Page 10 of Maybe
I should have kept my trap shut. “The best of the mid-range? That’s like saying,oh good I’ve got crabs, the best of the sexually transmitted diseases.” Ezra cackled again. “Free life advice: if you’re gonna have a car too small to get laid in, at least make sure it gets you laid as soon as you get out.”
For a very pissed person, Ezra was irritatingly sharp-witted. Sharper than me after enduring my father’s memorial service, at any rate. Securing my seatbelt, I jabbed the start button. With a muted, unsatisfying click, my perfectly serviceablemid-rangeelectric car hummed to life. “At least I’m not wearing a shirt dotted with flamingos in central Oxford in January. And, while I’m at it, here’s some free life advice back. Do not arrive blind drunk at our father’s memorial service, insult the guests, then proposition the widow.My mother, aka your fucking stepmother.”
He shrugged, unfazed. “Janice can stand up for herself. And I wanted to make an entrance. This shirt fit the bill. Six quid from the middle of Lidl.” He plucked at the front, now stained with lager dribbles. “Bargain.”
“Well in that case, many congratulations. Mission accomplished.”
“Does a rich kid like you even know what Lidl is, Isaac? It’s one of those cheap supermarkets for people without fucking mansion flats in Chiswick and reversionary trusts and a gazillion quid in the bank. You should go sometime, take your mum. It would be a real eye-opener. They have this aisle down the mid–”
“Of course I know what Lidl is.” I had a good mind to boot him out the car. “What the fuck, Ezra? What just happened back there?”
Staring straight ahead, Ezra rested his head back, his mouth a thin line. “I told you—I wanted to make an entrance. And anyhow, I didn’t do it for me.”
“Well, you certainly didn’t do it for me, either. Or the twins and my mother.”
Grief, anger, and hatred were a miserable triad, one the Emergency Department was all too familiar with. Road traffic accidents, attempted suicides, fatal infarcts. Shocked husbands, wives, children, friends. Stricken relatives lashing out at paramedics, the nurses, the doctors, security staff. Was Ezra grieving? And if so, what? His past, his father, the loss of his family? The siblings he never saw grow into adults? Or was he simply really fucking livid about the money?
He yawned widely, digging around in his jeans pocket. “Can I smoke in the car?”
“No. Absolutely not. What do you mean? What are you talking about? Who… who did you do it for?”
Cracking open the window a couple of inches, he lit a cigarette, puffing smoke in the vague direction of the gap. All out of arguments, I let it go. “Forget it,” he mumbled around the filter. “Forget I ever said anything. Just fucking drive this pile of shit back to London.”
Halfway along a slow moving A40, Ezra fell asleep, sensual lips parted and audaciously long eyelashes resting on his equally audacious cheek bones. A picture of pure innocence. As we rounded a bend, the hand nearest to me, resting in his lap, slipped off to land on the console between us, obstructing several overengineered controls. Picking it up in mine, I held it a moment, cool and dry, before reluctantly replacing it in his lap. Bloody idiot.
With every stop-start of traffic, Ezra’s lax head banged against the window, so I drove more carefully. I adjusted the aircon, too, nudging up the car temperature. Hawaiian shirts weren’t known for their thermal properties.
Christ, it really was the most hideous design, one half bright orange and covered in spiky yellow pineapples, the other lime green and boasting fluorescent pink flamingos. Did Hawaii even have flamingos? I permitted myself a smile, remembering the horror on Mrs Mustard’s face. Ed and Saffy would be gutted they missed it. Very few things in life were as rewarding as the upper-middle classes publicly skewered. My father would have detested it.
Which was kind of Ezra’s point.
He woke with a start as the car bumped across the ramps leading down to my building’s underground carpark, his head banging especially hard against the unforgiving glass. Minor retribution, seeing as he’d behaved so abominably. With a bleary yawn, he rubbed at his face.
“Where are we?”
“My place. Chiswick. Funnily enough, I wasn’t sure where to drop you off, seeing as you disappeared over a decade ago without a forwarding address.”
“Didn’t think anyone would care.” He sat up. “So, you thought you’d bring me here to rub my nose in it?”
Twat. “Yes Ezra, that’s exactly what I thought. Nothing to do with avoiding leaving you blind drunk and freezing on a street corner. Or to seize an opportunity to talk to you about what’s happened and see if I can help. Nope, this is about showing you what you’re missing and gloating.”
“He always liked you the most, anyway. As much as he liked any of us.”
“Well, if your performance tonight was anything to go by, then justifiably.” God, I sounded snotty. Sometimes, I opened my mouth, and my mother came out.
He threw me a sly grin. “Are you telling me off, little brother?”
“Well… yes. And so what if I am? Somebody needs to.”
Ezra belched, although at least he had the decency to raise his hand to his mouth. “Save it. I’ve already had enough to last me a lifetime, thanks to that fucking piece of shit.”
His gaze turned to the window, not that there was much to see out, except for a cream painted concrete wall. Like a blank canvas, itching to be graffitied.Learn to fly. Fly away.“He was vile to me too,” I said. “Just in a different way.”
“Boo hoo.”
Not in a hurry to get out, he reached for his fags again. I sighed pointedly.
“Don’t be a dick, Isaac. You got the fucking flat and a whole load of dosh.” With a fag poking between his lips, he patted the dashboard. “More than enough to buy something better than this heap of crap.”
