The Method Actors: a novel by Carl Shuker

Author:Carl Shuker [Shuker, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Counterpoint Press
Published: 2011-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

Anton walks into a waist-high iron pole set in the sidewalk outside the Häagen-Dazs. He crumples, and gets held up by a laughing embarrassed little J girl he almost envelopes and crushes, and next to us is a kebab caravan and two Western guys playing Hacky Sack outside Tower. I can walk quite slowly now, and smoke like Run Run does, elbow in hand to keep the lit end up and clear of flammable puffy North Face jackets. Taxis and traffic and not a soul over twenty-five, same old same old, and bent, releasing the J girl, Anton turns his face to my feet and says, seemingly completely serious, “It tries to take away … your dignity.”

“Are you alright, Ant?” I say.

“Don’t call me Ant. Hmmm. Oh … God,” he says with a sigh as he straightens, doesn’t like it and bends back down again, hands on his massively long thighs. He’s looking past me to the road, at a guy sitting on a blue Vespa by the kebab caravan, and this guy is old and Western, maybe a debauched thirty-five, and plump and balding and wearing bright orange PVC trousers and a sleeveless pink puff jacket, and he has, I swear, pink inflatable waterwings on his arms, and then Anton’s saying, “There is nothing … more pathetic … than the Canadian fags who overstay—” and I’m laughing, “—and get fat on kara-age and more and more pathetic and teach English until they are too old to do anything worthwhile—”

“Hey, Anton—”

“Waterwings!”

The old guy says, in an English accent, “I can hear you.”

“Anton,” I say. “Cool it.” I’m watching the guy’s reaction but all he does is pull on his orange helmet, and Run Run and Mary-Beth have turned to watch, and Anton just won’t stop:

“The only consolation for Japan is the fags don’t father any more useless international bastards—”

“Jesus,” I mutter.

Run Run doesn’t seem to understand or maybe doesn’t care, but Mary-Beth’s expressing tipsy faux-shock, wide eyes and agape, just once, and Anton stays bent and then he moans, “This land wants … debridement. Oh, god,” with his hands in his crotch where the post has hit him somewhere worse than I thought, so he doesn’t even see the old fag give him two fingers.

“You’re balder than I am, you great big ugly lunk,” the old fag says, and he’s totally English, lunk sounds like loonk, and where Anton dredged up Canada I don’t know, but the old guy doesn’t say much more because Anton’s scar is pretty obvious bent over like this, and he just starts up his Vespa and buzzes off intently into the incredible traffic in his waterwings.

“He’s not as ugly as you, you old goose!” Mary-Beth shouts after him, “You’re just so jealous!”

And ah, I’m thinking, so. Anton and Mary-Beth. And I wonder, where is Sonja. And I check out Run Run and find she’s checking me out right back.

“They try and take … your dignity away—” Anton mutters again to the pavement, bent double but

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