Coffin Dodgers

by Gary Marshall

  "Customer?"

  "When was the last time you saw a customer that wasn't old enough to be your mum?" he says.

  "Good point. So… customer?"

  "Get stuffed."

  "Sorry."

  "You know Spanish Dave?"

  Spanish Dave is one of the other security guys. Nobody knows how he got his nickname. He isn't Spanish. For all I know, his name isn't Dave either.

  "You're going on a date with Spanish Dave?"

  "Very funny. I'm meeting his sister."

  "What's she like?"

  "Dunno. Spanish Dave says she's cool."

  Oh dear. A blind date. I went on a blind date once. The girl was a bit older than I expected. By "a bit" I mean "a lot".

  "So where are you meeting her?"

  "Coffee etc." Coffee etc. is an up-market coffee shop. Organic everything, big leather sofas, surly baristas and ridiculous price tags. You'd think that combination would drive it out of business pretty much immediately, but it's always busy.

  "Want me to call, just in case?"

  "Sure."

  "Nine?"

  "Yeah."

  It's just after ten. Dave is on my sofa.

  "Good date?" Amy says with a smirk.

  "Not great." To be honest, we've already guessed that bit. Dave answered the phone immediately, and he'd done a runner before I'd even started making farmyard noises.

  "So what was the problem?" I ask him. "Was she a horror?" Amy shoots me a look. "Sorry."

  "No, she was pretty," Dave sighs.

  "Did she smell of soup?"

  "Eh?"

  "Doesn't matter."

  "She's Straight Edge."

  "Ah," Amy and I say simultaneously.

  "Pretty intense, then?" Amy asks.

  "Yeah."

  "Poor you." Amy hands Dave a beer.

  Straight Edge is one of those movements that appears every few years, disappears for a bit and then comes back again. I think it started before the turn of the century, with pissed-off kids of baby boomers rebelling against the older generation. It was partly a musical thing -- Straight Edge bands are very loud, very fast and very aggressive -- and partly a political thing. Straight Edgers don't drink, don't smoke -- okay, hardly anybody smokes, but you know what I mean -- and don't do drugs. Basically if the hippie generation did it, they're against it. Some of them take it even further, so they're against casual sex -- it's a "weakness", apparently -- capitalism, eating meat and pretty much anything that isn't great for the environment.

  It all sounds a bit Nazi, but it's the opposite: Straight Edgers are so right-on they can't do anything without making sure they're not accidentally oppressing someone or something. I met a few of them when I was doing the band thing, and I was amazed by how angry they were. Well, maybe not amazed. If you weren't drinking, having sex or doing anything fun whatsoever you'd probably be pretty pissed off too.

  "So what on Earth did you talk about?" Amy asks.

  "Oh, God knows," Dave shrugs. "I wasn't really listening."

  We talk about nothing in particular for a while, then Amy has an idea.

  "Why don't you try dating in the dark?"

  "Piss off!" Dave looks hurt.

  "I'm not being funny. It's a real thing. One of the restaurants is starting it soon. I read about it in the paper."

  "In the dark?"

  "Yeah. You're paired up with someone in the dark. The idea's to break down all the barriers, so if they can't see you blushing or whatever then you're going to be more confident, more likely to be yourself. Gives you a chance to suss each other out without shyness getting in the way."

  "And," I add, "you can easily bugger off without the other person noticing."

  "Are you serious?" Dave says, ignoring me completely.

  "Yeah. I'll dig it out and send you the link," Amy says. "It might be a laugh."

  I think Dave's actually thinking about it.

  I don't see much of Amy or Dave over the next few days, partly because we aren't working the same shifts and mainly because I don't really feel like seeing anybody. When work is finished I go home, drink a few beers, listen to loud music and generally mope around the place feeling sorry for myself. Eventually, though, disaster strikes. I run out of beer.

