Free Die Tryin' by Stavro Yianni

and if it
is
, then I’m gonna go spend it on all the shit I’ve ever wanted, booze, women, and cars. Yeah, I’m gonna live it up to the fucking max. Live it up and die young, spend every last penny on my-fucking-self, ’
cos they don’t appreciate what I do for ’
em, none of ’
em, when I fix their cars after they mash ’
em up speeding down the motorway, make ’
em look like they just came out the fucking showroom, cleaning up their fucking mess! Nor that bitch of a sister! I look out for her, put my neck on the line for her, protect her from arseholes and what do I get? Blanked! Fucking blanked. Well, it ain’t fucking happening no more! I’m gonna rob that fucking old hag of all her gold, greedy bitch tucking it away like that with her when she’s brown fucking bread. Putana! All putanes! Every fucking woman on God’s Earth is a fucking putana! They’re all the same. Yeah, well they’ll see when I get my gold and I jack this shitty job in. Who’s gonna fix their fucking cars then? Huh? Bitches will be crying after me like babies and I ain’t gonna hear ’
em ’
cos I’ll be too busy rolling down the street, sipping on gin ’
n juice. Yeah, that Marco prick could be onto something here. But, I’ll have to watch him, I don’t trust the malaka. He’s probably up to something, the sly half breed fuck. Never trust a half breed—or, in his case, a full on cross breed mongrel! Like fuck he’s gonna just let us walk away with half the gold. He’ll be planning some dark skata to pull on us.
    I’ll have to keep an eye on him, ’
cos the others are too weak.
    It’s down to me.
    I’m the motherfucking man!
    He gazed at the toil and the sweat surrounding him, the harsh scrape of metal on metal screeching against his ears. Fat dirty blokes in overalls covered in grease, sweating and panting, while the
Page 3 Calendar
girl for August was wiggling her titties at them all from the wall. He wanted out of this
skata
.
Why should he bust his fucking bollocks, while everyone else got the cream?
I want my own place. I wanna be the boss, come and go as I please, get other people to work for ME!
    Nah, like the Mavro said the other night. Work is for people who didn’t know how to fish.
Well, it’s about time I learnt how to fish ain’t it, re Niko?
    He wiped his greasy hands on a rag, took out his mobile phone from the pocket of his overalls, and dialled Nick XR2 to be updated on the Marco and the jewel front.
    *****
    Nick XR2 walked into his house and glanced in the front room, just as he did every time he arrived back home. His dad was sitting in his armchair (as he always did), watching the telly, a cup of Turkish coffee in hand, his thick-rimmed glasses perched wonkily on his nose. Nick often wondered if he would one day develop the same deep OCD traits of his dad, sitting in the
same
seat every day, drinking coffee from the
same
cup, saying the
same
things whenever he saw his son. Nick put it down to the fact that his unknown older brother, Nick one, had died at the age of three. It had permanently damaged his dad, it seemed. It took years for his mum to get over it, before he’d come along, Nick number two.
    ‘Hello,
re
Niko,’ Dad said and sipped on his coffee (just like he always did).
    ‘All right, Dad?’ Nick replied (like he always did) and joined him in the living room.
    Dad was watching
Masterchef
, and the Greek newspaper was on the table in front of him, open at the obituary section. Another of his dad’s OCD traits—reading the obituary to see who in the Greek community had died that week, and more importantly, if he knew them.
    ‘Someone from my village died,’ Dad then said on cue, pointing with his coffee cup at the open newspaper.
    ‘Really?’ Nick replied, feigning interest.
    ‘Hmm. Cancer.’
    It’s always cancer,
Nick thought to himself.
Maybe they should try laying off the fags…
    ‘He used to make olive oil. The best.’
    ‘Did he?’ Nick squatted down beside his dad’s