Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving by Martin Millar Page A

someone like Elfish capable of finger-picking it. He almost warmed to her till she abandoned it abruptly, turned up the volume to produce dreadful distortion through the small amp, and played a few savage bar chords.
    John Mackie winced. He would never entirely get used to this sort of thing. Elfish liked the guitar but, as was no surprise at all to the shopkeeper, she could not afford it.
    â€œLet me take it now. I’ll pay it up.”
    â€œNo,” said John Mackie.
    â€œIt is of immense importance to me to have this guitar now,” said Elfish, seriously.

    John Mackie shook his head. His demeanour was not friendly. He desired that Elfish should leave the shop as quickly as possible because he now realised that his discomfort at her presence was due to the fact that when she brushed her hair back her face bore an uncomfortable resemblance to that of his long-dead sister.
    Elfish could not persuade him to part with the guitar. He would not let it out of the shop until it was fully paid for and Elfish could not afford it. Back in her house Elfish was angry. She needed the guitar for May but could see no way of obtaining it.
    With no prospect of solving this problem, Elfish hunted around for someone on whom she could take out her bad feelings. She went downstairs intending to pick an argument with Marion, Chevon, Gail or Perlita, either separately or all at once, but no one was around. Chevon’s cat wandered in. Elfish was quite prepared to take her bad feelings out on the cat, figuring that any cat that was prepared to stay with Chevon deserved a fair amount of abuse. She prepared to swing her boot at it but the cat was wise by now to Elfish and departed swiftly.
    Elfish peered hopefully out the back, wishing that Lilac and Cary were around so she could upset them by swearing at them, but they were nowhere to be seen.
    She was now completely frustrated. She felt that she simply had to be unpleasant to someone.
    Bad thoughts of Mo invaded her mind, and with them came an excellent idea. She dived to the phone and dialled his number.
    â€œHi, Mo, this is Amnesia. Elfish has just been on the phone to me. She obviously doesn’t realise how much I hate her. Is it true what she told me, that she’s all ready to go with her band, and she’s going to collect the name of Queen Mab for herself? Pretty silly of you to make that agreement and let her get away with it, Mo.”

    Mo said that Elfish would do no such thing but Amnesia made light of his protests.
    â€œI’m starting to think that Elfish may be too much for you, Mo. Is it true she’s slept with all your lovers and they all say it was better than you?”
    â€œCertainly not,” said Mo, with feeling.
    â€œShe says you used to drink so much you could never really do it properly. I do remember you drank a lot, Mo. You’d better watch it, you have a few failures and word gets around. And a reputation for impotence is a hard one to get rid of. Oh well, I expect Elfish was lying. Bye.”
    After this Elfish felt somewhat better. These were deadly insults to Mo and he would now be seething.
    This small triumph made Elfish feel like playing a game of pool. It struck her suddenly that she had no one to play with. She seemed to have misplaced all of her friends apart from Tula and she would be working just now.
    Though Elfish did not like to face it too consciously, she had in reality very few friends. She had never been a member of a wide social circle. She never went off drinking or dancing with a crowd of people as did the other women she lived with. What acquaintances she had she tended to drive away either through gradually wearing out their charity with her persistent melancholy or banishing their goodwill in a flash of bad temper.
    This relative solitude was something she shared with Aran although it was not something they ever discussed. It would indeed be a difficult thing to discuss, even with her brother, but since her