George and Spider

Part One - The Comet's Tail

George Jules fidgeted in his seat. The sleeves of his leather jacket had adhered slightly to the sticky surface of the table, and there was a sort of 'piffing' sound as he repositioned himself in the chair. He checked his watch; nine forty five, his eyes lingering over the digital display for longer than was necessary. Somehow the numbers didn't make any sense to him, nine - dot - forty - six now. There was a sudden shift in his consciousness. Something was wrong, the time was wrong, too many minutes had past. Spider was late.
Lucas Buffet, aka Spider, was not only George's colleague but his bosom friend, his sidekick, his shaded gimp and all round under-handed man. Spider was thoroughly reliable in all these respects, and he was never, ever late.
A slow wave of anxiety rippled, cell to cell, through George's body as he attempted to rationalise the delay in his friend's arrival. There seemed no possible reason for the lateness, the fabric of Spider's life being so thoroughly smooth and plain; there was very little in the way of pattern to distract him, or texture on which he could have become snagged. George sighed, his lips stiffened as he glanced towards the door. His surroundings did nothing to smooth his rising anxiety.
This was not a place where a man could relax and coast through time, perhaps sipping at something with melting ice in it. Ice cubes were never served at The Comet's Tail, there was no freezer, the place had never known a lemon. Four varieties of beer were served, at blood temperature and always flowing from a fresh barrel. A hard-core of followers would drink nowhere else so the beer never languished long enough to turn into the regulation bilge water on offer in other flimsy establishments. These customers were plain-headed people who knew what they liked and stuck to it: fast barmaids, real beer, casual violence, silence, or conversation in the form of that type of crude, cutting vulgarity which spills from a man with an endless supply of inner-rage.
The pub was rarely quiet on a Friday night. Lone punters like George were forced to listen to loud, obscene conversations. Offensive words launched high and coated in spittle, dawdled within viscous air, thick with the foul scent of cheap deodorant, sweat and industrial chemicals, somehow all fused into one desperate aroma.
George checked his watch again. It said nine fifty two now. The atmosphere in the pub was increasingly volatile. Most of the congregation were on their forth or fifth drink. Alcohol had loosened the taught shackles of the working week; the men were hard-eyed and competitive, the women lucid and predatory. Slowly George turned his head, once again, towards the door. In an instant he felt the loaded beams of faces connecting with his, searching for weakness, for chinks in his body language. He felt his flesh crawl and his eyelids burn. Quickly he put his head down and focused instead upon the grain in the innocent wooden table-top.
An innocent glance at the wrong person, at the wrong time on a Friday night had been the cause of many an ambulance to be called to The Comet's Tail. It was one of those establishments which leached far more out of society than it gave back. Good old fashioned fisticuffs, of the sort where people argued first, then engaged in light, temperate violence, had become the thing of a distant, almost romantic past. In this, the era of instant gratification, the foreplay of verbal disagreement had become nothing more than an indulgent frill, a mere canape. And violence was never far from a trigger; a tattoo depicting the 'wrong' football team was always enough to do it, the smug and over-educated deserved it, smiling was asking for it, tall people drew it like lightening.
The regulars existed in an environmental niche all of their own. Any innocent person entering the pub who didn't quite fit into this niche could provoke the kind of rage which can only be released by a swiftly broken glass, followed by the frenzied slashing of flesh. And no more did the other punters intervene in goodwill to 'break it up', instead they gaped and grinned and supped their pints while emitting low, inane mutterings. The old grey mop behind the bar was streaked with the rusty brown stains of a hundred men or more. It harboured blood-born pathogens, and it smelled worse than the filthiest hospital mop in all of England.
The place was uncommonly filthy. In order to use the lavatory, customers had to go outside to a sort of brick cubicle with an inadequate wooden door. Here a stained, seatless toilet resided next to a minute sink, on which a cracked, grey rectangle of soap had stuck fast for several years. The air inside that cubicle was toxic with the imprint of a great many debauched encounters. Indeed, it could instil in a visitor such a mysterious sense of discomfort that they would often flee the room before their business was complete, leaving foul deposits behind and thus compounding the overall unpleasantness.
Come on, come on Spider! Where the blastards are you? George muttered to himself, rather like a ventriloquist, speaking through closed, pointed teeth. He was beginning to feel desperate now.
'Working along tonight?' said a familiar voice, 'Where's yer boy then?'
George hadn't noticed Kelly the barmaid creeping up behind him. She made a grab for his glass, he caught the base of it and gripped it hard. 'I'm saving that bit!' he said, sounding rather pathetic to himself.
'Oh? Who for?'
