Zachary 1

I always knew when Zachy had been at my halls. I’d open the door and find a postcard. It was never an ordinary one – always someone interesting; Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Harold Lloyd dangling from a big clock – with something enigmatic written on the back.

I was just bending down to pick up the latest, when I heard someone knocking. I opened the door and he was standing there

“Good, you’re back. Here….make yourself useful”

He handed me some sheets of stickers. I looked at them. They said Pogue Mahone.

‘Kiss my arse in Gaelic. Come on. I like your hair by the way. It makes you look like an evil baby”

I thanked him for the compliment, and we wandered down the corridor sticking one on each door.As we did, Zachy explained the connection; I was rubbish at names, and he and the other people I knew had been in so many bands I always forgot which was which.

“Oh ok, I remember them”

The only concert that had stuck in my memory had been at Dingwalls, years before, because that was the first and the most exciting. There had been crowds and crowds of us to see Zachy and T. playing – everyone from Kingsway and Hampstead, but nobody could have been more enthusiastic than Joel and me. We’d stood there, bursting with pride, in that small smoky place, gazing with admiration at T. on stage.

It had been his first gig – or at least the first one I’d been to anyway, and he’d been so shy he’d turned his back to the audience for most of the time, but we hadn’t taken our eyes off him the whole time, just in case he’d looked around. I pushed it out of my memory. T. was as gone as Joel out of my life and I didn’t want to think about either of them, it made me feel lonely.

We both winced as we walked past the room that always had The Smiths blaring out, day and night. Zach laughed and shook his head;

“God that man needs help. When’s your birthday again?”

“Friday. Why?”

“Want to come over?”

I looked at him. He was peeling another sticker off the sheet. He was being suspiciously nice all of a sudden. You never knew from day to day with him how he’d be – I wondered if I went over on my birthday it mightn’t be such a good idea, in case he changed moods in the meantime. Then I thought fuck it, he was worth the gamble, he was so lovely when he was nice, and I’d lost touch with almost everyone else.

It was odd how we’d stayed in contact. It hadn’t happened deliberately, I just seemed to bump into him a lot over the years. I liked him most of the time – but not all of it. I certainly couldn’t imagine crying on his shoulder, although I did once, and actually he was very kind that time. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t compare with the others – he wasn’t comfortable like T and Joel.

I watched his back as he walked across the central landing to the next corridor. He had changed so much since Kingsway. He’d grown about a foot – amazing when I thought about all the drugs he’d put down his throat since those days. He looked like an adult now, no longer a boy in a denim jacket. He was thin and fragile looking, with a slight blonde fuzz where he hadn’t shaved, softening the edges of his cheekbones. His eyes always glittered; you never knew quite why with Zachary – he would either come out with something that would have you doubled up with laughter, or a comment that would make you feel two feet tall.

Now that I came to think of it, he hadn’t been unpleasant for quite a long time – not since before those months when he’d stayed with me in Nice, the previous year. He’d been trying to give up smack – not that he’d really wanted to – it was just the cost that was getting him down. I think he’d temporarily dropped out of St. Martin’s when he came, or maybe it was the summer holidays. He’d paid his visit to the dodgy GP underneath the Westway, and stocked up on DF118s – much better than methadone, which was what was normally on offer – you just slipped him some money and he would write you a private prescription.

He’d arrived at the villa with a couple of other friends, and we’d had a lovely few weeks, sharing the DF118s around, then the others had left but Zachy had stayed on, to get over the worst, and I had tried to help, buying him cheap biscuits and jam, to take away the cravings as he weaned his dose down. I’d even taken him across the border with me into Italy, to Ventimiglia, when we’d run out of pills and found they didn't do them in France.

That had been such an odd day, wandering through endless little sidestreets in the summer heat, searching for the plaque outside the big front doors that announced the offices of a doctor. All those dark offices, with their big desks and leather chairs – the puzzled Italian doctors, straining to make out what we wanted – me with my non-existant Italian, Zachy with his non-existant anything. Gestures had taken over – always polite, but ones that said “I’m sorry I can’t help you”, and Zach had eventually given up, and gone home to the more expensive, but at least reliable sources of proper smack. It was so much easier on everything except the pocket.