Sunday 15 June

Suspiciously, or quite normally, Bateman has moved into a brand new apartment since I left town. Just down the road from Percy's and yet startlingly close to the Salford enclaves (much-neglected source of my Manchester credibility), the view from Bateman's eleventh floor balcony is of our city old and new and extends to the hills that cushion her (although once the pretty girl opposite begins rearranging her washing it's hard to concentrate on anything else).

'Tuna?' asks Bateman, wearing a mallard-green dressing gown.

'Tinned?'

He simply scoffs.

I eat warily, Euro '63 unfolding on his widescreen Puppetmaster HD, wondering whether to swallow a fishy story about the food being liberated from his mother when just weeks ago we were eating scrambled egg out of a cloth cap with chopsticks.

'Come into some money?'

Bateman hesitates. He could be calculating how much noise a man might make while transcending eleven floors backwards, or how long one should leave a stolen soufflé rising.

'An advance,' he continues, 'got a good tip for the championships – Mother Russia no less.'

'A tip from a friend?'

'What other kind of tip is there?' Bateman asks, smoothing the shark-sharp tip of his fish knife with a leathered finger.

1 comment:

Richard Donuthead said...

that's a Tommy Hilfiger (or 19th century equivalent) mallard green dressing gown I'll have you know!

You forgot to mention the copies of the style section and the transparent raincoat...the end is nigh Batson!