Free The Blueprint by Marcus Bryan

used to do when they woke up, and
says:
    ‘Cheers,
Dorian.’
    She takes a
couple of forkfuls, and washes them down with a sip of her wine. I
neck half my glass, and follow it up with a gulp of onion
bhaji.
    ‘Are we going
out tonight, then?’
    ‘Nah,’ she
answers through a yawn, looking like she’s a few seconds away from
passing out into her curry. I’m getting sleepy just watching her.
Maybe I should just stay in tonight, and contentedly fall
asleep on the sofa with Liz. Then again, maybe I should just switch
from wine onto something with caffeine and vodka in it.
    ‘What do you
fancy doing, then?’ I ask.
    ‘Dunno; can’t
we just watch, erm…whatever show this is?’ she replies,
blearily.
    I look up at
the TV. She must’ve rolled onto the remote control when she fell
asleep.
    ‘What, the
“Channel not available” screen?’
    ‘Yeah…’ she
murmurs, reaching out to put her fork back on her plate and falling
over the armrest again. ‘Sorry…I had to spend the last three nights
at the library, doing this…ess…ay…’
    The effort
becomes too much, and her eyelids slam shut. I smile at her for a
second, then wolf down my last few bites of dinner. Johnny left his
duvet down here when we were playing Xbox last night, so I cover
her up with that. Then, making sure my wallet is safely crammed in
my back pocket, I give myself a quick once-over in the mirror, give
Liz an affectionate pat on the noodle, and head out into the cold
and unforgiving Tyneside night.
    I would like
to stipulate, before I continue, that Liz just happened to fall
asleep of her own accord. I did not, surprisingly enough, follow
Charlie’s advice and slip her some sleeping pills. Would I have
still gone off to the gig if she hadn’t? I don’t know, to be
honest, but I do know I was glad that fate intervened and I
didn’t have to make the decision myself.
     
    The Governor’s
Arms is more packed than I’d expected. While I’m standing in the
queue, I’m half cursing Charlie for being good enough to draw a
crowd that queues up to see him, and half telepathically
apologising for expecting the place to be as dead as an Eastern
European at the end of a heist movie. Once I make it inside I
decide that my apology was premature, however, because no-one in a
half-respectable musical outfit would be seen dead in this place.
Broken glass crunches under-foot from the last month-or-so’s bar
fights, and that familiar, terrifying sense of unpredictability
hangs in the air around me - along with, I notice, what smells like
either old men’s farts or gone-off beer. Johnny and Fred are
nowhere to be seen amongst the debris. Amps and guitars are
scattered around the stage, but their players are absent. I’m
starting to wonder whether I’ve missed the gig itself. I check the
time on my phone. Half-ten. Charlie said they’d be starting at half
nine, ten. He’s either pushing the whole rock-star tardiness thing
a bit too far or he got bottled off after a couple of songs.
Neither would surprise me, to be honest. I’m not saying Charlie’s a
bad guitar player, far from it, but he also left himself two hours
to hang around in the pub before he was scheduled to go on, and his
level of impulse control is roughly on par with an old man who
masturbates at the back of a movie theatre.
    Deciding that
I’d rather give him the benefit of the doubt for at least one drink
than walk half-an-hour through the sleet back to the house, I go
over to the bar. I intend to order myself a pint, remembering the
old student adage of Wine then beer, naught to fear . Or was
it Beer then wine, and you’ll be fine ? I suppose it doesn’t
really matter, since I’ve got a couple toes over the tipsy/battered
boundary already. Whichever of the rhymes is correct, I doubt I’ll
be fine, and that fills me with fear. When the barman comes over, I
reconsider my plan and order a shandy instead. Wine then shandy,
you’ll be just dandy. The barman gives me a disgusted look