The Life and Loves of Gringo Greene (50 page)

   ‘Yeah babe, nice to see you, thanks,’ he muttered, but she didn’t hear him because she was already half way down the first flight of stairs, job done so far as she as concerned.

   He switched off the light but didn’t immediately fall asleep. Sometimes life has a way of keeping you awake when you least expect it. He thought about his mother, the funeral, her laughter, and the warmth that he would never feel again, her tenderness and caring, and everything that good mothers do so well, now gone forever, never to be experienced again. Such a precious resource lost to dust. We are all made of dust. Yeah, maybe, but it didn’t seem right somehow, that anything so valuable could be snatched away in an instant in that way. He didn’t understand it, nor ever would.

  
I miss you, mum.

   He thought of his crotchety father and vowed that when he himself grew old he would never become bad tempered too. But men have vowed such things since men have walked upon the face of the earth, and they rarely achieve it. 

   He thought of Glen and wondered where she was, and who she was with, and what she was doing at that precise moment, and that made him feel quite ill. He thought of Linda. It had been good of her to come round. She had risen somewhat in his estimation, but there was still something missing that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It was as if when she was with him, she was still partly back at the flat, present but absent at the same time, a weird feeling that brought some satisfaction, but never total.

   She was pretty and attractive, not always the same thing, that was undeniable, she was highly qualified and caring, and desirable to men. He had seen the way guys stared at her, and not just the frustrated old fool peering down her dress in the Jackdaw. She possessed a sensuous body and a decent dress sense, but undeniably something was missing. He couldn’t quite figure it out, yet another womanly conundrum to be solved, as he fell into a fitful sleep, and disturbing dreams that featured as the main picture, his mother calling from the far side of a flooding and rock strewn river, Gringo suddenly struck dumb, and impotent.  

He returned to work the following Monday and everyone looked at him sorrowfully, whilst displaying pursed lips and furrowed brows, as if one of his ears had been cut off. It was Melanie, always Melanie, who showed him real tenderness, when she came to him at lunchtime and kissed him on the top of his head.

   ‘So sorry,’ she said. ‘If there’s anything I can do.’

  
If there’s anything I can do.

  
He fixed her with his eyes and smiled and said: ‘Well now that you mention it…’

   ‘Not that!’ she said, grinning. ‘Off limits, sorry,’ and she pushed him playfully in the chest, and turned and left him to his steel rods reports, or whatever it was he was so engrossed in.

   He couldn’t help but remember her naked on his bed, opening her legs, and he couldn’t help considering that when it came to raw sex, to lasciviousness, Melanie knocked Linda into a cocked hat. Melanie 6 Linda 1, he read out an imaginary football result, just as Rebecca was walking by.

   ‘Sorry, Gringo?’ she said, sticking her head into his office. ‘Did you say something?’

   ‘Come in. Sit down. How are you?’

   She sat in the chair and smiled and crossed her legs revealing far more flesh than she ought.

   ‘So sorry to hear about your mother, Gringo.’

   ‘Thanks, Rebecca. These things happen.’

   ‘Was it sudden?’

   ‘Very.’

   ‘Must have been quite a shock.’

   ‘It was, yeah, do you mind if we talk about something else.’

   ‘Sure, sorry.’

   ‘How’s whatshisname from MBD’s.’

   ‘He’s a two timing bastard and I never want to see him again!’ and her bottom lip extended as she cursed her former, boyfriend, lover, what exactly? It was none of Gringo’s business, and yet… and yet… nineteen to thirty-four wasn’t a totally unbridgeable age gap, was it? And if the office sex bomb was currently off limits, and the apprentice sex bomb still appeared willing, well it would be rude not to show a modicum of interest, wouldn’t it?

   One of the young blokes, a trainee called Billy Drake stuck his head into the office and said: ‘Come on Becky, we’ll be late.’

   ‘We’re going for lunch,’ she said, apologetically.

   ‘Have fun.’

   She stood up and waved a dainty wave and let the guy take her arm and lead her away. Billy the kid still had time to flash a supercilious grin at Gringo as if to say,
Hard Luck Granddad
, as he tugged the pretty girl away, and then to top it all he shouted back over his shoulder, ‘Bad luck about your Ma!’

   Yes, it was, bad luck, like a dice falling on a five instead of a six, like being born poor instead of wealthy, or buying a salmon sandwich and biting into it to discover someone’s fobbed you off with fucking tuna fish, or growing the perfect pod of peas and opening it at the flower and veg show to find a sea of writhing maggots, yeah, bad luck indeed. The whole world is riddled with bad luck. The phone rang and Gringo grabbed it.

   ‘Reach for the sky, man!’

   He sure sounded back on form, and Gringo could do with a laugh.

   ‘Hi Paul.’

   ‘So sorry to hear about your mother.’

   ‘Yeah. Thanks, and thanks for the card as well.’

   ‘To tell you the truth that was Kay’s idea.’

   ‘Thought so. Women always look after things like that, and it’s just as well they do because the card industry would go belly up if it were left to us blokes.’

   ‘Too right man. Too right. Fancy a drink tonight?’

   ‘Yeah, I’m up for a swift one. How’s your little problem?’

   ‘Tell you later. 6.30 Naughton’s?’

   ‘I’ll be there.’   

   ‘See you then.’

It had been a dreadful day so far as Gringo was concerned, and he was happy to leave the office at ten past six and go and stand alone in the bar, staring at his pint. He hadn’t been in that semi-trancelike state for long when someone came up and stood beside him.

   ‘Hello, Gringo,’ the woman said warmly, ‘I haven’t seen you in ages.’

   He stood up straight and glanced at the redhead.

   ‘Hi Vicky, how’s things?’

