-1-
Alfie Jones
Daylight seeps through the cracks of my eyelids, bringing with it a sharp spike of agony that eviscerates my frontal lobe. I have no idea what day it is, or even what year. Evil elves have sandpapered my tongue during the night, and a wet ferret has died in my throat. There’s a stink in the room, too, that may or may not be the smell of regurgitated alcohol. Fingers crossed it’s just a sweat- and beer-stained shirt. I’ve a vague recollection of some bloke throwing his pint over me, but I’m not ready to swear to it as an absolute fact. Slowly, slowly, I pull at the frayed edges of my mind and darn them back into a whole entity again.
It’d help if it wasn’t so damn bright. Can’t someone turn the fucking sun off for a bit?
I mean really. It’s like the blinkin’ Bahamas in here, and I live in a boxy hovel in west London. The heating must be on super max.
With a clumsy swat, I manage to fish my specs off the bedside cabinet, and sigh in relief as the reactive lenses darken. The world becomes a pleasing monochrome.
How exactly is it morning already?
Okay, so it was technically morning when I crawled into this space, which probably makes now around—I squint at the black on grey digits of the clock—five to eleven.
Hell, what!
That is not good.
That is so, so, not good.
I’m supposed to be vetting potential new hires today. Not that they’re needed.
I worked solo on the first season of Oldrich Hall, but the studio has doubled the number of episodes for season two, and they’re concerned I’m overcommitted between them and my film projects. No one wants to hang around waiting for scripts anymore. It’s all about landing a whole series in one go, so viewers can binge watch a whole season inside a weekend.
Two episodes in, and they’re already baying for the next season.
And the next… and the next.
What the studio execs don’t grasp is that genius can’t be rushed or amplified simply by putting more people in a room. I work best without irritating distractions.
I don’t need additional writers.
I need a Tardis.
Forty minutes it takes me to drag myself across my fleapit bedroom into the shower, where I stand under the torrent, glasses on and hopelessly fogged up, and my head still nodding.
What the hell did I pour down my throat last night?
I know it was Dare’s stag-do, and the first full gang reunion of the Sunsetters for… pfft… two years? But that doesn’t account for the nuclear bomb still threatening to detonate inside my skull. Were we doing shots?
Cocktails! I clap a hand against my head and immediately regret it when Big Ben dongs inside my skull.
We were on the cocktails. Something involving lime and ginger. Fucker… No, Pucker Up. That’s it, and some sort of game involving kisses.
I have an unpleasant memory of—who was it—Dare? No, Dylan, sticking his tongue in my mouth, and hell knows where it had been prior to that. I might love these guys, but they’re the biggest bunch of sleazy playboys this side of the Atlantic.
Now, at least, I know what the dead ferret taste is from. It’s thankfully easily eradicated with a Listerine gargle and a brisk scrub.
The phone rings while I have one leg in my trousers. I dither, trying to figure out whether to put the other leg in, and settle on dropping them in favour of the mobile.
“Hey, mate.” Dare sounds so chipper, I want to bludgeon him with a nail-bat. It was his fucking stag night. He’s supposed to be the one being scourged by nasty imps today, not me. “Just want to run something by you for the wedding.”
“Yeah. What can I do you for?”
“We’re making some last-minute tweaks to the seating plans for the reception and wondered if you’d be okay sitting with Lorne’s plus two, since he’s on the top table.”
“Sure, I guess.” Why does this require an ear torturing phone call? “Didn’t you do your seating plan weeks ago?”
“Yeah, and if a certain someone had been a bit less secretive and not waited until last night to spring his relationship status on us, I wouldn’t be redoing it now.”
It takes me a full minute to realise that someone is me.
“Ah, I told you about that, did I?”
What the ever-loving fuck did I say to them? The only relationship I’m involved in is a tawdry affair with my own right hand. I squint hard behind my darkened lenses, but it results in zip all clarity. Nada. Nothing. The alcohol amnesia remains absolute.
