“Hold on to your hat, Norman, old man! You’re going to the Fringe, baby!”

29

I KNOW WHAT you’re thinking—the news that a venue had given Little Big Man a slot on its Fringe schedule shouldn’t have come as such a shock to me. That I should have known there was a reasonable chance it would happen, because, after all, it was one of the crucial points on which Norman’s whole plan hung. But now that it had become a reality, all I could think was, holy, holy, holy shit.

In between their excited chattering and congratulating of Norman, Kathy and Tony both gave my arms a squeeze from either side, in tandem of course. Leonard plonked the laptop down on the table and started picking lint out of his jacket pockets with a beatific smile, like he’d known all along. And Norman, well, he just sat there with an expression I couldn’t quite read, because, to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure I’d ever seen it before.

When everyone calmed down Leonard pulled over a chair from a nearby table, sat down next to Norman and adjusted the screen on his laptop. There was no sign of his previous odd mood and he seemed totally back to his charming self.

“Right then. Listen to this. Oh...er, just a moment, I seem to have...” He fumbled around with the keys and brought up a few windows on the screen.

“Um... I’m terribly sorry, I...oh! Right, here it is.”

He cleared his throat and began reading out loud from an email.

“‘Dear Little Big Man. Thank you very much for requesting to be part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe event schedule at the Duke Supper Club downstairs at O’Shaughnessy’s Real Ale House.’”

It seemed they had been impressed by the tenacity of his daily and sometimes twice daily follow-ups (Leonard clearly hadn’t made it through three wars and a stint at Pearl’s by giving up when the going got tough), so after due consideration and a very last-minute cancellation (and possibly a healthy dose of exasperation, I was willing to bet), they were delighted to offer Little Big Man a fifteen-minute slot at their establishment on the outskirts of Edinburgh, but easily accessible by public transport. Good to know.

“Oh my God, Norman! You did it, you got a venue!” Kathy was positively beaming as she reached over the table to give Norman’s hand an encouraging pat.

I knew I needed to say something, too, but when I tried my mouth just did some kind of weird yawning thing as a bunch of words began lining up to commit suicide over my tongue. Jostling around next to the shit it alls were a couple of what the fucks and a few token hell’s bells thrown in for good measure, and it took everything I had to stop them from spewing out all at once in an almighty mess on the café table. So I said nothing. But I was thinking plenty.