Dylan

Another hazy evening, after hours in a basement bar huddled in the hole with the losers and the shmoozers and the drips from the broken beer tap that distracted from the tobacco smog only to peck at your brain like water torture. The ailing juke box buzzed in the corner and I rested my elbows on the counter, face pressed up to my glass to look at the world through a nebulous orange filter. The bartender lumbered back and forth, shifting across the periphery of my fisheye perspective with a filthy rag scrunched in his hand, poking in on drunken conversation as he insouciantly sloshed the scum off the surface and in the process partially showered me with stale, beery putridness. I decided then that it was time to leave. Expressionless, I strewed my coins on the bar, shuffled the squeaking stool out behind me and began blindly navigating the space underneath the stretcher on which my soles had rested in an attempt to lower my unsure feet to the floor.

I felt the warm rush of relief leak through my bones as my heels met the concrete but this was chased with a shot of terror as, suddenly and without warning, the iron door at the top of the steps in the far right corner of the den screeched open and a ray of light sliced the room, illuminating every smoke and dust particle between its source and the eye. The buzz of chatter dropped silent and all heads jerked in the direction of the opening. I beheld a silhouetted figure dance along the photons towards myself and the other patrons, jolting and weaving through the tobacco smoke and casting great, flickering shadows on the grimy walls, before finally coming to rest on the stool beside mine. The buzz resumed and he came into focus. “I'm Dylan”, he augustly announced in sonorous eastern U.S. tones slightly at odds with his stature. He was taller than average but wiry and sickly pale with nobbled elbows like knots in a blanched piece of thread with withered, chicken feet hands dangling from either end like something you might expect to find within the festooned walls of a juju shaman’s shrine. His eyes were dark, deep portholes to some fire that evidently lurked within him and they met mine assuredly as he offered a predictably firm handshake. I returned the gesture and sheepishly revealed my name and that I was just leaving. “Nonsense”, he protested with his eyes big and wide, “finish that drink and lemme get you another”. Slightly dubious and more so drunk I bought myself a few seconds with indecisive grunts and fidgets, using this time to scan down from his jet black trilby over thick, wild, brown hair to a dapper blue check shirt, past pressed stonewashed jeans, arriving at an immaculate pair of stone suede tennis shoes. There was something striking about him, something you couldn't quite put your finger on. His face was weathered but young looking, his dress predominantly smart but unmistakeably streetwise and his aura benevolent, even to the point of betraying a degree of innocence, yet tough and alive and revealing of someone who'd been around the block a few times. He was ambiguous in every way and this I knew, clouded as I was, was the aspect of his being that attracted me to him. With a laboured breath and without further ado, I ushered the stool back below me with hooked feet, sat down and accepted his generous offer.

“So what's your story?” He asked after the clink of glasses and the accompanying “kanpai” chanted in unison as was customary between strangers and friends alike sharing a drink in these parts. I took a swig and hissed as the bubbles burned my over-beered lips, and then answered his question, revealing that tonight had traversed pretty typically and had consisted of ungodly amounts of alcohol, equally desperate and fruitless attempts to snag women, the eventual inability to locate friends followed by the inevitable self-loathing descent into this place. He chuckled heartily with sharp, bouncing shoulders and sent what he had in his mouth raining to the floor only to splash back up at our ankles. The bar tender darted a suspicious glance from behind the counter but then, ostensibly seeing no harm in the situation (the floor was already speckled with the beer and blood of an eternity of iniquitous nights), promptly returned to his handy work. “You seem a little jaded, man”, he observed with faint concern in his voice. I replied with a bashful nod, favouring to divert my gaze to the bottom of my glass as I did so.

It was true, I was disillusioned at how quickly life had become predictable in the few months since relocating here. I knew deep down in the fibres of my soul that there was some meat, some eccentricity to this city, Osaka, that had the potential to stir the senses into an eruption of ecstasy, but I had as of yet found it impossible to penetrate the grey walls of this mysterious society, unable to get behind what was so fastidiously presented on the surface. Instead, I spent my time in bars like this growing increasingly underwhelmed with living without conscience on my very own beer-fuelled conveyor belt like the last piece of cheap sushi; a rotting pariah going around and around with a garbage fate winding ever closer. Yes, these nights were fast becoming as stale as the beer in this place and I needed something fast to satiate my insatiable lust for the novel. I knew somehow that Dylan could provide me with this and sure enough, after a few more beers, he proved me right.

