A) I Am The Man

I AM THE MAN.

chapter 1.

Adrian James Roach.

Roachy.

Fish.

Aids.

There were at least another fifty variations on his name that he was
monikered with at certain points in his life.It was also rather apt
that he worked in a tropical fish shop.

A fish amongst fish.

Adrian kneeled closer to the fish tank and his thoughts drifted into
his breathing, 'Aidy, The fishster, Roach boy, Fishy, Trout, Fish boy,
Razor-fish Roach.'

He'd never been called this last name but he pondered on it for a
moment, 'Razor-Fish.' Now that was a name to be listened to and
respected. It conjured up images of Adrian, hair slicked back, legs
astride and face to the breeze. It also conjured up a cut-throat razor
and any amount of slashed and maimed people who dared stand in his way,
but, he thought, he had no control over what people knew to be the
truth.

There.

He was at it again, lying to himself or more to the point, embellishing
the facts so much that they became lies. In truth the only claim he had
on Razor-fish stemmed from a beach time encounter with a taught 40lb
fishing line he had nearly garrotted himself with, while chasing his
dog along the shoreline.

Then the encounter with the owner of the fishing rod that was attached
to the line. Apparently all the hooks and bait (razor-fish) had been
scattered into the pebbles by the whiplash of the rod as it suddenly
set off on its journey towards him.

Adrian remembered the booming voice. 'What the hell are you doing, you
twat?'

Adrian recalled the surreal situation that developed when the
fisherman picked up the rod and seemingly tried to reel him in, then
realising the size of the catch exceeded 40lb shouted, 'Just keep
still, I'll have to cut you free.'

The line had snagged across the top of his ear, across his face and
become entangled in the sleeve button of his wrangler, thrashing about
wildly hadn't helped matters either.

He was Stanley knifed free of his bindings with the mutter, 'Biggest
catch I'll have today, anyway.'

So, Razor-fish it was then.

He also had no control over what people didn't know.

And this was the crux of Adrian's problems, his ability to lie with
conviction and his inability to cease from lying when there was no
actual point of him continuing.

There was a 'ding ding' of the shop door and a draught of cool air,
someone had come to break the tranquillity.

'Are these the only discus fish you have? The ones in this tank?'

Adrian refocussed his sight from the two discus fish in the foreground
of the aquarium to the too disc shaped face in the background.

'Yes,' replied Adrian. 'Just this pair of reds.'

He eased himself up to full height, his knees ached from kneeling on
the tile floor.

'They are a pair then?'

Adrian glanced back down at the tank wondering if another discus had
miraculously appeared, then back into the face of an obvious discus
collector. He realised the man had meant a male/female pair.

'Oh yes, we've only had them a week.'

'They're green discus, not red.' corrected the man. 'It's just that
they have red spots.'

'Yes, of course.'

'How much are they?'

'They're not for sale, they're getting over white spot,' lied Adrian.
He'd become quite attached to these two fish while he'd been in the
shop, which was all of ten minutes.

'They seem to have got over it now there's no sign of it at all,' said
the discus-man peering into the tank.

'Well we try to keep them in quarantine for about a fortnight after.
Usually.'

'I've kept discus for, let's see now...must be seven years, in fact
that's all I keep', he snapped his head around into Adrian's gaze, 'you
could say I'm a bit of a specialist, of course, only in the contained
breeding of the aequifasciata, or the green discus to the
layman.'

He said it with such an air of superiority that it made Adrian break
the stare and look at his shoes.

Adrian thought for moment and decided on a new angle.

'Have you seen them in their natural habitat?' Asked Adrian.

'No, I originally started with your standard setup, you know, shoals of
tetra, red-tailed shark, angel-fish, fin-rot, ha ha ha....'

His Ha-ha's tailed off as Adrian's acknowledging stare levelled back.
The majority of his fish had fin-rot, in fact it was only one of three
ways that they could enter the exclusive 'Adrian's lounge aquarium'.
They had to be so diseased, traumatised or boring that their next big
splash in life would have been the short, sharp shock of them entering
lavatorial deep-water.

'Anyway, as I was saying,' continued the Discus-man, 'I came to the
conclusion that it was just a novelty tank... it was just novelty
fish.' Adrian realised he had anti-novelty fish, if you saw one of
Adrian's fish you wouldn't want to see another bloody fish for a
month.'They were just novelty fish,' re-iterated the Discus man,
'that's what they were! So I specialised. Into Discus actually.'

Adrian envisioned other scenes in which the last two statements could
hold the same enthusiasm. He saw the Discus-man at an Olympic throwing
event after launching his projectile out of the stadium; Reporter: 'And
to what do you credit your dedication to this event Discus man?'

'Well, I played a little javelin, a little bit of shot but there was
one event I really liked...so I specialised. Into discus
actually!'

