Worst. Person. Ever. Read Free Page A

everyone on earth loves this song.
    “And? And what comes next, Raymond!?”
    Jesus fucking Christ. “
But even then I knew I’d find a much better place, either fucking with or without you.
”
    “Louder!”
    “But even then I knew I’d find a much better place, either with or without you.”
    “Raymond! You are a man redeemed. Next line!”
    “
But now I think it’s time I live my life on my own, I guess it’s just what I must do.
”
    “Louder! All together now … One, two three …”
    In stereo: “But now I think it’s time I live my life on my own, I guess it’s just what I must do!”
    “Very good, mate.” Neal let me go to sprawl beside him.
    We lay there on the street, drunk with song. I looked over my left shoulder to see a pair of pigeons bobbing towards us. I was feeling oddly philosophical. “Neal,” I said, “what the fuck is it with pigeons, anyway?”
    “What do you mean, Ray?”
    “I mean, how many fucking crumbs can there be on this street—or any other given street in the world?”
    “Go on, Ray. I’m listening.”
    “I mean, it’s not like there’s a mobile croissant-shredding machine that trundles about the city strewing fresh, delicious crumbs all over the place just to feed pigeons.” A pigeon ventured close to my face, cooing dementedly. I blew at it and it skittered away. “And yet look at the little monsters everywhere: very plump, likely juicy, too.”
    “Very roastable indeed.”
    “Not only are these pigeons plump, Neal, they shit like leaf blowers, and they do all of this on a diet of, essentially, nothing.”
    “Makes you think, Ray.”
    “It does, doesn’t it, Neal?”
    The mood down on the sidewalk was relaxed now. I caught a whiff of piss. “Christ, just smell the piss here. What is wrong with this city? Someone couldn’t wait seventeen extra seconds to find a shrub or a loo?”
    “You should give urine a chance, Ray. You’re reflexively negative about it. Think of all those people in India chugging down bottles of urine every day. Piss is practically a food group over there, it is.”
    “Neal, there’s a reason it’s called piss—it’s because your body doesn’t want it inside you anymore. If we were meant to drink piss, it’d come out of tits. Think about it.”
    “Good point, Ray.”
    “Thank you. Just one question, Neal …”
    “Yes, Ray?”
    “A minute ago, when you were talking about giving your hair a name and all that—were you serious?”
    “Good God, no. People expect crazy people to ham it up, so I give what I think the audience wants. But I can see you understand me, Ray. I’d never try a stunt like that on you again.”
    “Thank you for your refreshing candour.”
    Neal stood up, looming over me on the diseased concrete. “Okay now, Ray, stop being a cunt to the world, and the world will stop being a cunt to you.”
    And with that, Neal was gone.
    Kind of liked him, actually.

03
    I got home to my cramped top-floor flat in my building, a forgettable heap with about as much visual magnificence as Margaret Thatcher’s morning coffee dump. Unwashed dishes in the sink had gone bacterial and were on the brink of growing fur. Six light bulbs in the room needed replacing. I suppose, were I to wax poetic, the absence of pets or loved ones amplified my sense of aloneness in the universe.
    The phone rang: “Hi, Ray. It’s Tabitha from Fi’s office. She wanted me to prep you for Kiribati.”
    Tabitha!
Tabs! Fi’s gofer, a sweet delicate fawn. But the question in my mind about Tabs is: Has, or has not, Fiona tongue-nabbed Tabs in the ladies’ room in between her PowerPoint casting suggestions for a Ford Fiesta commercial or the Afghanistan war or God-only-knows what other appalling clients? “Hi, Tabs. What do I need to know?”
    “Do you have a valid passport?”
    “I do. I never know when an overseas gig might come up.” Implicit in this?
Raymond Gunt is a man of the world.
    “Okay, good. Umm. Like, ummm. Well …”