Twenty Seven

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No sun, no moon, no stars, no clouds. No crisscross of contrails or swarms of startled city birds. Just a white nothingness above, a vast absence like unused sketch paper up beyond the near colourless brick townhouses looming overhead. It was the most vague and unreadable sky he had ever craned his neck to contemplate. The world made no sense.

Maybe it was morning.

No breeze to tussle his hair or gooseflesh his forearms, no lingering scents of burning breakfasts or coffee being ground, no drifting fumes from idling cars.

Nothing. No deliveries being made, no quickwalking young professionals, no trams or buses being boarded by queues of commuters. No cyclists or joggers or anyone on this street which looked like a distorted and off kilter amalgam of the many middle European cities his tour bus had cut through- Budapest, Zurich, Vienna, Berlin, Prague.

This place made no sense. The proportions were all wrong, all craning expressionist angles and harsh lines. The colour of this world was turned down to near monochrome, and the street signs as he veered down one street and then the next in this maze-masquerading-as-a-city were written in a counterfeit and illegible alphabet, an alien series of glyphs.

His feet walked themselves, soundless, and he glided as though on an airport travelator heading from one terminal to the next, one country to the next, one gig to the next. Maybe he would chance across someone who recognised him, someone who could point him towards the venue, the tour bus, the train station, something, in exchange for a photograph, an autograph and a story to tell their wide-eyed friends.

You’ll never guess who I saw wondering around lost and confused and bedraggled the other day.

But there was no one. No one around to whisper about him from the side of their mouth, no one to do double takes as they caught his eye, or to size him up from a safe remove, or to stare him down or to admire or envy or resent him or to wonder aloud to their girlfriend what all the fuss was about or to remark on how tired and worn out and skinny and pale the lost singer looked.

He glided on, the cobbled path travelator carrying him to a street that didn’t belong. He was led to a New World dilapidated row of taverns and bars, to a weeds-growing-through-paving-slabs shithole of a street unfathomably jettisoned in this Old World storybook city. He glided to a single story flat roofed dive, the kind of place where the last of the hard living go to get blackout drunk on weekday mornings, the kind of place he sometimes sang about and obliquely glamorised. The dive had blacked out windows and a leaning and peeling wooden bench to the left of the wedged open black entrance. The whole outer edifice of the place was painted fire engine red and had Twenty Seven written across the wooden awning above the door. The letters were yellow, in bold relief, three dimensional. And they were in English.

The singer entered.

‘Thought you’da got here sooner.’

The bar was dead quiet, dark and deserted save for the one soul sat in silhouette on the farthest edge of the row of leather and chrome barstools. The silhouette coughed and spoke again in a strained and rasping near-whisper, his back still turned from the light of the doorway.

He said ‘Ain’t nobody to stop me and you associatin’ here. Reckon you’re wanting a drink.’

‘Huh?’ The singer rubbed his eye with a fist as though he’d been woken from a long sleep. He glided to the voice, to the hand that was patting the cracked leather of the vacant barstool to its lefthand side.

‘Sit.’

The singer settled into his stool and glanced at the stranger in his periphery before scanning the room and the back of bar. Head craning and eyes hunting for a barman or a waitress or a friendly face that could give him a phone to use or a scrawled napkin-map pointing him back to the band and the bus. Back to his life.

‘‘Fraid it’s jus’ you and me, youngin.’

The singer spun on his stool a quarter turn. The stranger wore an old man’s hat with a matching band and a brim that cast shifting shadows over his darkened face. In one instance the stranger had the look of a long-faced, lean, strong-jawed late twenties black man and in the next he looked to be in his eighties and darker still and his face wore the lines of decades of poverty and injustice and abuse. He was ancient, ageless, youthful, worn out, wry, jaded and as blank and unreadable as a stonefaced young hustler. All of these contradictions played out in a slow kaleidoscope as the stranger smoked down a cigarette that the singer never saw him light.

‘Help y’self.’ The stranger held out a soft pack of a brand the singer had never once seen in all of his young years of smoking in greenrooms and outside nightclubs and while leaning against the tour bus. He’d bummed every kind of cigarette in existence from every kind of fan and crew member and hanger-on but he’d never seen this old-timey vintage packaging. The box looked close a hundred years old and brand new all at once.

‘Thanks.’

‘Whiskey?’

The singer thought it over for all of a half-second before answering with a hard nod and a too-loud ‘hell yeah’. Ideas of health and responsibility and promises made faded before they had even formed.

The stranger free poured from a heavy bottle with a silver spout where the stopper should go. The bottle and the two rocks glasses were soundlessly, motionlessly conjured up from somewhere and as the whiskey flowed the bottle never became any less full.

‘How’d you do that?’

‘One of the considerations of this ‘stablishment. Comes a time you don’t even pay it no mind no more.’

‘Huh.’ The singer frowned but nodded as if he understood.

‘S’yer name, young man?’

The singer looked at the stranger dead on with a sideways tilt of his head. Maybe he was serious, maybe this weird old guy or young guy or whatever he was with this weird old pinstriped suit really had never heard of him.

‘I’m Robert. Bobby most people call me. I-’

The stranger shook Bobby’s offered hand. ‘I’m a Robert too. Now ain’t that a strange thing?’ Robert smirked as he said this but he didn’t smile and his eyes registered no delight at the coincidence.

‘You know what Robert means, son?’

Bobby shook his head and took a long swig of the drink that had no taste and no fire whatsoever.

‘A woman once told me it means shining with glory. Fame like a flame that burns bright. She said it flames like a comet across the night sky yonder ‘fore it burns itself out. She was one of them fortune tellers out on the road, one that studies their ‘strology right smart. Like Melchior and them kings looking for the manger. I gave her some of my folding money one night and she told me how the whole thing was set to play out for me. And she was right too. But shit, I didn’t listen.’

Robert stopped speaking and took a drink and then considered his glass.

‘You should always smell your whiskey before you imbibe. If it smells like garlic you know someone’s got it in for you. That’s how people do, you scorn ‘em.’

Behind the two drinkers the entrance door slammed shut, a cavernous thud disproportionate to the size of the opening Bobby had earlier drifted through. Bobby spun to the noise, startled and wide eyed. Robert didn’t even look up from his glass and his dark whispering.

‘Ain’t nothin’,’ he said, ‘Ain’t nobody set to come up in her for a long time ‘sides you.’

Bobby came down from fight-or-flight nerviness to a restless and edgy boredom. The whiskey was doing nothing, this weird guy wasn’t making any sense, the day was wasting. This place was all wrong. He rose from his stool said ‘thanks but I’ve gotta be going’ all one word, one breath as he advanced to the closed door. He found it was stuck as though sealed shut, as though he was pulling on a handle that had been cemented into a solid brick wall.

‘Ain’t nothing doin’,’ Robert said from over his shoulder. ‘You’re gonna make a fool of yerself darting round every time you’ve got a mind to do something. Sit.’

Back across the room, back to his stool.

‘Look,’ Bobby said to his shadowy faced drinking buddy ‘I’ve got to get the fuck out of here. People’ll be looking for me. I’ve got a show tonight. They’re waiting on me. People have paid their money. I’m not supposed to be here.’

‘Yeah y’are.’

Bobby took a short breath, frustration raising his voice to a higher, more indignant pitch ‘Look-’

Robert set his glass down hard. Hard enough that it should have shattered. Bobby stopped talking, frozen, his mouth open.

‘Now, you look, you stupid junkie motherfucker. Ain’t you worked out what this is yet?’

Bobby shook his head. Frightened, confused, sorrowful, lost.

Robert calmed, his pinstriped shoulders sinking back to a centred neutrality. He dusted down each sleeve from bicep to wrist with the opposite hand, his fingers impossibly long and calloused and sinewy. Musicians’ hands.

‘I want to apologise,’ Robert said ‘I can get lonesome, you know? Ornery. If we’re gonna be here together it’s important we get off on the right foot.’

‘Okay, fine, fine, whatever, but I’ve got to go now, you understand that? I’ve got to get going.’

Robert sighed. He pointed to the ceiling. ‘Listen.’

Bobby looked up at the too-distant ceiling and listened. There was the faintest murmur of a faraway voice or a conversation, all vague consonants like white noise.

‘Yeah, what is it?’

‘You need to listen closer, son.’

Bobby stood up on his stool and strained to the sound. It grew louder in increments, in jumps like someone was turning up the volume on a television.

A voice, female, youngish, panicked saying ‘ohgodohgodohgodohgod’ like an incantation.

‘You hearin’ it now?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Bobby said looking down at the crown of Robert’s fedora or trilby or whatever it was. ‘There something happening upstairs?’

Robert laughed, a single one note ha. ‘Yes’n, you could say that. Now sit back down and keep listenin’.’

Bobby did as he was told, his eyes all the time fixed on the ceiling that shrank down lower and lower as he sat. It went from being a cathedral-like distance beyond him to being so close and foreboding that he could almost reach up and touch a fingertip to it from his seated position.

The incantation broke and gave way to sobbing and loud jagged breaths.

Ohgodohgod what do I do, what do I do? He’s blue, he’s blue.

He’s not breathing.

Bobby felt something like small interlinked fingers pushing on his chest over and over. Robert watched him with one giant hand around his rocks glass and the other clasping a new cigarette. He took a deep drag.

BobbyBobbyBobby don’t do this. Please. Please!

Bobby felt as if he was being shaken on that barstool- shaken, slapped, crushed, held onto too tightly by loving and terrified arms.

He knew what this was now, dimly.

He knew what was happening.

Robert exhaled a long grey cloud of smoke. ‘You’re gonna be here a while.’ Another long drag ‘Doesn’t look like you’re set to be going anyplace else anytime soon.’

Bobby looked at the ceiling and felt the rhythm of the invisible hands pushing on his chest becoming slower and weaker. The voice, her voice, receded to a stream of consonants too distant to decipher.

Robert gave a quarter-smile, a look of knowing and of clear-eyed understanding. Of commiseration. He hovered the spout of the whiskey bottle above the singer’s glass.

‘You want another?’

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Collected Commonplace Newsletters

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Writing these essays helped me (and hopefully a few others) to stay sane during the era of lockdowns, division, confusion and cryptocurrency mania. I aimed to be a voice of reason in unreasonable times and a model of calm-bordering-on-idleness in a time of hustle and greed and needless busywork.

I think, if I may say so myself, that I was largely successful in what I set out to do with these pieces.

Over the months and years I have received many kind and encouraging emails and messages2 and a plethora of insightful comments3 and I was able to gather enough generous, money-paying subscribers4 to weather a protracted period of unemployment and become a Full Time Professional Man Of Letters for a while, a fact which in retrospect strikes me as being miraculous.

But I realise now that I have said everything that I have to say in essay form. I have taken non-fiction as a medium as far as I can.

The fact remains that of everything I have published online, it is the small handful of short stories that I have posted to date that have proven to be the most rewarding, nerve-wracking, infuriating, life-affirming, terrifying, joyful and fulfilling5.

Fiction, then, is the path that I have to pursue.

I’m sure- given what I’ve learned during my years of writing online- that following this path means that I will lose money and subscribers hand over fist and that the likes and restacks and open-rates and such will all plummet. So be it.

If fiction isn’t your bag and this is where we part ways then I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support. It has truly meant the world to me. And if you are reading this and saying ‘Yes! Finally!’ then I want to thank you for your patience.

This is just the beginning.

TJB.

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P.S. long-time readers will know that nothing I publish is behind a paywall. I like to keep everything is 100% free. That being said if you do feel compelled to reimburse me for this free Collected Works etc you can always click on the button below:

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The Zone

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Cherry – Cherry – Seven

Nothing



Seven – Watermelon – Bell

Nothing



Cherry – Seven – Seven

Nothing



It would be four in the morning by now, maybe five. But this is a place without time, without clocks or windows, where day and night, where hours and days all blend into one another.


Bar – Grape – Grape

Nothing


Bar – Orange – Watermelon

Nothing


Orange – Cherry – Orange

Below the cherry a third orange

Near miss


She feels nothing. But this is the point. Tapping the spin button for the thousandth, two thousandth time this session. Maybe more. Her eyes stinging from insomnia and the hours and hours of vivid cherry red and lemon yellow and grape purple.


Grape – Lemon – Lemon

Another a near miss


Getting closer. A matter of time.


Grape – Cherry – Seven

Nothing


It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. She’s in the zone, the flow, the whole point of it all. The self-obliterating oblivion where the aches and pains and worries fade away.

Where the bills and the mounting debt and John at home with his emphysema, now rake thin and wheezy chested doesn’t cross her mind. He’s one of the first things she forgets- him and his frailty and his sickness and the struggle in his eyes. She would never admit it to anyone but the thought of him, the worry of him, disappearing after the first dozen spins of each session was a blessing. A reprieve. Oblivion. 


