When Mr. Dog Bites (25 page)

“I’m going to get a drink. Want a Coke?”

“Get me a lemon Fanta. I’m just going to hang here and see if the hot-hot-hotties come to me,” Amir said.

“Good luck with that,” I said, and plodded off to the bar.

Well, it wasn’t exactly a bar, more like a couple of desks shoved together with rough white paper covering them; the same white paper that we put on the cafeteria tables when the school had its Christmas lunch. A square metal money box and some plastic cups were on the “
bar
.” Mr. Grant was barman.

“What will it be, sir?” Mr. Grant said.

“Can I have a vodka tonic and a piña colada, Mr. Barman?” I said.

“We’ve just this minute run out of vodka and colada, sir.”

“What about a G and T?”

“No G left, I’m afraid.”

“Give me a pint of snakebite, then.”

“All the snakes have slithered away.”

“Shame, that. Give me a Bud?”

“Gone.”

“Becks?”

“
Finito.
”

“Wicked?”

“Out.”

“Water?”

“Now
that
we have gabillions of.”

What we were doing was called role play; we did this all the time in Mr. Grant’s drama class, and I was quite good at it—he told me so. I was thinking that when I finished school maybe I could become the first actor with my syndrome to be on the silver screen or on the telly. But I tried not to think these thoughts ’cause that was when I became super sad, and this was the big Halloween disco bash and the last thing I wanted to do was get all sad and misery guts. I laughed really loudly so that Mr. Grant would realize our role play was over and done with. If I hadn’t laughed, we could have gone on all night with it, and there were far too many things to be getting on with for me to be standing and role playing with Mr. Grant all evening. Also, he had to be a barman. For real.

“What can I get for you, Dylan?”

“Can I have a Coke and a lemon Fanta, sir?”

There was no fridge, so all the sugar drinks were stacked up behind him. All warm and fizzy. In my mind some of the real morons at Drumhill shouldn’t have been mixing their medication with drinks like these. Could have been a disastrous concoction.

“One Coke and one lemon Fanta, coming right up.”

Mr. Grant put the drinks on the desks/bar and poured them into two plastic cups. I wasn’t looking forward to the drinks.

“Thanks, sir.”

“Who are you supposed to be, then? One of the Blues Brothers?”

“No, I’m one of the characters from
Reservoir Dogs
.”

“Oh, I see. Well, very good, Dylan, very good.” I could tell that Mr. Grant had never seen the film.

The Beyoncé
song where she talks about having a rock the size of a grape on her finger was playing. This was a song all the girls seemed to love; they loved it so much that they all pointed to their ring fingers when they were dancing as if all the men should go out and spend their hard-earned cash on a bloody silly sparkle ring. Stupid song. Stupid dance. Stupid message. And, as I expected, all the dudes and walking wounded hovered around the edges of the dance floor/gym hall with nothing to do.

“This is pure shite. There are no chickadees here,” Amir said.

“It’s still early. Cool the jets, Amir.”

We checked out the dance floor, sipped our drinks, and tried to sweat coolness. In America they would say we were working it or that we were damn fine.

“Look at the state of you two fannies.” The voice was so loud it boomed above Beyoncé. Doughnut was there with a couple of third-year guys. He was dressed as a punk rocker. The third-year guys were dressed as a pirate and the pope. A punk, a pirate, and the pope. What a shower!

“Look at the nick of
you
,” I said.

“Yeah,” Amir said.

“So who are you supposed to be, then?” Doughnut asked.

“
Reservoir Dogs
characters,” I said.

“Really?” Doughnut seemed impressed with this. “Really? You’re from
Reservoir Dogs
?”

“Yeah, really.” Amir was no longer scared of Doughnut since our soccer disaster.

“Cool fucking film, dudes,” Doughnut said. Scottish people shouldn’t say words like “
dudes”
and “
awesome”
and “
bitch”
—it doesn’t sound right. Singing in an American accent was okay, but Doughnut sounded like a pleb. Secret: I did it too sometimes, but never in company. “So, what’s happening, boys?” he asked.

Me and Amir looked at each other as if he were talking to someone else. Was Doughnut trying to be our Halloween disco buddy? He called us “boys,” as if we were two of the boys or part of his gang of boys.

“Erm .
.
. Nothing much; just watching the dance floor,” I said.

“No bitches in here yet?” Doughnut said.

Amir laughed, and I knew why.

Doughnut turned to the pirate and the pope and said, “Fudballs, go to the bar and ask that shirt-lifter Grant to give me a Coke on the rocks.”

The two third-years did what they were told. Fudballs. I’d never be a slave to anyone. Dad’s advice was to scud someone full force in the coupon if they were taking liberties with friendship. I thought Doughnut was taking liberties here with the pirate and the pope.

“What’s your tipple, Amir?” Doughnut asked. For him to even say a sentence to the bold Amir without using the word “Paki” or “Pak-man” in it was a rip-roaring success. It made me happy inside for Amir.

“What?” Amir said. He spoke for me also.

“What are you drinking?”

“Erm .
.
. Just Fanta.”

“What kind?”

“Erm .
.
. Lemon.”

“Faggot Fanta!” Doughnut said.

“No, it’s not,” Amir said.

“No, I didn’t mean you were a faggot, Amir. I mean your drink needs some jazzing up.” Then he turned to me. “What are you guzzling, D-Boy?”

“D-Boy”? I guessed that meant “Dylan-Boy,” and the
D
was an abbreviation. This was proper buddy talk. I wasn’t quite sure of D-Boy as my new nickname, but I didn’t want to tell Doughnut to blow town, because he was making a real effort to act all chum chummy, even if it did sound like he was reading all his sentences from an American film script.

