Cowboys and Dinosaurs - Chapter 2

2. The Supreme Celestial Planet

"Are you sure this is the room?"

The room had THIS IS WHERE YOUR SAD, SAD LIFE WILL END written all over it. The next step before a cardboard box in the park, it had mould on the walls, cracks in the plaster, loose floorboards, and wet patches in the ceiling.

It also still appeared to have the previous occupant's furniture.

"When I say he left", said Gonoroid, "I was referring only to him, not to his previous possessions. Insofar as he was into possessions, that is."

"The landlord took the rest of them as back rent, I expect", said Steve.

"Oh no. No, this was always about it."

Steve was appalled. The room contained only a single sleeping roll, a sleeping bag of the bargain basement sort handed to tramps, a child's colouring book picture of Buddha filled in painstakingly in gold crayon, and a pile of soiled laundry.

"Those are the clothes he was wearing", said Gonoroid respectfully, "when he went."

"He went naked?"

"The room was bolted from the inside, and the window shut. We hypothesize", said Gonoroid, "that he simply vacated this plane of existence for another, happier location."

Steve looked around the room. "It would be difficult to think of a less happy one. Would anyone mind if I, erm, burnt this stuff?"

"I don't think he'd have minded if you'd set fire to them while he was wearing them. He was a very spiritual man."

Steve stepped into the single-seater toilet, lifting the lid on the cistern. "Was his spirituality chemically-assisted?"

"We suspected so, but we were never able to find anything. He wouldn't have had money for drugs. He didn't work, and he refused to claim benefit. He lived off what he could beg."

"Some people can beg a lot. Look at the Dalai Lama."

"If he begged a lot, he'd give what he called The Surplus to his order." Gonoroid pointed to a small stack of identical, expensively-produced books in the corner. "He used to Not Sell those. He'd stand around in the street offering them to people for free, then suggesting that the people who'd taken them offer him a voluntary donation equivalent or superior in price to the book itself."

"Nice work if you can get it." Steve picked up the top book. It was entitled THE SUPREME CELESTIAL PLANET.

"It's terribly astronomically inaccurate", said Gonoroid.

"D'you think he's likely to come back for all this?" The author of the book was listed on the dust jacket as simply Devasekhara, A Major World Figure In Awakenment From The Sleep Of Ignorance. There was a picture. Devasekhara did not look as eastern as his name.

Gonoroid shook his head. "He's gone. He wasn't actually really the last tenant. There were two or three more after him. But none of them ever managed more than a night in the room, so their stuff came and went and his just stayed."

The skin on the back of Steve's neck crawled uncomfortably, despite himself. He took the bedroll by one corner, between finger and thumb, and moved it closer to the door. "What did he use to eat?"

"Never saw him eat", said Gonoroid fearfully. "Or drink. Only meditate."

Steve shuddered. "Can I interest you in a stack of highly astronomically inaccurate books?"

"No fear. I already have five. The charity shop on the corner's stopped taking them as well; says they take up too much space. Besides, the Evil Owner has been trying to get rid of this stack for over a month now."

"He can't have been trying very hard."

"He's been taking them out the door down the tip as fast as he can shift them", said Gonoroid in quiet anxiety. "The trouble is, they come back."

Steve looked at the stack of unwantable literature in deep discomfort. "Gonoroid, are you trying to tell me this room is haunted?"

Gonoroid shrugged. "You could always recycle them. Recyling might find favour with his unquiet spirit. There's a man at the university who offers a special service to recent PhD's - a fiver to turn your doctoral thesis into a paper brick with the title on the top. It's surprisingly popular."

"I may well do that. I'll be back later on this evening with my stuff. Are you sure things are all cool here? I haven't been able to get the landlord on the phone."

Gonoroid nodded. "He owns about twenty or thirty properties. He never listens to answerphone messages from here. I think he's hoping the place will fall down of its own accord. It would be a shame if it did. It's one of the finest remaining examples of an inadequately lit and ventilated early Victorian sweatshop. Most workplaces of this sort were replaced by light, airy, properly designed buildings at the time of the Arts and Crafts Movement."

"Gosh. Isn't it great to be a part of history."

