Read One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel for Free Online Page A

England, what could all this bizarre new info do to him? But then, out of the tumbling tightness of the olive-black Mannu river valley, the Buick rushed up on to the high plains of the Altopiano Campeda, where as we reached the highest land I caught a glimpse of my mobile phone approaching full reception. Oh dammit, how I wish I hadn’t noticed. Feeling utterly duty-bound, however, I motioned to Anna to slow down a bit while the phone signal up here was good. Dialling his number resignedly, I prepared for the M. Goodby onslaught.
    MICK : Section. At last. How do fat women fit into leotards?
    An obscure opening gambit was this even for the poet Goodby, until I clocked from the uproar coming down his end of the phone – the cackling, the giggling, the ostentatious over-breathing, the clucking air of female-voiced hysteria – that Mick’s question had been clearly staged for a gathered throng,that ye Bard was currently at his town centre Exercise Club surrounded by several new fuller-figured middle-aged ladies all in a hurry to enlist, and all hanging on to his every word. Now was certainly not a good time to speak to Mick even if I’d needed to. Like his old time attitudes to poetry readings, DJ stints and Brits Abroad gigs, Mick’s sessions at his Exercise Club are truly sacred times. He doesn’t gig anymore so these are his only performances. Like a town-crier announcing his own genius, Mick commences every Exercise Club session by belting out his own worth from the steps of his establishment: Get Yourselves In, Mick’s About To Begin! Even now – cunted here in Sarduland – I could picture him framed by the grand oval arch of his elegant red-and-white Liverpool F.C.-inspired ‘entrance’, towering over the impressionable women, sucking his belly into that rugged all-black tracksuit and standing there self-importantly being six-foot-three-inches tall with his mane of just-washed curly blond hair. Sammy Hagar the Horrible or what! Now, at the other end of the phone, I could hear Hagar giving ladies individual bits of expert advice, pointing directions to the changing rooms, even writing down mobile phone numbers. Mick’s Exercise Club is a phenomenon in the north of England because he successfully teaches middle-aged women all kinds of yoga, meditation and breathing, but always sells it under the catch-all banner ‘Exercise Club’. ‘Call it Exercise and their husbands keep out of the way,’ says Mick. ‘Call it yoga or meditation and the men think I’m some New Age fiddler.’ His exercise CDs sell by the bucketload, are God-awful to the point of being near Pop Art, and one effort culled from his last, ahem, album even went Top Ten. Entitled ‘Kick’, the song simply involved a particularly flailing Mick yelling that one word over and over a repeated sample of the Doors’ cheesey-cheesey ‘LightMy Fire’ intro. And they call
that
doing your thing! Anyway, suddenly the poet pulled his head out of the goldfish bowl of women and returned to my phone.
    MICK : Section. What news from Detchy?
    I began immediately to explain that my intentions to head south to R.A.F. Decimomannu for M.G.R. (Mick Goodby Research) had been thus far thwarted, but that Anna and I were now indeed on course and no more than two hours away from our destination. But Mick had soon got caught up again with females and his class was about to start. I heard ‘Kick’ booming over the P.A. and Mick running up on to the stage.
    MICK : Section. Gimme two mo’s.
    I hung on and hung on and hung on waiting for the guru, but the 131’s snaky and shaky course through the landscape began to cut once again through harshly excavated rock. The phone went dead. At least Mick has some kind of mission restored, I consoled myself – but with Dean just now gone, even I’d expected a momentary crack in Mick’s telephone bravura, surrounded by adoring women or not. This was a man so guilty about the kidnappings that he couldn’t leave the cupboard