Old Flames, Burned Hands Read online

  By the same author

  BAD WOLF

  PALE WOLF

  KILLING DOWN THE ROMAN LINE

  A Perdido Pub book

  Copyright © 2013 Tim McGregor

  Cover photo copyright © 2013 Cristina Otero

  All rights reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9920403-0-7

  WHEN TILDA PARISH OPENED her eyes, the world was all wrong. It was upside down. She had to blink twice before realizing that it wasn’t, in fact, the world that was all wrong; it was her. The car had landed on its roof and Tilda hung inverted like some demented bat, tangled in the seatbelt.

  Under her lay the remains of the windshield, a thousand pieces of shattered safety glass blown over the ceiling of the wrecked car. The engine still running. Something wet dripped up her nose and trickled into her eyes and when she wiped it away, her hands came away bloodied.

  “Gil?” Her voice was cracked and parched. She turned to the passenger seat but it was empty.

  Gil was gone.

  She screamed his name but there was no response, no sound beyond the lapping of water against the pier.

  Later in hospital, there would be great gaps in her memory about the accident itself and what came after but everything preceding it was sharp and crisp. Small details recalled with clarity about that last night they were together. The last night before Gil died, before her life was cleaved into to two halves; before and after. Her memory recall was a blessing at times and other times it was a curse. She clung to every detail, she wished she could forget the whole thing.

  She had performed that night, standing on the black painted stage of the El Mocambo. Its stink of spilled beer and limes that should have been tossed the day before, the cloud of cigarette smoke boiling over the hot stage lamps.

  The Spitting Gibbons was Tilda’s fourth band in as many years. The band name had no significant meaning to anyone, having been dreamt up while high one night after practice. They just liked the way it sounded. Besides, Tilda had told her bandmates, they can always just make up some interesting story behind it for the inevitable interviews after they broke big. History would save them the trouble as the Spitting Gibbons wouldn’t live to see Christmas.

  So there was Tilda onstage, a stick figure of twenty-four years, lips to the mic and fingers curled around a Fender bass. A raw voice, like a choirboy who smoked unfiltered Navy Cuts. The guitarist was a hirsute trog who had schooled under the Robert Fripp academy before forgetting everything he had ever learned to find that low-fi amateur crunch. The drummer was a wiry octopus who banged for no less than four other bands at the time, this being one of those drummerless seasons where competent percussionists were scarce.

  Neither boy was much to look at, which was just as well because all eyes were on her. Her head tilted to one side and her thin shoulders weighed down under that big Fender. Her voice cracking when she hit that high note but not caring, knowing it was masked under the wall of noise. Slow then fast, loud then soft. That kind of structure so many chased back then, the sound of the Pixies still ringing in their ears from the first time they heard it.

  Coming down, her eyes dropped to the crowd (seventeen who’d paid at the door, another dozen who crashed). Peering through the footlights and smoke to pinpoint a certain face amongst all the others. His.

  Gil Dorsey leaned against the bar at the back of the room holding a pint of swill that passed for draught. A smirk so big you would’ve thought the skinny dude just found a C-note sticking to the bottom of his glass but it wasn’t that. It was her. The girl onstage was singing to him.

  Something happens when your average human being climbs onstage and sings. Doesn’t matter who it is, they transform up there under the lights and, admit or not, every warm body gets a woody. Even butt-ugly singers (look under Jesus Lizard, also Dinosaur Jr., too the Pogues) take on this strange magnetism when standing five feet overhead and bathed in sound.

  Tilda Parish was no exception. On the everyday street, she was no traffic-stopper, no magnet for cat calls. Cute? Sure. A few freckles dotted the cheeks under her green eyes, her chestnut hair tinted black in a bad home dye job. Someone you pass on the street and note the smile but could not recall the face five minutes later if your life depended on it. That was her. And yet she walks onstage, plugs in and starts singing? Everyone looked up, drinks frozen halfway to their lips. Even the near-comatose doorman plucked the toothpick from his scowl to take a look. Even the entrenched hetero girls clinging to their boyfriends responded with the flicker of a nipply hard-on.

