The Vagrant

By Lincoln Kate

Where do you go for answers in the age of information? How do you love in grey areas of echoed ideas? When does understanding become manipulation? Forced into self-reflection, Eilidh explores the idea that no single answer is an entirely palatable truth – not when it comes to friends, philosophies or men.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398434295

Lincoln Kate

Lincoln Kate’s longest love has always been language. She is an experience thief with the aim to enjoy life by understanding it. When not in the sun or between pages, she can be found teaching teens or stealing stories. Cover art: Daniel Bennett

Book preview

About the Author

Lincoln Kate’s longest love has always been language. She is an experience thief with the aim to enjoy life by understanding it. When not in the sun or between pages, she can be found teaching teens or stealing stories.

Cover art: Daniel Bennett

Dedication

To my parents for my education,

To everyone I love,

Lost,

And am still leaving.

Copyright Information ©

Lincoln Kate 2022

The right of Lincoln Kate to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398434288 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398434295 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Can We Create Serendipity?

The power flickered for a minute; an overloaded city was trying to rain on our final parade by keeping everyone else cool in one of the many heatwaves that Summer. Everyone in the bar froze for the two seconds it went dark. The lights kicked back in as capitalism prevailed. It took a minute or so for the musicians to reset their amps and peddles and the bodies to swing back into their moves. The Regent had become a home for baseless people who existed in themselves and in communal spaces, sharing their drunk stories before disappearing back to what society would hope is a suburban nine to five life. Tonny, my boss had been strong-armed into selling The Regent to a development company after a good two years of trying to make it work. The economy isn’t what it used to be and the only places that survived through the quiet weekends outside the inner city were the fast franchises. It was a hell of a last night though, Tonny fed me a concoction of liquors that tasted like medicine from my childhood while we served our manmade family between dancing, jokes, yarns and trips down the nostalgic highways of better years. The little ragtag crew we had collected were as sad as we were to see it go. Everyone in The Reg was a misfit and although you could box them up as dyke, muso, hippie, crack head, biker, skater, dole bludger, stoner, bitch, alpha, beta or omega based on their donned capes, you couldn’t keep them locked in there once you got to know them. No one surprised me. Not even the angry gay man in his fifties who despite spitting his order through an angry lisp, punched the last guy who grabbed my ass in the teeth without shifting his lock jawed expression. Our locals, more than anyone, knew what it was like to have to give up on a dream. All manner of individuality was sandwiched into the long hallway that had been turned into our living art instalment.

I noticed him, his soft brown features, elastic eyes and patchy facial hair, long before he came up to the bar. He was a calm kind of unkempt and each time I threw down a shot, my eyes found their focus on him. Without even interacting, I started worrying that he was avoiding the bar on purpose. Had he seen me stare and thrown his card to someone else so as to avoid me? Desire manifested into panic easily in me.

I handed two whiskeys to the bald-headed hipster in front of me wrapped in a tartan scarf, which was far too warm for the occasion, smiled and tried to ignore the urgency I had thought unlearnt years ago. I exhaled and handed over the change and tried not to seem like I noticed him at the end of the line.

When he finally arrived without warmth or enthusiasm, the boy with the elastic eyes ordered two rum and cokes and lent over the bar. His hands were covered in dark lettering and religious iconography and sat heavy on the bar in direct opposition to his face.

I spun on my toes and made them both doubles.

‘There you go.’ I passed them, winked and then felt sick with embarrassment. Too drunk.

‘Thank you.’

‘Are you having a good night?’ I said not wanting the interaction to end.

‘Yeah, it’s a pretty sweet spot.’

‘It sure is. I won’t be able to mourn it forever though.’

‘True. I’m sure a pretty lady like you will have plenty of ways to move past it. I’m Pete.’

I couldn’t help laugh, ‘Thanks. It’s nice to meet you, I’m Eilidh.’

‘Sweet, well I might see you around later?’

‘Okay sure. See ya.’

