Bumping Uglies

Chapter Twelve

I felt something warm and wet rasp my forehead.

I raised a hand and rubbed at my eyes. It was morning, though exactly when was lost on me.

I heard panting and smelled a blast of pungent breath, then felt a staccato burst of tapping against my stomach.

Thump-thump-thump-thump.

I opened my eyes and found myself staring straight into the fuzzy face of Fungus, whose doe eyes were alive with the prospects of another day of chasing rabbits and snoozing in knee-high grass.

"Morning, girl." I tousled the tangle of white and chestnut fur on the crown of her head. "How exactly did you get up the ladder?" I asked, not expecting much of a reply other than perhaps another round of playful bumps from her tail.

"She might have had a little help," Thatch groaned. Well, I assumed that it was Thatch. All I saw was an enamelled plate piled high with hot buttered toast being pushed up onto the floor of the hayloft, and two calloused hands clutching the sides of the ladder.

"Morning, Thatch," I called quietly, mindful of a shooting pain in my head.

"I wish I had a little help with this bloody ladder. A man of my age, it isn't seemly." He hauled himself up and into the loft. "Why do you sleep up here anyhow?" he asked.

"To be a little closer to God," I joked, though that wouldn't hurt at the moment.

"It don't look much like it," Thatch snorted in the direction of Richard's racy photos that I had pinned back on the wall. "I didn't have you down for that sort of thing..."

"Oh, they're for a case..." I blushed. This was like being caught by your mother with your dick on one hand and a grumble mag in the other.

"Course they are, son." Thatch gave me a broad wink.

"No, really. Anyway, pass the toast please. I'm famished and I feel like shit."

"Language, there's ladies present." Thatch scolded me, clicking his fingers so that Fungus bounded across the loft and snuggled at his side.

"I'm no expert on ladies, but I'm pretty sure that an affinity for barking at one's reflection and showing a predilection for licking one's own crotch are not in the index of Debretts," I said.

Thatch looked at me blankly. Pearls before swine.

"So, this case of yours, the woman," Thatch began. Which one, I thought. "Is that the cause of you not sleeping?"

"Yes," I replied through a mouthful of toast. Very much so. How could Thatch have known that? The not sleeping, that is.

"Well son, I reckon you need to get this thing done sharpish before it does you some sort of mischief." Thatch edged himself backwards onto the ladder with Fungus tucked firmly under his arm.

"Because the season's changing and I often find it's best we change with it," Thatch's voice echoed up into the loft once more as he descended.

"What time is it, Thatch?" I shouted, spluttering crumbs.

"Gone eleven," he replied.

Shit, I had a bookies to stake out.

*

Films and TV shows do a great disservice to the noble art of The Stake Out.

They tend to portray it as an opportunity for the two grizzled protagonists to engage in some witty banter or protracted exposition whist eating takeaway food and drinking beer. The sheer dragging tedium of it is usually abstracted with a nice montage.