Tom came round and dragged me off to The Fox for a drink and a pie at lunchtime.
We sat at our favourite table, by the window.
Not long afterwards, a tall someone sat down at the same table, uncomfortably close to Tom. 'Twas a gentleman of North African persuasion with an afro and curiously, a ginger goatee.
He balanced a needle thin roll up casually between lips, and stared out of the window intensely, which put us right off our stride, or rather a convo about who we estimated would have the best set of nipples, Mira Sorvino or Juliette Binoche.
After a moment, the gentleman of North African persuasion brought out a bus timetable and a biro and began to draw ever-decreasing circles, humming to himself, sipping occasionally from a glass of red wine.
Tom, lighting fresh cigarette despite still having one burning away in his mouth, tried to ignore him by telling me he'd read in a magazine that hi-fi racks could dramatically alter the sound of a hi-fi.
The strange gentleman of North African persuasion piped up, said he hadn’t heard about that and asked whether vegetable racks could alter the sound of vegetables?
If so, he’d buy one.
The strange gentleman of North African persuasion sat motionless, staring at both of us.
Tom and I stared back at him, waiting for him to shove off. When he didn't, I whispered to Tom whether he thought it might be a good idea to ask him to.
“No,” he whispered back.
The strange gentleman of North African persuasion leant forward, fixing me dead in the wrong eye.
“You wanna see The Man?”
“What?”
“What?” the strange gentleman of North African persuasion shot back.
“What?” I replied, furrowing my brow.
“What?” he shot back again, expression unchanged.
“What?” I replied, increasing the ferocity of my frown thinking three can play at this game.
It was getting us nowhere in a pink balloon.
I looked over at Tom. He now had squinty, midget’s eyes, fixed intently on the strange gentleman of North African persuasion, at once alive, darting about rapidly.
“We just want a little space, man,” he explained.
Now we had the gentleman of North African persuasion on the back foot, on the fucking ropes. “You’re making it sound like I’m crowding you out.”
“Well, you are.”
There was now intensity in Tom’s midget eyes, the likes of which I’d hadn't seen before...before last Wednesday, at around five of the o'clock.
I searched for example to muddy my point. It came to me. Heavenly music. Jagged guitars, funky beats and infectious tunes. Brutally basic, but interesting.
The strange gentleman of North African persuasion sat back. Told us The Man went by the name of H. He explained The Man was as a driven man. Being six foot five and well over twenty stone The Man was a really big fat man too. In his late forties, the strange gentleman of North African persuasion said. Possessed fists of steel, head the size of a watermelon, full of stories about his dazzling past in the shady underworld of crime.
When it came to all things against the law, said the gentleman of North African persuasion, The Man had seen and done it all. In fact, that’s what he wanted engraved on his tombstone.
I told the strange gentleman of North African persuasion that he was mistaken, we didn’t want to see The Man, we were just in for a swift pint and a pie each.
“Oh, I see” he said, realising his error, got up and went away.
