The Gorko Gazette

THAT’S WHAT IT FEELS LIKE

FADE IN.

EXT. CANAL. DAY.

[Panning shot: reflections of clouds drifting across the dirty, motionless green waters of the canal]

John Gambler sits on the towpath at Gas Street Basin trying to salvage what was left of the abysmal day w/bottle of vodka in hand, legs dangling over the side, staring into the water. And Gambler’s thinking about sumthing. Thinking hard about sumthing along the lines of…

He senses a presence and when he turns round it’s the hulking gravity of Ronnie Castle pulling Gambler into his sphere, standing there looking like a pimp in a big fur coat except underneath he’s uncharacteristically wearing a cheap cut of black suit.

RONNIE CASTLE

You need a goddamn haircut, kid. But I still recognised you straight away, I saw you from over there on the bridge.

and then, with a double-edged smile…

You like the suit? Uhh… Court.

JOHN GAMBLER

Ha. Yeah, I heard you’d bin in a spot a trouble again. What did you steal?

RONNIE CASTLE

(sitting down on the canal bank next to Gambler)

I don’t steal, Crackerjack. That’s not my M.O. I just put people in hospital, that’s what I do.

JOHN GAMBLER

(passing Castle the bottle of vodka)

Here, lubricate yourself. I know, I know. So who’d you put in hospital this time?

RONNIE CASTLE

(slugging from the bottle)

I wuz minding me own business taking a piss down the toilets on Stephenson’s Place, you know, the ones under the ramp. Sum little cissy was lurking about down there tryna get a suck-off or sumthin. Don’t ask me what it is queers do, I don’t know. But this one wuz looking for summat anyway. He found it too, I slashed his fuckin throat for him.

JOHN GAMBLER

Holy shit, you fuckhead.

RONNIE CASTLE

(passing Gambler the bottle back)

Just relax, will you. It certainly had him spitting out his Bazooka Joe. But he ain’t dead.

The clouds roll past them, shifting across the flat-calm surface of the impenetrable dark water. Castle points down into the water straight in front of them.

RONNIE CASTLE

Shit, look at that.

An olive green extraterrestrial about twelve inches long glides to the surface w/its glowing orange eyes. Castle hacks up a great globule of mucus and spits it at the fish, it sinks slowly away down into the darkness again. A muscular fish, king of his realm exuding easy authority.

JOHN GAMBLER

That was a good shot, Ronnie.

RONNIE CASTLE

(reaching out his hand)

Ugly fuckin things, fish. Gimme another hit a that vodka. Rachel left me again, permanently this time for sum rat shit fuck called Spock. I tell you, that gid me a right sick feeling right down in the pit a me stomach.

JOHN GAMBLER

That’s what it feels like.

RONNIE CASTLE

When we wuz arguing once she went into the kitchen and come back out with a big fuck-off hammer, she swung it like she wuz the daughter a Thor straight at my head but I managed to shift out the way pronto and grab the fucking thing off her.

JOHN GAMBLER

You was lucky there, Ronnie.

RONNIE CASTLE

Funny thing, I knew him vaguely, this Spock. Used to drink down that Lyndhurst joint. He tried to sell me this little pocket Saturday Night Special once that he’d cobbled together himself out a different parts, you know. I wouldn’t a trusted that thing not to blow up in my hand.

JOHN GAMBLER

You didn’t buy it?

RONNIE CASTLE

You’re dead right I didn’t buy it.

JOHN GAMBLER

Why was he called Spock, Ronnie?

RONNIE CASTLE

Because he’d got these funny ears, man.

Two teenage schoolgirls walk past them along the towpath. Gambler and Ronnie Castle stare dead ahead in silence for a minute, nothing but the static of telepathy transmitting in the air between them. The girls walk by wearing lipstick and the shortest short skirts, their perfume cuts through the decayed smell of the canal.

and then…

RONNIE CASTLE

You’ll get thrown in prison.

JOHN GAMBLER

Fuck off. You were thinking the same thing as me.

They sit there for an hour, drinking the vodka. After a while Castle gets to his feet.

RONNIE CASTLE

(handing Gambler the now depleted bottle of vodka back)

Well, Jesus save me, what am I thinking? I gotta get a move on. You’re one a the few good men, Gambler. I’ll be seeing you.

And then, as he’s trudging away…

You know the score, my little friend.

JOHN GAMBLER

Yeah, if anyone asks, I ain’t sin you, right?

… Along the lines of how all our dreams slowly decay and turn into tragedy. And strangely, how it’s the tragedy that sustains the lives of most people. Gambler pulls on the vodka, picks up stones and throws them in the canal, watches the ripples fan out in concentric circles from the epicentre as dusk begins to crawl across the city and the vacant chromium plated grey sky hangs above everything like a sheet. You can try to do sumthing with your life if you want to, and maybe even fool yourself that it matters sum. But the truth is we’re all going down to our graves straight and nobody gives a fuck. All this. Life. It’s just a momentary illusion and nuthing in this world really matters none.

CUT TO:

INT. THE BLACK HORSE. DAY.

Two days afterwards, late in the afternoon for Happy Hour, Gambler’s in the Black Horse. During Happy Hour you get a triple shot a whisky for the price of a double. He picks up a newspaper sumbody left folded on the bar. Page four there’s a smiling picture of Ronnie Castle at the top of a side column, he’s jumped bail. Wanted for violent assault, the police searching for him. Thought now to have contacts in Blackpool. Do not approach, call the police straight away. Blah. Blah. Blah. Last known movements Ronnie Castle had hijacked a car that’d pulled up at the Scott Arms traffic lights where the Birmingham Road intersects w/the Queslett Road, two-hundred yards from the north bound on-ramp of the M6 motorway, jumped in the passenger seat with a nine inch Bowie knife pulled from under his coat and ordered the driver to take him to Blackpool.

[Indistinct voices coming from the back room, the sound of pool balls cracking together. Soundtrack playing on the system: the electronic melodic synths of Japan’s Life in Tokyo]

Gambler folds up the newspaper, tosses it away. Smiles to himself, lights cigarette and sips his drink as we…

FADE TO BLACK.

CAST

JOHN GAMBLER – JOHN MARCEL O’LEARY
RONNIE CASTLE – EDDIE GASKINS
SCHOOLGIRL #1 – Daria Han
SCHOOLGIRL #2 – Liz Rose

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Image: Frontier pay phone downtown Charleston WV July 2022.jpg