Everything You Need: Short Stories Read Online Free Page A

Eastern European, most nationalities were represented — he’d listen out for new venues to hit in the evening, though they’d almost always be heading for noisy trend-pits someone on Facebook had recommended, where Spike’s shtick wouldn’t work.
    After a single drink at the Y he’d get back out onto the streets and walk until he found an area he hadn’t worked before. On the way home at the end of each night he walked down the alleyway, to check the door. He did this secretly, covertly, carefully — in case anyone was watching, testing him. He went in the period between 11:01 and 00:01, the correct time. He always approached humbly and with something he’d picked up that day — a dropped coin, a paper cup of collected rain water, a blade of grass plucked from between paving stones.
    None of it made a difference. The door was always there but it was never open. It might have been easier if it disappeared. If a door isn’t there then you can’t hope to go through it, but if it’s there but always locked, then you’re trapped. Someone is keeping the door shut. Someone won’t let you come back.
    So now that he’d made his mistake, what the hell else was he supposed to do?
    The days started to feel even longer.

     
    T hen one morning , in his tenth week, he came across the newsagents. It was an unremarkable place, the sort of dingy little business you find on street corners in the center of London, selling celebrity magazines and cigarettes and quick sugar fixes to office workers. It was early and he was bleary from another night of bad sleep — he seemed to be dreaming more and more in recent weeks, cloudy visions of home that left him feeling empty and panicky — and found himself inside without noticing much about the place.
    ‘Bad for you, you know,’ a voice said.
    Spike looked up. He’d asked for what he wanted without even clocking the guy filling the space behind the counter. He saw a man who was tall and stooped and had a craggy face, with a harsh, hooked nose and sharp grey eyes. His hair was very thick and long and his hands were extremely large. In one of these he was holding out the pack of Marlboro that Spike had asked for.
    ‘Yeah,’ Spike said. ‘So I hear.’
    ‘I don’t mean the cigarettes.’ The man never took his eyes off Spike’s. ‘I mean this place.’
    Frowning, Spike handed over some hard-won coins and backed out of the shop. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
    Back on the pavement he hesitated and looked back into the newsagents. The man was still watching him. From here he looked far too large to be behind the counter. He lifted one arm and made an odd movement with it, bringing his hand down, then back up, and down and up again.
    Spike walked quickly away, too tired and too early in the morning to deal with city weirdness.

     
    I t was a long and boring day but culminated in an unexpectedly good evening in a little patch near Charring Cross train station, pubs that were full of people killing time before going home, and already too drunk to realize what they were seeing was not a meticulously-practised fake, but the real thing. After performing for a table of jolly German businessmen, Spike received a tip of a fifty-pound note. Either the guy was too drunk to realize what he’d done, or — more likely — he was trying to impress a nearby table of shop girls by handing over high value tokens of exchange. It probably worked.
    At nine-thirty, Spike decided to call it a night and walked back up through Soho towards his ‘home’. Without realizing until the last minute, he took a route that took him right by the newsagent he’d seen that morning.
    The door was shut but there was a light on inside. It was probably still open but there was nothing he needed, even if he’d felt like encountering the disconcerting man behind its counter again. He was almost past when he noticed something.
    As with most such places there was a large grill obscuring the whole of the front window,