Whereupon Tony, after delivering a well-pitched parting shot, for authenticity’s sake, would oh-so-reluctantly allow himself to be ushered from the scene.
In the event, he was practically walking up the heels of his victim – who still, believe it or not, continued to browse – and was beginning to wonder whether, to save face, he might actually have to make good on his threats, when a solid prod in the small of his back (oh-no-you-don’t!) halted him in his tracks.
‘Argh! What the f...?’
He spun around to confront his assailant and there, wielding her broom like a bayoneted rifle – and, make no mistake, she was prepared to use it again – stood Margaret the cleaner.
‘And if you think, son,’ she rasped, ‘that I’ll just stand here and let you batter this poor laddie to a pulp, on my good clean floor, you’ve got another think comin!’
Pabs was quick to swoop and (at least as far as he was concerned) rescue the situation (even if Coshy and Ricky seemed quite content to linger where they stood, waiting to see what might transpire). Slyly tapping his temple, by way of excusing his friend’s behaviour to this feisty little cleaner, he got in among the melee, and, laying a rational palm on each of Tony’s shoulders, quietly suggested that it might not be such a bad idea if they were to, eh, you know, em, leave now. Tony breathed an inaudible sigh of relief.
‘Aye, all right, ’ he said, before turning back to the boy. ‘You’re fuckin lucky your ma was here to save you this time, cunt! But if I ever see you’re face round here again you’re a fuckin dead man!’
Halfway up the aisle he glanced back at the blackboard propped against the desk. It read:
IN STORE TODAY
DRAKO!!!
SIGNINGnoCOPIES OF HIS
LOUSyDEBUT SINGLE
“DEBASER”
FROM 12.30pm
‘Cunts!’
21
That it had taken Billy at least three attempts to get his key in the door gave Tony ample time to compose himself. He threw himself onto the couch, covetously gathered up from the small table what was left of the drugs, stuffing them into his pockets, fumblingly re-lit a half-smoked joint he had fished from the ashtray and hurriedly tried out several different postures to find which one made him look the most nonchalant. He was sitting legs crossed with one arm resting on the couch back, taking a long, aristocratic draw on the joint when the door swung slowly open.
Immediately Dooly broke for freedom, and Billy, who stood wavering in the doorway, key in hand, reflexively bent to block his exit.
‘No you dzon,’ he slurred, the hard edges of his speech eroded by immoderate drinking. ‘No, no, no. No you dzon.’
His reaction, meanwhile, had revealed to Tony a second person standing in the stairwell, someone, as it were, waiting in the wings. Tony eyed this person quizzically, his expression verging on disgust. He knew that he knew him, he just couldn’t remember from where. He was even almost sure that for some long-forgotten reason they weren’t exactly the best of friends. He certainly looked, and dressed, like someone Tony should know.
He had his hands tucked into the pouch-pockets of a close-fitting, retro-style red tracksuit top – zipped all the way up to his chin – of the kind a few of the boys from the pub wore from time to time, but he definitely wasn’t one of them. And his short brown hair was cut in a fairly normal fashion, like that of many people around town, though maybe it was just a bit too meticulously disheveled. In fact, as Billy stumbled forward, coaxing Dooly back from the door, and more and more of this visitor was revealed, Tony began to feel that maybe everything about him was just a bit too meticulously disheveled, a bit too thoughtfully disarranged. His jeans, just ordinary jeans such as Tony himself might wear, were faded in all the right places, and they appeared to have been deliberately stressed at the knees. They were the perfect length too: that is to say a bit too long, so that the hems fell in exactly the right way over the tongues and laces of his trainers – TRAINERS! – which were still whiter than white. It was clear the effect aimed at – ‘streetwise’, ‘anti-fashion’, call it what you will – but he was too wholesome looking to pull it off and these clothes were like a costume on him. He looked as though he had just come from Wardrobe. He was too new, too…punctilious, too precise. And it was this about him, this precision understatement, that, in the space of an instant, led Tony to conclude that he wasn’t from around here, that he didn’t know him after all. Yet, somehow, shopping centre…? And then the penny dropped.
‘No, no, no. No you dzon. No, no, no.’
Catching Tony’s stunned look of recognition Billy was reminded of his guest, and with a nod of his head from one to the other, and back from the other to one, he casually made the obligatory introductions.
‘Tzony, Ryan. Ryan, Tzony,’ he said. ‘Come in, man. Shut the dzoor.’
