Free The Dreams of Max & Ronnie by Niall Griffiths

wants me to break an arm today . Or they’ll say: I’ve got to hang up now, I’ve got to keep me line clear cos I’m expecting a call from the Emperor . Max is not really in the habit of enjoying the product he pushes but sometimes he will allow himself an indulgence, and on these occasions he likes to have several of his men around him for company and protection. Whoever forms this retinue will not ask payment for the service.
    â€“ I want to go on a pussy-hunt tomorrow, Max declared one night. – Haven’t dipped it for weeks.
    So the next morning he set out with his crew to the pub-lined thoroughfare in the centre of the city that terminates in an old warehouse, now a night-club called Rome, in a dark and secret corner of which Max liked to, as it were, set up shop. All day they drank in that road’s pubs and bars and it was the height of summer and hot and, whilst some of his men partook of the pills and powders that would counteract the soporific effects of the alcohol and heat, Max on this occasion did not, on the lookout for sex as he was, so it was a sleepy Emperor that sat hidden in the corner booth of Rome at dusk, and, despite the pounding music and flashing lights, fell asleep. His boys sat around him to protect him from any thieves or malice-hearted rivals and one rolled up his gold-piped Kappa jacket into a pillow and slid it, with care, under the Emperor’s slumbering head.
    And there he had a dream, Max did, a detailed and vivid dream. He dreamt that he was travelling through the country that lay beyond his city’s borders, a place he’d never visited, and had never had any wish to, but that he knew existed because of the stories he’d heard and pictures he’d seen. It was a place of mountains and crags and lakes and water-falls. He was moving over a plain towards a jagged rim of blue mountains and he stopped at an estuary over which he could see a walled town with a great castle and many tall towers. Between himself and the town however was a large group of men who he knew to be enemies; they looked like him, a little, and wore the type of clothing that he was familiar with, and stood around or leaned out of vehicles of a type that he’d himself been in many times over, but they spoke a language that he’d heard yet did not know and they eyed him warily and with aggression and exuded a general air of fierce unwelcome. Then the dream flipped and he was in a car traversing a bridge onto an island, through crags so high they had their heads in clouds and which seemed to him repellent, accustomed as he was to his city with its reliable roads and solid buildings. He saw a plain and a forest. He saw a river and another castle. This was the country that lay beyond the boundaries of what he knew and the country, he’d been told time and time over, to which he belonged; yet it felt to him wholly alien. His dream-self entered the castle. A golden hall. Golden gleaming tiles, which his dream-self thought must be valuable and wondered if they could be prised away and flogged on. Everything was golden. He was dazzled and had to squint. He saw two shaven-headed lads on a couch playing on a games console and whilst he couldn’t see the screen he noticed that their handsets shone golden too. He wanted this wealth. He deserved this wealth. In the real world, his docklands flat and his designer clothing and expensive accoutrements and appliances meant nothing here. This was where he belonged. The lads were wearing fine clothes, silk shirts and huge sovereign rings, thick gold ropes around their necks with little gold boxing gloves attached. Trainers so white and pristine they hurt the eye. At the end of the hall, on a throne, sat another man festooned with golden ropes and rings and trinkets; he was grinning, and even his teeth were gold. There was a quality of great success about him; a quality which the two lads (the dream-Max intuited), and Max himself,