“Surprisingly uplifting,” said Danny.
“Then I guess I’m better at lying than I thought,” said Krystal. She gave him a wink. “Anyway, watch and learn. I’ve got a routine that I think might do the trick.”
The walls began to shake as Krystal pressed play on the stereo. She walked into the middle of the room and stood facing the mirror, rocking her head from side to side and shaking her arms like a boxer readying to rumble. The music grew louder as it built towards a crescendo, and when the beat eventually dropped, so too did all of Danny’s expectations of ever getting his hands on that prize money. He watched Krystal flit across the floorboards with such agility that the wood barely creaked because her feet barely touched it, and when they did they fell like rain, somehow landing in several places almost simultaneously. She moved with the grace of a figure skater and the confidence of a free climber, the attitude of a rock star and the freedom of someone who followed nothing except the music. As the beat sped up towards a second crescendo she began to dance so fast that the lights started to flicker, perhaps because Fanny had forgotten to pay the electricity bill or perhaps, as Danny suspected, because Krystal’s impossibly vigorous performance was somehow draining all the power from the neighborhood. Even when the music had finished and Krystal was no longer moving, Danny had the strange sensation that the room was still in motion, as if her body had generated a surplus of energy that was now spinning wildly around the studio in search of a way out.
“So?” she said. “What do you think?” She’d barely broken a sweat, but Danny’s forehead was glistening.
“I think you’re right. I’m never going to win this competition.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“No, I didn’t like it,” he said. “I loved it. You were incredible. But that’s just the problem. There’s no way I can learn all of that in three weeks.”
“Not with that attitude, you won’t,” she said.
“Can’t we do something easier?”
“You can do whatever you want, Danny. You can go out on that stage and fart ‘The Blue Danube’ through a rolled-up newspaper for all I care. It’s not me that’s going to get smashed into cat litter if you lose.”
Danny stared at his reflection and tried to see anything but a panda facing extinction.
“You really think I can do this?” he said.
“We’ll never know until you stop bitching and start dancing, will we?”
So that’s what they did for the next three hours, and that’s what they did every day that week. They worked from eight till eleven, after which time Krystal had to start work and Danny had to go to the park where he’d dance until the late afternoon before returning home exhausted. Even then, after Will had gone to bed, he’d quietly go over that day’s lesson, tiptoeing through the various moves that Krystal had taught him in the kitchen while he tried not to crash into anything. He downloaded the song she’d picked, an aggressive piece of electronica that sounded like it came from Guantánamo’s Greatest Hits. He added the track to his iPod and reluctantly listened to it wherever he went, tapping out the rhythm on his knees, the table, the seat of the bus, and any other surface he could find until he started to learn the structure by heart. Danny also included the song on his park playlist so he could practice while working, but the music seemed to repel a number of demographics (the middle-aged, the elderly, the people held without charge for terrorism-related offenses) and attract certain others that he didn’t particularly want to attract, like the gang of teenagers who forced him to pose for several humiliating selfies before reimbursing him with his own money that they’d taken as collateral. He would have let them keep it had it happened a few weeks previously; but unlike then, when his lunchbox seemed to be nothing more than a storage area for beer caps, buttons, chocolate limes, and pocket fluff, Danny was making more money than ever. Even though he was still several hundred pounds short of what he needed to pay Reg, he tried not to think about that and instead did his best to clear his mind of everything except for the upcoming contest.
CHAPTER 21
Saggy sun worshippers sizzled in deck chairs while children played chicken with the waves or poked around in crab holes. Seagulls pecked at Styrofoam trays stained red and yellow with ketchup and curry sauce. Loutish youths swigged beer from cans and jeered at people beneath the flapping shadows of the flags that flew from the bright white turrets of Brighton Pier. Halfway along the promenade stood a noisy games arcade where Danny and Will were busy beating the hell out of each other, their eyes darting left and right as they followed the two fighters who were leaping about the screen in front of them. Will looked focused. Danny looked perplexed. Both were hammering the buttons on the console, but only Will seemed to know which ones he was hammering and why.
“Okay,” said Danny. “Just. Hold on. If I. Wait a. There! Ha! Kick! Again. Again!”
He jerked the joystick left and right and mashed the buttons with his fist. His fighter threw out a combo of moves that looked impressive but achieved nothing. Will retaliated with a flurry of violence that left Danny’s fighter bloodied and immobilized. A sinister voice-over implored him to finish the job.
“Is that it?” said Danny. “It’s over? Again?”
Will nodded. Danny sighed.
“Go on, then, put me out of my misery.”
Will hunched over the console and grinned like a deer with a trucker in his headlights as he rapidly wiggled the joystick and jabbed several buttons in sequence. His fighter hit Danny with a brutal uppercut that took his head clean off his shoulders and sent it bouncing down a ravine.
“Happy now?”
Will nodded, clearly proud of himself.
“Come on, I think I’ve been decapitated enough for one day.”
