Chapter 5
Jones’s squat was surprisingly nice. There were half-empty coffee cups and toys on every available surface, but it was clean enough, and it smelled of old coffee - a scent that reminded Dan of his childhood. His mother had been a professor of women’s studies and had written several books on the under-representation of women in just about every field of knowledge. She’d spent most of Dan’s childhood drinking coffee and talking to herself. As much as he admired his mother and her success, Dan had realized at a young age that he had no interest in academia or anything that would be overly time consuming. He went the opposite route and wrote utter bollocks for idiots. If Elizabeth Ashcroft was disappointed with her intellectually lazy son, she’d never let on.
“Coffee? Tea?” Jones offered before opening the refrigerator and taking a look. “Ummm… Yeah, those are your options, because the water is well rank.”
“Tea,” Dan answered, forcing himself not to ask about liquor. Despite the fact that Jones had literally just plucked him out of an alley, Dan didn’t want to be that guy for a moment. Jones was giving him a chance to act like a normal human being, and Dan wanted to go with it. At least for a little while.
“I’ve got mates in a few takeaway places, so the fridge is full,” Jones explained as he pulled out an assortment of boxes. “People give me food they were going to pitch because they fucked the order up or made too much. I’ve been thinking of trying to be a Freegan and just not spend money at all… but you need to get up early to get most of the good stuff, and I’m not a morning person.”
Dan kept a straight face in deference to Jones’s earnest expression. He helped himself to half an order of Pad Thai and a handful of eggrolls. He ate sporadically, but he rarely felt hungry thanks to the constant drinking and smoking. His vices were slowly moving him away from those pesky instincts to survive by eating food and breathing.
But half-sober and looking at a veritable buffet of takeaway, he was suddenly famished. He couldn’t remember his last proper meal (it probably hadn’t been that long, his memory was just shit) and he was looking forward to digging in.
Dan rarely sweetened his tea, but Jones gave him a cup of liquid that tasted like a melted lollipop.
“You like your tea sweet,” Dan observed as he stirred.
Jones laughed. “Yeah. I put twice as much sugar in mine as yours. Is yours too sweet?”
Jones suddenly looked concerned, and Dan felt a need to put him at ease. There had always been something about the odd boy that made Dan feel protective. Or at least as protective as a self-absorbed twat could be about another person.
“It’s not how I usually take it, but it’s nice. It tastes good.”
Dan felt like he was speaking strangely, but Jones didn’t seem to notice. Having a normal conversation felt strange. His conversational skills were rusty. He was used to yelling in the streets, not chatting over tea.
“There’s two bedrooms. I stay in that one,” Jones explained, gesturing to an open door. “You can have that one. I already put clean sheets on the bed, and you can help yourself to the clothes in the wardrobe. I don’t think Brian or Snake will be needing them for a while…”
Dan toyed with visual images of “Brian and Snake” as he gulped down his food. He soon found himself feeling queasy, and the sugary tea only made it worse. Generally, when Dan Ashcroft stood on the precipice of vomiting and knew what he had to do to feel better, he opted to keep drinking, but he didn’t want to be sick in Jones’s presence.
“I’ll make you some plain tea,” Jones said out of nowhere. “And I’ll get you some biscuits to settle your stomach. The food’s pretty greasy.”
Dan wondered if he was turning green, because he’d thought he was doing a pretty good job of acting normal and yet Jones was moving into full nursemaid mode. Dan gave a half-hearted argument, but some plain tea and biscuits did the trick. He immediately felt better and able to dig back into the greasy buffet.
Jones quietly ate his Tandoori chicken until Dan felt comfortably full and extremely sleepy. He dearly hoped that Jones wasn’t going to try and get something started. Dan had no problem falling asleep on people and wasn’t overly concerned about what happened when he wasn’t conscious, but Jones seemed a bit squeamish about that kind of thing. He knew from experience that a lot of people were able to forget their moral concerns when a blowjob was on the table, but they usually needed some external lubrication. All those former friends’ and colleagues’ motives had been as pure as snow until they’d had enough to drink or inhale that it had seemed okay to start pushing the envelope of appropriate behavior. Not even Nathan had tried to fuck Dan while sober.