Bell – Bell – Watermelon

Nothing


Seven – Bar – Horseshoe

Nothing


There hadn’t been any horseshoes for a while…


When she played the machine, her machine, her arthritic hand never bothered her. With her thumb anchored near the slot that pulled in her cash time after time and with her index finger poised just above the spin button her hand became that of the girl who had taken all those piano lessons half a century before- nimble, graceful, controlled. The aches and the cramps would call afterwards when she was driving or cooking or fetching or cleaning. Or maybe they were there the whole time and the golden bells and silver horseshoes were simply a potent, effective, ruinous anaesthetic. Take as needed for pain.


Seven – Bar – Orange

Nothing


Bell – Horseshoe – Bar

Nothing


Not even close to anything…


Her machine. Her spot tucked away deep in the maze of machines, secluded and private. You had to go out of your way to get here. Hers. This was true privacy, true separateness, where the tasteful piped music and the decor and the staff all fade away as she is absorbed into the machine and the game plays her as she plays it. A merging. A relationship that asks for nothing more than every penny she has.


Grape – Watermelon – Orange

Seven – Seven – Lemon

Orange – Watermelon – Seven


The zone feeds on speed as well as money. Demands it. To gain the tunnel vision, to be anaesthetised, to become disembodied eyes joined to a finger and nothing else- you have to play fast. Spin, spin, spin, tap, tap, tap. Speed slows the world down and losing control is how you regain control. Spin, spin, spin, credits go down, credits go up, money in the slot, her bankroll getting lighter hour after hour. A hypnotic state, a substitute for the sleep that eludes her night after night. Or is it the thought of leaving the house when John nods off and heading here to become the machine that keeps her awake? Which came first? Does it even matter?

Her eyes now red. Maybe outside the sun is coming up?


Seven – Orange – Watermelon 


Maybe John is awake now, wondering where she is. Wheezy. Worried. 


Watermelon – Bell – Horseshoe


She had to buy more time. 

Her watch, an anniversary gift from John, was in her handbag. Having it on her wrist stopped her from entering the zone, so she zipped it away at the start of each session. She would find her machine, thank heavens it was unoccupied, sit in the leather-effect seat- perfectly designed to be comfortable for long sessions of play-, take a bankroll from her handbag, unclasp her watch and zip it into the front compartment and then begin feeding the machine increments of her pension, her savings, her credit line.

She would have to call him, tell him something.

She stood, the fake leather chair creaking as it released her from its subtle restraint.


Watermelon – Bell – Orange


She was hungry, a little giddy, and tired. She shouldered her handbag, placed an empty coin cup upside down next to the spin button- the universal signal that this machine was occupied. To make sure- she also caught the eye of a uniformed staff member- and asked him to save her machine.

‘I need to make a quick call love- are you alright to watch my machine for a minute? I’ll be straight back.’ Her voice sounded wrong to her as it came out.  Her mouth dry from hours of not speaking, not drinking anything. 

‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep it for you.’ The man said, young and bored and nearing the end of his night shift. Though he made no sign of it she felt his judgement, his pity, his curiosity at how a nice-seeming woman around retirement age could be here now, at this time of night. 

‘I’ll just be a minute.’

‘Take all the time you need.’

She dialled, thinking of what to say. The answerphone message played. John must still be asleep, or too tired to answer. Maybe it hadn’t been that long. Maybe she had more time. 

‘Hiya, love. Just checking in on you, making sure you aren’t worried. I, uh, I couldn’t sleep so I thought I’d head out early and take care of a few things. Maybe pick us up something nice for us to eat later on. Uh, I laid out your pills for this morning next to you and I left you a glass of water and a sandwich on a plate there if you’re hungry. Cheese. We didn’t have much food in. Anyway, I’m sorry if this woke you. I’m sorry. Anyway. Get some rest and I’ll be back in a little while. Love you. Bye.’


*


The young man in the uniform had held her machine, and no one had sat down at the machine next to her, thank goodness. That would’ve meant that she would have had to move to another one. Had to have cashed out and then fed all of that to a new machine, ruined the whole rhythm of the thing. It was all a question of rhythm and speed. She eased into the seat, still warm, designed with a perfect tilt towards the screen just as the machine itself was perfectly built for maximum comfort, for maximum distraction from the fact that the gambler has a body and is capable of walking away.


Seven – Orange – Watermelon

Bell – Cherry - Cherry

Near miss


Watermelon – Bell – Horseshoe

Nothing


The machine sucked her in. The zone called and she entered it. Speed and rhythm. Credits- money- like sand through fingers but hitting enough small wins to keep going. Money is not the reward, nor is excitement, nor is the thrill of risk. The game itself is the reward, the prize is the ability to keep going, to keep playing.

And then the unthinkable happened…


Seven – Seven – Seven

Jackpot


Double her initial bankroll- bills and grocery and petrol and more. The machine made congratulatory chimes and flashed a rainbow of colour. She hated when the machines made too much noise, it was jarring, it killed the flow.

‘Great’ she thought as the credit counter clocked up, adding all of her winnings to her total. ‘Now I’ve got to stay until this is all gone.’

She played faster, piano fingers tapping spin at inhuman speeds. The night shift gave way to the day shift, songs played quietly, people came and went. Nothing mattered.


Lemon – Bell – Bar

Seven – Lemon – Cherry


The reels were against her. A nothing spin after nothing spin, minute after minute. Time passing but she was too machine-numb to feel it. She was both parched and needing the W.C. Her rule of not drinking anything to prolong the zone could only last so long…


Horseshoe – Horseshoe – Cherry

Near miss


Lemon – Bar – Orange

Nothing


The credits were getting low. Very low. Starting to panic, woozy anxiety making the need for a toilet break all the stronger.


Bar – Seven – Bar

Near miss


Come on, come on…

The zone was fading, the tunnel vision opening to the panorama of reality- sickness, old age, infirmity, debt, disappointment. 

Uncontrollable fate. In life you lost arbitrarily, but with the machine you lost on your own terms with a reassuring certainty. Twenty symbols per reel, three reels per machine. Simple sums. And while you slowly lose you get to merge with the machine, to stop thinking, to stop feeling.


Lemon – Grape – Seven

Grape – Seven – Bell


She was nearly tapped out. For God’s sake. Panic, shaking, sweating.


Horseshoe – Horseshoe – Cherry


Come on…


Three spins left.

Orange – Bar – Watermelon


‘Really?’ 

Two spins left.

Come on, come on, come on…


Cherry – Bell – Lemon


‘Please!’

Final spin…


Grape – Grape – Bar

Near miss


Tapped out.

It’s over.

Aching eyes, aching hand, thirsty, hungry, dizzy. Done. She reached down for her handbag and fumbled inside for her watch, a familiar beginning to the ritual of defeat that she had played out again and again and again.

She felt paper, folded and folded and folded into a tiny square, tucked in the corner of the bag. Her heart thumped. The tiredness left. She pinched it between thumb and forefinger and pulled it out and unfolded it. A banknote.

It was enough to buy her and John something nice to eat on the way home. It was enough so that she wouldn’t leave this place completely penniless and broken and defeated. 

Or.

It was enough to buy a ticket back into the zone.

Sitting in that fake leather chair with the note between her fingers, she closed her eyes and mouthed a silent prayer as she thought about what to do next.

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Ghost Lap

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Dad was younger than I am now when he passed. It’s strange to think about. I remember him as a man- lean, upright, the linger of aftershave on him but still with a near-blue shadow of stubble at his jaw and cheeks. I’m eighteen months older than he ever got to be and yet I still feel like a boy. 

He was cut down by stomach cancer- rare and progressive and merciless- at thirty four years of age and he went from athletic and tanned and quick with a smile to a hollow eyed, sunken cheeked, still-smiling near corpse in the span of a few weeks. As I remember it he was diagnosed at the start of the summer holidays and by the time I was back in school he was gone.

But not completely. I still see him in dreams most nights. He is indistinct and faint like an image that has been photocopied again and again, or like a scene on VHS that’s been warped and worn by constant viewing and rewinding. In these dreams, these glimpses, he says things that make no sense, things which fade from memory before I can bring my eyes into focus and stretch my fumbling hand to my bedside pen and paper. 

I also see him in the bathroom mirror from certain angles, and sometimes he’s looking back at me as I watch the barber scissor my hair. And all of these years later my heart will still leap when I make out what I think is his silhouette in a crowd or when I hear someone shout out his name, as if they too are searching for him. And then I will see that it is the shape of some stranger, or what I heard was in fact a mother admonishing a child or a man greeting his friend by calling him by his name. And with my heart still beating in my ears and with a swirl of anticipatory nausea still in my gut I will smile a half smile and linger in a memory- the funeral, the hospice, a Christmas, a birthday- before continuing on with my day, the stranger oblivious to the drama, to the up and the down that has just played out in my head. And then I walk on, just another body ambling through the crowd.

Dad was twenty three when I was born. By that age he had already left school, found his soul mate, married, found his vocation and put in enough overtime to pay the deposit on a house. He knew what he wanted in life- descendants, security, stability- and he sprinted to get each thing, one after the other. Maybe he knew that he was in a race against time. I mean, we all are of course. But maybe he knew that his was going to be a short race and that he didn’t have time to fool around with hesitancy, with second guessing or circular ruminating or with carefully weighing up what was in the one hand and in the other. I don’t know- I never got the chance to ask him.

What I do know is that his race was short. What I do know is that I am still stuck on the starting line, waiting for a sign, for the lights to change.

See, I lost my job a little while ago. Lost my girlfriend too. Those things have a way of going hand in hand. She wasn’t a girl and she wasn’t my friend, come to think of it. She wasn’t my partner either, whatever that means. So jobless, loveless, rootless and essentially moneyless I hired a car and drove two suitcases and six cardboard boxes of stuff across country to Mum’s house. To the house Dad’s overtime had won for us.

So here I am back in my childhood bedroom, a mausoleum to my teenage obsessions. Coming on for two decades into my own race and I have got precisely nowhere.

Fuck.

It’s all exactly as it was- the single bed, the flat pack shelving, the paperback collection of a pretentious, would-be intellectual, a few volumes with creased spines and dog-eared pages but most of them pristine totems, signifiers of my desire to belong among those who think they are too special and clever to belong. Looking at them I don’t know whether to bin them or to maybe actually finally read them. They came after Dad was gone, the books, so I don’t know whether he would have approved of them or not. Maybe not. Maybe that was the point. That old song says You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory. And you can’t really rebel against one either, because you never quite know if you are getting the reaction that you seek. We test boundaries so that we can feel where we are in the world. A counsellor told me that once. But ghosts are untouchable. You go right through them.

I’d called Mum before I came back home. We hadn’t spoken, really spoken- as opposed to exchanging small talk and reassurances that we were both doing fine- for a long, long time. As we talked and one hour ticked over to the next and the next, I realised that our fixed weekly reassurance ritual hadn’t counted for much. Waiting for my turn to speak instead of listening, trying to wind the conversation down and get off the line before it had barely begun, that sort of thing. How most people go about it I imagine. Not sure that excuses it though. 

So I had laid it out for her, the whole mess, the whole work falling apart due to management games- stuff that I’m not going to get into here- and the whole falling out with the girlfriend who was neither a girl nor my friend. The dissolution of the partnership, so to speak. She listened and let me go on and then said ‘so what are you going to do?’

I had no idea. I’m not sure I ever have.

‘Move back here for a little bit.’ She said. ‘Get back on your feet.’

I made some face saving protestations, but as soon as she said it I knew I was going to do it. It’s probably why I called in the first place, in terms of what outcome I was hoping to get. I remember being relieved I hadn’t had to outright ask. And ashamed that it had come to this. Back at the starting line. Thirty six years old. 

I wanted to be useful, I wanted to help out. I made that known as we ate takeaway at the dining table that first evening, after I had unloaded the two suitcases and six cardboard boxes from the rental car. I paid for the food- I had to insist- and I left a generous tip for the delivery driver though I was pretty sure my bank account was already hovering on the threshold of being overdrawn. You could say that this generosity was a form of deceit, a way of bolstering up the image that I was doing okay. And it probably was. But sometimes these things make you feel good or at least like you are normal. Like things are going to work out.

Between bites I gave out unsolicited reassurances that I had a plan (I didn’t), that I had a few leads to chase down regarding getting a new job (I didn’t) and that I was coming around to seeing this whole situation as being an opportunity (I wasn’t). I may have used the phrase ‘blessing in disguise’. Mum smiled while I prattled on and nodded and made positive, encouraging, affirming noises. Maybe she was afraid of the engulfing silence and sadness that would descend if I stopped talking.

I wanted to help. Mum pointed out that there was a roof space full of old toys and gadgets and schoolwork and photographs and such that I could sort through if I wanted too. Keep what I want, dispose of what I don’t, sell what might be collectable now or have any value. Something to occupy my mind while I was waiting for the (fictional) job leads to play out. A little project. 

I agreed. Maybe this would be a helpful thing to do, maybe Mum had more guile than she let on and this was a make-work project, a ploy, because she knew that I was lost and holding on and that the blessing in disguise veneer was already on borrowed time. Perhaps she could already see the cracks.