  When I have to go to the supermarket -- which isn't often; I buy everything in bulk -- I try to do it early in the morning before the rest of the town is awake. It's bad enough then, but if you wait until mid-morning or even worse, mid-afternoon, you'd have more fun in the fifth circle of Hell. The car park looks like a really big motorway pile-up happening in really slow motion. People in SUVs reverse out of spaces without looking, crushing the fronts of little runabouts; others drive into spaces their cars can't fit into, taking the paint -- and in some cases, the wing mirrors, bumpers and anything else that protrudes even slightly, such as dogs or passengers -- off the cars on either side. It's a constant cacophony of car alarms, crunching, arguments and the occasional ambulance siren.

  Thank god for electronic safety aids. Most of the cars have them, which is just as well -- if the drivers aren't half-blind or so arthritic that they can barely turn the steering wheel, their reflexes are so shot that they'd have trouble doing an emergency stop with less than four days' notice. If it weren't for the sensors and automatic braking systems and all the other electronic goodies in their cars, the death toll in a single afternoon would make a World War look pretty tame.

  I'm a seasoned shopper and quite like having a car with all its trim intact, so I park well away from the main entrance in a still-empty bit of the car park. I reverse park, too, so when I come out of the space I'll be able to see other cars even if they're not paying the slightest bit of attention to me. My timing's off, though, and a huge gold Lexus glides into the space next to me. The other driver opens his door at the same time I open mine, and being the nice person I am I close mine again and gesture for him to go right ahead.

  That, I'm beginning to realise, was a mistake.

  He's very thin, very old and very shaky. I don't know if it's just old age or something like Parkinson's, but every bit of him seems to be shaking violently. Just getting his seatbelt off takes what seems like an hour, and actually exiting the car takes much, much longer. I try not to look -- I don't want to stare, and I definitely don't want him to see how exasperated I'm becoming -- but I do glance at him every minute or so. By the time he's got one leg out of the car and begins the slow movement to get his other leg out, I'm beginning to understand what ten years in solitary confinement might feel like.

  Still, at least the guy isn't legally allowed to drive a two-and-a-half-ton car that's capable of doing nearly two hundred miles per hour. Ahem.

  After several lifetimes, I finally escape my car-shaped prison and head into the supermarket. It's no different from any other one. The aisles are extra-wide but still get jammed with a mix of trolleys, wheelchairs, walkers and those sit-in mobility vehicles that look a bit like dodgem cars. Even the tallest shelves can be reached from a sitting position. The adult undergarments section -- let's call a spade a spade here, I'm talking about incontinence pants -- is so big it probably has its own postcode. The cheesy-listening piped Muzak is very loud, and if you're a newbie then the first time you hear somebody bellow a promotional announcement over the top of some twinkly piano tune you'll probably think you're under attack.

  My favourite bit is the clothing section, which seems entirely dedicated to hideous shirts, golfing trousers in colours unknown to Mother Nature and elasticated leisurewear in a range of faintly unpleasant pastel hues. When we're really bored Amy, Dave and I have a competition where we come here to find the ugliest, most unflattering, most visually offensive outfits imaginable for one another, and we have to wear the outfits for an entire day. The last time we did it Amy found me a pair of trousers so unspeakably vile that I think I suffered permanent eye damage -- and yet when I wore them outside, nobody paid the slightest bit of attention. It's that kind of town.

  As
I'm loading my trolley with a few cases of beer I spot somebody familiar-looking over by the Scotch whiskies. That's not unusual in itself -- most of the town passes through the casino at some time or another, if not to gamble then to eat or to drink or to pick up people who've been gambling, eating and drinking -- but there's something strange about him. I can't work out what it is, so I put it out of my mind and head for the checkout. Another ten lifetimes later I've paid and I'm halfway across the car park when I realise who he was.

  He was The Yellow Man.

  And he wasn't yellow.

  There's nothing worse than having exciting news only to discover that everybody else knows your news and knew about it days before you did.

  "I know," Amy says. "He was in here the other night."

  I think Amy's a little disappointed. She likes to know things that other people don't.

  "Turns out he was right about his ship coming in," she says. "He's had a head transplant. Or maybe it was a kidney transplant. It was definitely one or the other."