“You look ready to fall asleep. Why don’t you go have a sleepy,” Jones said, taking Dan’s empty takeaway box. “There’s an extra key by the door. I work from 9-2 tomorrow at Sweet Pipes. Come and go as you like. You can stay here as long as you want.”
It was a generous offer from a near stranger. Dan knew all about the savior types who reckoned they could fix Dan with a few square meals and a good night’s sleep. His parents had certainly tried.
“You shouldn’t trust strangers in your flat,” Dan said, too drowsy to think better of it. “I could rob you blind.”
“I don’t have anything worth stealing,” Jones laughed. “I try not to have excess baggage, you know? I just need my bed and my fridge. If you steal all the beds and the fridge, I’ll be shit out of luck, but I’ll be more impressed than angry.”
“What about your tables?” Dan asked as he eyed Jones’s eccentric set up.
“S’all shit I’ve found in the streets or bins. Can’t afford good stuff, so I just make it work.” Jones struck an old fashioned pin-up pose. “My gimmick is, I make cheap sound good.”
When he put his hand behind his head, Jones’s shirt rode up a bit, so his stomach was visible. Dan admired the hint of skin and the dark trail of hair leading down to Jones’s low-riding drainpipes. He felt a stir below the waist as his libido tried to shake the rest of his lethargic body from its trance state.
“Cheers,” Dan said before heading to the room Jones had indicated. As tempted as he was to go straight to sleep, he could smell the bitter, dry sweat of having worn the same clothes a little too long. It had become a familiar scent well before he’d become a literal homeless person. Before Claire had died, there would be weeks or months where Dan found it nearly impossible to make himself shower on a regular basis. Claire would talk to him for a day or two, doing her best to be supportive. Sometimes she picked up literature on depression. Then she’d get fed up and yell at Dan until he started going through the motions of being human again.
Without Claire to kick him in the ass, sometimes literally, Dan no longer had to try and pretend to be a functioning human being. The telly was full of people getting rich for yelling at people to make good choices, and Dan reckoned Claire could have had her own show if she had lived, maybe even could have cracked America, where they seemed to really like angry, yelling Brits.
But she was gone, and Dan was on his own. In the bathroom mirror, he saw a crazy tramp staring back at him. He grabbed a pair of scissors and chopped at his beard until it was short enough to shave off entirely. He didn’t care for his clean-shaven face, but it was better than looking like Grizzly Adams. He left his hair long, fearing that any attempt at a haircut would result in him looking like Nathan Barely. He showered and brushed his teeth with his fingers and, feeling nearly human, he suddenly felt wide awake. He had spied a few beers in the other room, but he opted to continue to take the classy route and just chugged some mouthwash. It was just enough alcohol to keep the wolves at bay, and it left his esophagus minty fresh. That was how a functioning alcoholic behaved: they hid booze in their coffee and snuck hits of perfume when they were in rehab. Only the sloppiest drunks made no effort to hide their shame.
That Dan was capable of feeling shame about his addiction seemed like a positive thing. At least he was feeling something.
When he crawled into bed, it was an amazing feeling. More often than not, Dan was able to find some form of shelter, but he didn’t often have his own bed. Although it was only a mattress on the floor, it was still more comfortable than most couches, and it was nearly long enough to hold his whole body. His feet barely hung over the edge of the mattress, and that had been a normal enough occurrence since Dan had been fifteen and hit six feet. He remembered how he would walk into doorjambs and bang his head on every low ceiling, but his mother had promised he would get used to his height and the awkwardness would go away. Dan was 34, and he was still waiting.
His mind was still whirling, but his body was shutting down, so that he felt almost paralyzed. He wanted to remember his night with Jones. A mixture of booze, coke, shock, and grief, plus the heavy grey cloud that had been hanging in his brain since Claire’s death, had wiped out most of his memories of that night. Everything that had happened afterwards was a bit blurry as well.
