Too Cold For Snow

Fetch, only just managed to clamber out through the hatch with his life. He was lit up like a magnesium flare, screaming like a banshee, his clothes burning into his dermis. A Samaritan yob who hadn’t legged it rolled the flames out with a coat and then scarpered. Marty paid for the plastic surgery, jokingly offering to make him look like Robbie Williams, but Terry never smiled after that night, wasn’t able to really, not with the way they had to reconfigure his jaw. That was the only shadow on what seemed like a perfectly sunlit and profitable summer.
    It was an October afternoon when a television researcher rang Marty to ask him whether he’d like to be a guest on The Johnnie Smooth Chat Show . Marty said yes. He’d never been on TV and he liked Johnnie Smooth, his ready banter and punishing asides. ‘You’re as welcome as syph,’ was one of catchphrases, this self-crowned ‘King of the Putdown.’
    The velveteen-voiced honey ended the chat with Marty: ‘Next Thursday, live on air at seven, so you’ll need to be at the studio by half past five if that’s all right, for some make up and a quick run through? We’ll send a cab for you to the house, yes?’
    ‘I look forward to it, Melissa.’
    Melissa was on Brennan’s payroll now. As was Johnnie, although his help depended on morality rather than money, convinced by Brennan that what he was about to do was for the public good.
    The make-up lady was a doll and the researcher, Melissa, was a doll and the producer of the programme, Henry, was a gushing London queen slumming it in regional television after an accident during the making of a documentary at the British Museum, when he’d insisted on getting a better angle on a Ming vase which he nudged off the table. The crew and the mortified curator seemed to count the minutes before it hit the floor.
    ‘May I say,’ simpered Henry, who would have made a good Beatrice or Delilah, tottering on heels, ‘that I think your burgers are ravishing. Quite the best this side of the Atlantic and you could even give them a run for their money Stateside. Ever thought of franchising over there?’
    Marty hadn’t until Henry put up the idea and he squirrelled it away. He knew that people lived in the sewers in New York which might be an advantage, or maybe not, and he knew that they’d hunted down the passenger pigeon – once the most numerous bird on earth – until there was just one left, shuffling off a porch in San Diego zoo, a ten inch drop to extinction.
    ‘Let’s take you to meet the man,’ said Henry.
    They went through a labyrinth of corridors until they reached a door marked with an enormous star, with dozens of thin strips of gold fanning out from its centre.
    They knocked and entered.
    ‘Come in! Come in! Care for a blueberry margarita. Heaps of vitamin C. Let me tell you Marty, I do admire your products. Very much.’
    ‘Have you ever tried any?’ ventured Marty with a certain bitterness. His hackles were up because Johnnie addressed him via the mirror, not deigning to turn around.
    ‘My researcher brought in a wild leveret thing which tasted pretty divine. You’ve got some good products and I hear Mammon’s looking after you well.’
    ‘Mammon?
    ‘The false God.’
    ‘I know who Mammon is, but what are you trying to imply?’
    ‘Nothing, chum. Look, don’t get in a tizz. Don’t get my stage persona mixed up with the fifty-two-year-old-bloke who’s been on the roller-coaster. I’ve seen ups and I’ve seen downs and at the moment I’m having a drink to settle my nerves before delivering verbal bad ju-ju to the nation. Why don’t you? People get nervous under the television lights. We had to give one contributor, a taxidermist from Prestatyn, a cup of tea laced with Mogadon before we could get him on the set. Trouble was he’d had a few slugs from a hip flask apparently and we only just managed to stop him attempting fake coitus with a stuffed leopard he’d brought in. On air, mind! In front of all those people.’
    ‘I’ll have what you’re having.’
    ‘And if we’re talking about gods,’ said Johnnie, ‘these are their faces.’ He pointed to what seemed like a mini-shrine in the corner, a four foot high block of cork to which were attached a collection of men’s faces.
    ‘These are the tabloid men, the ones who make and break people like me. Daily Star , Mirror and most pungently, The Sun. And here’s my favourite headline from that august organ. The Institute for