  Tilda and Gil were in love. Who wasn’t in those days? And like the movie said; truly, madly, deeply. They had met fourteen months earlier at a dingy club where Tilda was gigging with her former band The Daisy Pukes. Loading gear out of the van, she was struggling to haul an amp inside when she heard someone ask if she wanted a hand. Looking up, Gil Dorsey was there.

  Smiling, he reached down for the amp and tried not to strain under its weight. Tilda smiled back, grabbed a guitar case and led him inside. Neither of them believed in love at first sight but something sparked when their eyes met. She invited him to the show and when he saw her onstage that first time, he was a goner. Three songs into the Daisy Pukes’ set, he was upfront with his eyes locked on the slight girl hammering a sunburst acoustic. Waiting for her after the gig, she asked what he thought of the show and he admitted to disliking cowpunk. ‘You’ll come around,’ she declared. When he finally did, Tilda had already dissolved the Daisy Pukes to form a new band with a different sound. Didn’t matter. By then they had both fallen off the deep end.

  “This is kinda spooky,” Tilda had said, and not for the first time. Hauling her gear back to his flat after the El Mo gig, they had uncorked a bottle of cheap Spanish red and shed their clothes. Seeing Tilda play had lost none of its power and left him aching to get his hands on her. For Tilda, she loved being wanted that much, that desperately. Like his life depended on it. There were more than a few times when they hadn’t waited to get home and just went at each other in the club’s grimy backroom.

  “What’s spooky about it?” he asked.

  Lying next to him in the sweltering flat, waiting for each pass of the oscillating fan to cool her sweaty skin, Tilda kissed his shoulder. “You’re all I think about now.”

  Gil patted the floor beside the mattress until he located the cigarette pack. Two left. He lit one for them to share. “You sound resentful.”

  “I am. I was perfectly happy before I met you. I’d sworn off boys. Too much trouble.” She took the cigarette and blew smoke at the cheap fan. “But now? Jesus. We’re in so much trouble.”

  “That’s what I love about you. Such a romantic.”

  “The thing is, I don’t remember feeling this way with anyone else. This strongly, you know? I can’t imagine it being this strong ever again.” Tilda sat up and flattened her palm on his chest. “I should just kill you now.”

  “Kill me?”

  “Yeah. In your sleep. Then I’d kill myself. Your landlord would find us a month later, kicking down the door because of the smell. He’d find the two of us rotting into each other.”

  “Again with the romance.” He leaned in and kissed her hip. She tasted salty.

  Tilda stretched and went to the sink to fill a glass of water. Gil’s place was small, a flat above a garage on Oxford. The place smelled of solvents and oil. Stretched canvasses were stacked against the wall and paint of every colour dotted the scuffed floors. Gil was a painter and he wore it with pride. Eve
ry stitch of clothing he owned was splattered with it, more of it encrusted under his nails and embedded in the grooves of his fingerprints. Not untalented but no Picasso either. The work piled up in the corner.

  Gil studied Tilda from behind as she stood at the small sink. There were times when, standing at the back of a club and watching her perform, he knew in his bones that, between the two of them, hers was the true talent. Raw and huge. She made it look effortless, all that sound crashing across the room to rattle your sternum. His own talents seemed trifling next to it and, in his weak moments, he sometimes resented her for it. Ashamed at its pettiness, he kept that secret. For now, he could afford to keep up this illusion that he was a painter. It was all he had ever wanted to do. The day of reckoning talents and facing the truth was far, far down the road. For now they had each other and, if he had his wish, he would have forever to reconcile the disproportion in their abilities.

  He propped up on one elbow, still studying her figure. Her damp skin reflected red from the neon leaking in from the kitchen window. “I should paint you like that. All red from the glow.”

