Kill Your Friends by John Niven Read Free Book Online

bracelet. Just to take a step must be like a
half-hour workout. He looks like he’s covered himself in glue and
charged headlong through an outlet called Rich Black Bastard.
    “All right, boys?” he says, simultaneously slapping my shoulder,
pumping Schneider’s hand, aggressively tugging a chair out and
casting an imperious glance around the place. The rest of the
clientele suddenly find things of great interest in their soup
bowls and among the dismembered sea creatures on their plates.
    Rage’s success is recent and he’s not used to being in places
like this. Consequently he’s on red alert, Defcon 3, ferociously on
the lookout for any sign of being patronised, any flicker of
condescension. He doesn’t even look at the menu proffered by the
swallowing waiter. “Burger and chips, mate, yeah?” he says.
    Burger and chips. Steak and chips. Always ordered ‘well done’.
These are the staple restaurant foods that will be ordered by every
filthy working-class toerag you will ever sign. (Until they get
saddled with some Hampstead girlfriend—some Millie, some Sophie—who
starts civilising them, teaching them about wine and telling them
what a fish is. Then you’ve got to put up with the bastards
ordering Rioja with Dover sole and talking about fucking
restaurants.) The waiter backs away, looking sick and uncertain,
and, after the briefest of “How’s tricks?”, Fisher gets straight to
making his point. It’s basically the same point he makes in every
meeting: how we should be paying them more money.
    “We gotta go out on this fucking tour, right?” he says.
    “I don’t wanna do it in the first fucking place,” says Rage.
    “Easy,” says Fisher, placing one of his massive wanking paddles
reassuringly on his client’s arm but not taking his eyes from
Schneider, “we’re gonna do the fucking tour…” he says benevolently.
I wonder how thoroughly they’ve rehearsed this.
    “Great,” says Schneider.
    “But we ain’t gonna dismantle the studio to take it on the
road…”
    “No way, man,” says Rage, shaking his head solemnly, as if we’re
asking him to sell one of his—surely many and illegitimate—children
into sex slavery.
    “So we need to rep, repli…” Fisher has a quick pop at
pronouncing ‘replicate’, then changes his mind, “buy all the gear
again, you know? To have a touring rig.”
    “How much are we talking about?” Schneider asks.
    “Sixty,” says Fisher with a straight face, but his left hand
goes automatically to his lobe to finger a big gold stud. This
tour—with backing musicians, lighting, transport, hotels, crew,
catering, sound, etc.—is already costing us something like eight
grand a show in tour support.
    “Mmmm,” says Schneider.
    “Excuse me, sir?” The manager is standing there, our waiter
hiding behind him. Rage swivels around, already, always, angry.
    “Yeah?”
    “I’m afraid, with your order, we are a zeefood restron and—”
    “For fuck’s sake,” Rage says.
    “Peraps sir would like to shoes another dish?” The guy offers
him the menu again. Rage doesn’t even look at it.
    “Look, you can make me some fucking chips, man. You got potatoes
in the back, ain’t you? All you do is fry ‘em up in…” Rage thinks,
“stuff.”
    “There are potatoes on the menu, sir, oven-roasted in oleeve
oil, thyme and zee salt?”
    Rage clenches his fists together, black skin banding white
around gold rings. Here we go.
    Every time I have been in a public place with Rage there has
been an angry, dramatic scene—a walkout, a storm-off, physical
violence on more than one occasion. I’m not of what you’d call a
‘cheery’ disposition myself, but these guys, guys like Rage, you
wonder how they do it. What does it take to wake up every morning
already furious, and for that anger to increase steadily during the
course of every single fucking day ! He lives in a world
where every possible encounter—from parking the car, to buying a
pint of milk, to eating