Capital

kindness – it would involve listening to him fall in love with girls at least twice in the course of a typical evening. He was not shy, either. If he saw a girl he liked he never failed to ask her out, the first time he spoke to her. It wasn’t that Piotr didn’t mind rejection; he hated it. It was just that he recovered very quickly.
    Zbigniew took a different approach. Women were a practical issue, a real-world problem, and like other problems were best solved with a methodical and pragmatic approach. Zbigniew had, not rules, but maxims. He would chase a girl only if he had good reason to think she was already interested. He had never been in love. He said he didn’t believe in it. His philosophy was that if you were clean and financially solvent and not ugly you were already in the top 30 per cent of men. If in addition you listened to what women said to you, or were able to fake doing so convincingly, you were in the top 10 or even 5 per cent. Then all it took was to apply common sense: don’t seem desperate, don’t get drunk, do let the girl get drunk, and harness the power of texting. And then other things, like going out midweek when there was less competition. It was all to do with improving your percentages.
    A man in a three-quarter-length dark coat came into the pub, looked around, and went over to the dark-haired girl Piotr liked. They kissed and she reached round behind him to squeeze his bottom.
    ‘My life is over,’ said Piotr, finishing his beer.
    ‘Not necessarily,’ said Zbigniew. On the other side of the unused fireplace where they were standing, two young women were looking round the room, flicking their hair, and holding huge 250 ml glasses of white wine. Zbigniew had already twice made eye contact with the girl who was facing him. She had blonde highlights and had taken out a pack of cigarettes and put it on the mantelpiece. Her coat looked expensive and she had a big handbag of the type that was in fashion. Her friend was doing most of the talking. There was something about the blonde girl that Zbigniew liked. Perhaps it was the cigarettes – which were disgusting, for their smell and everything else, but also, when attached to a woman, inexplicably sexy, because of the hint of recklessness that went with them; the hint of not-caring. She was a little untidy with it, her coat open at an odd angle. Zbigniew gestured with his bottle to Piotr and then finished his drink. Piotr took a look.
    ‘Time to improve our English,’ said Zbigniew. This was code. It was well known that the best way to improve your English was to have an English girlfriend. This was not easy but got much easier once you had a bit of money and spoke good English yourself – but then it was hard to really get good at English without an English girlfriend – so it was not easy. Zbigniew had learned most of his English from a girl called Sam whom he had met when he changed a car tyre for her on King’s Avenue during a rainstorm. He had seen her for six months and it had done wonders for his English. She had been cheating on her boyfriend, but that didn’t seem to bother her and so it didn’t bother Zbigniew either, and they only split up a week before her wedding.
    ‘I’m going home tomorrow,’ Piotr said.
    ‘I thought I was supposed to be the practical one.’
    ‘Yes, but I’m going home tomorrow.’
    ‘Just get her number then. You’re only away for two weeks. She can be something to look forward to when you get back.’
    ‘I just told you, my life is over.’
    ‘And yet it goes on.’
    Piotr sighed. ‘Oh, all right.’
    Zbigniew was a quiet man, but like his friend Piotr he was not shy. He leaned across to where the handbag girl was standing and said,
    ‘It’s terrible, isn’t it? The ban.’
    She smiled, looked away, looked back. Her friend turned to look. She had very dark hair, black, and wore dramatic red eye make-up. Zbigniew thought her movements were off-puttingly quick, but then she wasn’t his type to start with. The two women looked at each other and some female communication passed between them, and they both turned to face Zbigniew and Piotr. And then it went on from there.

18
     
     
    Patrick Kamo didn’t like the card which had come to their door on the second morning, the one with a photograph of their house and the caption ‘We Want What You Have’. Patrick found it sinister; he thought it disturbing that Mickey had no explanation for it and didn’t know what it meant. To