“Haye you ever hearn'd of a place callg'd Tobita Shinchi?” He blurted as he clumsily lit a cigarette and knocked it, sending burning ash streaming into the dim air. He was now stumbling on his consonants and leaning well over onto my space of the bar to look at me through infinitesimal pupils embedded in two swirling pools of drunken redness. I told him I didn't think so, although admittedly I wasn't yet well up on place names enough to answer decisively about almost anywhere in this city.

“The pink area yuh know, it's like the famous Yakoooza place wheah duh hookers hangin' out.”

It sounded interesting, very interesting, but I didn't want to show all my cards just yet so I replied as nonchalantly as I could, saying that I hadn't even heard such a place existed let alone had been there. With that, a maniacal grin melted over his face and he froze and then shot up from his stool like a preacher rising to address a dedicated congregation from behind his pulpit. He then cleared his course throat, slowly raised his shoulders into an impeccable posture and prophetically announced;

“Well then my friend, I must show you the pink light and deliver you from the ills of your disenchantment.”

I felt the tides of laughter swell inside me but chose to quash the feeling so as not to risk offending this clearly passionate if slightly aberrant fellow whom I had, after all, just met. On top of that I knew that despite the drunken bizarreness Dylan had just exhibited through his stirring display, this was what I had been looking for. Before I had any more time to appreciate the prospect though his cadaverous hand grabbed my collar and dragged me off my seat, myself resisting desperately just enough to finish the last drops in my glass, up the stairs to ascend from the smokey pit and feel my eyes burn against the early morning sun. We located our crudely parked bikes and rode off into the sunrise.

I followed his lead as we recklessly navigated the winding streets, skidding and weaving in our drunkenness and laughing wildly like maniacs hopped up on early morning anarchy, standing on our pedals to feel the languid Osaka dawn whisk through our hair. We shot past the disapproving, wrinkly glares of early-rising locals and I didn't care for I was on a mission, a quest for enlightenment to realise something elusive that I had known existed behind the plate glass images of double-point-convenience-store-card campaigns and shiny billboards depicting happy, hugging families who bank with these guys and buy the right dog food and callously lie to all those that look upon them whispering “this could be you” with unscrupulous grins and deceptively equable eyes. To hell with all that shit. This was the real deal and I pedalled as hard as my leaden legs would allow, desperate to keep with Dylan's pace until we arrived at our destination.

With the turn of a final corner the uniformly cinereous residential buildings that had defined our route at once gave way to an oasis of pink neon flashing and framing signs hanging out from buildings that lined the narrow street as far as the eye could see. Without a word we came to a squeaking stop and glanced from left to right to witness the same spectacular display prevail down even narrower side streets. It was quite a sight, and I wondered why I hadn't heard so much as a whisper about this place in all my time fraternizing with the faceless, raggedy dregs that frequented the same establishments as I did. Dylan had his nose cocked skyward and he gave the air an eager sniff before returning a vindicated nod. He then subtly gestured that we continue into the labyrinth. This place was unlike anywhere I'd ever been before, in Japan or otherwise. Stumbling salarymen dotted the pavements with skewed ties and stained briefcases, sipping tinned beer, predatorily peering into the shopfronts within which the commodity was showcased; and indeed it was showcased in such a way that would send the boiling torrents of desire flooding into even the purest of souls. Within each opening hung tied pink silk curtains beside burning incense sticks that sent an aphrodisiacal stream of smoke gently wafting into the early morning air. Rose petals were delicately scattered across the freshly-brushed tatami floors over which slipper-clad old women presided, seemingly fulfilling their roles as steward sub pimps in this Yakuza-run velvet ghetto of the underworld. Bearing warm smiles they ushered in prospective customers, waving their hands vigorously and softly murmuring beautiful words of enticement in incomprehensible Osakaben, the usually gruff local dialect. All this was secondary of course to the focal point of the presentation. In the dead centre of each frame sat cross-legged on cushions were the working girls. Made up flawlessly with long, vivacious locks and wearing immaculately provocative half-cut gowns that accentuated the breasts, stomach and buttery smooth legs, each dazzled in her beauty, glistening under the ethereal lighting as it struck the shimmering make up applied the body over. The fingernails and toenails were equally exquisite, emanating shades of rouge and magenta and their tawny faces, without exception accented by perfectly drawn arches of pastel lipstick below intoxicating dark eyes, presented the perfect canvas for a tempting expression somewhere between the greenest of innocence and the reddest of hot lust. Any straight male would have been smitten within the space of one fleeting glance and we were no exception, utterly silenced and drooling like dogs with feet planted either side of our shoddy bike frames, transfixed on the glittering prize that lay within groping distance.