  “Like you need another nude of me. Paint something else.”

  “You’re all I want to paint anymore.”

  “Obsessive much?” She turned around and let the cold counter press against her back. “Now that is romantic.”

  “You hungry? There’s some eggs in the fridge.” He nodded to the antiquated Kelvinator beside the sink. “Scramble us up a mess.”

  “Funny guy.”

  “Aw, come on, Til. Anyone can scramble eggs.”

  “Not me. I don’t cook.”

  “Not even for me?”

  “Gil, I love you but I’m not going to cook for you. Or any dude. The day you find me slaving in the kitchen is the day you can put a bullet in my head.” She refilled the glass and came back to bed. “This is the extent of my kitchen skills. Water.”

  Gil didn’t respond. His gaze stuck on the window, his eyes faraway.

  “Hey,” she said. “Where’d you go just now?”

  He took the glass from her. “Sorry. Drifted off.”

  “You keep doing that. You okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s just… last night was weird.”

  “I noticed.” She touched his knee where the skin was scraped raw. There were others cuts and bruises on his hands and shins. “You got banged up more than usual. What happened?”

  “Nothing.” He shrugged. “Just, uh, a close call.”

  There was more, she could read it in his eyes but didn’t push the issue. He would either tell her or he wouldn’t. In the last six months, Gil had taken up a strange and sometimes dangerous hobby; exploring abandoned buildings. He would break into deserted factories or condemned tenements to see what was inside. He would come home bruised and filthy, regaling Tilda with how he had crawled through tunnels or almost fallen through a rotten floor. She hated his hobby and didn’t understand the appeal. Whatever close call he had must have been serious because he hadn’t said a word to her about it.

  “I wish you’d give that up. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I think I will,” he said.

  That surprised her. He could be obstinate, just for the sake of it, and didn’t take well to advice but something was different. He almost seemed humbled, she thought, which was something she’d rarely seen in him. Had he almost died last night, tumbling to his death in some rotting firetrap? She wanted to know but didn’t want to ask. “Hey,” she said. “I have something for you.”

  “You do?”

  She couldn’t stop smirking. “Yup.”

  “Is it breakfast?”

  “No dummy.” She prodded her toe into his ribs. “I wrote you a song.”

  He sat right up. “You did? Play it.”

  Tilda chewed her lip, stalling. She had written the song four days ago but kept mum about it. The melody had just popped up while noodling on the guitar. Stringing a few notes together, a verse and half a chorus dropping off her tongue like they had been waiting there all along. The rest of the song was teased out and cold-forged that afternoon. It was a love song; plain and simple. Worse than that, it was earnest. She hated love songs. There were just so many of them, all insipid and cruelly simple when there was so much more to craft a song around. Imagine her surprise when, innocently plucking notes on the old gut string, a love song of all things hiccupped from her throat. Her fingers working the fretboard like they already knew the chords.

  It was unnerving how easily it came. She expected her roommate to burst in laughing and mocking her for such a maudlin tune. Tilda wouldn’t have blamed her either. Yet here it was. She noodled and finessed it, this the fastest she had ever written a song. Simple chord changes, the words spare and direct. She blushed singing the lyrics out loud in her bedroom but she couldn’t deny their accuracy. It was a love song about him.

  “I want to hear it,” he said when Tilda still hadn’t moved. Gil swung off the bed, lifted her guitar from its case and placed it in her lap. An old Gibson Hummingbird, the varnish crackled over the sunburst body.

  Tilda took a deep breath and plunged in. No point trying to describe the thing, the simple riff and words were meant for him and him alone. Leave it at that. She kept her head down, eyes on the strings. Chancing his eyes while playing it would have been too much.

  She didn’t look up again until she finished the song and the strings ran quiet.

  His eyes were a tiny shade of red and painted with disbelief. “You wrote that for me?”

  “Do you hate it?”

  “God no. I absolutely love it.” Now it was his turn to take a breath. “No one’s ever written a song for me.”

