The meanest Flood

Geordie sat quietly for the whole four minutes of it and then came over to turn down the sound at the opening bars of ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’.
    ‘What’s up?’ he asked.
    ‘I was set up,’ Sam told him. ‘The guy in Leeds, the address he gave me nobody had heard of him. Some kind of practical joke. You want coffee?’
    ‘Coffee’d be good. You could’ve written down the wrong number.’
    ‘I don’t do wrong numbers. He said it was thirty-seven, but the guy there’d never heard of a Bonner. And I tried seventy-three, make sure I hadn’t written it backwards. No reply.’
    ‘Could’ve been twenty- seven,’ Geordie said.
    ‘It wasn’t, it was thirty-seven, I remember the guy saying it on the phone.’
    ‘So why’d you try seventy-three?’
    Sam eyeballed him. ‘Just in case.’
    ‘Could’ve been any house in the street when you think about it,’ Geordie said. ‘Might even’ve been the wrong street. Are you sure it was Leeds?’
    ‘Fuck off, Geordie. I’ve just driven to Leeds and back, wasted half the day for nothing.’ He waited until the kettle stopped singing and wetted the grains in the bottom of the cafetiere. ‘Where is everyone, anyway? I expect to come back to a busy office and there’s just a dog here and you talking to your wife on the phone.’
    ‘Celia’s helping Marie move out of her house. They’re putting everything upstairs and leaving sandbags round the doors. The river’s flooding tonight.’
    Sam filled the cafetiere with hot water, fitted the plunger over the top.
    ‘You know what a flood is?’ Geordie asked.
    ‘Yeah, it’s when I get my canoe out.’
    ‘Metaphorically,’ Geordie said. ‘What it means to us?’
    ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Geordie. Slack times, like we’re in the middle of just now, I’d probably be out hustling for business, trying to make something of my life. Know what I mean? But with you around, I don’t have to worry about stuff like that. I can talk philosophy instead.’
    ‘It’s not philosophy,’ Geordie said. ‘It’s a question.’
    ‘And the answer is?’
    ‘A flood is chaos, that’s what it means to us. When the water breaks its banks it’s the same as if all the rules of society are suddenly breached.’
    ‘Breached?’
    ‘Yeah, broken. Or if you’re flooded by someone’s passions or emotions you want to leg it, get as far away as possible. Because they’re out of control, like the river. Then there’s all that stuff about Noah’s Ark, God destroying the earth to punish us for our sins.’
    ‘That’s two different things,’ Sam said.
    ‘How come?’
    ‘In the first place you’re saying the flood is chaos or anarchy, everything out of control. But once you bring God into the equation there’s no chaos involved. He’s controlling the thing. He’s decided to flood the earth and save Noah and all the animals and get rid of the rest of the fat cats who’ve fucked up, eaten all the apples, whatever. It’s not chaos, it’s divinely controlled genocide. If God’s in control of the flood, He’s worked it out to the last centimetre.’ He poured the coffee into cups and handed one to Geordie.
    Geordie took a sip. Sam watched the coating of milk form on the bottom of his moustache and reminded himself never to grow one. Geordie said, ‘OK, they’re different things. Whatever, Marie is really pissed about it. She thought it’d be wonderful living next to the river. Now the river’s moving in with her, taking over the ground floor. Looks really nice in the spring, the sun shining and all those little swirls and eddies going past the house, but it’s not the same when it’s covering your three-piece suite and slopping about in your cooker.’
    ‘Eddies?’
    ‘Yeah, something wrong with that? Eddy, it’s a contrary motion in a stream.’
    ‘Knew a bloke called Eddy once. He sold fish and chips in Manchester.’
    ‘I’m not listening, Sam. If there’s a sucker in this, it’s you wearing the cap.’
    Sam laughed. ‘Maybe I should go give them a hand,’ he said. ‘Celia won’t be a lot of help moving the big stuff upstairs.’
    ‘Marie’s got JD there as well.’
    ‘I’ll go then,’ Sam said. ‘JD lifting furniture, somebody could get killed. You OK to hold the fort here?’
    Geordie looked around the office. ‘Me and Barney’ll cope. If it stays this busy we’ll be doing laps in the pools of our own sweat.’ He gave it teeth to prove he understood