Angel City

by Mike Ripley

  ‘Biggest sellers are the beers by the neck, no glass,’ said Sam pushing behind me. ‘A few of the Vanilla Dykes go for white wine spritzers and the older GBs may hit the spirits later on.’

  ‘GBs?’ I queried as she thrust a lemon, a paring knife and a saucer at me.

  ‘Gender Benders. Start slicing.’

  I made a note to add that one to Duncan’s Irish driver joke.

  ‘And what about– ?’

  ‘Customer,’ hissed Dave. ‘Your end.’

  At the far end of the bar was a woman nervously puffing on a cigarette. She wore a huge, chunky-knit cardigan, which could possibly have housed a small family, but apart from that, looked perfectly normal.

  I approached and did the universal barman’s quizzical stare.

  I thought it best not to speak.

  ‘Southern Comfort and Malibu, please,’ she said politely.

  ‘Ice? Lemon?’ I risked.

  ‘Both, thank you.’ She puffed out a small smokescreen.

  I moved to the optics and made the drinks expertly, or so I thought, placing them in front of her with a flourish. ‘That’ll be–’

  I had even worked out the right price, but I never got a chance to tell her.

  ‘No! No!’

  Even in the disco lights, she’d gone pale. Then she drew on her cigarette violently, blew smoke at me and shook her head.

  Then she said, ‘No, no, no,’ turned on her heels and walked away.

  I sensed Sam at my side.

  ‘What? What did I do wrong?’

  She reached over and picked up the drinks.

  ‘In the same glass, you idiot.’

  She poured the Malibu into the Southern Comfort and took the empty glass away. Somebody shouted for a pint of lager and I turned to get that, remembering not to ask if they wanted a strawberry in it or anything. When I looked back, the full glass at the end of the bar had gone and the correct money stood in a small pile of coins.

  It was going to be one hell of a learning curve.

  Two and a half lager tops. Molson Dry, please. Three tonic waters, no ice, she’s cold enough. Beck’s. Two Sols, don’t forget the lime, though he doesn’t look like he knows where to put it. Two pints of lager, a dry sherry and a whisky and Lucozade. Bailey’s with ice. What do you mean you haven’t any Lucozade? Pils with the top off. So how much was the whisky without the Lucozade? Half a shandy. A grapeka – it’s vodka and grapefruit juice, don’t you know anything, you git? Quick, put a large gin in there while she’s not looking. Don’t you do Chardonnay? A Southern Comfort and a Malibu, please. Of course I want two glasses, you prawn!

  It was going rather well. But it couldn’t last.

  Dave sounded the alarm in a hiss of genuine panic. ‘Phasers on stun! Watch yourself, Roy, it’s Thelma and Louise.’

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but I had more sense than to stop and look. Avoiding eye contact had got me through the first hour and a half, but now the disco had given way to the karaoke and a procession of volunteers were queuing up to take the microphone and sing along to k d lang. Those not interested or, let’s face it, embarrassed by the amateur offerings, began to scramble for the seats as far away from the karaoke gear as possible. Two of them had found bar stools from somewhere and were staking a claim to the end of the bar where I’d had my first customer.

  I risked a glance at them while bending down to clean off an ashtray with a paint brush. One was a redhead, the other a blonde with blue streaks, the same blue as you get on a shirt when a fountain pen leaks. Both had it cropped to within a half-inch of the skull except for a comma-shaped lock over the left eye. The redhead wore large round glasses with red frames and the blonde had one gold stud in her left nostril.

  Nothing out of the ordinary there.

  ‘Better see what Iron Tits and Steel Arse want,’ hissed Sam. ‘I ain’t going near them. You’re on your own, kid.’

  ‘Hey, what’s ... ?’

  But there was no way I would get anything out of them except a view of the back of their heads.

  ‘Lousy service around here,’ somebody said loudly.

  ‘Men always give lousy service, darling, didn’t you know?’

  Action stations. Keep it civil.

  ‘Being served?’

