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“That’s the plan, is it?” Mark asks as he watches Tim set out a little folding table and carefully place a notebook and pen.
A man on a bicycle zips by and the table rattles on uneven legs. It wobbles again when Key moves or breathes or looks at it.
“Ah. Needs a bit of weight,” Mark says, without moving to do anything about it.
“Oh. Yeah, I thought about that.” Key swings his rucksack from his shoulder and spends several minutes trying to wrestle what turns out to be a typewriter out of the opening.
“There,” he says, dropping it unceremoniously on the table. The table wobbles. “Well. It is what it is.”
“Yes, and what it is seems to be my bastard typewriter, actually. Did you steal that from my house?” Mark asks, as though there were some other way for Key to be in possession of his bastard typewriter.
“Borrowed it,” Key says without the decency to look apologetic. “Always thought you looked quite smart when you use it.”
“And you're going to use it for this, are you?”
“Fuck no, I don’t know how to type.”
Tim sticks a piece of paper that reads “Poet for Hire” to the front of the table and it immediately catches a breeze and wafts up and flaps about illegibly.
“Needs a bit of weight.”
“I could do with a little less observation from you, and a little more shutting your trap.”
“How much?”
“What?”
“How shutting my trap?”
“Listen, I’m trying to raise a bit of dosh here.” Tim unfolds a deck chair and sits almost beneath the table. “Lower than I thought that.”
Mark tears a piece of sellotape between his teeth and makes an attempt at sticking the bottom corners of the sign to the legs of the table.
“How much?”
“What?”
“How much for a poem.”
“Hundred quid.”
“How much?”
Key bites his bottom lip. “Fifty quid.”
“Here’s a tenner. I’m going to the shop, so if it’s good and done in the next three minutes I’ll throw in a packet of Polos too.”
“Deal!” Tim yells at Mark’s back and grabs for his notebook, and only narrowly avoids knocking the flimsy table and expensive typewriter to the ground.
***
Paint flies off the roller and lands in a spray of speckles across Mark’s shirt.
“Hey hey hey, go slower,” he says, tutting and trying not to instinctively rub at the paint. It would only make it worse.
Tim looks at him, an alien beekeeper in head-to-toe coveralls and goggles and a mask. The mask raises.
“It’s hardly my fault you’re dressed like that. Who wears a blouse to paint a wall?”
“It’s a shirt.”
“Got flowers on it.” The mask comes down again and Mark hears a muted sound that might very well be “Blouse.”
He sighs and paints another broad stripe of white on the wall, rolls back and forth until another section is filled in.
“Are you going to actually do a, what was it, poetry mural on this-”
A muffled reply from behind the mask starts up and Mark can make out an explanation about Alex bringing the spray cans tomorrow and all the practice they’ve done out where the community couldn’t give a fuck about what’s painted on their underpass wall.
“- or are you just going to draw a penis?”
The beekeeper turns to face him and for a second is stock still until the mask and goggles are removed and Tim appears.
“If I do paint a big old hairy cock and balls and a big spray of jizz lines, will you come and help me paint over it again?”
“No.”
“Better do the proper thing then.”
***
The Perthshire water is freezing, and Mark clenches his teeth. He wiggles his toes against the wet rocks and thinks warm thoughts. The October foliage is gorgeous, the woods burst with orange and red leaves like a mosaic sunset. The sun is pretty warm. It is shining and lighting up the trees and making the surface of the river glitter. Not contributing much in the way of degrees though.
Tim stands stubbornly further up the bank, his arms folded and an impatient look on his face.
“Do you need a push?” he calls.
The water looks good enough to swim in, Mark had said. Without missing a beat, Key had challenged him. Dare you.
A breeze blows and ripples through the tails of Mark’s long shirt and he visibly shivers. Fuck this.
He pulls the shirt quickly over his head, pointedly ignores Tim’s wolf whistle behind him and splashes ungainly out into the river.
“Hooooo ooh ooh ooh, fuck me,” he says. He means to shout but the cold has kicked the air out of him and it comes out as a breathy gasp.
“It’s lovely,” he says to Tim, louder and with his teeth chattering. “Why don’t you try it?”
“Why don’t you suck my dick.”
“Come here and I will.”
Mark’s heart gives an extra couple of thuds as Key starts walking towards him. He relaxes when he sees Tim is only gathering up his clothes, and then panic kicks in again.
“No no no no, Tim. No!”
He’s trying to wade out of the river as fast as he can, hobbled by the cold and the smooth stones sliding beneath his feet. He makes it up to the bank, his hair plastered down and his hands cupped over himself in the least dignified pose possible whilst sort of maintaining dignity.
Tim’s eyes drag over his body at a lewd pace and he smirks.
“Yeah, very funny,” Mark says and pulls his clothes on as Tim hands one item at a time to him.
“Couldn’t let you stay in there,” Tim says, finally handing over Mark’s jumper. “You’ll get hypothermia or something. This seemed the quickest way to get you out.”
Mark is forced to concede that had he simply been asked he would have insisted he was fine for several more minutes. Perhaps until he lost feeling in his legs.
“Thank you,” he says instead.
Tim grins and lightly smacks the side of his face. “You’re very welcome, old cock. Towel in the car, come along.”
Mark follows obediently, his trainers in his hand, a small smile on his face.