Cerberus Is looking for his www.lostdawn.co.uk
Registered: Mar 2003 Posts: 3952 - Threads: 317 Location: Park Royal
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I was skimming through my files and remember this story I started a few years ago....I had written quite a lot of passages and below is a sample....lots of editing to do but really want to attempt something - managed 10,000 words in a weekend....just need to come up with the straight story style structure rather than cobble together these incidencies...
has anyone attempting a book, short story or in fact got anything published?
Chapter 2
Cavaliers of the Soho Light Lunch
THURSDAY
1:30pm – Soho London – Office of Davidson & Davidson Associates
Here we are and I am feeling tickety-boo. After securing another Friday off I am just hours away from kicking off my weekend in style. I am sitting in The Nelly on Dean Street drinking a couple of pints with the guy from IT. We are waiting patiently for our man from Havana, Cuba, or wherever the fuck we like to imagine he’s from to come drop off some ‘You know what’ so we may conclude the few hours of our working day in style.
My man in IT, Iain, has just whipped me at pool. It doesn’t surprise me – he is superb at all pub games. A glimpse perhaps of a misspent youth. Iain was trapped in the back office of my dark and dreary paper company along with the mail. He will have the last laugh however as the senior partners will soon realise how important computers really are to the industry and elevate his pay scale from post attendant to IT consultant. That day is yet to come however
While I curse the worn baize of the pool table, Del, our man, rocks up.
He is small but athletic in frame and dressed as most cycle couriers are – rejects from the Tour De France and trying to out do each other in the sponsored shirt stakes. He is not some Columbian drugs barren after all, but a twitchy ‘Saffa’ who is on his two year work visa who once landing in London realised just cycle couriering alone is not going to pay the rent of a London landlord.
Given those circumstances, and as he is already delivering letters, CD’s and film reels adding hard drugs to his dispatch bag in a way is entrepreneurial and damn right efficient. He should be getting awards for this business insight. First class all the way baby.
I have met Del loads but he still eyes me sceptically. It is as if he expects at any moment for me to whip out a radio and call in an armed response unit as we take this Pablo Escobar framed figure down and send him to Guantanamo Bay. I buy him a pint and munch into my pork scratchings.
Iain, the IT guy, knowing the score and as not to seem like some paid heavy sidles off to the ‘Only Fools and & Horses’ fruit machine and starts ploughing coins into it. Me and Del sit and embark into surreal dialogue.
“You alright”, I say
“Ya Mate, fuckin sweet”, flinch, twitch, “fuckin right mate yeah no problems” he stutters. Wide eyes and nostrils flared.
“So we are sweet then yeah”, I reply.
“Yeah no worries bro, no worries bro” He replies.
I think I am getting no where when I feel under the table his hand on my knee. It slides up my leg quickly and firmly. Fuck. Have I misread this situation? Is this guy for real? I thought this was a drug deal not a date.
He stares me hard in the eye and I soon realise he is handing me a cigarette packet under the table.
I am spared a moment of embarrassment as I realise this subtle transaction. Express delivered without the need of a signature. I squirrel the packet away into my thigh pocket of my combat trousers - wiser to the ways of ‘this’ world.
We both relax instantly.
“Thanks dude, same as before?” I ask eyeing our empty glasses.
During this transaction we had both nervously necked our pints like a pair of inexperienced virgins about to go fumbling in the dark. I begin to sift through a few notes in my wallet as discreetly as possible.
I gather my thoughts and stroll to the bar calculating the price of the new contents of my trouser pocket and if I have enough to get us all a drink. I’m a bit short.
Iain gets a half pint. Fuck him; I did all the risky business.
But this is the irony.
I am a nice guy. I’ll drink the half; Iain will get the pint because that’s how it works when you are organising drugs for your friends. You might as well pay them to take them off you. I return to our corner table.
Del sips his second drink now. Calmer now the dodgy business has concluded and I am the one carrying the potential three year stretch in Wandsworth in my pocket and he isn’t. This realisation dawns on me, briefly. It is despatched along with the foam on my Stella.
The file in my mind which reads, “Personal invoices”, has just received a healthy deposit into the Bank of Guilt.
“What are you up to this weekend then bro, why my lunch time visit?” Del pipes up.
“Raving”, I retort, “usual shenanigans”.
Del looks as me hopefully.
“Where exactly is this party? I am around a bit here and there. Maybe I could drop by. Are you going to be on your phone?” He asks in his curt and staccato South African accent.
Careful Jimmy boy, you are on tricky ground I think to myself.
Now do I out rightly say ‘look mate it isn’t gonna’ happen – I feel uncomfortable as it is meeting you - let alone introduce you to my friends. “Hey guys this is my dealer. He sells good shit but beware if he is busted by the old bill and your within 100 yards of him you’ll be singing ‘Jail House Blues’ and taking midnight booty calls from a man who dresses like a woman and calls you his “bitch” for the next twenty years”.
Or maybe he is lonely. I mean he spends all week working hard - supplying the good stuff to the party people. Is he envious that he isn’t getting a little partying for himself? Or heaven forbid he actually likes me. The customer. The man who supports his cause week in week out and buys him a pint for the trouble.
“I better make this the last; I still have a little work to do this afternoon”. I despatch the drink.
Courier style right back at you Del.
“I’ll call you”, I say, gesturing with a hand signal and picking up my brick like mobile phone. I grab Iain on the way out. He now has a handful of coins from the fruit machine.
“Did it go alright? Have you got the stuff?” Iain impatiently asks.
“Too fuckin’ right”, I say.
Cavaliers of the Soho light lunch. Back to the office. Bosh a cheeky line in the office of IT guys room. It had been a stressful lunch
We sit amongst the parcel sacks which occupy Iain’s room for the rest of the afternoon. Job done. The package delivered. High as kites.
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