“Nothing.”
Ivan frowned. “Your boy, he speak for first time in forever, and you say nothing?”
“I know, I know. I wanted to, believe me, but, well, I couldn’t.”
“Why you couldn’t?”
“I was too shocked, I guess. I wasn’t expecting it. And anyway, I was wearing the costume.”
“The rat?”
“The panda.”
“I thought you not want Will to know you are rat now? Panda. Whatever.”
“I don’t,” said Danny. “That’s why I couldn’t say anything. I was in the park and I saw Will getting beaten up by some older kids so I ran over to help. He said thanks, I said nothing, and he hasn’t spoken a word since. I don’t know what to do. What if he doesn’t speak again? What if that was it?”
“Is easy,” said Ivan. He pulled out a foil-wrapped parcel from the plastic bag he was carrying and gave it to Danny. The Cross-Eyed Goat was the only pub Danny knew of where foil-wrapped parcels were frequently exchanged without anybody batting an eyelid. “Tell him he cannot eat cake until he speak again. If he does not speak, you eat all the cake. Is win-win for you.”
Danny smiled. “Thanks, Ivan.”
Offensively loud Ukrainian pop music began to blast from Ivan’s pocket. He fished out his phone, looked at the screen, and cursed before answering. Ivana yelled at him for a solid sixty seconds, her voice so loud that it woke one of the locals, who lifted his head from the table and looked around in a daze with a beer mat stuck to his cheek.
“I have to go,” he said when Ivana hung up on him midsentence. “Do not worry about Will. He talk once, he talk again. You will see.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Danny. “Enjoy the Bake Off.”
“I rather bake my yaytsya,” muttered Ivan as he ducked out into the night.
The door had barely stopped swinging when in walked Mr. Dent. Reg hobbled in behind him as the sound of scraping chairs and nervous whispers filled the room. Everybody looked scared, even the people who made a living scaring other people. Danny eyeballed the fire exit, wondering if he could make it in time.
“The usual, is it, Reg?” shouted Charlie, the landlord.
“And another for young Daniel here,” said Reg as he slowly made his way over to Danny’s table. He handed his crutches to Dent and carefully lowered himself onto the stool that Ivan had recently occupied. Dent remained standing, looming over them like an overzealous chaperone.
“That’s very kind of you, Reg, really, but I was actually just—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Charlie arrived with a pint for Danny and a flamboyant cocktail for Reg that contained, among other things, a miniature paper umbrella, a colorful curly straw, a cherry in the middle, and a big wedge of pineapple on the rim of the glass. It didn’t look like a drink so much as a cheap package holiday to Cancún.
Reg picked up his cocktail and clinked it against Danny’s glass.
“I do love a good piña colada,” he said, his lumpy tongue slithering around his lips after slurping on his curly straw. “Not a lot of people know this, but the secret to a good piña colada’s in the coconut, ain’t it, Dent?”
Mr. Dent nodded, being an obvious expert in such matters.
“See, most people use coconut milk, but a real piña colada’s made with something called Coco López. It comes from Puerto Rico, not easy to find around here, but Charlie imports it special. He’s good like that.”
Reg took another sip while Danny tried to figure out exactly where this conversation was heading.
“Reminds me of my younger days,” said Reg with a groan of nostalgia. “Sitting in the sun by the sea, watching the girls go by.”
“In Puerto Rico?” said Danny, surprised that Reg had been farther than Slough, never mind San Juan.
“Brighton, Dan, keep up.”
“Brighton. Right.”
“It was a bit like Puerto Rico back then, though, depending on who you got mixed up with.”
Reg plucked the pineapple from the rim and noisily sucked the flesh from the skin.
“I ever tell you how I ended up on crutches, Daniel?” he said.
“No, Reg,” said Danny, his hands sliding over his knees as if he feared a physical demonstration.
“It was a bouncy castle that did it.”
Danny nodded. Then he frowned.
“You fell off a bouncy castle?” he said.
“No, Danny, you pillock, I did not fall off a bouncy castle. I owned a bouncy castle.”
“Yes. Sorry. I thought—”
“The Boogie Bounce, it was called. Shit name, I know, but that was the seventies for you. Everything was groovy this and boogie that. Anyway, there was this fairground near the beach with all the usual fairground bollocks. You know, coconut tosses, bumper cars, cotton candy, that sort of stuff. It ain’t there no more, but it used to be quite popular, back in the day.”
He pulled the umbrella from his cocktail and licked it clean before using the end as a toothpick.
“The place was owned by Harry McGuire, right nasty piece of work he was. Big Gypsy bastard, you know the type, mouth full of gold and fingers full of rings. Rings very much like these, come to think of it.” He held up his hands to reveal his brash collection of signets, sovereigns, and affiliations, one of which had Harry McGuire’s initials etched into it.
Danny pretended to admire the mobile museum of ill-gotten gains.
“I rented a plot off old Harry McG, a prime piece of real estate between the bumper cars and the carousel. It was right near the entrance, so everybody had to walk past it on their way in and out of the fairground, which was good news for me but bad news for the parents, ’cos there ain’t a kid in the world who can walk past a bouncy castle without wanting to kick their shoes off. The plot cost me an arm and a leg, but I was raking in so much dough in that first month that I could have paid for the next year up front if only I’d been smart about it. Being a daft sod in my twenties with more money than sense, however, I did what any daft sod in their twenties would do and I spent the fucking lot of it. June of seventy-four was a hell of a month, Dan, let me tell you. Never had one like it, before or since.”
Reg swirled his straw around and smiled into his drink as if he’d just stirred up some long-forgotten memories.
“Course, I wasn’t to know that the shittiest summer since the dawn of time was just around the corner, otherwise I might have put a little bit aside for a rainy day, or, as it turned out, a whole fucking season. The Dreaded Dresden Drizzle, that’s what the papers called it. Fuck knows why Dresden. I think they just wanted to blame Germany. Hating the krauts was still pretty hip back in those days. You couldn’t even call a German shepherd a German shepherd without looking like some kind of Nazi sympathizer, you had to call it an Alsatian, as if sympathizing with the French was any better. Anyway, whatever. June was a scorcher, but then July comes around and it’s wetter than a beaver’s sweater. Still, not to worry, I thought, it’ll clear up eventually. But four weeks pass and suddenly it’s August and it’s still fucking pouring down, and then before you know it we’re into September and guess what?”
“Still raining?” said Danny.