Billy

But if I’d said: Yesterday I met a man at a party and suddenly he said something - there’s a crack in that man’s personality like a gap in a dam, and through that gap the future might pour in a different shape - terrible perhaps, or marvellous… [Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook]

Friday, near midnight. Billy had just finished work. It took him a long time to close up shop, he was doing everything slowly, slowly, moving as if through stew, and by the time he was pulling down the grill the city had cracked its knuckles and was on to its third drink. Billy was at the bus stop. It was raining, with force. His bus hadn’t come though he’d been there twenty minutes already, and he’d dropped his chips. That was the kind of sitcom bad luck Billy didn’t have the bandwidth for that night. He wouldn’t see the funny side. The bus didn’t come and didn’t come, and Billy sat and watched his chips being pounded into a steaming oily mush by the rain.

Some guy rushed past, tugging at a muscular dog with big balls and a head like an anvil. It tried to stop for Billy’s chips but the guy wasn’t having it.

Over the road women were falling out of a nightclub. Every two minutes a woman fell out, sometimes two, or three, clattering into the railings around the sheltered smoking area while they fumbled in their handbags for a lighter or a phone. Billy watched one of them vomit very quickly and privately into a potted palm tree - she was alone - holding her own hair back, hoops swinging like mad clocks. None of the other women noticed. She straightened up and went back inside. Trash music leaking through the door. Another day Billy would have worried he looked like a creep, posted up like that across a dark street and watching this cluster of unassuming, underdressed women. He was too weary to care, he just sat there, watching, like it was Europe. He put his headphones on. His lovely big noise-cancelling headphones.

No, Billy wasn’t feeling too good. He was having problems with his girlfriend, Nina, and his job was making him depressed. These were the things that could be named, but naming them gave Billy no relief because he knew there was a whole miserable curdling mass of something else underneath them, which could not be named or resolved. Billy had taken a job as a customer service advisor in a Ladbrokes betting shop. An infamously horrible place to work, a betting shop, but he was sick of hospitality and for the same minimum wage he thought he might as well do something of anthropological interest. Billy’s great-granddad threw his big Irish family to the wolves by gambling away what little money they had. The urge was totally alien to Billy, he didn’t even do crypto. Before he started Billy was actually thinking of the job as fieldwork for his masters dissertation. It dawned on Billy during his first shift that he would never write a single word about the betting shop. He didn’t want to think about it when he was not there.

Billy would quit, but he was supposed to be saving up for a long trip to Spain with Nina, and although he’d been able to set only a tiny parcel of money aside in the two months he’d been working there, Spain had become a kind of promised land for the two of them (London is the problem!) where their issues would desiccate in the heat and they would find each other again. It felt too dangerous to jeopardise the plan, even if only symbolically, and spend weeks scrolling through job sites on the sofa in front of Nina, who worked from home.

Billy was edge all day in the betting shop. You have to be, the clerks in betting shops get murdered all the time, just the other day some guy in a William Hill got his head smashed in, no one found him for two days, and the shop stayed closed while he was lying behind the counter out of sight of the security cameras. The betting companies are salivating for the arrival of full automation. Unfortunately opening and closing still requires one staff member, the technology isn’t quite there. And it was desperate in Billy’s Ladbrokes, the endless procession of no-hope men getting robbed over and over by machines that jingle and scream. He was on edge all the time, but that day he just ran out of anxiety. Some guy with mad eyes sidled in after lunch, Billy saw the handle of his knife when he lent over the B2 machine, yeah and he didn’t win, but Billy wasn’t anxious. He just pulled down the metal grill and let the guy get on with it while he had a cry. When anxiety runs out misery takes the wheel.

Nina had gone to stay with her cousin, so there was no one waiting for Billy at home. Billy could tell he was about to cry again, his nose was smarting, and there was still no sign of his bus. He hadn’t noticed because of his headphones, but now there was a woman at the bus stop with him. She was saying something. He pulled one leather disc away from his ear. Sorry, what? he said. G’is a smile, love! she said again. It might never happen. You waiting for the 436? Then she stared at him in a different language, like a bug, or a cat.

She was a small woman, brunette, in a furry coat and a blue-green dress made of strange clinging material. It clung around her thighs and her belly, which protruded slightly as if she was in the early stages of pregnancy or maybe just very full. Her hair was long, curly, wet from the rain, and she had lots of makeup around her eyes, which also protruded slightly.