* * *
Getting to Brighton hadn’t been easy. The journey itself had been simple enough but the planning had been somewhat trickier. Ever since Will had told the panda about Liz taking him to the beach, Danny had been trying to figure out how he could propose a trip without Will getting suspicious. He’d already become an overnight pancake guru and Thomas the Tank Engine assassin, and he was afraid that Will would connect the dots if he suddenly suggested a trip to Brighton. In the end, it was Mo who saved the day. His parents had dragged him to Clacton-on-Sea to visit relatives for the weekend and Will was left with nothing to do, so Danny had proposed their own trip to the seaside and Will had eagerly accepted.
They weaved their way through the various machines in search of another game. Danny kept his eye out for one in particular, a ramshackle penny pusher that was already an antique the last time he’d seen it almost thirteen years ago. He knew it was probably long gone by now, broken down for scrap or languishing on eBay because nobody could afford to pay the shipping on a machine that weighed the same as a pregnant cow—but there it was, hiding in the corner, repelling the latest of a lifetime of assaults as two young boys tried to make it spill with a series of hip shunts and body checks.
Danny smiled when he saw it, recalling his first official date with Liz when the two of them jumped on the train without paying and spent the journey to Brighton locked in the toilet while Liz pretended to be an old lady suffering from alternating bouts of food poisoning and motion sickness whenever the conductor pounded on the door. They spent the day shoplifting from joke shops, being expelled from liquor stores, throwing chips near unsuspecting people so seagulls would attack them, and roaming the very same games arcade that he and Will were now roaming. Danny had also attempted to defeat the penny pusher via underhand means, not to get the money itself (that was a secondary objective), but to demonstrate to Liz how strong he was. All he succeeded in demonstrating, however, was that fifty kilos of skin and bones were no match for a half-ton machine, although he did at least manage to trigger the alarm, something he felt perversely proud of until he saw the security guard lumbering towards him. Bolting for the exit and realizing Liz wasn’t with him, Danny ran back and grabbed her before they burst thr
ough the doors and escaped together down the pier. That was the first time they ever held hands, and they didn’t let go for the rest of the day.
He traced his palm with his fingertips as he tried to imagine her hand in his, but before the sensation returned to him, Will thumped him in the arm and pointed at something nearby. Danny followed his finger and saw that Will was challenging him to a dancing game. He smiled.
“You’re on.”
They both stood on the dance mat and faced the screen, where two characters with multicolored hair and oversize features were waiting to guide them through the game.
“You know,” said Danny, “I think it’s only fair to tell you that I’m something of a master on the dance floor, so if you want to chicken out, now’s your chance.”
Will looked at him the way a bouncer looks at a drunk person who’s trying to convince them they’re sober despite not wearing any trousers.
“Suit yourself,” said Danny, grinning like he’d already won. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The game commenced and they started to dance, moving in time with the characters on the screen. The moves were basic at first, the types of maneuvers that Danny would have struggled to pull off just a couple of weeks ago yet now found tediously simple, but they soon became more complex as the characters danced with ever-increasing speed. He missed a few steps and dropped a few points but shrugged it off, certain he was still on course to reap his revenge for all of those earlier beheadings, until he looked at the other side of the screen and saw that his son hadn’t missed a single beat. Danny redoubled his efforts, but the harder he tried, the more mistakes he made and the more points he lost, while Will’s scoreboard continued to skyrocket. The longer the game dragged on, the more uncoordinated Danny became as he stopped paying attention to his own digital dance coach and focused instead on Will’s flawless footwork. A crowd formed around them as accolades started flashing up, all of them for Will (Masterful! Genius! Godlike!), who didn’t seem to notice that Danny had already conceded defeat. Nor did he notice the crowd around him until the game finally came to an end and everybody cheered, Danny loudest of all as he proudly watched his son, amazed by his skills and stunned by the contrast between the boy he thought he knew and the confident, lively, happy boy in front of him.
* * *
Danny grimaced as he watched an old man in the corner of the café lick not just his fingertip but everything up to the second knuckle every time he turned the page of his newspaper. Another, older man dozed upright beside his wife, who was delicately unwrapping a mint as if she were defusing a bomb. Above them fishing nets dangled from the ceiling like giant cobwebs, and actual cobwebs hung from the fishing nets as well as from the life rings, wooden boat wheels, and other nautical-themed décor. The place looked more like a boat ready for the breaker’s yard than the Jolly Cabin it purported to be.
“You’ve played that dancing game before?” asked Danny across the table.
Will shook his head and took a slurp of his Coke.
“Then where did you learn to dance like that?”
Will shrugged. He fished an ice cube from the glass with a spoon and popped it into his mouth.
“Well, you’re a natural, mate. You must get it from your mum. You certainly don’t get it from me anyway.”
Will smiled and crunched the ice cube between his teeth.
Danny looked around the room. “You know, me and your mum came to this café on our very first date?”
Will frowned and looked around as if the café had suddenly materialized around him.
“Nothing’s changed by the looks of it. Even the tablecloths are the same.”
Will peeled his elbows from the sticky laminate.
“Think he was here then too,” said Danny, tilting his head towards the man asleep at the next table.
Will smiled.
