Bear Necessity Page 5

  “Look—”

  “Got it!” said the man with a click of his fingers. “You’re looking for a jumpsuit for your sister’s disco-themed birthday party.”

  “I haven’t got a sister,” said Danny.

  “Is it a costume funeral by any chance?”

  “Is that even a thing?”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Look, I don’t want a costume. I’m here about the advert.”

  “What advert?”

  “In your window,” said Danny. He pointed towards the front of the shop. “For the job.”

  “Oh, yes, the job! Sorry, I put that up so long ago that I forgot all about it.”

  “Well, you can finally take it down because here I am.” Danny presented himself with a showroom flourish of the hands.

  “I really need a woman,” said the man.

  “I bet,” said Danny, looking the man up and down.

  “No, not me I don’t have any trouble with the ladies. The boss is looking for a woman. For the shop.”

  “Where’s the boss?” said Danny, looking around.

  The pirate readjusted his eye patch. “I’m the boss,” he muttered.

  “Right,” said Danny. He shook his head and turned to leave.

  “You want to leave your number?” said the man.

  “What for?” said Danny.

  The man shrugged. “Maybe we can go for a pint sometime. You know, the three of us.” The man nodded again at Barry.

  Danny pointed to the street. “I really have to go,” he said, backing out of the shop.

  The man sighed as he watched the door creak shut behind Danny.

  “Nice one, Barry,” he said.

  Barry said nothing.

  * * *

  Danny came home that evening to find Will on the couch watching television and a letter on the table. Fearing it might be another bill, Danny ignored it while he changed out of his “work” clothes, took a long shower, and made himself a cup of tea—three things he always did when he used to work on the building site, and three things he’d continued to do in order not to arouse suspicion—before collapsing into the armchair and peeling open the envelope, carefully, as if it might explode.

  It wasn’t a bill, which came as some relief, but he knew it couldn’t be good news either when he saw the name of Will’s school on the letterhead. Either Will was in trouble or the school wanted money for something. He quietly hoped that Will was in trouble.

  “Another school trip?” he said, as much to himself as to Will. “Where to this time?”

  Will continued to watch Top Gear while Danny continued to read.

  “Stonehenge? You’ve already been there, with Mum, remember? It didn’t cost fifty quid neither. You don’t want to go again, do you?”

  Will shrugged.

  “I mean, it’s okay if you do,” said Danny. “It’s totally up to you. The place hasn’t changed since the last time you were there, it still looks exactly the same, but if you honestly think that you’re going to learn something from this trip that you didn’t learn last time, and I know you learned a lot last time, so much so that I distinctly remember thinking that this kid is literally an expert on Stonehenge now, and probably never needs to go again—if you really want to go all the way back there to look at the same old pile of rocks, then that’s absolutely fine with me, you just say the word. Or not. I mean, you don’t need to say anything. I just mean… you know what I mean.”

  Will didn’t respond. Danny stared at the letter.

  “Look,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we go sometime, just you and me? It’ll be fun, we can make a day of it, like you and Mum did. How’s that sound?”

  Will shrugged again while somebody blathered on about horsepower in the background.

  “Great,” said Danny, trying to ignore the lack of enthusiasm. “I’ll go get dinner on.”

  Closing the kitchen door behind him, Danny scanned the letter again in the hope that a second read might reveal some previously overlooked detail that would exempt him from having to pay. Finding none, he slid the letter back into the envelope and tossed it into the bin.

  * * *

  The weather was bright and the park was full of retired people lounging in beach chairs, young parents pushing strollers, office workers eating their lunch or soaking up the sun, and groups of students chatting in circles on the grass.

  Danny was sitting on a bench in the shade, his eyes fixed on his phone as he scrolled through endless pages of job advertisements.

  “Experience required, experience required, experience required,” he muttered to himself as he made his way through the list. Every job he came across, no matter how menial or self-explanatory, seemed to require some level of experience. A shop assistant required experience. A bingo hall cleaner required experience. Even a dog walker required at least two years’ experience in walking progressively larger dogs “up to the level of Alaskan malamute,” according to the advert (Danny guessed the starting level was probably a Chihuahua or a shih tzu or something, although the advert didn’t specify).

  He opened his e-mails to find two rejections waiting in his inbox and another one in his spam folder. He also had an e-mail from a woman called Svetlana who thought his Facebook profile was very attractive despite the fact that he didn’t have a Facebook profile.

  Danny sighed and put his phone away before slowly making his way through the park. Noticing a crowd up ahead, he saw that people had gathered to watch the same street performers that he and Will had come across a couple of weeks previously. The man with the cat on his shoulder was there, performing for a group of people who were filming him on their phones. Another sizable crowd had gathered around the magician, and the nut juggler and the chicken man were also present, along with several other performers that Danny hadn’t seen before, including a mime, a one-man band, a violinist, and a human statue who was doing her best to ignore the children who were doing their best to piss her off.

