LAUGH, MY FRIENDS. LAUGH

by
Jason Michel

�Pick up the phone, you useless cunt �!� went the voice mail message. I had received eight missed calls from the sarcastic fucker, but I knew he would try again. He was as desperate as I was.

I hadn�t answered them because my phone no longer rang. It vibrated but never rang. If I was walking in the centre of Paris, I couldn�t distinguish the buzzing from the trembles of the Metro line beneath my feet. It hadn�t rang since I�d thrown it against a graffiti covered wall in a fit of rage at having to suffer an endless torrent of drunken abuse by the woman I loved. I spent that night in a park.

The solid black lump in my hand began to buzz and light up. I answered it and that recognisable sneering middle class voice spat at me and I spat back and we decided on the meeting place.

Half an hour later, I was stood outside the Metro station at Saint Michel. I was reading a story in that day�s Independent that told of a suicide bomber in the West Bank, a teenage girl who had blown herself up in a shower of rose petals and laughter. She had killed four and injured twenty. I was re-reading the paragraph, just to check I�d read correctly, when I felt the presence of someone stood next to me. It was the Englishman.

�I didn�t know you could read �� said the bespeckled leering face next to me.

�I can�t, I�m just looking at th� pictures. Let�s go fer a beer.�

It was becoming dusk over Paris and we walked quickly towards the bar in silence and smoke. The bar was about ten minutes walk and as we passed through its arrogant streets I saw Paris as one huge inferiority complex, just waiting to lash out at us. All the chic ladies and floppy scarved men, with their hair just so, reeked of style over content. I suspected that if I pushed too hard on the walls, the buildings would collapse like a theatre set or dominoes. The place was made of coloured paper.

We found two seats by the window, sat down and I looked over at my friend. He looked awful. He was losing weight from just eating cabbage soup for the last six weeks. We were both skint, the job we were doing was not paying us enough to live on, and certainly not enough to suffer the dullness of the people we had to see every day. We knew we were nothing more than shoeshine boys for the nouveau riche. The fucking company did its utmost to bleed us dry, I was just scraping by with having a woman to share the load of the extortionate rent we had to pay, but the Englishman was alone and losing money. The tedium was cutting strips off our sanity and we both needed a night out in the open, a night we couldn�t afford.

We sipped at our overpriced beers and then decided to skulk off to another bar. One where the booze was cheaper, maybe in Le Marais, the Englishman suggested. I agreed, but only because I knew that he hadn�t had a shag in almost six months.

On the way, we passed a little corner shop and the Englishman turned to me and said �Let�s go in, but you cover me, ok?�.

I shrugged not really knowing what he meant until I got inside.

The shop was a typical Moroccan mini mart, with its polluted distraught looking vegetables on the outside and its selection of crisps, booze, beans and couscous on the inside. Behind the counter was a diminutive middle aged Moroccan who eyed us suspiciously until he heard us chattering away in English.

�Go and ask him for directions to Notre Dame�, the voice next to me purred, �I�m going to nick this bottle of whiskey.�

My heart started beating but I did as was asked. I walked straight up to the guy and started gibbering away in English smelling the old fucker�s sweat and dribble while my friend stumbled passed me, his hand stuck into his winter jacket, his eyes staring straight ahead. The stumpy Arab squinted at me then at my friend. I knew then that we were fucked. He�d twigged us. How many times has this fucker had to deal with a couple of dirty opportunists like us? I saw his face change from surprise to anger as he lunged at the Englishmen shouting �Hey, � hey!�

Quickly, I pushed the stocky little stinking fellow into the tins of beans shelf and legged it. I turned around momentarily to see the body of the old man lying still on the floor. One of the tins must have landed on his head and knocked him out. Some luck for once.

We didn�t run very far. We couldn�t. We were both heavy smokers.

We headed for the closest Metro station and ducked down into it gasping for air.

�Let�s find a park to drink this in and then I�ll go looking for a piece of French arse. You�ll be the bait��

He was still buzzing from stealing. I hadn�t stolen anything in ten years.

Although I could still remember the high afterwards. It was good.

Sitting in the park close to Les Halles, we drank and laughed, as the Saturday night opera goers and party animals went on their way. The Englishman bought a bottle of Coke that we emptied of half its contents and then poured the whisky into it to make it look innocent. We kept an eye out for the coppers but thought it best to be hidden amongst the crowd of the weekend.

�Well, well. An� you bein� an ex-lawyer.�

�Swapping one criminal profession for another, old chap� he smiled, as he took a great big joyous swig from the bottle, ripping a fart out with abandon.

�Look, what you�ve reduced us to!� he shouted at an old tart that was walking past with a little pedicured rat-dog, spoilt and yapping.

We ended up Le Marais at about ten. The bar we were in was heaving with French homosexuals and pink and blue neon, all laughing and enjoying themselves and I could see the Englishman eyeing them all drunk, greedy and lonely. He looked behind him and made eye contact with a twenty something sat on his own at the bar.

�Right, I may be some time� he giggled and staggered off to sit next to him.

I sat there on my own for a while thinking about the night, the man lying under tins of beans. What if I�d killed him? He probably had a family. A wife and kids. Shit.

I was just about to leave when the Englishman came stumbling back. He sat unsteadily down and I could see him making the effort to focus on me.

�No joy?� I asked.

�Naaaaah�� he slurred, �the cunt�s a top and I demand a bottom!�

Then, he looked at me and grinned. It was a holy grin, a desperate grin, a savage grin and I began to laugh. He started chuckling too and the next thing I know the whole bar was laughing, one big laugh that cut through the heaviness of everything. All the world�s horror, its rape, genocide, advertisements for toothpaste and babies being born without legs, became light in that one moment and as I looked at my friend with tears flowing down his face, I saw rose petals falling down over him.

� Jason Michel
Reproduced with permission