Read The Last Days of Disco for Free Online

the whole scene a surreal air. When the circle started rushing in towards the girls, Fat Franny pushed on ‘The Stripper’ by the David Rose Orchestra, just to witness the confused looks on the faces of those on the dancefloor.
    Thirty minutes later, and, entirely predictably, the twins’ dad approached the decks.
    ‘We’re goin’ tae call it a night, big man,’ he said. There were now less than fifteen people in the room, but four of them were being paid to be there and another was Bert Bole.
    ‘Fair enough pal,’ said Fat Franny. With a bit of luck he’d be home before midnight. An unexpected bonus.
    ‘Let’s say we call it thirty quid, eh?’ said Mr Dunlop.
    ‘Whit? Ah don’t fuckin’ think so!’ Fat Franny had had this exact conversation many times before.
    ‘Come on. We booked ye til one o’clock but yer stoppin’ at eleven.’ Mr Dunlop’s arms were widespread in demonstration of the reason behind his argument.
    ‘Aye, but ah’m only stoppin’ cos’ you asked me tae. Ah’ll play ontae one in the morning if ye want me tae.’ Fat Franny had recently read a book on mind games, which had suggested mirroring and matching as a tactic of positive negotiation. Accordingly, his arms were also now opened out with hands facing upwards.
    ‘Ah’m no sure that’s entirely fair.’ Mr Dunlop now had one hand on his hip and the other was scratching the top of his balding head. Fat Franny knew this looked ridiculous, but since it had been highly recommended to him, he mimicked as the book decreed.
    Bert Bole watched this bizarre ritual from the comparative safety of the bar. He observed both men looking like teapots, saluting like Hitler and then – most curiously – both standing on one leg. Whatever it was, Fat Franny looked to have emerged triumphant. The other guy had just slapped money down on a box of records, leaving Fat Franny with that recognisable, thin-lipped smile, which only seemed to happen when he came into contact with money. Bert reconsidered his earlier trepidation and decided that having just been paid was as good as it was going to get to let Fat Franny know he had been usurped.
5 TH FEBRUARY 1982: 2:47PM
    ‘So whit did Gary end up gettin’ ye?’ said Joey Miller.
    ‘Eh? Ach, bugger all,’ replied Bobby. ‘Cunt got me a magnifying glass an’ a satsuma. He told me to look through the glass. When ah did, he says, “
Look, ah got ye a Space Hopper”
.’
    Joey laughed and folded his arms. ‘Aye, ah’ve got a family like that as well. For ma sixteenth, ma dad got me “Hide and Seek”
.
’
    Joey was sitting on a three-foot-high, red-facing-brick wall. It had been around twenty minutes since his best friend had started speaking, and he’d taken advantage of the first available pause in Bobby’s pitch to try and change the subject. Bobby’s constant pacing back and forth had almost created a curved groove in the black tarmac in front of him. They had been friends for more thanfive years and this current scenario was a familiar one: Joseph Miller, the logical ponderous
Hutch
to Robert Cassidy’s hyperactive and relentlessly optimistic
Starsky
. But it was a good combination. Bobby was the ‘ideas’ man and Joey the pragmatist, the one who was left with the task of turning Bobby’s various dreams into some form of reality. A sort of Butch Cassidy and … Jeeves!
    There had been the money-making scam from a year ago that had almost resulted in a school expulsion for the pair of them. Bobby had envisaged an alternative tuck-shop where crisps and chocolate could be sold at a discounted rate. Joey had access to the goods through his part-time shelf-stacking job at the local Safeway. It operated successfully for three weeks before various interfering prefects detected a strange downturn in the revenue from the school’s four official outlets. Another piece of entrepreneurial hustling had the fifteen-year-old Joey searching for a ten-foot ladder as a key part of the new Cassidy &