Misty Kicks the Breeze

About the Author

David Riaz Zaman (Zam) writes novels, screenplays, plays, and has taught Scriptwriting at University level, and been engaged as a Script Reader. Success includes commissioned plays (Shade, Descent), screenplays (P’out, The Burden of Light), radio plays (Dog Man’s Folly), and numerous creative-industry scripts – primarily connected to themes of identity, ‘otherness’, betrayal, desire, deceit. He has two novels in the pipeline, We Bleed and Skinn’d Perfect, and is currently working on plays/screenplays – Splinter from the Fleshy Swirl, Push Meaner, Squander. Misty Kicks The Breeze is also a completed feature screenplay, and Zam is hoping for the words to hit the screen ASAP.

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Dedication

To the boys ‘n’ girls of that town, that time, that place: for the memory, always present – with affectionate respect, a nod, a wink.

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Misty Kicks the Breeze

Published by Austin Macauley at Smashwords

Copyright 2018, David Riaz Zaman

The right of David Riaz Zaman Irving to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the publisher, or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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A CIP catalogue record for this title is

Available from the British Library.

www.austinmacauley.com

Misty Kicks the Breeze, 2018

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

ISBN 978-1-78878-030-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-78878-031-5 (Hardback)

ISBN 978-1-78878-032-2 (Kindle E-Book)

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First Published in 2018

Austin Macauley Publishers.LTD/

CGC-33-01, 25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf, London E14 5LQ

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Acknowledgements

To all at Austin Macauley – big thanks to Rosalind, Rebecca, and the team in Production. And to the persistent power of those tough love books and films, that continue to swill and swirl: special mention to the great Jim Thompson – where book meets film meets us. Now getaway and grift.

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Chapter One

I’m lying here, all cramped and crushed. I can hear the sea, but can’t work out if it’s day or night. There may be a reason for this – because I’m smart, honestly, I swear, I know I’m smart – and the reason may just be that I’m wrecked. Not shipwrecked – I’m not in the sea, and I’m not from it – but wrecked as in cannot tell if it’s breaking dawn or closing dusk.

And I’m not breathing right – I may as well be from the sea, like some primal creature who’s lost his way, washed himself up, gills gasping for blood – and I’m not breathing right because I can see, just, an empty pack of cigarettes. Next to the cigarettes discarded dog-ends. Disgusting, even here, exposed to the elements, and next to the fags … that’s right, folks – booze. Empty bottle, all drained. Too much, too much, one’s too many, two’s not enough … and, of course, the bottle’s early morning twin – vomit.

Yes, got it! It’s morning. The day has broken – a fade up from yesterday to tomorrow, called today, which is as cramped and crushed as my (yes, I’m going to say it) soul. Because I have a soul, I know I do. I know this because I’m smart. Oh, really? If so smart, wise-boy (man, actually), then how come you’re in this position, this state, this state of absolute self-destructive filth?

I’ll tell you how. By showing you when. Why. Most importantly how. And the elements of when-why-how needed one more to shuffle the deck of my demise: that element is who.

Who was she. She was in my sight. My blurry, boozy sight, and she came smashing in on a crashing wave … and nothing was ever the same again.

The seagulls squawk, the sea laps and licks, I’m here on the promenade in this dead-end detritus – a place of beauty, actually – and I look up and she’s laughing; that throaty-raspy chuckle, so sexy and cool … and she speaks, she says ‘Wotcha’, she …

… but no, stop, wait, forgive me. You need to know something before I tell you what happened. You need to know the following – and it’s not information, I promise you, don’t be bored, don’t put me down just yet, I beg you, bear with me – and the following is crucial ‘cause the following is true.

Before we get back to ‘Wotcha’, a few facts, my friends – I hope I can call you friend: my name is Glyn, aged thirty-three, thirty-three-and-a-third to be exact (oh, how neat, the only thing in my life that is neat), and I’m born and bred in a place, just like you (once upon a time) – and that place is called thlan-did-no. No, I’m being facetious – see, I told you I was smart, I can spell facetious: the place is pronounced thlan-did-no, but it’s spelt Llandudno. Go on, I invite you, no tricks, nothing big or clever – say it, let it roll off your tongue.

That’s it: Llandudno. That’s right, that’s how you say it. Like you’re clearing your throat, clearing your head. Coughing up those cheeky consonants, those vibrant vowels, gagging up all those sounds that make you what you are – the person, the place. Put it all behind, get yourself out. From those sounds, this place … these people. And I am one, one of these people, so I do not mock, but nor do I defend. It is what it is. I am what I am. What? A product of my environment? No, something simpler, more primal than that: I am Glyn, closer to forty than twenty, I live in Llandudno, I do not know how to live, and worse than that I do not know how the hell I’m going to escape.

Calm. Breathe. Too many cigarettes, way, way too much booze. Count to ten, Glyn lad, and carry on.

Okay. So: here I lie, to tell the truth, telling you a tale about the twin elements of She – betrayal, desire. Not a dream, though it felt like one. Life is choice, and she chose to say ‘Wotcha’. Ahhh, I love her – this Queen of her own choices, this Queen of this last resort.