  Danny stood and watched for a while, marveling once again at their ability to earn what appeared to be good money by dressing up and making total fools of themselves. He could see why certain acts were popular, namely the ones that exhibited some kind of actual talent, such as the violinist, or the magician, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out how even the worst performers were leaving the park with more money than they’d arrived with. The only music the one-man band seemed to be making was that of the purely accidental variety, randomly flapping and kicking and twitching in the hope that at least one of his limbs struck a corresponding chord, and the man dressed up like a squirrel spent more time picking his oversize nuts off the ground than he did trying to juggle them. Danny had lost count of the number of jobs he’d come across that morning alone that he wasn’t eligible for because he didn’t have enough experience—yet here were people who were making not just a living but a decent living when they clearly had no clue what they were doing.

  And just like that, Danny had an idea.

  CHAPTER 8

  “I bid thee welcome, weary traveler!” said the man behind the counter at the costume shop. That, at least, was what Danny assumed he said, although it was difficult to know for sure because the man was dressed in a full suit of armor and his voice was muffled by his helmet. “Aha, you again,” he said, lifting his visor as Danny approached.

  “Where’s Barry?” said Danny, looking around.

  “Currently rented out to an elderly widower called Graham.”

  “Never too old for a pirate party, I guess.”

  “He didn’t hire the costume,” said the man. “Just Barry.”

  “What—”

  “I didn’t ask. We need the money.”

  “Got it,” said Danny. “What’s the cheapest costume you have?”

  “Allow me to cast an eye over yonder bargain rack and honor thy request, good sir,” said the man. He turned to the rack behind him and began to rifle through the hangers. “How’s about this one?”
he said, taking a suit from the rack and draping it over the counter.

  Danny frowned. “Is that… a Nazi uniform?”

  “We prefer the term historically accurate military costume,” said the man.

  “It’s a historically accurate Nazi uniform.”

  “Well, if you want to get technical about it, then yeah.”

  “Has anybody ever actually rented this?” said Danny.

  “Prince Harry did once, I think.”

  “Right. I was sort of looking for something a little less likely to get me beaten up, to be honest.”

  The man flicked through the rack again and selected a three-piece suit with a blue tie attached. His other hand clutched a messy blond wig.

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well what?” said Danny.

  “What do you think?”

  “What is it?”

  “A Boris Johnson costume, obviously.”

  “I said I wanted something less likely to get me beaten up,” said Danny.

  “So… that’s a no?”

  “Yes, that’s a no. Who the hell wants to look like Boris Johnson?”

  “Nobody,” said the man. “That’s why it’s cheap.”

  “Give me something else.”

  The man rummaged through the rack a third time. He found a black-and-white costume and placed it on the counter, along with a mask.

  “What am I looking at?” said Danny.

  The man’s gauntlet clacked against the counter as he drummed his fingers in contemplation. He checked the label on the inside of the costume and shrugged as much as his suit of armor would allow.

  “It’s a panda,” he said.

  “You sure about that?”

  “No, but it’s what the label says.”

  Danny stared at the costume, still not convinced. If it really was a panda, then it was the saddest panda he’d ever seen, one that had lived an exceedingly long and disappointing life full of unfaithful partners and unreliable betting advice.

  “It smells funky,” said Danny, his nose twitching involuntarily.

  “I won’t lie to you,” said the man, “some kid hired it for Freshers’ Week and puked all over it. It’s totally clean, don’t get me wrong, but it still has the faintest whiff of Jägermeister vomit.”

  “How much do you want for it?”

  The man thought for a moment.

  “Tenner?”

  “I’ll give you five.”

  “Give me a tenner and I’ll throw in Boris for free.”

  Danny pulled a crumpled five-pound note from his pocket and slapped it onto the counter.

  “I’ll give you five,” he said.

  “Deal,” said the man.

  * * *

  Back at the park, Danny locked himself inside one of the public bathroom stalls and commenced his graceless metamorphosis, almost putting his foot in the toilet as he struggled to remove his clothes in the cramped confines of his makeshift dressing room, and then almost doing the same with the other foot when he tried to feed his leg into the costume.

  “All right?” he said to the man at the urinal who gaped at him as he emerged from the cubicle. The man nodded, unaware that he was missing the urinal by a good few inches as he watched the giant panda check itself in the mirror.

  Danny wandered around the park in search of a suitable place to perform. He thought it was a good idea to keep his distance from the other acts for the time being, partly because he didn’t yet have the confidence to approach them and partly because he didn’t want to risk a potential territorial dispute on his very first day. By turning up uninvited without first introducing himself or asking for acceptance, he might be breaching some unknown code of honor which might or might not result in a gangland-style punishment beating or, at the very least, some unpleasant staring.

  Deciding on a spot that was far from the other performers yet still close enough to keep an eye on them should he need to make a hasty getaway, Danny dumped his bag of clothes on the grass behind him and placed his open lunchbox by his feet. Lining the container with a handful of pocket change, he nervously adjusted his costume and thought about what to do next.