He remembered how small Jones’s hand had felt in his own. He remembered how Jones had pulled mad faces and giggled like they were having an innocent snog instead of a seedy tryst.
He had no idea what Jones had taken from that night. A lot of people wanted to find meaning in Claire’s death. Maybe like Nathan, Jones was looking for some kind of closure on that night through Dan.
As Dan’s eyes started to close of their own accord, he thought of all the people who had tried to help him and failed. He almost felt sorry for Jones, but it was a lesson everyone needed to learn: there were people who weren’t worth saving.
Xxx
Dan woke up with his standard blinding headache, but in a strange bed. When he remembered where he was and why, it only seemed stranger. He wandered around the flat and found a message addressed to him on a whiteboard. Jones had listed the number and address to his work in case Dan needed anything, and again urged Dan to help himself. Part of Dan wanted to steal something just to be contrary, but Jones had a point about possessions: they weighed a person down. Dan had no use for things, unless they could be sold for liquor.
Dan drank beer and watched telly for an hour and then fell asleep on the couch. He woke up to Jones wearing headphones and working at his tables. It was already dark.
Dan sat up and watched Jones dance and adjust the apparently random items on his decks. He looked less like a Shoreditch DJ than a performance artist doing a piece called “Shoreditch DJ.” Dan imagined that got the guy a lot of work. The Idiots loved anything that was completely familiar, but with just enough a twist to pass for original.
When Jones finally noticed Dan, he jumped and yanked off his headphones. Dan heard the screaming cacophony coming from the headphones and wondered how Jones could bear having it pumped directly into his ears.
“All right, Dan?”
Dan gave a single nod of his head and Jones grinned.
“You must have been dead on your feet, mate. How are you feeling?”
Dan needed a drink to carry on a conversation. The forced sobriety of sleeping had left him feeling weak and woozy. Instead of charging towards the fridge, Dan forced himself to show a modicum of control.
“Still a bit knackered. How was work?”
Dan forced himself to maintain eye contact and listen as Jones told stories of eccentric customers. Although he made it clear he had a “shite job,” Jones seemed to have a lot of fun interacting with the people there. He was a people person. Like God, Dan neither believed nor didn’t believe in people like Jones: he simply found it very unlikely that a person could look around at his fellow humans and be happy with what he saw. Either Jones was so deeply self-deluded that he’d convinced himself he liked the miserable fuckers who surrounded him, or he actually liked people. Either way, Dan didn’t understand it.
He tried to laugh at the right times and not to look at the refrigerator. He could wait for a natural moment.
Rather suddenly, Jones wrinkled his brow and asked, “Would you like something to drink?”
Dan wanted to ask for tea, but he was beginning to feel anxious. Things got scary when he was sober for too long.
“Beer, if you have it,” Dan said, trying to keep his voice even.
Jones put a beer in Dan’s hand and said, “Help yourself. I don’t know what you need but… you know, I’m not gonna keep count or anything.”
“I’m cutting back,” Dan lied, in a reflexive effort to be civilized. Jones had a severed doll head on his tables and his hair was four different colors, yet there was something about their interactions that made Dan want to pull himself together. Maybe it was because Jones managed to look concerned without the touch of pity that made Dan die a little more inside every time he caught it in the eye of someone who’d used to respect him, or who would have respected him back in the day. Jones didn’t look at Dan like he was a drunken tramp; he looked at Dan like he had a touch of the lurgy.
“Sometimes I think I’d like to have a music shop,” Jones said, as though there had never been a change in topic. “Just my own place where I could sell a bunch of local artists and have live performances and have a benefit every couple months, when I’m in danger of having to close shop because it never makes enough money…”
Jones looked wistful as he talked about his imaginary, unsuccessful music shop. Dan envied Jones for having a dream. Dan couldn’t even think of what could make him happy anymore.
“Dare to dream,” Dan said, immediately regretting his comment when Jones laughed.
