Too Weird for Ziggy Read Online Free Page B

that wouldn’t be hard to find. If you thought Finsbury Park was apit back then—well, we moved away eventually, bought a house around here. I always said I could never live in the suburbs, but anyone can live anywhere, can’t they, when it comes down to it? We packed up when our youngest was born. Scarlett. Yeah, named after your song—the wife’s idea. She said she wrote to you asking you to be godfather—nothing to do with me, she only told me a short while back. She said she never heard back from you. I suppose you didn’t get the letter. Ha! Don’t worry about it. No, seriously, I’m sure you get asked that sort of thing all the time. Letters like that probably don’t even reach you. You pay people to make sure the great unwashed don’t intrude on your life, don’t ‘invade your space,’ don’t pollute your pure air. What’s the view like from up there, Buttock? I mean, how
do
we appear to you?”
    The people from economy class crowd by with cheap suitcases piled up on trolleys. Spike hears his name muttered and whispered as they pass. His head is throbbing. It feels like a washing machine stuffed with the contents of a thousand dirty laundry bags, churning.
    The customs man pulls a paperback from a corner of Spike’s suitcase. He reads out the title. “
Life and How to Survive It
.” He tosses it back in the case. His cheeks are livid. “Jesus H. Christ! If
you’re
not satisfied, what fucking hope is there for the rest of us? You’ve got it all, Buttock, don’t you. Living like a kid on a grown man’s money—well, good luck to you, mate. Good fucking luck to you. There but for fortune. There but for one great fucking stroke of fate.”
    Red hands shaking, he tidies up the suitcase.
    And all at once an image flashes into Spike’s mind, so vivid he might have been looking at it in a magazine. It’sKnocker’s bedroom. His new carpet—electric blue with red, black, and yellow swirls. His old wallpaper—“Animals of the Jungle,” he remembers, and it makes him laugh. Knocker said they couldn’t take it down because the British government had designated it a historic inner-city treasure. You could barely see the wall for posters anyway—Beatles, Stones, Arsenal Football Club, and that enormous map of the world he had, with the handmade flyer pinned onto America that said ‘Knocker and the Dawes Tour the Universe 1965.’ On a low bookcase stacked with records was the regulation one-piece, blue vinyl record player they all had. And Knocker’s there on the bed, playing along to the record on his big cheap acoustic guitar, and he’s on the floor, back against the wall, tapping out a rhythm on a Monopoly box lid, and Knocker’s father is yelling up the stairs to keep the bloody noise down and hasn’t he got a home to go to, and back home Mum’s got the dinner on, the house smells of pork chops and brown sauce, and she’s telling him he’d better get the table laid before his dad gets home from work. Poor Dad. Wonder how they’re all holding up.
    Spike reaches a hand across the table.
    The customs man pulls his hand away.
    â€œI’m all right. You don’t have to lose any sleep over me. No need to lose any of your beauty fucking sleep. I’m sorry. I’m a bit tired. Had a hard week. Night shifts. Long hours. Fluorescent lights. Ultraviolet deprivation. I’m slowly crumbling, you know? The blood’s slowed down. If you bumped into me now I’d crumple up like papier fucking mâché. You could turn me upside down and shake me out and I’d just be full of dust, like a vacuum cleaner bag.
    â€œDo you want to know what’s frightening, Buttock? Really fucking frightening? Watching what’s happening to yourself and not being able to do a thing about it. Like those dreams where they’re disemboweling you and