I turned to the middle-aged blonde woman – who probably wouldn’t understand why her usual tactics of asking for the manager wouldn’t work in Tonny’s – with a pep in my step despite her insistence to make this transaction as painful as possible. She spoke through her pursed red lips and sipped the vodka before shrugging it off as adequate. She placed the money on the wet bar rather than handing it to me. It was necessary for her to prove that I was nothing more than a monkey for hire so I danced. And monkey, did I dance.

The booze sloshed in my belly like a pail of fresh milk and turned my footsteps to lead so that soon my twirls were just a 12-bar shuffle. Tonny noticed before I did and gave me the head nod that meant I could duck out for a cigarette and straighten out. Fumbling under the register around Tonny, avoiding his crotch because I had no intention of blurring that line again, I grabbed my pouch of tobacco and shimmied like a salted slug though my squashes of people.

The smoker’s area was packed with nearly as many people as there was inside – no crates or railings to perch on and no quiet corner. There was a Pete though, leaning against the wall of the alley on the opposite side of the street. His slouch and mustard corduroy shirt were a beacon that had me buzzing straight to his light.

‘How’s your night going?’ He asked, blowing out the smoke high above his head.

‘Pretty amazing! There’s heaps of booze and people and the band is sick. You?’

‘Yeah, pretty good. Sucks it’s closing down. Sorry about that.’

‘It’s all good. Onwards and upwards and all that bullshit.’ I shrugged.

‘Yeah, you’ll work it out. You’ll find your thing.’

‘A thing? Do you have a thing?’

‘I have a few really but I have one that I have turned into my mainstream form of income.’ He relit his cigarette and exhaled out slowly, ‘Can’t live with the system and can’t live without it.’

‘Right. What is it?’

‘That’s a bit forward. We’ve only had one cigarette and you haven’t even bought me a drink yet.’

We laughed.

‘So, brothers, sisters, mum, dad?’ I tried a lighter question.

‘All of the above.’

‘Oh well, please don’t inundate me with your whole family history now.’

‘I don’t know. They’re there. We talk. No story. You?’

‘Mum and Dad have been split since I was a teenager but everything is pretty amicable now. I’ve got an older sister Kate, she’s the academic type, works in international insurance or something like that. Real gold star.’

‘Nice.’

‘I can tell you about my grandparents next if you’d like some more rambling.’

The alcohol in my elbow nudged him and he laughed; his eyes creasing at the corners like a lake splitting into three tiny creeks.

‘I know that we are the genetic products of our parents and there may be some genetic bonding through that but really they are still people and sometimes, some of them are people we wouldn’t usually associate with or even like but we’re supposed to because that’s what families do.’

‘Yeah, I guess. I’ve got a few aunties like that. But I suppose, for the most part, they are people who love us unconditionally but hold us to a higher standard of ourselves. They help keep us in check while, uh… nurturing and caring for us.’

How much of a sap could I sound like?

‘Couldn’t you get that with friends or a church or a band or a sports team?’

‘I suppose, but I think in families, for the most part when they’re well-functioning, there isn’t a competition or any real need for backstabbing.’

‘When are families ever well-functioning?’

‘I think mine is, usually. Yours not so much?’

He shrugged.

‘I guess it just depends on the group.’

It wasn’t typical smoking chat. What impression must I have been giving? Most of the time when you overhear something like this, you assume that they’re probably just rambling crack heads, jabbering on about the next theory of our origin or how the sky net is already here and we just don’t know it, but tonight I was the one helping to poke holes at our preconceptions.

‘Will you finish late tonight?’

‘Not really. Our license only goes until one and then probably a half hour of clean up after that.’ Tonny would probably kick on for hours but I could see the light of a newly opened door seeping into our chat.

‘Sweet, do you want to come and hang out after that?’

‘Um, what do you have in mind?’

‘My friend Jayden,’ he pointed to the barrel-chested redhead just beside the door, ‘is having a party after. We could go. It’s not too far away, we could walk.’

‘Yeah, that’s sounds sweet. You don’t mind waiting?’

‘Not at all.’

