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Renton raises the espresso to his lips. Blows, takes a sip. — I said sorry. I did regret it, if it’s any comfort tae ye. I thought about sorting ye out, and I did mean tae, but ye ken how it is with cash, it just gets frittered away. I suppose I thought you’d forget about it . . .

I glare at him. Who the fuck does this cretin think he’s talking to? What planet is the cunt on? Planet Leith, in the nineteen fucking eighties, I’ll wager.

— . . . well, maybe no forget about it, but you know . . . Then he shrugs. — it
was
a bit fuckin selfish. I just had tae git the fuck away, Simon, fae Leith, fae aw that junky shite.

— And I didn’t, I suppose? Aw aye, you were fucking well selfish alright, chum, I smack the table again. — A bit selfish, he says. Understatement of the fucking century.

I hear the Americans say something in what sounds like Scandinavian, then realise that they’re actually Swedes or Danes. Funny, they looked a bit too fat and stupid in those starchy clathes tae be anything other than middle-aged Shermans.

Renton pulls down his baseball cap to get the glint out of his eyes. Looks a bit tired. Once a druggy . . . unless you’re Simon David Williamson, and by virtue of being so, instantly transcend all that crap. — I sort ay thought that I’d sub Spud first, he says, playing with the coffee cup. — I thought Sick B . . . Simon’s a ducker n diver, an entrepreneurial type. He’ll be okay, he’ll ey land oan ehs feet.

I say nothing, but turn my head away ostentatiously and watch a boat go down the canal. One crustie cunt in the boat sees us, peeps a horn and waves up. — Hey, Mark! How are you?

— Fine, Ricardo, enjoyin the sun, mate, Rents shouts and waves back.

The fucking Rent Boy, a pillar of the cloggie community. Forgets that I’ve watched him junk-sick, squeaking with need; ripping into a stolen wallet like a starving predator devouring a small but unsatisfying mammal.

Now he’s telling me his story, which I’m finding interesting, although I’m trying to feign indifference. — I first came here because it wis the only place ah kent . . . he starts. I roll my eyes and he says: — . . . well, apart from London and Essex, where we worked on the cross-Channel ferries. But that was how I got into the idea of coming here, like we used to after our shift on the boats, mind?

— Aye . . . I nod in hazy recall. I don’t know if the place has changed. It’s hard to remember what the fuck it was like before, with all the drugs we took.

— Funny, part of me thought that it would be easy for you to find me here. I thought that somebody over on holidays would run into me, I thought it’d be the first place you’d fuckin well look, he smiles.

I curse my own stupidity. None of us thought about Amsterdam. Fuck knows why. I always thought that either an acquaintance, or even myself, would run into him in London, or maybe Glasgow. — It was the first place we thought of, I lie, — and we were over a few times. You just got lucky, I tell him, — until now.

— So I suppose you’ll be letting the others know about me, he says.

— Like fuck, I snarl in contempt. — Do you think I care about the likes of Begbie? That thick cunt can get his own loot back; that psychopath has nothing to do with me.

Renton considers this for a bit, then carries on with his tale. — Funny, when I got here first, I stayed in a hotel down the canal there, he says, pointing down Prinsengracht. Then I found a room down in the Pijp, which is sort of Amsterdam’s Brixton, he explains, — south of touristville. Got clean, started hanging out with some punters. This guy Martin I got pally with, he’d been attached to a sound system back in Nottingham. We started putting on club nights and parties, just for a laugh. We were both into house and it was all techno here. We wanted to make inroads into that European orthodoxy. Luxury, we called it. Our nights became quite popular; then this boy Nils asked us to do a monthly at his small club, then fortnightly, then weekly. Then we had to move to bigger premises.

Renton’s aware that he’s starting to sound a bit smug and semi-apologises. — I mean, I make a good living, but we’re always just two or three bad nights away from disaster. We don’t give a fuck though: when it’s over, it’s over. I don’t want to do a club just for the sake of it.

— So what it boils down to, I feel the contempt rise in my chest, — is that you’re rolling in it and you hold out on your pals. A few measly fuckin grand.

Renton protests in a feeble manner that only accentuates his guilt. — I told you how it was. I’d drawn a kind of mental line under my life back hame. And ah’m no rolling in it, once we pay off everybody after a club night, we split it two ways. Never even had a company account till a couple of years ago. Only got it when we got bumped one night. I was walking around with thousands of pounds in my pockets every Saturday. But aye, I live well. Got the flat up here in the Brouwersgracht, he says, now definitely sounding fucking full of himself.

