“How do we get in?”

“Over here,” Lilian said.

I followed her voice to a gate in the fence. There was a sign on the gate that said:

“Dunton Municipal Tip. No unauthorised entry.”

“I thought municipals were kangaroos,” I said. “Are there kangaroos in the tip?”

“I don’t think so, Charlie,” Lilian said. “Can you open the gate?”

Olive Why did you want to kill yourself? [...]

Frank I wanted to kill myself [...] because I was very unhappy. [...]

Olive Why were you unhappy?

Frank Uh... Well, there are a lot of reasons. Mainly, though, I fell in love with someone who didn’t love me back.

Olive Who?

Frank One of my grad students. I was very much in love with him.

Olive Him? It was a boy? You fell in love with a boy?

Frank Yes, I did. Very much so.

Olive That’s silly.

Frank You’re right, it was silly. It was very, very silly.

Grandpa There’s another word for it.

Mom Dad!

Olive So, that’s when you tried to kill yourself?

Frank Well, no. The boy that I was in love with fell in love with another man, Larry Sugarman.

Mom Who is Larry Sugarman?

Frank Larry Sugarman is, perhaps, the second most highly regarded Proust scholar in the US.

Dad Who is number one?

Frank That would be me, Rich.

Dad Really?

Frank Mhm.

Olive So, that’s when.

Frank No. All what happened was I was a bit upset. So, I said some things that I shouldn’t have said and I did some things that I shouldn’t have done. And subsequently I was fired from my job and forced to move out of my apartment and move into a motel.

Olive And, that’s when you tried to...

Frank Well, no. Actually, all of that was okay. What happened was two days ago the MacArthur Foundation in its infinite wisdom awarded a Genius Grant to Larry Sugarman. And that’s when I...

Grandpa Decided to check out early.

Frank Yes... Yes. And I failed at that as well.

Here lies everything
The world I wanted at my feet
My victory’s complete
So hail to the king

Everything you ever

Arise and sing!

So your world’s benign
So you think justice has a voice
And we all have a choice
Well now your world is mine

Everything you ever

And I am fine

Now the nightmare’s real
Now Dr. Horrible is here
To make you quake with fear
To make the whole world kneel

Everything you ever

And I won’t feel... a thing

My mother said, ‘There are no joys
In ever kissing silly boys.
Just one small kiss and one small squeeze
Can land you with some foul disease.’

‘But Mum, d’you mean from just a kiss?’
‘You know quite well my meaning, miss.’

Last week when coming home from school
I clean forgot Mum’s golden rule.
I let Tom Young, that handsome louse,
Steal one small kiss behind my house.

Oh, woe is me! I’ve paid the price!
I should have listened to advice.
My mum was right one hundredfold!
I’ve caught Tom’s horrid runny cold!

Winslow If I had a steak... Oh, boy. A... A rare, a bloody steak. If I... If I had a steak, I would fuck it.

Wake You don’t like me cookin’? [...]

Winslow How could I possibly like the horseshit you fix us for supper?

Wake You’re drunk, or ye wouldn’t be saying that! [...]

Winslow I’m drunk? [...]

Wake You’re fond of me lobster, ain’t ye? You’re drunker than a Virginia fence. I seen it. You’re fond of me lobster. Say it. Say it. Say it!

Winslow I don’t have to say nothin’.

Wake Damn ye! Let Neptune strike ye dead, Winslow! Hark! Hark, Triton, hark! Bellow, bid our father, the sea king, rise from the depths, full foul in his fury, black waves teeming with salt-foam, to smother this young mouth with pungent slime, to choke ye, engorging your organs till ye turn blue and bloated with bilge and brine and can scream no more. Only when he, crowned in cockle shells with slithering tentacled tail and steaming beard, take up his fell, be-finned arm, his coral-tined trident screeches, banshee-like in the tempest, and plunges right through your gullet, bursting ye, a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now, a nothing for the harpies and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon, only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the dread emperor himself, forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff or part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul, is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea.

Winslow All right. Have it your way. I like your cooking.

Make a Virginia fence—to walk in a swerving, unstable manner due to being intoxicated. An allusion to a kind of fence constructed of rails resting across one another in a zig-zag pattern. Chiefly used in New England.

‘Jeez,’ Charlie said, turning and looking out the back window.

Minty Fresh seemed to turn his full attention to driving safely now. ‘What the hell are those things?’

‘I call them sewer harpies. They’re the things that call to us from the storm sewers. They’re a lot stronger now than they used to be.’

‘They’re scary is what they are,’ said Minty.

‘I don’t know,’ Charlie said. ‘Have you gotten a good look at them? I mean, they got the badonkadonk out back and some fine ba-joopbadangs up front, know what I’m sayin’, dog? Buss a rock wid a playa?’ He offered his fist for Minty to buss him a rock, but alas, the mint one left him hangin’.

