Half Cut

‘Can you take over for a minute?’ he begged. At the corner of the alley, in grubby vest and shorts, Julian was down on his hands and knees, gripping a pair of scissors.

He rented a studio in his friend Yvonne’s house. She’d gone away for the weekend, leaving him with instructions to feed her prize Burmese cat Mistinguett. The latter was on heat, and when she started her infernal caterwauling, Julian threw her out. Come Monday morning, he was crawling round the village trying to lure her back home, making the sound that Yvonne made with her scissors as she cut up little slices of fish for Mistinguett.

Right now you’d never guess that Julian’s paintings sold for mega bucks in Paris, London and New York. If I found Mistinguett perhaps he’d give me one. And perhaps he wouldn’t, by lunchtime back at the Bar du Chateau and on his fifth pastis.

I turned the corner. ‘All right,’ he bawled, ‘go fuck yourself!’

Snip snip.