Nirvana Bites by Debi Alper Page B

made a note of the names and numbers programmed in, and that was it. Hardly a cornucopia of gritty info. His wallet held nothing more exciting than a stack of credit cards. I put his keys aside. I could get copies from the hardware shop on Nunhead Green.
    His toilet bag yielded the most interest. Which is to say, one notch above bugger-all. Among the more obvious items, there was a large selection of condoms – ribbed, ridged, flavoured, rainbow-coloured and ticklers. There was a small vial of what I assumed to be an essential oil. I pulled out the stopper and took a whiff, and for the second time that day I had an out-of-body experience. Only this one was chemically induced. My brain shot upwards, bounced against the ceiling several times and then reversed back into my skull with a force that threw me on to my hands and knees on the floor. I recognised the powerful rush of amyl nitrate, gone almost as soon as it came. No wonder it was so often used to enhance the moment of orgasm.
    There were also razor blades in Stan’s bag – as well as an electric Shaver. The blades were in a separate zip section, nestled up to a small mirror. Unfortunately, there was no sign of any of the white powder I was sure that little kit was for.
    Stan’s Tardis-like toilet bag also revealed a prescription bottle of Seconol, which would certainly provide the explanation for his comatose state. A combination of downers and alcohol could have him out for hours. Or even days. Or even permanently…
    As that thought hit home, I was up and running back into the front room. I yanked Stan over on to his back and dropped to my knees beside him. I pressed my ear to his chest. I heard nothing. Damn it, you bastard. Don’t do this to me. Don’t die in my lovely home and poison the karma for ever by sailing out on a cocktail of barbies and booze.
    Before terminal panic set in, I realised it would have been impossible for me to hear anything, since the ear welded to Stan’s chest was the deaf one. The one damaged by contact with a wall on my seventh birthday. Another of those exciting little high points from my childhood.
    I tried the other ear, but by this time the blood was pounding so loudly in my own head, I couldn’t work out if what I was hearing were my own rhythms or Stan’s. I grabbed a cushion and pounded it until feathers flew. I picked one up and held it under Stan’s nostrils. That didn’t work either. My hand was trembling so much, the feather acted like it was being buffeted by a tornado. Stan could have been dead for months and the result would have been the same.
    I rocked back on my heels and grabbed handfuls of hair, willing myself to think straight. Inspiration struck from an unlikely quarter. I remembered an article in a magazine I’d seen at the dentist’s. It was about people who had been wrongly pronounced dead. The most extreme case was that of a Spanish woman who was being lowered into her grave when the mourners heard scratching sounds coming from inside the coffin. In one of those pseudo-scientific info boxes, they had listed the tests for establishing when a person is genuinely dead and not just very, very tired.
    I pulled open Stan’s eyelid and dry-sobbed relief when his pupil fluttered like a ping-pong ball in an updraught. It was also relief that made me kick him once more for good measure.
    So I could get no satisfaction from hurting Stan. And I didn’t want to go down the road of hurting myself – a familiar route, but one I did my best to avoid these days. I needed distraction. I went and got a set of Stan’s keys cut and returned the originals. I was in acute need of a friendly face.
    Mags was the only one in the co-op who knew anything at all about the man who was my biological father. But she wouldn’t be back for at least a couple of hours.
    I phoned the third house. If I was lucky, Ali would be in. He might be crap at stringing sentences together,