“Sky’s the limit for this guy,” Jones agreed. “One day I’m working at a moderately successful shop, next minute I’m running my own failing business!”
“Don’t.”
Jones shifted awkwardly and Dan tried to pull words together.
“Don’t belittle the things that are meaningful to you,” was the best Dan could come up with. There was a reason he was a writer. It took him a long time to compose a thought in a palatable manner. If all communication were written, Dan would probably be able to handle life a good deal better.
Jones looked thoughtful for a moment, but then began chatting about his day again, filling the air with his bright and animated voice. He should have been annoying to Dan, but he was surprisingly pleasant. His enthusiasm was disarmingly sincere and his language was naively non-PC. Jones described someone in the shop as a “beautiful Red Indian,” like that was a term still commonly used. Dan was forever torn between the belief in the power of words and having been raised to consider the political impact of word choice on oppressed populations and his belief that people just needed to stop being assholes. Every time he saw an American cringe at the word fag, it reminded him that words were inherently neutral. Jones was like a child raised in a jungle, oblivious to the social mores that surrounded him, and Dan enjoyed basking in his naivete.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Jones asked. “Have I got shit on my face?”
Dan pretended to double check before saying no. When Jones laughed, the exchange felt utterly normal and mundane, which was absolutely amazing.
Xxx
Once Dan was settled into his flat, Jones had no idea what to do with him. As far as Jones was concerned, Dan could stay forever. It didn’t matter if he was a good flatmate, because Jones was used to sharing a living space with whoever came along. He was beyond flexible. In fact, Dan’s presence could be helpful if someone tried to invite themselves in - which sometimes happened. Dan didn’t look like he’d share his space easily.
The problem was that Dan had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Ever. He sat in the flat and drank. Jones would have trouble keeping Dan in beer, but he didn’t want Dan out of the street begging for money (in his particular style) or doing worse. Jones found himself reconsidering becoming a manager at Sweet Pipes. When he brought it up to Dan, needing a reasonable voice to help him sort his thoughts, Dan had a surprising reaction.
“Why don’t you want to be manager?” Dan asked.
“I really want to focus on my music and get myself out there,” Jones explained, making a point not to make a self-deprecating joke. “If I make more of a commitment to the shop, the DJ thing is going to be a hobby. I’m not ready to give up yet.”
“Do you think you could get me a job at the shop?” Dan asked with not a hint of sarcasm.
“Coffee? Tea?” Jones offered before opening the refrigerator and taking a look. “Ummm… Yeah, those are your options, because the water is well rank.”
“Tea,” Dan answered, forcing himself not to ask about liquor. Despite the fact that Jones had literally just plucked him out of an alley, Dan didn’t want to be that guy for a moment. Jones was giving him a chance to act like a normal human being, and Dan wanted to go with it. At least for a little while.
“I’ve got mates in a few takeaway places, so the fridge is full,” Jones explained as he pulled out an assortment of boxes. “People give me food they were going to pitch because they fucked the order up or made too much. I’ve been thinking of trying to be a Freegan and just not spend money at all… but you need to get up early to get most of the good stuff, and I’m not a morning person.”
Dan kept a straight face in deference to Jones’s earnest expression. He helped himself to half an order of Pad Thai and a handful of eggrolls. He ate sporadically, but he rarely felt hungry thanks to the constant drinking and smoking. His vices were slowly moving him away from those pesky instincts to survive by eating food and breathing.
But half-sober and looking at a veritable buffet of takeaway, he was suddenly famished. He couldn’t remember his last proper meal (it probably hadn’t been that long, his memory was just shit) and he was looking forward to digging in.
Dan rarely sweetened his tea, but Jones gave him a cup of liquid that tasted like a melted lollipop.
“You like your tea sweet,” Dan observed as he stirred.
Jones laughed. “Yeah. I put twice as much sugar in mine as yours. Is yours too sweet?”
Jones suddenly looked concerned, and Dan felt a need to put him at ease. There had always been something about the odd boy that made Dan feel protective. Or at least as protective as a self-absorbed twat could be about another person.
