Vic Vic did not think of himself as Vic Vic. Inside his head he was merely VIC. It had occurred to him once that this should be the Roman numeral equivalent of the number 94. This thought had occurred to him while he was smoking a roll-up. He prided himself on his ability to construct roll-ups. He had never used a rolling machine. On the rare occasion that a student asked him for a ciggie, he handed them the baccy and the Rizlas (blue) and quietly observed their competence.
He was smoking a roll-up now. He liked to imagine laughing through his teeth so that the smoke filtered up through the bristles of his moustache, seen close up, in black and white, hard focussed so that he looked like that Chuck Close self-portrait. Every pore of his skin magnified.
Jinge came back from the bar with three pints of bitter. “Here y’are!” he announced. Sparrar arrived back at the table at approximately the same time. He’d been in the lav, “syphoning his python,” as he had explained.
Vic Vic peered over his thick tortoiseshell frames and gave them a serious, “gentlemen!” as he raised his glass first to Jinge and then to Sparrar. With a pint in one hand and a ciggie in the other he was truly the king of all he surveyed.
“So, where d’you?” asked Sparrar, “where d’you like… y’know?”
“Yeah, I’d been wondering that too,” said Jinge. “Where the fuck d’you like…”
“You’ll have to help me out there, lads,” said Vic Vic.
“Well, y’know?” Sparrar went for the jugular, “what’s the name of your specialist?”
“Your man of the moment?” added Jinge.
“Your boy with the toys?” Sparrar attached a Benson and Hedges to his mouth.
Vic Vic frowned, “can’t say that I follow your…”
“Drift?” Sparrar laughed. “Not trying to be personal, mate!”
Jinge raised his glass. “Nothing but respect intended.”
Vic Vic saw in his mind’s eye a boat floating on unmoving seas moored in the centre of a goldfish bowl. The bowl was perched on the veneer of the top of a television set. It didn’t seem like the safest place for all of that water. If there was a cat in the house or even a dog, that could lead to a house fire, or worse. What could be worse than a house fire?
“Cut to the chase, Jinge!” said Vic Vic.
Jinge looked nervous. “I haven’t a Scooby what Sparrar was levelling at. Just, y’know, playing along?”
“Maybe I could have been more explicit,” said Sparrar. “Perhaps I should have been more direct like. You are after all a man of the world.”
Vic Vic didn’t like the sound of this. “I have no interest in boys, if that was what you were thinking.”
Sparrar tried to back off, but he was on a bar stool and even he realised that such a manoeuver would only come to grief. “No sir! You got me entirely wrong. I wouldn’t think that of a solid gent like you! It was just that Jinge and myself were wondering where you get your corduroy jackets dry cleaned?”
Vic Vic felt his suede elbow patch under the pads of his left fingers. “That, my boys, is one of the secrets that it will be revealed to you on the Day of Judgement.” He stubbed out his roll-up with a sense of a job well done.