The Dreams of Max & Ronnie by Niall Griffiths Page A

at his flintiness, has blunted his edges, has made him soft and fluffy. He’s a pillow. He’s a kitten. He’s a slice of bread at the bottom of a damp sink.
    He asks his boys whereabouts they searched for his woman and they list some nearby cities and towns.
    â€“ And what, yew expected to find me a woman there? Max almost shouts. – Towns full-a skanks, maan, all of them. Didn’t I tell yew to use your fuckin imaginations? Didn’t I say that? Miss Judy’s. Bet yew even looked in Miss Judy’s, didn’t yew?
    One of his boys gives a nod, sheepish and ginger.
    â€“ Knew it! Fuck’s sakes. I ask yew to go and find me a fuckin goddess and yew look in Miss Judy’s. Heads full-a shite, maan, all-a yew.
    â€“ Still, tho, boss. One of his men spreads his arms. – We looked and we didn’t find. What do we do now?
    Max glares. – Put petrol in your cars. Buy some tickets for a train or a bus and carry on… fucking… looking.
    This they do. They fan out beyond the city’s boundaries, into the valleys that spread out there like spokes from a hub into hills and mountains gouged and scarred with spoil and ruin and disused mines from an industrialised past. Dole towns, student towns, call-centre towns. They speak to many women and find no takers, not even amongst the newly arrived Polish community. One pretty woman from Krakow, it is true, seems interested in the proposition, but her English was so poor that they weren’t certain if she understood what they were asking her to do. Plus her teeth were very bad. Pretty enough, aye, but when she smiled... Cheryl Cole with a gob full of porridge.
    They were getting very worried. Concern was building up in them and amongst them, less from their lack of success than the evident disintegration of the Emperor. The man was falling to bits before their eyes. The finer emotion of loyalty kept them on their quest, but that was crumbling under the necessity of survival; the boys from the north were getting bigger and louder in the city and a rumour had it that not only were they looking to stuff Max’s mouth with river mud but those of his underlings too. So they needed to escape. Which meant they needed money. Which meant they needed a woman willing to do what they asked.
    And meanwhile Max moped. He got flatter. One night in Rome, forcing down a drink that tasted to him of dust, the barman told him that some filming was going on in the north of the country; a film crew from the city had decamped to the place of mountains and eagles, where the people used the old tongue, in order to make a film. Something about knights. Big budget, the barman said. Loads of money. Starlets. Actresses. Fucking Hollywood.
    â€“ That’s where you need to go, brar. Get yerself up there. Turn up the bling, put on the charm, give it some flash. Them actresses are gunna be surrounded by the yokels up yur, fellers with no teeth, speak no fuckin English like, only woman they’ve ever had goes baaaa and yew turn up, flash motor, giving it a bit of large. Who they gunna go for? Impressed? Phuh. Course they’ll be impressed.
    Max thinks: the north of the country. Mountains and lakes. Deep valleys. Castles and ruins and rain and forests just like in his dream. No, not a dream – a prophecy. That dream was telling him something. And that something was that he must get his arse north.
    So, again, he gathers his crew in his flat and they notice an animation has returned to him, bit of colour in his cheeks like, a spark in his eye again, and they sip drinks and snort powders and he tells them what he wants them to do. He talks of beautiful actresses and filmsets and great wealth and how that should all be his. But the north , they say. We’re not getting on with the north, brar . So he takes a picture with his mobile phone of them all standing together in a group, him central with his big arms folded across his