Monday, March 9, 2015

Shut-up Shop - Vale Mr. T. T.



Nearly half eight, Beefy crowing over a 4D $1455 win on Wednesday. That explained his absence the last little while. Took him across to Tanjung Pinang to see the kids and share the bounty. All signature cool sangfroid Beef like you get in some former jailbirds who endured well. Butcher from Haig Road going by with Hellos in company with some young bucks who turned out his sons. One at least a son who had been on $170 a day packets for a good while. The old man had paid the lad generously. 170, 170, 170 before he managed to chuck it aside, in Beefy’s vocabulary. Did the old man not know who had been his dealer, one wondered.
         Fine and clear made it perfect for the Long March, maybe some more little gallops interspersed…. The Long March might shake-out something again from the pages. Maybe. The newly discovered Canadian journal would receive “One Piece Dragon” with any luck, the thing having legs now, three years later after how many revisions. Correction, correction, correction. Writing is re-writing, rightly said the Jap Hideo, who himself wrote in a non-native language.
         Beef quietly getting his red pen out and magnifying glass. A call. Beef doesn’t usually either receive or make calls, old school. The night before he had been waiting for nightfall when he could get to work. Didn’t like too much daylight. Shortly after the triangulations Beef had been talking about on the Form Guide  spread on the table before him. Long finger line, across and back up on the diagonal. Beef “saw” the good, lucky numbers, as well as understood a certain logic in the occurrence and sequence. He regularly drew up little three inch squares of nine or twelve numbers and used the chart to try to explain his systems. The past few weeks he had been talking about the triangles and pyramids. A sneaking suspicion too the fella had decided he might have struck some kind of vein of luck with his writer pal. Strange. Scissors not long after too cutting out a segment for some reason. The magnifier had not been seen before and certainly not the scissors. Soon after taking a seat a little quizzical self-mockery at the figure a Malay would cut with a Chinese broadsheet for passersby.
         Passing too the Widow Shark, nosing by in his black and white check flat-cap. Day or two ago close-up at the drinks counter the thatch was interesting, shaved around the ears and down behind while grown out otherwise and coloured what was an unusual brown russet tone for Geylang Serai. It had been Beef who christened the fellow a few months ago, nailing the man perfectly. Fair guess like many others the Shark was intimidated by Beef. 150 Minute Maid Pulpy Aloe Vera for a swig was another unknown. Beef rarely ever did buy at any of the stalls.
         Last day of the old regime here at Mr. T. T. Monday Hussein from out at Bukit Bartok assumed control$6.8m from memory. Most of the crew were having a week or two back home in ML before reassignment elsewhere in the chain. (A reminder there were sixteen other Mr. Teh Tariks island-wide.)  The rescuer of pigeons Abdul Majid, lover of ladies, a leading light of the workers here, is off to Chennai for a couple of weeks visiting his wife’s family and at the same time taking the opportunity to re-connect with Ismail the cook out at Pondicherry from the 2011-12 crew. Wonderful boys. Adieu.

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