Life of Stone Chapter 2

2.
Stone awoke with a jolt and a headache.
The beginning of Stones life went much the same way as anybody else’s might have done. He emerged from his mother’s womb having been formed of cells dividing themselves millions of billions of times over, during an incubation period of approximately nine months. He went to school, and made some friends. He grew up, matured, and was soon a man. This should be made clear to reassure you that you don’t need to be worried about being bored with the very start of his life. Not that it was particularly boring for him, but from the outside looking in you’d be surprised how boring your life is. The rest of Stones life however is nothing if not eventful, and so we begin not at the immediate beginning but close enough to it in perspective to the whole, with Stone waking up. His head hurt. A lot. He recognized it as a more severe hangover than the ones he was accustomed to. The pain was accompanied by a ringing in his ears and a complete absence of any memory as to why this hangover should be so bad. He recognised that he was in bed, but he felt higher from the floor than usual. He swung his legs out expecting to find the floor and fell eighteen inches to the ground. Looking up he realised he hadn’t been sleeping on a mattress on the floor, a bed had somehow appeared between the two. He stood carefully, wary of the effect that a sudden change in altitude may have on his delicate disposition. He took a few paces toward the door and had even reached for the handle before he realised that it wasn’t there. He stopped in his tracks. At his feet sat a bottle of warm flat beer, opened hours ago but barely started. He picked it up and took a few swigs. It soothed his raging thirst.  He held on to it and carefully rotated on the spot until he found the position of the lost door. He kept one eye closed for fear of the pain that letting light into it would cause. He shivered and looking down suddenly realised he was naked. He drank some more beer. His head thumped but the alcohol eased the pain. There was something about this room, apart from the bed and the position of the wandering door, which wasn’t ringing true. It smelt nice. It had furniture in it. There were curtains over the windows through which the sun was attempting an appearance. There were posters decorating the walls. As he became aware of these things it dawned on him with an uneasy prickle of goose bumps that this wasn’t his room, and that he didn’t know where he was. A shuffling noise from the bed he had woken in suggested that he wasn’t alone in this strange room. He continued turning on the spot, completing a 360 ۫ panorama until he once again faced the bed. The bed where he now realised that someone else still slept. He stared at the scene that confronted him. Each object his eyes rested upon opened a new memory of what had happened the previous night. There was the pile of clothes, not all of which were his. There was the bedside table, with its partially consumed bottle of wine and packet of Camels roached to within an inch of collapse. On the floor by the bed lay four condoms where they had been discarded following a brief yet intimate relationship between two consenting adults. In the bed was a girl. A girl who now stirred, woke, and sat up to face him. He stood before her naked, his jaw slack and wide open, his eye staring at her. His mind spun as it occurred to him that he had just spent the night with this impossibly beautiful woman. They were the adults responsible for the balloons of semen lying unceremoniously on the otherwise pristine carpet.
‘Morning you.’ The girl said playfully. Her eyes were pink swollen slits, make up was smeared in scars of passion across her face. Her hair, long and blond, had arranged itself into amazing shapes hitherto unknown to geometrics. She smiled at Stones complete inability to speak or move. 
‘Come back to bed.’ She told him, and opened the duvet invitingly. He was far too in love with her to say anything, especially not ‘no’. He took a long swig from the flat Heineken and jumped into bed with her.
Seven minutes later the two of them lay exhausted on the bed, gasping for air. A fifth condom had joined its fallen comrades. When they had caught their breath, Stone reached for the bottle of wine and took a long grateful swig. He offered it to the girl, who took a much smaller one.
‘Do I remember us having an amazing time last night?’ He asked her. ‘Most of it’s a blur, but I seem to remember we had a great time.’
‘Yeah man, it was amazing.’ She put her arm round him and rested her head on his chest. Somewhere nearby a clock struck the hour of ten. Stone tried to imagine how he could be happier but no ideas came to mind.
