Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play (36 page)

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“SHUT UP!”

“YOU SHUT UP! SHUT UP!”

Up to 25% off all carpet and laminate floors!!!

“YOU DRIVE LIKE SHIT, MAN!”

Vinyl floors!!

“HA! YOU LOSE! YOU SHIT!”

Natural stone!!

“YOU’RE A MORON!”

Oh my word, this was
awful.
I ran out of words to read, looked up and noticed something.

“Green light, Oleg! Go! Go!”

“BYE BYE!”

The wheels might well have spun and plumes of smoke risen from the tires, such was the speed Oleg managed to gather in just
a second or two…

I turned in my seat and looked round, behind us.

“You should’ve just said you were sorry, Oleg! He’s going mad!”

“I do nothing wrong. He is mad. He is very mad.”

“Maybe you should stop telling him he’s a shit and so on…”

“He
is
a shit! He is a
terrible
shit!”

I didn’t want to agree with Oleg in case somehow the cyclist could lip-read or something, but he was getting smaller by the
second, despite pedaling furiously…

“We have to lose him!” I said. “He’s still tailing us!”

“We lose him,” said Oleg, calmly. “This is no problem. He go now.”

“He’s still behind us!”

“Where?” said Oleg, his eyes scanning the mirror.

“By that sports shop!”

“
What
sport shop?”

“That one! The Merchant of Tennis! But now he’s by the bank! He’s
gaining!
”

“Because I have to stop…”

No! We were slowing down! More lights! This was
terrible!

“YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST DRIVE OFF, MAN?” shouted our ruby-faced and nearly breathless friend.

“YOU THINK YOU CAN BICYCLE FOREVER? THIS IS A BIG CITY!”

“I’LL KEEP COMING, MAN, TILL YOU LEARN HOW TO DRIVE!”

The two men stared at each other, then looked away. I coughed politely in the back seat. There were a few seconds of silence,
as both of them tried to think of something clever to say. There was nothing clever to say.

“So,” said Oleg, quietly. “Why you in LA? Holiday?”

The cyclist was still there, still looking at us.

“I’m here to surprise an old friend who thinks I’m an animal,” I said.

“Oh,” said Oleg.

He didn’t seem to think this was quite as cool as the last driver had.

The lights changed. We shot off again.

“Oleg, we have to turn off or something. He’ll follow me all the way back to London if we don’t.”

“We not turn off. I take you to hotel.”

“But we’re taking
him
to my hotel as well!”

“We soon be fine. We soon be fine. We soon be fine.”

He’d started to say this under his breath, as if he was trying to convince himself as much as me.

The next set of lights were green, and we almost had to stop ourselves from cheering, united in our small victory over our
cycle-stalker… but up ahead, cars were slowing right down…

“NO!” shouted Oleg. “IT’S A BUSTY TOUR!”

I blinked a few times, confused.

I looked around. I could see no busty tour. Surely I would have
noticed
a busty tour. What the hell
was
a busty tour, anyway?

“A busty tour?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Oleg. “They detour some bus.”

We slowed, annoyed and anxious, to a halt. A small fat boy looked at us from the window of one of the buses. We simply looked
back at him, preparing for the inevitable.

It took the cyclist a little longer this time, but when he finally made it, he seemed a little more subdued. His hair was
lank with sweat and he tried to catch his breath.

“I’ll… just keep… coming, man…”

Oleg looked worried. I decided to take action.

“Um… excuse me,” I said.

“This is nothing to do with you, guy…” said the cyclist, putting up his hand and waving it a bit.

“But it is! You’re chasing us, and that means you’re chasing me home! Back to my hotel. And I’d rather you didn’t, if that’s
all right by you.”

“This is nothing to do with you,” he said, pushing a pair of little round glasses up his nose. Up the
outside
of his nose, I mean, not the
inside.
He wasn’t a
magician.
“I suggest you step out of the cab if this is a problem for you and let me and this guy deal with this…”

“You can’t just hijack my cab!” I said. “And are you even going this way? You’re going to be very late for whatever it is
you’re doing today. Just think about that for a moment!”

The cyclist just shrugged.

“I’m sure Oleg is sorry,” I said. “He didn’t mean to nearly hit you.”