“It’s not how I usually take it, but it’s nice. It tastes good.”
Dan felt like he was speaking strangely, but Jones didn’t seem to notice. Having a normal conversation felt strange. His conversational skills were rusty. He was used to yelling in the streets, not chatting over tea.
“There’s two bedrooms. I stay in that one,” Jones explained, gesturing to an open door. “You can have that one. I already put clean sheets on the bed, and you can help yourself to the clothes in the wardrobe. I don’t think Brian or Snake will be needing them for a while…”
Dan toyed with visual images of “Brian and Snake” as he gulped down his food. He soon found himself feeling queasy, and the sugary tea only made it worse. Generally, when Dan Ashcroft stood on the precipice of vomiting and knew what he had to do to feel better, he opted to keep drinking, but he didn’t want to be sick in Jones’s presence.
“I’ll make you some plain tea,” Jones said out of nowhere. “And I’ll get you some biscuits to settle your stomach. The food’s pretty greasy.”
Dan wondered if he was turning green, because he’d thought he was doing a pretty good job of acting normal and yet Jones was moving into full nursemaid mode. Dan gave a half-hearted argument, but some plain tea and biscuits did the trick. He immediately felt better and able to dig back into the greasy buffet.
Jones quietly ate his Tandoori chicken until Dan felt comfortably full and extremely sleepy. He dearly hoped that Jones wasn’t going to try and get something started. Dan had no problem falling asleep on people and wasn’t overly concerned about what happened when he wasn’t conscious, but Jones seemed a bit squeamish about that kind of thing. He knew from experience that a lot of people were able to forget their moral concerns when a blowjob was on the table, but they usually needed some external lubrication. All those former friends’ and colleagues’ motives had been as pure as snow until they’d had enough to drink or inhale that it had seemed okay to start pushing the envelope of appropriate behavior. Not even Nathan had tried to fuck Dan while sober.
“You look ready to fall asleep. Why don’t you go have a sleepy,” Jones said, taking Dan’s empty takeaway box. “There’s an extra key by the door. I work from 9-2 tomorrow at Sweet Pipes. Come and go as you like. You can stay here as long as you want.”
It was a generous offer from a near stranger. Dan knew all about the savior types who reckoned they could fix Dan with a few square meals and a good night’s sleep. His parents had certainly tried.
“You shouldn’t trust strangers in your flat,” Dan said, too drowsy to think better of it. “I could rob you blind.”
“I don’t have anything worth stealing,” Jones laughed. “I try not to have excess baggage, you know? I just need my bed and my fridge. If you steal all the beds and the fridge, I’ll be shit out of luck, but I’ll be more impressed than angry.”
“What about your tables?” Dan asked as he eyed Jones’s eccentric set up.
“S’all shit I’ve found in the streets or bins. Can’t afford good stuff, so I just make it work.” Jones struck an old fashioned pin-up pose. “My gimmick is, I make cheap sound good.”
When he put his hand behind his head, Jones’s shirt rode up a bit, so his stomach was visible. Dan admired the hint of skin and the dark trail of hair leading down to Jones’s low-riding drainpipes. He felt a stir below the waist as his libido tried to shake the rest of his lethargic body from its trance state.
“Cheers,” Dan said before heading to the room Jones had indicated. As tempted as he was to go straight to sleep, he could smell the bitter, dry sweat of having worn the same clothes a little too long. It had become a familiar scent well before he’d become a literal homeless person. Before Claire had died, there would be weeks or months where Dan found it nearly impossible to make himself shower on a regular basis. Claire would talk to him for a day or two, doing her best to be supportive. Sometimes she picked up literature on depression. Then she’d get fed up and yell at Dan until he started going through the motions of being human again.
Without Claire to kick him in the ass, sometimes literally, Dan no longer had to try and pretend to be a functioning human being. The telly was full of people getting rich for yelling at people to make good choices, and Dan reckoned Claire could have had her own show if she had lived, maybe even could have cracked America, where they seemed to really like angry, yelling Brits.