‘Shame you gotta go.’ Her words rang in his ears but his brain refused to make any sense of them.
‘Do I?’ He asked, hoping she didn’t have any good reason why he should. He noticed a toy Minnie Mouse sitting on the end of the bed, leant up against the footrest, staring at him. A silent witness to the debauchery that had taken place before its beady plastic eyes the night before.
‘Today’s the day, right? Harry’s ice cream van? The big trip?’ Her words floated into the air, and his brain suddenly remembered something very important. His train of thought moved up a gear and went downhill, fast.  ‘It’s all you kept talking about last night.’ She managed to add casually before he leapt out of bed.
‘Ah, baby, I gotta go.’ He screamed and began searching the floor for his clothes amongst hers. She pulled the duvet around herself, and watched him rush around in a million different directions.
‘There are your shoes and socks.’ She pointed a delicate index finger helpfully to a chair by the window. She was sat upright, her legs drawn up in front of her under the duvet. He took her jeans off, replaced them with his own, and moved over to his socks. His T-shirt was also here. He scanned the floor and tops of furniture and found his lighter, which he put in one of his pockets along with his keys. He then found his small bag of weed, and using the one remaining Camel he made himself a joint.
‘Sorry to leave you like this.’ he apologised, embarrassed. ‘Look I really had a great night, when I get back to London, maybe we’ll find each other again.’ He hastily licked Rizlas.
‘I hope so.’ She replied, resting her head on her knee. He stood, placing the freshly made and rather smelly concoction behind his ear. She held out her hand for him to shake. This seemed a very dignified way for them to part company. He shook it.
‘So, I just have two questions.’
‘Ok.’ She replied, accommodating his curiosity.
‘Ok. One; where am I?’
‘76 Glamis Street, just round the corner from your house.’ She told him.
‘Great!’ This was good news, it meant he knew where he was. ‘And secondly, what’s your name?’ She laughed, not in the slightest bit offended.
‘Star.’ She told him.
‘Star, far out. How could I ever forget that? Catch you later, Star.’ He said. He let go of her hand, and left.
These were the events that preceded Stone walking into the Woolworth’s store in Brixton High Street, just down the road from Star’s house, which was just round the corner from his house. How typical, he thought, that someone he might actually like happened to appear in his life the night before he left indefinitely.
He walked into the air-conditioned Woolworths building and tried to concentrate on the task in hand and not on the image of Star’s naked body that had fixed itself in his mind’s eye, but it was very difficult. The cool air of the store offered a relief from the close heat of the morning. He searched through the front pockets of his jeans to see if he had any money to pay some passport photographs. Apart from the bits and pieces of his that he had picked up from Star’s bedroom all he found was a bottle top, which he discarded on to the shop floor. There was no cash. Disappointed but not disheartened he began a search through his back pockets. His fingers clamped around what felt like a wad of bank notes folded in half. He pulled it out to see what it was and found himself holding a wad of bank notes folded in half. He stopped in his tracks to gawp at it for a moment. He did a rough calculation of how much must be there and liked the figure he came up with. He gawped for a while longer while his brain tried to work out whose it was and where it had come from. It took a full two minutes for him to give up and put it back in his pocket. He smiled a wild smile. He may not have any idea where it had come from but he did know that it would come in very useful. He continued stumbling into the shop for a good four or five paces before the image of Star’s body popped into his mind again. He pushed it aside and concentrated on his mission.
Once, some time ago, he’d noticed a photo booth at the very back of this Woolworths store situated amongst the socks in the clothes department. The booth would, in exchange for the appropriate coinage, give you a strip of four passport sized photographs. Stone very rarely found the need to go into shops, especially not a Woolworths. What made the photo booth stick in his mind was that it seemed so out of place. He had noticed it when he was there to buy underwear, and it was the last thing he had expected to see amongst the socks. He’d wondered if being situated in such a ridiculous place it ever got used and had made up his mind that as long as it was still there, he was going to use it today.