The next morning I was woken by the sound of birds. It was an annoying, strangulated, post sunrise squawking, not some idyllic countryside birdsong serenade. I lay there for a good thirty seconds trying to work out where I was and how I’d got there. From the bed I saw the wall of tacked up rockstars cut from music magazines, with a giant Johnny Cash, monochrome and furious, giving me the middle figure as the centre piece. I remembered where I was. 

Mum made us tea and toast and we watched the breakfast news show, punctuating our silence with the odd comment and aside about each topic. The show went from tragedy to banality and back again- war, earthquakes, corruption, moral panics, the best clothes to buy to ring in the new season, superfoods, celebrity gossip, skincare tips. From atrocities to bakery, the hosts reading from the autocue and modulating their voices so that we knew how we were supposed to feel. I wanted to hurl my mug through the screen.

‘I’ll make a start.’ I said through a yawn as I pushed up from the settee and stretched out my arm and neck muscles. Anything to pull me away from having to endure anymore daytime TV.

I found a stepladder and wobbled up it and pulled myself through the hatch and up into the roof with a torch clamped between my teeth. I crouched low and duckwalked around the small patches of space that weren’t filled with timeworn boxes and tied up bin liners stuffed with God knows what. Clearly none of this stuff had been looked at in years, decades. I had thought that Mum had parted with Dad’s stuff soon after he died, passed it on to friends who might have been interested, donated it, thrown it- to sever herself from constant painful reminders- but maybe she had just shut it all away up here. I dug around for the next hour or two in that hemmed-in dust and wood smelling world up there, lost in remembering. 

Notebooks and schoolwork folders brought back memories of boredom and coasting through classes, waiting for real life to begin. Clothes- Mum clearly had kept every item, every scrap that any of us had ever owned- took me back to holidays and birthday parties and that I would never have thought of again and each memory was corroborated by album after album of photographs where the sun was always shining, the people were always smiling and the haircuts and fashion choices were always questionable.

The ones with Dad in- posing, smirking, always favoured by the camera and the centre of group shots- were both hard to look at and hard to look away from. I thumbed through them for hours and hours. It made me heavyhearted, tired, hungry. But I carried on. Once I had gone through every album, every image I returned them to their boxes and set them aside. And that was when, buried in the corner dust coated and forgotten, I saw it.

Christmas 1998. Our last one together. I was 10 then which means that I was still a few years away from the phase where you begin to feign indifference at gifts and pleasures and rituals. I remember being excited- that giddying, white hot, bouncing up and down excitement that seems to fade with the years and soon exists only as occasionally flickering embers before going out completely.

I remember tearing through the other gifts under the tree, getting it over with because they were the wrong shape, because I knew that they weren’t the one. The big one. I remember being made to leave the big one until last. I knew- or at least I truly hoped- and Mum and Dad knew that I knew. I remember tearing away the paper of the large box and seeing the silvery grey and knowing then that all of my prayers and pleading and letters to Santa (though I was getting fairly close to seeing through all that) had been answered. A PlayStation. And three games. The rest of that day- apart from the Queen’s Speech and the turkey dinner- was taken up with me and Dad sat cross-legged up close to the TV sweeping the direction buttons with our left thumbs and hammering down the accelerate button with our right as we drifted around different tracks in our supercars. And the next day and the next, it felt like. For hours and hours and hours.

It all came back in an instant, in a memory that I could feel in my chest and with images so sharp and so vivid that the chasm of years between now and then was obliterated in an instant. I wondered if the neglected and forgotten machine- the gift to end all gifts- still worked. I had to know. Nothing else mattered.  

Johnny Cash and Keith Richards and Paul Simonon and all of them watched as I untangled cables and fiddled with remote controllers and television ports and mumbled threats under my breath. I made the thing work, I made the black vacant screen glow white and orange and the start-up chime sounding like a choir of angels made my arms goosebump. You can’t put your arms around a memory, but a memory can put its arms around you.

In the box along with the console and the controllers and the cables and the games there was a memory card- green plastic and see-through from that brief sliver of time when gadgets were candy coloured and transparent. I plugged the thing into its port and placed the car game into the tray and loaded up the game. I remembered everything- every menu, every sound effect and engine roar, every piece of music. The time between that Christmas and this moment disappeared as if it had counted for nothing- I was a boy sat too close to a television screen feeling emotions that I wasn’t yet grown up enough to be able to articulate.

The fastest lap held on the memory card was saved under DAD. The save date was late spring ’99. He had never let me win, never gone easy on me for the sake of making me feel better. He didn’t believe in that sort of stuff, in those kinds of hollow victories. This replay, this ghost race demonstrated that as his Japanese supercar- the Nissan Skyline that he had always played- hugged corners and drifted through chicanes and kept to a tight and disciplined racing line.

I had to beat it.

I chose the same Mitsubishi I had always used and faced off against Dad’s transparent pace setter. He left me for dust, again and again. I clipped tyre-walls overshooting corners, I spun out trying to aggressively drift to save fractions of a second. I swore a litany of fucks as my car in top gear was still too slow on the straight to the finish line. I tried again. I tried again. The flesh of my constantly depressed accelerator thumb started to ache. My eyes burned with tears. The room grew darker as the sun sank down behind the houses.

This was all that mattered.

Mum may have entered with a polite knock to see how the sorting was going, to see if I was hungry. I think I sent her away with a grunt. Maybe she just sensed what was going on, what I was trying to do. Maybe she hadn’t knocked at all.

Sometimes I could keep nose to bumper with Dad’s Skyline for the first lap or so, copying his moves and trying to cut inside whenever he gave up an inch or two of space. Sometimes I would go straight through his ghost car for a frame or two but I could never get out ahead. He was just too good, the same consistent unbeatable run, the same precise turns and strategies again and again.

My neck hurt. My eyes hurt. I couldn’t stop, he wouldn’t have wanted me to stop. Would he? Stupid fucking game. I tried again, a second off. Again- 1.2. Again- spinout, pause button, growl, reset. It was fully dark outside. I stood up stretched my neck, went to the bathroom across the landing, splashed cold water on my face and saw an image of two race cars seared behind my eyelids.

Again, a little closer. Again, closer. One more and then I’ll stop. Closer. One more. Within a second, the closest yet. It was maybe past midnight. One more. Spinout after holding the lead for a lap. One more. A second behind. One more.

My thumbs ached and my eyes burned and I sleeved away tears every time I yawned.

I started perfectly. I had the lead instantly. I took the first corner with the faintest tap of the handbrake, the tail drifting out and then back exactly with the contours of the track. I shifted gears with the shoulder buttons, my ears straining to pick up every detail of the engine noises. This was the one. The ghost car slid through my right rear wheel. I was breathing through my nose in a quick shallow rhythm. Was I breathing at all? I kept to the line on the straight, top gear, my accelerator thumbnail white, both hands threatening to cramp, my eyes just wanting sleep.

Come on come on come on come on.

I drifted around the hairpin that was usually my undoing, a squealing handbrake turn that turns anything less than perfection into a huge loss of speed or a jolt along the trackside grass. Perfect. And still he was right behind me, right on top of me.

The final straight, the stands, the finish line and the chequered flag drawing closer and closer. I was a car length ahead, then a half a car length. A second from the end.

I pressed pause. The nose of my Mitsubishi was a pixel away from touching the black and white chequerboard. Dad’s transparent Skyline was maybe a fifth of a second behind. When I unpaused the game I would win. I would end his record of over twenty years. I would surpass his victory.

I let the joypad fall from my hands.

I turned the console off with an aching finger and pulled the cable from the back of the TV.

And that was that.  

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The Day Manager

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Usually he- the Day Manager- would hand over to the incoming Night Manager, grab a quick post-shift pint at the bar and then head home. 

But it was Christmas Eve and so the post-shift pint had become three, then four and the regulars- ruddy faced with red noses and physiques like the fat cats of Victorian political cartoons- had insisted on standing him a shot of whiskey to go with each of those beers. ‘Tis the season, one of them had said- he couldn’t remember which- as they all clinked heavy shot glasses one by one and looked each other in the eye before tilting back the burning orange-brown measures.

Other than the standard end of shift pint- a cherished ritual, a basic pressure release- he wasn’t much of a drinker anymore, and so the three beers and three shots, or four beers and four shots, whichever it had been, had been enough to slur his words and wobble his legs.

He was forty next year.

He found himself at the cathedral’s Midnight Mass, somehow, shoutsinging hymns with the other inebriates as the pious and sober congregants- the minority- judged from behind their hymn sheets. Or that’s what he imagined them to be doing as he glanced around the pews left and right while the man in robes leading the show spoke from the pulpit about the flight from Herod and the nativity of Christ.

Forty next year.

Outside, out on the street, his street, his collar-up navy overcoat over his thin black work shirt and thin black work trousers- not enough to keep out the biting cold and the fine rain that was falling near-sideways. His wristwatch under the streetlamp light read half past one. The Night Manager would be sweeping up now, mopping the floors. Or maybe making a drink for an insomniac guest who couldn’t find sleep in a strange bed in a strange city at this time of year. Or maybe he’d be at the reception desk, alone and reading one of his dogeared old thriller books, listening to the rain and trying to keep his eyes open. You do what you have to do to earn a living, put up with what you have to put up with and you grasp moments of relaxation, laughter, respite and meaning where you can.

But, too bad. Under the streetlight and the rainfall he patted and repatted his pockets and worked through them again and again with gloved hands. He swayed a little and then leaned a shoulder to the lamppost like an old friend and snorted out a single laugh at how ludicrous the dripping wet, cold, hood-eyed, tipsy, confused figure he was cutting must look to the eyes of God or Santa Claus or whoever else was looking on and watching over him on this silent cold dark wee small hours of Christmas morning. Damn keys. He took a steadying breath and knew that if he could see his reflection he would see red rimmed eyes and a meandering grin looking back at him, like a hiccupping cartoon of a down but not yet out drunk. Another try, another pat down in search of the elusive housekeys. He felt his money clip again, the banknotes it once held now lost to the collection plate and the sleeping figure swaddled in a sleeping bag by the sheltered entrance to the old Art Deco cinema. The mat of flattened damp cardboard and the stained navy blue cocoon had contrasted with the ostentatious glamour of the period drama poster and moved the Day Manager enough to silently wedge all of his cash, all of his Christmas tips into the sleeping figure’s takeaway coffee cup of change. A Christmas miracle for when they awoke. A chance to turn things around for the day or at least not feel quite so alone and so forsaken.

Money clip, a gnawed pen, a paper napkin with a scratched-out list of tasks from the shift. The inner pockets: his work name badge, a spare coat button, a folded and creased hymn sheet. His keys. Yes. He pinched his front door key between thumb and forefinger and left the lamplight to weave towards his end terrace. Like the others in the front gardenless row of houses along the single lane street it had twinkling lights in the windows, a wreath on the door and a tinsel and bauble festooned tree in the living room. Under the lamplight and the moonlight his street had never felt more like home.   

The Day Manager approached the front door, the holly wreath, and for the first time in his years of living here he fully noticed the cast iron boot scraper set into the wall by the door. He had never used this old relic before now and he used it enthusiastically to remove the mud and wet leaves from his night walk home. Not that he could see much under the flickering illumination of red and green Christmas lights.  

In the near-darkness he felt for the door with one hand while trying to key the lock with the other. He missed and scraped wood. And again. With the pinched key held ready for the third attempt the door swung open by itself, almost silently. There she was in baggy red Christmas pyjamas dotted with thick white snowflake shapes, her thick navy dressing gown tied at the waist and her head haloed by the blindingly bright hallway light.

‘I thought we said you wouldn’t wait up.’ He said as he squinted at her.

‘I changed my mind’ she replied in a whisper. ‘You look freezing, you should dry your hair off.’ She kissed him hello. ‘Did you smoke a cigar?’

‘Tis the season!’ He hiccupped and held a hand to his chest.

Silently laughing, She hushed him with a finger and pointed to the ceiling.

He nodded that he understood.

‘Mince pie?’ She asked.

There wasn’t anything he could’ve wanted more. He nodded, remembering the upward pointing finger.

He dried his hair, changed out of his tired work shoes into equally worn but infinitely more comfortable slippers and joined her on the sofa. He devoured the mince pie on its dainty china plate and read and re-read the note for Santa Claus that came with it. The bold, free, oversized handwriting brought a lump to his throat as he sat there, feeling more drunk and completely sober at once.

He looked at the muted television for a few seconds. It was a black and white Christmas film that he didn’t recognise. A man- one of those broad-shouldered old-time actors who normally played private eyes and tough guys- was working in a department store surrounded by wide eyed children in scarves and bobble hats. A glamorous and serious faced woman in a beret and a fur coat approached him and offered the slick-haired actor a fan of banknotes. He counted it, both him and the glamorous actress mouthing lines of muted dialogue.    

After a beat the Day Manager turned from the screen and looked his wife in the eyes.

Another beat. ‘I’m sorry I was so late getting back. I just.’

‘Were really thirsty.’ She waited for his come-back, for his sharp and witty retort. Nothing.

