CRIPPLEGATE, LONDON, ENGLAND | 1958
“What time is it Mr. Wolf?” A lanky, teenaged Lucious Cole sidled up to the edge of the Berwick Street Market in Soho, his pegged jeans and blonde hair carefully tortured into a quiff like his latest American hero, Jerry Lee Lewis.
“Time for you to nick a watch, Louie,” Chas Woodrow good-naturedly chastised his longtime partner-in-crime. “You are late.”
“There was a holdup on the Tube,” Cole explained, removing the cigarette from behind his ear and waiting for Woodrow to flash his cherished Zippo. “It wasn’t me, I swear.”
“Should have taken the Transport,” Woodrow leaned in and lit the bent Player’s Navy Cut. “Run into any Teds?”
“Nah,” Cole took a drag off the unfiltered smoke and upon finding tobacco on his tongue, spat it into the street as disaffectedly as he could manage.
“You should upgrade, mate,” Woodrow needled his best friend. “‘Get together with Player’s Bachelor-Tipped,’ as they say.”
“The minute I start smoking those posh fags, I’ll deserve getting stomped by Teddy Boys,” Cole groused. “I might as well dress like a cowboy and smoke Marlboros.”
“Says the bloke dressed to marry his own cousin.”
“Rumor and conjecture!” Cole protested. “I won’t stand for it.”
“It’s true, mate,” Woodrow lit his own Navy Cut, inhaled, and blew a huge cloud of smoke as if smudging the area of negative energy. “My cousin—whom I do not plan on marrying, thank you very much—saw the whole thing go down.”
“The next thing you’ll tell me is that Richard’s really a poof,” Cole jibbed.
“Tutti Fruiti, loose booty!” Woodrow sang as flamboyantly as he could manage.
“Look, I didn’t call you down here to tear down my idols,” Cole pitched his butt into the gutter where it self-extinguished with a hiss.
“What are we doing here, if not taking the piss, then?”
“We are going to start a band,” Cole explained.
“Are you off your chump?” Woodrow laughed, but upon looking at Cole’s face, quickly realized that he was serious. “How do we intend to do that, now? I’ve no money for instruments, let alone talent.”
“I’ve got readies,” Cole stated. “And we have time.”
“Oh, do we now? Who tol’ you that, your bald-headed gran?”
“You leave my gran outta this,” Cole turned conspiratorial. “Here’s how it’s going down; you and I are going to start a band, achieve more success than we can imagine, and then piss it all away.”
“That sounds grand,” Woodrow agreed. “Where’d you get the dosh?”
Cole looked around, taking note that all of the action was down the street where the outdoor market began. “Can you keep a secret?”
“You havin’ a bubble?” Woodrow asked, incredulous. “I ain’t a muppet. You, of all people should know that. I haven’t let on that you’re a right poofter!”
“Alright, alright,” Cole relented. “What if I told you that I know everything that’s going to happen to me… to us?”
“I would say the pomade in that duck tail is soaking into your loaf, mate.”
“That is exactly why I haven’t told you,” Cole groused.
“Told me what, that you are going off your nut?” Woodrow lit another Player’s and took a good look at the one person in his life that he thought that he could trust and wondering if that time was passing in front of his eyes. “I’ll bite, Nostradamus, who has hipped you to the jive, so to speak?”
“I wasn’t sure at first, but now I’m pretty sure it was me.” The utter lack of a snappy comeback from Woodrow made Cole think he might be digging himself in deep, but he rolled right along, carefully avoiding his friend’s eyes. “Do you remember when I fell into that basement when we were wee lads?”
“I am five seconds away from giving you a right clout,” Woodrow bristled. Who do you think helped pull you out of that hole, you ungrateful prick?”
“I know, I know,” Cole conceded. “It’s just… while I was down there, I had an experience that I never told you about.”
“An experience?” Woodrow mocked. “In the ten bloody minutes you were down there?”
“That’s just it, it was ten minutes for you; but for me, it felt like an hour. There was this weird metal structure in the other room, and when I walked into it, I was sitting there waiting for me.”
“They call that a mirror, you nutter. Funny thing, I’m always waiting for myself every morning when I go to wash my face.”
“I knew this was going to be hard,” Cole bemoaned.
“Said the actress to the bishop,” Woodrow quipped on cue.
“Is this proof enough, then?” Cole pulled out a roll of blue five pound notes from his jacket.
Woodrow jumped forward, blocking any prying eyes from Cole’s stash. “What are you doing, Louie? Put that away! If you didn’t nick it, someone else is about to. Where did that come from?”
“I won it,” Cole explained. “I told you, I got the inside track on everything that is going to happen to us, including who was going to win the Grand National last week.”
“Who?”
“Mr. What.”
“What’s on second,” Woodrow resorted to slapstick, having completely lost control of the conversation.
“Right,” Cole tossed off, ready to put his plan into action. “Let’s go buy some instruments, we gotta get good.”
“Naturally.”
Román Leão 
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