As it was a Saturday, the store was busy. People of all ages slowly milled around between the shelves and the merchandise and each other. He passed an elderly couple that stood looking at toys, trying to decide what to buy for a grandchild’s birthday. The man clutched a card in one hand and a roll of wrapping paper in the other. A child raced passed, screaming through the shelves. A dishevelled and exhausted mother followed behind him, an image no doubt familiar to the elderly couple. These characters were cloned and distributed amongst the store, all spending their hard earned money on things they didn’t really need. Stone made his way winding through them all, his mind racing over the events of the last twelve hours.
Where had he gotten that money? Was the cash Henry’s ferry money? Why would Henry have given it to him? The notes were too clean and neatly packaged to be anything Henry had to do with. There was also far too much of it for Henry to have any connection. Stone was suddenly confronted with another image of Star and he tried to keep it in his head. He tried to imprint it on to his memory, so he could remember what she looked like in the months to come that they would be apart. Most of the previous evening was still a partial blur, but moments of clarity occasionally appeared through the mist that seemed to have no relevance as to how he had managed to end up in bed with a girl like Star. He tried to forget about her by worrying about the money, but his mind trumped that problem with the problem of not having a passport. An explanation for the money and his luck at pulling could wait. If he happened to be on a ferry in a few hours still clutching the mysterious wad of notes it would be something he could live with. Right now he had to worry about getting to Henry with four passport sized photographs.
He stumbled on through the shop, and the shelves eventually gave way to rails, gleaming silver and full of clothes. A shape he recognised appeared up ahead, and Stone set his eyes on his target. Positioned against the wall farthest from the door through which he had entered the shop stood the photo booth. It hadn’t moved an inch from last time he’d seen it, and it was still surrounded by socks and pants. Around it two mothers and their respective children had gathered in excited chaos. At first Stone thought they were waiting to use the booth, but the children ignored it as they whipped themselves into a hurricane of sock shopping. He attempted to enter the furore but the children thwarted his attempts at every chance. Instead he stood back and waited, not wanting to get drawn into the storm. Their mothers watched, shouting directions and pleading with their offspring. He imagined them ten years ago, burning their bras for equal rights for women. Now they stood, assimilated into the inevitable consumer lifestyle that awaited them along with all the men. Equality at last. The wait got too much for the stretched patience of one of the mothers, and she made the decision for her kids by simply picking up a drab multipack of black socks and dragging them away. Their screams of protest echoed through the racks of clothes as if they were being denied food and water. The second mother realised what a good idea the multi pack choice was and followed suit. The smoke cleared.  Peace descended on the valley. A small group of people had formed alongside Stone, all trying to get to the underwear. His fellow consumers were finally allowed to assess the damage and approach their quarry. He approached the booth, and it wasn’t until he was stood next to it that he realised just how huge the thing was.
Stone stood six feet and two inches tall. He wore, starting at the toes, a pair of worn out black baseball boots. Covering his slim legs were a dirty old pair of infrequently washed flared Levi’s jeans. Above these he wore a tightly fitting white T-shirt with a picture of Jimi Hendrix printed across the chest. His brown hair was long enough to reach his shoulders. It wasn’t straight, but had no particular curl to it either. He wore it down. Hair grew across his cheeks but it was not quite a beard. His eyes were green. He hadn’t washed for a few days, but didn’t smell that bad. In his blood stream the THC from the concoction that he’d put together on Star’s bedside table was making its way around his body to his brain. He took deep breaths to help the circulation. He suddenly realised he was still more pissed than sober.
The booth stood eight feet tall, five feet long and three feet deep. Illuminated across the length of the top in large letters were the words ‘Kwiki Snapz Foto’s’ in white on blue. The front was split in two; the left hand side had a large picture diagram explaining how to use the booth, a long mirror, and a small hatch. The diagram told the story of a simply drawn stick man getting his photograph taken. The man adjusts the height of the seat. He then sits in the booth, putting some money into a slot. Two minutes later, a small clock informs the reader, he collects his photographs from the hatch. 