   ‘I’m cool, but you sure look miserable. Missing Maria, are you?’

   ‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s not it.’

   ‘Are you going to buy me a drink or what?’

   Gringo nodded the barman over and glanced back at Vicky.

   ‘Vodka tonic,’ she said, smiling at the guy, and then, ‘Thanks, Gringo.’

   ‘So how is Maria anyway?’

   ‘She’s cool. Out with some guy tonight, though she won’t tell me who it is.’

   Gringo sniffed and took a pull on his pint.

   ‘So why are you so down in the dumps, Gringo?’

   ‘My mother died.’

   ‘No! Really? Does Maria know?’

   ‘Not that I know of.’

   ‘Do you want me to tell her?’

   ‘Not really.’

   ‘No wonder you look so awful.’

   Gringo wasn’t aware that he looked
awful
, and didn’t really appreciate the thought much, but the bubbly redhead was already talking again.

   ‘What you need is a bit of comforting, I can tell,’ and all of a sudden she was standing rather close to him.

   ‘You reckon?’

   ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You know I’ve always fancied you, Gringo, and if Maria isn’t interested any more, well, I am.’

   He smiled across at her, not that she was that far away. She wasn’t the prettiest girl in the city by any means, but neither was she repulsive, and free spare was free spare, and not to be so readily dismissed. He could do a lot worse, and often had. Eddie’s words came back to his mind.
Never ever close off an avenue. You never know when you might want to go there.
Gringo let out a grunt.

   ‘Why don’t we go out for a meal or something and then afterwards; well who knows what might happen,’ she said, linking her arm through his.

   ‘Can’t tonight, Vic, I have a meeting with a friend, he’ll be here in a minute.’

   ‘It’s not that long streak of misery guy?’

   ‘That’s the one, Paul, he’s a good bloke. You shouldn’t be so shit to him.’

   ‘I’m not! Not really, but you have to admit he does look pretty scary, especially when he’s peering out through those thick specs. One of the girls in the office called him
Insect Man
the other day, and that just about sums him up. He’s plain unnatural.’

   Even Gringo couldn’t resist a tiny laugh at that.

   Vicky grabbed her brown leather handbag and opened it in front of him, not worried in the least that he could see all her womanly things scattered about in there. Perhaps that was the point. She took out an expensive looking gold pen, snapped the bag shut, and reached over and grabbed his right hand. She pulled his jacket sleeve and shirt cuff up over his wrist and carefully wrote her mobile number on his hairy skin.

   ‘You give me a call,’ she said earnestly. ‘Any time you want, any time of the day or night, I mean it, Gringo, it doesn’t matter how late it is, you ring me and I’ll jump in a cab and come calling. You put my number in your little black book, or wherever you keep all your dirty little secrets. When you need some company, and you probably will at a time like this, you remember me, for I am the Queen of comfort.’

   She giggled at her own little sobriquet, and then opened her bag and slipped the pen away, and as she was doing that she noticed Paul coming through the door. He stood in the entrance and peered round as if he hadn’t spotted his friends who were standing almost in front of him.

   ‘Eh up,’ she said, ‘here comes the insect, I’m off, and don’t lose that number,’ and she pecked him on the side of the cheek, leaving her mark, and fled through the other door.

   Paul sidled up beside him and said: ‘Was that the ginger chick I saw you with?’

   ‘Yeah, she was just going.’

   ‘Was I seeing things or did she kiss you?’

   ‘I didn’t notice.’

   ‘You’re not giving her the doings too, are you, man?’

   ‘Not yet, I’m not,’ smirked Gringo to the big man, unable to bury even such a silly idea as that. ‘Want a pint?’

   Paul nodded to the beer and said: ‘You are one randy sod.’

   Gringo wouldn’t disagree. Don’t all men want to be seen as the
randy sod
to their colleagues and contemporaries? Of course they do. It isn’t all about dick size. Staying power and consistency were equally important.

   ‘She didn’t go because of me, did she?’

   ‘No,’ lied Gringo. ‘She’s meeting a friend.’

   ‘Oh, I get it; you’re seeing her later, eh?’

   ‘My lips are sealed,’ grinned Gringo, knowingly, and even Paul’s assumption that he was seeing her later might not totally be out of the question. ‘Why don’t we sit in the corner, there’s a quiet table over there, away from eyes and ears.’

   ‘Sure,’ said Paul, who rarely sat down in pubs. He never felt comfortable sitting, and Gringo could see why when he sat down. He was unable to put his knees beneath the table, his legs were bent and shaking and sticking up like some rusty crane, or a preying mantis on heat.
Insect Man
, thought Gringo, and he grinned to himself.

   ‘What is it?’

   ‘Nothing, just something Vicky said. How’s things with Kay?’

   ‘Good. We seem to have resolved our little differences.’

   ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Gringo, unwilling to push the matter further. If Paul didn’t want to tell him any more then that was fine by him.

   ‘You know I told you she didn’t like the light on?’

   ‘Yeah.’

   ‘And you said I should tie her to the bed and then put the light on regardless.’

   ‘Yeah.’

   ‘Well, that’s what I did.’

   ‘And she didn’t like it?’

   ‘She didn’t have any choice in the matter, did she,’ said Paul, glugging his drink. ‘The thing is, later on after I’d untied her, I fell asleep.’

   ‘So?’

   ‘When I came round the tables had been turned.’

   Gringo snorted. He could picture the scene, Insect Man trussed up like a rack of lamb. If only Vicky knew about that she’d have wet herself laughing.

   ‘But that’s not the worst of it.’

   ‘Go on.’

   ‘She went out to do the weekly shopping and left me alone.’

   Gringo sniggered.

   ‘And that’s not the worst bit either.’

   ‘Don’t tell me, the window cleaner called.’