Free Keys of Babylon by Robert Minhinnick

places like that. Or, rather, you do. The failed and the flakey. The ugly and the deformed. The men whose first instinct, even at that time in the morning, is violence.
    Most especially the women. The women will be few but they will be noticed first.These are women who by their very presence are exposed immediately as beyond salvation. Because walking into a place like that is an admission of guilt. Or desperation. Being seen there incites a verdict. For a woman, the walk up that pathway, out of the car park and past the dented keg, over the fag ash thick as cinders, is a long road.
    Eight a.m. the blackboard said. It was 8.05 when I first stepped in. Yet the place was full. I’d say it was seething. But not like a workmen’s café at that time, when there’s a frenzy to life. Where you see men in plaid shirts starting enormous breakfasts. Swigging tea out of white enamel. All the coming, the going, the familiarities. In a café, there’s an expectation for the day. Unimaginable things are going to happen. Fateful things.
    But at the Seagull Room it’s a different busyness. The act of entering says this is the day’s highlight. Reached already. That this will be for you, the one who dares enter, the best part of that day. Before even the school buses have appeared. The locks drawn in the banks.
    When I went in I was carrying two plastic bags, my coat over my shoulder because it was already warm, and I had a three-inch bolster in a side pocket of my jeans. Heavy, blue steel. Edge of brickdust on it. Scabs of concrete. But I’d recently had it under the grinding wheel and there was no burring on the blade. It’s not something you’d want waved in your face. Which, I’m afraid, I had to do last week. To some waster. Some wanker.
    I was on the hill going down towards the fairground. They call that stretch the Ghetto. It was about eleven, throwing-out time, and I was just wandering off to watch the waves. What’s wrong with that? Maybe buy chips. Then out of this alley come three of them. Two kids and their dad. It was obviously their dad. Stubbies of Stella in their hands, so not hard up. Money to piss away.
    One of the kids shoulder-barged me off the pavement. For no reason. Believe me, I was sober and I was orderly. He was only a kid, but it hurt and I stumbled. The three of them laughed, but I had the bolster out in a second and under the father’s chin. Blue steel, like I said. Heavy in the hand. Serious heft.
    Okay, that was a stupid thing to do. But you can’t let yourself become a target. I learned that a long time ago. He was fat, clean shaven, the father. Nice white shirt, properly ironed. And he smelled of cologne. As sweet as a lemon. As it was dark he couldn’t have known what I was holding. Only that there was a cold blade against his Adam’s apple. A very big blade. Something immediately dangerous.
    I looked into his face and ignored the boys. Boys? Eighteen, twenty. Big, drunk, unutterably ignorant. They could have floored me then and there. Imprinted their trainers on my face. But they froze. Surprised by the unexpected. By my reaction. And dulled by the booze.
    Hey, all right, he laughed. The fat man laughed but I could hear the shock in his voice. The fear. Sorry, butt, he said. Only messing like. It’s all right.
    And they walked off. Slowly, but they left. Swearing, red-faced, bollocky men. Dad bandy-legged as a pitbull in his powder-blue, low-crotched Levi’s, his riveted belt, the Samoan tattoos on his arms. Yes, some role model. Dad dragging his sons away. I expected them to throw the bottles but it didn’t happen. What they aimed at me were the usual words. And unlike glass they were impossible to avoid.
    Ten minutes later I was down on the esplanade. The sea was under the railings. And I was shaking. I was nearly crying too, then laughing, then everything together. And there was the bolster in my pocket. A dead weight. A deadly