Three is not always a crowd

 

I swing through the lab to check on the techy on-call. He nods. I salute. His bleeper bleeps. The telephone rings. The test time buzzes. I’m out of here. I don’t say ‘Good night- I’m away home.’ It wouldn’t sound right. I try not to yawn. Yawning is contagious.

     Besides, I’m not going home. Yes, I’m tired but there’s the rest of the night for going home and nothing there when I do. Even my cat has found some elsewhere to receive its creature comforts. It looked sleek when I saw it last - when it had regarded my outstretched hand with some disdain. So home would be friendless, comfortless; a choice between hot and cold beans.

    So... I jog down the back stairs. Can’t abide with lifts. You have to have no imagination to use a lift, or one colossal faith in reality and engineering. Every time you step into a lift and press the button… you believe you’ll will arrive where you intend. But what if you don’t? Probability says one day the Russian will win at Roulette, and you won’t – I mean - arrive where you expect, that is. Besides, my old man died in a lift. He was eighty four and lived on the fifteenth floor of a hi-rise. Coroner said he’d been dead a day and a half. Must have done over a hundred miles up and down before some bugger had thought to take the old geezer’s pulse. So I use stairs. You step and, by an amazing sequence of minutely co-ordinated muscle  movements, you descend or ascend at your will. Your feet clear each tread by the merest distance. You stumble only when you’re drunk or the engineer lets you down by making one step just a fraction too tall or too short. Breaks the rhythm. Breaks your neck. OK. People fall down stairs every day. More die in lifts. I use the stairs because I trust my grip on the hand rail. You’ve got to trust something, I guess. So, I arrive where I expect at the ground floor fire exit by the rubbish bins. Apt.

     It is dark. That’s Ok - that’s because it’s late. It’s raining and that’s OK too. Thoughts of Home still hold no rosy glow but the pub does. But then pubs are designed that way here. My favourite pub has a lot of window, a lot of brass and rich upholstery and dark mahogany. It’s like Christmas every time you go in. Comfy seats, sweet music and beer. Not to mention staff, like Mo, who always greet you like you’ve made their night coming in to buy their beer. I make Mo’s night and she sparkles at me.

     ‘Hi Jo,’ she rasps. Her voice, like her once beautiful face, is a ruin of former glory shored up by gin and Malbro’. She waggles a pint glass at me and I wink. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve told her my name’s not Jo. But it doesn’t matter, she calls all her boys, Jo. Randomly, one day, like the lift, she’ll arrive where no one expects and call a real Jo – Jo and Reality will crash. In the meantime, she’s safe with me. 

     The pint, roiling with internal, black dynamics, arrives on the bar top as I arrive within arm’s reach. I take it and drink. The Prefect was right. It must be agony for a liquid to be consumed, especially with as much visceral pleasure as I experience consuming it. I pay for it and the next Mo pulls slowly, much slower than the first. I hitch a buttock on the bar stool and watch. Time… slows… down... I yawn.

My second arrives in front of me as I finish the first and Mo beams at another Jo joining me at the bar. He climbs on the stool. I see his legs don’t reach the foot rests by a long chalk. He winks at me.

     ‘Hi Jo,’ I say.

     He grins showing small square, gappy teeth. He takes his amber pint and drops coins that sparkle into Mo's red clawed paw. He says, ‘You Hi-Jo. Me, I’m Low-Jo.’

     I laugh and say, ‘If you say so.’ 

     I sort my change to play the Bandit. Then, I feed the jukebox and sing along to Searched for the hero and Wish I could fly while the Bandit rolls electronic tumblers with programmed tremble. I win. Select, gamble. I win again. I’m on a roll. The universe trembles. Take a chance: Hi or Low? 

     I feel someone at my side. His pint looks too large for his child-sized hands. He grins. ‘You’re Hi-Jo,’ he says and winks again. ‘I’m Low-Jo.’

     You’re nuts, I think, but I don’t gamble, I chose. Him or me? Me every time. But I’m a loser. Always have been so I chose Low. And lose anyway. He sucks his teeth and shakes his head. The tension in the pub eases. Normal service has resumed. Even Mo avoids eye contact but there's another beer waiting when I get back to the bar.

     Low-Jo follows me over. ‘Hey! Can you lose like that to order?’ he asks and I wonder if he’s taking the piss. But then he says, ‘because I’m looking for an all-time loser for a deal I‘m pulling off.’

     ‘Aren’t you supposed to sell the up-side?’ I ask.    

     He looks over his shoulders, one at a time, of course. ‘Couldn’t lie to a Hi-Jo, like yourself. This deal is strictly for suckers.’

     I’m depressed; he’s marked his man. ‘OK. What’s the deal?’

     He nods with satisfaction and plays knuckles with the bar top for a full minute and I feel every one of the knuckle knocking seconds. I give up waiting and take a large, I’m-only-on-my-third-pint sip of my beer when he says, ‘I’m looking for a guy to ride a dragon.’

     I come up swimming… ‘Sure,’ I splutter. ‘That’s some kind of oriental dope crap, yes?’

     He looked pained.

     ‘Sorry.’

     ‘S-OK,’ he says and knuckles the bar top into submission again while I consume the remaining half a pint, taken in smaller sips, until he says, ‘So - you’re on, yes?’ 

