Chapter Four Are “Friends” Electric?
Julian was late for work. Again. In fact, if Julian was ever on time, that’s when Rahul would really start to worry about him.
It’d be Invasion of the Body Snatchers if that man was ever on time for a single thing in his entire bloody life.
All right. So maybe he was still cross with the little git over last night.
It wasn’t often they’d had a row like that.
They’d been best mates since secondary school.
Rahul had been tall and awkward even at the tender age of eleven.
He’d been new to South London, having just moved down from Leeds with his mum after his parents’ divorce.
He’d already been a sensitive, creative lad, then the divorce and the move had made young Rahul quite the shy, anxious boy who was easy to bully.
Some older boys had been pushing him about the yard, trying to shake him down for money, and Rahul could recall being on the verge of tears when a little slip of a boy, a mop of unruly blond hair falling into eyes, came out of nowhere and started slagging them off, standing up to them as if he were twice his size. Pomeranian, Rahul had thought.
His mum had had one at home. It had been a wee thing, no bigger than a football, and made entirely out of honey-coloured fluff, but if a stranger came round the house it bared its tiny white teeth and barked with the ferocity of a Doberman.
And just like the strangers who came round the house, the bigger boys had shied away from the feral boy, unsure if he was about to leap up and bite their throats out.
After they’d gone, the boy had wiped his runny nose with the back of his sleeve and told Rahul his name was Julian.
Rahul had learned not to stick his hand out to shake, even though it’s what his father had taught him.
Apparently the kids here found it too formal and preferred to kick him in the shin.
So instead he’d just mumbled his own name out.
And then this fascinating little creature had proclaimed them best friends on the spot.
Fifteen years later, Julian had dyed his hair black, Rahul remained the tallest person in any room -- albeit he now had an added moustache -- and they were still best friends.
If it weren’t for Rahul’s flatmate, Kwambe, and Julian’s sister, Mel, (and, Rahul assumed begrudgingly, Julian’s girlfriend) they’d be each other’s only friends.
Though they’d had their ups and downs over the years, there didn’t exist two people who understood each other better.
Despite their occasional spats, they hardly ever had massive fights.
And Rahul definitely considered last night’s debacle a massive fight.
Julian had poked him, for crying out loud! In the chest!
“Poke me,” Rahul muttered under his breath as he flipped through a magazine without reading it. “I’ll poke you, sir. I’ll come at you like a beam, like a ray. You won’t see me coming. The Stealthy Poker they call me. I’ll poke you before you even know --”
The chiming of the bell above the door alerted him to the presence of another human being, so he quickly buttoned his lip.
He knew from experience that if people caught him muttering to himself, they usually left the shop post-haste.
And lord only knew they couldn’t afford to lose any more customers.
“Settle down, it’s only me,” Julian grumbled from behind darkly tinted sunglasses, throwing off his parka and coming round the counter. “No need to stop talking to yourself on my account.”
“I was doing no such thing, sir,” Rahul lied as he watched Julian drop onto the stool beside him and slump forwards onto the counter. Rahul noted how he didn’t remove his sunglasses. “Late night, eh?”
“Something like that.”
“And you deserve half as much for calling me -- what was it? Oh right, a ‘stuck-up ponce with an anaemic caterpillar on his lip.’ Or were you too pissed to remember that?”
Julian groaned and cradled his head in his arms. “Look, I know I was in a state last night. Aisling had gotten me all confused, hadn’t she?
Saying that if it weren’t for you we’d be as well as married by now.
She got me thinking maybe it was you that was the problem.
But I was just taking it out on you really. I know you were only trying to help.”
Julian tilted his head, a flash of his bright blue eyes peeking out above his sunglasses. “You forgive me, don’t you?”
Rahul folded his arms over his chest and huffed, making a show out of it. Of course he forgave him. He’d forgiven him the second he’d opened his mouth. But he couldn’t let him off that easy, or else Julian would never learn his lesson, would he?
“Come on, Rahul,” Julian whined, sitting up and grabbing onto Rahul’s arm.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Don’t be like that.” He pouted exaggeratedly and Rahul knew he was playing with him too now.
Rahul’s lip twitched under his moustache, threatening to turn into a smile. “Don’t be like what? I’m always like this.”
“Are not. You’re a massive teddy bear, you are. A great big Northern softy. I could melt you down and drizzle you over a Victoria sponge.”
“I am not. I’m bitter. Like coffee and whiskey and cigars. I’m like a gentleman’s club from before the war. Old Colonel Bitter, they call me.”
“No one calls you that. Who calls you that?”
“People. No one you know.”
“I know everyone you know and no one calls you Captain Bitter.”
“Colonel Bitter, thank you very much. Don’t demote me.”
By this point, neither could hold back their grins. Just like that, all was forgotten, like it always was between them. They were still the best mates. Rahul and Julian. Julian and Rahul.
Julian winced through a laugh and massaged his temples. Now that he was no longer pretending to be resentful, Rahul could let his concern rise openly to the surface.
“But you’re okay, yeah? You got home all right last night?”
“I didn’t, actually. You’re not gonna believe this, but I woke up in some bloke’s flat.”
