Read Online Chop Chop by Simon Wroe - Free Book Online

unburdened by standards when it came to women, secretly described her as “Predator with Tits”—and this made Bob suspicious. He began to think Ramilov was taking the piss.
    â€œHe should be a gentleman about it,” he told Dave gloomily, “and shag her or shut up.”
    â€œYou should be a gentleman about it and shag her,” Dave told Ramilov in O’Reillys, “or you should shut up.” It was early November and Ramilov’s tempestuous streak was becoming dangerously apparent.
    â€œI can’t shag her,” said Ramilov, swilling his mouth with bitter. “She looks like a trowel.”
    â€œBob’s getting pissy about it,” said Dave. “He asked me for reasons to lock you in the fridge.”
    â€œI’m not sexually aroused by garden implements,” said Ramilov. “Ask Dibden.”
    â€œWhat?” said Dibden, who was trying to pat down a cowlick in his hair and was not listening.
    â€œYou’ve got to shag Bob’s missus,” Ramilov told him.
    Dibden looked worried.
    â€œDoes Bob know about this?”
    â€œIt was his idea,” said Ramilov.
    â€œOh.”
    Dibden looked as if he were trying to imagine it: what he and Bob’s terrible wife would do by way of small talk, how the seduction would unfold, whether there would be music playing or Bob standing over them and shouting for him to hurry up. He shuddered.
    â€œI can’t,” he said.
    â€œGo on.” Ramilov flicked bitter at him.
    â€œWhy me?” Dibden asked. “Why not Monocle?”
    â€œMonocle would take too damn long,” said Ramilov, “and he might hurt his massive face. You look like Coldplay. You’ve got to take what you can get.”
    â€œIf you don’t want her, why do you keep fucking howling at her?” Dave asked Ramilov.
    Ramilov shrugged without interest and looked around the pub. O’Reillys was the only place open when the chefs finished work. It was an Irish bar that Nora, the cross-eyed matron of the house, ran like a hostel for inebriates, which was more or less what it was. At the back, where the chefs usually sat, there was a dartboard positioned to test the wits of those visiting the toilets, a few low tables and a jukebox full of folk music from the old country. The bar and Nora stood in the middle of the room where a cross-eye could be kept onthe rowdier customers, which was most of them. Toward the front was a raggedy pool table that played to a slant on one corner pocket, beneath a chandelier no one could explain. The pictures, insofar as they fit that description, were covered with cellophane instead of glass so they could not be smashed over people’s heads satisfactorily. Every so often one of the regulars would stagger over to the jukebox and pick a song and start to dance and sing. Sometimes they would notice the tired bunch of chefs huddled in the corner and become incensed by the lack of patriotism on show.
    Jig, you bastards! Jig!
they would cry, or words to that effect, and Nora would tell them to hush the feck up.
    â€œWhose round is it?” asked Ramilov.
    â€œYours,” said Dave.
    â€œSame again?” Ramilov said. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, Monocle?”
    I did not immediately reply. The talk of Bob’s wife had set my mind off in another direction, toward the quiet dark-eyed girl. In the kitchen I could not stop looking at her, out of it I could not stop thinking of her. I had not forgotten how she had pushed me aside in the dry store while I was bleeding, or the profile of her nose up close. No, there was nothing sophisticated about her. Yet something about the way she held herself in this world of men transfixed me. The gravity of bigger planets like Bob did not affect her. Ordinary, forgettable acts seemed important when she did them. Small details stayed with me. That brisk, high voice above the male grunt, so far beyond me, so removed from the earthly