Whatever happened to restlessness? It would be fucking boring to do a club night for so long. — So, you’ve been running the same club for eight years, I accuse.

— It’s no really the same club, it’s changed a lot. Now we do big festivals like Dance Valley and the Queen’s Day here, and the Love Parade in Berlin. We go all over Europe and the States, Ibiza, the Miami dance festival. Martin’s the public face of Luxury, for the dance-music press and that, I keep in the background . . . for obvious reasons.

— Aye, like me, Begbie, Second Prize and Spu . . . oh, of course not Spud, no, you sorted that cunt out, didn’t you, I accuse again. I still can’t believe that he sorted out Murphy and not me.

— How is Spud? asks Agent Orange.

I nod a little while, like I’m sizing him up, letting a sheen of satisfied contempt gloss over my coupon. — Fucked, I tell him. — Oh, he was clean until your wad arrived. Then he blew the whole fucking lot on junk. Now he’s going the way of Tommy, Matty and all that crowd, I tell him with a flourish.

Rents’s pallid skin still fails to flush but his eyes soften a little. — Is he positive?

— Aye, I tell him, — and you certainly played a big part in it. Well done, I toast him.

— Ye sure?

I’ve no idea as to the state of scruff-boy’s immune system. If he’s not HIV, he fucking well deserves to be. — I’m about as positive as he is.

Rents thinks about this for a while, then says: — Too bad.

I can’t resist it, so I tell him, laying it on thick: — Ali as well. They were thegither, y’know. Goat a wee laddie that wey n aw. The British taxpayer should thank you, I quip, — eliminating drains on society.

Renton looks a bit shaken at that one. White lies, of course, though no, it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if Murphy was full-blown, the state of that cunt. This, though, is just a mere down payment on the suffering the Rent Boy is going to get. He’s composed himself a bit, and now he’s even trying to effect a pathetic casualness. — How depressing. It’s good to be over here, he smiles, looking around at the sloping narrow buildings, like staggering drunks holding each other up. — Fuck Leith. Let’s go over to the red-light district for a few beers, he suggests.

We head over and have a good day out on the piss. We’re settling back outside a café and I can tell that my fibs have hit home with Rents, even if the beer has made him more gung-ho again. — I’m trying to get by and fuck up as few people as possible in the process, he says grandly as we watch a group of rowdy young English lads bounce past us.

— Yes, I admit, it is hard. They
are
our greatest resource, I say and he looks at me in earnest confusion, so I expand. — Us being the men of ambition, aka the only people who count now.

Renton’s about to protest, but thinks better of it, laughs and slaps me on the back and I realise that, perversely, somewhere along the line we’ve almost become friends of a sort again.

That night I opt to kip on Renton’s couch, rather than go back to the madness of the hotel. Apparently Rab’s old cashie mates wanted to swedge every cunt yesterday evening; it was like they suddenly realised that it was getting close to going-home time and they had just been smoking dope and shagging, and hadn’t remembered to batter anybody. There are plans to go down to Utrecht today to have a row with some daft cloggies. Fuck that, I’m staying here with Renton.

Renton lives with this German bird Katrin, a surly, skinny Nazi lassie with no tits, in fact the sort Renton always seems to go for. Boyish. Always thought he was a closet fag but didn’t have the bottle to go all the way, so he shags lassies that look like young boys. Probably up the arse, affording the satisfactory tightness for the smaller-dicked man. This Katrin bird though, she’s possibly worth one. Possibly. Skinny, titless, erseless birds are usually pretty dirty, it’s compensation for not having much of the padding that we chaps so enjoy. This ice-cold wee Teutonic cow hardly spoke a word, not even reacting to my attempts at flirty politeness. How the fuck could magnifico Italia ever have thrown its hand in with these pseudo-Saxon cunts in the Second World Swedge? But aye, I’d possibly give her one, if only to annoy Rents. It’s funny, him just sitting there, looking fit, almost European. He’s still slim really, but not disgustingly so. There’s a bit of flesh on that old ginger skull face. His hair’s a bit thinner and slightly receding; baldness is a curse for a lot of ginger mingers.