But she was gone, and Dan was on his own. In the bathroom mirror, he saw a crazy tramp staring back at him. He grabbed a pair of scissors and chopped at his beard until it was short enough to shave off entirely. He didn’t care for his clean-shaven face, but it was better than looking like Grizzly Adams. He left his hair long, fearing that any attempt at a haircut would result in him looking like Nathan Barely. He showered and brushed his teeth with his fingers and, feeling nearly human, he suddenly felt wide awake. He had spied a few beers in the other room, but he opted to continue to take the classy route and just chugged some mouthwash. It was just enough alcohol to keep the wolves at bay, and it left his esophagus minty fresh. That was how a functioning alcoholic behaved: they hid booze in their coffee and snuck hits of perfume when they were in rehab. Only the sloppiest drunks made no effort to hide their shame.
That Dan was capable of feeling shame about his addiction seemed like a positive thing. At least he was feeling something.
When he crawled into bed, it was an amazing feeling. More often than not, Dan was able to find some form of shelter, but he didn’t often have his own bed. Although it was only a mattress on the floor, it was still more comfortable than most couches, and it was nearly long enough to hold his whole body. His feet barely hung over the edge of the mattress, and that had been a normal enough occurrence since Dan had been fifteen and hit six feet. He remembered how he would walk into doorjambs and bang his head on every low ceiling, but his mother had promised he would get used to his height and the awkwardness would go away. Dan was 34, and he was still waiting.
His mind was still whirling, but his body was shutting down, so that he felt almost paralyzed. He wanted to remember his night with Jones. A mixture of booze, coke, shock, and grief, plus the heavy grey cloud that had been hanging in his brain since Claire’s death, had wiped out most of his memories of that night. Everything that had happened afterwards was a bit blurry as well.
He remembered how small Jones’s hand had felt in his own. He remembered how Jones had pulled mad faces and giggled like they were having an innocent snog instead of a seedy tryst.
He had no idea what Jones had taken from that night. A lot of people wanted to find meaning in Claire’s death. Maybe like Nathan, Jones was looking for some kind of closure on that night through Dan.
As Dan’s eyes started to close of their own accord, he thought of all the people who had tried to help him and failed. He almost felt sorry for Jones, but it was a lesson everyone needed to learn: there were people who weren’t worth saving.
Xxx
Dan woke up with his standard blinding headache, but in a strange bed. When he remembered where he was and why, it only seemed stranger. He wandered around the flat and found a message addressed to him on a whiteboard. Jones had listed the number and address to his work in case Dan needed anything, and again urged Dan to help himself. Part of Dan wanted to steal something just to be contrary, but Jones had a point about possessions: they weighed a person down. Dan had no use for things, unless they could be sold for liquor.
Dan drank beer and watched telly for an hour and then fell asleep on the couch. He woke up to Jones wearing headphones and working at his tables. It was already dark.
Dan sat up and watched Jones dance and adjust the apparently random items on his decks. He looked less like a Shoreditch DJ than a performance artist doing a piece called “Shoreditch DJ.” Dan imagined that got the guy a lot of work. The Idiots loved anything that was completely familiar, but with just enough a twist to pass for original.
When Jones finally noticed Dan, he jumped and yanked off his headphones. Dan heard the screaming cacophony coming from the headphones and wondered how Jones could bear having it pumped directly into his ears.
“All right, Dan?”
Dan gave a single nod of his head and Jones grinned.
“You must have been dead on your feet, mate. How are you feeling?”
Dan needed a drink to carry on a conversation. The forced sobriety of sleeping had left him feeling weak and woozy. Instead of charging towards the fridge, Dan forced himself to show a modicum of control.
“Still a bit knackered. How was work?”
Dan forced himself to maintain eye contact and listen as Jones told stories of eccentric customers. Although he made it clear he had a “shite job,” Jones seemed to have a lot of fun interacting with the people there. He was a people person. Like God, Dan neither believed nor didn’t believe in people like Jones: he simply found it very unlikely that a person could look around at his fellow humans and be happy with what he saw. Either Jones was so deeply self-deluded that he’d convinced himself he liked the miserable fuckers who surrounded him, or he actually liked people. Either way, Dan didn’t understand it.