"Plus", said Gonoroid excitedly, "there's a bona fide holy relic built into the foundations."

"The sacred Lump Of Stuff of Saint Neot", nodded Steve. "I've seen it."

"There have been five buildings on this site. In the Middle Ages, Gerald of Wales stayed in a house on this very spot."

"Who was Gerald of Wales?"

"A mediaeval chronicler who recorded a carnal act of lust between a man and a sheep, and the subsequent birth of a miraculous man-sheep."

"A weirdo, then."

"So lightly do you judge the learned men of other times. In the Renaissance, a second house built on this spot housed Giordano Bruno."

"Who was he?"

"A learned man who believed the Earth went round the sun and was burned alive for his beliefs."

"Get in. I'm actually impressed."

"He also believed that we should therefore worship the sun."

"Ah. Another weirdo."

"In the Seventeenth Century", said Gonoroid, "Archbishop Ussher stayed here. He believed literally in every single word on every single page of the Bible and used Biblical evidence to compute the date of creation of the universe. It was 4004 BC, if you're interested. On the twenty-third of October. At around teatime."

"What you're basically saying", said Steve, "is that this house is a weirdo magnet."

"I find that quite offensive, Steve."

"Ah, but", said Steve, opening the nicotine-cream curtains and peering out through grimy windows into a series of neatly delineated back gardens separated by B&Q fencing, "there is a drawback to that argument. I am perfectly normal."

"I'm afraid so", said Gonoroid sympathetically.

Weirdly, this offended Steve in turn. "Whoah there. You don't have to agree to readily. I can do nutty unpredictable stuff too, you know."

"Such as."

Steve squirmed. "I can make balloon animals", he said eventually.

"What's your favourite colour?" said Gonoroid.

"Blue", said Steve.

"What sort of car would you drive, if you had the money?"

"A Mercedes S Class."

"What sort of dog would you own, if you had a dog?"

"A labrador", said Steve. "A faun one", he added.

Gonoroid clucked disappointedly. "I'm sorry, Steve, that's why the house has attracted you. You're weirdly average. You couldn't run naked through the streets if clothes were illegal."

Steve looked uncertainly at his indistinct reflection in the window, then at the cracked plaster. "Is there, um, actually any danger of the house collapsing?"

"Oh, no, the building's structurally sound. There's just a leak in the roof on this corner."

"I can fix that. My dad's a roofer."

"My dad's a heterosexual", said Gonoroid pointedly. "But that doesn't mean I am."

Angels could have been heard dancing on the head of a pin being dropped. Steve realized suddenly that he had spent two entire afternoons with a man in skin-tight lycra without spotting any of the danger signs.

"I'll go and get my stuff", he said. "Can you...will you be here to let me in in half an hour?"

Gonoroid nodded dejectedly. "I can get you in."

"Doesn't the landlord think there's any security implication in the fact that all the doors in this place apart from yours can be opened with a JJB Sports Storecard?"

"Apparently not. Burglarcard, accepted at all good doors near you."

Steve looked at Gonoroid suspiciously. "Why do you have a JJB Sports storecard?"

Gonoroid shrugged sadly. "They do a very good line in paramilitary cream polyester. It dyes all sorts of colours."

"I'll see you in half an hour."

"See you then."

The door closed with indecent haste. Gonoroid sagged against the wall, dispirited.

"Always the Chief Engineer", he said. "Never the First Mate."

***

"You're moving out a day early?"

She was still wearing her Ffoulkes Starnamann Swindal Whymper Spink sales uniform, in which she resembled a slice of battenberg with arms. Why it was necessary for Estate Agency staff to resemble marzipan confectionery in order to shift greenbelt, he had no idea. He had hoped she'd be working late, as she usually did on Thursdays. Why had she come home early? Was she, perhaps, having last minute doubts?

"Are you going back to your parents?"

Steve hefted a box of books - healthy Christian paperbacks involving people being blown to pieces in exotic parts of the world, and involving no celestial enlightenment whatsoever - onto his shoulder.

"Nope."

"You've found a new place already? You CAN'T take that just because it's got tits on the cover, it's mine." She removed a rare first edition of Radical Feminists of GOR from the top of his box.

That clinched it. She'd come home early in order to stop him nicking the television.

