I woke up with a hangover the size, fragrance and approximate consistency of a sumo’s jockstrap. The blond had made like a coronary case and departed. My memories of the night before were somewhat hazy. Suffice to say I’d been curiously shaved of all my body hair and my nethers felt like they’d been on the short-spin cycle in the washing machine. Actually, that bit came back a bit too wince-inducingly clearly.
She was nothing if not an adventurous girl, though I doubted the rental company would be too impressed. She hadn’t left a note, but she’d romantically fashioned a kiss out of the wet patch. There was obviously a hidden sentimental side to her. I was collecting my thoughts, along with the various attachments to the food mixer that had inexplicably made it into the bed, when suddenly my door was taking a knocking like a bandy-drawered strumpet at a TV Evangelists convention.
After carefully untying myself from the lengths of electric cable and detaching the electrodes, I rushed to answer it. Maybe the blond had forgotten something, like a part of my body that she hadn’t smeared with pureed monkey glands. Unarousingly, it was my landlord, Mr Barabas. He was noisily demanding my overdue rent whilst hovering six inches off the floor and he kept vanishing and reappearing before my eyes. I told him to stop being impossible.
“What’s the best thing for a hangover?” I asked him.
“Drinking heavily the night before,” he helpfully replied. Mr Barabas loved to interact socially with his tenants, if by interact you meant “toss out into the street at a moments notice”, and if by socially you meant “with excessive use of a baseball bat”. His idea of shooting the breeze involved being too drunk to aim properly. If there was one thing that annoyed him more than being disrespectful, it was being respectful. Your only chance was to give as good as you got.
“Where’s your rent?”
“Yeah, I don’t really have it, Mr Barabas. I’ll get it to you by the weekend.”
“How come you’re so poor?”
“How come you’re so fat?”
“Because every time I sleep with your mother she gives me a biscuit.”
Damn.
No wonder the bakery was in
receivership. Buoyed by his small victory in the rapier-like cut and thrust
of intellectual debate, he gave me two days to come up with the clams.
I doubted I could lay my hands on that much seafood, though, and figured
just finding the money would be more sensible, not to mention less smelly.
The blond and I hadn’t talked figures, at least, not ones that didn’t
yield sensually to my expert touch, though that could pretty much apply
to my accounts, too. I pondered my unemployment over half a litre of strong
coffee. Thirty minutes later, I was wide-eyed and jobless.