Free Billy and Girl by Deborah Levy Page A

of his presence in a universe where everything is energy and nothing is certain. Baskets only. Thank you so damn much for that information. It’s changed Brother Billy’s life. Like when he’s cycling at night and he hasn’t got lights and he’s wearing black everything, and a kind motorist takes time off to point out that he, Billy, has not got lights. If only he had known. Thank you for that insight. He’ll walk his bike the twelve miles home now and ruminate on the information; so dense and perplexing is it, he won’t even notice the blisters on his feet, the muggers, the drunks, the runaway kids in their sleeping bags, the night rats chewing winglets and suet and Valium, the kerb-crawler blokes with their lack of hair and toilet-chain bracelets, oreven the rain so cosy with its pitter-patter. So much to think about and so much time to think it in. Billy plunges his arms deep into his trolley. Yep, here it is. A giant-sized Frozen Family pizza: JUST LIKE MAMA USED TO MAKE . He flings it onto the sliding belt and walks his trolley to the other side of the store.
    Girl glances at her watch. Give him thirty seconds.
    Bleep. Bleeeep. Bleeep. Music to Girl’s ears. Where is FreezerWorld Louise? She’s due back any minute.
    Three uniformed FreezerWorld staff (little black bow ties) are running through the gleaming aisles. They are like paramedics, moving in unison, running and talking at the same time, revving up to crash through the emergency swing doors of superstore surgery. Bruising past soporific shoppers wheeling their trolleys in a trolley ballet, reaching for bread and biscuits and cereals and teabags. Someone shouts ‘He’s bleeding, call Mr Tens!’
    Bleep.
    Girl thinks, Billy is okay. But not that okay. The till is working like a dream. A crowd of customers are gathering near the Toiletries section. Billy’s weedy voice gabbles something about the razor blades not being properly wrapped. Girl turns to the queue by her till. ‘Move to Till Five, please,’ she insists in a Don’t Fuck with Me voice. Customers look at her in numb disbelief. It is as if she has just told them a relative has died. Girl fixes them with her most malevolent stare.
    ‘This till is out of order.’
    No one moves. Girl points vaguely to Till Five.
    ‘Over
there
. This one is
not
working.’ Jeezus. If she had a gun she’d mow them down. Haven’t they got homes to go back to? Children and lovers and pets waiting for them? Appointments to keep? Customers. Dazed and confused. Jeeeeezus. Get onwith it. Get a life. But this is the Life. FreezerWorld life. Is there life after FreezerWorld life?
    At last. At
last
the queue begins to disperse, but not without mutterings and complaints about how they deliberately chose a basket and not a trolley even though a trolley was easier for them and how they would have shopped differently if they had known they were going to have to queue in the trolley section. Some of them, Girl is informed, might as well shop all over again because if they are going to have to queue with trolleys they might as well do a week’s shop instead of just a weekend shop. What’s the point of just popping into FreezerWorld to get one item on special offer if they have to wait behind those customers doing a family shop, an extended family shop by the look of that trolley over there, and anyway, just take a look at where Till Five is – right over the other side of the store. Management should provide a courtesy shuttle.
    Girl is pressing the Open button and the till is stuck. It won’t budge. And it’s making a strange bleeping noise, a new kind of bleep with a different tone. A red light is flashing. Not only that but some grotty customer with ginger eyes, God, how do you get to have
ginger
eyes, is asking if Girl knows which aisle does green washing-up liquid? Girl, preoccupied but still playing sweet, says, ‘They’re all green,’ but the customer has turned into a citizen and he’s muttering on about