Hello Gorgeous: An Enzo Origin Story

Part 1

If this bloke doesn’t stop yammering on, I’m going to stab this bloody oyster fork straight into my pupil. Though his pupil is the one deserving, Alas, I’m an Englishman. Polite and all that rubbish.

I finger the three tiny prongs, testing their sharpness as he drones on about the bruises on his forearms and how an honest day’s work used to mean something.

And I’m quite sure it did, back in 1810 when this blasted conversation began. But it’s March 1870, and I’ve been sitting on this hard wooden stool for what feels like an eternity. I slip my grandfather’s pocket watch out of my waistcoat. A patina creeps around the edge; it’s in need of a good scrub. Much like this bloke’s teeth.

Half past eleven. I’ve been listening to this drunkard for nearly two hours. I signal the barkeep.

“The bill, mate, if you’d be good enough,” I say.

The barkeep nods and raises an eyebrow at the chap with the flapping tongue next to me as if to commiserate. He must be a regular. Which means this is my first and likely my last time here.

We all have our favorite haunts. London is full of taverns, all wood and brass and smelling of gin and ale, indistinguishable to the novice. But for working men like us, the stool we choose in the establishment we call our own is as personal a fit as the undergarments we wear, the tobacco we smoke, and the girls we chase.

Girls like that stunning gazelle that’s strolling through the door. Those long blond waves may frame her face like a mane, but still I’m the lion. Ready to stalk, hunt, and pounce.

Perhaps fate isn’t punishing me, after all. Sending me here because my local establishment was closed on account of consumption. That dastardly disease ends in death more times than not and it’s festering in every grimy corner of this city. It’s like London’s one vile bloody hacking cough.

The blond swivels her head, and her flowing waves float down to her ample bosom, erasing every dull word that’s escaped through this bloke’s yellowed teeth and cracked lips.

That blue jacquard silk dress with its lace collar and sleeves marks her as someone who wouldn’t step foot through a tavern such as this under normal circumstances. Perhaps she’s lost. Ooh, how I hope she’s lost. I’m quite good with directions. Transport’s my vocation, after all.

“Do you see him, love?” she says. Her full bustled skirt swishes behind her as she steps aside and pulls a mangy looking girl in a tattered woolen dress forward.

Ah, of course. This happens at least once every Friday night in taverns of this ilk, my own faithful one included. The wife cloistered at home with a baby suckling at each breast sends an older child round the local pubs to scrounge up her drunken husband before he exhausts all his wages on booze and cards.

The little girl spits out the finger she’s been gnawing on and points the drool-covered digit straight at me.

Blondie’s blue eyes widen and her long lashes flirt with her eyebrows. I’m not sure whether I should be insulted or flattered that all it takes is one glance for her to doubt my potential fatherhood status.

I shake my head and slide back on my stool, fully exposing the ladder man beside me, who’s currently slumped over the wood bar. Still jabbering on, mind you.

“Yes, yes, the cans of paste are heavy, chap, I know,” I say, patting his forearm.

He winces. Right, the bruises. As a ladder man, he has to drape heavy cans of paste over this arms so his hands are free—one to hold the edge of the exceedingly tall ladder he has to climb and the other to grasp the thick posters advertising everything from shoeshine to nappies. He slops on paste and unfurls his banners to hang these advertisements on buildings throughout this city that wants and needs so much as to create an army of ladder men to display it all.