Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

Mr Craxi turns around, oblivious to Dean: ‘Pru, wipe the farkin’ counters at the front, they’s disgr azz ful!’ He barges by again, revealing a customer sitting at the counter, between the cold-milk dispenser and the coffee machine. Thirtyish, balding, bookish-looking, dressed in a houndstooth jacket and hip blue-glass rectangular glasses. Could be a queer, but yer never know in Soho.

The customer looks up from his magazine – Record Weekly – and meets Dean’s gaze, unembarrassed. He frowns as if trying to place him. If they were in a pub, Dean would ask, ‘ What d’yer think yer looking at? ’ Here, Dean looks away and rinses the pod under the cold tap, feeling the customer’s eyes still on him. Maybe he thinks I fancy him.

Sharon arrives with a new order slip. ‘Two espressos and two Cokes for table nine.’

‘Two ’spressos, two Cokes, table nine, got it.’ Dean turns to the Gaggia, flips the switch and milky foam settles on the cappuccino.

Sharon comes round to his side of the counter to refill a sugar pot. ‘I’m sorry you can’t kip on my floor, honest I am.’

‘’S all right.’ Dean sprinkles cocoa onto the cappuccino and puts it on the counter for Pru. ‘Bit of a nerve to ask yer, really.’

‘My landlady’s half KGB, half Mother Superior. If I tried to smuggle you in, she’d ambush us and it’d be “This is a respectable house not a bordello!” and she’d turf me out.’

He fills the coffee pod for an espresso. ‘I get it. It’s okay.’

‘You won’t be sleeping under the arches, will you?’

‘Nah, ’course not. I’ve mates I’ll ring.’

Sharon brightens. ‘In that case –’ she hip-wiggles ‘– I’m glad you asked me first. If there’s anything I can do for you, I’m here.’

Dean’s not attracted to this sweet but dumpy, dough-faced girl with raisin eyes too close together … but all’s fair in love and war. ‘Could yer lend us a few bob till Monday? Just till I get paid?’

Sharon hesitates. ‘Make it worth my while, will you?’

Oh, yer flirty flirt. Dean does his half-grin. He yanks the cap off a Coke bottle. ‘Once I’m on my feet again, I’ll pay yer a ravishing rate of interest.’

She glows and Dean almost feels guilty at how easy it is. ‘I might have a few bob in my purse. Just remember me when you’re a millionaire pop star.’

‘Table fifteen still waiting!’ yells Mr Craxi in his Sicilian Cockney accent. ‘Three hot chocolates! Marshmallows! Move it!’

‘Three hot chocolates,’ Dean calls back. Sharon slips away with the sugar pot. Pru arrives to whisk the cappuccino away to table eight and Dean spikes the order slip. It’s up to the two-thirds mark. Mr Craxi should be in a good mood. I’m bloody snookered if he isn’t. He starts on table nine’s espressos. Donovan’s ‘Sunshine Superman’ takes over from the Stones. Steam hisses through the Gaggia. Dean wonders how much Sharon’s ‘few bob’ is likely to be. Not enough for a hotel, that’s for sure. There’s the YMCA on Tottenham Court Road, but he has no idea if they’ll have a spare bed. It’ll be ten thirty by the time he gets there. Once again, Dean combs through his list of Londoners who (a) might help him out and (b) have telephones. The tube closes around midnight, so if Dean shows up on a doorstep in Brixton or Hammersmith with his bass and rucksack and nobody’s home, he’ll be marooned. He even considers his old bandmates in Battleship Potemkin, but he suspects that bridge is well and truly burned.

Dean glances at the customer with the blue glasses. He’s switched Record Weekly for a book, Down and Out in Paris and London . Dean wonders if he’s a beatnik. A few guys at art college posed as beats. They smoked Gauloises, talked about existentialism, and walked around with French newspapers.

‘Oy, Clapton.’ Pru has a gift for nicknames. ‘You waiting for them hot chocolates to make themselves, or what?’

