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The carpet never looked clean even when he hoovered it, which wasn't that often anyway, but it was hard to tell as it was covered in papers, clothes, CDs, and, dominating the entire room, a massive 7ft tall cardboard cut-out pterodactyl that Bob had found outside a shop the day before. There was an open book in front of him, a masterpiece of world literature, no doubt, but the pages didn't seem to have moved much since Martha had left for the supermarket.
'So, what are you going to do with the chicken?'
'What am I going to do with it? Nothing, I was just going to leave it there.'
'Oh, right, so it's the three of us now, I don't know how I feel about that...' Martha said, looking as if she didn't feel too damn pleased about it.
'Well, I'm sorry, but Terry's staying.'
'Terry? Oh, it's Terry now is it? I thought it was supposed to be a girl.'
'I'm not too sure actually.' Bob said, looking doubtfully at the space between Terry's thin, scaly legs.
'Anyway, I couldn't think of a better name.'
'Terry the pterodactyl? God, Bob, you're so original, how'd you manage to think of that one?'
Bob just shrugged.
'Hey, do you want to go clubbing tonight?'
'Nah, I don't feel like it.'
'C'mon, it'll be fun, this is the first night off I've had in ages.'
'It won't be fun, it'll be smoky and expensive and claustrophobic and I'll only end up getting too drunk and spending money I don't have.'
'We don't have to get drunk...' She said, coyly rolling her eyes at him.
'No, we've been taking too many drugs as it is. Besides, I don't have any money.'
'C'mon Bob, everyone else will be going out...'
'So? I hate your friends, you know I hate your friends. They're so shallow and pretentious, all they care about is how fucking cool they think they are. There's no way that I'm voluntarily spending my free time hanging around with those people.'
Martha sighed and slumped down on the sofa, as if she weighed around, say, 500 tons. She was disappointed, although his reluctance to get loved up and go larging it with Glasgow possé was only to be expected.
In fact she had met him in a club where it was his aloofness and grim resolution not to have a good time that had interested her. Watching him sitting in the corner, hating everybody, she had thought he might prove to be an interesting person and she felt she should be going out with someone who was at least interesting. Her own shallow, pretentious friends were about as interesting as the pages of some poor quality, permanently out of date fashion magazine, this much was true.
'Well,' she said, 'we could go out with your friends if it wasn't for the fact you don't have any.'
'I have friends.' He said defensively. 'I have friends, they're just not the type of friends you go clubbing with.'
'Oh? Then just what is it you and your imaginary friends do together then?'
'We do... other things.' He said, slightly irritated to be reminded of the fact he had no real friends, the kind you go clubbing with or otherwise. It was one of the job hazards of being a full-time misanthrope. He decided to change the subject.
'Did you get the paper?' Bob got up and walked towards the huddle of shopping bags, now beginning to spread outwards, as tins and packets gradually worked their way out of the bag and seeped slowly across the carpet.
'Yeah, it's in one of the bags.'
He rifled through the thin plastic sacks for a moment, then pulled out a little bundle of newsprint that was sandwiched between two packets of stores-own-brand cornflakes. He looked at it for a second with a puzzled expression and then burst out in what he hoped was righteous indignation.
'Jesus, you got the Mail! I thought I told you to get the paper.'
'The Mail's a paper.'
'No it's not, it's a tabloid, and it's not even a proper tabloid. I mean if you're going to get a tabloid at least get The Sun or The Star or something that at least doesn't have pretensions of being a serious newspaper.'
'Look, it's a paper, it's got News in front, sport in back and the TV in the middle - it's a paper. When I get a broadsheet you never read half of it anyway.'
'Well, that's because only half of it's worth reading, but at least half of it's worth reading. What's worth reading in the Mail? The horoscopes? I mean, Jesus.' He held up the copy of the Mail between two fingers as if it was a piece of faeces.
But, worth reading or not, he opened it up and began scanning through it, flicking disdainfully past a couple of trivial kiss-and-tell stories he'd read later and looking determinedly at an article about the current situation in some obscure eastern European country. He wasn't the slightest bit interested in the current situation in some obscure eastern European country, but he wanted Matha to see he was reading something important.
He stared blankly at the page for about thirty seconds as Martha lit up a Regal King Size and then, fully briefed on the political situation in Eastern Europe, he put the paper to one side and began eyeing up her cigarette.
Bob was somewhat in two minds about smoking - on the one hand he was vaguely aware that lung cancer and emphysema weren't really good things, but on the other hand he had always felt that smoking made him look cool and devil-may-care. So it was no contest really.
