Who dares

"What does it feel like, Stevie?" asked Dan from a thousand million miles away.

Stevie thought: I am lighter than air; I am helium. I am the thermodynamic tail that breaks free of the earth's grip. Whoof. He said: "Oh, wow."

"That good?" he or someone else heard Dan or someone else again say.

Stevie thought: I leap out and up, past the orbits of the planets and the clouds that surround them. Unprotected I am prodded and jostled by the sun's weak light, and after an eternity and no time at all I have passed through the universe and through the sensate.... He said: "Yeah, pretty good. A bit... strong."

Dan grinned, leaned over and plucked the joint out of Stevie's limp fingers. He pulled out his cheeks, felt the heat from the flame and in his mouth, then inhaled, knocking it back with as much cool air as he could. For the first time in months Stevie was stoned. And Dan had finally made it to London. These two events were, of course, connected: Dan had brought a half-ounce of opium-soaked stock to set fire to celebrate finally getting his arse down to Stevie's. Well, Dan thought, if he would live south of the fucking river. It was a myth that taxi drivers wouldn't frequent here; it was just that they charged as much to get to Borough as they did to get to Heathrow.

For Dan, a night of booze and joints, and listening to their combined most-recent, was something close to heaven. He'd been worried about Stevie all night, though. Was he bored? He didn't look bored, Dan thought, wobbling his head round towards his mate and trying to focus. He looked wankered. But was he secretly bored?

Dan had grown up in a tiny village that sounded like a minor enemy of Sherlock Holmes: Marston Ruthvale, population eight hundred and seven in every ten were sheep. Every morning a bus wound its way through the village and on to the nearest big town in time for shops to open; every evening it wound its way back, sometimes.

The first time anyone stayed over in the town—depending on how old they looked and how deep they could bark out an order for pints, when they were around fourteen years old—they came back changed. Marston Ruthvale's adults never noticed, or pretended not to notice, but you could always tell when a mate of yours had gone up to the town. It was as though that one small leap towards a metropolitan life had stoked a fire in their heart, and that fire lit a fuse behind your eyes, a tiny pinprick of light that, once seen, you could always recognise. Kids were effectively ruined by their first trip. Evenings spent hurling abuse at each other across the cenotaph, and sometimes abusing the monuments own battered stone surfaces, seemed suddenly empty and shallow. From then on, till the day you inevitably moved away, Bali Ha'i would whisper from over the next hill but one: come to me.

Dan knew that if anyone from Marston Ruthvale had that look in their eyes, it was him. But now Stevie had moved here permanently, Dan sometimes saw that same shining star in his friend's pupils, an order of magnitude brighter. London had him in his grip: was Dan still stuck in the equivalent of drinking cider and black and kicking stones at the cenotaph?

How long had he been lost in thought? Had Stevie noticed? Dan cleared his throat. "I can't believe you're living round here now, Stevie," he said. "Five gigs within five minutes' walk, every night. The Lounge down the road. Giolla's open till midnight."

Stevie nodded. "We used to come here every weekend we could, to get away from the shit back in Oxford. Can you blame us?"

Mimicking himself as an undergrad, Dan squeaked, "'What's the night-life like in Oxford?"

In response Stevie quoted the college union rep: "'Well, London's only an hour away!'"

They both started laughing. Dan felt more sure of himself when they were both laughing.

"You should move out here too, you know. I'm serious," he added, as Dan began muttering a chorus of yeahs. They tailed off into silence, and Dan tried to think of something shake off the depression that was crowding round him. He thought of it.

"Stevie. Oi, Stevie. Dare you."

"Nnh?"

"Bet you can't blag us both into The Lounge."

"What? You serious? That'd be no trouble, Danielo. Date your name."

"Tonight. Now."

There was a pause, and it stretched, and Dan thought: Christ. Stupid idea. He's changed and I've changed. We're both too bloody old, for a start, and... But Stevie's face was resisting the look of incredulity that threatened to sweep across it, and for a half-second Dan saw mischief look back at him. Finally, Stevie spoke.

"It's a half-hour's walk."

Dan shrugged. "I'll roll us another."

"I'll be asleep by then."

"I'll do it on the way. I'm magic like that."

"I'm too spaced to stand, let alone talk my way past Fat Tony."

"We'll lean on each other."

"You're not giving me a way out, are you?"

"Nope. You're gonna have to do it now, Stevie. Unless you're..." (hands on an imaginary gunbelt, slung low over the hips, sat down so spoiling the effect) "... chicken."

Stevie sighed. Then he sighed again, mouthing "cunt" as he did so. Then he tensed in his chair and said:

"First to the street."

He was up first. Dan was still untangling his legs, but Stevie had to get his keys from the mantlepiece—thank God, he thought, he was still lucid enough to remember his keys—and as he swerved between Dan and the door, he was hit by a sofa cushion that knocked him off balance. Dan leapt for the door-handle, but Stevie bounced him with a shoulder and he ended up slamming the door shut. Stevie pulled it, and Dan, aside and ran for the front door, Dan reaching out to grab the tail of Steve's jacket.