     ‘Sure,’ I say swallowing hard. Three pints in and I’m finding my heroic insides. ‘I’ll ride your dragon. Is he out in the car park?’

     He shuts his mouth tightly and shakes his head.

     ‘You haven’t got him hidden under your seat, have you?’

     Low-Jo blinks at me and looks under his seat. He comes up smiling and still shaking his head.

     ‘Out in the alley, then?’ I venture.

     Big beam. Bingo. The little Jo wants to take Big Jo out into the alley. My lucky night!

     ‘Can I finish my beer?’

     He gives me the thumbs up and a wink. So I drink. 

     ‘Can I go to the loo?’

     He nods once. ‘Better. No loos on the dragon. It’s not a jumbo, you know.’

     I must admit I nod sagely. Should have remembered that. Really?

     I’m still trusting reality so I go to the gents for a whiz and on the way back I check with Mo. ‘Is he for real? I mean, is this “riding the dragon” stuff some kind of street speak for some unspeakable and illegal act?’

     Mo looks at me with liquid, juniper eyes. ‘Probably,’ she says but she doesn’t offer any odds. I guess, even after three pints, I can still out run the Lo Joes of this world, but I worry about him having bigger friends so deliberately ask Mo to look after my wallet. Bodies can be forgiving and heal, relationships with bank managers are never so reasonable even if they let you call them Derek. We leave by the back door. 

     Out on the street the lights glisten. 

     ‘Come on, Hi-Jo,’ says Low-Jo and scampers off. 

I walk like I’m the O.K. Gun Slinger twelve hours early for Noon. My gaze scans the roof line, alert for every movement. I see a cat slink nimbly along the railings, on to a wheelie bin and up over a wall. I see a figure in a second floor window as a naked girl goes back to her lover in a dark room. I see her neighbour, a young ginger haired boy, pacing with an infant chewing its fist. At ground level, I see Low-Jo tap dancing on the corner by the alley. Is this real? Or am I dreaming?

     It is the second time I’ve asked myself and I have no immediate answer. Third time’s the charm. I take a deep breath. The air is cold in my nose and tastes of rain-washed rubbish with a hint of diesel. I imagine the emulsion sloughing into the drains to give the rats cancer before they can rot in the Clyde. It feels real… sounds real.... I stifle a yawn. My steps, slow and paced, echo back and forth between the tenements and somewhere down by the river I can hear a clock chime.

     Funny thing – clocks chiming. I check my watch and the green luminous digital says 23: 59. I hold my breath.

     Low Jo scampers back to me. ‘Hey, Hi-Jo. Hurry. We ain’t got all night.’

     ‘Why?’

     ‘Because you can’t keep her waiting. It’s mad banners.’

     ‘Mad what?’

     ‘Yeah. Must hurry if you want to be the Ultimate All-Time Loser – otherwise…’

     ‘You threatening me? You hustling me? Well, know this - my wallet’s back with Mo and the time piece is--’

     ‘Please, come.’ Low-Jo whines backing off doing pick-up scuffs with his heels and toes and his large head nodding and small hands fluttering. He’s looking desperate. Something in his voice scares me.

     ‘So what’s the panic?’

     He makes a big decision and touches me. Not skin to skin but an urgent five-year-old’s tug on my jacket sleeve. ‘This way, now. We GO NOW, Hi-Jo.’

     I quit stalling and go forward at a trot. He keeps up easily if not gracefully. His hips just don’t have the flexibility. Nor do his lungs. He is blasting and muttering as we turn into the alley. Here, I stop as two yellow headlights flick on. He looks relieved and runs forward. ‘Come on. Don’t stop there. You said you’d be my dragon rider.’

     ‘Yeah,’ I say just the headlights blink and light shatters through a kaleidoscope of slashes sparkling on wet cobbles that heave and writhe along the ally and half way up dead-end wall. If it had been a car, it was one hell of a stunt. I hear a low rolling rumble. I smell cold fires and burnt apple wood. I see not cobbles but scales, huge, shiny, wheel sized scales. 

     ‘Come on,’ pleads Low-Jo. ‘She can’t wait for ever.’

     Of all the things that pass through my brain the only coherent thought is that Low-Jo is now somewhere above me and the headlights are moving closer.

     ‘O.K. So who is this ‘She’? Why can’t she wait? And why do you need a dragon rider anyhow?’ I say, feeling a bit of a prat staring up at Low-Jo astride the hugest lizard I’d ever seen.

     ‘Because,’ rumbles a voice that sounds like combustion, ‘the Princess needs to be rescued before midnight… And the laws for all this kind of thing state very clearly; you must have three to quest. So if you wouldn’t mind?’

     ‘Isn’t three a crowd?’

     ‘Not always. On this occasion, it’s a necessity.’

     How could I refuse?  

     I swing up into the saddle and adjust the stirrups just like I’ve always thought movie heroes should, but never do. I even gather up the reins and squirm round to grin at Low-Jo. Low-Jo is clinging to my waist, his eyes tight shut. He clings harder as we rise up and banking left to fly over the still, sparkling city streets and whoop out over the estuary.

     ‘So… What happens when we’ve rescued the Princess?’ I wonder aloud to no one in particular. ‘There will be four of us then.’

     ‘Hmmm,’ rumbles the dragon sounding remarkably like Mo. ‘I guess, you could say, that’s when Reality kicks in.’ 

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