“I wanted to take her somewhere nice, but neither of us had any money. Well, I had a few quid but I’d lost it all trying to win something from one of those grabber machines.” Danny made a claw with his hand and lowered it onto Will’s head. “You know that battered old teddy bear in your bedroom? The one that Mum gave you? I won that for her. It probably cost me ten times more than it would have cost to buy in a shop, but it got me a kiss at least.”
Will looked like he’d just seen a pigeon get hit by a truck, not fatally but enough to leave it mangled by the roadside.
“Too much information?” said Danny.
Will nodded emphatically.
“Sorry about that.” Danny took a sip of Coke. “You might not know this, but your mum knew all about you before you were even born.”
Will frowned as he tried to make sense of what Danny had just said.
“It’s true. She told me everything, right there at that table thirteen years ago.” He pointed to a vacant table in the corner.
Will turned to look.
“We were chatting about stuff, just getting to know each other, you know? Favorite colors, favorite films, favorite ways to upset our teachers, that sort of thing. At some point she asked if I ever wanted kids, which I wasn’t really expecting. I mean, it’s a pretty serious question for a fifteen-year-old, right? She just wanted to see how I’d react, but I didn’t know that at the time. She always liked to mess with people, didn’t she?” Will nodded. “Remember when she told that Jehovah’s Witness she was a devil worshipper?”
Will laughed. He drew a circle on his forehead with his finger.
“That’s right, she even drew a pentagram on her forehead. Poor guy didn’t know what to say. We never saw him again, though, did we? Anyway, so she asks if I want kids, and I say yes. I hadn’t given it much thought, but I figured that was probably what she wanted to hear. Then I asked her the same question, and she nodded and said one word. You know what she said?”
Will shook his head. He leaned forward without touching the tablecloth.
“William. That’s what she said. I didn’t know what she meant so I asked her to explain, and she said, ‘That’s his name. William.’ And then she went on to describe everything about you as if you already existed—as if you were sitting right there with us at the table. Blond hair, blue eyes, big feet, handsome as hell. She even knew you’d have a birthmark on your arm.”
Will admired his birthmark as if it weren’t a natural phenomenon but a gift his mother had given to him.
“Crazy, right? I laughed when she said it, but I stopped when I saw how serious she was. You know that look she gets. Anyway, you arrived a couple of years later, and you were everything your mum said you’d be, but even more handsome, of course. It was the most amazing thing. It was like you’d always been a part of her, right from the beginning, you know? And so even though she’s not here anymore, she’s not gone really, because now she’s a part of you. She’s in your smile, she’s in your eyes, she’s in the way you always used to pronounce the silent l in salmon. I see her every time you hold your toothbrush with your little finger sticking out like the queen when she’s drinking her tea. I see her when you pout in your sleep like you’re being told off in your dreams. I see her whenever you use your knife and fork like a rightie, even though you’re left-handed, and I definitely saw her when you were tearing up that dance floor back there. I see her every time I look at you, mate, and that’s why I could never, ever forget your mum. Because as long as you’re here, she’ll always be here too, you know?”
Will nodded slowly, his eyes so glassy that Danny could see his own reflection in them. He took some napkins from the dispenser as the waitress arrived to clear their plates.
“Food that bad, was it?” she joked.
“He’s just got something in his eye,” said Danny, winking at Will. “Want to grab some ice cream on the promenade?”
Will’s face brightened at the mention of ice cream.
“Thought you might.” Danny downed his Coke and returned his wallet to his pocket. “Come on, let’s—uuurrrp!” He slapped his palm over his mouth, but the burp had
already escaped. Will burst out laughing.
“Sorry about that,” said Danny, his face turning redder than the plastic lobster trapped in the fishing net above him. “How embarrassing. Come on, let’s—”
“Uuurrrp!”
Danny looked up to find Will grinning mischievously.
“That’s not funny, Will.”
Will’s grin faltered at the sound of Danny’s Dad Voice.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to burp louder than your father?” said Danny. He let rip with another burp, this one deliberate. Will giggled and did the same, and Danny responded with a belch so loud that it woke the old man asleep at the next table.
“Sorry,” said Danny, raising a hand in apology. “It’s the Coke. It’s very gassy.” He rubbed his chest for emphasis and tried to keep a straight face, but he burst into laughter the moment he saw Will sniggering at him from across the table. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER 22
He wasn’t sure when it had happened exactly, but as Danny took a bow and thanked the crowd for their time, their applause, and, most importantly, their money, it occurred to him that he had, at some point since purchasing the panda suit, started to enjoy his newfound profession. He was commanding bigger crowds than ever before and he was making more money than anybody else in the park. He was still putting every ounce of energy into his performances, and he was still taking a sweat-soaked costume home every night, but it no longer felt like work because it no longer felt like a chore. He’d spent his entire adult life laboring on building sites without even the slightest recognition for a job well done. He’d spent so many years taking orders from people who couldn’t order a pizza without screwing it up. He’d seen more than one colleague get seriously injured and each time wondered if he’d be next, especially during the winter when everybody’s minds were as numb as their hands and accidents became routine. And now here he was, being applauded and cheered by scores of people for dancing in a park, without anybody telling him what to do or how to do it (apart from Krystal), where the only real threat to his well-being came from children trying to hug him and inadvertently head-butting him in the testicles.
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