Crime

usually excelled at business, science or computing.

At first Lennox’s sympathies are with the awkward, tongue-tied boys, who seem easy meat for the vivacious but crass gold-diggers. Then it becomes apparent that all these guys want to do is to refine their social skills so that they can get laid. The women, underneath the superficiality, often appear to be looking for genuine romance. While keen to find a partner with money and prospects, and wanting to make these geeks dress, look and act cool enough to take good wedding pictures, they can generally conceive at least the possibility of something beyond a shag. Eventually, however, the banal predictability of it all begins to depress him. That Tianna is riveted disturbs him. It soon becomes a struggle to keep his eyes open.

— Did you like Beauty and the Geek? she asks, as the closing credits roll up.

— Aye, it was okay.

— Momma and me love that show.

He can see Robyn now, a feckless icon of cool motherhood, luminous with broken promises. Casting herself as Tianna’s surrogate, big-wee sister, subjecting the girl to a litany of such reality TV shows, particularly the ones with a dating element. Battering her neurons with the shit that would, in tandem with Robyn’s own behaviour, forge the template of the kid’s world view. As they channel-hop through similar shows, it seems that the television oozes more ennui than the streets and bars, the presenters struggling to deliver sufficiently high emotions to let their subject matters fly. It is as if the TV companies can’t find people quite thick enough not to be a little embarrassed by the fact that they are managing extreme banality, while the real momentous things are out there, in view, but not up for discussion, as if ringed off by an invisible electric fence. A despondent anger settles in his chest. — You should be watching stuff that other girls your age watch.

— Like what?

— I don’t know. There must be some stuff. Cartoons?

— The Simpsons is funny. South Park is neat. I like Family Guy.

— Yeah, Lennox says. Appeals again: — I’m knackered. I’m going to get my head down. He gestures to the door.

Tianna is reluctant to leave. Lennox has to get up and open the door, then escort her back to her room. But about ten minutes later, there’s a knock. He knows who it is. She is chewing on her hair and smiling strangely at him. — Cain’t sleep, she simpers.

Her grin and her body language have a quality that is making him nauseous. He isn’t going to let her step over this threshold. — Look, just go tae your room and watch the telly.

— Cain’t I get into bed with you? she pleads.

His heart bangs in his chest, in concert with the rhythm of the air-con unit. He holds the door tight, like a bouncer confronted by potentially aggressive clientele. — No. Why would you want to do that?

— I guess cause I like you. Don’t you like me? She widens her eyes in appeal.

— Yeah, but we’re friends. I don’t—

— It’s because of Trudi. You love her! I finally want to really be with somebody and they love somebody else! she moans, stamping her foot in exasperation.

What the fuck—

— No, Lennox says sharply, glancing around outside in panic. The place is deserted. He takes a deep breath. — Look, she’s my girl, but even if she wasnae, you’re a young lassie. Guys my age… he begins, then her years resonate with him, —… guys any age, don’t get into bed with girls your age!

She looks piercingly at him. — Some do.

— Aye, Lennox says, — they call them paedophiles. I’ve met a lot of them. Some are evil, others are just weak and pathetic. But they’re wrong: every last one of them. Because they don’t have the right to do that. Now please, he says with force, — go to your room!

He watches her dejectedly depart and vanish into her billet, then shuts his own door and switches off the air conditioning. The machine winds down in weary, fading clicks of protestation as he climbs into bed. Disturbingly, his thoughts run to Robyn’s lush bush. His brain is at war with itself as part of it, in renegade obscenity, wonders about the daughter, then the hairless genitals of the doomed child in Edinburgh. Although this thankfully offers him no arousal, he curses those thoughts outside of his control. He’s sullied by this baseness and the notion that he’s no better than them.

A couple of doors down, Tianna goes to bed. Her soul is in distress, brow wet on the sticky, discoloured pillow. She discards the torturous, suffocating sheet to let cool air blow over her stomach, chest and legs, but the room is full of shadows from walls that teem with a million nightmares. Her jacket hung over the bathroom door has assumed the shape of a malevolent hunch-back. She hears a squeak rise from within her and pulls the covers back to her chin, hoping she’ll fall into a quicksand of sleep. And this happens, but minutes later she’s drowning and battles back into a gasping consciousness.

A few walls away, Ray Lennox is distracted by a fluttering in his ear. Some fucking insect. A flurrying sound. Again. Then it seems to settle. He takes a drink of water from the glass by his bed. Then Lennox sits bolt upright in mordant panic, unable to draw breath. Something is jammed in his throat. He starts to gag. It’s alive, moving and whirring inside him. He staggers to the spore-laden bathroom, eyes burning and streaming like he’s crying blood. He tries to gag up this invader, but can’t. Then his guts erupt in violence, but the burning blast of vomit seems to hit something in his throat and the acid in his bile burns him as it cascades back down into his belly.

One thought in his head: this is how it ends.

Desperate now, dizzying and fearful, throbbing head about to explode, he retches again and it all comes up in a racking, forceful cough. He looks into the toilet pan and sees it, more flying hamster than moth; the tiny coal- beaded eyes in the furry golden body, struggling in his milkshake vomit, one rattling wing aloft.

— Get tae fuck, he half gasps, half wheezes at the huge moth, and yanks the flush, watching the creature spin and whirl like a dervish before vanishing.

For a few minutes he stays on his knees and pushes his hot face against the cool vitreous surface of the sink.

Rising shakily and climbing back into bed, the whirring noise still going off in his head, like the ghost of the moth would be for ever part of him, Lennox collapses into an exhausted, fuddled sleep where dark, conscious thoughts meld with deranged dreams. Time passes, how much he doesn’t know. After a broken, fevered narrative, he can vividly see Trudi in front of him, by the side of the bed. She is removing her clothes. — I want you, Ray, any way you want, she is saying. He can almost touch her.

He can almost touch her because she is here.

The door of his room has opened. He can see her figure backlit by the moon for a second or two till a breeze slams it shut, plunging him back into darkness. He glances at the display on the clock: 2:46. She is – somebody is – getting into bed with him. — You know I love you, her breathless voice whimpers. — You can do anything you want. I know you won’t hurt me.

Lennox’s body freezes. He jumps up out of the bed and switches on the light. Tianna is there, sitting up, in T-shirt and yellow knickers with a white butterfly stitched on to them. He reaches for his trousers draped across the chair, pulling them on over his underpants. — What the hell are ye playing at!

She looks up at him with a sad pout. — I cain’t sleep.

—You’ll have to try cause you cannae stay here! Lennox shouts. She starts to sob. He lowers his voice. An ugly, desperate fear grips him: if the clerk hears her. He can see Lance Dearing, hear him, ‘Why, I jus took her momma out to calm her down, left ol Ray here with the kid. Didn’t figure he’d grab her and take her clean across the state. Guess I kinda blame myself…’ Terror eats at his gut. — Look, just go back and watch the telly. Please, he begs. — You’ll soon drop off.

She grimaces and shakes her head. She isn’t moving. — I don’t wanna. Please let me stay here, I ain’t gonna try n touch you—

— No! Go to your room. Now!

Tianna pulls her legs and the blanket to herself and looks up at him. In an instant the twisted little predator is gone and she’s a gap-toothed kid again. — But I… I guess… I guess I kinda messed things up. In my room.

Lennox takes a deep breath. — Okay, okay. You stay here. He heads to the door. — I’ll crash at yours and I’ll see you in the morning, he gasps, his throat still raw and burning. — Please. Just try to sleep!