The jangling of the shop bell startled me out of my appalled fascination, and I frantically tried to shove the magazine out of sight of the teenage lads in hooded jackets coming through the door. I fumbled, ended up dropping it, and kicked it under the counter as far as I could.
The boys were laughing and joking with each other, and I wondered if they might be trouble. I'd read the Daily Mail, so I knew anyone wearing a hoodie was liable to mug me as soon as look at me. But as far as I could tell, they didn't try and shoplift anything, and eventually coughed up the money for a puncture repair kit and another pump adaptor. That made three in the last two days. I wondered where all the old ones were going-was there a pump-adaptor fairy somewhere, maybe living in a brightly-coloured castle built of short lengths of tubing with a screwy bit on the end?
Still, I wasn't complaining. I rang up the sale with a smile. As the lads turned to go, one of them stooped to pick something up and handed it to me solemnly.
"There you go, mate. Dropped your porn."
It was Jay's bloody magazine. Conveniently open to a centre spread of a young lady who'd obviously decided to blow her limited budget on the very last word in depilatories instead of anything resembling clothing. I must have kicked the wretched thing right out from under the counter. "Thank you," I said with as much dignity as I could muster and watched as they left the shop and dissolved into wild laughter outside.
"Bloody, bloody Jay!" I fumed, shoving the magazine roughly back under the pile of bike mags.
"Trouble?" Matt's voice made me jump, and I cricked my neck turning back towards him.
"Ouch!" I rubbed the side of my neck, grimacing as the pain and the pins-and-needles gradually wore off.
"Sorry." Matt hung his head. "Didn't mean to sneak up on you." He turned and started to lope morosely back to the other room.
I stared. What was that all about? "Did you need something?"
Matt spun around. "Oh-nothing important. It can wait."
"Why would it have to?" I frowned.
"Well, you know. You looked a bit … " Matt gestured vaguely.
It was lost on me. "A bit what?"
"Um. Pissed off?"
I had to laugh. "Well, maybe. I just inadvertently corrupted a couple of teenage boys, that's all."
One soft brown eye went wide; the swollen one, not so much. "You what?"
"With, I might add, the magazine you suggested I read. You might have warned me," I added with a smile. Now the pain in my neck had disappeared, it just seemed like a bit of a laugh. "I tried to get it out of sight and ended up shoving it right under their noses. Does Jay seriously read this stuff at work? Well, look at the pictures, anyway," I amended. Maybe there were articles in the thing, but I'd bet my black belt nobody ever read them. Probably they just printed out the same ones each month.
Matt twinkled. There was seriously no other word for it. "Yep, 'fraid so. I come out of the back room sometimes, I don't know where to look."
"I'd like to say I thought Jay had more taste, but … " I let it hang there-and then laughed as a thought hit me. "You know, I feel sorry for Jay, if he has to get his kicks from this sort of trash. I always assumed that frigid exterior of Olivia's was just a front, but now I'm starting to wonder."
"You bastard." Matt was cracking up. "Next time I see her, all I'm going to think of is Jay with a porno mag."
"And his right hand. Don't forget that very important part of the proceedings." I sniggered. Which, all right, was neither mature nor very brotherly of me, but in my defence, I had spent my whole adult life in the sad and certain knowledge my brother had had more sex when he was still in his teens than I was likely to manage in a lifetime. And he'd enjoyed it more.
Just then a customer came in, so we had to straighten our faces and get back to work. It might have been a bit embarrassing if she'd asked what the joke was.
What with her wearing a dog collar and all.
After the Rev had gone off with a new pannier, which I strongly suspected Jay had got in especially for her-after all, it's not exactly something you see on the average mountain bike-we hit another dry spell. I ended up flicking through a magazine again, being very careful to take one from the top of the pile this time. It was full of pictures of blokey men in helmets doing blokey things, most of them covered in mud, and was written in an over-the-top hearty, all-mates-down-the-pub style.
No wonder Jay liked this sort of thing. God, I'd been an idiot, jumping to conclusions about him and Matt. Of course Jay was straight. I was about to close the magazine when a title caught my eye: What Really Happens During Bonking. I did a double take and looked around furtively, wondering for a moment if one of the porno mags had slipped inside this issue.