  I didn’t say ‘girls’, I didn’t say ‘ladies’. I didn’t ask the redhead if she enjoyed eating lemons whole as surely nothing else could have put that expression on her face. I wanted to keep my job.

  ‘Two Rollicking Balls,’ said the redhead.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Deaf as well,’ said the blonde.

  They stared at me. Somewhere behind the lasers, the karaoke microphone changed hands and another song started. It didn’t help.

  ‘I asked for a pair of Rollicks,’ said the redhead.

  ‘I know what you said,’ I muttered quietly to myself. ‘I just don’t know which language we’re talking.’

  Sam got me out of it. She coughed loudly and I shot a glance over my shoulder, to catch her waggling a foot at one of the cold cabinets as she tried to hand two pints over the bar without spilling. Her foot was pointing to the cooler containing the imported beers selection.

  ‘Two Rolling Rocks coming right up,’ I announced.

  ‘The penny seems to have dropped,’ said the redhead.

  ‘A-fucking-mazing,’ said the blonde.

  I gave them their change and looked around desperately for some other customers. Where were they when you wanted them? Watching an overweight middle-aged woman in twin set and sensible shoes doing ‘My Way’. Sinatra has a lot to answer for.

  ‘You should go out and collect some glasses,’ Dave said with a grin.

  ‘Sod off.’

  That would have meant asking Thelma and Louise to remove their elbows from the bar flap so I could get out. And then asking them if I could come back in. No way. Not while they had bottles in their hands. I had no intention of even looking in their direction, but it soon became clear that I had been elected as target for tonight.

  ‘I don’t know why I ever bothered with men,’ said the redhead far too loudly. ‘They are universal wastes of space.’

  I edged my way up the bar looking for glasses to dry or olives to stone or anything. A woman loomed out of the light show and I was about to serve her when Dave muscled in front of me, elbowing me back down the bar.

  ‘The last man I had,’ the redhead was saying, ‘stripped off while I was making coffee in the kitchen. I wander in, balancing a cafetiere and two mugs, and there he is, but he’s still got his socks on! Would you believe it?’

  ‘So what did you do?’ asked the blonde as if she hadn’t heard it before.

  ‘I put the coffee down and looked at what he had on offer and said I didn’t realise it was so cold in here and offered to turn the heating up.’

  The blonde laughed.

  ‘Is that why he kept his socks on?’

  ‘It was the only thing he was getting on that night, I can tell you.’

  More hilarity.

  ‘And then, then’ – the redhead choked on her Rolling Rock – ‘he looks down and it starts to shrink before his very eyes! Talk about two onions stuck on a cocktail stick! And … and ... he has the nerve to say size isn’t important!’

  ‘Who told him that?’ the blonde hooted.

  Another man, I thought, but kept it to myself.

  ‘You know Simone?’ said the blonde.

  ‘All 16 stone of her?’ the redhead giggled.

  ‘Yes, and 15 of them are round her arse!’ The blonde gasped for breath. ‘Well, she told me – after she’d had a few – that she once picked up a man and tried to do it in a shop doorway!’

  ‘Go on, never!’

  ‘It’s true. The only trouble was he was as pissed as she was and ne
ither of them could go through the motions. She said it was like trying to put an oyster in a slot machine!’

  ‘Oi! Tinkerballs!’

  That was me.

  ‘More Rollerballs.’

  I flipped the tops off two more bottles and the redhead proffered a £5 note and a killer look, defying me to stare her out. I ducked her gaze, got her change and planted it on the bar in front of her, keeping my eyes on my trainers.

  ‘When I think of what I used to do because of men,’ she said to her partner. ‘Like worrying about my weight, for Christ’s sake. Every morning, first thing, on the bathroom scales. And an ounce or two over would bring on Toxic Shock syndrome.’

  ‘I hope you remembered to have a pee before you weighed yourself,’ said the blonde.

  ‘Have a pee? Jesus, I used to shave my legs before getting on!’

  A fingernail jabbed me in the arm. It was Dave wearing a cherubic smile that didn’t fool me one bit.

