Utterly Monkey. Nick Laird
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Название: Utterly Monkey

Автор: Nick Laird

Издательство: HarperCollins

Жанр: Зарубежный юмор

Серия:

isbn: 9780007372072

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ Though neither liked a specific type (aside from Albert’s self-hating weakness for sloans, pearls, turned-up collars) each would say about the target of the other’s amorous (read lewd) remarks, that she was too tall, too small, too fat, too thin, too loud, too quiet and so on. Albert had pointed her out to Danny in the canteen. She had been expertly gathering tomatoes at the salad bar with two primitive wooden utensils, the sort that look like souvenirs from a holiday in Tonga. She was wonderful. They agreed on Ellen. Everyone agreed on Ellen. Albert knew who she was, of course, and which office she was sitting in. Danny had since looked her up at least five times on the intranet to see her picture: those almond eyes levelly staring the camera down.

      Ellen was a trainee on the ninth floor in the Banking Litigation department. Danny worked on the tenth floor in the Corporate group. That morning, after his meeting with Adam, and a leisurely dander to Starbucks, he sent out a sequence of increasingly desperate e-mails to the entire Litigation department. There were two positive responses. One from a meat-headed trainee called Bradley who wore a variety of different shades of pastel shirts, all Ralph Lauren, with the sleeves rolled up to display massive pale forearms, like shanks of lamb in a butcher’s window. Bradley’s offer of help, evidently compelled by his trainer, was so loaded with qualifications, and his work of such low quality anyway, that Danny was about to send out a seventh request, addressed only to the senior associates, begging them to allow their trainee to assist him, when Albert’s uncommon optimism came uncommonly good.

      Ellen Powell was about to qualify into the Employment department and had been doodling the last seat of her training contract away downstairs on the ninth floor, avoiding work as much as she could and sneaking out the building by way of the catering lift at 6 p.m. Her trainer had gone on secondment and when Ellen returned from reading the newspapers in the library on the fourteenth floor, she had thirty e-mails in her inbox. After reading through Danny’s six requests, and checking Danny’s picture out on the intranet, Ellen e-mailed him offering to help. It had just pinged into Danny’s inbox when she appeared in his doorway. She was standing very straight: a tall, black girl wearing a black trouser suit and a double-cuffed blue and white pinstriped shirt. Her hair was braided and tied back. Her long legs and narrow hips made her seem taller than she was and it was only her breasts that prevented her body from appearing purely athletic. Her face had something reserved and angry about it. She was closed to the general public. Danny grinned.

      ‘Something amusing?’ A posh bone-dry voice.

      ‘No. I’m smiling in a friendly manner. It’s the Monks & Turner spirit. You’re Ellen?’

      ‘And you’re the man with too much work.’

      ‘I’m one of them. Please. Come in, come in. Sit down. Now, how are things?’ And thus we do the evil we have done to us.

       EARLY MORNING AGAIN

      Two miles and forty-seven yards away, Geordie was skinning up a morning spliff to lessen the stress of Trisha. Two men were arguing over an enormously fat girl who was dressed from head to foot in Adidas. The two men were both at least three times her age, which appeared to be around thirteen. Man One and Man Two would periodically stand up and shout at each other and then sit down. Like little figures wheeled out on the chime of a fancy wooden clock, they’d wave their arms, clang around for a while and retreat. The fat girl’s brown hair was scraped up away from her face and sat in a tuft on the top of her scalp, like the green parts of a pineapple. It was becoming apparent that Man Two was the girl’s father and that Man One drove her school bus. It was also becoming apparent that Man One had fathered Pineapple’s baby. This, the offspring of Pineapple and bus driver, was now being brought on stage for some kind of curtain call. It was a pink-faced wailing package and nobody wanted to hold it.

      Geordie took the last hot drag on his spliff, and stubbed it out, crooking it like a baby finger. This was interesting. He was alone in Danny’s flat. He stood up. He was wearing only pale blue creased boxers. He lifted his rucksack from the foot of the sofa and emptied the contents out onto the sleeping bag. He replaced everything bar one white plastic bag. He set about counting the cash it contained. Geordie had not left home empty-handed.

      The morning of his going he’d been fit to burst with worries about what to take and where to go and how to get. The usual going concerns. He’d rang Janice at work and asked her to meet him in the old children’s playground over in Kildrum. It was out of town and across the road from a housing estate that was being emptied out, house by house, to swankier estates. The windows on some houses were boarded up and some were flung open on the warm summer sky. The place had the look of an advent calendar. Janice had taken her lunch hour early from the chemists and driven out in her wee red Fiesta. Geordie watched her carefully and clumsily reverse the car into one of the outlined spaces in the car park, even though it was completely empty. She sauntered up to him. Tight scant denim skirt, white trainers, a navy V-neck top and a long open maroon cardigan. Her hair was tied back and Geordie fancied she’d been crying or maybe it was hay fever. She looked good, great even, if you forgave the wonky eye, and Geordie did, as he held her waist and kissed the soft swell of the top of her breasts.

      ‘Jan, I have to disappear. You know your fucking brother has put the word out on me.’

      I heard Brewster talking about it in the kitchen. Geordie, I don’t know what to say. It’s my fault. I tried to talk to Greer but he wasn’t having any of it. And Da said to shut up or he’ll turf me out. Should I come? Should I come with you? Where are you going?’

      Good old Janice, Geordie thought. Good old stupid sexy Janice, with her little waist and little feet and big lips.

      Better not, at least not yet. I’ll try and send you a message at Martin’s when I get something sorted. I don’t know where I’m going, to be honest Jan. And I’ve no cash. I was thinking of Australia but there’s visas and stuff to be sorted out and I’ll have to do that in England. You could try and come over and meet me in London maybe, or in Australia even, in a few months. You could do your hairdressing again and I could work in a bar or drive a cab.’

      ‘Geordie, if you need money, I can get you money.’

      He had turned her round and she was leaning into his lap as he drifted slightly on the swing, pleased with the airy movement. He was considering whether or not she’d let him slip her skirt up and fuck her gently from behind, here and now, as a little leaving gift.

      ‘How can you get money? You can’t nick it from work Jan. They have security cameras in there.’

      ‘Geordie!’ she snapped a little, ‘I love that job. I wouldn’t steal from Mr and Mrs Martin. They’ve been really good to me.’

      ‘Aye, Charlie Martin’s been very keen to be really good to you. Mad keen. Mad keen to get you in the back of the shop all alone and be really good to you.’

      ‘Shut up. Listen to me. Greer has money in a box behind the panel in the bath. He doesn’t know I know it’s there. You have to work the panel off with a knife or screwdriver but the other day I was in there and Da was shouting to let him in the bathroom but I was shaving my legs and I turned round to let him in for a piss and kicked the side panel of the bath and it made a clangy sound, like metal. Geordie, I can feel you.’

      Geordie had slipped his hands inside her cardigan, which she’d zipped up, and he was cupping the underside of her breasts. His cock was running lengthways to the left, over the side of his thigh. ‘Hold on,’ he said, and slipped one hand under the pinch of his jeans and pulled his cock up straight, to fit in the shallow indentation that her tight skirt allowed her ass to make. ‘Go on СКАЧАТЬ