We dismounted and stood there, taking a few silent moments to appreciate the view before I turned to Dylan and nudged him gently on the arm, signalling to carry on that we might take in more of the sights and smells that lay ahead down the street. He didn't respond, his eyes wider than I'd seen them all night, mouth ajar and hypnotised. I began to make my move anyway and I turned in the direction of the alluring unknown, but before I could take my first step his hand clenched my shoulder and spun me back around to once again meet with the side of his head. He stared intently at one of the girls who I'd noticed his eyes wondering toward moments before. His breathing was slow and calm under the brightening sky, the expanding and retracting of his chest the only visible movement in an otherwise statuesque entity, his arm still extended to rest a hand on my shoulder. “She's perfect”, he whispered, “she's absolutely perfect”. I followed his gaze and arrived at the girl in question; a twenty-something light-brown skinned bombshell leaning demurely on a plum velour pillow, returning his gaze between intermittent shy flickers towards the ground. When her eyes did meet Dylan's they shot a smouldering look as she ran her silken tongue across plump, glazed lips. She was perfect, but only as perfect as the rest. This meant everything and nothing to Dylan though and his lustful glare returned fireballs up from an inferno that now raged deep inside him. Moving no more than a small corner of his mouth he mumbled to me:

“It's eleven thousand yen foh fifteen minutes, but if yuh don't have that much on yuh s'only five thousand for... yuh know...”.

With that he broke his motionless and sprang into action to impudently perform the universal fellatio gesture. I couldn't help but roll my eyes, cursing the gods in the vast firmament above as the ambiguity that had so closely shrouded Dylan up until that point was instantaneously flushed away.

“I'm gonna g'all duh way though, man. I have to.”

I was shocked, I hadn't expected that we were here to actually partake in all this, but before I had time to say anything he'd took off his trilby and crammed it into my hands and was gone; meandering zombie-like towards where she rested. His eyes didn't leave her as he lurched up a pinewood step and inside the shopfront and without a word she led him by the hand up the creaking staircase at the back of the room until their feet were out of sight. The old woman then took her cue and swiftly untied the silk curtains and drew them, leaving me alone outside a pink barrier confused and in moderate disbelief.

I waited there running my finger along the rough nylon rim of Dylan's trilby thinking about the knowledge of prices he had so exactly imparted upon me. This guy knew what he was talking about. Pretty certain this wasn't his first time to take the plunge. I mean, I was happy to be here, ecstatic in fact, but I hadn't the money nor design to actually go ahead and do what he was in the process doing. No, I was just a tourist, a wannabe and I got my kicks merely out of being here didn't I? Of course I did, taking it all in, but I would never give credence to this trade in any other way than perhaps writing about it later, spurred on by patchy memories whilst hunched over my laptop in the modest comfort of my boxy apartment. Yes, I was upstanding in my morality and vehemently opposed to sex for yen, and although at that point the alcohol annulled any feelings of judgement towards Dylan, I was becoming more and more eager with every minute that ticked by to welcome him back to the street, say “good night” or “thanks for showing me this place man, see you around”, return the hat that anchored me here and be on my way. As it turned out, his return came sooner than I could have hoped for.

                                                               . . .

A loud ceramic smash broke the peace of the dawn and signalled a commotion behind the drawn pink curtains before me. I heard a high pitched scream, then Dylan's muffled voice booming followed by the rapid thud of footsteps bumping down stairs irregularly and then speeding up and then boom went a huge thud. All was silent for a few seconds before he emerged holding his head and elbow, looking dejected back on the street. He marched towards me, fiddling his still-ajar belt buckle, firing words from his mouth like a temperamental carbine that fires and then jams and then fires with erratic, untameable recoil.