So, here we go: I’m hungover – big style, but not big or clever – and tangled up, see. No, literally. Look at me, pathetic. I’m a mix of Man and Wood, knotted up like some washed-up Tree Seal (the swimming kind that you find dead at the water’s edge), in one of those picnic-pub-bench things. You know the kind, those beer-garden whatyamacallits. And I’m bending smashed at the break of dawn in a somewhat compromised state of Wood Man, like a fly in treacle.

If first impressions count, then she should’ve counted me out, counted to ten, walked the fuck away.

But she didn’t. She laughed.

‘Wotcha.’

‘Morning.’ Shit, what a stupid thing to say.

From the skewed squint of my Man Wood cage, I saw her walking towards me: the promenade, my runway of shame – strutting towards me with a feline fatale slink of subtly washed-out beauty, eyes that radiate a sweet ‘n’ sour soul (much like mine – a kindred spirit, finally?), maybe a heart of glass, hopefully not a heart of stone … and eyes … eyes that could kiss you, kill you.

The promenade (I’ll call it the prom from now on) was deserted as I squinted a sneaky look at this Girl Woman, aged, I dunno, twenty-two, with a proud, svelte body, striking good looks, but thankfully not gorgeous – too perfect has no place in this place – and a strange, organic dress code, a haphazard mix ‘n’ match of fashion boots laced high to the knee, an elegant, light-coloured shift dress over a white blouse … with traces, smears of blood on it … and over this a cashmere overcoat, clearly a man’s, at least two sizes too big.

She has blood on her shirt and she is swinging a briefcase to the rhythm of her slink, she smiles as she approaches, and as she smiles (the eyes are not smiling) I notice her face: a mess – a grazed jaw, a shiner of a bruise on one cheek, a split lip and brow …

… but oh-so beautiful (sorry, that sounds like a song).

Sorry, forget the tone of facetious creeping back in. Forgive me, it’s just a reaction, then as now, to being … I dunno, overwhelmed. So let me say it again, even as memory serves. Are you listening? Thank you. Good.

Oh So Beautiful.

The panoramic sweep of the bay as she struts towards me, her destiny.

Hold on – her destiny? How dramatic. Yes. Splendid. That’s what my life needs. Apart from a life, that is. It needs drama.

And drama came. Oh how it came.

Smash. Crash.

‘Morning’. Shit, what a stupid thing to say.

I must look so bizarre, so sad ‘n’ sorry, stuck here like this. Shit! She’s just looked down at them – the fags, the booze … oh, yeah, and a discarded ticket, admitting me to … she picks up the ticket, reads.

‘How’d you say that?’

I am thirty-three-and-a-third. I am modest, I am sad, I am sorry, but I am this: attractive (I know I am, it’s not delusion, self-delusion, there’s beauty in me, I just know there is), gone-to-seed, dishevelled, nondescript attire, shabby, retro … but attractive. Because I’m kind. And I see that she sees this.

The ticket. ‘Boulevard’s.’

She didn’t attempt to repeat it. I squint, shield my eyes from the intrusion of what passes for daylight.

Squawk. Splish. Splash. (And that’s just my head).

‘What’s Boulevard’s?’

‘A night …’ God, I am so croaky. ‘Nightclub.’

I am so, so thirsty. Maybe I was shipwrecked.

‘You fall out the sky or something?’

A-ha – a Londoner.

‘Thought for a minute I was elsewhere.’ I still don’t know why I said that.

‘Where’s that, then?’

‘London.’ No, seriously, I’m not kidding. I said it ‘cause it was true – at least it felt true.

‘Coming or going?’

I paused, and not for effect. ‘Leaving.’

For shame.

‘Makes two of us.’

I loved that she said that. Bang, Bingo, Connection! Sssh. Breathe. Ten. Count to t …

To regain what little dignity I clearly never possessed to begin with, I attempted to rise, one of my cramped, pinched limbs flicking out with convulsive twitch as it proceeded to crack what was left of the bottle. She is now inconsolable with laughter – which helped the situation, humour an antidote to a predicament as this beauty stands over me like some forensic force, looking down on me – but not at me – with an alien focus, as if she’d landed from the planet Hope.

But still, still … I was embarrassed. About breaking the bottle as the last swig of alcohol oozed out onto a melted fag butt. Because I am human. I swear. Even this alien beauty. Even she, as crazy as it sounds – she was credibly, openly human. Else why would she stay?

‘I ought to cut down.’

‘What, cut down what?’

She was being kind. She knew what I meant. I nodded her kindness in the direction of the dread and dying bottle.

‘That. Years ago.’

‘You’re a bad habit.’

‘Wearing thin. Ask anyone.’

‘Why, what would they say?’

‘They don’t say anything. They just … judge.’ Oh, such pity, such needy, desperate self-pity.

But she stayed.

‘Squares.’

‘Well, that’s other people for you.’

‘Bet they ain’t so clean themselves once you open up their closets.’

What an extremely perceptive thing for her to say – at that time of the day. No, any time of the day. Actually, I