sunshine, and all the guys with these thick mustaches. What is that, a macho thing?”
“What, wearing nylon tights?”
“You’re sharp tonight, Milius,” he says, putting his arm across my shoulders. He does that quite frequently nowadays. “I like it when you’re quick on your feet. Keeps us old guys on our toes.”
Fortner and I are going for a drink together. It’s something we’ve done three times before, just the two of us. Katharine cooks dinner, makes herself scarce, and leaves us to it. You go enjoy yourself, honey, she says, helping him on with his jacket. Bring him back in one piece, y’hear? And we walk the few blocks from their flat in Colville Gardens down to Ladbroke Grove, ready to drink through to last orders.
The setting is a spacious, brown, old-style pub that will be a themed bar and restaurant within twelve months, guaranteed. I hold the door open for him and we go inside, finding a pair of stools at the bar. Fortner hangs his elbow-patched tweed jacket on a nearby hook, retrieving his wallet from the inside pocket. Then he sits beside me and rests his forearms on the wooden bar, breathing out heavily in anticipation of the long night ahead. To his left there’s a vast, Sun -reading builder, all biceps and sinew, muscles packed tight into a lumberjack shirt. His neck has been shaved to stubble and dropping from a scarred right earlobe is a single silver stud that seems to contain his entire personality. The man does not look up as we sit down. He just keeps on reading his paper.
“I’ll get the first round,” I say and reach into my hip pocket for a handful of change. “You want a pint or something, Fortner?”
“A pint,” he says slowly, as if, after four years in London, he is still coming to terms with this strange Limey word. “Yes. That is a good idea, young man. A pint.”
“Guinness? I’m having one.”
The barman hears this and brings down two tall glasses, starting to pour the Guinness before I have even asked for them. He allows the pints to settle for a while, using the time to take my money and cash it in at the till.
“Nuts? Do you want any nuts?”
“Not for me,” Fortner says. “Been tryin’ to get back to my ideal weight. Two hundred fifty pounds.”
“There you go, guys,” says the barman, setting the glasses down in front of us. He has the slightly sweeter, higher semitone voice that distinguishes Kiwis from Australians.
“How was your flight?”
“From Ukraine? Lousy.”
Imperceptibly, Fortner gathers together the lies.
“There’s no chance of jet lag on account of the time difference, but they do their best to exhaust you anyway. Airplane sat on the tarmac for three straight hours. Fuckin’ stewards gave us one complimentary drink and then played cards until takeoff. Then the flight was diverted through Munich and I had to spend the night in a goddamn Holiday Inn. Took a day to get home.”
This is utterly convincing. Perhaps the Hobbit got it wrong. Fortner does look older tonight, aged by long-haul flights and the trickeries of Kiev. Here is a man propping up a bar, a man in shirtsleeves and slacks, with ovals of sweat under his arms and stubble cast across his face like a rash. There will be questions he means to ask me, but his eyes look drained of will. He has no energy.
“You look tired,” I tell him.
“Oh, I’m all right. This’ll start me up.”
He takes a long creamy swig of his Guinness and sets it back down on the bar with a thud.
“So what’d you and Kathy get up to while I was away?” he asks, licking his upper lip. We’ve already been over this at dinner, but it makes me do the talking.
“Like she told you at supper. We went walking in Battersea Park. Had dinner at your place afterward.”
“Oh, yeah. She mentioned that.”
“Why d’you ask, then?”
“I just wanted details. Kinda missed her while I was away. I like hearing stories about her, things she did and said.”
The truth here would prove interesting. Well, frankly, Fort, there’s a lot of sexual tension between your wife and me and we nearly had sex on Saturday night.
“She talked about you a lot,” I tell him.
“Is that right?”
“Then I talked about me a lot.”
“No change there, then.”
“And finally we went to bed. I slept on the sofa.”
“You stayed the night on the couch? Kathy never said.”
Interesting.
“Didn’t she?”
“No.”
An awkward pause hovers over us. The builder turns the page of his newspaper and it crackles in the silence.
“Why do we always drink here?” I ask Fortner, turning back to face him and lighting a cigarette from my pack on the counter. “Why do you like it?”
“Don’t you?”
“No, it’s great. It’s just that we haven’t varied the venue.”
“Consistency is a much undervalued asset in modern times, my friend. Best to get to know a place. And besides, there’s good-lookin’ women later on.”
The builder vibrates slightly on his stool. Something about this unnerves him.
Fortner takes another long draw of Guinness. “So how are things?” he asks. “Everything okay at Abnex?”
“Good, actually. Alan’s on holiday this week so we can get things done without him breathing down our necks.”
“That’s always good, when the big chief takes off. You gotta hope they never come back.”
“But I’m broke. I got hit for a parking ticket and a tax bill first thing on Monday morning. That really pissed me off.”
“You forget to feed the meter?”
“No. Parked it on a double yellow near Hammersmith. Got towed.”
“Shit. They swoop those guys, like a fucking SWAT team. You gotta be careful.”
“The tax is worse. I live in a shithole but I’m paying a fortune to the local council.”
“You let it pile up?”
“Yeah, it’s been building for the last year. I couldn’t afford to pay so I just let it drift.”
“Foolish, my friend. Foolish. You should have come to me. I’d have helped you out.”
Fortner gives me a paternal pat on the back and I thank him, saying in the nicest possible way that I have no intention of borrowing money off him. Then he drains his pint with a long, satisfied gulp and says it’s his round. Mine is still only half empty. It takes him some time to get the attention of the barmaid, a local girl who has served us before.
“How are you, gents?” she asks. She has a crisp East End accent. “Same again, is it?”
“That’s right,” says Fortner, taking a twenty-pound note from his wallet and snapping it between his fingers. He’s started to pick up in the last few minutes. One more drink and things will be rolling.
“You mind if I make a slight criticism of you, Milius?” he says, still looking at the girl. “Would that be okay?”
It is as if the fact that he is buying me a drink has suddenly given him the confidence to ask a serious question.
“Sure.”
“It’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about for a while now and I thought tonight would give us a good opportunity.”
“Go ahead.”
“It’s just that in the time that we’ve known each other-what is it, about six or seven months-you’ve shown a lot of hostility to the way things work over here. Does that sound unfair? I mean, stop me if I’m outta line.”
