LAYABOUT (FRAGMENT 2)

Nemo finally reappeared outside Castle Camelot, but in his drunken daze, Arthur couldn’t be entirely sure if the fish was real or just a dream. Life had been like that lately—an indeterminate bardo between waking and sleeping, his reality as secure as quicksand.

It took him a few hours to sober up and become fully convinced the fish was real. Even then, he had to prod it a few times to make absolutely sure, its tail finally springing into action like an outboard motor on a speedboat.

Eventually, Arthur decided to celebrate the reappearance of his daughter’s little fish by heading into town for a few hours and hitting a bar—one of those low-down, grimy places where no one from work or his old friendship circle would see him, and where the average pint cost less than four quid. He was getting unusually comfortable with his Ray Milland–style drunk-heel act, provided it was among those forgotten men and women at the bottom of society’s food chain—faces that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Hogarth drawing, only in more modern clothes. It was, in a way, an insurance policy for the day he hoped he might clean himself up and re-establish himself as a respectable, clean-living guy—though that seemed impossible right now.

Sitting in a booth with a cheap plastic cocktail pitcher containing a strange, blue-looking concoction called an Erotic Lagoon, Arthur felt that detached, floaty sensation that made him feel like he was watching a movie in which everyone around him was an actor and he was the director. Even when a few red-faced locals broke script and began hurling abuse right beside him, their mouths contorted, he remained convinced it was all part of some pre-designed story.

Besides, nothing could break his feeling of contentment at seeing Nemo again. His worst fears put to rest, he could now move on from the concern that something precious belonging to his daughter might be dead. It was alive, and he would take that as a sign to get his life back in order right away—just as soon as he ordered another pitcher of Erotic Lagoon.

Stumbling home later that night, a woozy Arthur saw various figures emerging from the shadows along his street. He liked these soft-focus, hot summer nights when everything around him seemed mysterious and indeterminate, like something from an old detective movie.

Then, spotting a light on at his neighbour’s house that seemed to him like a lighthouse beacon, he thought nothing of walking straight up the steps to knock on the door and tell Amanda the good news about Nemo.