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before I threw up.
    I made motions to Peggy. He brought me another large one and I took my time with the first mouthful. I made it last long enough for it to make my eyes water and my chest burn. I didn’t drink a lot but I drank regularly so I made sure that what I drank was clean and relatively harmless. That’s why I stuck to vodka: no hangovers to stop me wanting to get out of bed and do my daily workout. And that was something I never missed. Christ, at school the only athletics I’d ever concentrated on was keeping one step in front of the teachers. I’d thought physical fitness was for thick idiots. But it was like a lot of attitudes you had at school; they were the other way round once you’d left. Like in this case. I’d started doing judo classes when I was seventeen. And funnily enough the classes had been in the gym at my old school, the same place I’d skived off everything that had been shoved at me for the previous five years. And nowadays it wasn’t just judo, thanks to the Palestine police, it was armed hand-to-hand combat as well, plus the daily workouts, twice a day, in the evenings and in the mornings. The difference being of course, that nowadays, there was a reason for everything. A purpose. A purpose that had come with the respect for myself that I’d discovered, the discovery of the importance of respect for self, the power it engendered through the discipline of self. Since I’d discovered I’d become someone new. Whole. Everything worked, instead of just bits of me. And because I functioned properly, my success was effortless, like my body. I couldn’t fail because my mind and my body were tuned to succeed. It was simple. Literally, the healthy mind in the healthy body. The disciplined mind in the disciplined body. I smiled. If the P.T. master could see me now.
    A movement across the other side of the bar caught my eye. It was the couple getting up to leave. The man stood to let the girl get out of the booth. I looked into his face and immediately I was aware that I knew him. But I didn’t know who he was. In fact the face was so familiar the recognition had jolted me. It was like seeing a T.V. star in the street; the initial reaction was surprise that you remembered someone you didn’t actually know, and then when you realised who they were, that explained everything and you felt stupidly embarrassed. But in this case it was a matter of recognising someone without knowing who the hell they were.
    The girl continued to drift over to the exit. The man went over to the bar to get some cigarettes. The girl waited in the doorway and looked at the man while he opened the packet, took out a cigarette and lit up. Then he threw the match into an ashtray on the bar and began to walk towards the girl. Head forward, shoulders bowed, walking on the balls of his feet. The walk. The walk was even more recognisable than the features. The last time I’d seen that walk was seventeen years ago. Marching out of assembly on the last day of school, three boys away. With his usual mates tagging on. The handsome hair flowing off the clever confident face. Striding out to meet the future his parents were going to pay for. I wondered what he’d made of it.
    Peter Knott.
    I hadn’t seen him since that day.
    I wondered what he’d made of it.
    Had he done as well as me? He should have. He’d had the start.
    I looked at my watch. There was time.
    I drank my drink and got up to leave.
    KNOTT
    The wipers whirred and I wondered for the hundredth time what I was doing, driving this silly cow to my studio to weave her into my web. And yet I always wondered and the wondering never did any good. It was like masturbation! Each time you finished you told yourself that that was it, that was the last time, it’s never as good as you imagine it’s going to be so why bother? But the next time you got a hard on it was always straight to the toilet for a quick one off the wrist. Sometimes it was just to stave off depression