  "Aren't you supposed to quit drinking when you've blown up your own kidneys?"

  "Probably," she says. "I don't think they can really enforce that, though, can they?"

  "They could," I say.

  "Really? How?"

  "You could have gangs of surgeons roaming the bars, looking for any ex-patients sitting with a beer. If they spotted somebody, they'd jump him. GIVE US BACK THOSE KIDNEYS!"

  Amy cackles. "That'd be brilliant. Doctors, scalpels and barbecue tongs everywhere."

  "Barbecue tongs?"

  "They'd need something to get the kidneys out with, wouldn't they?"

  I can't really argue with that.

  Amy looks at me. "You know what's weird, though?

  "What?"

  "He's known about this for weeks. I thought transplants were last minute, phone rings and you've got to be there immediately things. Aren't they?"

  "I've no idea. Probably, yeah."

  "So how did he know it was going to happen?"

  "I've no idea. Maybe he's got a good psychic."

  Amy shoots me a look, and then softens.

  "What about you, Matt? Are you doing okay?"

  "I'm fine."

  "You'd tell me if you weren't?"

  "Honestly," I said. "I'm fine."

  "Good. Because I think it's your turn for the beers tonight."

  Amy gives me a grin and goes back to work.

  When Dave turns up at my door that night, he's a mess. At first I think he's been in a fight, but when he arrives at my door I realise he's covered in food.

  "What the hell happened?"

  "You know that thing Amy told me about? Dating in the dark?" Dave indicates his stained shirt. "Pasta in the face, more like."

  "I think you need a beer." I nearly make it to the fridge before cracking up laughing.

  "For God's sake," Dave says, but he's laughing too.

  I wait until Dave's had a chance to drink some of his beer before starting the interrogation.

  "So," I say. "Let's hear it."

  "It was a bloody disaster," Dave says.

  "I can see that."

  "It sounded quite cool. I looked into it before I decided to go. The waiters are blind, so they can see in the dark."

  "Wow."

  "Yeah. So I turn up, the lights are on, and the waiter gives me a blindfold and leads me to my seat. Explains that the lights will go off when everybody's seated."

  "Okay. So you're sitting there --"

  "I'm sitting there with this blindfold on, and they're leading people in, and then after a bit a guy welcomes everybody, tells us to take our blindfolds off on the count of three, and hits the lights."

  "Who were you sitting with?"

  "Susan. Some kind of sales rep."

  "So the lights go off. What then?"

  "Bloody chaos. Turns out the waiters weren't blind."

  "You're kidding."

  Dave points at his shirt.

  "You're not kidding."

  "I'm making small talk with Susan, we're getting on okay so far, and the waiters come in with the drinks. Next thing it's just crashing and banging and yelling. They're pouring wine everywhere, walking into tables, dropping glasses on the floor. Half of the waiters are apologising, the other half are banging into tables and swearing."

  I'm sure it was horrible at the time, but I'm in tears of laughter. So is Dave. It takes a minute for us to recover.

  "What did you do?"

  "Susan had just got half a bottle of wine poured down her top, and we agreed that we'd escape and go somewhere else."

  "Good plan."

  "Yeah. So we get up and I walk into four plates of linguine. Susan got a double lasagne."

  "Shit. Did you go somewhere else?"

  "Nah."

  "Was it pasta bedtime?"

  I'm very pleased with my joke, and I sit giggling for a while. Dave looks at the ceiling until I've finished.

  "You done?"

  "Yeah."

  "She wasn't up for it," Dave says. "I could tell by her face. The bit that wasn't covered in pasta, anyway."

  "Shame."

  "Ach, it's the same old story, isn't it? Boy meets girl, girl gets a double lasagne in the face. Probably for the best anyway."

  "You think?"

  "Yeah. I'm seeing someone later this week anyway."

  "In the dark?"

  "In the pub. It's safer."

  "Depends on the pub."

  "True. Can I get another beer? I think I deserve it."