"Yup." The book box obscured his vision on his right hand side. He narrowly avoided colliding with Kim's prized and horrible grandmother clock. Her Auntie Maggie had given her it. It was theoretically worth money.

The arms folded. "Oh, I get it. What's her name?"

Had Steve been attacked suddenly in the hallway by a great white shark, he could not have been more surprised.

"Eh?"

"All these tears and tantrums, just because I slept with somebody, and now it turns out you had someone else on the boil all along. Who is she?"

He absorbed this as he was ponderously side-stepping onto the pavement. In his imagination, he turned to her and roared: "You know, many times, I've been slowly and carefully told how incredibly, dangerously thick you are, Kim. But I was blind to it; I was in love. Now, thank the lord, my eyes are opened." In reality, he put the box down gently inside the car boot and shut the door down after it just slightly harder than was warranted.

"Who the BLOODY HELL IS SHE?"

In his mind's eye, he said: "She was christened Steve. I'm gay, Kim. I'm living in a house with a gay man. Another gay man, that is, for I, Kim, am gay. I would rather shag another man's hairy brown eye than go anywhere near your barn door of a vulva." In reality, he opened the driver door, stepped into the car, closed the door, re-opened the door as an afterthought, and said: "I'll be back in ten."

"Calm", he said to himself in the rear view mirror once the door was safely shut again. "You told yourself you were going to be calm. And you were calm." He turned the key in the ignition while she hammered on the driver side window, damaging the ageing paintwork. "You don't want to kill her at all. You don't even want to wait until she has children with whoever it is she's leaving you for so you can kill them as well just because they look like her and him, whoever he is. Calm. Cool. Collected."

"- who the BLOODY HELL IS SHE -"

He moved off into the traffic.

***

"What makes you think you'd be suitable for the job, Mr. Simpson?"

Gosh. I thought I'd prepared answers to all the questions I might be asked. The cunning bastards.

He mulled the question over. "Well, I believe I have a deep understanding of the wholesale sex toy market. My girlfriend - my ex-girlfriend - and I owned several of your products. The impossibly long pink vibrator with the right-angled G spot helmet, that one was very popular with her because she had a very large..."

He noticed the other man's eyes wishing death on him from the other side of the table.

"...vagina."

"We're not that Ann Summers", said the interviewer. "Our company name is Anne Sommers. It is a Swedish company, and is spelt quite differently. It sells coin-operated gambling machines. Would you like to rethink your answer?"

"Gosh", said Steve. "I'm so sorry."

"I imagine so."

"That must happen a lot."

"Actually, that's the first time ever." The door to the interview suite opened. "This will be a temporary reprieve for you. Mr. Botham here is our chief designer. I consider his input important in deciding on the recruitment of new sales and marketing staff."

Steve looked up, and choked on his complimentary coffee. Framed in the doorway like a gunfighter entering a saloon was the cowboy who had lured Steve to his new home, still wearing his pointed-toed boots, Stetson and denims.

"You", breathed Steve.

The cowboy did not react, but simply crossed the room, without appearing to need to hold onto his belt buckle while he did so, and took up a seat on the opposite side of the table.

"You live in the same building as me", said Steve.

The cowboy looked Steve up and down.

"A coincidence", he said, "if true. I can't say I've ever noticed you."

"Well, you wouldn't", said Steve. "I mean, I look normal. I mean, that's not to say you look weird, but, you know -"

The cowboy raised an eyebrow.

Steve turned to his first interviewer, appealing for help. "You know, he's, he's dressed like a cowboy."

"Really?" said Mr. Torres, Marketing Manager. "I can't say I've ever noticed."

Steve drained the rest of the coffee, his hands shaking.

"Do you know anything about gambling machines?" said Mr. Botham the cowboy earnestly.

Steve looked up.

***

"...and the best way to win is still to sit by the machine all night, waiting for about ten or eleven guys to put ten quid in one after another till the machine's built up a good payout."

"What about non-NUDGE machines?"

"Don't play them. Ever."

"You know the NUDGE button just gives you an illusion of increased win probability, don't you? Remember, machines aren't analogue any more, haven't been for decades. It's fixed digitally so that using it gives exactly the same chance of losing. It's done by automatically reducing your win probability in the bonus round."