  As if smelling his fear, a little girl suddenly appeared in front of him while her mother hovered nearby. The girl wore a yellow dress, blue glasses, and pigtails in her hair, but despite her seemingly innocent appearance Danny couldn’t help but feel the slightest bit intimidated as she silently waited for him to do something. Unable to juggle or play the guitar, and without a cat to balance on his shoulder, Danny did the only thing he could think of. He waved.

  The girl continued to stare at him, her eyes wide because her glasses were thick and not because she seemed even remotely wonderstruck by the weird-smelling panda in front of her.

  Already out of ideas and feeling increasingly awkward, Danny waved again. The girl looked at her mother, who smiled at Danny almost apologetically before removing her purse from her handbag and giving her daughter some money.

  “For me?” said Danny as the girl approached with a pound coin pinched between her fingers. Instead of giving him the money, however, the little girl, hypnotized by the sight of the other coins in the lunchbox, quickly grabbed a handful of change and stuffed it into her pocket while her mum, still smiling, looked on in total oblivion.

  “Hey!” said Danny, instinctively grabbing her arm.

  The girl screamed so loudly that several people stopped to see what was happening.

  “Tamara!” shrieked the mother. “Get away from her, you pervert!”

  “She stole my money!” said Danny as the woman ran over and scooped her daughter up in her arms.

  “The bad man touched me!” wailed the girl.

  “I didn’t touch her!” said Danny, addressing the bystanders, one of whom had started to film the encounter on his phone. “I mean, yes, I touched her, but I didn’t ‘touch’ her,” he added, making inverted commas, which only made him look worse.

  “You’re lucky I don’t call the police!” said the mother.

  “You’re lucky I don’t call the police!” said Danny, prodding his furry chest. “I’m the victim here!”

  “Victim!” said the mother. She pointed to her daughter. “She’s five years old!”

  “So was the kid in The Omen!”

  “Are you calling my daughter the Antichrist?” She looked at the man who was filming. “Did you get that? He just called my daughter the Antichrist.”

  “Can you please stop filming?” said Danny.

  “No way,” said the man. “This shit’s going on YouTube.”

  “What’s an Antichrist?” said the girl.

  “Nothing, darling,” said the mother. “Come on, let’s move away from the bad man.”

  The woman marched off with her daughter in tow. The girl looked over her shoulder and paused her theatrical sobbing just long enough to flash Danny the smuggest of grins.

  He picked up his lunchbox and sighed. Over half his money was gone. Before he could calculate precisely how much was missing, a little boy came out of nowhere and kicked Danny hard in the shin, causing him to drop the lunchbox and send coins flying everywhere.

  Danny clutched his leg in pain and lolloped after the scattered change. The boy giggled and kicked him again.

  “Stop that!” said Danny. He waved his arms at the big man in the small suit who was barking aggressively into his phone nearby, but the man was too busy telling somebody called Dave what an incompetent wanker he was to notice what his son was up to.

  The boy picked up a two-pound coin and taunted Danny with it.

  “Give that back!” said Danny. The boy shook his head.

  “Give. It. Back,” he repeated in his best Dad Voice, and this time the boy relented. He presented the coin in his little doughy palm, but when Danny tried to retrieve it, the boy jerked his hand away and hoofed him in the shin again before laughing like a maniac and running off to show his dad the two-pound coin he’d just “found” on the path.

  Dann
y got down on his hands and knees and wearily combed the ground. He didn’t see the other children approach until their shoes appeared in front of him.

  “What are you?” said the owner of the red shoes, a little girl no older than six who clutched a floppy-eared rabbit to her chest.

  “He’s a badger, stupid,” said her brother, who had the same ginger hair and freckles as his sister.

  “I don’t like badgers,” said the girl.

  “I’m a panda, actually,” said Danny, climbing to his feet and patting himself down.

  “I don’t like pandas,” said the girl.

  “Can you do kung fu?” said the boy.

  “Pandas can’t do kung fu,” said Danny.

  “Kung Fu Panda can,” said the boy.

  “Kung Fu Panda isn’t a real panda,” said Danny.

  “Neither are you,” said the boy.

  Danny had no response to that.

  “Do kung fu!” said the boy.

  “Yeah, do kung fu!” squealed the girl.

  “No.”

  “Why?” said the girl.

  “Because he can’t,” said the boy.

  “Precisely,” said Danny.

  “You’re the worst panda ever,” said the girl.

  “Okay. Fine. Here,” he said, throwing out a pitiful combo of clumsy karate chops. “Happy now?”

  “That was rubbish,” said the boy.

  “That was rubbish!” repeated his sister.

  The boy pointed across the park. “The man over there does magic,” he said.

  “Good for him,” said Danny.

  “Make me disappear!” shouted the girl.

  “I wish I could,” said Danny.

  “Can you juggle?” said the boy. “Another man was juggling.”

  “Yeah, juggle!”

  “Look,” said Danny, taking a coin and holding it up. “Here’s fifty pence. You can have it if you promise to go away.”

  “Fifty pence each?” said the boy.

  “I want a pound!” said the girl.

  “If she gets a pound, then I want a pound,” said her brother.

  Danny sighed and shook the box as if he were panning for gold.