london zoo

I let the door slam behind me as I climbed up the stairs to Joel’s flat. I was feeling very pissed off and I needed advice. He was holding the front door open when I got to the top and I followed him into his bedroom. I pulled off my wet jacket, threw my bag onto the floor with a thud, and sat down opposite him on one of the beds.

“Ben phoned me again”

I tried to rub some of the rain out of my hair.

Joel sighed,

“Well why don’t you say yes?”

“Because I don’t want to go out with him – obviously! I just wish he’d stop phoning me.”

“.. if you say yes he will.”

“Yeah, but if I say yes, I’ll have to go out with him, Joel, and I don’t fancy him. Have you got a light?”

Joel threw the matches over and I caught them.

“He’s really nice – he’s straight now”

I’d only met Ben once, at the cottage – he lived in Suffolk all year round – his parents were artists who’d moved there from London. He was one of Joel’s oldest friends and I’d always heard a lot about him – how he'd been expelled from school after school, and how he'd been a heroin addict for quite a while.

It had surprised me at the time; I hadn’t known people did that kind of thing in the country. He was up in London now, and he’d been phoning me every other day since he arrived. Joel had given him my number; he was always trying to fix things up for people.

“How old was he when started?”

“Maybe – fourteen? He’s had a really shit time. I think you should say yes. Be kind. Go on… don’t you think she should?”

He turned to T. who’d come back from the newsagent’s across the road.

T. shrugged,

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like him”

I was getting impatient with both of them.

Joel tried again:

“But he really likes you”

T. stopped rummaging in the drawer for the stash tin and turned around;

“Or tell him to fuck off then”

“Oh but I can’t! I’m shit at stuff like that”

“I think you should try”

“Yeah – say yes – it’s only one day. Then he’ll stop asking”

They both seemed to think it was the best plan. I considered it.

“I could suggest somewhere really crap – put him off…would it work?”

“Oh yes absolutely”

“Let’s think of somewhere really shit she could take him”

“Umm – the zoo?”

T. was laughing now;

I looked at them;

“Oh god it would be freezing – that would be horrible – would it do the trick? D’you really think so?”

I still wasn’t sure about it at all. T put another compilation tape into the cassette player and began to stick some skins together to make a joint. They’d decided. I should phone Ben and suggest the zoo. It was February – it couldn’t fail. T. said he was sure everything would work seamlessly, and Joel agreed. We’d do two hours at the zoo and then he’d stop asking. Easy! Still doubting the idea, I went over and picked up the red phone.

Standing in Camden Town tube a few days later, I was having second thoughts again. Joel and T had been reassuring – they’d told me it was sure thing, but they didn’t actually have to do it. I watched the steady drizzle, and the early afternoon shoppers hurrying along the wet, dirty pavement, their heads bent to avoid the wind. I looked at the bits of cabbage leaves that had blown into the gutter from the market across the road, pulled my jacket tighter around me, and hoped it would be over soon.

When I saw Ben coming, I wondered if he was up to it. He was wearing a woman’s thin black leather coat from the sixties and his long lank hair hung straight down over his face, almost completely covering his eyes. I wasn’t sure if he really had given up smack - he didn’t look as if he had, to be honest. He was very thin and shivering even more than me.

“Alright?”

“Hi. We have to go this way. Cold isn’t it? You ok?”

“Fine, fine”

He turned up his collar as we went out of the station, but it can’t really have helped much.

We began the tedious walk towards Regents Park and the wind got stronger. As we reached the traffic lights and crossed over to the black iron railings that border the gardens, the rain began in earnest, and by the time we got to the entrance to the zoo we were both soaked through and exhausted.

I looked at Ben and felt bad. His face was white and he didn’t look very well at all. The wet leather hung loosely on his thin body and he kind of drooped. We couldn’t think of much to say.

In the end we didn’t spend more than an hour or so there. We hardly saw any animals – they were mostly hiding from the weather, and the few we did see looked as miserable as I think we both felt – a handful of dejected looking penguins jumping in and out of their pool, and some bedraggled vultures huddled in the far corner of their cage. The rain made everything smell worse than normal.

By the time I watched him disappear from view back into the tube, my hands had gone numb with cold and I felt dreadfully guilty. It might have done the trick – I thought it probably had – but I wished I had just said no after all. I went slowly off to find a bus stop so I could tell the others how it had gone.