Read Stuff (The Bristol Collection) for Free Online

green.” The urge to defend his little garden overpowered Perry’s manners, and he snapped, “If you don’t like it, you can head back down again.”
    “Hey, don’t get your knickers in a twist.” Mas put his hands out, as if warding something off. Perry’s rudeness, perhaps. “I love green. And geraniums are lush. I just…you know, it’s a bit OCD or something. Just having one kind of plant.”
    Perry glanced around, trying to figure out just what this must look like to an outsider. At least Mas seemed preoccupied with the flowers rather than picking holes in Perry’s artifacts. “I find the smell relaxing. And I only ever brought one plant up here. The rest are all cuttings.”
    “You have green fingers.”
    “Hardly. Geraniums will root in pretty much anything. And they don’t need watering as much as some plants, so they’re a good choice for up here.”
    “And you’re absolutely terrible at taking compliments.”
    If Perry’s face glowed any hotter, he’d have to dunk his head in the water butt. “I’m just not used to them.”
    “What, your folks never praised you while you were growing up? Or teachers? You seem like the kind of bloke who’d have been top in the class in pretty much everything. Not like muggins here. All I learnt at school was how to give head, and that was— Oops! Done it again, haven’t I? You know, the innuendo stuff usually goes down better when everyone’s been drinking. Maybe that’s what we need up here. A beer or two.”
    “I thought you wanted to keep an eye on that man outside your flat.”
    Mas’s face fell. Blast, Perry hadn’t wanted to upset him. It was just he didn’t have any alcohol in the place and he really didn’t feel like explaining the whole allergy issue to Mas right now. Most people seemed to want to commiserate with him when they found out, but since it really wasn’t an issue for him, it was hard to know how to respond.
    “So, you some kind of astronomer, then?” Mas fiddled with Perry’s brass telescope. “Or is this more piratey gear?”
    “It’s not really useful for anything now. No lenses.”
    “But you’ve still got it hanging around.” The mechanism squealed as Mas attempted to spin it on the stand. “Hmm, could do with a bit of lubrication. Shame I left all mine at home. Mind you, that’s all water based, and I’m guessing you probably need oil for this. Hey, I like your clockwork cockerels. Or are they seagulls? Hard to tell when they’re all cobbled together out of bits of old junk.”
    “They’re chickens.” Perry absentmindedly petted one of his scrap-metal menagerie. Surely it should be obvious, what with the way he’d fashioned their wattles out of carefully cut sections of cogs.
    “Picked them up secondhand too, did you?”
    “Something like that.” He’d found the component parts that way. What on earth would Mas make of Albert when he saw him?
    Perry blinked, then went to lean against the front pitch of the roof, where he could get a bird’s-eye view of the street. His garden plainly wasn’t big enough for two. It felt crowded, and he couldn’t block out the awareness of how close Mas was standing. Closer than was strictly necessary, although perhaps he’d end up in the geraniums if he stepped back.
    “Bloody hell! What the fuck is that thing? Is that a body?”
    Okay, now Mas had seen Albert. Perry turned to see him brushing back the geraniums that had all but hidden him from view.
    “Oh my God. It is as well.”
    Albert crouched there, his bones lacquered in shades of iridescent black, the wire-work wings sprouting out of his back giving him a mischievous air, like he was about to take flight. Perry had wired the plastic bones into position, and he loved the way Albert looked like he was sniffing the air. Whoever had decided skulls were sinister was plain wrong. They were beautiful, especially when they gleamed like that.
    “It’s hardly a body,” Perry corrected. “The frame is a skeleton, but