Yet there has always been an edge to my relationship with Josh. His hostility is not just a cover because he likes me so much. I think Josh believes that I stole Rose away from him just when he was ready to make his move.
Personally I don’t believe you can steal one human being from another. You can’t steal people, despite what Josh thinks. People are funny.
They just slip away.
When we can’t drink any more, we walk the entire length of the City Road and Upper Street looking for a black cab.
We get to the far side of Highbury Corner, where affluence and fashion abruptly give way to poverty and function, and we still haven’t found a taxi. There’s a dirty yellow light revolving among a tired row of shops.
“You get a minicab,” I tell Josh. “I can walk home from here.”
“Something to eat first,” he says. “Got to line the old stomach.”
Although we have left the bright lights behind, I know there are some really good places to eat around here. On one side of the Holloway Road there’s Trevi, a little Anglo-Italian café, and on the other side there’s Bu-San, one of the city’s oldest Korean restaurants. But Trevi is closed and Bu-San is full.
“What about that place?” Josh says. “Looks like a dump but I’m desperate.”
He’s indicating a Chinese restaurant that is sandwiched between a dry cleaner’s and a kebab shop. It’s called the Shanghai Dragon and it is not much to look at. There’s a line of smoked windows decorated with ancient takeout menus, curling reviews from local rags and listings mags, and some big red Chinese characters that are probably the name of the joint. There’s a tiny sign in the window. NO DOGS, it says.
On the main door, a single rectangular slab of yet more smoked glass, there’s a leering golden dragon who has seen better days. But beyond all the darkened windows and dog-eared menus, you can see heads moving about inside. The place is busy. A good sign. We go inside.
The Shanghai Dragon is nothing fancy. The interior has the shagged-out minimalism of a minicab firm at midnight. It’s an L-shaped room with a large section for diners and a smaller area for takeout customers. In the restaurant section there are just a few courting couples left now, lingering over the coffee and mint chocolates. The takeout area is more crowded with people who have just come out of the local pubs. There are a few stray tables and chairs in this section but all of them are occupied. Suspended from the ceiling, there’s a large television set showing some TV movie about Charles and Diana.
At the angle of the L-shaped room, an old Chinese lady is leaning on the counter of a bar the size of a telephone booth and taking orders, which she scratches on her pad in Chinese characters. There’s a cup of green tea in front of her.
You can smell the kitchen beyond a tatty door at the end of the takeout section. Garlic and spring onion, frying beef and black bean sauce, noodles and rice. I look at Josh and I can tell he thinks it too. This smells like a good place. We study the menu.
“Next!” the old lady says.
A man with a shaven head and khaki shorts lumbers up to the counter. He is dressed like a young man although he is not young at all. He looks like a forty-year-old skinhead who is on his summer holiday, a style that is quite popular in these parts. His belly resembles a bucket of brewer’s slop that is being poured into the gutter. He stinks of drink.
“Bag of chips,” he says.
“Chips only with meal,” says the old lady.
The man’s face darkens.
“Just give us a fucking bag of chips, you monkey.”
The old lady’s bright brown eyes show no fear.
“No dirty words! Chips only with meal!” She taps a menu with her ballpoint. “Says so here. You want chips, you order meal. For goodness sake. I wasn’t born tomorrow.”
“I don’t want a fucking meal,” the man growls.
“No dirty words!”
“I just want a bag of chips.”
“Chips only with meal,” the old lady says in conclusion, and then looks over the man’s shoulder. “Don’t blame me if you got out of bed the wrong way. Next!”
The other customers are all waiting for their takeout. That means we are next. I step up to the counter and start to give our order. The man with the shaven head puts a meaty hand on my chest and propels me backward.
“Give us a bag of fucking chips, you old cow,” he says.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Josh says.
The middle-aged skinhead turns and brings his forehead smashing down onto Josh’s nose. My friend reels backward with shock and pain. Already there’s a Jackson Pollock-style splatter of blood across his white shirt and silk tie.
“And you can wait your turn, Lord Snooty.”
The skinhead grabs a fistful of the old lady’s jumper. She seems very small. For the first time she starts to look afraid.
I put a restraining hand on the old skinhead’s shoulder. He turns and-very quickly, very hard-hits me three times in the ribs. As I clutch my sides, good for nothing, I think to myself that he has either done a bit of boxing or watched an awful lot of it on satellite television. I also think to myself-ouch! No, really-ouch!
“I don’t want any greasy foreign muck,” says the skinhead in a tone of voice that contrives to combine fury with extreme reasonableness. “I don’t want any of your sweet and sour crap. Just…give…me…a…bag…of…fucking…chips.”
“Chips only with meal!” the old lady cries, and the door to the kitchen opens as the skinhead pulls her toward him.
A cook is standing in the doorway. He is about sixty and wearing a white chef’s apron that is stained and frayed. His head is also shaved. For a second I can’t remember where I know him from.
And then I get it. He’s the old man in the park who I saw doing his slow-motion dance. The one who told me to keep breathing. The Tai Chi guy.
The skinhead lets go of the old lady as the old man comes toward him. The two men look at each other. The skinhead squares up for a fight, his fleshy fists half-raised, but the old man simply faces him, doing nothing, waiting.
The skinhead seems clenched with violence. But the old man is perfectly relaxed, his arms hanging loose by his side. He’s clearly not afraid of the much larger man. The old lady barks something in Cantonese, gesturing at the skinhead.
“Chips only with meal,” the old man says, very quietly.
Then he says nothing.
The two men stare at each other for a long moment. Then the skinhead looks away with a short, contemptuous laugh. Muttering to himself about Chinks and chips and greasy foreign muck, he leaves the Shanghai Dragon, slamming the door behind him. The relief in the place is tangible. We all watch the old man, wondering what has happened.
The kitchen door opens again and another Chinese man, this one much younger and plumper, comes out carrying a stack of silver containers in a plastic bag. He looks at me and Josh and his mouth drops open.
I am almost weeping with pain. Josh is sprawled in one of the plastic chairs, leaning his head back, a bloody handkerchief over his face.
The old lady says something else in Cantonese, not quite so angry now. The old man looks at us for the first time.
“Come,” he tells us.
The old man takes us through a side door next to the steam and clatter of the Shanghai Dragon’s tiny kitchen and up some stairs into a little self-contained flat where a number of Chinese people, big and small, are watching the TV movie about Charles and Diana.
They turn only mildly curious brown eyes our way as the old man leads us into a small bathroom and examines us with cold, expert fingers. My ribs are already turning purple but the old man tells me they are not cracked. But Josh’s nose seems to be growing sideways.