Clive held up a hand. “I’m serious. Don’t mention it.”
The two-hour Chunnel trip sped by as I scrolled through the reports already flooding the Internet, like ROYAL RUMBLE; NICK TUMBLES, and GINGER ‘DAVID’ FELLS PRINCE GOLIATH, accompanied by photo after photo of Nick falling, then landing hard as his PPOs swarmed him and Gaz. My brain ricocheted between raking myself over the coals for backsliding into bed with Clive, and trying to figure out why I thought I should see Nick in my current state given that I had indirectly caused his current state. I’d reached no helpful conclusions by the time my cab pulled up to Joss’s place in an unremarkable part of Fulham. Every slender maisonette in the row had a different hint-of-color paint job that failed to hide the crookedness of the windowsills and mouldings. And when I pressed the bell, it sounded like a duck stuck in an air vent. No one would look for Nick here.
The curtains twitched, then Joss ushered me inside, her hair matted on the left as if she’d been woken from a deep, motionless slumber. We shambled into her microscopic white-and-yellow kitchen, where we came upon a very pale Cilla in a snug red tank dress, her heels in a heap near the sink as she blotted Gaz’s split lip with a wet cloth.
“God, Gaz. Look at you. What happened?” I said.
“You should see the other bloke,” Gaz quipped through one side of his mouth.
“I don’t know how you caught that punch,” Cilla said. “I barely knew myself what was happening until it was over.”
“Piece o’ doddle. Catlike reflexes, and all,” Gaz said, but fatigue and worry blocked his grin from reaching his eyes. “That photographer bastard leant right in at us and said…the thing, and I somehow just knew Nick was going to have a go at him. So I sort of swung ’round at the right moment, and bam, Bob’s your uncle.”
“Didn’t even fall down,” Cilla said. “He was bloody brilliant.”
“Or a bloody idiot, because then I shouted that Nick was a horse-fearing geezer and socked him back,” Gaz said. “I just felt like it had to look real, like we’d been quarreling rather than anything to do with that mustachioed slug.”
“Bowled Nick clean over,” Joss said, leaning against the doorjamb. “It was almost hot.”
“It was extremely hot,” Cilla corrected.
Gaz looked proud, but just for a second. “I assumed I’d miss,” he admitted.
I snorted and then covered my mouth and nose with both hands. “Shit, sorry. It’s not funny,” I said. “I just can’t believe you were faster than Stout and Popeye. You are seriously impressive, Gaz.”
“I’m a disaster,” he said morosely. “I’m finally a sensational hunk of manhood, and it’s going to get me chucked in the Tower.”
“No,” I said firmly. “It’s going to get you a medal. You know as well as anyone how hard that guy would’ve sued the Royal Family. You totally stepped up.”
“Too right,” Cilla agreed.
Gaz flushed to the tips of his hair. “Cor,” he said. “I just did what any mate would do.”
Cilla threw the rag aside and took his face in her hands. “Garamond Bates, you did what only an exceptional mate would do,” she said. And then she pulled him toward her, practically by the ears, and kissed him so hard he’d have seen stars if he weren’t already. Gaz’s obvious astonishment eventually faded as he wrapped his arms around Cilla and responded in kind.
Joss and I hadn’t been sure our conversation was finished, but after a full minute passed in a fumbling blur of plummy auburn locks and vibrant carrot-colored ones, we backed away into her dining room.
“I had fifty quid on this happening right after we graduated,” Joss said. “Could’ve used the cash back then. Christ, they’re loud.”
“I should go talk to Nick,” I said. “I assume he’s upstairs?”
“Is that moaning? Can I come with you?”
I just looked at her.
“Oh, all right.” Joss grunted. “I suppose the good news is that now Cilla won’t need to crash here when she’s in the city. I should sublet and move in with Hunty. Maybe I’ll go tell him the news.”
“Good plan,” I said, scooting to the stairs as Cilla roughly backed Gaz against the wall oven and Joss slipped out the front door, a protective hand over her eyes. I stared with trepidation up the steps, then started to climb toward what I’d been dreading.
*
Joss’s flat was decorated in the style of someone with a pathological addiction to flea markets: odd geometric tables, fringed lampshades, colored glass jugs, and one entire shelf of brass candlesticks. Despite my nerves, I still almost snickered at the sight of Nicholas Wales lying on her green and pink-flowered bedspread, holding a bag of frozen corn over his face while a three-foot statue of David made out of chicken wire stood watch. I hadn’t thought to ask if Nick knew I was coming, but when his eye opened and he saw me, he answered the unspoken question by sitting up so fast that the vegetable bag dropped onto his thigh. A vibrant bruise bloomed over his right cheekbone and up around to his temple, a butterfly bandage held together a cut over one eye, and his left hand was red and swollen and cut.
“What are you doing here?” he stammered.
I perched on the edge of the bed. It felt too intimate, but there was nowhere else to sit in Joss’s room. “I heard the fastest fists in Britain were on the premises and I had to see for myself.”
He glanced at his hand. “Pretty gruesome.”
“I was talking about Gaz.”
Nick’s laugh quickly morphed into a sigh. “How’s he faring?”
“I suspect he has never been better,” I said, “considering he and Cilla are finally going at it downstairs. Apparently getting clocked in the jaw is an aphrodisiac.”
Nick looked surprised, then very pleased, then agonized. “Be that as it may, I strongly recommend against getting into a fistfight,” he said. “Everything hurts. Even my feet are screaming at me.”
“So are Barnes, and Marj, I’ll bet,” I said.
“I made Freddie talk to them for me.”
“You didn’t have to do it,” I said softly.
“Of course I did.” He swung his legs around to sit next to me. “Freddie never does anything responsible. It was glorious making him handle those calls.”
“What did he say?” I asked. “And don’t give me any glib crap about Freddie. I’m talking about Mustache.”
“I’d rather not repeat it.”
“What do you think I’m going to do about it, Nick? Punch him?” I gave him a reproachful look. “Who’d be that stupid?”
“No one,” Nick agreed. “That would be epically stupid.”
“Even stupider than drinking Pimm’s from a hose,” I said.
“Even stupider than Cats.”
“Even stupider than Devour.”
“See, now you’ve gone too far,” Nick said. “Don’t make me defend your honor and Devour’s in the same night.”
“Just tell me.”