alittlepoison

Jocas decided against the eggs. He was sitting with Harvey Q in the cheap half of Rojo’s 24/7. The electricity was down, and Sally the Waitress had furnished each table with a guttering candle stump; occasionally cars passed on the road outside and threw long, shuddering shadows against the walls.

When this happened Harvey Q would glance around the room at the assorted clientele, catch the eyes of two or three other people doing the same, and nervously return his gaze to the noodle bowl that lay, empty, before him. A large, flesh-bound man with an unsuccessful moustache and a squint in his right eye, he fiddled distractedly with an aluminium chopstick and waited for Jocas to finish with the menu. There was a crash and a roar of drunken laughter from behind the velvet curtain. A couple of cheap-half diners turned their heads as if disturbed from sleep, and then went back to their reveries.

‘No, definitely not eggs,’ said Jocas at length, expelling a long stream of smoke from his nose.

‘There’s fresh crabsticks on the board today,’ suggested Harvey Q, ‘if the rich half doesn’t want em first.’

‘Nothing that lives in the sea, no chance. There’s something unnatural - at least a man once told me that. Said all sea-life evolved from spores came off a meteorite in dinosaur times. He’d only eat things with lungs. Advised me never to touch - what else they got? And I don’t want eggs.’

‘Are you a vegan, Jocas?’ asked Harvey Q. This was a word he’d learnt recently, from a newspaper report about a holy-man they’d smoked out of a cave in the cliffs above the harbour. He had a beard down to his waist and wore a robe made out of cobwebs; he said he was a vegan and had been living there for sixteen years. According to the report he would be interrogated, deloused and then deported. The police needed the cave for security purposes.

‘You eating? Take your order?’ asked Sally the Waitress, appearing suddenly at the table. It wasn’t possible to see her face in the weak light of the candle, only the straggly mass of her hair against the darkness. She carried with her a faint, elusive scent that Harvey Q couldn’t quite define, something between almond and oranges, which gave his heavy body a strangely sad sensation. Bracelets clattered on her wrist as she brushed a frond of hair away from her eyes. More fronds immediately fell to replace it.

‘Yes,’ said Jocas without looking at her, ‘for me a plate of fried yam. Sweet chilli sauce, mayonnaise. And bacon, crisped, just to prove I’m not -I’d like it thin-sliced, and make sure it’s evenly fried. I don’t like undercooked - a basket of bread on the side, forget about the butter.’

‘You as well?’ asked Sally, gesturing at Harvey Q, ‘you done eating, or want more?’

‘Noodles again,’ said Harvey Q, pushing his empty bowl towards her. He had already eaten two bowls, waiting for Jocas to arrive; nervousness made him hungry, and he wanted something to do with his hands. Besides, he still needed more practice with the chopsticks.

‘More noodles, okay,’ said Sally, ignoring the empty bowl. ‘You want drinks? You got to have drinks. Beers, wine.’

‘Beers,’ said Jocas. ‘What you got? Sanhauser? Feusler?’

‘No Sanhauser. Feusler’s all gone to the rich half. There’s some party in there tonight, all drinking.’ Sudden laughter erupted from behind the velvet curtain, accompanied by wild applause. A woman shrieked, and the laughter mounted in volume. ‘Only thing left in here is Prego. Rojo gets em cheap, off the shipyard.’

‘Two Pregos, then. If that’s all we can - four Pregos, the stuff’s so watered down. And give us another candle, this one’s almost drowned itself.’

Sally turned, and Harvey Q could have sworn she produced one from somewhere inside her hair, but it was too dark to be sure about anything. She pressed the new candle down on the melted stub of the first, spilling a long finger of wax across the table. Jocas sparked a match. Sally noted down the order on the palm of her hand and then departed.

‘So what about it then, Jocas?’ asked Harvey Q after Jocas had lit another of his thin cigarillos, leaning close to the candle so that his face was illuminated from below. ‘The money’s here. All I could get. You want it now?’ He was anxious and impatient to get things done. He had been waiting half the night in this place already, and waiting made him nervous. The seats were hard and uncomfortable; his large backside had been numb for half an hour.

‘Not until we get some food,’ said Jocas. He seemed vaguely hurt by the suggestion. ‘Business is worse than liquor on an empty stomach. A man once told me that - gives you pains unless you got something to soak it up. Business produces lactic acid, see, same as you get from running. Bread’s best. You see I ordered bread? Lactic acid, sure, probably explains a lot about - just take a look behind that curtain. Besides, Harvey, we must drink each other’s health. You forgetting the importance of that?’

Harvey Q smiled weakly and shifted uncomfortably on his chair. His forehead felt very hot. He stuck his right hand down inside the pocket of his tattered brown jacket and felt around; with difficulty, his thick fingers managed to unscrew the lid of the little bottle and take out two pills, which he transferred to his mouth under the clumsy pretext of a cough. He held the pills under his tongue until they started to fizz and then swallowed them with saliva. Jocas went on smoking.

Pages: 1 2