“Man we gotta g-get outta here”

“Why, whada you mean, what happened?”

I shot for concern, but I couldn't prevent a smirk from leaking between my cheeks as the tides of laughter flushed in and over me now much stronger than before when he'd stood up and announced his intentions as if ready to embark on a mission to deliver the souls of starving children through the medium of whoring.

“Man, the whore didn't give me what I paid for, this whole outfit is a rip off, they're taking us all for a ride! How much money d'ya think they think they can squeeze off of people like us!? I understand Japanese, understand the language man, man I know and she knows wha' the hell we agreed on!”

“Take it easy, take it easy! What the hell happened up there?”

“S'not funny man, the whore didn't gi' me what I paid for I dunno who the hell they think they are, *****n' whores! But she was tryna rip me off, can you believe that!? What does she take me for, some kin'a punk!? I gave her a piece'a my mind an' then she starts yelling at me screeching like a *****n' cat, some *****n' nerve so I picked up the *****n' flower pot and threw it, I threw it! Threw it... at... her. We gotta go. Right now.”

I couldn't help but roar and I creased in the road, exceedingly amused at what I'd just heard, picturing the simple business transaction devolving into the argument of a fiery young couple, Dylan possibly emptying the pot of flowers and carefully arranging them on the floor with the other petals before he volleyed it at her. Dylan looked rather more concerned with the situation though and his voice dropped to a whisper and became calm and anxious and he got close up to my face.

“I'm serious man, we need to leave. Right away. Stand up. Let's go. Now.”

Just then the old woman snatched open the curtains in front of us and looked at Dylan and I with piercing eyes and then gave a sharp whistle with a thumb and a finger slotted into her lips whilst the other hand pointed convictively at us. Three men in clean black suits then suddenly emerged from a shopfront fifty feet further down the street and started sprinting in our direction, faster and bigger with every step. The old woman's sweet whispers turned to furious howls much more suited, I mused, to gruff Osakaben and my heart began to bump violently in my chest as the severity of the situation sank in.

“Dylan, are those guys Yakuza? Dylan! Are they Yaks!?”

Panic washed over his face which was now white and green as curdled milk and he remained silent as he scrambled to pick up his bike and hastily kicked up the kickstand. The three men were now about twenty feet away so I sprung to my feet and followed Dylan's lead, bouncing onto my seat with his trilby still in my hand and flicking the kickstand up and almost sending my left sandal flying into the air and we were away as the men got just shy of within grabbing distance. Dylan was off out in front, a stream of dust spitting up from the ground giving the appearance of water boiling off his back tire as he pedalled furiously, and I looked back to see the three shrinking men slowing down behind us, their colourful tattoos that escaped their sleeves close to the wrists gleaming in the early sun and their pierced faces red with exertion and anger. I could still hear the old woman's howls which reverberated off the otherwise silent wooden shacks, seemingly following us up the street to where the opening was back to the outside world. We neared the opening but then two more black suits darted out of a side building towards Dylan. He broke hard and skidded wildly and just about managed to regain control and swerved around them flying left in a cloud of dirt, out of sight into one of the narrow alleys. The two then drew their attention to me and, panic-stricken, I rummaged violently in my basket and grabbed an unopened can of beer from some point last night. I hurled it at the one closest to me and it clonked off his forehead and he went down dramatically like something you'd seen in an old Kung-Fu movie and I felt terrified and smug and invincible. I passed Dylan's alley and saw him still mounted on his noble steed, galloping off into the distance of the deep labyrinth, and I skidded right and down the opposite alley as the second suit flailed at my back, just managing to miss a grab of my t-shirt.