He tried to laugh at the right times and not to look at the refrigerator. He could wait for a natural moment.
Rather suddenly, Jones wrinkled his brow and asked, “Would you like something to drink?”
Dan wanted to ask for tea, but he was beginning to feel anxious. Things got scary when he was sober for too long.
“Beer, if you have it,” Dan said, trying to keep his voice even.
Jones put a beer in Dan’s hand and said, “Help yourself. I don’t know what you need but… you know, I’m not gonna keep count or anything.”
“I’m cutting back,” Dan lied, in a reflexive effort to be civilized. Jones had a severed doll head on his tables and his hair was four different colors, yet there was something about their interactions that made Dan want to pull himself together. Maybe it was because Jones managed to look concerned without the touch of pity that made Dan die a little more inside every time he caught it in the eye of someone who’d used to respect him, or who would have respected him back in the day. Jones didn’t look at Dan like he was a drunken tramp; he looked at Dan like he had a touch of the lurgy.
“Sometimes I think I’d like to have a music shop,” Jones said, as though there had never been a change in topic. “Just my own place where I could sell a bunch of local artists and have live performances and have a benefit every couple months, when I’m in danger of having to close shop because it never makes enough money…”
Jones looked wistful as he talked about his imaginary, unsuccessful music shop. Dan envied Jones for having a dream. Dan couldn’t even think of what could make him happy anymore.
“Dare to dream,” Dan said, immediately regretting his comment when Jones laughed.
“Sky’s the limit for this guy,” Jones agreed. “One day I’m working at a moderately successful shop, next minute I’m running my own failing business!”
“Don’t.”
Jones shifted awkwardly and Dan tried to pull words together.
“Don’t belittle the things that are meaningful to you,” was the best Dan could come up with. There was a reason he was a writer. It took him a long time to compose a thought in a palatable manner. If all communication were written, Dan would probably be able to handle life a good deal better.
Jones looked thoughtful for a moment, but then began chatting about his day again, filling the air with his bright and animated voice. He should have been annoying to Dan, but he was surprisingly pleasant. His enthusiasm was disarmingly sincere and his language was naively non-PC. Jones described someone in the shop as a “beautiful Red Indian,” like that was a term still commonly used. Dan was forever torn between the belief in the power of words and having been raised to consider the political impact of word choice on oppressed populations and his belief that people just needed to stop being assholes. Every time he saw an American cringe at the word fag, it reminded him that words were inherently neutral. Jones was like a child raised in a jungle, oblivious to the social mores that surrounded him, and Dan enjoyed basking in his naivete.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Jones asked. “Have I got shit on my face?”
Dan pretended to double check before saying no. When Jones laughed, the exchange felt utterly normal and mundane, which was absolutely amazing.
Xxx
Once Dan was settled into his flat, Jones had no idea what to do with him. As far as Jones was concerned, Dan could stay forever. It didn’t matter if he was a good flatmate, because Jones was used to sharing a living space with whoever came along. He was beyond flexible. In fact, Dan’s presence could be helpful if someone tried to invite themselves in - which sometimes happened. Dan didn’t look like he’d share his space easily.
The problem was that Dan had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Ever. He sat in the flat and drank. Jones would have trouble keeping Dan in beer, but he didn’t want Dan out of the street begging for money (in his particular style) or doing worse. Jones found himself reconsidering becoming a manager at Sweet Pipes. When he brought it up to Dan, needing a reasonable voice to help him sort his thoughts, Dan had a surprising reaction.
“Why don’t you want to be manager?” Dan asked.
“I really want to focus on my music and get myself out there,” Jones explained, making a point not to make a self-deprecating joke. “If I make more of a commitment to the shop, the DJ thing is going to be a hobby. I’m not ready to give up yet.”
“Do you think you could get me a job at the shop?” Dan asked with not a hint of sarcasm.