We finished our cigarettes and I returned to a bar with loose faces lined three people deep. Tonny had the bottles of liquor everywhere that I had to clean up before I could even start serving the small mass. It didn’t matter how busy we were now; the promise of plans kept my hands moving faster than thought. Pete came back to the bar a few times and lingered in the corner well after he’d gotten his round even though I couldn’t stop for much longer than a smile.

* * *

The walk was short but the sticky heat of the day still lingered between our bodies and the walls while fifteen of us crammed ourselves into Jayden’s fifth-floor apartment. There was only a couch and one wooden chair so I tucked into the far corner of the small, cement veranda. The sweat pooled in the corners of my crossed legs like an unwanted oasis. Foreign invaders are easy to spot, and I’ve always felt like a walking target for objection and recrimination, so I waited a little while before speaking – picking out which personality to wear. Once we all found our spots, the drugs started being pulled out of pockets, bras, and purses. People lined up coke on the screens of their phones, rolled long joints from tins, smoked from long glass pipes, and dipped their pinkies into bags of pink crystals and creme powders. It was all passed to me and offered with a lifted eyebrow or gentle shrug. I decided I wanted a little of everything. Except for the meth. I know my limits and I had enough demons without adding a crack pipe into the mix. The quick cocktail burnt through my skin until it prickled like popping candy and my jaw locked in a Cheshire grin.

Amongst the group, I liked Tammy most, Jayden’s girlfriend. A manic little goth that flittered about the small apartment getting drinks, tidying, smoking, leapfrogging into conversations, changing the music and clattering her bangles on her tiny wrists to the beat. She never got really much of a word in but when she did, her punches landed. She was impossibly optimistic – agreeing with such sincerity you began to doubt the quality of your own convictions. We all played musical chairs while transitioning through the drugs and I ended up next to Pete, surveying the space between us, weighing up how close I could sit to without appearing to do so, close enough to touch him, accidentally of course.

Jayden dominated the conversation. He wasn’t the kind you could really have one with. Rather, he would disagree with anything or anyone to assert his superior intellect. Or assumed superior intellect. He spoke with such pace that the listener couldn’t catch the lies between his distorted facts. Jayden was the type that didn’t like to leave the house because outside his sanctuary, there were too many people who were wrong or naive or just buying into to a corrupt system that only he saw clearly. When he made a point, his eyes became wide and fixed – burning his message through telepathically.

‘Right, so, if you think about it really, humans will do anything to anyone if they can get ahead. Not always and not always violently but more often than not, given the right opportunity, we’d fuck over our own mother. Particularly if it’s behind their back or for sex or money. Which is why I think that if aliens had visited, which all evidence points to yes, they probably wouldn’t want to even engage with us. We haven’t evolved past our need to take and win all the fucking time. So why would they come down? It’s like when I was in prison, if you could nick someone’s food or smoke or con something out of a first timer, you’d do it. There isn’t really anything you can’t get if you want it bad enough. It’s like the story of the guy and the guru.’

He looked around at each of us, searching our faces for a recognition that never came.

‘You know… A guy goes to a guru and tells him that he wants to be rich. The guru hears the man and doesn’t respond. The guy says again, louder, I want to be rich. The guru looks at him and says, ’Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Go and buy a boat and take me to the middle of the lake.’ The guy was obviously confused but didn’t want to seem like he didn’t believe the guy so he left and a few weeks came back with the boat. The guru smiled, climbed aboard and together they sailed out to the middle of the lake. They get there and the guy says to the guru, Well, here we are and I’m no richer than I was before. The guru tells him to wait, and the guy sits down. Then right, the guru shoves the guy’s head over the side of the boat and starts drowning him. The guy was kicking and flailing around but the guru kept holding him down. The world starts disappearing for the guy so with one last fuck you, he got out of the guru’s hold and fell into the water. When he surfaced, he started screaming at the guru that he was mad and evil and a fucking liar. He got back into the boat and asked the guru, What the fuck is wrong with you?

The guru replied, "When you want the money