I met Reg and Nigel at nine o’clock this morning. They were coming out of the Co-op supermarket with arms full of cans of Stella Artois.
‘Are you two drunk?’ I asked, incredulous.
‘You better believe it, Davy-Boy!’ Reg bellowed. ‘Been on the whiskey all night and all bloody morning, too.’
‘Wanna make something of it?’ slurred Nigel, looking very unsteady on his wobbly whiskey-legs.
I pointedly ignored him. ‘Being drunk this early in the morning will lead you to only one place, Reg,’ I told him. ‘Hell.’
‘Or the pub,’ replied Nigel.
‘Same thing around here,’ I informed them both.
It looked like Nigel had vomited sometime in the last few hours down the front of his nylon raincoat, and Reg had on carpet slippers, no socks, and what looked suspiciously like pyjama bottoms. I was embarrassed for them. I know that people around here do not always represent the pinnacle of urbane sophistication, but the pair of them looked like escaped mental patients. (Again, not something out of the ordinary for many inhabitants of the village.)
‘We’re celebrating I.T. Boy’s divorce,’ said Reg. ‘Came through yeshterday.’
‘I.T. Boy?’
‘Nigel.’
‘Yesterday? That was quick.’
Nigel leaned dangerously close to my face. ‘Not quick enough. I hate that lesbo bitch,’ he hissed. ‘When I get the chance, I’m going to shoot her in the back and make it look like suicide.’
‘You haven’t thought that through properly, have you.’
He toppled backwards into a shopping trolley, but before crashing completely to the floor, regained his balance at the last minute – as drunken people are surprisingly able to do sometimes. I held out my hand to assist him but he didn’t take it. He made a big show of straightening himself, of drunkenly dusting down his stained coat, before half-fixing me with his eyes and loudly declaring: ‘I don’t need anybody to help me. You or anybody. You especially.’
Why am I not surprised he works in I.T.?
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