Read V 02 - Domino Men, The for Free Online Page B

shuffled behind me.  The nurse.
    “You recognize your grandpa now?”
    I blushed in shame.
    “He seems sad,” she said.
    “Sad?”
    “He was in a war.”
    “Actually,” I corrected her, “Granddad didn’t fight.  He wanted to but they wouldn’t let him go.  Some kind of heart defect, I think.”
    The nurse just smiled.  “Oh, no.  He was definitely in a war.”  She turned and hurried away, the heels of her shoes squeaking on the linoleum floor.
    I looked back at my granddad.  “You weren’t in a war, were you?” I asked, although of course I knew there’d be no reply.  “What war?”
     
     
    Half an hour later, with visiting hours at an end, I was on the ground floor and almost in sight of the exit when I saw a patient I recognized.  He seemed quite cheerful, sitting up in bed, propped against a pillow and engrossed in a tabloid, his left leg hanging suspended in plaster.  He looked like an extra from a Carry On film, the kind of potato-featured background artist who would have ogled Barbara Windsor’s wiggle and guffawed at Said James’s dirty jokes.
    I stopped in front of his bed.  “I know you.”
    The man looked up from his newspaper.  It was definitely him.  The squitty face, the shock of ginger hair, the air of insouciant lechery — all were unmistakable.
    “Don’t think we’ve met,” said the window cleaner.
    “You fell,” I said.  “You fell at my feet.”
    “Sorry, pal.  Don’t remember nothing about it.”
    I nodded toward the cast and pulley.  “You broke your leg?”
    “Nah, I’m doing his for shits and giggles.  What do you think?”
    “Sorry.  It’s just that you seem…  I don’t mean to be rude but you seem absolutely fine.”
    “Why shouldn’t I be?”
    “You fell five stories.”
    “Then I’m made of tough stuff, aren’t I?”  Evidently irritated, he made a big deal about returning to his tabloid.
    “Yesterday,” I said, “just after you’d…  landed.”
    “What?”
    “There was something you were trying to tell me.  You kept saying that the answer is yes.”
    He snorted.  “Did I?  Well, you do funny things when you’ve had a knock, don’t you?  Can’t have been thinking straight.”
    “You’ve got no idea why you said that to me??”
    “Mate, I can’t even remember.”  His next look began as truculence but shifted halfway through into one of recognition.  “Don’t I know you?”
    “Ah,” I said.  “So it’s coming back?”
    “You’re off the telly,” he said.  “You’re a little boy.”
    My heart sunk.  “I was,” I snapped.  “I was a little boy.  Not anymore.”
    “I remember your show.  What was it you used to say?”
    Now I just wanted to leave.  “Don’t blame me.  Blame Grandpa.”
    The window cleaner started to chuckle, then abruptly broke off.  “Wasn’t very funny, was it?”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “Come to think of it, that show was a real shitcom.”
    “It’s always nice to meet a fan.”
    “You’d better hop it.  Visiting hours are over.”
    “Well, I’m sorry for bothering you.”
    “Your mate’s waiting.”  He nodded behind me.
    “What?”
    “Over there.  By the door.”
    He was right.  Standing on the other side of the ward, just by the exit, someone was watching us.  He vanished through the door as he clocked me but I’d already seen enough to be able to recognize him as the man from Peter’s office.  Mr. Jasper.
    The window cleaner turned to the soccer results with the air of a reader who does not wish to be disturbed.  I left and went outside into the cold but, if he’d ever been there at all, Jasper was nowhere to be seen.
    I cycled home, my mind clamorous with unanswered questions.
     
     
    Abbey was up, flicking through an encyclopedia of divorce law.  My landlady worked in some mysterious capacity for a city legal firm, although the precise details of what she did there always eluded me.  I’d asked her about it several times, desperate for any