being good isn't always easy

After this Lemmy takes me into a shop and very carefully, while the shopowner is attending to a customer, Lemmy slyly picks up a packet of cigarettes and quick, up under his jacket it goes, held gripped by his armpit. I goggle. Lemmy just looks the same, sort of waiting impatiently when the shopowner glances at him. Lemmy looks as always—bored. My heart bangs away, I have never known such excitement. Then I realise Lemmy is waiting page 107 for me to take some too. I can't stop myself, I look at the shopowner then my hand of its own will moves away from my body and I see it lift up a packet of Bold Gold so sophisticated and smelling of swinginglondon and twiggyandcarnabystreet and this gold bar attaches itself to me, joins my flesh. It cuts in, hard.

Suddenly I think of what it might mean if I'm caught, Jamie the good boy has to meet Jamie the bad boy, everything would change. But already it is too late, I am caught in the river again, whirling me along, too fast for me to stop. I realise that now I am giddy with speed, I can never stop.

The shopowner's face under fluorescents looks faintly sick, with great big pools and bags under his eyes. (Overhead lighting is no good, I memorise at that moment, practical as always, grabbing at details—as if they'll save me.) But it is like snatching at dry leaves as I whirl by, spinning roundroundround, getting nearer and nearer the edge of the waterfall: the door.

'Oh boys,' says the shopkeeper suddenly, moving round the counter, 'Hold on a minute,' but Lemmy keeps walking as if he can't hear, so I can't hear either, our ears are sealed over, till we hit the door, the dark, at which point we break into a run, joining our flesh onto the flash of speed we feel inside our veins. We run until we meld into boygirl.

I don't know what I've just done, I don't know what it means. I look down at Lemmy trying to work it all out. Here, I say, and give him my cigarettes. But he already has his packet out and he's unconcernedly ripping aside the cellophane, as if it's so thin it just doesn't matter. The cellophane falls to the ground, blows away. I watch it and feel tired and sad. He pops open the top, offers me one. I look down at them, then I look at him, then I look down at the cigarettes.

'I don't smoke,' I say.

Lemmy just shrugs and lights up and I watch him and he doesn't look at me. We move back under the pink flashing lights, swim through the river of looks and I think how different we are now, my life has so suddenly changed and it's because of Lemmy, and when we're on the other side, in the warm dark, I say, 'Oh Lemmy,' very casual-like, 'Could I borrow a cigarette. Would you mind?'

Lemmy squares his herringbone tweed shoulders (as seen in English Vogue) and he shakes out a cigarette and he offers it to me and I feel this shivery feeling all over me, right down to the bottom of my socks, I can feel the sweat pricking and I feel suddenly—oh—I'm being washed, showered page 108 all over with silver and I take the cigarette and Lemmy leans forward and lights it looking into my eyes quite curiously and strangely and the cigarette catches fire and I say, Thank you Lemmy. Thank you.