Girl Meets Boy - Ali Smith [16]
I don’t see why he can’t just pretend to find it funny like the rest of us have to.
(Maybe he is gay.)
So what about that other work experience girl, then? Norman is saying when I get back through. The one who’s not Chantelle. What about work-experiencing her?
I’ve other things in mind, Dominic says looking at me.
I look above his eyes, at his forehead. I can’t help noticing that both Dominic and Norman have the exact same haircut. Norman goes to the bar and comes back with a full wine bottle. He and Dominic are drinking Grolsch.
I can’t drink all that, I say. I’m only out for one or two, I’ve got to get back.
Yes you can, Norman says. He fills the glass up past the little line, right to the very top, so that it’s almost spilling over onto the table, so that to drink anything out of it at all I’m going to have to lean over and put my mouth to it there on the table, or pick it up with superhuman care so as not to spill it.
We’re off for a curry in a minute, Dominic says. You’re coming too. Drink it fast.
I can’t, I say. It’s Monday. There’s work tomorrow.
Yes you can, Norman says. We work too, you know.
I drink four glasses filled to the top like this. It makes them roar with laughter when I bend right down to drink it. Eventually I do it so that that’s what it will do, make them laugh.
At the restaurant, where everything smells too strong, and where the walls seem to be coming away from their skirting boards, they talk about work as if I’m not there. They make several jokes about Muslim pilots. They tell a long complicated joke about a blind Jewish man and a prostitute. Then Brian texts Dominic to say he can’t come. This causes a shouted dialogue with him down the phone about Chantelle, about Chantelle’s greggy friend, and about whether Chantelle’s greggy friend is there with Chantelle right now so that Brian can ‘watch’. Meanwhile I sit in the swirling restaurant and wonder what the word greggy means. It’s clearly a word they’ve made up. It makes them really laugh. It makes them laugh so much that people round us are looking offended, and so are the Indian people serving us. I can’t help laughing too.
The word seems to mean, on the whole, that they don’t think the other work experience girl wears enough make-up to work, regardless of the fact she’s sixteen and should really know how to by now, as Norman says. That she wears the wrong kinds of clothes. That she is a bit of a disappointment.
That she’s a bit, you know, greg, Dominic says.
I think I’m beginning to understand, I say.
I mean, take you. You exercise, and everything. You’ve got a top job, and everything. But that doesn’t make you a greg. That bike you’ve got. You can get away with it, Norman says.
So the fact that I look all right on a motorbike means I’m not a greg? I say.
They both burst out laughing.
So it means unfeminine? I say.
I’d like to see her gregging, Norman says looking at me. You and that good-looking little sister of yours.
They roar with laughter. I am beginning to find the laughter a bit like someone is sandpapering my skull. I look away from the people all looking at us. I look down at the tablecloth.
Aw. She doesn’t like not knowing the politically correct terms for things, Dominic says.
Greggy greggy greggy. Use your head, Norman says. Come on. Free associate.
Dreggy? I say. Something to do with dregs?
Getting there, getting there, Norman says.
Go on, give her a clue, Dominic says.
Okay. Here’s a great big clue. Like the man at the BBC, Norman says.
What man? I say.
The man who got the sack for Iraq, who used to run the BBC until he let people say what they shouldn’t have, out loud, on the news, Norman says.
Um, I say.
Are you retarded? Greg Dyke. Remember? Dominic says.
You mean, the work experience girl is something to do with Greg Dyke? I say.
They both laugh.
You mean, she says things out loud that she shouldn’t? I say.
She’s, like, a thespian, Norman says.
A what? I say.
A lickian, Norman says. Well, she looks like one.
Like that freakshow