  ‘We’re running out of vodka. Nip into the other bar and ask April for a bottle.’

  ‘You do it.’

  ‘I’m busy and you’re the new boy and April doesn’t like disobedience.’

  I looked towards the danger zone. Thelma and Louise were draining their beers. I reached for two more as the redhead snapped her fingers at me.

  ‘I may be gone some time,’ I hissed at Dave.

  ‘I even used to shave my armpits in those days,’ the redhead started up again.

  I gave her her change and began to wipe the bar counter with a damp cloth. It’s an old trick perfected by bored barmen, as when you ask people to lift their glasses, most will take a drink before putting them down again. Most men will probably finish them. Consequently, you speed up the drinking rate and sell more.

  ‘You were worried about the weight of your underarm hair?’ asked the blonde, lifting her bottle. ‘Now that’s what I call paranoid.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ said the redhead. ‘You shaved there because men expected it. Don’t ask me why.’

  I said ‘Excuse me’ ever so politely and lifted the bar flap.

  They made no attempt to move their bar stools and I had a gap of about three inches to squeeze through.

  ‘Men are funny about body hair,’ said the redhead, and I was so close now I could smell the Rolling Rock on her breath.

  ‘It used to worry me a lot …’

  I let the bar flap descend behind me, as I eased between them.

  ‘I mean, what does one do’ – she was really loud in my ear now – ‘with unwanted pubic hair?’

  ‘Spit it out,’ I said, diving towards the door.

  ‘I know you’ve got your new job to go to at the pub, Angel,’ said Fenella sulkily. ‘But I think a proper lesson should be more than five minutes.’

  Was that all it had been? I’d smoked three cigarettes.

  ‘Setting off and parking are very important components of the driving test,’ I lectured her.

  ‘But I thought we might have made it out of our street.’

  Two lessons and she was hooked, raring to have a go at roundabouts, T-junctions, three-point turns. She had even bought a copy of the Highway Code without Lisabeth noticing and was secretly identifying road signs and already getting her knickers in a twist in case they asked her the one about the countdown markers approaching an unmanned level crossing without gates.

  ‘We’ll do more at the weekend,’ I promised as I locked the car and looked down the road to where Armstrong was parked.

  Fenella checked the entrance to Number Nine to make sure there was no sign of Lisabeth.

  ‘I said I was going to the library, so if she asks, say you gave me a lift, okay? Otherwise she’ll wonder what I’m doing back so soon.’

  ‘Anything you say, but you know how I hate to deceive people, Fenella.’

  ‘Just this once, eh?’ She squeezed my arm.

  ‘Just this once,’ I sighed.

  ‘Thanks. And I’m sorry I didn’t know what a Vanilla Dyke was.’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said generously. It had been a long shot.

  ‘But I’ll ask Lisabeth later on.’

  ‘Er ... no,’ I stammered. ‘Don’t do that.’

  Fenella hit the street and was in at the front door like a rat up a drainpipe. I was locking Armstrong when I heard the communal phone ringing from inside. Sure enough, it was for me.

  Fenella was holding the receiver at arm’s length and mouthing what appeared to be ‘Mister Bastard’. I didn’t quite believe my eyes, reading that on her lips, but then again, it could cover any one of a number of my friends. I took the phone from her and she said, ‘Thanks for the lift, Angel’ very loudly so that Lisabeth could hear upstairs, and she said it again as she went up herself.

  ‘Yo, Angel,’ I said, expecting it to be Bunny, or Duncan the Drunken, or some other reprobate.

  ‘Bert Bassotti here,’ came an echoing voice. He was on an amplified office phone, the sort where you could use your hands for several other purposes.

  ‘Hello there, Bert. You sound kinda distant. What can I do for you?’

  I was more worried about how he had got my number, but then that was probably via Tigger. I wasn’t too worried. It is still tricky enough to get someone’s address from just a phone number unless you’re a cop or similar. Not impossible, but tricky.

  ‘Wondered if you’d made any progress,’ said Bassotti, still sounding as if he was sky-diving into the Grand Canyon. There was only one explanation; someone was listening in.

