3a. The game is sacrosanct.
Play to win
Game forty, eleven to go. Almost nine o’clock, Manchester. Amid the swirl of rain on a road called Claremont, in a district called Moss Side, just south of Rusholme, three men were sitting in a parked car, keyed into the radio. The AnnoDomino channel, of course, where the sweet and sexy Cookie Luck was doing her dance of numbers, calling out the numbers. Visions of loveliness inside the head.
Three men in the car, another three students at the university. Two of them were studying Maths, the other studying Physics. One of them was much older than the other two. Two of them were white, the other one black. One of them was straight, another one gay, the third balanced evenly between the two. One of them was a virgin. One of them had a diamond through his nose. One was studying Pure Maths, another studying Computermatics, the third Genetic Calculus. Their names were Joe Crocus, DJ Dopejack and Sweet Benny Fenton. Not in any order. One of them had green hair. And no, not the gay one. Although the gay one did have the nose stud, twinkling in a fractal display. Three men; all of them gazing deep into their dominoes and listening up as Cookie’s invisible dance played over the waves, the last waltz of the world.
‘Lick my numbers, sweet Lady!’ one of them cried.
‘I’m starving!’ cried another. ‘Can we get a curry after this?’
‘Shut the fuck up, I’m concentrating!’ cried the last.
‘Dot shit!’ cried the first. ‘I just got a Joker Bone come up!’
‘You’re OK then,’ replied the second. ‘Look, it’s changed already.’
‘Sorted,’ said the third. ‘You never get a double-blank more than once a week. Everybody knows that.’
A blurbfly bounced off the windscreen, buzzing out loud its slogan.
‘Play to win!’ echoed the three men. ‘Play to fucking win!’
Play to win
Somewhere else in Manchester, that very same moment, a young girl calling herself Little Miss Celia was standing amid a sodden crowd of cheap, down-market chancers, outside an all-night luxury store. There were seventeen and a half televisions for sale in the window, and all of them tuned into AnnoDomino. Even the homeless made sure a puny was put aside for each Friday night.
The homeless with their secret homes.
Here they are, the ragged brethren of society, the vagabonds, praying to whatever gods would still care to listen, clutching at their miserable puny bones like a last chance of escape, even as the blurbs fluttered around their heads in a halo of messages. ‘Get off me, you nasty flies!’ the youngest amongst them muttered at the troublesome cloud.
Play to win! Play to win!
Celia Hobart was only eight years old, and she had to stand on tiptoes to catch even the occasional glimpse of Cookie Luck’s dance through the pack of beggars and the haze of flies. She had long, straight, metallic-blond hair, in which a green-and-yellow bird’s feather was knotted. Celia had run away from home only a couple of months ago, during which time she had scraped together a meagre living. Celia hated begging for life, but she’d chosen to be a runaway. The first few days had been the worst, moving alone through the city, so young. Terrified, until discovering the brethren. The other vagabonds had taken her under their cover, united against normality, especially a big, old guy calling himself Eddie Irwell.
Eddie had found Celia one morning, queering his official begging hole in St Anne’s Square. ‘What the fuck is that shit in your hair?’ were his first words to her.
Celia, touching the feather, like a faraway magic wand.
‘This is Big Eddie Irwell speaking,’ the man continued, ‘and this is his fully paid for hole. Now get your half-arse out of my life.’
Eddie was the alpha beggar, with his real home hidden so deep.
Celia ran away, fearful of the big man, even as he settled his bulk into the tiniest of begging holes. But the very next day, there she was, back again, sitting in his hole long before the big guy was even awake, and a whole nano puny in her begging hat already. Eddie had chased her away once again, but ever after, and for the next six days, this little kid had beaten him to the hole. In the end, he gave up, more or less adopted the girl and street-christened her Little Miss Celia. He found her a personal hole on Deansgate Boulevard, right outside a bookshop – prime pitch – just to keep the girl out of his dreadlocks. Which turned into a kind of love.
Nine o’clock, almost striking.
The brethren of the streets were close and warm, despite the rain that almost always poured upon them, and now Irwell was gathering Celia up into his arms, and from there to his shoulders, from which mighty position she could finally see Cookie Luck dancing in all her changing glory. Celia kept glancing at her single domino and back at the screen, wafting away the blurbs, touching her feather. Wishing all the time, and with all of her heart, for Lady Luck to be kind upon this day, this special day.