Yes, he said. The 436.

Do you have any gum? she said. Her voice was really high, like that actress in Harry Potter. A Northern accent. He guessed she’d come out of that club. She looked kind of drunk, or stoned, or something. He thumbed out a piece of gum in his pocket and gave it to her. Then he worried she’d think it was linty pocket gum, unsheathed. But she put it in her mouth and said, Thanks. What’s your star sign?

To be honest he was really hoping she’d leave it at the gum. Just, she had this weird sheen to her, like a face from a dream. When you’re happy you’re receptive to strangeness, it’s all colour and texture and mystery added to the world. When you’re depressed it’s a different story, strangeness is unendurable.

Guess, he said, weakly. You have to tolerate that question a lot these days. The stranger tilted her head back and looked at him.

Taurus, she squeaked.

Yeah, he said. Taurus. She clapped her tiny hands.

I’m on fire, she said. Do you mind, she continued, unclasping her leopard-print purse and drawing out her phone, I’ve got this account - she opened TikTok and showed him her page. She had fifteen followers. She was following five hundred accounts. She’d posted a lot, a lot of videos of her with different people. I’ve guessed right like a million times in Manchester. I came down to London to see if I could do it here too. Do you mind?

She held up her phone in front of them with one fat little arm. She was so small and Billy so tall that she could only get half her face in shot. There he was on her screen, pale and thin and leaning diagonally away from her. She pulled her phone back in and flicked through a couple of filters. We look rough, she said. When she lifted it up again, they were airbrushed, faces flattened, their lips an ugly pink. Just act like I haven’t guessed yet.

She looked into the camera. Hey guys, she said, you know who it is. I’m here with - she elbowed him in the side - Billy, he said, Billy, she said, and the filter came off her for a second, she lurched through all textured and strange, leaving him alone with his pink lips and flat face. Billy, what’s your star sign?

Guess, he said, weakly. She tilted her head back again, stroked her chin with her free hand, then pointed one fat little finger at him. Taurus!

She put her phone away and they looked together at the women outside the nightclub.

Ta, she said. It seemed rude to put his headphones back on so he didn’t, and they sat on in silence, trying not to slip off the plastic bench. They don’t even let you sit down at the bus stop in London, you have to perch and push all your weight back against the glass.

Do you live in Camberwell? she asked eventually.

Yeah, Billy said.

That’s where my hotel is. Billy felt sorry for her, she just looked like she didn’t have a chance, being so weird and a woman and alone. It made him feel protective.

I’ve just been walking around, she said, for three days. I’m leaving tomorrow. Everyone in London is so friendly. Except that bouncer, she said, pointing at the club, he didn’t let me in. I don’t know why. He was a real prick.

To be honest if Billy was a bouncer he probably wouldn’t let her into the club. Just instinct. But he commiserated with a nod.

I’m starving, she said. I’m bloody ravenous.

He said, Oh yeah?

Do you wanna get some chicken? She turned her buggy eyes towards Billy. He looked at the puddle of chips.

Yeah, alright, he said, docilely.

She cupped a hand to her belly and slid off the bus bench. She was tiny, even tinier than he had thought, like a garden gnome. They were two minutes down the road when the 436 stormed past them, water hissing at its wheels. She didn’t look at it. She was busy telling Billy about herself. She was telling him that when she first discovered that she was pregnant she started feeling all these strange things, things she’d never felt before. It was like she had been given a few extra senses. She began having these dreams, dreams that would predict things - minor things - like an ex-boyfriend calling her out of the blue, or her mum’s cholesterol results - minor things that kept coming true. One morning she had this overwhelming feeling that something was going to go wrong. She cancelled all her plans and stayed at home, and then that evening on the news she saw some guy with a knife had gone crazy on the high street and stabbed three people. No fatalities, but if she hadn’t cancelled her plans that day, she would have died, she knew it. It was clear as day to her, like reading a traffic sign. Clearer.

As she spoke on Billy began to feel a sensation of increasing weightlessness, like she was pulling him out of orbit. It was a relief to get into the familiar light and stink of the chicken shop, to see the glittery plastic counter and the big multicoloured bottles of off-brand sauce and his skinny friend in the hairnet standing over the chip fryers. He saw Billy and called, Brother, you are back already?