Instead, he rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm, put his dainty crumb strewn china plate on the coffee table and stood and stretched. ‘Talking of which,’ he held his hand over a yawn, ‘I have another thing on my list to do.’

He padded across the room and into the kitchen and whispered back, ‘Don’t look.’

She put her feet up on the edge of the coffee table and watched the silent monochrome man and the silent monochrome woman on screen. One scene faded to the next as the television was blocked by her husband still smelling of beer and whiskey and cigar tobacco and church incense, but now much more animated. The hotel’s Christmas season at work, the stress, the hours, all of it had etched dark rings around his eyes and a weariness to his step but that was gone now. He moved like the energetic young man he had been when they first met. He had found a red Santa hat from somewhere which was askew on his head and he had a matching sack slung over his shoulder, filled with various rectangular parcels.

He crouched down by the tree that they had all spent hours decorating the week before on his one day off from the hotel, and started placing presents from the bag around its base. He smiled at her over his shoulder.

‘You want to get involved?’ He asked.

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The Record Collector

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The music stopped, the song faded out to the thin crackle of the needle failing to find a groove. The crackle blended with the endless summer downpour outside his window to become an almost hypnotic white noise, the kind of thing that people with no taste in music listen to when studying for an exam or when trying to get to sleep. He watched the rain smack down on the small square of paved courtyard for a moment, his forehead pressed to the windowpane, and he watched the open mouth of the never used barbecue rapidly filling with rainwater. The potted plants- her idea- buckled under the pressure of the torrent. He huffed a sigh through his nostrils, fogging the glass. Slow seconds of crackle and rain passed and then he scratched at his short beard, huffed again and turned on his bare feet with a squeak and padded with a heavy tread to the turntable.

The whole long room, the whole semi-subterranean studio flat, his whole life was set up around the turntable. The gunmetal device itself, the tone arm, the cartridge, the two chest-high-off-the-ground richly wood grained speakers- all of it spoke of hours and hours of research and comparison and a lifetime of wages sunk into it. As did the floor-to-ceiling wall-to-wall shelving that was fully lined with LPs sorted in an alphanumeric, chronology-favouring, genre-acknowledging system that only truly made sense to him and him alone. He bowed forward ever so slightly to gently move the tone arm to one side and holding the record delicately between his two palms, he flipped the pristine black vinyl over. He lowered the record- now back to the A side- onto the spindle again before giving the shining surface of the vinyl a careful, methodical, clockwise wipe down with an anti-static record brush, which, like everything, was arguably the best on the market and was something that he had done his due diligence on before purchasing. Content with his work, but still miserable otherwise, he let the record play. As the music filled the room- first three unfretted upstrokes of a guitarist counting himself in, then sliding into the opening lick, with the swinging, ride cymbal prominent drums locking in to place- he stood on the spot, still slightly bowed like a revenant, and watched the black circle spin.

This was one of the greatest songs of all time as far as he was concerned, flawless, five stars out of five- Magic Sam had bottled magic on this debut LP and his tragic, early thirties heart attack two years after this 1967 first edition had been pressed only added to that. Thirty two. He was twelve years older than that now and- as he had been back when he was the same age as Sam was when his heart gave out- he was still alone in a room, listening to records.

That was the whole problem, she said the day before yesterday in the too-exasperated-to-even-shout argument that ended it all, he always stayed the same. Just him and the ever-growing albatross of a record collection and time slipping by. You know the name of every song ever recorded, you know who the bass player or the producer is on every single one of these fucking records (a second of rage did seep through as she gestured to the imposing walls of record spines and spat out the words ‘these fucking records’). But, gesturing again, somehow you can’t dance. You aren’t even able to dance to any of this? This is your tomb, she said, your mausoleum and I won’t be buried in here with you anymore.

And then she left.

Fuck her. She never really got it, not really. She probably saw the fact that he owned these 17,000 records as an indicator that he had money, that he could provide, that he was a resource that she could bleed. The evenings of listening to music, the mixtapes, the gigs- all of that was a pretext, a ruse, a lie…

The record spun and spun.

Well, that’s all done now. Her loss. She was almost twenty years younger than him, and she was saying that she was tired of being the mature one, tired of feeling like she was outgrowing him and leaving him behind. Saying all of that while she was still studying to do some bullshit, still playing around with notebooks and coloured pens and Post-it notes like a schoolgirl while he had a musicology and reviewing and crate digging career that meant that he could set his own schedule and afford to buy what was without doubt the greatest record collection in the whole city, if not the country. Who was the real child and who was the real actual adult who had made their vision come true here?

The record spun and spun.

Shit, if you’d’ve told him as a teenager (God, that was thirty years ago now) that when he was an adult he could get to constantly go to gigs and travel the world hunting for records he would’ve torn your arm off for the chance. Everything he had wanted then he had now. Almost. He didn’t have her. Or any of the past hers. But there would be some other her on the horizon. Probably. Although this one had felt like the last one in a way, the last shot. His natural rockstar leanness was starting to give way to a small belly that made his thin arms and legs look skinnier still by comparison. And his hair wasn’t what it was. He thought she saw him for what was inside of him, but evidently not. She was no different, despite doing a sophisticated impression of someone who was different.

He felt hot tears welling in his eyes. Stupid. He wiped them away with an angry back of hand. Now Sam was singing about how he didn’t want no woman telling him what to do. A little blurry eyed from the tears still, he almost laughed out loud as he heard that. Shit.

The A side ended, and he became aware of the thumping rain again. It had been raining when she had told him it was over too. The last thing he had said to her was about how wet it was out, about how she should wait until the weather calms down at least. Stood by the doorway, hands in his pockets like a chastised schoolboy as she zipped up her raincoat, shielded herself with her umbrella and walked up the street and out of his life.

That was the final image- black clouds and a rainslick North London street and him with his hands in his pyjama pockets in a doorway, confused.

But he was starting to understand now. Understand that he was now free. He filed Magic Sam away in his designated space and searched the rows and rows of spines with fresh eyes. He could listen to anything now. Do anything. No disapproving head shakes, no little gestures, no tedious compromises because she had to study or get an assignment done. No ‘can you keep that down?’, no ‘can you play something else?’ It was time for something else. He found it in one of the lower segments of the wall of records, to the right end and at knee height. The sleeve was a little scuffed, the record itself was in good condition but not pristine. This was a record that he had heavily played, a record that he had bought with Saturday afternoon teenage drudgery wages and not a near mint, rare first pressing of the kind he had been buying since he became a serious collector and not an honest fan. He looked at the cover- the ironic saccharine photograph of the wholesome 1950’s ponytailed blonde in the white blouse holding a basket of flowers- and his lips formed into something between a slight smile and a smirk. Again, he took the record from the protective slip, perched the sleeve in its spot beside the turntable and put the wax onto the spindle and gave it a wipe with the brush. The record spun and the abrasive guitar and rumbling bass and trademark tight, metronomic, sharp snared drums drowned out the sound of the rain. He couldn’t dance but he could grit his teeth and bang his head and swing his left hand in time to the metallic ‘ting’ of those heavy rim shot snare hits. What kind of person hates music that has noise and aggression and anger and guts to it? What kind of life is it if all the songs are pretty little three-minute ditties? Soothing background music that’s just there, dull and pleasant and unobtrusive- not something that you have chosen yourself, have hunted down, have become obsessed over?  

Music should challenge you, should excite you, enrage you, upset you, consume you, amuse you, captivate you, break your heart, blow your mind, tickle your brain and change your state like the greatest drug ever made. She never felt that way. There were just some songs she liked, that’s all. She never got it. He listened to the opening two tracks on the record, grimaced and nodded his head along to Page’s giant handed guitar riffs and his yelled vocals before bringing the record to a stop. He could listen to anything. He could blow the dust of neglected records and fully submerge himself in the noise and chaos of those angry albums that had been the headwaters of the vast river of music he had spent his life swimming down, gleefully drowning in, with each new subgenre marking a new tributary to explore and map.  

The records. Though the floor-to-ceiling-wall-to-wall shelving in the large rented studio would always make the eyes of the rare guest grow wide, they weren’t the whole collection. More records were stored in metal handled travel boxes, in wardrobes and in the cupboard under the communal stairs. There were four unopened packages labelled ‘fragile’ on the kitchen counter that housed new LPs imported from three different continents. The undercounter cupboards housed more vinyl than they did pots and pans.

He stood from the sofa and walked across the length of the studio towards the bathroom, humming the riff to the opening track on that basket of flowers record. He opened the door. His humming trailed off as the sensation of cold water on his bare feet startled him. The water was ankle deep, higher. Closer to mid shin height. His stomach lurched as if he had been shaken from a dream.

Oh God.

The grey torrent was entering the bathroom through the fan above the shower, the water gushing in and descending like a waterfall into the shower tray, the volume of it cascading doing nothing to mask the heartbeat that was now thumping in his ears. He pulled two bath towels from their back of door hooks and stretched up to block the deluge with them, mumbling what am I doing, what am I doing, what am I doing, before letting the useless towels fall from his grip, their sky-blue colour darkening to a near black as they became saturated with the rainwater.

He turned, eyes darting, searching for something he didn’t have, his head craning, his movements panicked and useless. He stomped and waded through the water back into the studio room. The waterline had almost fully submerged the bottom row of records and was climbing. Record boxes, shoes, a discarded inside out jacket and a coffee mug were all bobbing in the water.

OhGodohGodohGodohGod.

He splashed over to the shelves and crouched down in the water, the smell of it making him wince as his face got closer to it. His legs and waist and the tails of his robe were soaking now, and he shivered as he reached into the water and pulled out a record from the submerged shelf. The sleeve disintegrated as soon as he hoisted it up out of the water. It had still had a $200 price tag on it and a label designating it as near mint.

OhGodohGod.

He pulled out record after record, frantically, the extent of the loss starting to dawn on him. This one had been a birthday present from his long dead father, this one- had cost him four figures and had been brought with some of his grandmother’s inheritance money way back when. This one he had bought with Saturday job money when he was seventeen.

The waterline had claimed the second row now. He stood, his saturated pyjamas clung to his thighs and calves. He splashed over to a floating record box, one of the ones he lugged with him when he was occasionally invited to play a DJ set in the East End. He unclasped it and upended it, dozens of heavy records thumping down into the water. There wasn’t enough time. He scanned the shelves, the spines. There wasn’t enough time.

He pulled out a record, threw it to the water. And other. And other. What criteria do you use? Value? Rarity? Irreplaceability? Sentimentality? He tried not to think, to simply act. With the open box balanced on one thigh, he filled it with records as tightly as he could, then he clasped it shut and did the same with a second box, his breathing shallow and fast and his hands and forearms burning from the weight and the excursion.

The water was bellybutton high by the time he ascended the stairs up to the street. He had his housekeys, a few banknotes held together with elastic, a faux leather bankcard holder and two metal boxes of LPs. This was all he had.

Out on the street there were dozens and dozens of people congregated in the still unrelenting downpour, shoulders hunched and hoods up. There was a fire engine, a van with a news crew, onlookers and rubberneckers, bystanders in pairs and trios pointing and gesticulating and speculating and chatting. He heard something about a burst water main, about the whole street being flooded, about a wettest day on record. Or he thought he did.

And then a voice- quiet and close- asked him if he was okay, and still gripping the record box handles tight he said that he didn’t know.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’

A sigh.

He placed the record boxes on the floor and started to walk up the street. Maybe he was.

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The Programme

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‘Is this really necessary?’

The guard sighed and pointed with the tip of his pen to the painted X on the floor. He glanced to his colleague who was stood to the left of the questioning prisoner.

‘Mr Wilson, would you be so kind as to assist Mr Pryce with his garments.’

Pryce had heard this same tone- this facetious mock-civility with its undertones of contempt, of threat- from every uniform he had encountered in this whole sorry year long process. From the officers who arrested him, to the detectives who offered him vending machine snacks in exchange for a confession; from the bailiffs who led him with a guiding mid-back palm to and from the witness stands and lobbies and vans, to the prison guard now giving him a resigned and world-weary look from behind his clipboard and ballpoint pen.

‘That’s quite alright,’ Pryce said, a slight quiver in his voice from the prospect of the looming Wilson. ‘I’m just, this is all rather out of the ordinary for me.’

‘I should hope so, Mr Pryce.’ The Clipboard Guard said with a wry quarter-smile.

Pryce handed Wilson his blazer which the guard carelessly dropped into a numbered cardboard box.

‘One light brown blazer, tweed.’ The Clipboard Guard said as he wrote.

‘Woollen, Mr Harrison. With darker brown elbow patches.’ Wilson said.

‘Right you are,’ Harrison said as he amended his paperwork.

Pryce unbuttoned his shirt with fumbling thumbs and struggled out of it.

‘One oxford shirt, white, with thin navy stripes.’

‘Hm, mm.’

Pryce slid one shoe off and then the other and then his trousers (‘Woollen trousers, charcoal’) and then his socks (‘black socks, peacock feather motif, small hole near right greater toe’) and then his underwear. He stood on the painted X now goosefleshed and hunched in shame, his thin hands cupped around his genitals.