“Just Coke,” I said.

“Fuck that for a game of Scrabble. You want to put some of this in it, spunk it up a bit.”

Me and Amir sniggered at the thought of Doughnut spunking up our drinks. The image of it was rot-rot-rotten in the nap-nap-napper. Doughnut by this time had gone into the inside pocket of his punk leather jacket and produced two bottles. A half bottle of vodka and an odd-shaped bottle of something else.

“What’s that one?” I asked, pointing to the odd-shaped bottle.

“Grappa,” Doughnut said.

“What the bloody hell is that? It sou-sou-sounds like toilet cleaner,” Amir said.

“Crapper,” I said.

“It’s fucking dee-licious. It’s from Greece or Italy or some fucking spic country or other,” Doughnut said.

I wondered if he meant a clean country, as in spic-and-span.

“Where did you get it?” Amir asked.

“I swiped the bitch from my dad’s garage. He won’t have a scooby—he’s totally clueless.”

“And what do you do with it?” I asked.

“Are you serious, D-Boy?”

“I mean, do you put it in your drink or do you swig it neat?” Check me out, “
neat.”

“Whatever floats your boat, D-Boy, whatever floats your boat. You guys want some?”

I flashed my eyes to Amir—he caught my eye—then to the bottles, and again to Amir. I could tell that he didn’t want to be the one who backed down. Me neither. Neither of us wanted to be the one who was the weak son of a gun. But Mom would swing for me if she caught me drinking, as would the docs; it was super dangerous to booze while taking my type of medication. I knew for a fact that Amir’s dad would gut him like a junkyard dog if he caught him pissed as a fart. I didn’t think people like Amir or his family drank anyway. I scrunched up my face and looked at Amir. He understood the sign as only best buds do. Sometimes we had that ESP
Twilight Zone
stuff going on. Bonkerinos!

“Erm . . . I’m not sure, Doughnut. I’m not supposed to take any booze with my medication,” I said. That was my way out of the teenage humiliation of not being cool. I was Rubik’s Cube square.

“What about you, Amir? Your lot must like a bit of grappa, being foreign and all that.”

“Not for me, man. My guts would be in bits all night, and I’d have to spend the rest of the disco in the l-l-lavvy.” He didn’t say that his dad would have knocked all the shite out of him if he got caught. He might even have kicked ten lumps of shite out of Doughnut, too, but then he’d be in the papers for battering a spastic, which would mean they’d have to flee the country because of all the backlash.

“You want to lay off the curry, Amir. Anyway, your loss, boys, your loss,” Doughnut said.

Just at that point the pirate and the pope returned from the bar and handed Doughnut his Coke on the rocks. Doughnut gulped down about three quarters of the Coke and then poured some of the vodka
and
the grappa into the rest of it. So much for the security. “Right, I’m off to see what this shit hole of a disco has to offer,” he said.

“See you, then,” I said.

“Adios,” Amir said.

“What?” Doughnut said.

“Nothing, just saying ch-ch-cheerio,” Amir said.

“Well, if you change your mind and you want some jizz in your stomach, I’ll be floating about—unless I’m baw deep in some chick, that is.”

“Okay, well, all the best with that,” I said.

“Okay, see you,” Amir said.

“Right, boys, let’s go and get ourselves some Drumhill pussy. I need to dip my wick,” he said to the little pirate and the pope, who sloped off behind him through the by-now-busy dance floor. Everyone was dancing to Lady Gaga, who was chanting about the tabloid photographers. What the hell was Comeford thinking?

“D-Boy?”

“What? Don’t call me that, cock-balls.”

“Only teasing .
.
. Dylan?”

“What?”

“Do you think Doughnut
does
do it with chicks?”

“Not on your nelly.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“Too ugly.”

“And fat.”

We drank two more Cokes and lemon Fantas; both pissed twice; ate some monkey nuts; and spoke to a selection of businessmen, tramps, robbers, soccer players, Michael Jacksons, witches, and geography teachers about our costumes and nothing else in particular. We stared at the dance floor, laughed at people’s freaky dance moves, tried to see through Miss Flynn’s blouse again, and slagged off Mr. Comeford’s music selection. Then it got Channel 4 News
boring.

“Want to dance?” Amir asked.

“With who? There’s no one to dance with.”

“We could dance with each other.”

“Dance with each other?”

“Yeah.”

“Amir, people will think we’re a couple of double adaptors if we dance with each other.”

“Why?”

“’Cause they just will.”

“That’s stupid, that is,” Amir said.

“Why don’t you dance with a girl?”

“There’s nobody I really want—”

“Are you scared?”

“No.”

“So go.”

“It’s just .
.
.”

“Just what?”

“Just that I’m n-n-not a very good dancer.”

“Look around, Amir. Who is?”

“Yes, but I only know how to do bhangra dancing, and there’s no way I’m doing that here.”

“What about the
Slumdog Millionaire
dance?”

“Don’t talk shite, Dylan.”

“What about her?” I said, pointing out a girl in the year below us. A cute girl, right up Amir’s street.

“Who?”

“That one who’s dressed like a big cat.” I pointed.

“Priya?”

“Yes, that’s her name. She’s not bad-looking. I think you’d get on.”

“’Cause she’s a Paki?” Amir said. I didn’t think he was happy.

“No, I didn’t mean that. I just thought .
.
.” I DIDN’T MEAN THAT.

“She’s not a Paki anyway.”

“She’s not?”

“No, she’s Indian.”

“Oh, right. Well, that’s okay, then, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not, Dylan.”

“Why?”