In some ways, it almost felt fitting that this sputum glob of a day should have such a rancid fucking ending.
* * *
I’d hoped that seeing Saint walking out of a police station would feel a tiny bit satisfying. It would mean that at least his actions had mildly inconvenienced him.
Temporarily.
Though probably not as much as they’d inconvenienced Celvestune Primary School, the arresting officers, the staff at the police station, anybody who’d been unfortunate enough to be put in an adjoining cell, or, for that matter, me.
“Hey.” With an infuriatingly matey smile, Saint jumped into the passenger side. I’d sort of assumed he’d be the kind of guy who insisted on driving, but thinking about it, hewasfrom a background where chauffeurs were normal. “Thanks for the pickup.”
“No problem.”
“Fucking pigs,” he said to nobody in particular.
I gave a kind of “Yeah” out of principle, but Saint didn’t seem to give a shit one way or the other.
“So,” he asked, “we on?”
“On?”
“For the reunion.” He threw actual horns. “Rancid Sputum together again.”
Keeping my eyes firmly on the road, I tried to give a measured response. “Saint”—I kept my voice as calm and level as I could manage—“of the four original members of Rancid Sputum, one is you.”
“Right.” He nodded as if that was good enough to end the conversation.
“One is dead.”
“Drawback,” Saint admitted.
“One quit music to become a primary school teacher, and when you went to see him, you punched him in the face and got arrested.”
“Part of the life. You get drunk, you get loud, somebody gets his face broken, you play the gig anyway.”
“When you’re twenty-five and in the Sex Pistols,” I agreed. “Not when you’re sixty-eight and, I’m going to keep saying this because I really think you need to adjust your expectations around it, the deputy headteacher of a primary school in Droitwich Spa.”
“You can take the man out of the metal, Luc,” Saint declared, on the basis of no evidence. “You can’t take the metal out of the man.”
Eyes on the road. Eyes on the road. We were on the M40 now, and if I played it smart, I’d make it home without either one of us strangling the other.
I didn’t play it smart. “One,” I said, “I’m pretty sure that’s meaningless. Two, he didn’t agree to do the gig. And neither did Richard.”
In my peripheral vision, I caught the look of shock on Saint’s face. “Not Jism too. There’s no way.”
“Please at least call him Rik.”
Saint, as ever, wasn’t listening. “I’m telling you, Luc, if you knew Jism like I know Jism, you wouldn’t swallow it.”
I gritted my teeth. “For the last time, Richard Smoddle—much like Michael Giffard—doesn’t want to be in Rancid Sputum anymore. He doesn’t think there’s anything in it for him.”
“But what about the music?”
This was beyond exasperating. I’d failed to save my job, and now I was having to save the ego of the man I’d failed to save my job from. “He doesn’tcareabout the music, Saint. Also—and there really isn’t a nice way to put this, so I’m going to have to stop trying—he fucking hates you.”
“Jism?” said Saint, unbelieving.
“Yes. Rik Jism hates you. Properly, actually, seriously thinks-you’re-a-terrible-person-style hates you.”
