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“Lemme tell you somethin’ Tommy, free of charge,” Alfie jabs his fingers just inches away from his eyes, with all the misplaced confidence of a man who still had a functioning depth perception. “You look a lot better with them’ on.”
“Yeah?” Tommy chimes, amused enough to glance up from his morning paper.
“Yeah,” Alfie continues, shooting him a knowing look through a half-glassed, mostly amused eye. “You look a lot less like that cunt who shot me in the face.”
“Good,” Tommy smiles, in the oh so rare mood to actually go along with one of Alfie’s many whims for once, “Knowing you like I do, I’d hate to be that guy.”
“Oh, fuck off,” and Alfie laughs then, like he really means it. “You don’t know nothing’ about nothing, mate. Couldn’t sell a walking stick to a blind man, could ya? That’s why you’re stuck out here in the middle of fucking Margate with me, ain’tcha?”
Perhaps’, Tommy says, in that stupid little Gypsy accent of his, and Alfie feels like knocking the glasses off his face altogether. Oh, but he did look alright with them on, didn’t he?
Alright, then.
Alfie leans back, letting himself enjoy the view. The way the morning light frames his face, making him look like a much more angelic man than he actually was, almost makes Alfie forget who he’s looking at. For just a second, Alfie can pretend the handsome, Margate sky-eyed man hiding behind the gold-framed glasses isn’t the very same man who’d left him sprawling on the sand outside, clinging to a cancerous life as he waited in vain for the waves to come and wash the last of sinful Alfie Solomons away.
But alas, on a closer look,
(namely, the smug little smile playing on his lips as he flips that fucking newspaper over,)
Alfie can confirm this is in fact, without a doubt, the same cunt who’d shot him in the face.
In the absence of tears, all he can do is sigh.
He could save the rest of his snide remarks for later.
Another time, maybe.