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  ‘Oh, I gotcha,’ he said, ‘Like world domination.’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘And, but I get to live. Okay, so that’s good news. I think.’

  ‘Beats the alternative,’ I agreed.

  ‘So, hey: that writing thing. How’s that work for ya. I mean: I don’t wanna ask if you don’t wanna tell me; but, that pay the sorta moolah I think it pays?’

  ‘It can,’ I said, ‘The right book at the right time, and all that. Or even the wrong book at the wrong time, but by a guy who was right at the right time once already. Get that one book out there, and anything else you yarf out at the market for the rest of your life is gold.’

  ‘The chicks dig that too, don’t they—writers and singers always get the chicks.’

  ‘Only the ones who can read,’ I said, ‘Which is good: who wants the stupid ones.’

  ‘Hey, I’ve had a couple of fine stupid ones,’ he said, then laughed, coughing a bit, ‘Damn. I really don’t smoke much at all; this is about my third butt this year.’

  ‘Y’know that used to be common?’ I asked, ‘There weren’t really a lot of smokers and nonsmokers; people would just have a cigarette every once in a while, like today they have lobster once in a while; it was just a treat when they were in the right mood. Cigarette girls used to hand out free little packs of five cigarettes each, and that would last people minimally all night. Fun little uppers, harming pretty much no one. But, it’s America; so, sooner than later, people got gluttonous with them, until we had chainsmokers burning through three or four packs a day, developing habits pervasive enough to be confused with addictions, slaughtering their immune systems and becoming physically unable to burn out the cancer you get just from being alive. Suddenly we get cigarettes with filtres built in, to save us from the cancer; and lights and ultralights and whatever’s lighter than that. Another decade or two, and we started losing our fundamental right to smoke—hospitals, then aeroplanes, then malls, and now pretty much the civilised world.’ I looked at the cigarette shortening in my fingers. ‘All from a tiny fivepack of cylindrical happiness once prescribed by doctors to improve moods and cure anxieties. Which of course is why, as oligarch of the universe, I promise to let each and every meaningless waste of meat out there die from its own stupidity.’

  Jackson regarded me for a moment. ‘You’ve put some real thought into this oligarch thing, haven’t you.’

  ‘No law against that,’ I said, ‘Unless I start stockpiling WMDs, or something.’

  ‘No: I’m with you; I just never put that sorta thought into it. Maybe, now, I will.’

  ‘The evil that all men do,’ I said.

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Shakespeare,’ I said, ‘Julius Caesar: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”.’

  ‘Whoa. That’s bleak.’

  ‘That’s life. We remember the badguys. Even if they were goodguys. Which was sorta the point, I suppose: that we’d remember Caesar necessarily as a badguy, regardless how good he might have been in life. Good is boring. Want another? Dylan Thomas: “Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay”. Why? Because good is boring.’

  ‘And Green Bay sucks,’ Jackson added.

  ‘Heh. Not Green Bay, Wisconsin; just a green bay; a paradise, or something.’

  ‘Oh. Gotcha.’

  ‘There are thousands of examples—maybe millions. What counts is that—well, think of a given badguy, real or imagined; then try to think about his opposing goodguy—it’s never as easy. You’d forget who’d opposed Hannibal Lecter, but for “Quid pro quo, Clarice”. Good is boring, and, in simple fact, a bit unnatural. We’re in such a hurry to get along and save everyone and...I look at people and try to imagine, like, sharks forming committees to discuss the humane, ethical treatment of seals; it’s absurd. People are animals: carnivorous mammals kept in line by arbitrary, subjective rules—half of which you’re expected to enforce—thought up by people taking offence to the sad fact that we’re just yet more organisms on a planet of predators and prey.’

  ‘So, you’ve thought about this a hell of a lot.’

  ‘I’m a writer,’ I said, ‘It’s kinda my job.’

  ‘So it’s hypothetical.’

  ‘It has to be: there are seven billion reluctant animals maintaining the illusion of human goodness I’d have to convince before going pro with that whole oligarch thing.’

  Jackson pondered the last of his cigarette before tossing it illegally into the carpark I used as an ashtray. ‘You are not a dumb guy, huh.’

  ‘Not according to my neurologist,’ I said, ‘I’m what head doctors call “special”.’

