Friction Read Online Free Page B

surveys the girls. He weighs them, unwraps them, cuts and prices them. It’s slaughter, quick, it’s slaughter.
    â€˜Look at her.’
    â€˜That twat’s pointing at me.’
    â€˜Come on.’
    â€˜Knockers. Quick, fuck. Look at the knockers.’
    â€˜I’ve got no chance.’
    Somewhere among the lights, fun is located, invisible to the untrained eye. This is the age of excess, of silence, of stillness, of getting fucked up, of inebriated and uninhibited sex or hard morning wanks. This is the age of cash and waste.
    At around midnight Colin seeks refuge in a toilet cubicle, leaving Boys 1 and 2 on the dance floor. He takes a piss and then lowers the toilet seat and the lid, wiping away the residue of cocaine and urine before sitting down and resting his elbows on his knees. The music is muffled but still seems deafening. ‘Y2K’ reads a note on the door, graffiti, ‘Y2K: Kev fucked Sal.’ What became of that moment? thinks Colin, noticing a pair of black brogues entering the adjacent cubicle. What became of Kev? He fucked Sal, of course, but then what? What did Sal and Kev do afterwards? Dance, maybe, yes, thinks Colin, Kev danced with a dirty dick, and Sal with an altered minge.
    Colin falls forwards on to the wet floor, turning and lifting the lid, vomiting an odorous yellow into the toilet water.
    â€˜You all right in there, mate?’
    Am I all right in here? Colin wipes a hand across his mouth. It’s decay, he thinks, pinching his Adam’s applebetween his fingers and thumb. It’s some fucked-up decay. He looks down; the toilet lets out a deep, gurgling belly laugh.
    â€˜All right, son, out you come.’
    Colin looks up to see a very white face staring down at him over the divide. A very large fat face, the telling shine of black bomber jacket beyond its neck. A bouncer. Bollocks. A bouncer balancing on next door’s toilet. Colin sighs. The bouncer jumps off the toilet and comes round to meet Colin as he leaves the cubicle.
    â€˜Let’s go, sunshine.’
    With a fat white hand on each shoulder, Colin is pushed slowly through The Bar. The crowd parts in front of him. Wankers turn to watch. Bitches whisper and Colin finds himself outside with Boys 1 and 2.
    â€˜You’ve been chucked out, too?’ he says, straightening his collar. ‘What for?’
    â€˜Fighting,’ says Boy 2, quietly into his sleeve.
    â€˜Wanking,’ screams Boy 1, over his shoulder, running quickly towards a bus.
    The following morning. Colin suggests that they all eat breakfast at the hospital. The others follow for one important reason: for the hell of it. They walk from Boy 2’s flat in Victoria Park to the Infirmary off Oxford Road by the University of Manchester. On the second floor they find the Wishing Well, a grim cafeteria where the light is the yellow of vomit and the air is always grey. The pregnant and the dying shuffle here, trays in their hands, hair terrified by nocturnal static.
    All three boys order English breakfasts. Since being guided from The Bar last night, Colin is sure that something haschanged. That the intricate pipes of his brain have been tampered with, or one little tube has slumped accidentally from its socket and has begun to leak into his open skull, closing off a hemisphere of feeling and thought.
    â€˜I can’t be arsed going out any more. All those wankers, chasing cunts – I can’t be fucked with that.’ Colin watches Boys 1 and 2 closely. His veins seem to course with fizzy blood. Or something bitter, perhaps. Boy 2 forks an entire sausage with one jab and allows it to hover in front of his face.
    â€˜You don’t have to go out, Colin. You can shag prostitutes.’
    â€˜They make you wear condoms and you can’t kiss ’em.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ Colin snaps and Boy 2 crunches at the sausage. ‘What do you think of these women?’ asks Colin