‘Arms up above you head Mr Pryce.’

Pryce stood in a star-shape. Harrison ticked a box.

‘Palms open.’

Pryce complied automatically, mechanically, his gaze fixed on a metal sign stuck to the institutional blue-grey wall beyond Mr Harrison’s shoulder. The sign showed a series of stickmen contorted in semaphore shapes, each phase of the imminent full body search.

‘Open your mouth.’

‘Ahhh.’

Tick.

‘Lift up you tongue.’

‘Ahhh.’

Tick.

‘Stick out your tongue out, wider.’

‘Ahhh.’

Tick.

‘Good. Turn around. Lift up your right sole.’

Tick.

‘Now the left.’

Tick.

‘Bend over. Yeah, palms on knees.’

Pryce bent over, the painted X between his bare feet began to blur and wobble.

‘Now cough.’

Pryce forced out a single sharp cough. He wondered if it was possible to back out of the deal...

Pryce, his anxiety giving away to thought-erasing boredom, turned to look at his wristwatch. He saw nothing but the silver glint of a handcuff. This was the third or forth time he had done this, and every realisation that his wedding anniversary Brietling was now a loose steel cuff came as a fresh surprise. He squirmed in his chair- red moulded plastic and curved to encourage recalcitrant schoolchildren, and indeed recalcitrant prisoners, to sit up straight.

Wilson, stood silent by his side, exhaled loudly through his nostrils. The guard didn’t deign to look down at the overalled, bespectacled prisoner in his shadow. The prisoner’s delousing powder stink and the metallic squeaks of his squirming were irritation enough. Or so Pryce imagined.

Pryce looked vaguely at the opposite wall as he followed a chain of memories- the back arching plastic chair led him back to drab schooldays and then to the sanctuary of English classes and from there to looking out on lecture theatres and seminar rooms and black tie dinner tables as his younger self expounded on Shakespeare, on the structuring of the novel, on how gratifying it was to be recognised with an award such as this. And then his mind, being what it was, focused in on one particular student with her enthralled and naive eyes and her small town attempt at sophisticated dress and then her flushed and glistening late-teen body and her stifling a moan by biting down on a flower patterned pillow and her…

‘Mr Pryce.’ The voice was rich and soft, as soothing as a relaxation tape. Pryce turned to it.

The man in the doorway was mid-height and dressed in scholarly wool and corduroy. He was elderly but upright with a precise white beard and a barbered horseshoe of matching white hair.

‘Please come in, Mr Pryce. Mr Wilson will wait outside for you.’

Pryce stood and shuffled in his shackles through the doorway. Wilson gave a small nod of deference and exhaled loudly in spite of himself.

‘Take a seat Mr Pryce.’

Pryce lowered himself into the plush leather swivelchair opposite the even plusher, even taller chair of the old man. Between them was a rich, dark wooden desk. Mahogany maybe. The surface was clear, there were no pens or staplers or monitors or keyboards, nothing that could serve as a makeshift weapon.

The old man reached down to his side and Pryce heard the grating scree of a filling cabinet slide on its runners. The old man lay a thin manilla folder down in front of him, and Pryce scanned the upside down series of numbers and his own upside down name written in neat capitals.

‘It’s good to meet you, Mr Pryce, I’m Doctor Rose, as you may well already know. Now. It’s my role here to assess you, to ascertain the particular nature of your case and then to help get you situated as best as possible. Does that all make sense to you?’

It didn’t particularly but Pryce nodded and said yes all the same.

Doctor Rose wetted his thumb with his tongue and flicked through the opening typewritten pages of the file. ‘I’ve glanced at your case, Mr Pryce, and of course I am familiar with you by reputation, but old age does tend to make one a little forgetful of the finer details of things. If you’ll indulge me...’

Pryce swelled at the remark about his reputation and told the doctor that of course he could take as long as he needed.

'Thank you.’ Doctor Rose said, reading. He looked up from the page.

‘So I want to begin by just corroborating a few details here. I understand that the charge against you is the first degree murder of your spouse. Is that correct?’ The doctor’s voice remained rich and soothing, without a hint of judgement.

‘That’s correct, yes.’ Pryce looked down at the vast emptiness of the wood.

‘And you are wholly innocent.’

‘Yes, Doctor.’

‘I see. I apologise for having to make you relive the whole-’ The doctor searched the ceiling for the right word ‘unfortunate side of this affair, but mistakes sadly have been made in the past.’

‘I understand, Doctor.’

‘You never can be too careful. We had a case a while ago of a sculptor who joined The Programme with a conviction of statutory rape, and also a regular, garden-variety serial sex offender. Both had the name Jones, you see. A very common name of course. And so poor Jones the sculptor was mistakenly sent to the general prison while the other Jones, the brute Jones, was inducted into The Programme. Though he wasn’t an educated fellow, this imposter Jones soon cottoned on to the situation and unfortunately it became necessary for him to have a mishap. Had he been a mere thief, say, it may have led to prying eyes. As it was it very nearly led to the termination of our whole operation here. I can’t tell you the amount of paperwork and hand-wringing it took to make the situation right...’

This was the most that anyone had spoken to Pryce in days, the most, in fact, since the oblivious, grandstanding Judge had given him a ten-minute monologue on morality and the squandering of gifts to go along with the sentence.

‘But be that as it may, we continue onwards, Mr Pryce.’

‘Yes Doctor.’

The doctor wetted his thumb once again and skipped on to the next section of the file.

‘So according to what we have here, your wife- herself somewhat of a literary figure in her own right- is also a part of The Programme?’

‘That’s correct, Doctor. We were both tired of the grind of deadlines, signings, interviews, the whole situation. We were tired of each other too, most of all. She detested her family, and most of mine are gone, as is probably already written down in there.’ Pryce gestured to the file. ‘So it was perfect. She’s had the chance to start over- new name, clean slate- in one of your more women-centric facilities and I-’

‘And you get to join us here.’

‘Yes.’

‘Very good, Mr Pryce.’ The doctor made a quick notation in the margin of the file-page. ‘So just to clarify- and again, I may be being somewhat over-cautious after the Jones incident- you and your wife, upon learning of The Programme decided that you would fake her death, thereby allowing her to begin a new life under a new name, and allowing you- having been found guilty of her murder and thus ruining your reputation- to join us in The Programme.

‘That is exactly correct, Doctor. It’s funny how it already all feels so long ago.’

‘I’m sure it is. And I must take a moment to apologise for all of the, ah, distress that you have had to endure to get here. You see, when one wishes to rig a prizefight- for it to be convincing- only the loser must be in on the fix, as it were. If the winner were to know that the situation were a hoax then he would not behave authentically, he would not be able to sell the ruse to the spectators. And so every police officer, every judge, every lawyer and every guard that you have thus far encountered were led to believe that you were an actual cold blooded murderer. I trust you see the necessity of such deception.’

‘Yes, Doctor.’

‘Very well, then.’ The doctor turned to the final page of the file. He spun the file around one-hundred-and-eighty degrees and pushed it along with a black fountain pen towards Pryce.’ If you would be so kind as to read through this and sign at the bottom.’

Pryce had read more words- more prose and poetry and literary academic works- than anyone he had ever met. His ability to devour books whole was legendary in the bookish circles he moved in. But this single page document was beyond him- a blur that refused to come into focus. It may as well have been written in cuneiform. Pryce signed it anyway.

‘You seem perplexed Mr Pryce.’

Pryce fumbled for an evasion. ‘I was just, er, just wondering about money.’

‘Well, I’m sure you have many questions about the day to day workings of this facility. In fact...’ The doctor looked at his watch and then pressed the underside of his desk with two fingers.

‘Mr Wilson?’ He said to the ceiling.

The voice of Wilson, warped and tinny, responded from a speaker hidden somewhere in the high ceiling ‘Yes, Doctor?’

‘Is Mr De Boele here yet?’

‘He’s stood right next to me, Doctor.’

‘Excellent, send him in.’ The doctor’s two fingers reached for a second button and after a sharp, high buzz the office door was opened and a man wearing the same standard issue overalls as Pryce entered.

The man shook the doctor’s hand warmly with his right and patted his shoulder with his left. He offered his hand to the seated Pryce whose shackled hand could only manage a weak, jangling shake.

‘Don’t get up,’ De Boele said to him, and then. ‘I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.’

‘Oh?’ Pryce said, scrutinising the man. He knew him from somewhere.

‘Absolutely.’ De Boele said, sounding like he genuinely meant it.

‘Good,’ The doctor said, turning to Pryce. ‘Mr de Boele here has been kind enough to offer to show you the ropes. He will be more than capable of answering any questions you may have...’

‘Be my pleasure.’ De Boele said. He adjusted the beanie he was wearing. It was cuffed over so that it wasn’t much larger than a skullcap and it sat at a rakish angle on the man's closely cropped head.

‘Wait,’ Pryce said, remembering a similar looking man on television once, a younger man, junkie-thin wearing a similar woollen beanie at a similar tilt. ‘Seb de Boele?’

‘The one and only.’

‘My God. My wife used to rave about you. She never missed one of your openings. Of course that was before you-’

The doctor interrupted with a cough. ‘Mr De Boele, if you could tell Mr Wilson that our new arrival has been fully processed, he will be able to have these unfortunate restraints removed.’

‘Of course.’ De Boele said with a smile in his voice. He beckoned for Pryce to stand and put a friendly guiding hand on his shoulder as he motioned the shackled prisoner towards the door.

‘Oh and Mr De Boele.’ The doctor said. ‘Be kind.’

The two inmates walked and talked. Pryce still took the short strides of a man accustomed to being restrained while De Boele strolled the corridors with the ease of a boulevardier taking in the lunchtime sun.

‘Yes, my brother, this is paradise.’ De Boele said gesturing to the rows of numbered metal doors on one side and the barred windows on the other. Beyond those bars was the yard with its basketball hoops and its free weights and its cut grass and sunshine. Everything orderly and looked after and every overall-clad prisoner looking lean and suntanned and contented and at ease.

‘Oh, yes, brother,’ De Boele continued, ‘you’ve made the right choice here. All of the paint you will ever need, all of the marble and clay and typewriters and pens and amplifiers and film stock. Three hot meals each day. A different Criterion film screened every night. The best stocked library outside of a national archive. That’s where I read your Willow Garden by the way. Fantastic book, it made me cry, I’m not ashamed to say.’

Pryce mumbled an attempt at a gracious reply and tried to keep the look of elation from his face.

‘I read more than I ever used to out there.’ De Boele pointed a thumb behind him and sneered as he said out there. As is it were almost beneath him to even mention it. ‘And I sleep better, and I eat better, and I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been, and I managed to kick the junk years ago while here even though you can get whatever you want and the guards couldn’t care less. It’s a paradox, my friend, all of it. When I was free,’ de Boele gestured a set of air-quotes, ‘When I was free, so-called, I was a junkie ego-maniac, shitty artist painting empty crap and trying to second-guess what my audience and my critics wanted from me. I lived in chaos with a needle in my arm and a bottle in my hand, anything to keep the endless empty misery at bay. Which is futile, as you know. A bottle in one hand, a syringe in the other, how are you going to hold a paintbrush, you know?

‘But in here, in so-called prison, I paint my best work, free, clean, healthy, at peace. I paint skilful work- whatever I want, however I want- and I am fit and I am happy, truly. Only in here have I finally found my freedom...’

Pryce felt the need to interject, to contribute, but De Boele was burning brightly as he spoke, burning with an energy that Pryce had never felt among his friends and his peers. It was as entrancing and restoring as a log fire after a long march through a frozen forest. Pryce felt the words warm him and remained silent.

‘… The idea of only having your labour but not the fruit of your labour, I only understood that when I got here. The idea that success is as bad as failure and that the more you know the less you understand, I only began to understand these things when I got here. When I gave everything up and became nobody, that was when the pieces fell in to place. You see...’

It went on and on this way- de Boele unleashing a testimony from the heart, not smoothed with practise and repetition, not laced with a grifter’s rhetoric or a motivator’s cadences, but just circling examples again and again, of the emptiness out there versus the paradoxical absolute artistic freedom of life in here, of life in The Programme. Pryce became drunk on the talk, his heart beat loud in his ears like the first time he smoked a cigarette as a teenager, like the first time he drank a cup of strong black filter coffee.

The two prisoners entered the canteen. De Boele did the rounds like a duke at a soirée, shaking hands with the elderly, hugging and swapped quick witticisms and in-jokes with the younger inmates and introducing Pryce to everyone.

A good number of them seemed to know of Pryce already- they had read The Willow Garden and Light Through the Shutters and more than one had even read his youthful, out-of-print poetry collection. And he knew some of them too- there was a fellow novelist who had killed a young boy in a drunken hit-and-run, a composer who had abused his position and supposedly several of his female soloists, and a guitar player who had famously strangled his manager with a low E string before attempting to kill himself via tranquillisers and high-end whisky. Those were the newspaper stories anyway. But here, now, they all seemed like great people- welcoming, softly spoken, amusing, attentive and engaged fully in the moment.

