Between the Bridge and the River

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Book: Read Between the Bridge and the River for Free Online
Authors: Craig Ferguson
get together and have a relationship.”
Jumpers
    Julie is only one of the many women who have fallen victim to the Rasputin-like attentions of the lusty TV vicar, who hides his rampant desires beneath his trademark fluffy jumpers.
    Charlotte Cameron, an innocent nineteen-year-old student who worked on Darby’s programme during her summer break from university, where she is studying modeling and media studies (see pic on page 3), said she is considering filing a sexual harassment suit against the star, claiming that he FORCED her to bend over his desk when she was handing him his morning coffee so that he could look down her blouse. “He said Jesus could have done better feeding the five thousand with my boobies than using some old bread and stale fish. It was disgusting. I’m a Jehovah’s Witness, so what he said really shocked me.”
Investigation
    The star was unavailable for comment last night, but TV boss Gus Magoogan said that an investigation into the allegations would begin immediately.
    “We are a family network,” said Magoogan. “If these allegations are true . . .”
    More on pages 6, 7, 8, and 10.
    * * *
    They hadn’t used any of his publicity shots. Instead there was an old picture of Fraser that had been taken by an amateur paparazzo as he was leaving his local supermarket. He looked fat.
    George missed the whole scandal; by Sunday he was in London. He could have got the Scottish Sunday papers there, of course, but he would have to have gone to a big railway station or the airport or a Scottish pub, none of which he fancied. He thought he felt the first stab of the cancer but it was just the intestinal complications of having eaten a three-week-old meat pie at Watford Gap services. Old offal and nerves will play havoc with your system, although he couldn’t imagine why he was so jumpy. Jumpy, ha-ha.
    He had already established that there was no afterlife, at least he thought he had. He had already convinced himself that there was no hell to look forward to, and even if there was, they’d have to have a pretty fucking lax door policy to let him in.
    He tried to figure out what was scaring him about his impending death. Was it pain? No, not really, he was fairly convinced that he’d pass out during the fall. He figured that maybe what really scared him about dying is that maybe he’d be missing something.
    He’d already missed a healthy dose of Schadenfreude that would have warmed him to the core of his being. Reading about Fraser’s humiliation and disgrace would have reached him like Karen Carpenter to a coma victim. But he didn’t know that he had missed it, because he had missed it.
    He parked the car on a double yellow in Soho and took a taxi to Tower Bridge.
    Fraser got drunk on Saturday night. He bought the early edition of the newspaper and drank almost two liters of Russian vodka alone, sitting on his couch weeping in self-pity and shame.
    He was asleep in a pool of his own urine when the postman slipped the golden embossed invitation envelope through his front door.
    They don’t normally deliver on a Sunday.

IN DREAMS
    FRASER HAD NEVER LIKED FLYING but since September 11 it had gotten much worse. Obviously.
    What the hell was wrong with these people anyway? Fucking Arabs, flying planes into buildings and strapping dynamite to their shoes. Fuck!
    One night in the Press Bar, Jack Trampas put forward the theory that the reason the Arabs were so angry was because they were so ugly. Howls of derision from the left-wing politically correct alcoholics he drank with, including Fraser, but Trampas persisted.
    “Look at that shoe bomber guy, he’s a freak. The mug shots of these hijackers, they’re like the fucking Addams family. They’re mad because they see pictures of the beautiful people in Hollywood and they’re jealous.”
    “Nobody looks good in a mug shot.”
    “What about Zsa Zsa Gabor? When she smacked that cop?”
    “She was cheatin; she’s almost 90 percent

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