  ‘I’ll bet that helps you make some money off writing the books.’

  ‘Oh hell no,’ I said, ‘Some of the most successful writers alive are also some of the stupidest, subviral specimens I’ve ever encountered. I won’t name names; but, if you read as much as I do, you’ll figure it out for yourself.’ I tossed my cigarette into the carpark, hitting Jackson’s, and thinking I should have scored some number of points for it.

  He opened the door and held it for me. ‘After you, Sir Oligarch.’

  I smirked somewhat in denial and went inside. Jackson spilt off and returned to his table as I approached mine.

  ‘The cop again?’ Leslie asked.

  I shook my head. ‘He had about the same idea I was having: that one of these mitochondria might follow me out and elect to die. Then we rapped about Shakespeare and Dylan Thomas and Hannibal Lecter.’

  ‘If you wrote down a tenth of what you talk to people about...,’ Leslie said, then said nothing else.

  ‘I probably will, at some point,’ I said, ‘Boring a book though that actually would be.’

  So: who knew....

  TWENTY-TWO

  Drunk morons lacking perseverance and stamina, they began slipping back out of the restaurant shortly after three, some even remembering to pay their bills before being sent back in by Jackson and Davis, under pain of incarceration, to argue over the price of taco salads which may or may not have been cheaper elsewhere, during the day, when they were sober, or any combination thereof; thirty-five open tables became thirty, and twenty-five, and twenty, and fifteen, and then, finally, ten, or so.

  The wiggers in 74 were among the last unable to find the door back to the world outside, Wigger himself cornering Wiggette against the wall, not against her evident will, preventing the rest of us from clubbing this chick—who, if gumchewing were gainful employment, would be the world’s first trillionaire—and absconding with her dumbscrillyicious ass back to Team Genius for the win; before them remained enough uneaten pancakes to kill a blue whale—which, thinking about it, having no idea whether cetaceans can even digest pancakes, might not mean a whole hell of a lot—each containing approximately half an oildrum of cold, congealed maple syrup, more of which was likely permanently bonding the plates to the tabletop, their neglected bill itself a victim of this ecoterroristical sapspill.

  ‘Two hours and thirty-seven minutes!’

  ‘Juh shuggafuggup,’ Wigger moaned, losing half a mouthful of pancakes from behind his teeth, catching a decent percentage of it again in a couple ropes of cheap bling Mister T would roll his eyes at.

  ‘Oh damn,’ Wiggette sang in a tone reserved by more intellectual morons for reacting to the unexpected explosion of the sun, ‘You be wasten food, yo!’

  ‘Ffft!’ Wigger declared, more pancakes go for launch, ‘Ain’t nuffin: affo’ all a’pan’akes I won, know it.’

  Wiggette divaricated: ‘They be starven kids Africa don’t need y’all spitten fuggen pancakes all over lan’ duh free; damn, got no fuggen brains.’

  Wigger impugned: ‘Know y’all juh playne, that brain shit: fuggen smart like fuggen Einstein up here, yo.’

  Wiggette elutriated: ‘Don’t e’en wanna hear none that shit, dumbfuck nigger poser—’

  Wigger punctuated: ‘Know y�
��all din’t just hit me duh NBomb, Beeyatch.’

  Wiggette remonstrated: ‘You be acken like a muhfuggen nigga, I be callen y’all a muhfuggen nigga, fuggen nigga.’

  Wigger contravened: ‘Ah, heh naw; shit ain’t right, ma bitch.’

  Wiggette abjured: ‘Be yo bitch muh longer, keep dis shit up, Muhfugger.’

  And that, as they say—well, in fact, they don’t say, since, to my knowledge, no one’s ever attempted to spell out this sort of babytalk in a novel before; though I could be wrong.

  ‘Two hours and thirty-six minutes!’

  ‘Dey yo nigga rye dey,’ Wigger said, possibly indicating George, but possibly trying to remember the lyrics to a Harry Belafonte song, ‘Go tow he ass bout duh fuggen Africa, Beyotch.’

  Jackson approached, this time with Davis. ‘Wha’d I tell you about making me come over here again,’ he prompted.

  Wigger and Wiggette launched into a cacophony of stuttering perplexity: their impersonation of Jawas denying that they could ever have guessed that R5D4 was going to blow its motivator like that.

