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"That's fucking gross." Miles muttered. A corpse of a rodent with no head lay on the floor next to his shoes.
"What's fucking gross?" Alex asked from the other side of the bed.
"I did have a mouse, after all. Maxie killed it in the night and left it just here." Miles crawled back onto the bed and pointed in the general direction of the floor.
"I didn't hear it. I reckon next door's cat got in through the dog flap. Maxie isn't a ratter." Alex moved in the bed. He looked over Miles shoulder at the remains on the floor.
"We got pretty drunk last night. Pretty unobservant." Miles reminded him.
"No amount of alcohol would make me not notice Max ripping a rat's head off." Alex said.
"I gave you Wild Turkey." Miles brows moved up. "A lot of Wild Turkey."
"I won't be consuming that again in the future." Alex decided.
Both of them heard the paws of the little dog before he appeared. For a moment, Miles felt reluctant to touch him. Alex moved out of the bed and picked up the eager dog. Max was too little in his own right to leap up onto the bed. He needed human assistance.
"No blood on him." Alex said. "His breath's fine."
"Fuck, I hope so." Miles winced. "Oh, matey, don't look at that thing." He took the little dog into his arms, patting his head and stomach at the same time to Max's contentment. Max rolled over across the bed and Miles legs covered by the duvet to get a stomach pat in turn from Alex.
Miles climbed out of the bed to get rid of the rodent whilst Alex obliged the little dog.
"Let's rip up this bit of floor and burn it." Miles complained when he returned. He had plastic bags in hand and a nauseous expression deformed his face. "Christ, I'll want some Zolpidem after this."
When Miles left with the headless rodent contained, Max leapt off the bed and followed Miles to the back door.
Alexwas reminded of stories Miles had told him about his great-grandparents, Angloromani gypsies, and his Grandmother, who had gotten sick of the Karavan life and had married a wharf labourer in Liverpool.
Miles great-grandfather, who had lived until ninety six, a miracle age considering his life, had been universally known as Old Boy. No copper, doctor, administrator, shopkeeper or publican had a decent word to say about Old Boy, even after he was dead for thirty five years.
Old Boy had passed when Miles was a few months old. The consumption of opium deriviative, tobacco, alcohol, and chemical poisoning of nine decades had marinated Old Boy's organs nicely.
When Miles had been born, Old Boy had wanted to know what the baby looked like.
"You, old boy." Had been the answer of many long-suffering women. "Hopefully he's not a cunt like you."
Whenever that story was mentioned, everyone laughed. Even old ladies in fitted jackets and diamond rings laughed; men who had wallowed blissfully in the free love and marijuana days were not too politically correct to frown upon it.
Old Boy had bred dogs, guard dogs specifically. The black and vicious kind. The sort that ate a barrell of food a day and had a bite force that caused screams to be heard from three miles away.
As all romani at the time, Old Boy had also bred horses for racing and farming. The dogs protected the horses. The dogs protected the family.
"The smell of the shit, the fur, did Gran's head in." Miles had said. "She always preferred the smell of Grandad - ship oil and motor grease."
Miles talked about his family, but never the parts that Alex truly wanted to know.
Never a word about his Dad. Never a word about his Mother.
"Nothing there of interest." Miles had laughed it off once. "Never did anything of interest, Mum and Dad. Nah, it's all the old family that has the character, the tricks. They knew how to live, how to be happy."
Some of the possessions of the old family resided in Miles house. A picture of his Gran when she was twenty two in a hand-knitted cardigan and a tweed skirt. A picture of his Grandad when he was a baby. A white cloth nappy, white booties, and a white jumper.
There was a jewellery box that had little bits of everything stored in it. A few rings, spare house keys, some condoms, ticket stubs from the first concert he had gone to with his first proper girlfriend. Miles said the box was acorn wood, made in the 1830s. Got picked up by Old Boy's Mother in the 1870s.
