‘A fucking fuckup,’ Johnny muttered.
Kruze’s eyes were red-rimmed and rheumy. He put an arm around Johnny’s shoulder and gave him the kind of anaconda squeeze a wrestler might give a rival. His bald head gleamed. It looked solid, Magnus thought. Strong enough to batter down doors, but heads were fragile things, no match for speed and metal.
Kruze said, ‘Kim’s the only one who’s going to suck your dick tonight, Johnny. It was a good audience and you did a fucking amazing show, same way as you’re going to give another fucking amazing show tomorrow.’ The TV was on, its volume muted. An aerial view of the abandoned cruise ship shone from the screen, followed by a shot of the Houses of Parliament. Kruze picked up the remote and killed the picture. ‘If these bleeding emergency measures don’t shut down the theatres, that is. A big fuss over very little, if you ask me.’ It was not clear whether he meant the recall of Parliament that the sweats had prompted, or Johnny’s tantrum. Kruze stirred the milky contents of Johnny’s glass with a straw. Ice cubes rattled dully within. ‘Drink your medicine. Time for beddy-byes soon.’
Johnny lifted the glass to his lips and drained it. A dribble rolled down his Roger Ramjet chin. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, then stretched for the carton of full fat on the table and poured some into his glass. He topped it up with a generous tot of Admiral Benbow, turning the white liquid a treacle-toffee shade of brown that tugged at Magnus’s bowels.
Kruze sighed and got to his feet. ‘Get him to bed some time before the call to prayers would you please, Kim love.’
Kim put a hand on Johnny’s thigh.
‘I’ll make sure he gets back here in time for tomorrow’s show, that’s all you need to worry about.’
Kim’s engagement finger sparkled with a ring that had caused some tabloid speculation, and her voice was smug with the assurance of possession. Magnus wondered if rumours about Johnny and the rotation of pretty boys who were always in his orbit were true. And if they were, whether Kim knew and thought them a price worth paying.
Johnny shifted into the space vacated by Kruze. He coughed and then sneezed three times, hard and painful, the sound of a small train crushing bone and flesh. ‘Fuck.’ He took his handkerchief from his top pocket and blew into it.
Kruze was halfway out of the room, but he turned at the sound of Johnny’s sneezes and stood framed in the doorway, his pink shirt and pale blue suit Neapolitan-dapper, despite the late hour.
‘Why don’t I arrange cars for your guests and let you and Kim hit the sack, John?’ Johnny Dongo flapped a hand, dismissing Kruze, but the manager persisted. ‘If you come down with something, Magnus here will have to step into the breach, and you don’t want that, do you?’
Magnus had once auditioned for Kruze, way back when he first arrived in London, his accent so thick he had to repeat everything he said. He had been working as a KP in an Italian restaurant, the only white boy in a kitchen devoted to ‘authentic Tuscan cuisine’. Magnus had grown used to being ridiculed by boys with accents as thick as his own, but whose voices lilted to different rhythms and whose journeys to London had been sans passport. Magnus had rolled with their jokes and contributed a few of his own. After all, he too was fresh off the boat and had had the privilege of an easy passage on the Hamnavoe rather than the long hikes, the stowaway goods trains, overcrowded night boats and container lorries his workmates had endured. But when Kruze had stopped Magnus in the middle of his routine about the fear that could hit you on your way home when it was after midnight and you were fu’, and said, ‘I can’t understand a word you say, kid. Save up for some elocution lessons,’ Magnus had bunched his fists. Later he was glad that there had been no set of golf clubs propped in the corner of Kruze’s office, no handy paperknife, or pair of scissors on his desk, because the urge to score the smile from the manager’s face had been strong. Perhaps Kruze had sensed the danger. He had leapt to his feet, like a man who knew life was short and had decided not to waste a second of it, opened the office door and ushered Magnus into the corridor with a ‘Good luck.’
Magnus had put his foot in the door, leaned in close and said, ‘Awa and fuck yoursel, ya big poof.’
But as Hamza, the best pizza maker this side of Islamabad, remarked later over a consoling beer, it didn’t really matter what Magnus had said. Kruze wouldn’t have understood a word of it.
Magnus and Kruze had run into each other a few times over the years since then. The manager had been polite and Magnus had wondered if he had forgotten the incident, but now the apologetic look Kruze threw Magnus told him that the older man remembered.
‘Don’t get me wrong, you did well tonight, Mags,’ Kruze said, and something inside Magnus cringed.
Johnny flapped his hand at his manager again. ‘Don’t get your Y-fronts in a tangle. Your goose will be on stage crapping golden eggs tomorrow night.’
Kruze hesitated for a moment as if he were going to say something else, then shook his head and shut the door behind him. Johnny Dongo spat into his handkerchief again.
‘Thank fuck for that.’ He turned his bloodshot eyes on Magnus, his pupils microdots. ‘I thought you were an island boy. Stop shaming your ancestors with that piss-poor stuff.’
Johnny splashed a goodly measure of Admiral Benbow into a glass and shoved it towards Magnus who took a sip. It was navy rum, dark and bitter, and it reminded him of late afternoons in the Snapper Bar, ship masts swaying at their moorings, giving a hint of what brand of wind would greet you when you went outside. Then, if you stayed longer than was wise, the ferry docking, blocking all view of land or sky, lit gold against the black of a winter’s night.
Gold and black made Magnus think of the boy’s hair shining on the gravel, the rush of the train. Bile rose in his throat. He drowned it with a swig of rum, finished the measure in his glass and helped himself to more.
‘Take it easy, man,’ said one of the Dongolites, but Johnny Dongo laughed. ‘He’ll be all right, he’s Scottish. My old man was Scottish. He used to drink until his fists were full.’
Magnus could have gone home after his set, stood beneath a hot shower and attempted to wash the day from his skin, but he had stayed on to watch Johnny from the wings. Johnny had danced across the stage, skinny legs encased in herringbone trousers of a lavender hue that would have made old Harris weavers fear for their souls. The audience were a storm of sound, out in the dark of the auditorium. So loud that Magnus wondered Johnny Dongo was not lifted from his feet and thrown on to his arse by the weight of laughter surging towards him. It rose from deep in the audience’s bellies, firing out of wide-open mouths, each one with its share of teeth, and though he could not see them, Magnus could imagine the faces of the crowd, heads thrown back, tongues wet and shining, eyes squeezed into slits. The crowd had loved Johnny Dongo and he had steered them upward, ever upward, sending them rocket-fuelled out into the night. But now that Johnny was off stage, it was as if all his energy had turned to venom.
Kim coughed. ‘Christ,’ she said to Johnny. ‘I think I’m getting your cold. I sound like fag-ash Lil.’
Johnny hoicked up a gob of phlegm and spat into his handkerchief. ‘I don’t have a fucking cold.’
Kim produced a small Ziploc bag from her purse and chopped out neat lines of coke, white stripes bright against the black coffee table, like an inverse barcode. Johnny took a note from his pocket, rolled it tight and handed it to her. ‘Ladies first.’ Kim rubbed his thigh as if she were testing it for quality and hoovered up three lines. She passed the note back to Johnny who followed suit.