‘We’re gonna grab some food and I’ll fill Julian here in on more of the details of life in The Programme.’ De Boele gave Pryce’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘We’ll catch you fellas soon, maybe play a few hands of poker.’

‘Sounds good.’ The Guitar String Strangler said. They all exchanged handshakes and back-patting half hugs.

Pryce and De Boele joined the short queue at the counter, collected their plates- today it was braised fillet of lamb with asparagus, dauphinoise potatoes and a red wine jus- and found a quiet corner table.

A quiet corner table- in a prison canteen. De Boele caught the look of utter confusion on Pryce’s face and smiled.

‘I know,’ de Boele said ‘I was the same way when I first got here. Dumbfounded. It’s almost beyond belief, isn’t it?’

Pryce looked around- at the clean tables, the high ceiling, the tasteful décor, the food that he would only able to get on the outside by making a months-in-advance restaurant reservation. If he strained he could just make out the respectfully quiet, amiable conversations- about cinema, about literature, about metaphysics.

‘How do they afford all of this?’ Pryce said.

‘Well, we pay for it, of course.’ De Boele said. ‘When you sign up for The Programme you give up everything you have- property, portfolios, future royalties and residuals. In my case, all my old works were auctioned off and a portion of what I create in here is passed off as the work of some bright new thing and then sold off. They will have all your royalties too. And of course the works of controversial, outlaw artists practically sell themselves. The foundation behind The Programme makes millions off us each year. Tens of millions.’

‘You know...’ Pryce took a bite of the best piece of lamb he had ever eaten. He leant back in his chair, closed his eyes and let out a contented sigh. ‘I really don’t care.’

‘I feel exactly the same way.’ De Boele said between mouthfuls of potato and braised meat. ‘They save us from ourselves with this set-up. We have all the materials and equipment we could ever need, we have infinite time to create without obligations, you can get whatever you could possibly need from the commissary, you can get access to the finest call-girls money can buy.’ De Boele gave him a mischievous eyebrow raise before turning serious. ‘Although money doesn’t really exist in here so everything is free. If you want something, you ask for it, and it’s brought to you. You soon stop becoming materialistic. Another paradox. So we are all equal here, we all wear the same clothes, we are not all vying for attention in the press any more. Envy is essentially impossible here. Like I said, this is paradise. What every artist spends their whole life dreaming of.’

‘And all you have to give up is your freedom.’ Pryce said.

‘All you have to give up is your freedom.’ De Boele adjusted the tilt of his beanie and leaned in closer to Pryce. ‘Hey, are you feeling alright?’

‘I, I...’ Pryce followed a chain of memories. The blown deadlines and day drinking. The sacking over the affair with the naive-eyed provincial girl. His wife filing for divorce. His reaction- rage and then cold nothing. The long, still minutes of standing over his wife’s supine body, her face a red concave. The dripping claw hammer in his grip. The officers. The handcuffs. The indulgent tone the doctor had taken with him. And you are wholly innocent.

Pryce cried out words that weren’t words, a rush of syllables whilst de Boele craned his neck to get the attention of one of the uniformed officers at the far end of the canteen.

Pryce sat at the desk in the corner of his cell, writing. Or trying to. The words weren’t coming, a line or two and then he would strike it through with a frustrated back and forth of black ink. He heard footsteps from out in the corridor- the steady click of work shoes rather than the muted taps of prison issue footwear. Pryce stood in the doorway of his cell and waved for the attention of the officer as he passed.

‘Excuse me, sir, would it be possible to get one of the computers de Boele mentioned and perhaps access to the vast library he told me so much about. You see, I’m really struggling to get this latest work off the ground.’

The officer smirked before adjusting his voice to become a subtle mockery of Pryce’s own educated accent. ‘Why, I shall have to make some inquiries, sir, but for a man of your stature I’m sure arrangements can be made.’ And then he walked on, shaking his head and laughing to himself.

The heel clicks grew fainter.

Pryce was alone.

They were often laughing, the officers, often sniggering or having little condescending remarks at the ready to greet any honest enquiry.

Sometimes, it was as if they knew nothing about The Programme at all.

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Before Service

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The Kid shouldered the fire exit door open, his face a scowl of concentration. In each hand he had a mug of hot black coffee that threatened to slosh out onto his already sweat and soup and gore-stained t-shirt and apron.

He sidestepped the waist-high A-shaped chalkboard sign with its inviting list of specials and prices and offers, he slow-walked along the row of empty wooden tables, each with a limp and logoed brewery umbrella sheathed in a hole in the centre of it. He stumbled on the same loose paving slab that caught him out every morning and he cursed both it and himself, the same as he did every morning.

Scowling still, with eyes downward on the overfilled mugs, the Kid reached his destination, the final and furthest table.

Because Chef didn’t believe in making life easy for the Kid.

‘Alright?’ The Kid handed Chef his coffee. Chef took it in his non-cigarette hand, the handle facing away and took a slurp and then looked into the brown-black liquid as if it had just insulted his mother.

‘Is it alright and everything?’ the Kid asked, eager.

Chef sighed his trademark sigh, a mixture of mild annoyance, exasperation and infinite resignation that all the floor staff, the regulars, the management even, would imitate and parody when he was out of earshot.

‘I, I can get you another if you like?’

‘Sit. Mal’chik.’

The Kid was starting to pick up the basics of Kitchen Russian alongside knife skills and fryer skills and microwave programming skills. He knew all of the profanities and all of the utensil names. Which made up a good ninety percent of what Chef said, or yelled, during service. When the Kid did something right ‘Mal’chik’- boy- would be prefaced by ‘moy’- my- and when he did something wrong it would be prefaced by ‘glupyy’- stupid. Or worse. Much worse.

The Kid sat.

Chef crushed out his cigarette which he had smoked all the way down to the filter. The Kid watched Chef clap ash from those monstrous hands of his. Scarred and white and huge and vein-lined with a tattooed dot on each knuckle. And reportedly made of asbestos- the way that Chef would grab hot trays out of the salamander- or plunge them into a sink of scalding water when the potwasher fell behind the pace. The Kid had seen the fryer spit molten oil onto the back of Chef’s hand, burning cherry red dots into the flesh and Chef hadn’t even flinched.

The Kid checked his watch and eased out his own cigarette pack from his checkerboard trousers and he thumbed the wheel of his lighter until he finally coaxed a vague yellow-blue flame out of it. He inhaled, and the accumulated tension of three hours of prep work began to release from his shoulders.

Chef gave the Kid a look. With no words and no gestures the Kid held out his pack in offering and that ink-dotted bear paw of a hand plucked out a cigarette, the movement deft and delicate for such a big and ugly piece of meat.

Chef lit up- his own lighter might as well have been a blowtorch- and the two cooks smoked in silence for a long minute, the Kids mouth attempting to form the beginnings of small talk.

But it was Chef who eventually broke the silence.

‘Mise?’ He said.

‘Done’

‘Stock?’

‘Put away, Chef.’

‘Labels?’

‘Everything’s labelled and rotated.’

‘Barrels’

‘Collected about an hour ago.’

‘Fish Man?’

‘Yep, all done, all put away and the invoice is in the office.’

Chef gave a single half-nod. ‘Blagoy.’

‘Just doing my job, right?’ The Kid said.

Chef took a gulp of coffee then a deep drag. He nodded to the Kid’s watch.

‘About eight minutes.’ The Kid said.

Chef blew smoke from his nostrils, his sigh now all resigned.

‘You like job?’ Chef said. It was the first time in the four months that the Kid had been in the kitchen that Chef had asked him a personal question.

‘Yeah?’ He was a little taken aback. ‘Well, you know, I mean at first I was obviously. But, er, you know I think I’m starting to get into the swing of it now I think. Right? Starting to speed up a little I guess.’

‘You are young.’

‘Yeah. Everyone says. But I’ll be twenty next month and in a year or so I’ll have graduated and then, well…’ The Kid sensed that Chef was losing interest, he was looking off to his right, thinking.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ The Kid said. ‘It’s not very interesting to most people. Chemistry.’

‘Why you here?’

‘This job you mean? Well, I need the money, you know? And they’re fine about me just working weekends and picking up shifts here and there. Taking time off  if I’ve got any essays coming up or whatever.’

A slurp, a drag, a grunt.

The Kid took it as an invite to keep talking.

‘So, er, you always been a chef, Chef?’

‘Nyet.’

‘Oh?’

Chef sighed. He took a final drag on his cigarette and then a real final drag and crushed it out in the plastic ashtray. The Kid ashed his own cigarette which was only halfway done. He too only smoked on shift. Too expensive otherwise.

Chef looked at the Kid’s hard pack on the wooden table there- smoking clogs the arteries and causes heart attacks and strokes- and the Kid said ‘help yourself’ and tried to sound like he didn’t mind.

‘Thanks’ Chef blowtorched the cigarette end and held down a lungful of smoke before eventually exhaling a grey-blue plume out of the side of his mouth.

‘No.’ Chef said.

‘No what?’

A pause. ‘I was not always cooking. When I was your age I did not cook. I was studying like you. I was studying medicine. Like Chekhov. You know this man?’

The Kid shook his head.

‘It doesn’t matter. I want to work with the heart. How you say in English, cardio-’

‘Cardiologist?’

‘Yes. I study very hard and I win place to top university in my country-‘

The Kid knew that Chef was from one of those Russian speaking non-Russia countries. Estonia, Latvia, Belarus- one of those. It had never come up and it had never felt like the right time to ask about it.

‘Study, study, study.’ Chef said. ‘I must be top of class, you understand? This what my father say. To be second is to be er, disappoint.’

‘You’ll be a disappointment to you family if you not top of the class?’

‘Yes. So I do this. I get best grades. Father is not showing he is happy. He is expecting big things. So next thing is to study in top hospital. I do this. I am little bit older than you are now at time. I am working at hospital all time, even longer hours than this place.’ Chef gestured to the pub with his cigarette hand, a speck of ash falling to the floor like a grey snowflake. He let out a bitter ghost of a laugh.

‘I am working with top doctor, he is like new father-‘

The kid took a silent sip of his own coffee. It was now somewhere near drinkable temperature. This was the most he had ever heard Chef speak in one go, about anything. The Kid kept eye contact and nodded along, scared to do anything else in case Chef took it as a cue to clam up.

‘And then.’ Another one of Chef’s famous sighs. ‘And then my father, my real father dies. So I must leave my studies and go home to help my mother, brother and sisters. This is during hard time in my country, you understand. Is not like here where you have jobs, and money if you cannot work.’

‘So you became a chef.’

‘No. I get job at Vokzal, at big train station. With bags and tickets. Is okay. Easy work but I am very boring. And pay is not good. So-‘ Drag, ash, exhale, drag, exhale. ‘I steal. Small things from bags of rich people, very careful, and I either sell them on black market or make trade for food and this things. But I am caught. Someone who is working with me reports me to authorities. So I am caught with ladies brooch in pocket of my uniform. I am arrested, go to court, sent to jail. Ten years.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘Yes, I was looking for where Jesus Christ is. So it was in prison that I begin to cook. Where I get this.’ Chef pointed at the inkdots on his left hand with the fingers of his right. ‘And this’ Chef rolled up his chef jacket sleeve to show further homemade tattoos, a blue trail of inelegant doodles and phrases written in Cyrillic. God knows what it all meant but the Kid knew that it all meant something.

Chef rolled his sleeve back down. The Kid realised that he had never seen Chef in anything but his whites, had never seen anything but his head, neck and hands.

‘Every day is making soup for hundreds of prisoners. They are hungry and thin and all we have to work with is shit, is little bit potatoes and water and old vegetables with hard bread to dip. No meat. I want to give everyone more, you understand, good food, but I am not able with what I have. My heart breaks, everyday putting soup in bowls and men have eyes sink into faces and are pleading and trying to grab cherpak. Every day same. But so I live with this and I do my time and then my country changes and I am free man. I work, save money and eventually get passport and come to this country. And then here gives me job, which is crime same as stealing things from bags in train station. But I don’t care. Jail here is not the same.’

‘Now.’ Chef wrapped one of his giant calloused paws around the Kid’s wrist and angled it towards him so he could see the lad’s watch face better. ‘Is lunchtime.’

Chef stood tall, cricked his neck and downed the rest of his coffee in two gulps. He flicked his cigarette and sent it flying towards the distance.

Through a mouthful of smoke he said ‘let’s cooks these people something nice, huh?’

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The Ferryman

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I like to be busy, me- ‘cause at the end of the day it’s the slowing down that’ll get you. I’ll give you a for instance- so me and a whole gang of fellas at my old work all got made redundant at the same time. Nice phrase that made redundant, it tells you a lot about how the bosses see you. Anyway, a bunch of us got laid off one way or another when the old firm was bought out and the new set of bosses started about trying to make some cuts and bolster up the bottom line. One of those writing on the wall type situations. Some of the younger lads managed to stay on but a lot of us took what pensions we had and skedaddled. It made sense. Me, I was state pension age so I wasn’t too fussed in a way. Money-wise I’d be alright. But still, nearly forty years at the same job and then unceremoniously given the elbow at the end of it all. Things like that can rankle if you let ‘em.

