Half Plus Seven (25 page)

‘… and anyway, you might want to fill me in on your story.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘I've seen you some place before, haven't I?'

FUCK.

He'd rumbled me. I was Dave, Dave wasn't dead, and I wasn't really Dave.

FUCK.

‘Have you?'

‘That was a hell of a left hook you clocked that fella with…'

The SoupMobile Station.

Of course.

‘Well, he was asking for it. What can I say; some of my uncle's training must have rubbed off on me.'

Dave was dead, long live Dave.

The entrance to Écouter, like all of the most pretentious places on God's greedy earth, was guarded by a rope, a man, and a clipboard. Ordinarily, these kinds of situations were not conducive to being accompanied by homeless drug addicts. The man recognised me as I approached.

‘Mr…' He wouldn't remember my name and blow my cover. They never remembered your name. I was just a walking AmEx.

‘Good day to you,' I said. His phoney smile broke when he clocked my company.

‘Sir, as you know, we have a strict dress…'

‘And,' I checked his name badge and slipped two crisp fifties from the petty cash tin into his top pocket, ‘as you know, Bradley, Morgan & Schwarz is a faithful and generous patron of this establishment. I'd hate us to have to take our custom some other place.' A lifetime of minimum-wage jobs flashed through his mind. He swallowed hard and looked up and down the street.

‘Very well, sir. Your usual table?'

‘Indeed. Follow me, chaps.'

Money didn't just talk, it screamed.

We'd probably have drawn less of a reaction from our fellow diners if we'd dressed in full Klan robes and spat Public Enemy lyrics through megaphones. Not that I'd have trusted my companions in anything brilliant white, the menace of the pointy hat diluted somewhat by the inevitable blim holes and booze stains. Our entrance must have been what Jesus felt like when entering Nazareth, just with open-mouthed stares replacing adulation. No palms were laid to soften our path. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted an ex-client, a ghastly Greek shipping magnate who had sat across from me at a dozen of these tables, gorging himself on the richest food in town and daring me not to laugh at his sexist jokes. His face now was reminiscent of mine when I took the toilet cubicle next to him and heard the desperate chokes of an Eastern European whore. I shot him a wink and a smile. His gaping pie hole mouthed a ‘hello' back my way. He didn't have a fucking clue what to think.

Having been paid to manage perception for the past forever, it was almost as liberating for me to toy with this restaurant's reputation, a nihilistic cat with a ball of social string, as it was for my guests to have a hot meal in their bread baskets. Which was exactly the receptacle they demolished when our bemused waiter seated us at our table. The finest, freshest French bread, artisan-made, piss-artist-devoured. They wolfed it down quicker than the Eucharist amongst a bunch of brainwashed believers.

‘Can I get you any drinks?' Seven pairs of eyes lit up like Christmas trees. I didn't need to peruse the menu.

‘Seven of your finest bottles of champagne please, my good man. One for each of my companions.' The waiter's threaded eyebrows arched.

‘Very well, sir.'

‘And a sparkling mineral water for me.'

‘Very well, sir.'

‘As you were.' I had no idea why I addressed the waiting staff like a member of the 19th century landed gentry, but I rather liked it.

‘Is all that plonk for us?' asked Spider.

‘It most certainly is,' I replied. He smiled a toothless grin.

The waiter returned, this time with company, expertly balancing the ice buckets and overpriced bubbles.

‘If you'd be so kind as to leave the bottles unopened, my good man. It's a rather special occasion and I fancy my companions might rather like to pop the corks themselves.' Wheezing laughter and mistimed clapping broke out around the table. It was like feeding time for a herd of heavily asthmatic seals. Cut-glass flutes magically appeared at their right hands.

‘Right, after three, boys…' Their faces, blotchy red now from the laughter if not yet the booze, looked at me for further instruction. I caught on.

‘Okay, I'll lead,' said Michael, and proceeded to show and tell the others how to get to the booze. As a rule, bums weren't big Bollinger drinkers. I knew he'd known another life. Seconds later, the troops were locked and loaded. What was the saying? Show me and I'll forget, tell me and I'll remember, tell me there's a drink resting on it and I'll nail a Rubix cube one-handed in 10 seconds flat.

‘1… 2… 3!' Champagne shot through the air. Shell-suited arms flailed after corks. Shaggy heads lapped at spillages on the table. Coats were called for at nearby tables. Glasses were ignored and bottles raised to lips before being raised high like victors in a boxcar Grand Prix.

‘TO DAVE. It's what he would have wanted,' I shouted, probably a little too loud for our surroundings.

‘To Dave,' in chorus.

The diners who hadn't scarpered at the sight of Spider giving a frighteningly realistic impression of fellatio on a champagne bottle, did their best to ignore our party. The way you did a head-scarfed Romanian on the tube, blocking out the sound of her out-of-tune two-stringed banjo, looking straight ahead at the reflection of your detached robotic gaze. I couldn't blame these people. I'd done it myself a million times. They said you were only ever 6 ft away from a rat in this city, but that didn't mean you wanted them asking you for bus fare every 5 minutes.

The AmExodus had caused our waiter to try and hurry us along with our menu selection. We weren't helped by the fact we only counted two readers amongst our number.

‘What about
navarin d'agneu
?' I asked the group with, if I say so myself, almost passable Gallic arrogance.

‘What the hell's that?' asked Sid.

‘Well, it's a lamb dish…' I'd eaten my way through this menu twice already.

‘Does it come with chips?' asked Sid.

‘No, sir, it doesn't come with chips,' the waiter stepped in.

‘What about French fries? They're French, aren't they?' said Spider. He wore the look of a dog who'd earned a treat.

‘Well, sir, yes they are.'

