Page 46 of Blow Down (The Plumber's Mate)
Gary pouted. “I’ll do my best, but you know how it is when you’re in bed with the man of your dreams. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, something just slips out.”
“Yeah, well, use less lube next time. I’m serious. If Phil heard I’d been telling everyone about him and that git he used to be with—”
“I’m hurt, Tommy. I am not everyone. But do tell. Is that how his previous entanglement withered and died—due to a lack of common interests?”
“Pretty much, yeah.” I was not going to mention the cheating.
I gave Gary a sharp look in case he’d somehow managed to guess this bit of gossip as well, but he was busy stroking his chin and staring into the middle distance.
The old bloke came back from the gents’—I didn’t envy his proctologist—and sent Gary a worried look.
“It’s just so hard to think what you and Phil might have in common,” Gary said at last.
“Cheers, mate.”
“Apart, of course, from an outdated attachment to the aggressively masculine, which, while I have nothing against it per se, is not really entirely my area . . . Oh, I have it!” Gary sat up straight, a proud smile on his face. “Shooting.”
“Shooting?” I echoed, my eyebrows chasing my hairline as a phantom pain shot—heh—through my arm. “Seriously?”
“Of course. Macho and violent enough for him, yet involving enough skill and precision to interest you. And, of course, with Phil preferring to cultivate an image as the strong, silent type, the headphones will be a definite bonus.”
“I dunno. Doesn’t he see enough violence in the day job?”
Gary gave me a stern look. “I was suggesting you shoot at targets, not actual people. I’ve heard gun clubs tend to take a dim view of that sort of thing.”
“Ah . . . I dunno. I’ll think about it.”
“And in his line of work, knowing how to use a gun could save his life one day.”
Okay, so that was a stronger argument. But . . . “Maybe he knows already? From the police?” Phil had been in the force six years, because apparently it was cheaper than going to private-eye school.
If, you know, there was such a thing as private-eye school.
“Was he in the police in America?”
Lacking a clean knife to cut the sarcasm with, I stuck up a finger. “No, but they have firearms units over here too, yeah? Some of ’em get training with guns, I know that much.”
“So? Even if he did, maybe he misses it. I’ve heard a man can get quite attached to having something with that much power in his hands. Ooh, you know what? I’ve just had a really radical idea. Why don’t you ask him?”
Screw the knife. You’d need a JCB to get through sarcasm that thick. I laughed. “All right, all right. I’ll suggest it. Sometime.”
Gary pouted, but let it go. “Any other family news to tell me?” His tone made it clear just which member of my family he was asking about.
“You mean Mike Novak?” I sighed. “Sod it. I’m gonna need another drink for this. Same again?”
“Ooh, yes please. But tell her it’s an olive this time, not a cherry.”
I got the drinks in—no olive for Gary, but they managed to dig up a slice of lemon for variety—and added a pack of ready salted to fortify myself.
“Well,” I said, sitting down. “I’ve seen him a couple of times, but I dunno. It’s just . . .” I waved my hands a bit, as if the words I wanted were flying around in the air between us and I just needed to catch them.
Then I told him.
It’d been . . . Christ, I dunno. I mean, what the bloody hell do you expect, meeting your real dad for the first time? Just . . .
I s’pose I’d thought there’d be some, I dunno, instant connection. That we’d get talking and somehow everything would make sense.
Like, say, my psychic so-called gifts.
