MORNING SERIAL
“CAN’T go wrong,” he said. “Pork chops the size of dartboards.”
The new bar was more ready for the party group, polystyrene rocks forming dimly-lit booths, of which I took one that looked out over the street whilst still concealing me as much as it could.
For Napa, the night was young, and strolling around you could still see the odd tourist who would not be found here deeper into the night – older couples; an obviously younger German couple all blonde hair and innocent perspectives.
I ate my pork chops – not quite the size of dartboards but they were large enough to give credence to the exaggeration – and wondered how long I would have to sit there before I saw the whole of what Napa had to offer.
I ordered a beer, and then another, and remained at my spot in silence until the sun fell and the lights went up casting a stage-like heat across the street. Before too long things got louder – not the music, as that was consistently loud, neighbouring venues competing like opposing storm winds – but the street began to fill with groups of young people, all screeching, lolloping, all of them on the prowl.
Groups of lads, groups of girls, each of them pecked at by the street staff paid to try and lure passing packs into one of the open-front bars that seemed to go on and on like market stalls. It was a circus from where I was sitting, and one that was peopled with a twisted idea of attractiveness, peopled with those both blessed with good looks and those not so much, all down in the same shallow waters of forced equality.
The odd scooter parped and swerved through on occasion, some of them with Cypriots riding, but mainly it was the predictable mess of sunburnt Western youngsters strutting their stuff with bare chests for the boys and gleaming strap marks along mauve shoulders for the girls.
The one exception was odd indeed, and the sign that beneath Napa was a real town with miscreants and chancers grifting the underbelly.
> The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond is published by Parthian www.parthianbooks. com
CONTINUES TOMORROW