simple men

‘Nothing to shout about,’ said Lawson.  ‘Nothing to worry about either. Quick in and out job.’ He fidgeted, adjusting the specs on his nose. No matter what he did, they  remained a bit squinty. Pigeon necked, he tilted his head to compensate as he peered up at Ritchie. Lawson had been in the newspaper business long enough to know that it was Friday afternoon and the pubs nearby were waiting for their custom. He licked his bottom lip. ‘Some old fart is retiring. He works in the local college. Teaches some shite about the pantheon of Gods.’ He wiped his hands on the inside of his shirt, above the paunch where his belt buckled, before passing Richie a slip of paper with a name and address on it.

            Richie had a quick look. It wasn’t far and he had already worked out in his head most of the valedictory crap he was going to write. It was like filling in a bookies line after the race had been won with the punter’s name filled out last. A Dr. Dove. Fucksake, he thought, he even sounded like a born loser.  Figured he’d be in and out in fifteen minutes. Sitting on a barstool, an hour tops.  He didn’t want to let Lawson know that. ‘Why didn’t you sent Deeney?’ He turned his face sideways, biting his lips, trying not to smirk and let his cheeks dimple and to sound suitably pissed off. ‘He’s the one that should be doing this kind of thing.’

            ‘Called in a sickie, the bastard,’ growled Lawson. ‘And you’re the next arsehole in line. And let’s face it, the kind of shite you’ve be writing recently this shouldn’t tax you too much and is right up your ball park.’

            Richie grinned at him and he began laughing at the expression on the old man’s face. ‘Cut with the pleasantries boss. It doesn’t suit you.’ He held an index finger up as if testing the wind. ‘I’m out of here.’

            His car was parked six streets away. The only time Ritchie believed in prayer was when he checked the windscreen for the stub of a parking ticket and when he turned the key in his Ford Focus. Sometimes the gods were kind. He scooted out and joined the traffic, and was on the motorway, off the motorway and driving home in squiddly-dot time, daydreaming when he realised that he had to take a sharp right down the hill towards Clydebank College.

            Finding a parking space in the town centre was like finding a deckhand on the Marie Celeste, but in a further education college it was plain sailing. He asked at reception. Dr Love’s office was just as easy to find, but it was on the top floor.  Ritchie had a morbid fear of  lifts and, when he came to think about it, drunk women, and, in particular his on-off girlfriend Moira’s finger-wagging determination to tell him things he really needed to know. The facts of life, in fact, which he already knew – she had great tits. But there were compensations. The bell rung, just like at school, and the stairwell above him filled with shrill voices and a clacking crescendo of high heels puncturing the silence. He met with the mass of stampeding hair on the second floor. Every  student that bounced down the stairs, gripping the banister,  smelled like a bucket of roses  dragged through the swirly frames of shoulder-length locks, mostly blonde, but with some brunettes and even a red head to two. They modelled the same uniform polyester-white lab coat of the hairdressing, beauty and design department on the fourth floor, so dazzling clean it hurt his fag-stained teeth watching them passing.  Some of them flounced  and ponied down the stairs better than others, but all had the virtue of blooming youth painted on their faces. They took a professional interest in his matted cockatoo-hair and less-than- fashionable denim shirt. 

            He followed the line of shut over doors and empty classrooms on the fifth floor. He walked up and down, retracing his steps, irked that he’d been given a bum steer. A balding older man, with grey fuzz round his ears and carrying some yellow folders in a pile almost walked short-sightedly into him. He wore a heavy-duty apron that looped leather straps under his arms, round his back and crossed and tied as the side in a Gordian knot.

            ‘Sorry,’ said the man, shuffling sideways to step to get past Richie, who stepped the same way to get out of his way and mirrored his feint in the other direction. He craned his head to look up at Richie, examining his lanky frame, sharp face, full lips and slightly bulbous nose. ‘I see you’re not a student here. Neither have you got that defensive look of the failed minor academic. Yet, you have the same kind of slouching cynicism in the way you hold yourself. You don’t look as if you’re lost. Perhaps you can tell me why you are here?’

            ‘Touche,’ said Ritchie, his eyebrows lifting as he grinned. ‘I take it you’re not the janitor, so you must be Dr Love?’

            ‘I am indeed.’

            Richie looked as if he was going to stick his hand out to shake. Dr Love looked down at the folders in his arms and back at his face.

            ‘But you have me at a disadvantage,’ said Dr Love. ‘You know who I am, but I don’t know who you are or why you are here.’

            Richie chuckled, his heels clicking together on the shine off the floor. ‘I’m Richard Johnson from The Glasownian, here to interview about your retirement.’ 

            Dr Love shook his head.

            ‘You were expecting me? Richie asked.

            ‘No,’ said Dr Love. ‘Who told you I was retiring?’

            Richie’s face screwed up, which was answer enough. ‘I’m not really sure.’

            ‘You’re a newspaper man and you don’t know who your sources are. That’s not a very good start is it?’

            Richie shook his head. He felt about ten-years old again standing outside the headmaster’s office. ‘Coincidence?’ he offered.

            ‘There’s no such thing as coincidence.’ Dr Love turned, the folders sinking in his arms as if they had gained extra weight. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘and we’ll find out exactly why you’re here.’

            Richie knew this interview was going to take much longer than he’d hoped.     

http://unbound.co.uk/books/lily-poole