“Certainly did.” There’s a chuckle in Dare’s voice that speaks of intrinsic disbelief. “You sly fox. Can’t believe you’ve been keeping that under wraps from us all. I mean, this is you, and not one tiny slip-up before the big reveal. That’s got to be some kind of record.”
Piss off, I almost say, but he’s right. Facts are:
A: I can’t keep my damn mouth shut for a minute when there’s something juicy to tell.
B: The last time I officially dated someone, the dinosaurs still roamed the planet, and
C: I spout utter gobshite when I’m drunk.
“Lorne’s been quiet, too,” I hedge, ignoring what I suspect is Dare’s glee at being the one to call me out on my bullshit. But, you know, fuck that, and fuck him. I can find a date to haul along to his wedding. There must be singletons aplenty who’ll tolerate even my I’m-so-not-an-A-list-actor self in exchange for an invite to Dare Wilde’s wedding. I just need some clues as to the gender of my potential date, and I’m set.
Come on Dare. Clue me in buddy. Which fantasyland was I residing in last night?
“Not really.”
I don’t follow.
Oh, he means Lorne. “Well, Dylan—”
“Come off it, the whole world knows about Dylan, and his, what was he calling it? Homoflexibility. He’s still giving the tabloids a field day – the certified gay now going straight.”
“He’s still ninety-five percent gay,” I say, as if Dare isn’t perfectly aware of that. As if the lot of us aren’t all intimately aware of the whole gamut of our personal preferences. Or potential personal preferences in my case, because everyone has a little bit of a disconnect between what they like to imagine and what they’re actually into in their lived reality, and my experience of the one outweighs the latter by about seven… all right, nine to one.
The eternal fantasist cum dateless loser, that’s me.
“Hm,” Dare muses. “I wonder if that makes the table too male heavy?”
So, it’s a guy. I’ve invented myself a boyfriend.
“Aren’t we a bit beyond being seated boy, girl?”
“True. You’re right. And some of the guests are… Well…” He trails off. “Anyway, just to clarify, you and your plus three, with Lorne’s plus two to make a nice round six.”
My plus what? Plus three! What was in those cocktails? Is he jerking my chain?
How am I supposed to find three people willing to fake date me in the next week, who just happen to also be willing to fake date each other? I am so beyond fucked it’s scary. Yet, instead of bloody confessing, and proving for the umpteenth time what a total loser I am, for once, I keep my ridiculous gob shut.
“What are their names again?”
Oh, no. No. I am not going there. That’s a step of commitment too far. Too much crazy even for me. “I’ll text you. Gotta go. There’s somebody at the door.” I hang up before I dig myself an even deeper pit. Like the current one isn’t dark and piranha filled enough.
“What the fuck!” I screech, treating my pet goldfish to a sonic boom that makes ripples in his…her tank. I never did figure out how to sex a goldfish. I mean, how do you? There aren’t any obvious visible signs to me. Benchley looks completely unimpressed. I flick some flakes of food into the water, and then remember to finish pulling my trousers on before I face plant into the tank.
Hey guys, life skills 101: I’ve managed to dress myself. Watch out world, next thing you know, I’ll get myself elected galactic president.
However, until that particular campaign commences, I need to buckle down to Project ASAP. That’s Alfie’s Stupid Arse Plan to stop him sinking to newly discovered depths of loser-tude. Or to put it more viscerally; where in fucking hell’s name am I supposed to find three willing saps? One, I could maybe pull out of my arse, but three? I am so fucked that I probably need to spend the next six hours staggering around the worse parts of London, hoping I get mugged, and beaten up so badly I can’t attend the wedding next weekend due to suspected kidney failure and having had my nads relocated to my lungs.
Also, tie or no tie for the interviewing of candidates?
Meaning the Oldrich interviews, not the cruising for a bruising meander through Brick Lane.
I settle on a loosely knotted tie and top button undone. Then it’s off to meet the dreaded candidates.
Maybe a couple of them will be up for some posh nosh and a night in a former stately home in exchange for a trial stint in the Oldrich Hall writers’ room?
Unethical, I know, but my head’s pounding so hard, I don’t actually give a damn.
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