Dead in Time

Chapter Twelve

“I just wondered,” I said as we side-stepped a knot of bright young things having life-changing emotional crises via their mobile phones. Shrieks of laughter and wails of tears rent the night. “I wondered how—”

He cleared his throat. I closed my eyes.

“You didn’t nick it, did you?”

“No! Well, nah, not really.”

“Oh, God….”

“Nah, babe, it’s not like that. Chip?”

He offered me dibs from the greasy packet we were sharing. It wasn’t exactly the sit-down dinner he’d promised me, but I couldn’t afford that, especially if I was off up to London again at the end of the week. Turned out I’d had an email from Charlie Davies while I’d been out. Damon had been proud of himself for playing secretary and dealing with the computer (despite whatever he’d done to my printer… I suspected it would never work again), and I gathered from how snide he’d been about the string of letters after Charlie’s name that he’d been at least a little bit impressed. Charlie had used his work address, from the clinic in Northwick Park, and seemed cautiously eager to meet me.

That in itself worried me.

“Thanks.” I took a chip and bit into it thoughtfully. “So what is it like? If you didn’t nick it?”

Damon wrinkled his nose. “Temp’ry liberation. I’m gonna take it back. Was only sitting in some dealer’s back room, y’know. All padded up and not bein’ played. Ain’t right.” He broke off a piece of battered plaice and offered the packet to me again. “And then, y’know, you see all these mass-produced things up on the wall, all plywood glued together…. I got talkin’ to the bloke in the shop, and he says these days a ’74 Deluxe goes for thousands.” He scoffed and gesticulated with the bit of fish. “He says, right, girl: ‘The music might’ve been shit, mate, but the guitars are well sought after.’ Huh.”

I winced. “Ouch.”

“Yeah, well. What’s that, uh… ‘decade that taste forgot’, yeah?”

I reached over and took another chip. Perhaps surprisingly, they were still warm. Walking beside him was still reminiscent of a bracing stroll on a tarn, but I supposed I’d been getting used to that.

“Taste is subjective,” I said. “And we’ll probably grow out of post-modernism soon. I wouldn’t worry.”

“Post-what?”

“Culturally sanctioned historical sarcasm,” I said and reached in for a bit of fish. “Y’know. The ability to see how absolutely everything refers to everything else, but still fail to either declare your allegiance to something, or come up with anything truly original.”

“Oh. Right.”

Damon looked at me with that expression of faint… well, admiration. I wasn’t used to it. I took another chip.

“Anyway,” I said, chewing. “It wasn’t all shit. The music.”

He gave me a withering look and took the chips away.

“You’re gonna pay for that, baby. I mean it! No… get off.”

“Oh, come on. I’m hungry!”

He laughed. Not really thinking about it, I stuck out my foot and caught the back of his leg with my ankle. A split-second of cold, slimy fire slid up my spine and it felt a little bit like standing in semi-congealed jelly. I smelled something sweet, heavy and woody, and there was the solid shape of him, somewhere beneath the acreage of his patched flares. It was over quickly. Damon righted himself with barely a stumble, offered me a conciliatory chip, and we walked on, him chuckling and me pretending I hadn’t felt slightly queasy.