And Ryan Watson, thee Ryan Watson – all the while surreptitiously appraising his audience (tough crowd) to help determine the exact shade of his performance – stepped inside, with, he hoped, just the right amount of confidence and humility to ensure a warm reception.
The condition of the room startled him, as it would almost anyone seeing it for the first time, but knowing full well that here, in this milieu, it was not the room that was exceptional, not the destruction nor the neglect, but his reaction to it, he knew just how to act. An off-the-cuff flippant remark was called for, something mildly sarcastic but well intentioned, well delivered, something that would serve the fourfold purpose of: one, concealing any apprehension he was now feeling; two, showing his hosts that he was capable of an off-the-cuff flippant remark; three, winning them over with its somewhat backhanded politeness; and four, hinting at his rock’n’roll lifestyle, which could only but enhance his standing. A split-second’s hesitation however upset his timing, and doubt set in, bedevilling the equation: what if just such a remark had the opposite effect? What if merely by making it he gave the lie to his casual demeanour and came across as less than sure of himself in these surroundings? That was the last thing he wanted, to appear ill at ease, or, for that matter, anything other than natural, in his element. Hmm. Tough call. How would a local react?
And so, for all his rapid calculating he was not a whit the wiser, when Billy fed him an opener, resolving his quandary.
‘It’s a wee bit untzidy,’ he said. ‘Try and just dzon’t notice it. That’s what we dzoo.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ retorted Ryan, in something like Mancunian. ‘I’ve left more than a few ‘otel rooms looking worse than this in me time. Ryan, Ryan Watson.’
He extended a hand for Tony to shake.
Tony, still stunned, mechanically extended one of his own in return, and was surprised to find that it was already shaking.
Billy dropped heavily into the armchair, letting his head fall laxly backwards.
‘And, eh, that’s Dzooly,’ he said.
Dooly was sniffing avidly at and around Ryan, salivating torrentially. But fame of course meant nothing to him and any resemblance between his lively curiosity and the excitable behaviour of a fan meeting his hero for the first time was purely superficial. He was just hungry, and this stranger was a possible source of food.
Ryan roughed him playfully, keeping him a good arms length from his clothes, but when the dog, perhaps sensing fear, started barking he sharply withdrew his hands. With his arms raised in mock surrender he steadily backed away, until he was pinned hard up against the front door, casting supplicating glances at his hosts, the one rapt spellbound, the other blissfully insensible.
‘HOWF! HOWFHOWF! HOWF!’
He was as far back as he could go.
‘HOWFHOWF! HOWFHOWFHOWF!’
He innocently displayed his empty palms.
‘HOWFHOWFHOWF! HOWF! HOWF!’
Billy finally raised his head.
‘Dzooly!’ he snapped. ‘Quiet! Relax, man. He’ll not eat you. Look, his tzail’s waggin. He’s only playin. What’s the matter? You dzon’t like dzogs?’
‘Funnily
enough,’ said Ryan, ‘I do. But for some reason they never...’
‘HOWF! HOWFHOWF!’
‘...they never seem to like me very much.’
‘Dzooly!’ snapped Billy again, this time with as much authority as he could muster. ‘Heel!’
He feebly snapped his fingers and pointed to the floor at his feet, and Dooly, after a somewhat circuitous skulk, flopped down with a huff between the armchair and the wall.
Using a cuff Ryan wiped what he could of the saliva from his jeans, and, after repositioning the hems and giving himself the once-over, nodded towards the cardboard figure in the far corner of the room.
‘Is that what I think it is?’ he asked.
Billy struggled forward and turned to look, leaning over the chair arm.
‘Couldz well be,’ he said, nodding. ‘Couldz well be.’
‘Mind if I take a look?’
‘Not atz all!’ said Billy with a be-my-guest gesture. ‘Be my guest. Just make yourself at home, eh?’
Tony watched agape as Ryan Watson, thee Ryan Watson, crossed the floor in front of him stepping carefully through the assorted litter.
‘Didz you feed him yet?’ asked Billy.
But Tony was miles away. The remainder of the joint, still smouldering, had dried onto his bottom lip and a thin column of ash drooped precariously from the end of it.
‘Didz you?’ pressed Billy.
'Who?’ said Tony distractedly, still stargazing.
The falling ash caught his eye and snapped him out of his reverie. He