‘Stop that,’ Fresh said.

‘Sorry,’ Charlie said.

‘Talk Like a Playa in Ten Days or Less — Stone Thug Edition?’ Minty asked.

Charlie nodded. ‘We got the CD into the store a couple of months ago. I practice in the van. How am I doing?’

‘Your Negro-osity is uncanny. I had to keep checking to make sure you’re still white.’

‘It’s outside work, isn’t it,’ said Tam, by way of explanation.

‘So?’ I asked.

‘English people don’t like working outside, do they?’

‘Well, I’ve been out in it all day,’ I said. ‘And I’m English.’

Tam looked at me. ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But you’ve been with us, haven’t you?’

I said, ‘You shouldn’t drop litter, you know.’

‘Why not?’ said Tam.

‘Well,’ I replied. ‘You know. It looks bad, doesn’t it? Spoils the countryside and everything.’

‘That’s a load of shite and you know it,’ he said.

‘No it isn’t,’ I said. ‘You can’t just go chucking rubbish all over the place.’

‘You can if you want,’ said Tam. ‘All this stuff about litter is just English pathetic . . .’ He trailed off, and then started again. ‘This is Scotland. You’re in Scotland and these mountains have been here millions of years. It doesn’t make any difference, a few fag packets for fuck sake. That’s just English fucking pathetic shite.’

‘He’s right,’ said Richie.

‘Yeah . . . I suppose so,’ I said.

I couldn’t see any mountains.

Later that evening I sat down, once more, to plot the framework of my Great Report. The clearing I’d made on my desktop was still there, untouched and un-encroached-on—save by a small, dead moth whose corpse had landed there after whatever parachute it had put its faith in had failed. I swept it aside; and, once again, the space was pristine, perfect, blank. Tabula rasa: I pronounced the words aloud as I surveyed the leather, breathing in its smell of cut grass and detergent. Just sitting before it, above it, filled me with a sense of infinite possibility. I pictured myself as an industrialist, viewing a clearing in the forest where his factory would go; or as an urban planner, given carte blanche to design from scratch a new, magnificent cosmopolis; a mathematician, a topologist or trigonometrist, contemplating space in its most pure and abstract form; an explorer, sea-discoverer, world-conqueror from centuries gone by, standing at his prow as his dominion-to-be hove into view: this virgin territory that he would shape after himself and make his own. Placing my laptop in the middle—the exact, geometric centre—of this clearing, I opened a fresh document and stretched its borders out until it filled my screen entirely. As I did this, though, just as the document’s expanding lower boundary reached the bottom of my screen, my finger momentarily lost contact with the glide-pad; when the finger made contact again, it caused the applications docked invisibly at the screen’s base to pop up, impinging on the clean neutrality both of the screen and of my mind. Trying to hide them once more, I accidentally tapped on the docked news page, which slipped from its box, inflating as it rose, like some malicious genie, taking the screen over—and in an instant, all the extraneous clutter, all the world-debris, that I’d so painstakingly eliminated flooded back into the clearing, ruining it.

‘The human bean,’ the Giant went on, ‘is coming in dillions of different flavours. For instance, human beans from Wales is tasting very whooshey of fish. There is something very fishy about Wales.’

‘You mean whales,’ Sophie said. ‘Wales is something quite different.’

‘Wales is whales,’ the Giant said. ‘Don’t gobblefunk around with words. I will now give you another example. Human beans from Jersey has a most disgustable woolly tickle on the tongue,’ the Giant said. ‘Human beans from Jersey is tasting of cardigans.’

‘You mean jerseys,’ Sophie said.

‘You are once again gobblefunking!’ the Giant shouted. ‘Don’t do it! This is a serious and snitching subject. May I continue?’

‘Please do,’ Sophie said.

‘Danes from Denmark is tasting ever so much of dogs,’ the Giant went on.

‘Of course,’ Sophie said. ‘They taste of great danes.’

‘Wrong!’ cried the Giant, slapping his thigh. ‘Danes from Denmark is tasting doggy because they is tasting of labradors!’

‘Then what do the people of Labrador taste of?’ Sophie asked.

‘Danes,’ the Giant cried, triumphantly. ‘Great danes!’

‘Aren’t you getting a bit mixed up?’ Sophie said.

‘I is a very mixed-up Giant,’ the Giant said. ‘But I does do my best. And I is not nearly as mixed up as the other giants. I know one who gallops all the way to Wellington for his supper.’

‘Wellington?’ Sophie said. ‘Where is Wellington?’

‘Your head is full of squashed flies,’ the Giant said. ‘Wellington is in New Zealand. The human beans in Wellington has an especially scrumdiddlyumptious taste, so says the Welly-eating Giant.’

‘What do the people of Wellington taste of?’ Sophie asked.

‘Boots,’ the Giant said.

‘Of course,’ Sophie said. ‘I should have known.’