You Don't Know Me

34

People talk about crossroads moments. You have probably spoken about crossroads moments, I don’t know. But whatever you have heard about them and whatever you think your crossroads moment was, truth is, that weren’t no crossroads you were at. That was more like a bend in the road or a place where the tarmac has come off. Mine, mine was a crossroads moment, right there, right then.

I don’t know whether if I had done something different maybe what happened afterwards would not have happened. If I had spoken some different words even, maybe that could have changed something. But what I remember about that day is that I could see the roads crossing in front of me. Every way I could take pointed to somewhere I didn’t want to go. They were all pointing to one hell or another hell. And these roads were the one-way kind. What I know is that if there’s at least one place in four that you want to go or could even live with going, you ain’t at no crossroads, trust me.

‘Okay,’ I say at last, ‘we do this, we do it my way.’ I look at their two faces and there’s no resistance in them so I carry on. ‘First of all I don’t know where my gun is at. I ain’t seen it since the whole Jamil-in-the-trap-house thing. Second of all, Ki, you ain’t going in no front door, you staying put here. Thirdly –’

‘No. No. No,’ says Ki. Something in her eyes shows me that she is not backing down. ‘You cannot do this without me. You will be killed. Are you hearing me? You need me there to get into the club and you need me there to call you to let you know when he’s alone. If you go walking into that club at any time and he sees you, any one of twenty guys will be queuing up to put you down.’

‘Yeah well that’s where your brain needs to catch up with mine for a change Ki, because ain’t no way no phone is going to be working in that club. No phone Ki, no need for you.’

‘Do you even know me at all?’ she says smiling out of the corner of her mouth. She goes into her handbag again and throws Curt and me each a lump of black plastic.

‘What the fuck are these?’ I say.

‘Two-way radio. Got them from the bouncers. They use one channel, we use the second.’

‘When? When did you get these?’ I say. This is all surreal still and I still haven’t caught up with her. Right then I don’t know whether I can ever catch up with her. ‘And what about a gun?’ I ask. ‘Where we supposed to get one from now?’

‘Curt,’ she then says looking over at him. He is by the window looking out on to the street, his hugeness making shadows on the floor. ‘Can you do something about a gun too?’

‘It’ll be dirty but I can probably get one by Friday,’ he says.

‘There we are then,’ says Ki. She has it all worked out.

‘Just one more question,’ I say. ‘How the hell you know Face is going to be there?’

‘I just do,’ she says and as far as she was concerned that was the end of it.

As soon as Curt left, whatever life was in those eyes of hers went again. The shutters went down and every time I tried to engage her she just looked through me. Of course I knew that all of this stuff was proper stressful for her. It was stressful for me but if you peeled back my layers I could pretty much guarantee that you’d still have found the same old me. A little more wired, yes, but basically the same guy. Ki had changed. Don’t get me wrong. I know she had a right to change after all this shit. But she was changing before my eyes in a way that I couldn’t keep up with. It was Spooks, I was sure of that.

She changed most after seeing Spooks. That time when she came back for the first time in that burkha and gave me the fright of my life. That is when it happened. The change. Not change in a way that would have been obvious to anyone looking from a distance, but I could see it. It was subtle at the beginning, almost like all the colours she was painted in started to change just in tone. The greens were not so alive. The blues were less vibrant. Everything was muffled like one of those 1970s’ photographs where the colours are what they should be, just not sharp enough or bright enough to look real. Now, though, the colours on her were all wrong.

I was worried about her and I tried to talk to her after Curt went but the thing about Ki if you know her, is that she’s not a person to be talked round. That was not anything new. She was always like that. It was one of the things I hated about her.

For any other normal person you could maybe pull them out of their bad moods with a joke or something. Even if not straight away, you could eventually crack most people. Ki though, she was not somebody you could talk round. It was like she considered it an insult to her own mind. As if you were saying to her, ‘Whatever you’re feeling, it’s not the right feeling so change it.’ So talk to her all you like. There was no way you could bust her out of whatever she was feeling. I know, I tried it enough times. The best thing to do in those times was to just let the feelings ride themselves out. Let them just be until they did the job she wanted them to. My way was to just change the subject.

I tried that of course but she wouldn’t even really talk to me. It wasn’t one of them moods that she was having where she looked like she hated me. It was just blanks. Her mind was somewhere else, and with Ki if her mind was somewhere else, all of her was there with it. Ki was her mind. The whole of the rest of that day went by with almost zero conversation. She grunted a ‘no’ when I asked her if she wanted a sandwich but sat with me as I ate. Later though, when I switched on the TV that night she went to the bedroom and just lay there staring at the ceiling and mumbling to herself, working something out. I didn’t feel like going to bed right then so I called Mum.

‘Mum,’ I go, ‘did I wake you?’

‘Of course you will wake me up if you call at this kind of hour.’

‘Sorry. I just –’

‘I am just joking you, foolish boy. How can I go to sleep with the two of them downstairs?’

‘The two of who?’ I say suddenly worried.

‘Your sister and that boy.’

I ask her, ‘What boy, Mum? Who is there?’ I can’t believe I haven’t been more careful and I can’t believe Mum doesn’t seem scared at all.

‘The horse boy. Your friend.’

‘Oh,’ I go, ‘Curt.’ Then after a second I go, ‘Curt? What’s he doing there?’

‘You are asking me? How should I know what you and your horse friend are up to all of the time? He says he needs to speak to your sister so he is speaking to your sister. That is all I know.’

I end the call and decide I need to go to sleep myself. Thank God for Curt though. It’s just like him to look in on Bless and Mum. I felt safe knowing that he was there.

I go and lie next to Kira. She is still awake, looking up at the lights, muttering quietly. I put my head next to hers and I try to think about nothing and before I know it I have fallen asleep.

The next day she was a little more with it you could say but truth be told I think that was more to do with the fact that she was on the phone for most of it. She would step out into the corridor, the communal one on our landing and take these calls. They were proper weird calls too. I didn’t know who they were from but I did get that they were not normal calls. Mostly she just nodded with the handset held against her ear. Occasionally she said, ‘Yes. Yes. Okay,’ but that was about it. Really quick calls. No hellos no goodbyes. Like I say, weird. When I asked her about them she told me it was the bouncers at the club and how they were old friends of hers from time back. Or someone else that had something to do with how we could get in or get out. ‘It’s just details,’ she said, ‘leave it to me.’

I should have maybe guessed what was going on, but I swear down, my mind don’t work on them kind of levels. This kind of thing is just out of my radar. I feel stupid now, but that time, I swear I had no idea. When I think back I sometimes think I probably should have known something was going on. Because I followed her to the mosque again the next day. I mean actually followed her. This time I left within a minute of her leaving so I could see where she went. Actually see exactly where she went. I should have known then.