Coffin Dodgers by Gary Marshall Read Free Book Online

rep."
    "So the lights go off. What then?"
    "Bloody chaos. Turns out the waiters weren't blind."
    "You're kidding."
    Dave points at his shirt.
    "You're not kidding."
    "I'm making small talk with Susan, we're getting on okay so far, and the waiters come in with the drinks. Next thing it's just crashing and banging and yelling. They're pouring wine everywhere, walking into tables, dropping glasses on the floor. Half of the waiters are apologising, the other half are banging into tables and swearing."
    I'm sure it was horrible at the time, but I'm in tears of laughter. So is Dave. It takes a minute for us to recover.
    "What did you do?"
    "Susan had just got half a bottle of wine poured down her top, and we agreed that we'd escape and go somewhere else."
    "Good plan."
    "Yeah. So we get up and I walk into four plates of linguine. Susan got a double lasagne."
    "Shit. Did you go somewhere else?"
    "Nah."
    "Was it pasta bedtime?"
    I'm very pleased with my joke, and I sit giggling for a while. Dave looks at the ceiling until I've finished.
    "You done?"
    "Yeah."
    "She wasn't up for it," Dave says. "I could tell by her face. The bit that wasn't covered in pasta, anyway."  
    "Shame."
    "Ach, it's the same old story, isn't it? Boy meets girl, girl gets a double lasagne in the face. Probably for the best anyway."
    "You think?"
    "Yeah. I'm seeing someone later this week anyway."
    "In the dark?"
    "In the pub. It's safer."
    "Depends on the pub."
    "True. Can I get another beer? I think I deserve it."
    He does. I head for the fridge.

CHAPTER FIVE

    I'm sitting around, doing nothing in particular, thinking about Amy. It's not that she's a force of nature, although she is. It's not that she can make me feel glad to be alive, although she does. It's not that she's got a way of looking at you from underneath her fringe that can make your knees weak, although that's true too. And it's not that she's so good-looking she takes your breath away sometimes, although she is and she does.
    It's that she's not Scott Marsden.  
    I'm sitting in reception at Ottomatik, waiting for the mechanics to finish servicing my car, and Scott Marsden is sitting next to me. Either times are hard or Ottomatik has belatedly discovered the joys of customer service: they called me a few days ago to remind me that my service was due, and did I want to make an appointment? It was all very professional, which is not a word you usually associate with the place. You don't go to Ottomatik because it's good, or because it's professional. You go because it's the cheapest garage for miles.
    Scott Marsden plonked himself in the seat next to me about two hundred million years ago. Well, five minutes, but it seems like two hundred million years. He's not a bad guy, I'm sure, but he's not an interesting one either. So far he's managed to turn a simple puncture into an epic, and I'm rapidly losing the will to live. He's got a reason to moan -- most cars don't have spares because the tyres auto-heal, but if you damage the sidewall the auto-healing doesn't work and the whole tyre needs replaced at great expense; Scott found a great big nail stuck in one of his sidewalls, so the tyre's a write-off -- but I really wish he didn't moan quite so much, or for quite so long, or in so much detail.  
    Scott and I went to school together. We weren't friends -- I think I maybe said about ten words to him in the six or seven years I was there, and nine of those words were nasty -- but Scott is the kind of person who doesn't let that kind of detail get in the way of a good old chin-wag. On the few occasions I haven't seen him coming and hidden until the coast is clear, he's greeted me like his very best, oldest friend. And then he's started talking.  
    I'll spare you the full details of today's monologue, because I'm nice like that. Put it this way: Scott doesn't talk to you. He talks at you. I'm quite sure you could get up halfway through the conversation, build a raft, sail to foreign lands, survive