Free Reheated Cabbage by Irvine Welsh Page A

from the garage. He resented the city boy, not just for fucking a girl he had sexual designs on (after all, he had sexual designs on almost any girl), but because Devlin had threatened to baseball-bat him after he'd caught Jimmy stealing some crisps.
    It had to be said, though, that Shelley was pure class. Jimmy knew that from the time at the chippy when he had offered to buy her chips; she had asked for curry sauce on them. It was these wee touches that marked out the top manto from the park-and-ride brigade. But this aliens baws, though, it got on his nerves. That was how that Alan Devlin was riding her, getting her head messed up with all that shite.
    Glue had always been Jimmy's drug of choice. He loved the stunning rush of the vapour, the way it stuck to his lungs, catching his breath. He knew that it meant he possibly wouldn't live long, but every auld cunt in the town seemed as miserable as fuck so there seemed to him to be no real virtue in longevity. It was quality of life that counted and he considered that you were better being cunted than on a fuckin training scheme for a pittance with some red-faced tossbag shouting at you and then paying you off after two years to make way for the next dippit cunt. If any cunt couldn't see that, then, as far as Jimmy was concerned, they didn't have a fuckin brain. — The logic is inescapable, he sniggered to himself.
    — What you sayin, ya daft cunt? Semo laughed.
    — Nowt, Jimmy smiled, dropping some Airfix model glue on his tongue, enjoying the nip and sensation of asphyxiation. n, when air filled his lungs, he savoured the spinning in his head. As the throbbing in his temples receded, he squirted the rest into an empty crisp packet and went for it.
    — Pass it ower, Jimmy ya cunt, Semo moaned, guzzling a can of super lager and wincing. It tasted foul. You were better starting on the hooch until you got cunted enough no tae taste the lager, he decided. It wisnae too bad cauld, but warm . . . fuck it.
    Jimmy reluctantly passed the bag to Semo. For a brief second he felt that the ground was going to rise up and smack him in the chin, but he weathered that storm and rubbed his eyes in an attempt to restore some vision.
    Dunky was chewing on something or other.— Mind when we used tae fish here? Good times, he mused.
    — Borin as fuck but, eh? Semo said, then, with a sudden abruptness which caused Jimmy to start inside, asked him: — Hi, you rode that Shelley yit, Jimmy? Yuv been sniffin roond it enough.
    — Mibbe ah huv, mibbe ah huvnae, Jimmy smiled. In his fantasy they were going out together. He liked the way people were starting to associate them. He played his desire like a poker hand, flirting with his friends about his feelings for her, in a strangely deeper way than he ever did with her.
    — Some cunt wis sayin she's up the kite, Dunky said.
    — Fuck off, Jimmy snapped.
    — Jist gaun by what ah fuckin heard, Dunky replied, unconcerned. He rolled over, feeling the blazing sun bite into his face.
    — Dinnae fuckin spread aroond stories, right, Jimmy dug in. He knew it was that cunt Clint, with his big mouth. He could see Clint's huge, loose, slavering gob, just before Semo had shut it so deliciously with that hammer. He could see Alan Devlin, shouting at him to put they fuckin crisps back. He could see, in his mind's eye, the smiles Devlin got from the girls, including Shelley, and how powerless they seemed to be to do anything but giggle with a sexy nervousness under his patter. Jimmy had tried Devlin's style, but it never hit the mark, not in the same way. He felt like a little girl secretly putting on her mother's dress.
    — Aye, right, Dunky scoffed.
    Dunky wasn't really making an issue of it, but Jimmy was. He stood up and jumped on top of his friend, pinning him to the ground. He grabbed a handful of Dunky's red hair and twisted. — Ah sais dinnae fuckin spread roond stories! Right?
    In the background Jimmy could hear the encouraging wheeze of Semo's low,