'You don't...friggin'...say', said Adrian inadvertently.

'Pardon me?

'You don't...ever...see....'

'See what?'

'Uh, see discus in their natural environment as I did.'

Pause

'On holiday.'

Pause.

'Last year.'

The Discus-man's eyes lit up, 'You've been to the Amazon?'

'Well, yes', Adrian felt like he had to add, but I don't like to talk
about it.

'Have you seen the discus, oh, at home?'

'Well I dived, um, dove, doved even, ha ha, well I scuba-dove into the
river and came face to face with discuses, it was great!'

The lie-ball was rolling quicker than he needed, it was confusing his
tenses now.

'You swam in the Amazon?'

This wasn't a question that he had prepared for, it had all just
evolved so far. This was a direct 'yes, no' question. You couldn't say,
'I sort of swam in it!', because you either have or, have not. And
anyway Adrian had never actually left Britain leave alone swim about in
crocodile infested waters in some godforsaken Amazonian
scuba-fest.

'Yeah, spent two months in..', he needed names, places, place names,
just something.

'Sumtin! Yeah, it's a small village, very secluded, off the beaten
track, they live off the land, if it moves, you can eat it.'

'Really.'

'Even discus, you can eat them as well.'

Shit.

Why did he say that? Can you eat them? He didn't have a clue or more to
the point would the Discus-man ever be in such a desperately hungry
situation as to dip into his tropical fish collection, like some
piscean pic'n'mix, to stave off his hunger?

'Surely not! You couldn't eat discus fish?' said the Discus-man,
obviously reviled by the very thought of it. To him, concluded Adrian,
the actual act of eating your fish must be tantamount to eating your
pet dog. In a way cannibalistic.

Obviously not then. So this would be a good time to stop.

And this is the point that a normal person would stop but Adrian had
found the Achielies' heel, the Achielies socks... and shoes and
whatever other mode of transport he deemed appropriate for the
occasion. The Discus-man was putty in his hands.

So what now?

'They get as big as plates you know? In fact, they used to use them as
plates! Dry them out whole.' He was on a roll now, 'then have a
fruit-salad on them and it was like, with a fish base. And you eat the
fish with your salad, but you just pick the middle out of the fish so
the whole fish/plate combination doesn't collapse into your lap.'

Where the hell does he stop? He can't stop now Discus man might get a
question in.

'And, so with the bits of fish you've got left you can...... trade for
fishing rights.' This was going into the bad zone. The place where lies
and truth are indistinguishable.

'But the maximum size for a discus is around six and a half inches.'
factualised the Discus-man.

'Yes. But in confined spaces.'

'But, I mean, they've been studied in their habitat'

'Oh yeah and you know someone who can actually say that truthfully?'
smirked Adrian.

Adrian wished with all his heart for an exit from this situation, but
short of clutching his chest and feigning a cardiac arrest it was
probably best to let it run its course.

There was creak of an upstairs door, and an enquiring voice, 'Hello? Be
down now.'

Adrian glanced to the bead-curtained doorway at the bottom of the
stairs and back to the man, 'there's a good place for discus fish on
Freeman's Road, AquaPets I think its called.'

The man snuffled. 'That's not very good business sense, giving out the
oppositions address is it?'

Adrian shuffled towards the shop door. 'Well I likes to be helpful!' He
opened the door and exited on to the street.

He may work in a tropical fish shop but it certainly wasn't that
one.

'I likes to be helpful!', he whispered, stifling a chortle with his
hand over his mouth. He looked around to make sure no one in the street
had observed him telling jokes to himself, but very few people were
about.It was just too damn cold. He walked to the the corner of the
street, leant on the frost glazed rails and thought what he could do
for the rest of his day off.

Choice 1; go back to the car, drive home to the flat and put the
heating on full. The down side being, the heating bill getting
larger.

Choice 2; stay in town, perhaps have a beer and something to eat, buy a
magazine or two....The down side being, less in the
disposable-income-pot.

Choice 3; visit a friend?

But the sad point was, he didn't really have any friends anymore. Not
after the break up with Julie. All the friends were just friends of the
relationship, the unity of them together, as one entity. Once the bond
had been severed, you could no longer be part of that circle. The
circle that allowed only stable male/female relationships, children
optional.

The circle that had continually insinuated they would never last and
had continually insinuated it for eight years, but of course, finally
they had been right all along, it hadn't lasted. If he visited any of
them now, he would just feel so.....I-told-you-soed.

'So what was it to be? One two or three?' He let out an audible
chirrup after he'd said it and instinctively covered his mouth
again.

A panda car pulled off from the opposite side of the street, Adrian
smaned as he saw the few cars that were on Bridge Street noticeably
slow down.

He gazed back to the police car and clashed glances with the
driver.

Adrian tensed, hunched up his shoulders and headed toward the car
park.

to be continued.......

by jjbhughes