Oleg said nothing. The cyclist looked at him, annoyed.

“Oleg, you didn’t mean to nearly hit him, did you?” I said.

Oleg looked up. The lights were changing.

“Okay,” he said. “I am sorry.”

I looked at the cyclist and smiled. Oleg started to move the car forward.

“I AM SORRY YOU’RE MORON!”

And then he stepped on the gas.

I looked behind me, horrified.

My heart sank as I saw the cyclist slowly and begrudgingly start up after us.

We managed to lose the cyclist thanks to a run of good luck and green lights. Oleg had clearly decided that we had bonded
over this small adventure, and given me his card. I should give him a call when I needed to go back to the airport, he said.
He’d bring his limo out for me. I said I’d look out for
Bad Mutha!
In reality, I would never, ever do either.

As I walked back into the hotel I found myself jogging slightly, just in case the cyclist had somehow found a short cut. I
now understood why people in LA like jogging.

I made my way to the Business Center in the hotel lobby. It’s always made me feel quite important, using a hotel’s Business
Center. Like I had Business to attend to, and nothing short of a Center would help me do it. Sometimes I would ask a member
of the staff to direct me to the Business Center, and then I would sit there and pretend I was Businessing, when in fact I
was just checking my email and typing “Funny Cats” into YouTube.

I logged in and checked my emails. First, my ManGriff the Beast Warrior account. There was nothing from Ben Ives—no cancellation,
no query, no nothing. We were still on.

But…
were
we? I had to make sure. This was like planning a bank robbery. I needed to be meticulous.

Ben,

I landed in LA late last night in preparation for our meeting. I’ll see you at the bar at 2pm.

I looked down to check what I was wearing.

I’ll be wearing a white shirt and reading a copy of LA Weekly.

See you then

M

And then I checked my normal emails. There was one from Peter Gibson!

Danny!

Hello mate. Are we still meeting up this weekend? I’m leaving work soon so let me know!

Peter

Bollocks. I’d forgotten to cancel Peter. But no worries. As soon as I was home, I’d hotfoot it round to Tooting to say hello,
update his address in my book and notch up friend number 7. Besides, he’d understand—I had important business to attend to
in an important Business Center in LA.
And
I’d just been in a car chase. Surely that topped every excuse ever. I tapped out my reply and promised to buy the first round
as soon as I was home.

Things were working out nicely. But I was disappointed to see that there was still nothing from Akira in Japan. His dad had
seemed to think that Akira would
love
to hear from me, and I’d written an excited and upbeat reintroduction, but so far: nothing. Maybe I’d written to the wrong
address? I found his dad’s email, and wrote another message.

Hello Isamu,

It’s Daniel Wallace here again. I wrote to Akira but have not heard back yet. I know he must be very busy indeed, but maybe
I had the wrong email address for him?

Sorry to bother you with this,

Daniel

So. Nothing from Akira. And nothing, either, from Chris Guirrean.
Any
Chris Guirrean.

Before I’d left, I’d printed out a list of all the Chris Guirreans I could find in the UK. There were more than a dozen, spread
around the UK from Colchester to Cardiff to Glasgow. I’d figured the Glaswegian Chris Guirrean would be the likeliest—he was
closest to Dundee and our childhood home. But people could be anywhere. Literally
anywhere.
I’d written a standard letter, explaining who I was and what I was up to, and how vitally important it had become for me
to meet my first-ever best friend again… and I’d not had a single reply from a single Chris Guirrean as yet. Oh well. There
was time. It was still the beginning of September, and I wouldn’t be thirty for a couple of months yet.

I logged back in as ManGriff the Beast Warrior and found a reply from Ben.

Sure.

I smiled, but then frowned.

What kind of “sure” was that? Was it a
sure
sure, or was it a
sarcastic
sure? And if it was a
sarcastic
sure, was it sarcastic because he wasn’t coming, or sarcastic because he knew this was a set-up? Or perhaps he thought that
I
wasn’t coming? My levels of paranoia were reaching Woody Allen proportions.

There was only one way to make certain.

I looked at my watch. It was 12:30 p.m. I would be meeting Ben in an hour and a half.

I decided to set off early.

“So, why are you in LA?” said the driver.