‘Clapton plays lead ,’ Dean explains for the hundredth time. ‘I’m a bloody bassist .’ He spots Pru looking pleased with herself.

The little courtyard behind the Etna’s kitchen is a soot-encrusted well of fog with space for dustbins and not much else. Dean watches a rat climb up a drainpipe towards the square of under-lit night-cloud. He draws a last lungful of smoke from his last Dunhill. It’s gone ten o’clock, and his and Sharon’s shift is over. Sharon’s gone off back to her digs, after lending Dean eight shillings. That’s a train ticket to Gravesend, if all else fails. Through the kitchen door, Dean hears Mr Craxi speaking Italian with the latest nephew to arrive from Sicily. He speaks next-to-no English, but you don’t need any to serve up the bubbling vats of Bolognese sauce that, dolloped onto spaghetti, is the Etna’s only dish.

Mr Craxi appears. ‘So, you wanna’d a word, Moss.’

Dean stubs out his cigarette on the brick-paved ground. His boss glares. Damn. Dean retrieves the stub. ‘Sorry.’

‘I don’t got all night.’

‘Could yer pay me now, please?’

Mr Craxi checks he heard correctly: ‘Pay you “now”?’

‘Yeah. My wages. Tonight. Now. Please.’

Mr Craxi looks incredulous. ‘I pay wages at Monday.’

‘Yeah, but like I said earlier, I got robbed.’

Life and London have made Mr Craxi suspicious. Or maybe he was born that way. ‘Is misfortunate. But always, I pay Monday.’

‘I wouldn’t ask yer if I wasn’t desperate. But I couldn’t pay my rent, so my landlady booted me out. That’s why I’ve got my rucksack and my bass in the staff cupboard.’

‘Ah. I think you going on holiday.’

Dean does a phoney smile, in case that was a joke. ‘If only. But, nah, I really need my wages. Like, for a room at the YMCA or something.’

Mr Craxi thinks. ‘You in the shit, Moss. But is your shit what you shitted. Always I pay wages at Monday.’

‘Could yer just lend me a couple o’ quid? Please?’

‘You have guitar. Go to pawnbrokers.’

Blood from a stone , thinks Dean. ‘First off, I haven’t paid the last instalment, so the bass’s not mine to sell. That’s what the money the robbers took was for.’

‘But you say it was for the rent money.’

‘Some of it was rent. Most of it was bass. Second off, it’s gone ten on a Friday night and the pawnbrokers’ll be shut.’

‘I’m not your bank. I pay Monday. End of the story.’

‘How am I s’posed to be here on Monday if I’ve got double pneumonia after sleeping in Hyde Park all weekend?’

Mr Craxi’s cheek twitches. ‘You no here at Monday, is okay. I pay you fuck-all. A P45 only. Understand?’

‘What’s the difference between paying me now and paying me Monday? I’m not even bloody working this weekend!’

Mr Craxi folds his arms. ‘Moss, you is sacked.’

‘Oh, for fucksake ! You can’t bloody do this to me.’

A stubby finger jabs Dean’s solar plexus. ‘Is easy. Is done. Go.’

‘No.’ First my money, then my digs, now my job. ‘No. No.’ Dean swats Craxi’s finger away. ‘Yer owe me five days’ pay.’

‘Prove it. Sue me. Get a lawyer.’

Dean forgets he’s five foot seven not six foot five and shouts in Craxi’s face: ‘YER OWE ME FIVE DAYS’ PAY, YER THIEVING BLOODY SHIT-WEASEL.’

‘Ah, sì, sì , I owe you. Here, I pay what I owe.’

A powerful fist sinks into Dean’s stomach. Dean folds over and lands on his back, gasping and shocked. Second time today. A dog is barking. Dean gets up, but Craxi is gone, and two Sicilian nephews appear at the kitchen door. One has Dean’s Fender, the other holds his rucksack. They frogmarch Dean out through the coffee shop. The Kinks are singing ‘Sunny Afternoon’ on the jukebox. Dean looks back once. Craxi glowers from the till with his arms folded.