SAMMY SEES HIS FUTURE

How did it start, this unhealthy interest of mine? What was I looking for, or at least what was I missing that this dangerous man would play such an important part in my life.  Clearly, I know the moment in time when I first became aware of him, the Professor, but I am not at all sure I know why and how it became such an obsession. It wasn’t just the fear that I felt, it was that unfamiliar feeling of overwhelming excitement, the thrilling sense of danger, a bit like what I imagine bungee jumping or parachuting must be like, except this felt a thousand time more intense.  

Let me be clear, I am not and have never been a brave or foolhardy man.  Ever since I was young I was aware of people who were considered extraordinary.  Either extraordinarily good, like mathematicians, scientists, chess prodigies, great sportsmen. Or of course extraordinarily bad people, dangerous, scary, unafraid to confront, good with their fists.  Both groups always able to get their way one way or another, get what they wanted.  This was never me, my fate was at best to be second in command, deputy head boy, stand-in rugby team captain. “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be”. I was, I thought comfortable with my lot, my ordinariness, a reasonable but not spectacular set of A-Levels, a 2.1 from a pretty good university, a group of friends that could be relied upon as long as nothing better was around. But, I realised soon after leaving university that this ordinary life that I was drifting into was not the life I had imagined as a child. No great future to aspire to, nothing tangibly interesting, nothing to make it a life well lived.  It was like dragging myself through a treacle of boredom and quiet desperation.  

I was drifting between dead end jobs, with no real future and had ended up working  in a shop selling what it euphemistically called “reproduction” mid century furniture but was in fact cheap lookalikes of classic designs, sold at impressively high prices. Impressive that is if anyone ever came in and bought anything. I had got the job through a friend of my rather disreputable Uncle Maury.  Maury was never clear about what he actually did, but seemed to have an interest in a number of businesses, one of which was Maxwells Midcentury.  

The owner of the shop, Ronald Maxwell, known as Later on account of his reputation for never paying for anything until forced to later on, was a ferrety little man whose eyes were constantly moving as if checking all the exits.  On this day he was in the office at the back, a room I was never allowed in.  The day was as quiet as every other day.  I was idly looking through a copy of Stuff magazine when the door slid open soundlessly and the noise of the rain spattering on the pavement outside become instantly audible and slowly faded again as the door closed. My first impression of the Professor was not particularly clear.  He was a man of indeterminate age, medium height perhaps even on the small side, slightly balding, no distinguishing features as far as I could tell. He wore a rather forbidding demeanour and a plastic overcoat, still dripping from the rain and showed no signs of wanting to remove it. The drips rolled down the shiny surface and hit the floor with a rhythmic ping that rolled around the room, breaking the awkward silence that had descended.

“Can I help you?”  The man turned to me with a look of such distaste, and such severity that I inadvertently tensed ready to respond to an imagined attack.  He began to walk slowly towards one of the display items, keeping his eye levelled at me almost daring me to speak again. When he got to the item in question, a two seat beige leatherette sofa, he turned swiftly on his heel and sat.  The sofa let out a sigh as it settled around the mans rear and his face took on an appearance of mild distaste, as if the sofa itself had insulted him personally.  He started to wriggle a little, trying to find the most comfortable position, all the while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on me.  Suddenly he stood up, and moving with an almost feline grace, walked to an Eames replica lounge chair.  He sat down carefully, as if to make no impact on the leather look cover. The chair let out a rasping fart, loud enough to reverberate around the showroom followed quickly by an almost soundless growl which I realised emanated from the man himself. I could barely suppress a giggle as I asked again if I could be of any assistance.  The man rose and walked slowly towards me and in one motion he pulled a small revolver from beneath his coat and levelled it directly at my head. It felt as if I was watching this from a distance, like it was a badly scripted cop show on Channel 5 and because of that felt no fear at all. In fact I initially felt that thrill and a level of excitement I don’t think I had ever felt before.  For about 30 seconds. After which the full unreasoning panic hit me like a punch in the gut.  People who obviously don’t know, say your whole life passes before your eyes in the seconds before death like a sort of newsreel.  In this case what ran through my mind was much more mundane.  What the fuck had I done? Alright, we all go through life making mistakes and annoying people.  Was this man some nutter that I had inadvertently pissed off in the street, had I splashed him driving through a puddle in my car, or was he the father of one the few woman that I had had relationship with all of whom I suspected I had let down so badly. As a wave of nausea swept over me, my next thought was about the futility of this. Mine had been a short life so far to be sure, but it seemed such a waste to end it now, before I even had time to work out what I could do to improve, to be a better man. It could be a life of great altruism, good works accomplished, friends made, foes vanquished, instead it would end before it really began, here in this show room for overpriced copy furniture over what almost certainly was an accidental encounter with some psycho nutter that I don’t even remember! The bitter unfairness of it all started to rise like bile. 

The man looked me directly in the eye, smiled and moved the gun an inch to the left and and pulled the trigger.  

It was the noise I remember most, an ear-splitting crack filling every atom around and inside my head. Then came the smells, the first acrid and sharp like the air itself was burning, then something noisome at the back of my throat leaving a metallic taste in my mouth. Still smiling he then leaned in to me, his voice strangely high pitched with an east london twang and a distinct edge of menace, said “tell your fucking boss he should have paid his debts”.  With that the man walked past me, through the automatic doors, that opened without a murmur of concern, and out into the rainswept street. I heard a sound like a duvet falling off a bed and with the noise from the revolver still reverberating around the showroom, I turned to see Later Ron lying on the floor staring unblinking at nothing in particular, his head at a curious angle nestling in a pool of blood. I turned back and vomited copiously over a pretty good copy of Arne Jacobsen’s graceful Swan chair and collapsed on the floor.