Fall Down Easy by Gough Laurence

Author:Gough, Laurence [Gough, Laurence]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2016-05-26T04:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

Greg’s eyes felt as if Mr Sandman had taken the night off, and his good buddy Mr Glueman had worked his shift for him. And their pal Mr Sledgehammerman had joined in, put in a solid eight hours on Greg’s head. He forced his eyes open a little wider. He had no idea why, but he felt an overwhelming sense of dampness. Bright round beads of sunlight glinted on the shiny chromed links of a chain. Pink tiles glistened. Greg blinked twice, and everything suddenly came into focus. He was in the bathroom, curled up in the tub. The tap leaked. He had a wet towel for a pillow.

He struggled to a sitting position. His knees ached. His head throbbed mightily. He stood up, promptly lost his balance, snatched at the plastic shower curtain and tore it to shreds, sat down hard on the edge of the tub.

One of his suede penny loafers lay half-submerged in the toilet. He suspected its mate had flown out the bathroom window, which had a shoe-sized hole in it.

He rested for a little, collecting his thoughts, then climbed weakly to his feet and made for the medicine cabinet above the sink. He gobbled a near-lethal dose of aspirin, splashed the cobwebs from his face. His head felt as if it had spent the entire night being repeatedly dropped upon an unyielding surface from a great height.

He retrieved his shoe from the toilet, urinated and flushed, turned on the shower. A spray of water pebbled the linoleum floor. He swore, but without much energy or conviction. The ruined shower curtain was heavy-gauge blue plastic decorated with a repeated pattern of groups of naked women huddled under red umbrellas. It was one of the few things he owned, and it hadn’t come cheap. On the bright side, though, it was so ruthlessly tasteless that he was confident that when it wore out he wouldn’t have any trouble finding a replacement.

Taking his time, making no sudden movements or loud noises, Greg showered and shaved, slipped into a shirt fresh from the dry cleaner’s, faded Levis. By the time he finished his third cup of coffee he was starting to feel human again, and the world had become brighter and more vulnerable.

Good thing, too, because before he’d set out on the previous night’s journey into drunkenness, he’d added up the wad of crumpled bills hidden in the fridge in a box of frozen waffles. He was worth less than three grand. Twenty-eight hundred and fifty bucks to be exact. Add in the cash in his wallet, he had enough money to last about a week, if he stayed home nights and watched TV.

Unlikely.

He poured a fresh cup of coffee, sat down on the sofa and began to page through his little black book, spiral bound with a leather cover, what he liked to think of as his Encyclopaedia of Possibilities. He studied the names of all the women he’d conspired to meet during the past eighteen months, studied

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