10. The Bruce Lee Legacy

A contemplative space to contemplate a sword

Friday, getting on for half one

They both contemplate for a moment. The cider has invigorated both of them in similar ways.

“Last night, though…” and Moses chuckles into his pint.

Vardaman’s eyes widen, and he starts to chuckle too.

“Yeah,” he says. “What was all that about?”

“Was there a sword at one point?” Moses says.

“Samurai sword,” Vardaman says, his eyes getting even wider. “Collector’s item. Definitely not the sort of thing a man like Aaron should have hanging on his mantlepiece.”

“What is it with drug dealers and swords? Like they have some elevated understanding of the art of war because they flip out niff to teenagers on a Friday night.”

“You ever seen Aaron kick someone’s head in?” Vardaman says.

Moses thinks on it. Not sure if he has now it comes to it.

“He does all that martial arts posturing,” Vardaman goes on. “Did you see his Bruce Lee poster in the bathroom? Framed. Enter the Dragon.”

“Good movie,” says Moses.

“Not arguing. Just suggesting Aaron isn’t admiring it for the same reasons we might, like the influence it had on the Bond franchise, or Lee’s screen presence. He’s more of a ooooooh-wow-one-inch-punch kind of guy. I saw him fight once – Aaron, not Bruce Lee – down by the underpass, big crowd of people gathered, and he looked like he was slipping around on ice, or his trousers were too tight. He did not look like Bruce Lee. Still, he put the guy in hospital. I think he ended up hitting him with a paving slab.”

“Ah, I love a martial arts purist.”

Moses takes a mouthful of cider and swallows slowly.

He’s thinking.

“I don’t want to hang out anymore with people who hit other people with paving slabs, Vardaman. Would that be okay?”

“You say that now, Moses; but you just haven’t yet come across the next degenerate motherfucker who might prove useful to you.”

Moses wants to laugh at this, take it on the chin, but it gets to him a bit deeper than that, and he just exhales as if he’s trying to breathe some of the truth of it out of his system.

“Harsh,” he says.

“Anyway,” says Vardaman, “Aaron can’t argue with the send-off we gave him. He won’t forget that in a hurry. Mad.” Vardaman winks across the table to Moses who is still half contemplating his own lack of character when it comes to who he chooses to drink with and why.

Mike the Elder is out from behind the bar, lighting up as he moves across the room, leaving young Denise in charge chewing her gum and doodling moustaches and specs on royals on the cover of the Daily Mirror, and he says across to the boys, “I have to pop down the market to get some pickled onions; if I see Aaron on my travels you want me to tell him you two are up here?”

Vardaman checks his watch.

“You won’t see him,” he says. “He’ll have been sent down by now. You won’t see him for seven-to-ten.”

“Oh no, he’s about,” Mike the Elder says. “He got off.”

“What?” Vardaman and Moses say it as one.

“Technicality,” Mike the Elder says. “Something to do with the evidence. A lightbulb or something.”

“No, that can’t be right,” Vardaman says. “They had him bang to rights. He said so himself.”

“There was no doubt in his mind,” Moses says. He sounds more panicky than Vardaman.

“What can I tell you, boys? He got off.”

Mike the Elder shrugs, clamps his cigarette between his teeth, and is out the door.

Vardaman and Moses look at each other.

“Fuck,” they say as one.