Page 56 of Pansies

But Alfie didn’t know how he was looking or how to stop. “I just don’t get how you figured all that out.”

“Well, I’m a fully qualified electrician, and I spent all my time at university doing theatre stuff before I dropped out, and I—”

“No, I mean how you knew that was what you wanted to do.”

“Oh. Well. I didn’t really. I thought I wanted to be on the stage, at first.”

“What, like an actor?”

“Mainly I wanted to be in musicals.”

Alfie didn’t mean to, but he laughed. Sort of guffawed, actually, as the plates were being cleared. “Musicals,” he repeated. And did jazz hands.

Fen flinched, then scowled. “I’ve always loved musicals. You know that. You took the piss out of me enough for it.”

Truthfully, Alfie had forgotten this too. Also he mustn’t have changed as much as he’d hoped, because he was still pretty inclinedto take the piss. “They just don’t make sense to me,” he explained. “Like, somebody will be walking down the street, and suddenly they’ll burst into song for no reason. People don’t do that.”

Fen didn’t seem impressed by this line of reasoning. “Fiction is more than mimesis, Alfie Bell.”6

“I don’t understand what any of that means.” Except when Fen used his full name. Which meant he was cross.

“An imitation of what is.”

“Okay.” Alfie thought about it a moment—though why something so bloody simple needed a massive, weird word was beyond him. “I get that stuff doesn’thaveto be realistic or whatever, but the whole singing and dancing and everybody just miraculously joining in, knowing what to do, goes too far for me. There’s no way I’m just going to be able to see that happen and not be like, ‘No, that’s daft.’”

“Fine.”

“I know I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I knowfinemeansnot fucking fine.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Their eyes met across the table, Fen’s still locked away behind pink glass. “But it obviously matters. Why won’t you explain it to me?”

“Because I hate this argument. And I hate that people always think they’re so bloody clever for not liking musicals. Andalso, I don’t want to explain it to you.”

Alfie was going to protest, but Fen had sort of hinted in the car that he was too pushy sometimes. And while there’d definitely been times being pushy had turned out okay, he could tell this probably wouldn’t be one of them. Fen didn’t have to talk to him about anything, and he definitely didn’t have to justify what he was into. Even if it was cheesy gay shit like musicals.

It was impossible to tell right now if things were going well. There were definitely moments when they were, except they were mainly sex moments or laughter moments. All of which was great, but still left a vast in-between. Maybe Fen was right. Maybe this was all too complicated. Maybe ridiculously horny (Alfie was going to carry that phrase around with him like a conker in his pocket) wasn’t enough. Not with all that anger and sadness and confusion floating around underneath it. And everything Fen didn’t want to talk about. Wouldn’t trust him with.

Even tandoori king prawn jalfrezi just the way he liked it didn’t do much to cheer him up. It should have tasted so good, but it felt like it was sinking straight down to meet wherever his words were stuck.

It was Fen, eventually, who broke the silence. “I don’t think you said what you do these days?”

He really wanted to be standoffish—to not want to talk about something right back and see how Fen liked it—but Fen was looking at him in a sweetly interested kind of way, which basically turned Alfie to rice pudding. “I work for J.D. Jarndyce, as part of the financing group.”

“You…pardon? What’s the financing group?”

“It’s kind of an umbrella term for a bunch of specialist teams who offer, like, a range of stuff.”

A pause. “What sort ofstuff?”

“The usual stuff. Like corporate finance solutions, liability management, or whatever.”

Fen’s eyes were so wide. “Alfie, are you…the wolf of Wall Street?”

That, combined with the way Fen’s expression had morphed from curiosity to astonishment, like Alfie had grown a set of antlers or something, made him laugh. It was the sort of laugh hefelt all the way to his bones. And suddenly his jalfrezi was perfect again. “Well, if you take away the fraud and the ludes and basically everything else, yes. I mean, no, not really. Some of the other guys are into all that work-hard, play-hard, snorting-coke-in-the-bogs macho crap. But I’m in equity capital markets, which is pretty civilised.”

“Holy shit.” Fen had put down his knife and fork. His hands were hovering over his mouth, like he was six years old and the Daleks were on TV. “I can’t believe it. Alfie Bell grew up and became an investment banker.”

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