Anyway I mention all this because I knew what was gunna happen next, could see it from a mile off. So I kept in touch with everyone who’d been on the job with me- the ones I liked anyway- some of me mates in the office, some of the site gangs, some of the fellas who’d done the same job as me in the different patches. I made sure I had their numbers and I’d give ‘em the odd bell and go for a drink. That sort of thing. But like I say, I could see what was gunna happen from a mile off. Soon enough, the calls came less and less often and then I started to hear about how one bloke- only the same age as me, mind- had come down with cancer and how another had a massive heart attack while out walking his retriever. A year, year and a half after that last day piss-up down the pub and they were starting to drop like flies. Redundant. It’d get so you’d almost start to dread the phone ringing. I tried to tell em ‘If you don’t stay busy with yourself once you’ve packed up work you won’t be around for long’ and they all nodded and said ‘right you are’. I’d seen it with me dad’s generation- a whole crop of men who left the factories and the building sites and the maintenance work in their early mid sixties and then dropped dead within a few years. See, if you don’t have a reason to get up in the morning then you’re done for. I said all this to ‘em but still a lot of me old work mates just retired to the telly and the newspaper or else they went on a few cruises with the missus- if they’d done a bit of clever investing- and after a couple of years they were in the ground.

So the pub trips and the Saturday morning fry ups at the caff became less and less and the calls telling me that someone else has passed on became more and more. The fact I seen it from a mile off makes it no less of a shame, to be honest. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t next in line for the crematorium. So I decided to use some of me lump sum and get me act together.

I made sure to sort everyone out before I left. I cashed everything out, sold up the old semi-detached, gave the kids their share of what they had coming to them early while I’m still here to see ‘em enjoy it. The eldest will no doubt get on the ladder with her share because she was always sensible like that whereas the lad’ll no doubt blow it all on one scheme or another. He’ll either blow it all or turn it into a million, I should say. Easy come, easy go with him. I don’t mind it too much to tell you the truth, he’s had the same attitude to life ever since he was a little ‘un. His mother never understood it, mind, but that’s just one of those things. Speaking of which- I made sure to pay her a visit and give her her share and all. Her and the new fella- I say new but they’ve been married for seven or so years now- point blank refused the cash but we hashed it out over a cup of tea and in the end they took me cheque. I get the feeling she genuinely didn’t want the money whereas he didn’t mind so much and was just playing the part. Makes no difference to me so long as they took it. It’s up to them what happens now. The money’ll probably be siphoned off to the kids or else it’ll go on a couple of holidays. Them cruises again.

So like I say, I sold up, sorted everyone out and then drove right across the country down to the seaside here. Best thing I could’ve done, especially on a day like today. I mean it doesn’t get much better than this does it? Sometimes the gulls cawing might do your head in if you let ‘em but if that’s the only downside then I’m doing pretty well I’d say. For me this time of the year’s the best, the weather’s nice as often as not- I mean just look at that sky out to sea there- the season hasn’t started yet so I’m not just carting the out of towners to-and-fro all day. Not that I mind that so much as far as it goes but it’s nice to have a chat sometimes, isn’t it? Take your time about things, enjoy the purr of the engine here, the sound of the boat going through the water, even the sound of the lorries reversing at the docks over there I don’t mind. Days like today you get to take it all in if you want to. Does you a bit of good the fresh air, being on the water, getting to have a little chat for the few minutes it takes to get from one side of the estuary to the other. Most passengers I get don’t seem to notice much of anything I can tell, and it’s not just because they’re keen to get from the main town beach over to the posh village there or vice versa. It’s not that. They’re just taking pictures of each other, of a seagull on a buoy like that one or of some of these nicer moored boats as I’m arcing me way through ‘em. It’s like they’re looking but not seeing if that makes sense. Anyway we’re here now. Just let me shove this ramp out onto the sand and you can be off to the village. The caff down the end of the beach there is decent, so they tell me. Now mind how you go down the ramp there. Oh- and me last trip back to the town beach is at four, don’t forget. Take care.

You again? Well that’ll be two quid again then, please. Perfect. I’ll not have to bother rifling through this coin bag here for change. Nice afternoon in the village there? Funny, I’ve been doing this ferrying for a good couple of years now and I’ve never been around the village other than that patch of sand where I stand as I’m getting you all up onto the ramp. They tell me it’s beautiful but I like the main town side me. Funny how from the fancy village side you can see the dockyard over there and the main road and the trains running in the distance- but when you’re on the main town side with your back to all that, all’s you can see is this bit of estuary, the sea, the moored boats and that lovely village with all of its bright coloured houses. Picturesque as they say. I suppose that’s the kind of thing you end up thinking about when you’re on the water all afternoon like me.

Now, what was I saying to you before? Cuh, it’s even sunnier now. Oh yes, I was saying I’m only doing this two days a week, the other days I’m either on me market stall or else I’m on me patch of land or tinkering with me classic motor. Good to stay busy. The other days it’s this bloke Mike who does the ferrying, quiet fella. I told him people like to have a chat, you know, maybe learn the odd little fact, tell ‘em how the boat’s painted black and white around the top of the hull there because that used to be the sign for a ferry boat, like the red and white they have on the barber shop pole. Before most folks could read. He nods and all that but I know he just goes rapid back and forth from one side to the other all day, not saying a word to anyone unless he’s spoken to. Up to him at the end of the day. But it’s a false economy all that whizzing back and forth like that. Often it pays you to get off for a minute, stretch your legs, nip to the W.C. across the car park near the town’s lifeboat station there, talk to the ice cream sellers, pet the dogs being walked on the beach, that sort of thing. It’s funny how dogs on the beach like to dig and like to get in the water. You rarely hear ‘em whine and bark like you do if you go past city houses in the daytime. Says something that does. Besides, as I was saying with Mike there, if you take your time a bit between trips the boat’s full up to its full dozen more often rather than just running one or two people back and forth back and forth. False economy that way.

Now I know it’s just you again now but that’s besides the point. It’ll pick up soon enough when the season kicks off. All them tourists. That’s when it gets to be like the Mike routine, back and forth like a ping pong ball. Gets to be a bit repetitive, a bit boring. But it’s only a day or two and it helps keep me fit. Talking of which- hark at those two over there in the rowing boat, they’re going for it. Big fella wheezing at the stern has got on one of them expensive Tilley hats. I heard they’re unbreakable. I mean, I’ve never heard of anyone breaking a hat except maybe Laurel and Hardy but… Anyway we’re just coming up to the sand bank now, just bear with me a minute. Lovely. I’ll just get the plank for you to walk. There we go. So that’s me for the day, then. Moor this up, then it’s off to meet me mate from the dockyard down the pub there. He likes to keep himself busy and all. Best way to be you ask me. Mind how you go.

BUY ME A COFFEE

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Two Arrows

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‘What you need,’ The Fat Man said, gesturing with a twirl of his yolk-dripping knife ‘What you need is to learn how to enjoy yourself, get a little pleasure into your life. Get a girl. You got a girl, right?’

Across the table Smith gave a near imperceptible shoulder shrug, the gesture saying ‘maybe I do, maybe I don’t.’

‘I mean Lord knows I pay you enough, right? You can’t be hurting for money. Go out and spend a little, go for a drink, meet someone. Go to a whore for Christ sake, if the getting it the normal way ain’t your forte. Do something at least.’

‘I do okay.’ Smith said, more bored than irritated.

‘And maybe you do, you dark horse ya.’ The Fat Man wagged a finger at Smith, the jewel on his pinkie ring catching the too-bright light that hung above their booth. The Fat Man was the one who filled the envelopes and so The Fat Man got to choose the location of the meet ups. Invariably some cheap diner or working men’s cafe, maybe a mid-tier steakhouse on the rare occasions that the meet had to be in the evening hours. Anywhere where the portions were large and the coffee refills were infinite.

The Fat Man wore custom made suits that cost more than what one of the waitresses would earn in half a year, watches and a Cuban link bracelet that cost more than a decent car, but still he was drawn to places with breakfast specials and all the warmed coffee you can stomach thrown in gratis.

Smith took a sip of coffee.

‘You sure you don’t want nothing,’ The Fat Man said through a mouthful of bacon. ‘Food here’s tremendous. I can get you whatever ya want.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You’ve gotta learn to savour things, my friend. Life without good food, good company ain’t a life much worth living you ask me. Otherwise wadda we do all this for, huh? To make life better for ourselves, am I right?’ The Fat Man speared the remains of a bacon rasher, dipped it in yolk, chewed it and pondered for a second. ‘Even if in the process we have to make life a little worse for some other poor fuck.’ The Fat Man laughed, a head-back extroverted boom with an undertone of radio static crackle from the decades of cigar-sucking and scotch sipping. He wiped away a laughter-tear with the the back of his index finger, the digit about the same thickness as one of the breakfast special sausages.

‘So.’ Smith said.

‘Alright, alright, you wanna get down to it, fine. Brass tacks. What I have is a double.’

‘Double costs double.’

The Fat Man leaned in closer, he dropped his voice to a rasp- an attempt at a whisper that brought no reduction in volume. It was lucky the diner was in the middle of the lunch rush. The Fat Man was many things, but subtle he was not. Smith pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. He was starting to get a headache.

‘You wanna coupla aspirin or somethin, kid?’ And then back to the whisper-rasp ‘I was saying, I’m not gonna haggle on price with ya. You do good work. Double job, double pay. No skin off my nose.’

‘You got the details?’

‘Well not on me. You think I’m gonna carry that around on the street?’

Smith’s face shifted from anger back to a default bored but alert neutrality in a half second. ‘So why- ’

‘Shit, you never eat lunch alone, you never heard of that expression? Wanted to see how you were holding up after last time. It’s been a while. You’re looking okay, friend. Face like a fucking statue, and your usual sparkling conversation, which tells me that all is right in the world.’

‘So a double.’

‘Yeah, there’s some nuances to it so I want you to read the file close. This ain’t quite your standard job. But you’re a professional man, I don’t gotta tell you how to do your work. You still using the same place?’

‘Third floor.’

‘Alright. So whadda ya want, Chinese, Indian, Thai?’

‘Couple of cheeseburgers will do it. Fries. Don’t worry about the drink.’

‘At eight?’

‘That’ll work.’

Smith stood and zipped up his hoodie. He took a black beanie out of the pocket and adjusted it onto his head. He pulled the hood on top, the rain outside the row of open-blinded windows coming down straight and heavy, the clouds as black as the percolated coffee.

‘I thought it was supposed to be summer.’ Smith said.

Smith put down two bills from his elastic-banded bankroll. The Fat Man and his kind were all about these little gestures of respect.

Smith headed for the door, hands in pouch, blandly anonymous in his dark sportswear. Another guy on the street, a working man, a ghost.

The Fat Man snorted a single laugh and shook his head. He napkinned away a dot of yolk from his cheek and then snapped his fat fingers for a refill.

Smith lay on top of his bedsheet fully clothed, his legs crossed at the ankles and an ashtray on his chest and a Marlboro between his fingers, waiting. He looked at the corner of the room where two walls and the ceiling met and where a cobweb had been spun. He watched the housespider further tie up the trapped and frantic and doomed housefly. He watched.

A loud buzzer over the background turntable jazz. Smith didn’t flinch, didn’t react at all. He stubbed out his cigarette after a second and placed the ashtray on top of the bedside cabinet, next to the travel clock that read 20:05. He crossed the small and immaculate studio room, dialling the turntable volume down to near silence as he passed it. He thumbed the intercom button and said ‘third floor’ into the speaker and then held down the button with a picture of a key on it. He waited.

A knock on the door after a slow minute, a dripping wet courier in matching coloured helmet and windbreaker and outdoor trousers all garish and logo’d with the delivery apps symbol and its childish Silicon Valley name. You saw these poor delivery guys with their bicycles and their giant square backpacks of restaurant food everywhere now, huffing and peddling.

‘Delivery for a Mr. Smith.’

‘Yes.’ Smith said. It wasn’t his real name, anyway.

‘Well there you are. Enjoy your meal.’

Smith peeled off a bill from his roll.

‘The tip has already been included in the order sir.’

‘Just take the money.’

‘Well thank you very much. That’s really k-’ Smith had already closed the door.

He set the paper bag down on the dining table. In the bag were three smaller paper bags. One with two cheeseburger. One with a side of fries. One buried underneath- an unusually flat and smooth and rectangular one- held a thin manila folder.

Smith plated his food and sat and ate with his left hand while he flipped through pages with his right.

There were two targets, one male, one female. Both seemed unimportant, unremarkable, unconnected. But Smith’s job was to act, not to question why.

He read on.

From the description he could see that the female was SARAH LOUISE FOLEY, age: 31, hair: blonde/brown, eyes: hazel, height: five feet four inches, build: medium, distinguishing marks: unknown.