  Tilda shrugged. “Well, I’m glad to be the one to pop your cherry.”

  “You should record that.” He leaned in for a kiss, squeezing the guitar between them. “It’s a beautiful song.”

  “No recording. That one is just for you.”

  “Don’t be bashful. That could be a hit.”

  “It’s too sappy. I’m glad you like it but you’re the only one who’s ever gonna hear it.”

  “Then you better get used to playing it a lot because I love it.”

  She returned the guitar to its case. “Sorry, lover. Special occasions only.”

  “Then record it for me. So I can hear it whenever I want.” Gil went to the corner of the flat where her gear was stacked. Where most women left a toothbrush or a change of clothes at their boyfriend’s place, Tilda left instruments and amps. Gil dug out the four-track she had stored in the corner, found the mic and the cables. “Please.”

  She demurred but he insisted, plugging the microphone into the track machine. He pressed the guitar into her hands again and sat still as a churchmouse while she recorded the song. When she was done, she popped the cassette out and drew three little hearts on the white strip label. “I’m not even gonna put my name on this. But listen, you can’t play this for anyone else. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  She nestled tight into him until their skin grew slick in the heat of the small flat. “It’s too hot in here,” Tilda said. “Let’s go up to the roof.”

  “Okay. Grab the wine.” Then a devilish smirk broke over his face. “Hey, want to torch something?”

  “Like what?”

  He nodded at the stack of paintings. “I got some stinkers I wanna trash. But that’s not the cool part. I want to show you what I made.”

  THE rooftop was a relief from the torpid sauna of the flat. A hint of breeze that cooled the sweat sheen of their skin. They hauled up the wine, two stretched canvasses and some strange contraption that Gil had cobbled together.

  “What is that thing?” Tilda asked, leaning the frames against the low lip of the roof.

  “This,” he grinned, “is a homemade flamethrower.”

  The contraption consisted of a large can of butane slotted into the body of a caulking gun. A long barbecue lighter was fitted to one side and a rod extending from the undercarriage provided
a wick. A click of the lighter lit the wick. Gil aimed the contraption at the sky and squeezed the trigger nozzle. A blast of flame roared into the sky in a seven- foot arc, brilliant and angry. Gil laughed as he sprayed fire at the stars.

  Tilda scowled at the thing. “Why would you build that?”

  “Because I can,” he shrugged. “Here, set that painting against the wall.”

  “Be careful with that thing. You could hurt somebody.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded at the painting. “Him.”

  The painting Tilda leaned up was a self-portrait Gil had done in acrylic. It wasn’t his best work, Tilda conceded. Gil seemed to have gone out of his way to make his face look haggard and ugly.

  “You want to give it a shot? It’s fun.”

  Tilda stepped back. “No. It’s your toy, you go ahead.”

  Gil held the homemade flamethrower at his waist like a machine gun. “Sayonara asshole,” he said to the painting and fired. The flame blasted over the canvas until it rippled and burned, sending black smoke into the air.

  He lowered the gun and grinned at her. “I’m a genius. Sure you don’t wanna try?”

  It did look like fun. Tilda clapped her hands. “Okay.”

  Slinging the strap over one shoulder, Tilda tested the weight of the contraption in her hands. Gil kicked away the smoldering pieces of framing and set the second painting in its place. Another self-portrait. He stepped back and said, “Fire at will.”

  She aimed, then chewed her lip. “Feels weird, torching your face.”

  “Just burn that son of a bitch, would ya?”

  Tilda gripped the caulking gun tight and throttled back the nozzle. She squealed as the flame bellowed out in a dragon’s breath and incinerated the canvass. It felt powerful and dangerous but, she had to admit, it was fun.

  He took the flamethrower from her, lit a cigarette off the guttering wick before blowing it out. They watched the greasy smoke billow from the torched painting. “I was thinking about what you said. About killing your lover being romantic and stuff.”