On the right was a curtain hanging half the length of the booth, it was behind which one would have to sit down and re-enact the story of the stick man. Stone pulled the curtain back and sat on the stool. The space inside the booth was small, he could lean back on the wall behind him and his feet touched the wall under the glass in front of him. The wall behind him was composed entirely of an ambient white light. On either side of the light was a curtain, one red, and one blue. He stood up again and lowered the height of the stool. Part of the stick man’s tale involved having his eyes level with a line in the glass. Stone now interpreted this as meaning the red light in the dim recesses behind the dark pane of glass he faced.
He drew the curtain and made himself as comfortable as he could on the small plastic disc that passed as a seat. In the dim light he could just make out a small slit under the glass. It was set in stainless steel, with the message; ‘Sixty pence - 50 and 10 pieces only’ embossed above it. He had managed to forget about the coins necessary in operating the booth. He had no money other than the wad in his back pocket, and realised he would need to use this and worry about its origins later. Right now he needed coins. To be precise, he needed a fifty and a ten pence coin. He sighed in resignation and pulled back the curtain, and left the Kwiki Snapz Foto booth. He made his way back through the store toward the tills at the entrance. As he walked away from the socks, through the clothes and the toys, the mothers and their hurricane broods were conspicuously absent. He made his way as quickly as he could manage back to the front of the store to the tills, and sure enough the mothers and children were waiting for him there, except they had multiplied, and their clones filled every queue with a cacophony of rejected pleas and heartache.  He joined the shortest of the long queues and shuffled forward in line obediently, sandwiched between the old and the young, the previous generation and the next. Gradually the monotony of the noise, the obedient shuffling forward, the lack of sleep and the joint caused him to drift dreamily into remembering Star, or rather trying to remember Star. More accurately, trying to remember how he had met Star. She swam swirling naked through his thoughts. Had she been at the pub? Shuffle shuffle. How did he end up at her house?  Obedient shuffle. He was no closer to any answers when he was disturbed by the words;
‘Can I help you?’ He had shuffled himself forward automatically, and had been so distracted that he hadn’t noticed he had reached the front of the line. An old man in the queue behind him tutted rudely. The girl on the till was younger than him, wore huge braces across her teeth, and was chewing gum. She was spotty and obviously fed up. Stone was shaken from his dream and had to change frequency quickly to tune into the girl at the till who he wanted to exchange currency with.  He wondered how long they had been waiting for him.
‘Err, hi, how’s it going?’ He swayed slightly as he tried to find his centre of gravity. ‘Could I please get some change for the photo booth?’ He regained his balance gracefully and wondered if anyone had noticed how wasted he was.
‘Sorry, we don’t give out change you’ll have to buy something. The girl’s expression did not change, nor did her dull bored tones.
‘Oh, right, ok, well, err, hey would it not hurt just this once to give a guy some change?’ Stone attempted reason though doubted it would work. ‘I mean, what’s the hassle, right? It’s just some change.’ He took a note from the wodge in his pocket as casually as he could and tried to hand it to her. It was a ten.
‘Sorry, you’ll have to buy something.’ She didn’t make the slightest effort to move any part of her body, not even her mouth. She took a single long lazy chew on her gum, and bought her head to rest on the hand of the arm that happened to be closest to it at the time. She hadn’t even noticed herself doing it.  Stone sensed a fellow hangover sufferer and decided to make it easier for her.
‘Oh, well ok, err, I wonder if there’s anything that I need…’ He began to think to himself what he needed for his trip, but he needed so much stuff he could spend all day shopping here.
‘You’re holding up the line, yeah?’ The girl interrupted him as he pondered his need for socks. She pointed lazily down the line with the arm that wasn’t supporting her head.
