Free The Dreams of Max & Ronnie by Niall Griffiths Page B

clothes and walls of shoes mean nothing at all to him. He takes a bath. As he’s in the water his phones ring several times, or if they’re on silent mode they buzz and vibrate like irate insects on the work surfaces, but he ignores them. Lets them ring and chirrup. Shuts his ears to the entreaties that come through on voicemail. From nicking car stereos in multi-storey car parks to this, he thinks, this shining flat and everything in it, and the journey has brought him nowhere. He’s on his own. He needs a woman. Our man Max is very, very sad. Clinically depressed, a doctor might say were he to go and see one, which he won’t.
    For a week he remains isolate in his flat, visiting Rome with his boys at night, peddling his wares and scanning the strobed crowd for the face that was in his dream. Whenever his crew find their pleasures in drinks and powders, he does not join them. Whenever they surround themselves with loud music or jerkily dance in the flashing lights, he does not join them. All is funless to Max. During these days, in fact, Max does little but sleep; he knocks himself out with temazepam and he lies in a still heap on the sofa as the sun sinks across the bay. Once, he tries Zimovane on a recommendation, but although it helps him to sleep an afternoon away it puts a taste in his mouth of urinous ashes so he decides to stick to the temazzies. As he sleeps, the woman of his dreams re-visits him, in that golden hall; she presses herself against him. He invariably wakes to a small and sticky mess.
    One evening, a barman in Rome took him to one side and told him to be careful. He’d heard things.
    â€“ What kind of things?
    â€“ Some things.
    â€“ Aye and what fuckin kind, maan?
    â€“ Your boys reckon yewer losing it. Reckon yewer going soft. Pickled, like. Yewer not picking up your voicemails, yewer blanking them, and there’s some boys from the north looking to step in. That’s all I’m saying, bruv. Be careful, maan.
    â€“ What boys from the north?
    â€“ Can’t say anything more, Max. Have a word, tho, aye?
    So Max makes some calls and one afternoon he gathers his men around him in the kitchen of his flat, the kitchen that has never been cooked in, full of blades and machinery and slate worksurfaces that have never seen a crumb or even a used teabag. He chops up some lines of powder on a mirror and pours some glasses of chilled Baileys and they all sniff and sip and sit wiping their lips and nostrils and looking expectantly at Max. Lethal Bizzle plays in the background.
    And Max tells them that he’s lonely, and that he’s sad, although he doesn’t use those words. He tells them that there’s a void inside him that needs filling although they are not the words he uses. He tells them that he’s sick of slappers and gold-digging bitches, and he does use those words, skanks, slags, dull fucking no-mark whores, those are the words used by our man Max. He tells his men that he wants them to find him a woman, a good woman, a woman worthy of his companionship and support. He can see her, in his mind – the dream-woman, the perfect One. But he can’t describe her to his boys. He’ll know her when he sees her. When, if, they bring her to him.
    â€“ So, what, one of his boys says, his right nostril ringed with red and slightly scabbed. – This is, what, a pussy-hunt? Max, get yerself on the internet, boy. Few clicks and you’ll have yewer pick. S’like a shop of prozzies, maan. Done it meself loads-a times, I yav. Even pay by fuckin credit card.
    No no, another man says and grips tightly the first man’s forearm. – Leave it to us, Maxie-boy. I know what yewer after. Understand perfectly, I do, see. If yur’s a woman out there good enough for yew, Maxie, we’ll find her, bruv.
    Max smiles and turns to take another bottle of Baileys out of the Smeg fridge and as he turns his back to the boys the second one to