There was a thoroughly battered biscuit tin in the bottom of the wardrobe. The first tax records Miles family had ever got were in that tin. "They never paid tax before 1908." Miles had explained with a cackle. "That tin was a mourning tin for Queen Victoria when she died in 1901."
Nothing of his Mother's. Nothing of his Father's.
Between the movie posters, the stacks of CD'S, books, DVD's and vinyl records, other people would not notice. The basket with fresh washing that had not been put away in the wardrobe, the full boxing gym bag on the armchair. Enough modern, enough untidiness, to obscure the old, and the intent presence of it.
Alex breathed in deeply through his nose. It was silent. All of his observations often were. Signs felt rather than heard or seen. Eyes lingering...that was a tradition, a specislity. It was how his mates knew him, his lovers knew him. His staring, that was not staring, for it was not mindless. It was hyperaware, it was articulate.
Alex was pulled away from a memory of gazing at Nick's back, clad in a green jumper, from a corner of a pub in their early twenties by Max's eager barking.
"Morning love, how are you!" Miles voice called out.
Alex heard the response of Amy, the next door neighbour and lawyer for the firefighter's union that made sure Miles house was not broken into when he travelled.
Max raced back into the house, and once in the bedroom, attempted in vain to jump up onto the bed. Alex picked him up, whute tail wagging in enthusiasm, and placed him onto the bed. Max meandered about, sniffing the pillows and climbing over Alex's legs and torso as though he was not a human, but an accessory of the bed.
I am some nights, Alex thought with self-amusement.
Buster began to investigate the world under the bed sheets. If the smell of the male body was potent to a human, Alex's nose wrinkled at the thpught of what two men smelt like to a dog's nose. Their sense of smell was meant to be three hundred, three thousand, times more sensitive than that of a human.
Does it smell sweet to them? Something like mould, fart and smog to us has a kind of sulphur, a honey odour, to them? Alex wondered.
The shape of Max's body under the covers was a comedy sketch come to life. Alex nearly vaulted into the bedhead when Max found his toes. A head injury incurred by a little dog licking your toes would have made even the most sour-faced bitch in a NHS triage service smile.
Miles returned to the bedroom, and to the bed. He threw back the covers and exposed Max. Goosebumps rose on Alex’s legs.
"The state of you, Maxxie." Miles grinned at the electric friction from the blanket making Max's fur stand on end.
Max panted lightly, looked charmed. When Miles sat down in the bed with his shoulder pressed into Alex's shoulder, Max found an ideal spot. Max clambered over Alex’s legs to climb into the space of bed between Miles and Alex.
"Why are you snuggling?" Miles asked. "If you want the rest of your guillotined rodent it's in the trash. Christ, I hope that wasn't you, son."
Max pawed Miles thigh for a pat.
Miles rubbed his fingers over Max's head. Max closed his eyes, his tail hitting Alex's leg in a smooth beat of contentment.
"Can you stand my cooking?" Miles asked Alex in jest.
"I need to." Alex said.
"Hungover?" Miles eyes glimmered.
"Nauseous." Alex admitted.
"You want a shower?" Miles asked. "I'll have something done by the time you get out."
"Sounds alright. Yeah, that'd be good." Alex agreed.
"Come on, you, go out for a piss." Miles put Max on the floor.
The dog looked surprised and indignant.
"Bet you were comfortable in the big bed." Miles said. "Go on, run about outside. Stop harrassing Alex for attention, that's my job. Don't fart in protest. Because he does that." Miles glanced back at Alex. He laughed at the look on Alex’s face. "How's that for elegance?" Miles grinned.
"My Grandad was the same." Alex shook his head.
Miles laughed more, but then quire firmly guided Max to where he wanted him.
Alex vaguely looked around the bedroom. The big lights would be too harsh on his head if they were turned on. God forbid, anyone forbid, the spring sunlight being allowed in. The blockout blinds were a presence of divinity, and Alex would sooner send gratitude to the manufacturer in the Netherlands then bow before the sort of icon that was found in the buggered old church in Sheffield.
