roll one quick.” We’re standing in the protection of a shiny glass bus stop, sandwiched between adverts for drink and Norwegian nicotine pouches. I give Ali the baccy and turn for a piss against the wall. Above me is a behemoth pint of Carling, doing little to settle my craving for the unattainable. My stomach gurgles in reluctant acknowledgement. I wish we could get back and cook up a fucking storm, as if we were home home – all the trimmings and everything.

“How are you even gonna’ smoke?” I ask.

“I’ll shield it.”

“You’re wasting burn.”

“I’ll buy the next one.”

“With what?”

“Bruv. I’ll fucking - sell some shit from the house. The paintings.”

“How will you do that dickhead?”

“We’ll rent a fucking gallery and auction them off.” He smirks.

“Roll it.” I’m not waiting for him. Leaving the shelter of the bridge for the rain, I abandon Ali hunched over a cigarette placed precariously on his knees as he leans against the bus stop.

Beside the bridge, the trellis of The Old White Lion gleams like obsidian against weathered Tudorbethan limewash. The windows, long fogged over, direct streams of rainwater onto pots of drowned flowers below. They look like the peonies my Nan used to keep, except hers were always mint in their hanging baskets either side of the front door. Ali catches up, panting with half an unfiltered rollie hanging from his fuzzy lips, and we round the corner onto the long stretch down Bishops Avenue. Sweet home.

Joe Bird returns with an ongoing tale of morbid juxtaposition and silver-lined grief through the eyes of a young adult living on the city streets.