Rahul’s stomach somersaulted. “You what?”
“I know! I can’t remember a thing, but apparently I got into a row with some wanker at the pub and he nearly clobbered me out in the alley.
If it hadn’t been for this one bloke, I’d have gotten my head bashed in and left for dead out behind the B&P.
” The more he talked, the more animated Julian became.
“He’s like a saint or something. I was so pissed I couldn’t even tell him where I lived, but like an angel he swooped down and took me back to his posh flat.
Let me spend the night. Even made me breakfast in the morning.
Imagine that! I’m thinking I might ring him up sometime so we can grab a pint and talk about his mental life.
He owns a block of flats and writes about serial killers.
He’s handsome like an American actor and he goes round rescuing drunken idiots from death. How crazy is that?”
Rahul folded his arms back over his chest. Hearing Julian babble on about some good-looking man whose flat he’d spent the night in wasn’t exactly Rahul’s cup of tea.
He could handle Julian’s obsession with that big-tittied girl because he’d realised that, as a girl, Aisling’s position in Julian’s life didn’t threaten Rahul’s.
The bond he and Julian shared was special and it wasn’t one a girl, no matter how attractive, could understand.
A man, on the other hand, could easily slip in and steal the precious real estate he’d carved out for himself in Julian’s life.
Other than Julian’s sister, Rahul had known Julian the longest. He’d been there for him through thick and thin, the good and the bad, blond hair, red hair, black hair.
He had fought too hard and too long to maintain this friendship, and he’d be damned if some stranger was about to muscle him out of it.
He was also almost certain that this angelic saviour of Julian’s was a complete and utter liar.
Julian getting into a bar fight? Sure, Julian’s sunshiny sweetness was juxtaposed by his prickly defensiveness, and sure, if someone tried to pick a fight with him or one of his friends, Julian would come at them like a buzzard.
But drunk Julian? He was usually as gooey as a caramel and randy as a tomcat.
He’d flirt with just about anyone who gave him a bit of attention -- the girl at the till, the cabbie, the bin men.
Last night had been the exception to prove the rule.
Last night he’d been in a brown study before he’d even begun drinking.
Did that mean he could have started a fight with a stranger? Rahul highly doubted it.
This “angel,” Rahul thought, who had picked up a drunk, vulnerable, flirty Julian, most likely brought him to his flat, felt him up, and given him the old “oh, I rescued you” routine when he’d woken up in the morning.
And the fact that Julian was going gaga over this creep was enough to drive Rahul to extremes. Extremes like…
“Wouldn’t having a pint with this saviour of yours make Aisling jealous?”
Rahul felt a bit guilty over how relieved he was to see Julian’s expression darken. Without the smile to brighten his face, he looked positively peaked.
“We’re over, me and her. For good this time.”
“You’ve said that loads of times.”
“But this time I mean it. You didn’t hear the row we had.”
“No, but Leroy phoned me up and told me. How do you think I knew to come over?”
“Leroy.” He wrinkled his flat nose. “If he’d told you the whole thing right, you wouldn’t be asking me about Aisling. She crossed the line, she did. This time we’re really finished.”
Rahul raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Really? So then you won’t be interested to know that she came round the shop earlier.”
Julian paused with a cigarette halfway to his lips. When he spoke next, his voice had an artificial, disinterested quality. “Oh? She came round? What, uh… what did she want?”
“She wanted me to tell you she was sorry, and that she was going to come to the gig tonight.”
Julian’s wide smile split his face. “She never!”
Rahul was quickly regretting using this tactic. “She did.”
“That Aisling. I knew she couldn’t stay away.
I can’t wait to play some of that new material -- she hasn’t heard it yet.
She’ll love the one I wrote about that time we were caught in the rain on our holiday in Brighton.
She’s always got great notes for my songs. I’m always telling her she should --”
Rahul started to tune him out. Once Julian got started extolling Aisling’s virtues, there was no stopping him. You just had to let him run out of steam on his own. That was the thing about Julian. When he loved someone, he really let everyone know it.
They were both startled when the office door banged open. A diminutive form with a severely cut bob, enormous glasses, and an unimpressed expression appeared in the doorway. “What do you two ballbags think you’re doing?”
Julian swivelled around to grin at his sister. “All right, Mel?”
“Not all right. D’you know three customers have been in and out in the time you two’ve been gabbing away like washerwomen? I don’t pay you girls to gossip, I pay you to sell records.”
“I thought you paid me for the joy of my company.” Julian waggled his eyebrows above his sunglasses. “Are you trying to look more like Velma from Scooby-Doo every day or is that just a lucky coincidence?”
Mel’s shoulders hunched defensively beneath the scratchy fabric of her rollneck.
“If I wanted good company, I’d have hired the Chuckle Brothers, not my knobhead brother and his knobhead mate.
” Before she closed the door to her office, she threw out over her shoulder, “And you look like bloody Risky Business in those, mate. Take ‘em off. This ain’t Hollywood and you ain’t Tom Cruise. ”
Out of blind familial defiance, Julian wore his sunglasses the rest of his shift.