A Blink of the Screen

didn’t say why. I expect it was some clever reason. He was always good at that sort of thing, you know, knowing little details that other people didn’t know; it used to get him hit a lot at school, except when I was around. He was the kind of skinny boy who had his glasses held together with Elastoplast. I don’t think I ever saw him raise a finger to anybody, only that time when Greebo Greaves broke a record Wayne had brought to some school disco and four of us had to pull Wayne off him and prise the iron bar out of his fingers and there was the police and an ambulance and everything.
    Anyway.
    I let Wayne set everything up, which was one big mistake but he wanted to do it, and I went and sat down by what they called the bar, i.e., a couple of trestle tables with a cloth on it.
    No, I didn’t drink anything. Well, maybe one cup of the punch and that was all fruit juice. All right, two cups.
    But I know what I heard, and I’m absolutely certain about what I saw.
    I think.
    You get the same old bunch at these kind of gigs. There’s the organizer, and a few members of the committee, some lads from the village who’d sort of drifted in because there wasn’t much on the box except snooker. Everyone wore a mask but hadn’t made an effort with the rest of the clothes so it looked as though Frankenstein and Co. had all gone shopping in Marks and Sparks. There were Scouts’ posters on the wall and those special kinds of village hall radiators that suck the heat in. It smelled of tennis shoes. Just to sort of set the seal on it as one of the hotspots of the world there was a little mirror ball spinning up in the rafters. Half the little mirrors had fallen off.
    All right, maybe three cups. But it had bits of apple floating in it. Nothing serious has bits of apple floating in it.
    Wayne started with a few hot numbers to get them stomping. I’m speaking metaphorically here, you understand. None of this boogie on down stuff, all you could hear was people not being as young as they used to be.
    Now, I’ve already said Wayne wasn’t exactly cut out for the business, and that night – last night – he was worse than usual. He kept mumbling, and staring at the dancers. He mixed the records up. He even scratched one. Accidentally I mean – the only time I’ve ever seen Wayne really angry, apart from the Greebo business, was when scratch music came in.
    It would have been very bad manners to cut in, so at the first break I went up to him and, let me tell you, he was sweating so much it was dropping on to the mixer.
    ‘It’s that bloke on the floor,’ he said, ‘the one in the flares.’
    ‘Methuselah?’ I said.
    ‘Don’t muck about. The black silk suit with the rhinestones. He’s been doing John Travolta impersonations all night. Come on, you must have noticed. Platform soles. Got a silver medallion as big as a plate. Skull mask. He was over by the door.’
    I hadn’t seen anyone like that. Well, you’d remember, wouldn’t you?
    Wayne’s face was frozen with fear. ‘You must have!’
    ‘So what, anyway?’
    ‘He keeps staring at me!’
    I patted his arm. ‘Impressed by your technique, old son,’ I said.
    I took a look around the hall. Most people were milling around the punch now, the rascals. Wayne grabbed my arm.
    ‘Don’t go away!’
    ‘I was just going out for some fresh air.’
    ‘Don’t …’ He pulled himself together. ‘Don’t go. Hang around. Please.’
    ‘What’s up with you?’
    ‘Please, John! He keeps looking at me in a funny way!’
    He looked really frightened. I gave in. ‘Okay. But point him out next time.’
    I let him get on with things while I tried to neaten up the towering mess of plugs and adapters that was Wayne’s usual contribution to electrical safety. If you’ve got the kind of gear we’ve got – okay, had – you can spend hours working on it. I mean, do you know how many different kinds of connectors— all right.
    In the middle of the next number Wayne hauled me back to the decks.
    ‘There! See him? Right in the middle!’
    Well, there wasn’t. There were a couple of girls dancing with each other, and everyone else were just couples who were trying to pretend the seventies hadn’t happened. Any rhinestone cowboys in that lot would have stood out like a strawberry in an Irish stew. I could see that some tact and diplomacy were called for at this point.
    ‘Wayne,’ I said, ‘I reckon you’re several coupons short of a toaster.’
    ‘You can’t