‘You’ll have to buy something, just get a chocky bar or something.’ She directed his attention to the end of her till, where the impulse buys were cleverly positioned to tempt people into handing over their money. The bored girl’s idea was so brilliantly simple that it hadn’t occurred to Stone at all. By parting with a few pence not only would he gain a chocolate bar but also all the change he would need. He was amazed at the girl’s ability to be so helpful without exhausting any obvious effort at all.
‘Thanks that’s a good idea, hang on.’
She sighed and made a ‘what can you do’ motion with her shoulders at the tutting OAP behind Stone. He ignored them both. ‘Norms’, he used to think to himself. ‘Straights’, he used to call them. He was so used to them now he barely regarded them at all. Instead he made his way past all the people with baskets of shopping to the end of the till and studied the consumable goods someone had decided he would buy on impulse.
Without having to look he instinctively reached for a chocolate bar in a nice shiny wrapper. In a blink of an eye, in the time between his arm being outstretched and his hand completing the grasp, his attention was caught, distracted by a display of watches sitting innocently on top of the cocoa and the calories. Minnie Mouse watches. All with the same smile, the same ribbon in the hair. Those same blank eyes stared forward, watching the world, watching the disgusting acts human beings inflict on each other. A memory was caught in his sights and his mind raced back to Star’s bedroom and to the Minnie Mouse on her bed. He suddenly recalled that they had been talking about it during the night. The scene flashed in fast-forward across his internal memory. Between bursts of frenetic exercise, between insane lust fuelled love making, between condoms, Stone had noticed it looking at him. He lay on the sheets, cooling down, panting and sweating in the heat of the city in a sweltering summer night. Star had turned from him, having regained her breath before he had. She opened a drawer in the bedside cabinet then bent over it and began making a joint. Stone was impressed that she was making it with her own stuff. It was dark, only a dim lamp over Star’s bowed head lit the room. He had no idea what time it had been or how wasted he was at this point. He remembered pointing at Minnie. She stared at him from the end of the bed. It was not a judging stare, she was just a witness, he was just another in a string of visitors. It took the mouse’s presence to bring this home to him.
‘Man, if that mouse could talk.’ She didn’t need to turn to see what he was pointing at. Her eyes concentrated on what was happening between her fingers.
‘Yeah, I’ve had her since I was born, slept with Minnie in bed with me every night. If that mouse could talk, dude, you would love some of her stories.’
The doll was ageless, and didn’t age. Stone remembered randomly that Star was 22, so in the 22 years it had taken her grow into a beautiful woman, the mouse had never changed, it just watched the whole thing, never saying a word, keeping all her secrets. He picked up a pink-strapped watch. An idea crossed his mind. It would be easy to go back to his house via Stars bedroom, with a Minnie Mouse watch as a parting gift. It wasn’t that far out of his way. As he began justifying his actions to himself he found he was handing over the ten-pound note without even realising he was doing it. He acted in automatic pilot and so now the watch was his, in a bag that he carried in his right hand. The choice of whether to go back to hers or not didn’t even need considering. He had to see her again before he left, it was that simple. Time could be against him and his plan, but here he depended on his friends being reliably unreliable. He knew they would not be anywhere near ready yet. He pictured Henry, sat in his van with Warlock, waiting to take them all to the passport office with their photographs. Henry had put their mattresses and their clothes in the back and the tank was full of diesel. The engine was running and he was beginning to panic because Stone was nowhere in sight. Stone dismissed this image. It was much easier and more realistic to picture Henry asleep in the bath again with hours of snoring left in him.  He recalled the clock of the local church striking 11 at some point between Stars bed and Woolworths. Technically it was still early, Stone figured. The girl gave him his change as ten fifty pence pieces, twenty ten pence pieces, and a single pence coin. Stone had to present hands, palms up and fingers outstretched to take it all from her.  It was heavy, and filled his hands completely. He regarded it unwillingly.
‘Thanks but I think I’ll only need one of each, you can have some of this back.’ He presented the handfuls of change back to her.