I was now alone up a paved hill that left the alley at some point and weaved steeply in between and behind houses. A grey concrete wall was at my back with pipes protruding from it at head height that spilled murky water onto the path and above, about twelve feet or so, a rusty railing shimmered ember-like as the sun, which I couldn't see for the arched-roofed houses, rose in the east. To my immediate right was another wall, much more severe and of cracked concrete that dwarfed the first wall by at least twenty-five feet and joined the side of a bypass at the top where unseen cars breezed past presumably on their morning commute. All was quiet save for the cawing of crows and the intermittent sweet chirps of a few smaller birds perched on the rooftops and I felt the hug of security over my body that I didn't trust. Still clutching Dylan's damn hat, I looked back down the hill up which I'd pedalled. I was still panting from the battle with its gradient moments before. Nothing but sleeping cats on doorsteps. Looking left the path went with the gradual curve of the wall until stolen by it about a hundred feet away before a yellowing sky. All was tranquil but I felt tense, picturing more suits appearing from down the hill and sprinting up towards me, hungry and foaming at the mouth like spartan warriors heading into battle. In this eventuality I'd have to follow the path to the left but, as it ran parallel with the street at the bottom and back in the direction of where our troubles began, it could end up taking me back down the hill and returning me perilously close to the epicentre. It was risky and I felt a heavy churn in the pit of my stomach as I contemplated what consequences might befall me should I make such an unfortunate mistake. Not good. Not good at all. I tried my best to squeeze these thoughts from my mind. At least I had a great vantage point if they were to come from down the hill. From here I'd see them early and would have a solid head start while they struggled up the steep incline, exhausted and weak by the time they reached the top. On the other hand they could appear from my left from around the bend at pace and that would leave me with not much time to react and I'd have no choice but to set off back down the hill up which I'd come, back into the dangers of the street below. Neither option was safe and I wrangled with my thoughts, trying desperately to stem the currents of panic that were slowly encroaching and making my breaths short and sharp and my limbs heavy. I shouldn't have thrown the can of beer. Maybe I should've just stopped and tried my best to explain the situation. I might have had to take a few punches but then they would probably have dragged me back to the shopfront and the old woman would hopefully have had the decency to acknowledge that it was not me who created the commotion and thus grant my reprieve, especially if I gave them Dylan's name but no, no I couldn't do that. But what the hell did I owe Dylan anyway? I'd only known him for a matter of hours and already he'd thrust me into the most dangerous situation of my life. This wasn't fun anymore. This was pretty far from fun and I hated him; the stupid, self-important, selfish prick. Who the fuck does he think he is? I'm sure he's got quite a different image of himself from the one that presented itself to me: a paper tiger; bold and brimming with confidence until things get hairy in which case he turns green and laconic and flies off into the distance without so much as a nod back to make sure I wasn't getting my head kicked in for his asininity. If he were an actor I'd cast him as the lead role in a spoof action thriller: Die Mard. No, that's weak. Maybe I'd have him star in a reinterpretation of the classic Shakespearean comedy which I would lovingly entitle: Much Aplomb About Nothing. Better. Some guy, what a standup guy. Arse hole. Thoughts like these continued to circle in my mind which for some reason was always the case when I was nervous, and I thought to myself that maybe the unpleasant surge of fear sparked my creativity like nothing else. Maybe I should hire someone to hold a revolver to my head next time I sat down to write, spinning the chamber which would contain a single bullet, pulling the trigger and click! It might cause me to write the next great novel of our times... or bang! Perhaps the contents of my cranium might end up splattered on the wall beside me. Either way it would make for quite the story. Oh god, did the gangsters have guns!? Probably. A splattered cranium might not be such a far fetched image after all.

