Free Lolito by Ben Brooks Page B

say. ‘I mean yes. Drinks. Wine. Gay wine. Rosé.’
    She nods and disappears.
    I think about Macy. I imagine her having a midlife crisis that manifests itself in the form of a large, expensive coffee machine. I imagine her worrying about her children being bullied because their shoes don’t light up. I imagine her hiding under a duvet and sighing and masturbating over me, a twenty-six-year-old mortgage broker who owns a briefcase and knows the rules of golf.
    The wine arrives. I pour a glass and down it. I order beef in green pepper and black bean sauce, three bowls of chips, and prawn crackers. When the prawn crackers come, I line four up on the table and give them names. I eat the Alice one. It tastes stale and chewy. I move the Aslam cracker into the gap. I eat it too.
    *
    There isn’t a fortune in my fortune cookie. There’s a bad joke: What do you get when you cross a creek and a river? Wet feet.
    *
    The waitress wakes me up and asks me to leave. I tuck the thirty pounds into her breast pocket, flatten my hair and go outside. At home, I collapse and open the computer. There’s an email waiting. From Macy.
    
    RE: something
    Etgar,
I hope this doesn’t sound weird, and I’m sorry I didn’t say something before, I was worried that it would sound weird, and now it definitely does sound weird. If you think it’s weird, forget I said anything. Please, hon. I really enjoy playing with you and don’t want to fuck it up.
I’m coming to London in two days.
It’s for a business meeting that’s been planned for months. Meeting retailers and that sort of thing. But if you had any free time, I’d love to meet up. I know we barely know each other but I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to touch you.
Actually, since your first picture I imagined us meeting in London when I came for this meeting. I imagined you meeting me off the plane, and fucking me in the train station toilets.
My train gets in at six in the evening. I don’t have any meetings that day so maybe we could spend the night together then.
Talk later,
Macy
    PS: attached something to prove something
    It’s an .mp4 attachment. I download and play it. Macy’s face fills my screen. She stares into her computer. She’s doing a don’t be afraid of me smile.
    ‘Etgar,’ she says. ‘I’m not a man. I promise.’
    She’s wearing a thin, white vest top, and the wine-colour straps of her bra are visible. There are smudges that look like oil under her eyes. She presses a key and disappears.
    I stare at my hands. I want mouths to appear in my hands and I want the mouths to talk and tell me what to do. Would she be able to tell I wasn’t a mortgage broker? Wait, what? I can’t go to London. I can’t. I could. The money Gran left me. I can’t go and have sex with a woman from the Internet. It wouldn’t work. Amundsen’s here. I’m staying. I’ll tell her I’m busy. I’ll tell her it’s mortgage-broking season. Everyone wants their mortgages broken this time of year. I’m swamped.
    Do something.
    I go into the kitchen, fill a pint glass with water and down it. There’s half of the cider left. I refill the pint glass with that. My stomach panics and settles. Amundsen comes in from the garden. He’s holding a dead rat in his mouth. His snout is damp with red. The rat lands between my feet and Amundsen sits back, wagging his tail, eyes wide with pride.
    ‘Can we just –’ I say. ‘Can you put that somewhere else?’
    He doesn’t put it somewhere else.
    ‘I’m proud of you. Now go and eat it or something.’
    He doesn’t eat it. I pick it up by its tail and carry it through to the garden, throwing it as far as my arm will throw. It cartwheels in the air and lands near the compost heap.

16
    My phone wakes me up. Mum. I feel bloated and brain dead. I’m on the sofa, under a yellow towel, two empty crisp packets, and Amundsen’s forelegs. The sky looks like it’s