“Just keep your eyes on the road!” I said, pointing wildly in front of me. “There might be a cyclist!”

“A
cyclist?
It’s like four hundred degrees out there…”

“That just makes them angrier,” I said. “They follow us!”

“So is this a holiday?” he said, implying, I think, that I might need one.

“I’m here to surprise an old friend who thinks I’m an animal,” I said.

And he stayed quite quiet after that.

We rode silently past the Chinese Theater again. Spiderman no longer seemed to be arguing with Charlie Chaplin. Marilyn Monroe
was having her picture taken with a strange little man.

The cab driver put the radio on and for a few minutes we listened to Ryan Seacrest talking about Britney Spears, before all
thoughts turned to Ben Ives. What would his reaction be? Would we get on? Would he find my little wind-up funny? Would it
be worth the trip to LA? Worth the distance, worth the time? I hoped so. I leaned my head against the window and was about
to drift off, when suddenly…

“Hang on—what was
that?
” I said, quickly craning round to see if the something I thought I’d seen was the thing I hoped it was…

“What?” said the driver.

“
That
—that shop back there…”

I had seen it for just a second. But a second was enough. In the window of a bright and colorful shop was something I now
wanted more than anything. Something I knew I had to have. Something that would help me. Something
excellent.

“Stop the cab…” I said.

*   *   *

I was sitting in a corner booth of the bar, hidden away from prying eyes, wearing a white shirt and carrying a copy of
LA Weekly.
I had a Budweiser in front of me, a great view of the doorway, and, crucially, a giant white rabbit head on my lap.

Yes. A giant white rabbit head on my lap.

It was brilliant.

It was huge, and furry, and had round friendly eyes and a big chuckling mouth. The lady at the costume shop who’d sold it
to me told me that if I bought it, she’d also throw in a big plastic carrot for free—and that had really swung it. This was
meant to be.

I wasn’t wearing it yet, though. That would be insane. No. I was waiting. Waiting for Ben Ives. Waiting for him to walk through
the door, before I’d pull it over my head and sit there, for the first time actually feeling like ManGriff the Beast Warrior,
who today had chosen the stylings of a massive rabbit to fully embrace his Furry tendencies.

I giggled, and then sipped at my drink and looked nervously through the window. It was five to two, and there was no sign
of him. The bar around me was reasonably empty and unnaturally dark. A couple by the window were chatting, and a middle-aged
man was reading the paper and snorting to himself. I tried to read my copy of
LA Weekly,
but I couldn’t concentrate, partly through excitement and partly through worry that people might think it was odd that I
was balancing a giant white rabbit’s head on my knees. But I needed it at hand—and it was perfect. It was another level to
the joke; another layer Ben would have to bash through. I’d giggled when I’d walked out of the costume shop with it. I knew
exactly what would happen. Ben would walk in and see a huge rabbit sitting in the corner, in a white shirt, reading
LA Weekly.
He’d realize with a sickening turn in his stomach that ManGriff was real, that ManGriff was a
proper
Furry, and that he’d have to spend an entire meeting placating a man in a giant rabbit head.

And that, friends, would be the moment I tore the mask off, and shouted, “I NEVER HAD GENITAL EXFOLIATION! IT’S ME! DAVE CASEY!
VERNON BODFISH! IT’S
DANNY WALLACE!
I TRICKED YOU! THAT WAS MY FRIEND IAN ALL DRESSED UP AS A BEAR! I WIN!!!!”

And then his eyes would register the truth, the fact that I’d got him back, the fact that after fifteen years, sweet revenge
was mine. It was what the plan had been missing all along—the big reveal!

And that’s what I was thinking about as a lone figure approached the doorway of the bar. I immediately pulled on the rabbit
head, as subtly as I could under the circumstances. I raised my copy of
LA Weekly
and sat, still and quiet, trying to make out from the corner of my eye whether the man who’d just walked in was, in fact,
Ben Ives.

It wasn’t.

Or, at least, I hoped it wasn’t. Because the man had turned round and walked away again.

No! Had that been Ben Ives? Had he walked in expecting a chat with a man—a strange man, but a man nevertheless—and not with
a rabbit? Had I pushed it too far? Should I take the mask off? Run after him? Explain?