We crossed the highway to the shops. He led me to a bakery run by Chinas and I bought a pie for myself, and one for Jack (this was his name). After that we went to a service station and got Slurpees. I'd never had them before. We walked along the railway line, drinking the Slurpees.
"Who you live with?" he said.
"Nobody."
"Nobody?" He didn't believe me. "Where?"
"In a hotel."
"In a hotel," he said. No, he wasn't buying it at all.
"Dirty Joe sent us," I explained.
"Dirty who?"
So then I had to explain Dirty Joe.
"Who was in the hotel with you?" he said.
"Nobody."
"You said us."
"No I didn't."
"You're a fucking liar."
I tipped the Slurpee up into my mouth and tapped the bottom of it like a bongo drum. None came out. "My wife and my kid," I said.
Jack burst out laughing.
"Fuck you," I said, bringing the cup down again. Something in my voice must have made him stop laughing, and he didn't say anything for a while – just slurped through his straw, which is why they're called Slurpees I guess.
"You fuck her?" he said, after a while.
"What?"
"You know. Fuck. Her."
I didn't say anything.
"She was your wife, right?" There was a smile at the corner of his mouth.
"Don't talk about her."
He shrugged and turned away. There was a cat in the sun on the front step of an old boarded-up hall behind a cyclone fence. Jack threw his Slurpee at it and it bolted. Bits of Slurpee clung to the cyclone fence like magic. The cat went back to cleaning itself in a different sunny spot, and Jack told it that it was a cocksucking piece of catshit.
Then he turned back to me. "Where's your kid?"
"Dead."
"How?"
"Drowned."
He shrugged. I don't reckon he believed any of it. I realised that I didn't care.
"Do you want a job?" he said.
"What kind of job?"
"Rim job."
"Is that to do with cars?"
He burst out laughing. Then he pulled the knife out from under his coat again and handed it to me. "Yours," he said.
"Why?"
"You'll see."
I held it up and looked at the sun shining off the blade. "Knife," I said.
"You're a genius."
I ran it across the back of my wrist. When I lifted it away there was a bald patch there, the little hairs sticking to the blade. "Sharp," I said.
"Like it?"
I wasn't sure.
He gave me the scabbard. "Put it in this. Unless you want to slice your cock off."
I put the knife in the scabbard and slipped it in my pocket. He still hadn't told me what he wanted me to do with it.
"We're gonna make some coin," he said, slapping me just a bit too hard on the back.
I didn't tell him that I didn't need coin – that I had already a big roll of it in my bag. He'd probably figured people who sleep in pipes don't have any.
We spent the rest of the day putting things on the railway line and watching the trains roar over them, and throwing rocks at abandoned buildings, and spitting off a pedestrian bridge onto the cars going by on the highway, and things like that. I wasn't that enthusiastic about any of it, but it was something to do I guess.
In the afternoon we went back to the park and sat on top of the pipe I'd slept in. Jack smoked a cigarette. He offered me one but I didn't want it. Sometimes he looked at his watch. He still hadn't told me what my job was. Whatever it was, I didn't want to do it. But I couldn't think of a way to turn it down. I'm not good at turning things down.
As he smoked Jack told me about his family. His Dad was in prison. His Mum was a whore. His older brother was a genius. He didn't tell me what he was a genius at. Jack had dropped out of school last year because his teachers were cocksuckers. He'd started an apprenticeship in concreting, but his boss was a cocksucker, so he'd left after a week. The cocksuckers at the CES made him fill out too many forms. Now he was Self Employed, which is when you work for yourself. He didn't tell me what he was Self Employed at. I wondered if it had anything to do with rim jobs.
I heard a bell ringing in the distance. Jack looked up at it, then crushed out his cigarette on the side of the pipe. I wondered what the bell meant. I'm pretty stupid about everyday things like bells. That's what happens when you live half your life in a hotel. Knowing about Apes and things isn't much help out in the real world, I've discovered.
We watched a few packs of kids go through. They looked warily up at us as they trotted by. Then a small fat boy appeared. His backpack was huge, set high up on his back, and he was walking fast with his eyes to the ground, mumbling something to himself. When he got nearer I realised he was singing. He hadn't seen us. He was in his own world.
Jack moved over to cut the boy off. He stood in front of him and put his hand out, palm-first. The fat boy walked straight into it. He stopped with a weird squeak and looked up through Jack's fingers.
"Hello tits," Jack said. "Your bag. Give it."
The fat boy just stood there gaping.
"Ben, show him," Jack said.
I knew what he wanted me to do. So I took the knife out of the scabbard, and held it up so the fat kid could see it. I felt pretty stupid to be honest.
"Over here, dumbarse," Jack said to me. "On his throat."
I didn't get a chance. At the sight of the knife the fat kid squealed and dropped his bag. It was amazing how easily he slipped out of it. I read somewhere once that mice can shrink their bodies to get through tight spaces – maybe the fat boy had this ability. His bag thunked to the ground and he ran off into the park. He moved amazingly fast.
Jack laughed out loud at the sight. I put the knife away.
"Let's see what we've got," Jack said, and opened the bag. He pulled out a lunch box. There was a crushed sandwich in plastic inside it: the fat kid's uneaten lunch. Jack threw it over his shoulder. It unravelled in the air as it flew and some seagulls appeared from nowhere and started fighting over the bits. He pulled out a book and tossed it onto the ground. Another book. Soon there was a pile of them in front of him. He found some cards in the front pocket. They had basketball players on them. He threw them on the pile of books and turned the bag upside down and shook it. There was nothing else inside.
"Fucking fatarse," he said. He dropped his pants and pulled out his cock and pissed on the pile of books. His cock was dark and dangerous-looking, and he pissed for a long time. He chuckled to himself as he did it.
"Your turn," he said to me when he was done.
"I'm good," I said.
He shrugged, and shook the drops off the end of his cock. Then he pulled his pants back up and sat back down on the pipe. There was a cigarette behind his ear. He pinched it out, looked it over, put it in his mouth, lit it.
"I gotta go," I said.
"Where?" he said.
"Back. To the city."
"We just got started."
I shook my head and held the knife out to him handle first. He just looked at me. His eyes were red and bleary, and seemed to look through me, and for the first time I was afraid of him. He didn't take the knife off me. I looked at one of his hands, splayed out like a spider on the surface of the concrete pipe. It was very white and the knuckles very red. The fingernails were bitten back to nubs. There was a cigarette burn on the back of it. It made my stomach turn just looking at it.
"Gotta go," I said, and tossed the knife onto the woodchips at his feet and walked away. I imagined him picking up the knife and coming after me with it, but I didn't hear anything. He didn't even call out.