  He does. I head for the fridge.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I'm sitting around, doing nothing in particular, thinking about Amy. It's not that she's a force of nature, although she is. It's not that she can make me feel glad to be alive, although she does. It's not that she's got a way of looking at you from underneath her fringe that can make your knees weak, although that's true too. And it's not that she's so good-looking she takes your breath away sometimes, although she is and she does.

  It's that she's not Scott Marsden.

  I'm sitting in reception at Ottomatik, waiting for the mechanics to finish servicing my car, and Scott Marsden is sitting next to me. Either times are hard or Ottomatik has belatedly discovered the joys of customer service: they called me a few days ago to remind me that my service was due, and did I want to make an appointment? It was all very professional, which is not a word you usually associate with the place. You don't go to Ottomatik because it's good, or because it's professional. You go because it's the cheapest garage for miles.

  Scott Marsden plonked himself in the seat next to me about two hundred million years ago. Well, five minutes, but it seems like two hundred million years. He's not a bad guy, I'm sure, but he's not an interesting one either. So far he's managed to turn a simple puncture into an epic, and I'm rapidly losing the will to live. He's got a reason to moan -- most cars don't have spares because the tyres auto-heal, but if you damage the sidewall the auto-healing doesn't work and the whole tyre needs replaced at great expense; Scott found a great big nail stuck in one of his sidewalls, so the tyre's a write-off -- but I really wish he didn't moan quite so much, or for quite so long, or in so much detail.

  Scott and I went to school together. We weren't friends -- I think I maybe said about ten words to him in the six or seven years I was there, and nine of those words were nasty -- but Scott is the kind of person who doesn't let that kind of detail get in the way of a good old chin-wag. On the few occasions I haven't seen him coming and hidden until the coast is clear, he's greeted me like his very best, oldest friend. And then he's started talking.

  I'll spare you the full details of today's monologue, because I'm nice like that. Put it this way: Scott doesn't talk to you. He talks at you. I'm quite sure you could get up halfway through the conversation, build a raft, sail to foreign lands, survive shark attacks, hallucinations and eating your comrades, accidentally walk into the middle of a military coup, be captured, spend ten years in jail facing
certain death for a crime you didn't commit, tunnel your way out using nothing but a chopstick, be abducted by aliens just as you escape the prison grounds, lead a bitter but ultimately victorious war against implacable intergalactic enemies, return to Earth and wander back into the garage and he'd still be there, talking, completely unaware that you'd even left.

  Okay, he probably isn't quite that bad. But he's still pretty dull. You know when you post status updates online, and most people post pithy comments or links to cool stuff they've seen? Scott posts exactly what he's doing, often in real time. I hit the "block" button after this particularly exciting drama:

  "Getting a bit hungry." - Posted by Scott at 7.59pm.

  "Should probably make dinner." - Posted by Scott at 8.03pm.

  "Fancy some pasta." - Posted by Scott at 8.05pm.

  "Making pasta." - Posted by Scott at 8.11pm.

  "Had pasta for dinner. It was very nice." - Posted by Scott at 8.33pm.

  "I think I might have eaten too much pasta!" - Posted by Scott at 8.52pm.

  "Men in balaclavas waving machine guns have kicked in my windows, thrown grenades at the cat and shot all the prostitutes! I shouldn't have stolen heroin from the Colombians!" - Posted by Scott at 9.01pm.

  I made that last one up.

  He's still talking when Otto, from whom Ottomatik gets its hilarious name, pops his head round the door.

  "Car's ready," he says.

  "Anything I need to worry about?"

  "No. All fine. You pay now."

  Otto isn't a big talker. He hands me the bill and of course, it's all the money in the world. I follow him to the till, where he swipes my card and hands me the keys.

  "Thank you bye," Otto says.

  If I hear My Generation one more time I may kill somebody.

  All the radio stations are based on requests, so if enough people vote for a track the computer plays it. And the people who vote are just hilarious, so you never have to wait long to hear My Generation, Don't Fear The Reaper, Live Forever and worst of all, When I'm Sixty-Bloody-Four. I change channels but there's nothing but evangelists and crazy people on phone-ins, so I turn the stereo off and concentrate on driving.