Moments passed with increasing severity as I stood there up on the hill, frozen by anxious indecision and expecting the worst to come at any second. I began to hear the hum of deep male voices somewhere down in the morass of alleys and buildings below and eventually three gangsters, possibly including some we'd met earlier although at this point I couldn't make out their faces, strutted around the corner in perfect synchrony reminiscent of the old Rat Pack photos. In their black suits they advanced with intense, masculine gaits and started up the hill. I gasped as I saw them but it seemed they hadn't noticed me stood there on the hilltop until one looked up and growled and they all started running towards me. I was finished. This was where it all went downhill for me. I remounted my bike and looked to the left, the unknown of the curving path my only option. But following it could be equivalent to signing my own death warrant. There had to be another way. The men were making progress up the hill but it was slow and I still had maybe thirty seconds or so before they reached me on the crest. I turned around to face the concrete wall, the pipes still spewing out grey water that fell to the ground and splashed on my feet and it reminded me of Dylan's beer when he spat it out of his mouth hours earlier in that shit hole bar. Maybe the pipes were my best hope. If I could only get a foot on one I could push myself up and grab the rusty railing above and pull myself over it to reach salvation. But how to get a foot up there? The pipes were head height and too thin to pull myself up from the ground. Maybe I could use the bike. Yes, yes, the bike! I dismounted and hurriedly leant the rusty frame against the wall with my left foot on the seat, being as sure as I could that it might, perhaps, support my weight for just a second. I looked behind me. They were gaining on the crest and their purple faces grinned sinister grins up at me as if to say “you're mine”, and now I could make out that two of the three were from the original group that gave chase to Dylan and I after appearing from the shopfront down the street from the whore house. I turned back to the wall, took a deep breath as I placed Dylan's trilby on my head and hopped up, grabbing the pipe with both hands and I pushed off the bike and managed to swing my right foot up onto the pipe and the bike fell under me and clattered on the ground. I then quickly shimmied and pushed up from the pipe to grab the rusty bars of the railing above. Now I would see if the gangsters did in fact have guns because here I was vulnerable; an easy hanging target for a shooter and I half expected to hear a bang or feel the sharp burn of a bullet boring into my back at any moment. To my relief, no shots came and I hauled myself up and over the railing with one last hellacious yank and fell elated in a heap onto the ground above. The suits had just reached the crest of the hill and, fatigued, their grins turned to grimaces as they ranted vociferously with saliva-spraying lips and pointed at me with flailing fingers and I stood up and looked back down at them not saying a word, just looking. I was relaxed. I felt suddenly vulnerable no more and completely at ease from my position, perched feet above the bastards and out of their reach. They didn't even attempt to scale the wall. Instead they picked up my bike and slammed it on the ground in blazing, petulant fury and kicked it and tore at the seat, staring up at me all the while. I didn't care; a bicycle was a small price to pay for escaping unharmed and I'd acquired it cheap and unlicensed anyway from a shifty thing-pusher introduced to me by one of my dreg associates weeks before. Thank god it was unlicensed. It hadn't crossed my mind but now it did and I realised that even if they should try to find me through the bike I would be untraceable. All they had on me was that I was a foreigner and I was pretty sure we all looked similar to them if my own perception of the three gangsters was anything to go by. With that, I left their groans and cantered up the street away from the railing to the main road and hailed the first taxi I saw. The taxi stopped and the tuxedo-clad driver flicked a switch with his gloved hand and the back left door swung open. I breathed a heavy breath and sighed a sigh of the intensest relief. The taxi driver asked me where to? I dove in and replied “home” in English. He set off anyway and I was free.

                                                         . . .

Days passed and I wondered how Dylan had fared after shooting down that back alley and pedalling off into the distance. I still had that image burned in my mind; of him making tracks, leaving a streaming cloud of dust behind him, cinematic horns of the old westerns harping triumphantly in the background as he rode to freedom. I hoped he'd made it out ok. I wondered if he knew where those narrow backstreets led? Could he really have been so familiar with the place as to pick his escape route or, more likely, was his decision to skid left down that side street the culmination of sheer, aimless panic? I hoped the former was true but knew somehow that it wasn't. Regardless, his hat now hung on my coatrack at the door of my apartment and reminded me of him and the whole ordeal every time I left or came back. I had to either get it back to him soon or throw it out. Or burn it for kicks. It was early afternoon and the sun shone in through my small dirty window and made my usually dim, dead apartment bright and alive. I fell down on the bed with my phone in hand and scrolled through the phonebook. At the bottom of D, just above Easy Pussy (which if my memory served me right was the number of a young lady I'd met late one night who may have rescued stray cats for a living or something), was DYALN, written in capitals and misspelled as though hastily input under the influence of two ecstasy tablets, one shot of heroin, or about fifteen beers. I pressed call and put the phone to my ear and it rang for some seconds before he picked up.

“H-Hello?”

“Hey Dylan, how the hell are you?”

“H-er-hey, what's up?”

His voice was dull and soft and betrayed a slight tremor which I could detect in spite of the poor quality of the call's reception.

“Dylan, I've got your hat and I plan on burning it and dancing around the flames if you don't come and get it. You have until sundown, you've been warned.”

He paused and I heard him softly panting.

