Half Plus Seven Read Online Free Page B

buzzer like a teenager on a ‘Bring Your Son To Work Day’ who had been charged with moving the PowerPoint forward on Daddy’s big pitch. The radiation lurched towards my insides.
    After a short wait I was sent back in to see Dr Linda who reassured me that all was fine enough with my vital organs, before lecturing me on the slow but irrevocable damage my devil-may-care lifestyle was having on my inward and outward glint. She saw people like me every day apparently. Guilt-ridden fuckers who, after internal debate on infernal affairs, came in at the seventh sign of spit with blood. The next visit, and the one after that, wouldn’t have such an easy outcome apparently.
    What-fucking-ever. School’s out for summer.
    â€˜Was there anything else, Bill?’
    There was one more thing before the bell rang.
    Deep breath.
    â€˜There was something… but it’s a little bit sensitive.’
    â€˜Go on, Bill…’
    â€˜Well… there’s been a little spot on the end of my… my… penis for a while now and I thought you might be able to take a look at it.’
    It’d been a long time since I’d done this without been liquored up. She filled the expectant pause with a professionalism not seen since the African prostitute I’d been bought as a twenty-first birthday present in Hamburg. I hoped the endgame wasn’t the same. I may be hauled in front of the authorities if so.
    â€˜Okay, Bill, let’s take a look.’
    I undid my belt, clumsily unzipped my trousers and poked the end of my dick out of my pants. I did not pick a good day to wear comedy boxer shorts. This probably had something to do with the fact that I never actually bought my own pants, just kind of accumulated them from open drawers or Santa Claus. Note to self: buy better pants.
    It looked like a naughty schoolboy hauled up to the headmaster’s office, lying prone, almost retracting into itself to hide from crimes past and soon punishable. After a cursory glance, one of her shaped eyebrows raised, motioning me back to a more dignified position.
    â€˜Now, the Wellness Check doesn’t normally include an STI test, and I’m certainly not an expert in the field but it looks like nothing to worry about to me. But I do think you should visit your GP to talk through this and your ear problem.’
    Oh, the ear problem. I hadn’t mentioned that, had I? Seemed a bit tame when I had a good cock story to tell.

Chapter 4
    Ever been at a dinner party with an accountant? Scratch that, two accountants? Trying to outdo each other with their incessant wittering. Did you understand a word the fuckers said? Slurping about P & Ls through a minestrone soup. Yakking about ledgers, A/R and A/P over linguine. Being wan about working for the Big Five over tiramisu. Chit-chat full of their own impenetrable idioms. In PR, we saw this and we raised it to new levels of smugness.
    We were forever giving colleagues a heads-up during a sit-down or a touch-base so they could get the skinny on their radar. We sprinkled our magic on cradle-to-grave strategies for new products which we’d drill down to at idea showers which gave our clients strategic staircases going forward. We’d get all our ducks in a row to stop the grass growing too long on ideas.
    And then there was the low-hanging fruit. I was all about the low-hanging fruit. In case you were ever misguided enough to want to join Satan’s gang, or just wanted to know enough to bluff your way to a blowjob at a PR party, stay tuned in.

‘A heads-up’ – To make aware of, sometimes implying some kind of inside information. As in, ‘Pete, I want to give you a heads-up on the Workington account before we meet that slimy fucker Mathison.’
‘A sit-down’ – A meeting, most likely stolen from Italian American Mafia language. As in, ‘We need a sit-down to run through the invoicing for the consumer division, Carol.