  ‘Now jus—just—you listening?’ Jackson asked, ‘Just calm down and—and what the hell did you do to this table. Damn. You got maple syrup...oh, just look at this.’ Picking a corner not glued to the table by syrup, Jackson lifted the wiggers’ bill, ripping it in half in the process. ‘See there? How’d you think you were gonna pay this, with syrup all over it.’

  ‘Shunt gotta pay for it, all,’ Wigger denied, ‘Damn. Wait a hour just t’order a damn’ Coke...nother hour get pan’akes. Service fuggen suck, yo.’

  ‘Yo,’ Jackson agreed, ‘I think it’s about time you go pay the nice waitress lady and call it a night. You think?’

  ‘Don’t gotsta pay shit, meal all cole an’ shit, crazy muhfugger back dey callen out d’time every coupla seconds.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do gotsta pay this bill,’ Jackson said, waving the half he’d rescued from the Exxon Jemima, ‘And I think you gotsta leave one hell of a tip, Boy. Maybe even apologise to all these nice people for putting up with your confused ass for the last hour or two. You get me? Huh?’

  ‘Damn,’ Wigger sang, the sun still not exploding out in space, ‘Be police brutality, some shit.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Jackson said entirely certainly, ‘No, you’re mistaken about that, Son: this is not brutality; I have yet to become brutal. Tell you what though: if I become brutal, your first hint will be that it was the last thing you ever saw on God’s Green Earth. Now are you gonna pay this bill, or am I gonna redefine your understanding of brutality.’

  ‘Two hours and thirty-five minutes!’

  And Jackson lost it, laughing like a schoolgirl frightened by a spider. Composed again: ‘Okay: I’m done playing now. Show me the money; c’mon; show me you’ve got the money to cover this bill, we hand it over to clear you out, and you walk out that door free and clear. Don’t have the money? I start with charging you with larceny and then see what else I can think of on the way to the station. So c’mon, People: get those wallets out; let’s see what upstanding little citisens you weirdassed little whitefolk are.’

  For whatever reason—and I’ll probably never really know which—Wigger muttered something quickly, possibly in Sanskrit, before sliding halfway under the table to pluck a stash of Benjamins from the front pocket of the jeans cinched around his knees, slapping them precisely into the deepest puddle of syrup on the table. ‘Fine!’ he erupted, losing his blaccent, ‘There you go—there’s all my fucken money. Okay?’

  ‘Hey, Davis,’ Jackson said, ‘How much cash does a kid need on him at any given...whatcha got here, five thousand? Ten?’

  ‘Fuggen know,’ Wigger said, shrugging, ‘Nuff.’

  ‘That might just be enough,’ Jackson said, ‘You know that, if you’ve got enough cash in your pockets, we gotta call in the FBI? Secret Service? Make sure you’re not counterfeiting the shit?’

  ‘Yeah, whatever,’ Wigger said, pointedly adding, ‘Officer.’

  ‘You know what though,’ Jackson decided, ‘I don’t wanna fucking know you anymore. What say we take one of these Benjamins...,’ he proposed, sliding one off the top, ‘let that cover your bill here, and the waitress just keeps the change. How’s that sit with you.’

  ‘Two hours—’

  ‘Fuck it,’ Wigger said, ‘I gots more. A fuggen lot more. Fuggen knew who I was, find out what fuggen brutal all bout.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Sir, Mister Citisen, Sir,’ Jackson allowed, ‘I’ll make sure you get a commentcard with my name, rank, and badge number, so your daddy can sue my black ass the hell back to Africa. You’re done here. Go home before I change my mind. And you better take a damn’ cab: the next Officer of the Law will not be as kind as I’ve been, if you get pulled over driving drunk.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Wigger said.

  Mock astonished, Jackson noticed him. ‘You still here, Motherfucker? The fuck out. You do not want to test me.’

  ‘Fuggen place sucks,’ Wigger said, sliding out of the booth and grabbing his money, Wiggette following closely and silently, ‘Ain’t commen fuck back this fuggen place.’

  ‘I think that’ll suit everyone just fine,’ Jackson said, nodding to Davis, who followed a few steps behind the wiggers until they’d left the building.

  Standing at the window, Davis called back. ‘Little fucker got right into his car and drove away.’