There were said to be more connections in the human brain than stars in the sky. Anyone who even remotely knew Alex thought the scientific theory had a foundation in Alex's brain, if nothing else. Once Alex began to think, it could go anywhere. There had been a thousand and one occasions where he had taken his parents, his mates, a lover, or a stranger to the edge of a galaxy with skills of conversation steeped in his multiple-placed mind.
Crying lightning, Alex thought of the life-size mannequin of a crucified Jesus outside the Irish church in Sheffield. Blood tears had been painted on his girlish face to commemorate an anniversary of Ireland's Bloody Sunday. Jesus, in his new make-up, had not lasted long. Someone had taken an axe to his mannequin form one night.
Alex remembered the silence of people crossing to the other side of the street to avoid stepping in the crumbled remains. The local police had taped off the scene, and had been asking for anyone in the street with security cameras to send in their tapes. Alex had walked by with Matt, on their way to school. Nine or ten years old.
It was only then, in Miles bed with the sound of Miles in his kitchen, that Alex understood.
The silence of that morning, of that scene, to him felt like the silence he experienced when he saw Miles sleeping after a long abscence. The connection of emotion like emotion lit up a signal of electricity in Alex's mind, and made light rise behind his eyes.
That whole scene, and those experiences, oft repeated over the years...if he cpuld make films as well as music, it could have been adapted to the naturalistic immersion of that craftwork.
Or perhaps not.
To him only.
It lingered on Alex's mind as he moved into Miles shower. Alex lingered under the water, one hand pressed against the wall of the tiles, the other pinching water from the tip of his nose.
An internal monologue, fixated on Miles, ran in Alex's mind. It moved through Alex's brain in Miles voice, with clarity.
You bought me peace
You bought me a world to reach out for
You bought me my first culture amidst the scumbags and the people with no money, no life. Poor people can be sweet, but it was not the nature of those I knew
Gran said your skin was the same as the pearls she once owned. She said this to me before she died, when she wondered if I was going to stay with a girl, or you
Rare and different. That's what she thought of you. My only real friend. The one that would stay and grow old with me
The car you crashed with both of us in it. The smoke coming out from under the bonnet and the broken glass of the headlights. They were as white as you, and you as white as they. Yorkshire moors in the moonlight
You made me aware of my potential
That life would not stay the same
I could, and would, own beautiful things
I would meet women that were amazing, yet would only be a little bit like you
I still remember how pissed off Jamie was when you said the new Jesus in the new stained glass window actually looked like a bloke for a change; looked like me, in fact. Wish I could say you were lying, elaborating the truth, but you weren't. Matthew agreed, and so did the Vicar when he heard us laughing from his office. Wonder if he still has that picture of me and his window together?
The fact that you noticed I looked like some version of the son of God would have had my family crowing. Old Bpy would have given you a pup with a crooked tail, or a deformed lip, free of charge
Who could I have replaced you with had we not got on? No one, not even if I emmigrated. I was never a church goer, but anytime I could come to your house, I raced there
You could change your mind
You could choose me
I'd know you blind, deaf and dumb
Bruising, scratches, cuts, swelling
The vermin I had to live amongst
Shavambacu
Yeah, you
Even if you died
You saw me come into the world, the best version of myself. What I always wanted to be
Alex turned off the water of the shower and climbed out.
The hunted, uneasy expression Alex often wore covered Miles.
Whilst Alex had been in the shower, Miles had dropped a mug. It had chipped a tile in the kitchen, and a thousand tiny fractions had splintered off everywhere.
Alex remained in the doorway, wearing a towel around his hips that Miles had been using on his own body for a week.
The romance extended into desire and it seeped into Alex's blood.
"Every bloody time." Miles complained.
Alex's mouth pulled up at one corner, and his eyes gazed into Miles until Miles felt them like a press of a hot hand low on his abdomen.
"You right there, shavambacu?" Miles asked softtly.
"You already know." Alex spoke as softly.