‘Look,' I said, ‘we'll keep this very simple. Just bring us eight steaks, eight French fries, and eight side salads.' They needed at least some vegetable intake to fight off the scurvy.

‘Very well, sir. How would sirs like them cooked?'

‘As long as it's not with petrol,' said Michael, ‘down a dark alley, I don't think these men really care.'

The behaviour of my charges continued unabashed over the course of the next half hour or so, but like the patient parent of a toddler with Tourettes, I grew accustomed to and unphased by their outbursts. The joy I felt seeing their blackened teeth chew through the best beef on the block was, I imagined, akin to that felt by Mother Teresa when out helping the poor and infirm of Calcutta, or Bill Gates after making a tax-deductible donation to a Kenyan orphanage. Warm inside in a way only the stimulants had managed before. I don't know if I'd learned to love myself, or the world, but either way, I wanted more. But what of these men? Of Michael? One bad decision, some misplaced aggression or another red utility bill away from me. The former me.

‘When were they last in this situation?'

‘In a restaurant?' asked Michael.

‘Yes. You looked like you knew what you were doing there…' I said.

‘Well,' he paused and forked the last bit of red meat up to his mouth, ‘we used to eat out all the time, if you must know…'

‘I did buy you that drink…'

‘Yes, I suppose you did. Or Dave did.'

Christ, I was slipping up.

‘Yes, you're right, Dave did. But I could buy you one after we're done here?'

‘To be honest, it's probably the last thing I need.' He bit the meat from the fork. ‘Anyway, I need to look after this lot.'

Keep at him, Bill.

‘Who was “we”?'

‘Sorry?'

‘You said “we used to eat out”?'

‘Oh.' His dark eyes narrowed. ‘I meant my family. Every Saturday afternoon. We'd ride the bus to parts of town we'd never explored before, hop off at a random stop and stroll through the streets and happen upon somewhere at chance. Italian, Chinese, Indian, Lebanese, Turkish, Vietnamese, French not so much. You know how fussy kids can be. It was like going on holiday without going on a plane…'

His dark eyes started to mist over.

‘We'd always share a dessert, three-ways. Just the three of…'

Michael was cut off by a god-awful bang from the other side of the restaurant.

‘Quick quick, Mr Dave! You need to help!' Sid flung me around from the huddle Michael and I had formed. He was out of breath.

‘What's going on?' I'd ignore the Mr Dave. Like Michael said, maybe names weren't important.

‘It's Spider. He's just showed his knob to an old lady. She fainted and now the chef's got him in a headlock!'

What was the saying? You could take a tramp to water, but you couldn't force him to keep his dick in his pants. This situation called for some crisis comms of the highest order.

Chapter 24

‘Why?'

‘Because some people don't eat meat all the time…'

‘Why?'

‘Because some people don't want to…'

‘Why?'

‘Because some people think it's wrong to eat animals…'

‘Why?'

‘Because they have faces and feelings…'

‘Why?'

‘Where the hell is your mother?!'

I was sat at a sticky table in a Wacky Warehouse with a 5-year-old walking, talking
Jeopardy!
game show. Now, I hadn't turned all Humbert Humbert. Don't fret. Instead I was meeting up with Deborah. And she'd brought a date. The road to redemption was beset on all sides by inequity.

And the content of the conversation wasn't revealing a new-found vegetarianism. Fuck that. I'd knocked the fags and booze on the head, there's no way chicken and chops were joining the list of banned substances. Rather, I'd chosen a vegetarian pasta dish from a menu characterised by transfats. Okay, I'd often eat at the best joints on the block, but my bugle intake barely left an appetite and last time I checked squashed grapes didn't count towards your five-a-day. So now, on occasion, I'd swerve the sow in favour of a vitamin-filled veggie feast. Fortunately I didn't always have to explain my decision to the Junior Spanish inquisition.

So Deborah. Debs. Debbie.
Deborah
. She came post-German lessons with Laura Stanton, post-coat rape by Mrs Jenkins, post-ruined trainers by the virginal shop assistant and pre- …well, pre-a suitcase full of one-nighters I couldn't remember the name of. Our love, and it had been love – or at least it had
seemed
like love at the time – had been markedly different from those other conquests. We were away from home for the first time. Anything felt possible and we knew all the answers. Why wouldn't we? We were eighteen and the apron umbilical had been snipped. Our only shackles were irregular Shakespeare seminars, inadequate student loan funds and a rudimentary working knowledge of Sanskrit sex manuals.

Deborah became the sticking plaster to the wounds inflicted (and in the case of Trisha, opened all over me) by my early fumblings into the carnal arena. She had deep green eyes and long flaxen hair a bit like, and I'm only thinking this now and don't take it the wrong way, a Labrador. Now, I'm not saying she was a dog, far from it, but in the early days the energy with which she bounced around my being was up there with the best in show. And her tongue wagged out of her mouth just as much.

Every teenage boy knew that a blonde was the prize stag, the arm candy that'd draw envious eyes from lorry drivers and lecturers wherever you walked. The hair shone like a spilt halo. A sandy sheen overrode facial disappointments that brunettes just couldn't get away with, turning 6's into 7's and sometimes 7's into 8.5's. In the case of Deborah (Debs), it was a mole on her chin. Not a big mole, but a mole all the same. If she had brown hair, bullies would have whispered ‘gravy face' behind her back. Bisto granules would have been thrown. But being blonde deflected attention away. It was always like that. Shut your eyes and imagine Marilyn Monroe with mousy hair. Go on. Just a plump brass, isn't she?

If I went to the movies with a girl, I knew I was never going to be with them long enough for the feature to come out on DVD. It was different with Debs. I knew I liked her the first time I gave her the good egg at breakfast. I never could pull off two clean yolks. For a while there, Debs always got the virgin yellow.