'He'll be here,' George said firmly.
Kelly stood very close to him and leaning into his ear said, 'Well he better be! I've got other contacts waiting on me for leads, and their not as tight as you are George - and your dad!'
George cocked his head and shrugged. She cursed under her breath and shook her head as she trotted back to the bar, swinging her long, gingery pony tail.
He slyly checked his watch again. I'll give him ten more minutes, he thought, then I'll start walking. Where exactly he was going to walk to he wasn't sure. Spider could be anywhere, but George would start walking, for as far as he was concerned, walking could solve any problem. Many times he'd taken comfort in the fact that if something unbearably dreadful occurred in his life, he'd simply walk, walk himself to death; head down, one foot in front of the other until he reached his jumping off point.
Adding to George's discomfort now was an empty, groaning sensation in his belly. The absence of his girlfriend, who hadn't come home that evening because she was meeting her sister after work, had caused George to forget about dinner altogether. The monosodium glutamate based offerings behind the bar were less enticing, perhaps less harmful than a cigarette. He lit one up and slid the ashtray along the table towards him. It was a huge, heavy thing, red and shiny and stinking of old ash. George wasn't dependent on tobacco but he enjoyed the act of smoking as a sort of indulgent habit, something to keep his hands and lips busy. He relished opening the box, the look and feel of the silver paper, the nimble act of removing one of the long, weightless sticks, and finally the inclusion of fire, a primal urge sated. After taking a single drag he stopped and waited for the first cylinder of marl grey ash to form, then he tapped the cigarette and watched it drop down and settle into the bottom of huge, dusty ashtray.
Constantly looking down, to avoid looking up, was beginning to make George feel unwell. The back of his neck ached and the room around him seemed to blur and spin. People's voices grew louder inside the walls of his head. George didn't like to go too far into his own head. There was something there, something which lay dormant in the very centre of his consciousness, something which he feared to wake. He knew that he must keep at least one of his psychological tentacles in the now, in banal earthly reality.
Carefully now, he looked up. This time he was sure to look directly towards Kelly and the other barmaid, in order to avoid any loaded connections with the other punters. Kelly looked back at him, tapping her watch and raising her eyebrows as if to mock him. It occurred to George, as his eyes returned to the table, that there were similarities between the barmaids and the ashtrays. Big and hard, shiny and hungry. In fact, if everyone in The Comet's Tail chain smoked for three weeks solid. there would still be room for a few more fagends in those ashtrays. Something similar could be said of the barmaids. George wasn't sure exactly what, but he knew that this chain of thought fell into the category of bad taste. He was just trying to arrange these thoughts in his head when a familiar form came floating towards him, catching his eye.
George sunk in his chair, exhaled deeply and said, 'Christ you're here at last! I was starting to stress out. Where've you been?'
The small form panted and sat down lightly on one of the other chairs at George's table, looking rather like a small child late home from school.
There was a pause of about ten seconds, then,'Sorry George. One of my snakes got out,' came the reply. The voice was high but not squeaky, and it lisped slighty. It was rather like the voice of David Beckham, although the physical form of the owner bore absolutely no resemblance to the famous footballer.
'You're wet mate. Is it raining?'
'Er - it's mizzly.'
'Drizzly?'
'T's what I said George.'
'Good. Forecast said it would. Finish my pint, I'm just going up to the bar to square things up with Kelly.'
George had a confidence about him now, for he was on a mission and the anticipation of it filled up all the space inside his head which moments ago had left him feeling so vulnerable as he waited alone for Spider to arrive. He walked boldly up to the bar. A rush of punters were waiting there for service, their guts already swilling in that soothing marinade of hops and malt, so popular among bristly men with thirsty faces.
George knew he'd been seen by Kelly, for she had a sort of supernatural awareness. Her wide apart, entelope eyes gave her unrivalled peripheral vision and she was well known for serving her customers in order, it was one of her many talents and helped to minimise fights at the bar. George settled himself at the end of the bar and waited quietly. Just above his head hung the glass cabinet which housed the wiry grey tail of a once famous local racehorse known as The Comet. He watched Kelly for a few moments as she spun around from the customers to the taps to the till to the customers, she smiled, her face alive with little glints. She could be described as bubbly, but those bubbles did a very good job of clouding what was underneath. Her core nature being ruthless and self-serving, with absolutely no inclination to do the right thing.
'Be with yers in a second darlins!' she barked as she strode up to George and placed her elbows on the bar, staring into his eyes. She rather fancied the idea of swallowing him whole but he was more than repulsed by her and averted her gaze.
'You got details for me then?' he said.