Underlings (Not being updated at this time)

Underlings - 11. Happy Hour

Karl and Huxley watched the building across the square from the comfort of the Karmann Ghia.

Once a grand 18th Century house, this was now a shared building, chopped and divided in places that would have horrified the architect from his tomb in Egyptian Avenue; rooms within rooms and a cheapening plastic-covered intercom system at the pinnacle of the steps to the front door, below a camera serving as both deterrent and guardian.

“What do you call an anorexic girl with a yeast infection?” The last thing Huxley wanted to hear was a joke, especially one of Karl’s. He’d hoped they’d sit in the car until back-up arrived, then watch the operation unfold from a safe distance. Karl had over ideas, as usual.

“What? I don’t know. Are you sure it’s that building? No one has gone in, or out. We should wait for a team and get some cameras in there.” A group of people were doing tai-chi on the grass in the square; a larger group were in their gym clothes being screamed at by an over-enthusiastic militant black guy in a Lycra suit; the women in his class mesmerised by his physique as he barked orders at them.

“I’m telling my joke and then we’re going in. It’s the right place. Darren swore it on his life. You got your gun on you Huxley?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell me, what do you call an anorexic girl with a yeast infection?”

“I have no idea Karl.”

“...A quarter pounder with cheese!” It wasn’t Huxley’s humour at all; he was the Michael McIntyre to Karl’s Frankie Boyle. He gave a disapproving look, feeling like he’d been morphed into the Samuel L Jackson character from Pulp Fiction, in a badly contrived attempt at the original. He didn’t ask Karl what they put on French Fries in Holland instead of ketchup and checked his weapon for the tenth time, before taking off his seatbelt.

Karl led them to a cobbled alley behind the strangely named Ziggy Von Underbelly’s, running parallel to the square and too narrow for a car.

Twenty-somethings with floppy hair, fashion glasses and revival 80s clothing hurried to and fro heading from places of work to places to drink after work, as the imaginary 5 o’clock bell signalled home time thenHappy Hour.

“As I said earlier, this is an expensive area to run a drug’s operation. You’d normally go more East for this kind of thing; Bethnal Green, Manor Park, Barking, Plaistow... the whole thing is bizarre. This is Hoxton. It used to be a shithole, but the rent’s gone up. The land of kitsch barbecue eateries and the metro sexual male...” Karl had morphed from John Travolta into London tour guide or cliché black taxi driver. Huxley was uninterested as always, focusing inwardly on his own fears, which were coming very real.

The cobbles served as a meeting point for fire drills in the offices and restaurants on the square and each of them had an escape route, in case someone like Karl ever decided to cause a gas leak.

A couple of men in matching bomber jackets and matching shaved heads were smoking, at the rear of the building Karl and Huxley had watched from the square. They weren’t donning skinny jeans, or catwalk hair (in the very absence of it) and they certainly didn’t work in media. They stood out like Karl and Huxley did, but recognised it too late, because Karl had already cut one down with his knife and the second was far too slow to aid his friend, or defend his self; but was very compliant when it came to dying.

“That’s what happens when you hire your muscle in from Poland. It gets killed. Now Russians...they’re a different kettle of fish altogether. They’d eat their own grandmothers.” Karl dragged the bodies behind a herd of wheelie bins, stamped out the cigarettes the hair-twins had been smoking and found they’d kept the fire doors ajar whilst they were out there, by blocking it with one of the extinguishers...Very thoughtful/very silly...