the cadence of part time poets

Chapter 1: Tomny and His Boys

Magically bored,
On a quiet street corner;
Free frustration,
In our minds and our toes;

Quiet storm water,
M-m-my generation;
Uppers and downers,
Either way blood flows;

Inside outside, leave me alone,
Inside outside, nowhere is home;
Inside outside, where have I been?
Out of my brain on the five fifteen!

- "5.15" The Who, 1973

Monday 1st September 1975

The flat only had two bedrooms and certainly housed more than two bodies, but somehow Remus still woke up alone. It wasn't his room of course, but he felt more at home there than he had anywhere else in a long time.

Like most summer nights in the flat, he'd been sweating in his sleep and his t-shirt was plastered to his back, outlining a skinny frame and a boney spine in the mirror that leaned up against the closet doors. At some point during the summer a small crack had unceremoniously appeared in the corner of the mirror. No one had said anything about the crack, probably because there was nothing to be said; even if the mirror had bestowed a curse of seven years of bad luck upon one of them, it wouldn't matter. The boys would just split the bad luck between them until it was nothing more than a few rainy days, and those were common enough in London.

Remus blinked in the bright morning light that peeked through the broken blinds. He'd fallen asleep with one shoe on, apparently, and came to the conclusion that he'd lost the other somewhere in the flat as he collected his belt and remaining sock from the floor. Both the flat and the bed he'd woken up in belonged to Tomny, which should've been a cause for alarm, but really only meant that the older boy had most likely followed some bird elsewhere for sleep and other machinations. Probably Cheryl or Donna. Just because Tomny was always inviting people over didn't mean they had to stick around his place.

He found his other shoe tucked up under Doss' head in the flat's shabby living room. It was still early hours as far as the London East End boys were concerned, but Remus had other issues to contend with apart from the lateness of the morning and the nauseous feeling in his gut. Lyall was going to kill him, if Giles didn't beat him to the punch.

The only other person up with the larks was Seesaw, so named because he was blind in one eye. It was thanks to that, that he didn't notice Remus until he'd stepped right in front of him in the kitchen.

"Mornin'," said Seesaw, as he nursed his cup of coffee-and-whisky.

"Mornin'," Remus mumbled, almost wishing he'd had time for a mugful himself. He and Seesaw had never been particularly close, but had lent each other a few quid or a spliff here and there and they'd always been good for it. "Tomny around?"

Seesaw shook his head. "Had summink to do early. Said he would be back soon to see yeh off though."

Remus ran his tongue across his teeth. His mouth tasted terrible. "He don't need to. He saw me off last night."

"Headin' out then?"

"Yeah, got sumwhere to be." Should've been there last night, really.

"Well," Seesaw said, raising his mug, "cheers."

"Cheers," Remus said, before shoving his hands in his trousers and walking out the front door of the dodgy little flat.

He didn't regret not saying goodbye—they'd said plenty of goodbyes the night before while hopped up on God knows what. Generally it was just a lot of messing around while they dared each other to do stupid things like dangle from the third floor balcony by their thumbs or play a round of chicken that involved setting an apple atop one's head and letting your mate throw a dart at it. Remus almost always got off easy thanks to Tomny, but even he wasn't immune to shotgunning a beer or getting pantsed. Sometimes it wasn't all that bad to be fifteen.