“You alright, man?”

“Y-yeh, yeh I'm ok. I er... I don't think I can to get the hat r-right now. Please don't...”

“I won't really burn it Dylan”, I'll just smear shit all over the inside and watch you put it on, I thought to myself. I looked at the time. What the hell, I didn't have any plans for the afternoon anyway other than nursing my daily hangover and besides, it would be interesting to see where he lived.

“I'll come to your place with it if you let me know where you live?”

“Er... er n-nah, s'ok man, I don't know whether that would be...”

“Well Dylan, I might not burn it, but it's not staying in my apartment. It's either there with you or in the rubbish bin at the back of my building.”

He sighed.

“Ok, b-bring it over then, please.”

He told me his address which, wouldn't you know it, was on the same block as the shit bunker bar where we'd first met nights ago. I tore the trilby off the coatrack on my way out and was thankful that would be the last time I'd have to look at it. I padded out to the bike parking area, put the rusty key in the lock and set off to meet him.

After a while pedalling in the sun and sucking in the acrid air of the city in a futile attempt to overcome my alcohol-induced ailments, I arrived at Dylan's building which, like mine, was grey and cubic and blended in perfectly with the scatty neighbourhood around it. His apartment was on the fourth floor so I clunked up the metal steps to the right of the front entrance which wound upward from their concentric base and echoed and shook wildly with each step I took. I arrived at the fourth floor and followed a drab corridor to the door which said 404 on it and was as nondescript as every other on the corridor. In the building. In the city. This place and all others, human filing cabinets embalmed with the essence of wet paper and sardines. I knocked gently and waited. I heard movement from within and after a minute or so the peep hole flashed black and the door narrowly opened and Dylan's head poked out and then disappeared behind it and I leant through the gap and squeezed inside. All the curtains were drawn making the inside dark, but as my eyes adjusted I could make out old magazines strewn over the sticky brown carpet and an old, grey fabric couch that had black burn marks all over it. The kitchenette was behind the couch on the left and from the sink rose a tower of dishes that gave off that unmistakeable stench of at least four days, and the stench hung in the muggy air and clung to the tattered curtains and the tiny yellowed walls. He ambled over to the couch and sat down and I sat on a red plastic chair next to an old-as-hell TV and put my hand on the coffee table; which was chipped and gouged and looked like the termites had been working on it for quite some time. I handed him the hat and he quietly thanked me. His thick brown hair was untamed and fell down over most of his face and he wore scruffy shorts and an old, sauce-speckled t-shirt under a sling in which his arm was cradled, plastered up inside.

“Jesus, Dylan, what did they do to you?”

He gazed solemnly at the ground and then told me what had happened after we'd parted company that fateful morning. After skidding left down the alley, he'd pedalled in a blur of terror further into the maze of buildings and had been forced left again at some point by the lay of the street. He could hear them behind him but didn't dare to look back and kept pedalling and panically turning down tiny streets, each becoming narrower and narrower the further in to the labyrinth he got. Finally he'd hit a dead end and, being not far behind, they'd caught up with him in no time and threw him to the ground and began to beat him badly until he eventually lost consciousness. That was the last thing he could recall. He came to hours later in a tussocky, dog shit-littered lot of land behind a tall chain link fence near a busy main road. His arm was broken, his face blue and swollen and his clothes and hair drenched in piss, with cigarette burns down the length his back, the scars so numerous that when he turned around and lifted his t-shirt it looked as though he'd been viciously attacked with a household iron. A passer-by had spotted him and helped him over the fence and ushered him to a nearby hospital, Dylan himself dazed and unperturbed by the unsettled glances of the people they passed until he met his reflection in the glass doors at the hospital's entrance.

After regaling me, he broke his gaze with the sticky carpet and met my eyes and for the first time I got a look at his face. It was scratched up terribly and bulged in shades of black and yellow and purple. He let out a sudden quiet gasp and a lonely tear leaked from the corner of his eye and spilled down over the contours of his unrecognisable cheek. I had no words. I sat there with him in the dark silence for some minutes and then told him to take care. I then stood up and walked out of the dingy apartment, gently closing the door behind me. I walked back down the reverberating staircase and away from Dylan. I never saw him again after that, and to this day I don't know what's become of him.