From the long-lens photographs he could see that she had two modes of living. Number one was the pencil-skirted and medium-heeled work life which she endured in spite of the lack of comfort. The included job description and the unsure gait in the required work outfit told the tale. In all of the work hours shots she looked worried, pre-occupied, annoyed, wistful. The same as any other 9-5er. In some she carried a cardboard four pack of tall takeout coffees, in others she had an iPhone to her ear and a look of contrition on her face. Mode number two- on the other hand- was the off-hours life and this was all athletic wear and headphones and running. Either running to get to something or running to get away from something, he couldn’t tell. Laps of parks and edge of city trails, long circuits through neighbourhoods nicer than the one she lived in. No family of her own, no photographs of a social life either, though these folders were normally the product of just a week or two of recon so it could’ve just been a dry spell for Ms Foley.

Still she didn’t seem worth Smith’s fee. Strange. He took a bite out of burger number two. It was very, very good. The Fat Man must have a stake in the junk-food-but-gourmet place that had just sprung up in that rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood by the docks.

Smith turned the page.

Target number two was DAVID MICHAEL LEONARD- maybe having three first names was the reason this guy was in the crosshairs- age: 35, hair: black, eyes: brown, height: five feet eleven inches, build: medium, distinguishing marks: unknown. Another riveting page-turner of a life this guy had. Long-lens shots of him walking in and out of the same boring and grey car and in and out of the same boring and grey office building. The same boring and grey apartment building, the neighbourhood nice enough, the job description nice enough, the pay packet nice enough. More shots, more maps, more supplementary details. This guy David had no woman, no family either. His life was the same circuit of activities- the same bar every Friday, the same low buy-in card game every Saturday, the same broadsheet and chain-coffee place every Sunday.

Maybe this David got a bank loan, approached The Fat Man and paid for this work himself. Put himself out of his own misery while adding a bit of mystery and intrigue for the people in the block and the office that he’d leave behind.

But Smith’s job was to act and not question why. It made no difference anyway. It was what it was.

He turned the page.

Smith ate the last bite of the last burger and leaned back in full-stomached contentment. He read the brief, the job itself.

There’re some nuances to it.

As Smith read his eyes grew a little wider.

13:20, the end of her lunch break. Ten minutes and she’s be back at the front desk, all smiles and telephone voice while her eyes screamed out for help. Just kill me now. She made her way to a bench and sat, the little toe on each foot a rose red throb underneath the leather. You didn’t have to wear the shoes, but you had to wear the shoes. Everything was implied, was between the lines, was unspoken but understood.  Nothing you could go to HR with, no easily discernible and provable thing that you could point your finger at or start to catalogue and build a case about.

And what would be the point anyway? The upper floor pricks, the shoulder-hoverers, the leerers, were all Teflon. Good schools, good families, wives as expensive and ornamental and upgradable as their wristwatches. And with their little gestures, their little double-meaning whispers, with the smirking, sneaky vagueness of it all, what could you do?

This was life, all painful shoes and freedom-restricting clothes and mounting bills and  daily expenses brought about by the job you work to try to pay off your daily expenses. The salmon salad that she could still taste and the Flat White to keep the headache and the afternoon crash away had already eaten up over an hour of what she would earn during another eight hours of fake smiling and fake sincerity and showing fake interest in the fake small talk of fake people similarly faking their way through a fake life.

She took off her shoe and rubbed her aching foot and then the other. The toe seams of her tights stopped her from seeing the extent of the soreness and the blistering but from the throb she could tell it wasn’t too good. Both little toes burned and were warm to the touch.

She just wanted to be somewhere green, wearing something she could move freely in, something where she could breathe and not feel straightjacketed and vulnerable and on display. Where she could just be. With shoes where she could be light on her feet and sprint at full pace if the spirit moved her.

She put her stupid work shoes back on and exhaled and began the self-talk of telling herself that the day would be done soon, that the weekend was getting closer, that she would figure something out.

She looked across the street and saw the sign of the independent cafe whose prices she couldn’t justify to herself. Le Pain Quotidien. Her growing resolve sank back to where it had welled up from. She swallowed, not wanting her emotions to spoil the makeup that ate up a good half an hour each morning. Time from the hourglass that she would never get back.

She inhaled. And then the breath left her as she felt the jolt of the bullet and the blood, so much blood.

His job was to act, not question why. The why was someone else’s business, as was the who and invariably the when. Sometimes you had carte blanche as to the how, but usually not. ‘I don’t give a fuck, just get in done’, you might hear or ‘just make it look like an accident’ was another, but more often than not the guy with the envelope or the go-between for the shadowy guy in question would have requirements, suggestions, ideas.

You hire someone with a proven track record and then you start getting particular and unorthodox. It made no sense. But money is money.

A light southwest breeze side-parted his hair. Smith looked down at the anemometer screen in his right hand and then he lay the thing down on the right hand side of his set-up, belly down up there on the cold rooftop. He did a quick calculation and adjusted the windage to the left. It still didn’t feel right.

Smith would have liked to be able to use a fluttering flag as a more accurate gauge but there wasn’t time. No time to scan the whole city in his scope in the hope of finding some government building with a flag flying proud. So he made do with his own windage and elevation calculations, with the arithmetic that ran and re-ran through his mind, checking and checking again.

It wasn’t a hard shot, this, but he liked to take his time. A luxury he didn’t have today.

Smith looked at the target, made a tiny adjustment to the parallax, David Michael Leonard now in perfect focus in the crosshairs. There he was in an ordinary charcoal grey single-breasted coat with an ordinary shirt and an ordinary necktie underneath, the kind that comes in a Christmas morning three pack and signals the end of being young.

Smith took a slow nasal breath, and out. And again, slower still.

A bird landed by his side, unseen but sensed. It scratched around on the rooftop there on what sounded like a mangled and deformed claw. A city pigeon, confirmed by its soft rhythmic pecking on the rooftop concrete and a single steady coo.

Smith threatened it from the side of its mouth, saying it would catch a bullet first if it didn’t fuck off, and the bird seemingly understanding took flight.

Smith glanced at his wristwatch with the eye that wasn’t pressed to the scope. 13:01. Shit. A nasal breath, another, his heart rate now as slow and even as an athlete at rest.

David Michael Leonard stood there, where the horizontal line met the vertical, tapping out a smartphone message in his usual lunchtime spot, oblivious. A little quiet area off the main thoroughfare where he could eat and think in peace and quiet.

Smith held the man in his scope and aimed where he had been told to aim and he exhaled and then he fired.

Smith entered the bar.

The decor alluded to the areas waterfront past, black and white vintage photographs of strongjawed and moustachioed and bearded workingmen loading and unloading ships hung from the walls and there was a knowing and ironic nod to what would have been those same men’s off-shift recreations- neon pissbeer signs glowed from behind the bar and there was an index-cards-and-45s jukebox over by where a group of college kids were playing an amateurish game of pool.

Monochrome men loading and unloading ships but no stevedore or docker could ever afford to drink here. Not that there were many of them left anymore.

Smith rested two hands on the bar and the flannel-and-castaway-bearded barman approached from the other side of the wood. Smith leaned forward and the barman leaned in too, a reflex, though it was the afternoon dead-time and the jukebox’s ironic outlaw country song was playing as quiet as elevator music.

‘The Fat Man here?’

‘There’s a lot of fat men in the world today, friend.’

Smug hipster prick.

‘The Fat Man. Definite article.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Yes you have.’ Smith’s voice was his standard bored neutrality, but his half-hooded eyes held the promise of efficient and experienced violence.

‘I, er.’

‘Look, I know the Fat Man is all over. Probably doesn’t get around here to check in much. You think you’re doing the right thing by acting like you don’t know who I’m talking about. You’re not. So when you see him, tell him the double went down smooth.’

‘You want me to thank him for you for a drink he bought you?’

‘You tell him exactly what I just said. You wouldn’t want it to get back to him later that you didn’t. You can trust me on that score.’

Smith shouldered the age-faded gym bag that he always used to carry his set-up on jobs and he left the bar. As he palmed the door open he saw the hipster put the corded bar phone to his ear and dial.

Jesus, this was the weirdest job he had ever done. Fucking Fat Man and those ideas of his.

‘I’m going to the bar, can I get you anything?’ David Michael Leonard said with a smile.

‘Sure.’ Sarah said ‘A gin and tonic would be good.’

David slow-shuffled across the just-mopped floor in his hospital-issue slippers and gown his right hand clutched around the squeaky wheel rig that held this IV bag and the machine where which it wended through on the way to his cannulated arm.

‘Well’ He said as he reached the metal table-on-wheels with its cardboard cups and its sugar sachets and its too-small milk portions and its instant coffee and hot water urn.

‘Well, I can get you a coffee if you like.’

‘That’d be nice thanks. Milk, one sugar please.’

‘Same way I take it.’ David said.

He made the drinks and then delivered them in two journeys. First hers to her bedside table and then his also to the same table. He shuffled and winced and Sarah asked was he sure he was okay and he said yes.

The bullet had grazed him and left a flesh wound but the shirt fabric had gotten in it and infection had set in. Twenty minutes after he was shot, Sarah took her own bullet, same calibre, same weapon, same graze to the same area of the body, far from the brain or the major organs.

The subsequent investigation and media storm drew nothing. Though the calibre of the bullets and thus the rifle used suggested a serious marksman, a War on Terror veteran type, a specialist, both shots had been virtual misses, average at best given the weather report on the day and the presumed spot where the shots were taken from.

The gunman must’ve been a lone PTSD veteran who snapped and went on to a rooftop and fired off a few rounds but was fortunately too drunk or shook up to do anyone any permanent harm.

‘This isn’t too bad.’ Sarah said as she sipped the coffee.

‘You mind if I join you?’ David said and once her saw her half smile he lay on the vacant bed next to her and used the corded bedside handset to fold the bed up to a near chair shape, the same as hers. They both laughed softly at the painfully slow amount of time it took.

‘Comfortable?’ Sarah said.

‘I’m getting there. They said anything about your discharge.’

‘Soon they say. You?’

‘Yeah, hopefully pretty soon. I feel okay. Under the circumstances. So cheers to that.’

They tapped their cardboard cups together and took a sip.

‘Can you turn to face me a second.’ David said.

Sarah did so.

‘Let me see.’ David set his cup down on the bedside table and reached over to her and gently held her wrist. He pulled it closer to him, rotating it slowly and holding it up near to his eyes he read the date of birth on her white wristband.

‘You look younger.’ He said.

‘So flattery is the angle is it.’ She said, not sounding annoyed at all.

‘They say it’ll get you everywhere.’

Old Benny in his camel coat and leather gloves and scarf approached the back room card table with his shoulders hunched. His nose and cheeks were as red as the stacks of chips on the green felt.

‘When the fuck is spring gonna spring huh?’ He said.

The other three card players agreed and commiserated and reminisced with their own one-upmanship stories of freezing childhood winter while Old Benny shook himself out of his coat and handed it to the errand boy kid to go and put on a hook somewhere. The old man took a seat.

Across the table The Fat Man relit a half-smoked cigar and waved for the errand boy to go and fetch everyone a cup of coffee. Getting sleepy with how slow these old men are to raise, he said. A little good-natured back and forth between the cardplayers and then Fat Man asking if anyone wanted a real drink. The table concluded it was too early in the day.

The errand boy brought the coffees, the tray rattling with nervousness and he set them down next to each players chip pile and The Fat Man peeled a tip from his money clip and the errand boy said thank you sir before making himself scarce.

‘You’re a good boy.’ The Fat Man said.

The cards were dealt, the blinds paid, the pocket cards peeled back and considered. The flop was turned and Nicky, the paunchy and balding-but-in-denial player to The Fat Man’s left said ‘fuck this’ and folded.

A call from Old Benny then a call from Albert, the player to The Fat Man’s right.

The Fat Man considered the flop then snuck a look at the corner of his own two cards. Then he gazed off at the space above and beyond old Benny’s head.

‘Hey kid!’ He shouted after a second. The errand boy jogged into the room all nerves and concern.

‘Kid, turn that up a second would you.’

The errand boy reached up to the wall mounted television screen and tapped at the side button until the volume bar scrolled up from mute to half way.

‘We’re in the middle of a game here, Paul, wha-’

The Fat Man shushed him and waved away his concerns with a gold ringed hand.

‘… In other news, the man and woman who were victims to a bizarre double shooting last summer were today married at Saint Catherine’s church. The happy couple seen here met when they were both admitted into the same ward of University Hospital following the shooting. Removing his very fetching waistcoat and showing his bullet scar for the waiting press the bridegroom Mr Leonard said that this was the mark left by Cupid’s arrow.’

The newsreader with her gleaming white teeth turned to her silver-haired male co-host and they awkwardly ad-libbed about how nice it all was.

‘Don’t that make you feel all warm on a cold day?’ The Fat Man said and the cigar stuck out from his crinkle eyed smile as he decided how he was going to play the hand he had been dealt.

BUY ME A COFFEE

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