They ordered and sat down in the comfortable scoops of red plastic, next to a dirty old guy who ignored them. Well, she continued, her hand on her belly, if this baby had given her all these powers, she wasn’t just going to sit back and do nothing. She tried her hand at everything, at tarot, palm-reading, communing with the dead, all that stuff. Tarot she had nailed, palm-reading not so much, the couple of times she’d used a ouija board she got a bad vibe and stopped. My ancestors weren’t happy people, she said, they had hard lives. Billy asked her if she’d tried it with gambling. She said no, it didn’t feel honest. The way she figured it was she had seven more months of this, because who could say what would happen when she had the baby, her powers might just disappear. She had seven months to make a name for herself, maybe get a sponsorship, that’s why she started that account on TikTok, and since she guessed right every time she thought it wouldn’t be long before the algorithm noticed her. She said ‘algorithm’ in this awed, solemn tone. She hadn’t used that tone when she was speaking about communing with the dead. She ate her chicken delicately and thoroughly, making a neat pile of the clean translucent bones. Billy asked her her name. Michelle, she said.

When she was finished she moved their greasy boxes aside, wiped up some ketchup from the table with a paper napkin, and reached into her bag. She drew out a pack of tarot cards. You paid for my food, she said. Billy didn’t protest. She told Billy to ask the cards a question. It couldn’t be too specific, or too direct, and Billy couldn't tell her what it was. For a long time she moved the cards between her tiny hands with her eyes closed. Then a single card dropped onto the table. She didn’t open her eyes, continuing her shuffle. Pale and plump and regal, like Spanish child queen in an oil painting. A few seconds later another card dropped. She opened her eyes slowly, and placed the two cards next to one another. One faced towards her, the other towards Billy.

She placed a finger on the card that faced towards her. It showed a man, facing away, embracing a tall bundle of sticks. Michelle’s voice dropped four octaves and acquired a kind of growl.

This is the ten of wands, she said. Billy bit down on his drumstick.

In the reversed position. It’s telling me, Billy, that you fancy yourself a bit of a martyr.

Michelle, Billy said, you don’t have to do the voice.

Michelle looked up at him. The pupils in her snow-globe eyes had shrunken away from the strip lights into tiny black points.

Alright, she said. Some people like it. Anyways, you see how he’s clinging onto those twigs? That symbolises your responsibilities. You’re juggling a bunch of responsibilities and you’re not giving proper attention to any of them. Let go, Billy. Stand up for yourself. You’ve got the wrong perspective.

Bollocks, Billy thought. Has nothing to do with me. Billy was crying out for some responsibility. Responsibilities seemed like a luxury belonging to his parent’s generation, whereas Billy would be renting and childless forever.

And this one, Michelle said, pointing to the other card, is a card from the major arcana. It was yellow, and showed a guy in a tunic holding a rose, a little white dog by his feet. He was looking up into the sky with his arms outstretched. The caption said ‘The Fool’.

This is a really important card. It means you should lighten up. You should be more spontaneous, because you’re too logical and rational. You have no power over reality, and you shouldn’t think that you do. Let go of your expectations. If you have no expectations, you have nothing to lose.

Billy picked at his chips. Maybe they don’t make sense now, she said, but they will. Anyway I feel like they make sense for you, she said, looking him up and down.

But like do you ever think, Billy said eventually, that this stuff is designed so that everyone can always relate to it, no matter what it shows?

I don’t know, she said simply, I just wait until it feels right. If it doesn’t feel right I do it again. My boyfriend got those exact same cards the other day actually. That makes sense. You’ve got similar energies.

Oh yeah? Billy said.

Yeah, she said, he’s a miserable bastard too. She hooted. It’s like I attract them.

Outside on the street the rain had stopped. The old guy got up to leave.

I reckon I’ll go to Soho, said Michelle. In a cab. Want to come?

Billy declined.

Got a girlfriend? she asked.

Yeah, said Billy, she’s called Nina.

Knew it, said Michelle. And you’re in a rough patch?

Yeah, said Billy.

Michelle stood up to her full four foot six and swung her furry coat about her rounded shoulders. I’ll see what I can do, she said, but I can’t do it on my ones. You’ve got to pitch in, Billy.

She leant down around an inch and kissed him on the cheek.

Bye, Michelle, he said. Billy watched her through the glass door as she stood on the street and ordered an Uber. Eventually he went outside and walked towards a Lime bike. He paid on the app. It bleeped, unlocking, its handlebars falling sideways against his thigh like a spent horse.