Reversed Forecast Read Online Free PDF Page A

fingers and the pale hair on the back of his knuckles, his mind raced on with as much enthusiasm as if it had never paused. Blood in my nostrils, dried blood, like paint .
    He often lost all track of time. His life was a strange mixture of time-using (demonstration) and time-wasting (remonstration).
    He has many opinions, his own opinions, and he has many faults. The chief one is intolerance. He sees himself as an anarchic bob-a-job man - doing favours, splitting hairs, trading down. Always down. He is unusual in that his intolerance and his pureness of vision haven’t made him into boot-boy, a Tory or a fascist. He is the opposite of these things; is ceaselessly, peacelessly contrary.
    My life. What fucking life? No life. Low life .
    He has a terror of involvement, of commitment - to places, tothings. He won’t be held culpable or responsible, will only represent one view: his own view. He thinks the world, everything, is stupid.
    Stupid!
    During the course of his twenty-nine years, he has never seen any purpose in dedicating himself to traditionally worthy or helpful occupations. He refuses to give over his considerable powers to anything specifically useful. His prime, twin attributes of determination and energy have never been expressed constructively. If they are - and of course he thinks that they are - he has a definition of ‘constructive’ which is all his own.
    He survives on a diet of grand gestures, obnoxiousness and guile.
    Only one thing blots his anarchic copy-book. It is a simple thing. He is full of love. So full of love - indiscriminate, luminous, pulsating, unremitting - that it threatens to make him weak, to make him burst, to make him give in, completely. To what, though? He doesn’t know.
    The strange thing about love, Vincent decided, studying the white flecks on the pink moons of his nails, is that it starts off as one thing, and comes out as something altogether different.
    His arresting officer pushed open the cell door and walked in. ‘Your bail’s been settled.’
    I love this man, Vincent thought, but it’ll come out some other way.
    He looked up from his hands. ‘Fucking bail. What a joke.’
    ‘Yeah, very funny.’
    He stood up. ‘Can I go?’
    ‘Sign a couple of papers and you’re a free man, for the time being, anyway. So long as you don’t behave like a lunatic again before your court case.’
    Vincent smiled. ‘Well, that’s hardly too much to ask for, is it now?’
    When he caught sight of Ruby she was leaning against the reception desk reading a pamphlet about the police cadets. She looked up as the door swung back and slammed behind him. He thought, My God, she’s a push-over. The best kind of girl.
    He pulled on his canvas jacket and said, ‘You can get me something to eat if you like.’
    Ruby picked up the pamphlet and stuffed it into her pocket. ‘I don’t think so.’
    His eyes, she noticed, were like two blue marbles. He adjusted the collar on his jacket, grinned at her and strolled outside. Ruby nodded to the constable behind the reception desk and followed him.
    She stepped into the afternoon sunlight and saw him disappearing into a burger bar over the road. She crossed cautiously and followed him in. He beckoned to her from the counter. ‘How about buying me a burger and a drink?’
    ‘Why should I?’
    ‘Because you’re loaded.’
    She scowled at him. ‘How did you work that one out?’
    ‘I want a burger, a Coke and some chips.’
    The counter girl flinched at the mention of the word ‘chip’ and then looked to Ruby for her order. Ruby sighed. ‘I’ll have a medium coffee please, with cream.’
    Vincent sauntered off and took possession of a plastic table next to the window. Ruby paid, and while she waited for the order, counted the remaining small coins in her purse. Vincent was sitting at the table and running his fingers over the cut on his hairline. The cut stretched across a bluish lump and glimmered like a red mouth. Ruby supposed that he must