Steve considered this. "It's actually not that I think it'll make me win more often. It's that it gives me more control. Or an illusion of control."

Mr. Botham nodded. "Our customer surveys have observed this." He turned to Mr. Torres. "That'll be all from me."

Mr. Torres's expression was inscrutable.

"I believe, then, that that concludes the interview from our point of view...is there anything you'd like to ask us?"

Steve mulled over his list of prepared questions.

Mentally, he pressed the NUDGE button.

"Those new flippers on PRINCESS DIANA MUST DIE pinball. They're not straight. What's the deal with that?"

***

"So, if the flipper is concave, it carries on pushing the ball for longer."

"Exactly. The length of the contact surface is greater, and the flipper receives the ball rather than colliding with it. But more skill is needed. A straight flipper is more easy to predict. In theory, a concave flipper gives you more power and, if you play for long enough, just as much control. Our intention is to keep the customer playing longer by providing a challenge." Mr. Botham stoically ignored a gaggle of schoolchildren yelling 'HOWDY PARDNER' and, worryingly for Steve, 'GAY COWBOYS EATING PUDDING'. "You'll have noticed that the PRINCESS DIANA MUST DIE machine has a larger potential payout, due to the higher and more difficult MI5 CONSPIRACY PROVED ramp shot, which is too far up the machine to be reached with a conventional flipper. But with the full power of the scythe flipper, it's possible."

"Scythe flipper? It has a trade name?"

Mr. Botham stopped to buy a copy of the Financial Times. "Hmm, I see Statoil didn't perform as projected...yes, we have thirteen separate patents on flipper design. McSweeneys in the States, our main competitors, have a convex flipper - just as powerful, but ten times as hard to master. The Scimitar Flipper, they call it. Their chief designer, Melton Hinditty, is quite a personal hero of mine. I was privileged to speak to him once, at an international gaming machines convention organized by BALLS OF STEEL magazine."

"What did he say?"

Mr. Botham fluffed out his paper irritably as he walked. "He asked me where the toilets were."

"Is it a better flipper?"

"Oh good gracious no. Not to the average player. The balls go everywhere. But to a world-class player, a Park Young or a Fernando Ap Gryffydh, it's the only flipper. The McSweeny Shamsheer is produced only for world competition, and used by nine out of ten prior world champions. It's made of natural rubber and titanium, and costs over twelve hundred dollars a pair."

"Gosh", said Steve, unable to think of a more apposite response. They had now turned into their home street, and were approaching the steps to the front door. "What did the tenth world champion use?"

"Ah, that's Thor Einarsson", said Mr. Botham, fishing in his pocket for the front door keys. "From Greenland. Disdainful of modern methods. A stick-in-the-mud. Uses his father's old pair of lucky straight flippers. Carries them everywhere he goes. The rubber's cracking and coming away from the polythene. Polythene, I ask you."

The front door opened.

"Do many world class world pinball players come from Greenland?" said Steve.

"Mostly. Or North Korea. Or Welsh Argentina. Long nights in", explained Mr. Botham, "with nothing to do." He fished for another set of doorkeys. "Be seeing you."

"Have I got the job?" said Steve suddenly, thrusting his hands into his pockets in embarrassment.

"I really have no idea. It's Torres's decision."

"Oh. I see." Steve loitered uncertainly as Botham unlocked his front door.

"I'm sorry, did you have any other questions?"

"Um, yes. Erm - why do you dress like a cowboy?"

Mr. Botham's expression did not flicker.

"Do I?" he said. He looked down at himself. "Perhaps I do. What an interesting coincidence."

"You have the hat too", offered Steve.

"I have a hat", corrected Mr. Botham.

"It's a cowboy hat", said Steve.

"If you say so", said Mr. Botham.

"You're wearing holsters", said Steve. Secretly, inwardly, he punched the air in a victory salute. Now I have you!

"Many people wear holsters", said Mr. Botham. "Policemen and soldiers wear holsters, for example."

He nodded at Steve once more and entered his flat. Several substantial-sounding bolts shot into place on the other side of the door.

"Shit", said Steve, and walked off towards his own room.