  ‘Got a couple of leads, Bert. Something I think I can follow up tomorrow night looks especially good.’

  But if you think I’m telling you about gay laser karaoke nights, you’ve another think coming.

  ‘I just want to make it clear that we stressed that there was some urgency about this job, Roy. Didn’t we?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Bassotti,’ I said, servile, noting the ‘Roy’ – and also the ‘we’ all of a sudden.

  ‘So you think you can come up with something? By Friday, that is?’

  ‘Friday was the day I was aiming for,’ I lied. ‘I’m doing my best. I take it the finder’s fee still stands?’

  Down the line came a distant laugh, but even at that distance I could tell it was unpleasant. ‘Yeah, finder’s fee. That still stands.’

  ‘Then I’ll do my best, Mr Bassotti.’

  ‘You do that, Roy. You do that.’

  I never did get to experience the male gay laser karaoke night that Thursday, as I had a piece of luck.

  I turned up for work and got a blast from April about trying not to upset the punters – sorry, customers – this time, before being allowed upstairs to find a clean white shirt and a bow tie.

  Sam and Dave were not on duty until later and I was told to get the bar ready for opening with a tall, gangling youth called Keith and a wild-eyed Irishman called Joe who said nothing, just sat on an upturned beer crate pulling alternately on a joint and a can of Special Brew.

  Keith nervously tried to make friends, relieved that he would not be working alone with Joe.

  ‘I don’t normally do bar work,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I’m really here to help Derek with the disco and the karaoke gear.’

  Joe grunted something unintelligible.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ I said, feigning interest.

  ‘My friend Derek’s really good at it. Disco, I mean.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘He’s been a regular here for three years. Knows everybody.’

  ‘Does he now? Come and introduce me.’

  Derek was sorting out CDs for the disco and, rarity these days, he also had some vinyl LPs. I checked a few covers: mostly Dusty Springfield and the Beverley Sisters.

  I told Keith to bottle up and fetch in some more cases of beer. He was younger than me, needed the exercise and
seemed happy to help.

  ‘Keith says you know most of this crowd,’ I tried on Derek.

  ‘Could say that, I s’pose.’

  He was trying to be cool but made the fatal error of wearing a T-shirt carrying the name and sign of the pub. (Rule of Life No. 51: Never wear a T-shirt in the place it commemorates.) The T-shirt I’d been wearing when I arrived advertised a home-brew pub in Soquel, California. Further removed from the Grapes in Rimmer Road you could not imagine.

  ‘Ever come across my old mate Tigger?’

  ‘Cheeky little toerag, doesn’t know when to quit?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘Ain’t seen him for weeks.’

  He busied himself loading the CD player.

  ‘But I copped his partner this morning.’

  I wasn’t sure if this was a test or not. If I knew Tigger, I’d surely know his partner, wouldn’t I? Or maybe Derek was just bad with names.

  ‘Lee? How is he these days?’

  I couldn’t tell whether that had reassured him or not.

  ‘Yeah, Lee the Smackhead, as he’s known. Seemed straight this morning and had a bit of dosh on him. Bought himself a tent and was moving in.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The Fields. Lincoln’s Inn. God knows why; there’s an injunction or something that means they’re all going to have to get out soon.’

  ‘Yeah, so I’d heard.’

  Derek began rearranging his light show and I left him to it.

  I left Keith bottling up and I left April still needing bar staff.

  I ran upstairs and grabbed my jacket and T-shirt. Joe was still sitting there, popping another can. I smiled at him and he glared at me.

  As I went through the bar, I told Keith I was just nipping out to my car. I got into Armstrong and drove away.

  I never did get paid for the Tuesday shift. But then, they never got their shirt and bow tie back.

  Chapter Nine

  Bassotti had said there was a grand in it for me if I found Tigger by Friday. Derek’s lead about Lincoln’s Inn was the only thing I’d come up with all week, and tomorrow was Friday. So I checked that the flashlight I kept in Armstrong’s boot was working and I headed west.