  ‘Not surprised,’ Jackson called back, ‘Do a pussy little punk like that a favour, and you get this.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Davis muttered.

  ‘The rest of you folks,’ Jackson announced to the seventies, ‘Sorry for the inconvenience.’

  ‘Two hours and thirty-three minutes!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jackson told George, ‘Specially you.’

  Davis returned to the seventies. ‘I got his plates. I’ll call it in, give out their general heading.

  Jackson nodded, grabbing a chair from 62 and sliding it up to 71, sitting backwards in it, arms folded atop the chairback. ‘Think you’d put that in a book?’ he asked.

  ‘Think anyone would believe it?’ I asked back.

  ‘Believe it? Shit. I’d be surprised if they didn’t expect it. The hell’s wrong with those punks, acting all black like it gains them anything.’

  I shrugged. ‘Michael Jackson,’ I guessed.

  Jackson laughed. ‘Dude’s whiter’n you are.’

  ‘Maybe. But he got huge in the eighties. Pissed off the blacks, maybe; but that’s only about twelve percent; the other eighty-eight percent wanted to be the guy. But I dunno: it could be unrelated.’

  Looking at 74 with its unruly lake of syrup, Jackson mused: ‘I just don’t know what I’m supposed to make of those...whaddaya even call people like that.’

  ‘Wiggers,’ I said.

  ‘Come again,’ Jackson told me, behind precisely the look you never want to see on a cop facing in your direction.

  ‘Wiggers,’ I said again, more clearly, ‘With a W, not an N.’

  ‘Oh: wiggers. I gotcha.’

  ‘Though, at the risk of being too honest, I have no compunction against calling them niggers, either.’

  Jackson blinked. ‘You really just said that to me, didn’t you.’

  ‘I did,’ I admitted.

  ‘Now, you do realise that I,’ Jackson said slowly but unsoftly, ‘am a black man.’

  ‘Is that right.’

  ‘Born and bred.’

  ‘What else ya get for chris’mas.’

  He stared at me for a long second, then cracked the grin. ‘You are something else. You know that?’

  ‘I get that a lot.’

  ‘Two hours and thirty-two minutes!’

  ‘Okay, so explain this to me,’ Jackson said, ‘Don’t feel threatened; I can talk to a white guy about this sorta thing. You have no, what, compunction? Against the word “nigger”. That’s what you said, right? And, so why’s that, precisely.’

  ‘Initially? Because I’m English, and we have nothing resembling the colourwars
you have in this country.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jackson allowed, ‘So, initially, it’s cultural; I’ll buy that. But you’re here now. So, what makes it okay for you, do you think.’

  ‘Secondarily,’ I said, ‘I don’t pretend that there’s any difference between us.’

  ‘Is that a fact.’

  ‘It really is. In that regard, I mean. You’re a cop; I’m a writer; those are different things. But, as I understand basic biology, there’s exactly one human race. Right?’

  ‘With you so far,’ Jackson said.

  ‘So, we might be different colours; but so what. We’re different heights and weights and all that too.’

  ‘Okay,’ Jackson said, ‘So it’s just another differentiating characteristic; I get that.’

  ‘Except that it’s not.’

  ‘I can agree there too.’

  ‘No: it’s not really a differentiating characteristic. Biologically, we’re all pretty much the same; culturally, apart from what we claim to be...we’re all from Africa—you, me, those idiots who just left. Ultimately, humans evolved in and wandered out of Africa. Since then, some have evolved whiter skin; but it’s meaningless.’

  ‘Two hours and thirty-one minutes!’

  Jackson bobbed his head a bit. ‘Yeah...not really. I’m not sure you’d think it was so meaningless if you’d grown up—in this country—as a black kid.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I said, ‘That’s the point. Its meaningfulness is subjective. If you’d grown up as a white kid in London, you’d be perplexed by the reports of race riots and kangaroo courts designed to implicate black guys over in the US.’

  ‘So, what you’re saying is that it doesn’t matter, because it’s not your problem.’

  ‘I’m saying it’s not anyone’s problem, unless they let it bind them.’

  ‘No,’ Jackson said, ‘No: I gotta disagree with that. If I don’t let my blackness bind me, it won’t make me any less black to anyone else. I’m afraid I’m stuck with this particular shade of brown.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘All emotion aside.’