was only going through the motions at this point? After all, who knew how many weeks of higher education he had left, how long he’d be left to linger in the dorm before the university bureaucracy roused itself to inquire as to the next instalment of his tuition? Being left out of exams — leaving himself out — would, he knew, make him sad. Would be an acknowledgement. He would be nostalgic for the experience of exams all too soon — lonesome for that sense of harassed community and beleaguered fellowship.
Truth be told, he’d already spent the past month floating around campus in a fog of pre-emptive nostalgia for this time, this place, these people. Now all that was left was to set about hardening himself against all three.
Which would not be an easy thing to do with Kyle and his soupy talk of brotherhood growing faggier by the moment as the holidays approached.
We’ll get it over with, thought Rank back at the dorm, dutifully tearing apart his sock-smelling berth in search of his exam schedule. Screw it: one last night out, one big blowout with the boys. Raise glasses, toast themselves, cut each other’s palms and mingle blood like kids in a clubhouse, let Kyle spin his future dreamscapes, utter vows and proclamations, bestow hugs, brand their asses Brothers of the Temple, give them all fucking pet names if he wants to. Get it over with — one final time, and then.
And then: what?
And then the black hole of the future that was Christmas/New Year’s ’91. The other side of which remained unfathomable to Rank.
Lorna could not grasp the simple fact that patrons of Goldfinger’s responded differently to a bartender like Rank than they did a bartender like Lorna. She noticed how the ancient, ruined regulars — who usually liked to linger at the bar after paying for a drink, hacking up bon mots along the lines of Boys oh boys I wuz so fuckin hammered last night — tended to just mutely accept their drinks and change and shamble back to their table when dealing with Rank. It concerned her. She didn’t like to see the Goldfinger’s customer-service dynamic thrown off.
“The regulars,” she explained to Rank, “they like to joke around, you know? Like to chat with us up here at the bar. Makes them feel they belong.”
They like to chat up here at the bar, Rank wanted to say, because you wear that corset thing and have dyed blonde hair that you have grown down to where the cleft of your ass begins. Which I can see, by the way, emerging from your pants every time you bend even the tiniest bit forward.
He told her, “I am always very nice to the customers.”
“I know you are, lovey, but you’re a big fella and maybe you scare them a little.”
“I’m as nice as I can be,” protested Rank.
Truth be told there was nothing he was less interested in than chatting up the regulars. He didn’t find them lovable or endearing the way Lorna pretended to. They were last-stage alcoholics, ageless in their decrepitude, shaking, stinking, their shrivelled grey heads sloshing with permanently pickled brain cells, only able to make conversation on the off-chance that one such depleted cell happened to slosh against another somewhere in the depths of their cerebral brine.
Oily ol’ fuck so I get home last night and I get outta bed to take a piss and don’t he forget he’s wearing pants! So I’m standing looking down at the toilet thinking: Where’s it goin? It’s gotta be going somewhere. Well it’s goin down my leg is where its goin! Har har hagh . . . HAUGH! Hwack hwack hagh . . hagh . . ugh. S’cuse me Lorna darlin.
More importantly, they rarely tipped. They were drink-cagers by and large, relying on the kindness of strangers. Why indulge them? Why did Richard even let them in the place? He could readily imagine how Gordon Sr. would respond to such a customer base. But when he pointed this out to Lorna, protesting that the barflies contributed nothing but a frankly scuzzball ambiance, she shook her head.
“You’re not here on Welfare Wednesday, lovey.” She tapped the tip jar with a turquoise fingernail. “That’s when Santa comes to town.”
Okay, so Lorna was worried for her welfare tips. That explained it, but didn’t particularly prompt Rank to take her advice seriously. Heaven forbid he not endear himself to the pub’s incontinent habitants. Besides, he was perfectly civil — he just