Gutierez Goes to Heaven

Gutierez was walking along the windswept broadway. Crouch End is usually crowded and lively, but on this cold Monday evening, only a few people seemed to have ventured out. Gutierez wasn’t bothered by the weather. He didn’t even feel the cold. He had other problems. His latest girlfriend had just dumped him for the umpteenth time, his cash card had been retained for no obvious reason, and he’d lost his house keys the day before when he had got so drunk that he’d fallen over in the pub after that last fatal sip of Guinness.

He and a mate had started celebrating X mas (with to weeks to go) at 11am, with an Irish breakfast, i.e. several double Jameson’s and even more Guinness, and he must have been run over by a truck at some point, because whenever he breathed in or made a sudden movement his whole ribcage hurt, and the lowest rib on the right was somehow in a different position than it used to be. He was sure about that because, as a hypochondriac, he was continuously checking his body for lumps and moles, anything that gave him a reason to believe that he would die soon. Not hat it would come as a surprise if he ended up in hospital or 7 feet underground before his 40th birthday: his alcohol intake had always been quite high, but it had almost doubled over the last month or so. Also, after years of smoking so-called light cigarettes, he had switched back to Marlboro reds, and he went through 2 packs a day. For some reason though he never worried about real ailments, like that dull pain in the liver area or the heavy coughin g in the morning, followed by a burning feeling in his chest that would sometimes last all day and cause breathing difficulties. He would run to hospital for x-rays as soon as he felt an itch in his little finger, but when friends worriedly told him to quit smoking after he’d suffered another one of his coughing fits, he would dismissively blame the weather or the season changes or global warming, swallow a couple of paracetemols and keep on chatting to whatever bird he was trying to pull that night. He thought of himself as an interesting character, of irresistible charm and lethal wit. A few years ago, that might have been true. Once, his sharp tongue and quick mind had been a true talent, which he had successfully applied professionally as well as socially, More then once it had helped him to get out of nasty situations, or enabled him to get into a favourable ones, like that time when he talked himself into a job as head of entertainment for one of the trendiest music venues in town. He did the job for 2 years, and he hardly did anything but shagging the bands’ groupies, the bands’ members, snorting the bands’ coke and flogging the bands’ freebies. He’d made more money than he could spend and had made more friends than he could remember. But debauchery had taken its toll. The bags under his eyes had become a permanent feature of his face, thanks to hangovers that nowadays would last well into the afternoon, and his pale skin, which had once given him an interesting look in a Byronesque way (so he believed) had turned an unhealthy and unattractive grey. He could have been good looking, even kind of distinguished, but let’s face it, he had let himself go a bit. Dishevelled and scruffy, his thin lips pressed together with misplaced determination, he sometimes looked like a bitter and resigned man, a self-pitying loser blaming anyone but himself for his misfortunes. A potential bum. He talked to himself, swearing and cursing as if he were a Tourette syndrome sufferer, scaring harmless young girls and old l adies to death, and causing suspicious looks from the people in his local offy. They would refuse to sell him booze soon. Nah, he wasn’t doing to well, good old Freddie Gutierez.