Adam's Spare Rib (formerly Hove Side Story)

by Stevie P Smith

By Stevie Psmith

Call me Z.  As letters of the alphabet go, it's perhaps not the most action-packed - but, then, until the svelte blonde walked into my office on Hove's Lower East Side, neither was I...

A couple of hours earlier, I'd been sipping my morning Old Fashioned when the cry of a news vendor on the street below drifted through the open window: "Subliminally challenged criminal women's illogical behaviour. Read all about it!"

I barely paused to blow on my drink. It was the kind of story you find in this town all the time.

When the tap on my door came, I was already deeply engrossed in a review of a play in the Lake District - about as far as you could get from trouble, or so I thought...

The blonde didn't waste any time. "You seen this?" she asked, flipping a copy of a newspaper on to the desk. I picked it up.

"Wordsmith eats shoots and leaves," I read aloud. "So some broad likes salad, so what?"

"Not that," snapped the blonde, "This."

It took a couple of minutes for us to dispel the confusion, after which, having polished my glasses, I began to see what she was driving at.

"Seems some people at the local library aren't too happy," I observed mildly.

Her body language told me I'd have done better to remark on the unseasonable warmth for the time of year.

She took a deep breath, distracting enough in itself, but it was a couple of points she went on to make that really had me sitting up to take notice.

.../ 2
I don't know about you, but, ordinarily, I'm not a big fan of crime fiction. I mean, when you're a kid, say, maybe you flirt a little with Ngaio Marsh or Agatha Christie - but, like Kia-Ora and popcorn at the cinema, they pretty well fade from the scene as you mature. Other ideas claim your attention and you feel a whole lot happier about the notion of spending a day or two with someone like William Wordsworth.

That, though, wasn't the way the blonde saw it.

"I'm telling you, mister, I've been a friend of that library for more than half of my life," she breathed, huskily.

I tried, not wholly successfully, to banish from my mind thoughts of a young doctor on horseback riding slowly through a forest clearing, as she warmed to her theme.

By the time she'd finished and sank into the armchair I keep for visitors, not even the necessity of rapidly standing up again to brush the biscuit crumbs from her skirt could dull the triumphant gleam in her eye.

Perched now on a pile of old telephone directories I'd been thinking of recycling, she looked younger and, somehow, more vulnerable.

I sipped my drink. Eventually, the unspoken question between us came to her lips...

Maybe you'll have me pegged for a sucker, but I agreed to her request. I guess there's something about a blonde that can cause even a sojourn in the Lake District to lose something of its allure.

She seemed satisfied, anyway, as she settled her hat on her head and walked out of my life, leaving me with a slight twinge of regret that I wasn't ten years younger and a post-it note I hurriedly scrawled to remind me to do some recycling.

Telephone directories and their disposal by strong men weren't on my mind, though, as, a little later, I strolled into Jubilee Square to check out the arrangement of the crime shelves.  I could have let it go, but I like to keep my side of a bargain.

.../ 3
It was about 2.15pm when I found the library already closed for the day.

I made my way back to the office via the park, taking the opportunity to scatter a few crumbs from a couple of biscuits I'd left forgotten in my trenchcoat pocket.

Birds and blondes - maybe they're not all that different.  With friends like them, who needs enemies?