The Swap - By Antony Moore Page 0,7

like this? But this time I happened to be here anyway so I thought I'd drop in.' He glanced round with polite interest at the school assembly hall, taking in the long passageway that ran off it where the boys' toilets were: toilets in which Harvey knew for a fact Bleeder had been beaten senseless more times than he could remember. Harvey felt he was inhabiting a dream. Like fantasising all your life about meeting Lou Reed and when you finally do finding that he chats about soft furnishings. He hadn't really ever fixed in his mind what they would talk about, except of course for the Superman One. But he had assumed it would be significant, emotional, meaningful, that it would matter. Now here he was, here was Bleeder, and he just happened to be here and was exhibiting every sign of finding it a bit dull and of preparing to leave. 'Have you been before?' Bleeder asked politely.

'Er, yeah, yeah once or twice.' Looking for you. Only looking for you.

'And are they always like this?'

'Like what?'

'Well . . . a bit sad?'

'Mmm. I guess so.' Harvey could feel the top of his head beginning to lift, as if his brain was about to make its own way out of the situation. He put his hand up and scratched hard.

'So, what are you up to now?' This was a question that he and the old crowd had actively and specifically banned when they came back for that first ever get-together. It was sort of a joke, so now they said it with irony and it actually meant 'this is boring, let's move on' sort of thing. But now Harvey said it and realised that it was The Question, it was what he had wanted to ask every day for two decades.

'Oh, I do a bit of work in the City.' Bleeder smiled. 'Maths was always my thing, I guess.' No it wasn't, you didn't have a thing. You never had a thing.

'Yeah, I remember.'

'So I set up a little company a while ago and it worked out quite well. I sold out last year, but I still do some consultancy work, a few days a week, here and in New York. It keeps me busy, without the stress.' He smiled again and Harvey found himself smiling back. He reached desperately for his pockets and remembered that it was no-smoking this year for the first time. He also remembered his leopard-skin notebook from Quidbusters, might Bleeder have one too?

'Really, the City, cool. So finance, huh? Interesting.' It wasn't quite what he'd planned to say, but it was as good as anything else.

'Yes, mostly at Reiser and Watts.' Bleeder produced a card and handed it to him. 'Do you know them?'

'Um, no, I just ...'

'. . . or perhaps you're not in finance?'

'No, no not finance.'

'OK.' Bleeder glanced round the room as if looking for someone more interesting to talk to. 'So, what are you in?'

'Comics.' Harvey found his cigarettes and got the packet out. If he couldn't smoke he could damn well fiddle with the box a bit. Attached to the packet, as if melded by his bodily emissions, was one of his own cards, with a picture of Betty Boo on it and his address. He passed it back.

Bleeder was laughing. Bleeder was laughing at him. The realisation of how far this was from the fantasy picture he had painted was enough to make him want to join in.

'Comics?' Bleeder was gazing at the card.

'Yeah, funny really.' Harvey tried to smile. 'I just sort of carried on being interested after school.'

'Jesus, yes, you were the comic king, weren't you? Always swapping and bartering. You were a real wheeler-dealer. You should have ended up in the City really.' He laughed again and Harvey felt his scalp give another skip. Always swapping? Christ, do you really have no idea?

'Er, yeah, so I just sort of stuck with it. Stick to what you're good at.' He made a vague phrase, for no reason discernible to him. 'I've got a shop, in London, in Old Street.' He should have added something about departments and assistants and foreign trips, but somehow it got lost.

'Right.' Bleeder nodded and gave a longer, more searching glance around the room. 'Well, I guess if you like something ...'

'Exactly.' And Harvey saw his chance. He could just ask. So much build-up, twenty years of build-up was making it harder than it needed to be. He could simply ask straight