‘Sorry love tills closed, you’ll have to buy something.’ She chewed her gum lazily and looked round Stone to the next in line.
‘Next please.’
Stone considered making a fuss, but knew a lost cause when he saw one. He squeezed the handfuls of change into his already fit to bursting pockets and made his way back through the store toward the Kwiki Snapz photo booth. A new collection of mothers and children filled the aisles, blocking everyone’s way and causing untold misery to the staff and customers alike. Stone shuffled awkwardly round them back to the booth, looking and sounding like a cowboy approaching high noon, knees apart with the weight and bulk of the coins, hands hovering expectantly over his guns of change which jangled with the sound of spurs. He was momentarily taken aback by what looked a lot like an Australian aboriginal man wearing nothing but a small scrap of animal skin saying;
‘Alright mate?’ to him. He had white paint dabbed on his face and carried an ancient looking spear.
‘Yeah, alright?’ Stone replied, a little too distracted to think of anything more original, and in too much of a hurry to stop and ask questions. His mind was focused on photographs and passports, not on aborigines. He left the all but naked man where he was and continued doggedly onward. Enough was enough. Enough with the distractions. Enough with the hurdles. Enough with the screaming children and naked aborigines. He arrived back at the booth just in time to see a similar looking aboriginal man being carted away by two burly men in blue security uniforms. It was difficult to tell who looked more confused, the Security men or the aborigine. Stone ignored all three of them and climbed in the booth quickly, before something bigger and harder to ignore came along to try and stop him.
The chair inside was now a little higher, so he lowered it again. He fished into his swollen pockets for a ten and a fifty. He sat down and looked into the eyes of the haggard, sleep-deprived hippy that faced him. The unkempt curly hair, the filthy T-shirt. This was the Stone that would be immortalised in his passport. This was the Stone that would allow him a new lifestyle, the image that would represent him inside the document he could use to travel over borders and toward new and exciting horizons. He put the coins in the slot, they were damp from his sweaty palms.  Stone heard them roll down their runway with a whirr, and a satisfying ‘clunk’ as the fell into the secret recesses of the booth. A new noise now began, it was somewhere between a buzz and a thump. He stared at the little red light that had now become a little green light and waited for something to happen. He braced himself for a flash of light. The reflected eyes he stared into were pink slits. He stared and waited for a while with nothing happening.
He wondered about Henry and how long he would be asleep in the bath for. Nothing happened. He wondered about Star and whether she was still in bed. He wondered about the money. Nothing continued to happen. His eagerness got the better of him and he risked a glance down at the coin slot just to make sure he’d inserted the coins correctly. At the exact moment he moved his head a flash of light filled the booth, blinding him. He blinked furiously trying to regain his vision, but before he could a second flash went off. He tried to ignore the lack of vision and the sting in his eyes to try and get at least one decent shot for his sixty pence. He grinned inanely and stared forward, holding the pose for the next two flashes. Glowing green globules danced across his vision as the light burnt into his retinas. It took a moment for him to realise that the flashes had stopped. He stayed sitting to allow his vision to recover. He cursed himself for ruining his first attempt at getting photographs. He knew instinctively that there would not be one decent shot out of the four, and would have to try again. He was surprised at the checkout girl’s wisdom for giving him plenty of change. As he waited for his vision to slowly return, his mind didn’t drift away to the memories of the previous night, or to Star, or to the money. Instead, it cautiously drew his attention to the fact that there was something about the clothing department of Woolworths that was not quite right. The curtain flicked casually as if in a breeze.
The only thing that would bare any relevance on his life from this point on were the pockets full of coins that the checkout girl had given him. Everything else that had happened in Stones life up to this point suddenly became irrelevant. He would never see Henry again, and he would never travel any distance in the ice cream van. He would never discover where the money had come from, and Star would never receive her gift. Nothing that had happened to him up to now mattered anymore. It was at this moment that Stones life changed forever.