The best way forward is to start stringing the cunt along, letting him put some trust in me. Then he gets it. And I know who from. Because it’s not about the money, it’s about the betrayal. So I warm to this theme as we’re getting ready to go out for another beer. — As far as Begbie’s concerned, you were a hero in Leith ripping that cunt off, I tell him. Of course, this is a bare-faced lie. Begbie’s a bastard, but nobody likes a rip-off merchant.

But Renton knows this. He’s not stupid, in fact that’s the problem, the red-headed Judas fucker is anything but stupid. The hoods of his eyes still drop in that cynical way of old when he doesn’t believe or agree with what he’s hearing. — I’m no sure about that, he says. — Begbie had a lot of nutty mates. The sort of boys who’d do any cunt for fun. I’ve given them a reason.

Too true, thiefy-boy. I wonder how big Lexo Setterington, Begbie’s former ‘partner’, domiciled in my hotel, not half a mile from here, would react if he knew that Rents was in town. Might he be inclined to administer some justice on his mucker’s behalf? Yep, he was bad-mouthing Begbie, but that, of course, means nothing to bams like him. At best he’d certainly be on the blower to his buddy François, who would be right over on the next flight. Oh aye, that big wide cunt’s got a mischievous air about him. He would absolutely delight in telling the Beggar Boy that he knows Rent’s address.

Tempting, but no.
I
want to be the man who delivers
that
particular piece of good news. Renton’s got a club, a flat, a girlfriend. He’ll be going nowhere in a hurry, particularly if he believes himself to be safe here. — That’s as maybe, I say gruffly, then, changing tone, add, — but you should come back to Edinburgh, see the folks, I tell him, remembering that I’ve hardly seen mine since I’ve been back.

Renton shrugs. — I have done a few times. On the quiet, like.

— I never fuckin knew . . . I say, peeved that the cunt could slip in and out without me knowing anything about it.

The rid-heided cunt laughs loudly at that one. — I didn’t think you’d want to see me.

— Oh, I’d’ve wanted tae see you awright, I assure the bastard.

— That’s what I meant, he says, then he adds, raising his eyes hopefully, — I heard Begbie’s still inside.

— Aye. He’ll be in for a few years yet, I prevaricate in the most expressionless manner I can muster. And I fancy that I did alright as well.

— I might just come over then, Renton smiles.

Good. Let the cunt take his chances. I’m starting to enjoy myself now.

Later on I arrange for Terry and Rab to meet us, half thinking that Renton could come in useful with his music and Amsterdam contacts. When I tell him what we’re up to, he seems quite interested. So it’s me, Rab, Terry, Billy and Rents having a beer, blow and blether in the Hill Street Blues Café on the Warmoestraat. Terry and Billy vaguely remember Rents from way back; Clouds disco, the fitba, the lot. Terry still gives him a look like he’s no too sure though. Too right: no cunt trusts a fraudster who does their own, and sure as fuck, he’ll get it.

Rab Birrell, who (sensibly) opted out of the Utrecht trip, reasoning that burst mooths, broken noses and black eyes do not good wedding pictures make, is explaining something to us at the café. Rab seems to be a bit narked with Terry and me for some reason, probably because we’ve left him with his fitba mates most of the time, and I think they wanted an old boys’ reunion while Rab fancied something more chilled. He knows a lot though this Birrell boy, and he’s advanced a proposition, which Terry’s doubtful about. — Still dinnae see how we need tae film it ower here but, he says to Rab.

Rab’s looking at me, all tense and serious. — You’re forgetting aboot the polis. This type of movie . . . he hestitates and gets a slight beamer as Terry purses his lips and bends his wrists, — . . . awright, Terry, this type ay film, that we’re trying tae make is illegal under the OPA.

— Awright, Mister fuckin Student cunt, Juice Terry cuts in, — tell us what the OPA is.

Rab coughs and looks at Billy, then Rents, as if in some kind of appeal for support. — It’s the Obscene Publications Act, the piece ay legislation that governs what we’re trying tae dae.

Renton says nothing, he’s got that unscrutable look on his face. Renton. Who is he? What is he? He’s a traitor, a grass, a cunt, a scab, a selfish egotist, he’s everything that anyone who is working class needs to be to get on in the new global capitalist order. And I envy him. I genuinely fucking envy the bastard because he really doesn’t give a toss about anybody but himself. I’m trying to be like him but impulse, wild, passionate, Italian-Jock impulse, burns too strongly in me. I look at him sitting there, watching everything carefully from the edge of the scene, and I feel my hands grip the chair arms in rage as my knuckles go white.