Friction Read Online Free

persuaded by a football. It wouldn’t be right. The boy runs the sole of his shoe over the ball and begins dribbling in the direction of his friends, hoofing it towards them after a few metres and running on.
    His eyes, thinks Johnny, recalling how the young man had observed Rebecca, did his eyes get erections?
    â€˜You OK, Johnny?’ asks Rebecca, taking a tissue from her bag.
    Is this how it has to be, thinks Johnny, sex sewn into my brain, like air inside a ball? It’s Rebecca, he thinks, she’s making my brain go red. Johnny turns to Rebecca with a smile pulled across his face like a zip. Gentle Johnny, a sex offender? No. His brain blushes. He’s only joking: ‘Tonight, Rebecca, I’m going to drill a drizzly minge!’
    â€˜Pardon?’
    â€˜I’m going to hammer away at a twat!’
    Rebecca gets up from the grass. She’s offended. A twat? She’s not laughing. She’s frowning, a tissue held against her face. What would Johnny want with a twat? thinks Rebecca. What’s the smell? Is it the stench of young men thinking?
    The bullshit is carried on the breeze. Rebecca and Johnny both sense danger. Sense that a previously perfect system of interlocking shapes has somehow fallen out of synch and that this spells trouble. Rebecca brushes grass and dried earth from her long khaki skirt and turns to observe the group of footballing boys. They’re crowding around a hedge, poking at it with long sticks, retreating cautiously after each jab. The football has rolled into a wasps’ nest.

4
Cash and Waste
    WE CAN’T STAND still. We don’t wear rollerblades. We have more characters to meet. Last night the air was stuffy, as ever, stuffy with sirens, shouts and short skirts. Rented limousines crawled through the city centre, from Corporation Street, down Cross Street, Deansgate, through Castlefield. Drinks flow in England. Weekends arrive with gifts for the thirsty, leaving behind only trickles of piss.
    Boy 1 and Boy 2 meet at ‘The Bar’ for lunch at three o’clock. The Bar, pronounced ‘Thee Bar’, is not quite
the
bar to frequent, but as franchises go, it’s good. Boy 1 takes a steak sandwich and Boy 2 takes a BLT. The steak sandwich, as it must from 1998 onwards, contains caramelised red onion. Caramelised red onion is seen as really, really delicious. Boy 1 wants to be rich, he wants to be fucking rock and he wants the high life: red onions, houmous, focaccia, fit-as-fuck bird. Food having been consumed, both boys are left feeling powerful. The weekend looms above them dressed in hilarious drag, it offers them its creased and open palm.
    At five o’clock the lager living begins. The lager loving begins. Boy 1 goes to the bar, returning with two pints of Stella and a handful of change. At first it’s moderate, the drinking. But subtle sips give way to greedy gulps and their hearts begin to darken. After four pints they begin to piss and a banal chaos starts up; neither can go half a pint without jogging to the bogs and spraying into the urinal, a clenched fist held against the white tiled walls for support. At seven o’clock a fleeting lethargy hits them both and the subject of Colin is raised.
    â€˜We should call him,’ says Boy 2, belatedly tugging up his flies.
    â€˜Should we?’ Boy 1 replies, his eyes fixed on the girls that by now are pouring into The Bar.
    â€˜Yeh, man, we should.’
    Colin is heading down Sackville Street when his phone vibrates in his pocket and he comes to a stop. The display glows against the night, the words ‘Boy 2’ flashing across the middle. Answer?
    â€˜You sound fucked,’ says Colin, as the lager-lipped tone of Boy 2’s voice creeps from the earpiece. Colin agrees to join the two boys at The Bar. He does this reluctantly, because he has to. He does this because, nowadays, opting out of social occasions is a form of self-mutilation. The social is everything.