Free The Glasgow Coma Scale by Neil Stewart Page B

classes?’
    ‘Oh . . . a few weeks now, I guess. Yeah, a month or two maybe.’
    She didn’t give you much to work with, this one, and he said in desperation, ‘Grand place tae come and work, eh?’ This time she didn’t even open her mouth to reply, but gave a noncommittal hum. Peculiar to think that China, though not exactly loquacious, and Dean, whom he found ridiculous, were the only folk besides Lynne he’d spoken to in a fortnight. And how quickly he had come to take Lynne’s company, her hospitality, for granted! Sure it was a privilege to use a bathroom you didn’t have to share with a dozen other soap-dodgers, yet somehow that made it especially bowfing to find one of Lynne’s unconscionably long, wiry, kinky hairs in the sink some mornings. And as much as he tried to remain grateful to her for never pressuring him to go on the broo, or find a wee temp job seeing as he was not actually disabled, even this had started to rankle. Did she not believe he
could
hold down a job? This thinking was no good, he understood, this was not grateful or noble or whatever he’d have liked to be. He couldn’t help himself.
    ‘Well
there
you are,’ came Dean’s voice, preceding the man himself, who arrived via a marine gallery adjacent, aqueous light bouncing off his peanut head. ‘We were starting to think you two had run out on us.’ He seemed to be under the impression that referring to himself in the plural might bolster his skimpy authority. ‘We’re finishing up now, unless you fancy spending the night here?’
    ‘Widnae be the worst place ah’d steiyed in ma time,’ Angus said, sniffing. Dean laughed like it was a joke. ‘Albie Day,’ he went on, taking the opportunity to showboat to China, though she wasn’t, ostensibly, paying him any heed. ‘Ye heard ay him? Used tae sneak intae places like this just before closin time and hide, so he’d get locked in after hours. He’d wait there the night then reveal himself next mornin to whoever opened up. Ta-dah! Performance art, he called it – ah’m no so sure masel.’
    ‘Day,’ mused Dean. Angus noticed that the tutor had positioned himself closer to him than to China, body-blocking him. ‘No, never heard of him, I’m afraid.’
    ‘No, well, that’s no more than the guy deserves. Horrible artist. A horrible human being full stop, come tae that.’ Dean blinked in surprise, but that was how you separated the wheat from the chaff: no artist worth his salt hesitated to slag off his peers and precursors. You had to think about the alternative: lavish praise on someone as uncontroversial as Picasso, say, and you were what, a follower, a slave. Artist, let not the word
influence
slip from your lips. As for more obscure figures, why give them the free publicity?
    China, ignored, was packing away her equipment. Angus sensed disaster a moment before it occurred: she fumbled her tin and pencils spilled across the marble floor, delicate leads shattering. He and Dean both dived to be first to help, China scrabbling up the pencils but the sketchbook slithering out then from under her arm. Trying to catch it, she seemed to lose her balance, staggered like a drunk, and Angus suffered a momentary hallucination: China toppling headlong into the display case, shattering it, letting air into the vacuum inside – struggling to her feet while the threadbare specimens in the scene, unbound from their long paralysis, stared around in astonishment . . .
    Jesus! He fought Dean off, scooped up the sketchbook and returned it to China, and she regarded him with eyes as blank as those of the creatures in the vitrine.
    ‘Well,’ Dean nearly shouted, his friendliness seemingly exhausted, ‘I’ve just got to make sure nobody’s done an Albie Day, and then we’re finished. Maybe after that—’
    Angus, who could see where this was going – we three are the real talent here, why don’t we find somewhere to hang out together – talked over him at China. ‘Want me tae walk