TWO CANS

Said goodbye outside the pub and went down the shop. Crossing the road heard a voice behind me shout, ‘hey, you.’
‘No.’
‘Hey, you.’
‘What?’
‘Do us a favour.’
Turn. A man, wearing a white jacket and dark trousers, coming towards me.
‘Go in that shop and buy me some beer would you?’
‘I know you,’ to a man from the flats.
He held out a fiver, said, ‘HSL, man, they’re one ten each, can you get two?’
‘Yeh, okay.’
Two cans of HSL cost one fifty each because, the shopkeeper said, it was after ten, one ten before.
‘Oh no, that’s what he told me, that’s why I asked you to get them for me,’ he said when I told him and gave him the two pound coin was change. ‘It’s one ten before eleven. He puts the extra straight in his back pocket, he does.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’
‘Oh well, that’s alright man.’