Joe sits forward on the sunlit Soho Square bench, gazes mournfully into his soup:
— I like MSG …
Joe goes quiet, as he gingerly sips. Patrick looks at Joe. Then Patrick says:
— You know, sex is in many ways the monosodium glutamate of life
Joe:
— Oh God
— It makes what would otherwise be unpalatable palatable, it makes the boring samey noodles of life that extra bit
— OK shut up – Joe says, then he says – Anyway why did I buy soup? It’s thirty degrees in the shade and I buy soup? Man
From his side of the bench Patrick clicks his tongue, in empathy. Then Patrick returns to his own takeaway tray of sushi. Patrick can sense Joe watching on, hungrily, enviously, as Patrick chopsticks a smear of translucent tuna belly, briefly dips the fish in a little plunge-pool of soy, then deftly drapes the result between his lips.
Joe:
— You know your gran sucks your pants?
— Uh-huh
— She told me in bed last night
— Right – Patrick says – Right … Well …
— Yeah?
— Your girlfriend told me your cock looks like a weasel with a goitre on its head
— What girlfriend? – Joe shakes his head, says – How is she anyway?
— Sorry??
Joe, tutting:
— Your girlfriend, the rich one … you met her in a bookshop two months ago, you’ve been sleeping with her ever since – Slowly – She’s OK, yeah?
Silence. Patrick contemplatively stirs a few stray grains of rice around his little puddle of soy. Then he says:
— Tits are too big
Joe:
— As if
— No they are, too big, and too … firm
— Don’t
— Too firm and too good, wasted on me, those big creamy
— You cunt, Skivington
— Oh, I forgot, you like big ones, don’t you?
— Suck my cock
— Actually – Patch relents – I was thinking of bringing you in on the tits, as a kind of, breast consultant
— Kind of bomb disposal?
— … professional tit wrangler …
Together they shout:
— Breast whisperer!!!
After that the two of them grin. Then Patrick eats some more rice as he sidelong watches Joe. His friend is staring out onto the sunlit lawns of a crowded Soho Square garden. Kneeling sideways on a rare space of lunch-time grass is a young mother with her baby. Joe is silently regarding this pietà. The mother is kissing her baby’s foot, sucking its toes. Joe seems to nod approvingly at this, then he says:
— So, are you falling for her?
Patrick, with a mouthful of salmon roe:
— … not sure – Swallowing – She’s a package
— Yeah?
— Yeah. Pretty, sexy, rich … bit Jewish
— Nice legs, shame about the faith?
The sound of some shirtsleeved office lads arguing fills the air. Patrick looks at Joe. Joe looks at Patrick. Joe says:
— Sorry about that
Turning his face to the sun, Patrick nods and in a vague voice says:
— How about you, any progress with the redhead?
— Nah
— Not at all?
Joe shrugs:
— They all like want someone with a big car and … no crack habit
— Sticklers
— Nit pickers
— So you’re wanking a lot? Bashing the bishop …?
A pause. Then Joe says, in an odd voice, above the sound of a bike courier’s yowling radio:
— It’s true to say the upper hierarchy of the church has come in for some criticism
Patrick thinks for a while about this, sniggers for a second, then says:
— You’re still missing that last girl aren’t you? The last one
— Sally-Ann? My little Sally-Ann?
— That ugly smackhead with no arse
— Yeah, Sally-Ann …
A car alarm makes a horrible noise. Patrick tuts. Wiping some sweat from his forehead with a forearm, checking his watch as if he has something to do, Joe starts on a slow speech:
— Y’know, I remembered something this morning, when I woke up, alone again – Joe tilts his head, goes on – When we were, like, together, me and Sal, she used to do this thing – Joe pauses, and turns his eyes on the middle distance, as if toward the distantly heard sound of a much loved pop song
— When I was asleep she would do some smack and then roll over and kiss me and blow the smack smoke into my mouth – Joe makes a wry sad face – Which meant, like, I wouldn’t have to wake up, like, clean, so I wouldn’t have to suffer reality even for a fucking minute in the morning
Patrick sits on the bench, wondering what to say to this. Not knowing what to say he joins his friend in looking out across the Square at a group of toenail-painted secretaries sharing a packet of organic crisps on the grass. At length Joe says:
— Wish I had some fucking smack now …
— Really?
— Yeah, really
— So why don’t you? Just buy some?
As if to assist Joe in his purchase, Patrick points his Pepsi-can-gripping hand across the Square to a markedly deserted corner of the sunlit lawn. Where a gaggle of obvious drug addicts is lying, under a single big dirty blanket, like a family of Victorian street-Irish. Next to the addicts stands a stack of unsold, or stolen, Big Issues. Patrick watches as Joe shrugs at the prospect, as if to say ‘why bother’; then Patrick returns his gaze to the tribe of drug addicts. Like a troupe of Aborigines in an outback Aussie town, Patrick thinks. The junkies. They are the Abos of London, following the songlines of their addiction around the twilit streets, moving from waterhole to waterhole, moving from chemist to dealer to dodgy doctor, following their ancestral and mysterious routes around the underworld of the city … Which makes me, Patrick thinks, running away with himself now, which makes me Crocodile Dundee, a man who understands their ways yet is not of them and yet who
— You’ve not shagged her yet have you?
Patrick thinks hard, says:
— Of course I have
— So why aren’t you totally in love?
— Did I tell you – Patrick says – About my idea for a new hobby?
Joe sighs:
— Mn. Go on then …
— Well – Patrick takes a drink of his warming Pepsi, takes another shot of it. And then another shot and then a third shot before slowly burping most of the next sentence – I’m thinking of buying an Alsatian dog and a long leather