“It ain’t hard to boil vegetables, mate.”
“Speak for yourself.” Lenny had another bite. “Anyway, I’ve got some ideas for the dining area. How do the bigwigs feel about street art?”
Nero shrugged. “Do hipsters like it?”
“Hipster, millennials . . . anyone trying to be cooler than they really are.”
“That’ll do. What you got in mind?”
“Colour, mainly, lots of it, but I haven’t come up with anything distinct yet. Urban Soul implies by its very name that the business has an emotional, and tangible, connection to something besides the food. I need to find that connection and paint it.”
Nero didn’t know quite what to say to that. Besides, his recent run of late nights and too much beer had caught up with him, and if Lenny didn’t mind sharing the living room for a while, Nero didn’t plan on moving—or thinking—for the rest of the evening.
Shame Lenny had other ideas; he’d disappeared while Nero had been lost in thought. He was back quick enough, though, clutching a pile of sketches. “Your silence is scaring me. I think you need to see it. I haven’t come up with the main element yet, but I’ve got some basic ideas for the dining room.”
Nero sighed. “Pass ’em over.”
Lenny bit his lip and relinquished the sketches. Nero flipped through them, growing steadily more impressed with each one. “I like this. I kinda figured you’d go for the obvious urban-warehouse theme and try to make it Mediterranean with some shit tablecloths.”
“Seriously?” Lenny pouted. “You think I’m that shortsighted?”
“Er, no?”
Lenny punched Nero’s arm—hard—and attempted to prise the sketches from Nero. “That faux-warehouse shit with all the exposed pipework has been done to death, and if you must know, I thought trying to paint Vauxhall, of all places, as Little bloody Italy would be totally fucking ridiculous, especially as you’ve yet to mention anyone involved who’s actually Italian.”
It was the most Nero had ever heard Lenny say in one breath. “They have pizza in Spain too, you know, and Turkey. It ain’t just an Italian thing.”
“Whatever. They still shouldn’t try and make it something it clearly isn’t.”
With convictions like that, it was hard to believe Lenny hadn’t been working for Urban Soul from the beginning. Nero probably should’ve said as much, but didn’t, because a breath of wind from the open window fluttered through Lenny’s bundle of sketches and revealed the last few. “Jesus. Is that the bus?”
“Yup. You don’t strike me as someone who takes pictures of stuff for fun, so I assumed you wanted me to draw it.”
Lenny was more right than he knew, and the fact that he had coloured the dilapidated minibus in bright, Ninja Turtle green made Nero’s day.
“You’re doing that thing again.”
Nero studied Lenny’s last sketch. “What thing?”
“The thing where you grin like a maniac, and I can’t work out if you’re about to strangle me.”
Lenny’s tone was uncertain enough to tear Nero’s stare from the minibus, but the emotion he found in Lenny’s eyes wasn’t one he’d seen before, and it masked the impact of Lenny’s unwitting hammer blow. “You think I’d hurt you?”
“Anyone can hurt you, Nero.”
Ain’t that the truth. But Nero’s own bitter cynicism was likely the last thing Lenny needed to hear. He turned back to the bus sketches. “You know, Tom hates green. He never allows it in a restaurant, but if we can put a pizza oven in this bus and make it pay, he might just let us get away with it.”
“A pizza oven?” Lenny leaned forward, his unnerving frown all but gone. “I just played around with the outside, thought they could maybe sell it. I didn’t think of turning it into one of those food trucks. Do you really think they can?”
“Maybe.” Nero tapped the sketch. “I can probably fix up the engine if the bosses spot a bit of dosh, but they’ll do the rest—the design, the name, the concept. I’m crap at that stuff.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
Lenny scowled. “You’re so down on yourself.”
“Nah, I know my limits.”
