Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys Read Online Free PDF

of his heart, accelerating through its gearbox. The edges of his vision were fuzzing black with deathly, velvet pleasure.
    Tembe set the pipe down gently on the surface of the table. He was all- powerful . Richer than the Iranian could ever be, more handsome, cooler. He exhaled, blowing out a great tumbling blast of smoke. The girl looked on admiringly.
    After a few seconds Masud said, ‘Good hit?’ and Tembe replied, ‘Massive. Fucking massive. Biggest hit I ever had. It was like smoking a rock as big as . . . as big as . . .’ His eyes roved around the room, he laboured to complete the metaphor. ‘As big as this hotel!’ The Iranian cackled with laughter and fell back on the divan, slapping his bony knees.
    ‘Oh, I like that! I like that! That's the funniest thing I've heard in days! Weeks even!’ The girl looked on uncomprehendingly. ‘Yeah, Tembe, my man, that has a real ring to it: the Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz! You could make money with an idea like that!’ He reached out for the pipe, still guffawing, and Tembe tried hard not to flatten his fucking face.
    At home, in Harlesden, in the basement of the house on Leopold Road, Danny kept on chipping, chipping, chipping away. And he never ever touched the product.

FLYTOPIA
    ’Ending up as I am with animals and alcohol, one of her last friends, when she was losing her faculties, was a fly, which I never saw but which she talked about a great deal and also talked to. With large melancholy yellow eyes and long lashes it inhabited the bathroom; she made a little joke of it but was serious enough to take in crumbs of bread every morning to feed it, scattering them along the wooden rim of the bath as she lay in it, much to the annoyance of Aunt Bunny, who had to clear up after her.‘
    J. R. ACKERLEY
    My Father and Myself
    I n Inwardleigh, a small, Suffolk town which had been marooned by the vagaries of human geography, left washed up in an oxbow of demography, run aground on the shingle of a failing economy, and land-locked by the shifting dunes of social trends, the landlords in the three desultory pubs on the main street (the Flare Path, the Volunteer and the Bombardier) drew pints for themselves in the cool, brown, afternoon interiors of their establishments. The landlords stretched across the bars, from where they sat – feigning custom – tipped the handles of the pumps down with the heels of their hands, and then brought the glasses to their lips before the yellow foaming had subsided, before head had been separated from heart.
    In the Volunteer a lone young lad, who was skiving off from the harvest, played pool against himself. He made risky shots, banging the balls off the cushion, hazarding tight angles. He felt certain he could win.
    Jonathan Priestley, an indexer by profession, came bouncing on balled feet, out from the mouth of Hogg Lane and into the small council estate flanking the village. He savoured the anonymous character of the place, the semis’ blank, concrete-beamed facades; the pebble-dashed lamp standards; the warmed gobs of blue-black tarmac in the dusty, spore-filled gutters. Savoured it, and thought to himself how it was that while in turning in on themselves some places achieve character, Inwardleigh had been visited only with anonymity.
    In the windows of Bella's Unisex, Jonathan observed a young woman. She wore a blue, nylon coverall, elaborately yet randomly brocaded with the abandoned hairs of a sector of the population. She was sitting in one of the battered chairs, head tilted back against the red vinyl headrest, and as Jonathan passed by he saw her reach up to pluck, pull and then deftly snip at a lock of her own. He sighed, shifted the strap of the small rucksack he carried from one arm to the other, tried whistling a few notes through gummy lips, abandoned the attempt, proceeded.
    Jonathan tripped on down the main street. His socks had peristalsized themselves down into the ungy, sweaty interior of his boots. He passed