Del Cruz

Latimer Road, thinks Morgan. How in the name of hell did I get here?
Here, London is a distant promise. It's like some new derelict province, some 90s snapshot, all distant video screens and apocalyptic brutalist blocks, a ghost platform from a sad, old television film.
The wind whistles as he clumsily trudges through the station. People and newspapers talk about THE CUTS all around. DEFENCE CUTS. PUBLIC SECTOR CUTS. Has the public sector ever been such a public topic? Ever got such good publicity? Every cloud has a silver lining. SCHOOL CUTS. DEFENCE CUTS.

That awful road, what was it called again? hovers above weird concrete blocks and basketball pitches that are almost so depressing, so cliched, he considers they could be the sets for the new Shane Meadows, or Ken Loach, or Mike Leigh, or Andrea Arnold, film. Phew.
Turn right under the bridge, jump over the turnstiles... 'keep going,' is scrawled across the brickwork of an old school. keep going.... The phone rings.
'Morgan?'
'Emily...'
'Are you on your way?'
'Yup.'
'Taking one for the team?'
'Yup.'
After last week's Come Dine With Me fiasco, Morgan and Emily realised there was nothing else they could really do: they had to find out who had stolen their band's name and plastered it all over London. Morgan's seen it on bus-stops, stickers covering faces on the underground, on walls, ceilings, posts and clubnights- it even showed up in Time Out. Though there was always the possibility that We View Horizons Kindly the band had just stolen the name off the magazine/clubnight/party promoters.

'So I thought, I'll come and meet these utter bastards.' he smiles (seeds in his teeeth). 'The other members of the band thought so too. You see, we're all really quite pissed off by this.'
'And here you are, Mr. Furzedown.'
Morgan finds himself in a large, white and silver circular room with a giant painting on the back of one wall. All the chairs are mismatched and piles of CDs line one wall. Ceaseless building noise pierces the 'moment'.
'So you have a band, and I own a magazine. And they both have the same name.'
'But I've been in that band for three years, and you've only had one issue out and you're already all over London. I thought magazines were supposed to be fucked in the, ur, downturn.'
The man, the editor, the owner- Morgan wasn't sure what- kind of looks like Swiss Toni, you know, all shoulderpad suit and vagina-shaped, blond tipped hair but with a far ruddier appearance, a bit 70s, yes, and an indescribably strange, affected accent somewhere between Margaret Thatcher and Andy Warhol. He still hasn't told Morgan his name yet.
'So if you've been in a band for three years, then...' the man spins round both loafer-clad feet. 'Why haven't you got anywhere with it?'
'I've been learning to beatbox.'
'For three years?'
'The game just keeps changing.' Morgan wishes he was at home with a cup of tea, suddenly.
'It does. Haha...' the man has an odd, throaty, Margaret Thatcher laugh. The idea floats in Morgan's head that he might suggest the man reminds him of Margaret Thatcher. Had anyone ever told him that and all. But he bites his tongue. A vibraphone sounds up in the distance.
'Listen, Morgan. I know you've come here because you're really a frustrated, cocksucker writer. If you must write a free erotic novel online for your dissertation...'
'You've read it, then?'
'Sex and Atrophy, I believe it's called. There's some interesting bits. Some fetching imagery. My father loved it... And your twitter. I saw you discussing that Kyki Czukay guuuuy...'
'You-'
'Listen, ok. Morgan. Here's the thing.'
The man lays his hands down on the desk, very flat. Very pudgy. Pulsating with blood.
'What do you think about writing for us?'
'This isn't how the meeting is supposed to turn out,' mumbles Morgan. 'Look, mr.... I don't know your name.'
'Copa Del Cruz.'
'That's... that's a name, isn't it?'
'This is publishing,' says Copa, grandly, raising his fingers (which are ringed in imitation gold). 'It doesn't exactly... do to have a boring name. Morgan Furzedown. That's a good name.'
'We View Horizons Kindly is a great name. Look, Mr. Cruz. It took us several months to come up with that name and...' Morgan begins to cry. 'I've just worked... so hard... at being a cult electro-indie pop keyboardist... So hard. I wondered where you'd found it, and what the hell this magazine is, and whether maybe... rather than contributing... maybe you could feature us on the front cover...'
Copa Del Cruz stands up and looks out, rather grandly (in Morgan's mind) at the industrial wasteland of west London. The Westfield centre dominates like a silver wound on the skyline, with nothing further except planes, plains, planes.
'If you must know, it was something I read on a tattoo.'
Oh god, thinks Morgan. Here we go.
'You know Tolstoy?'
Del Cruz shrieks with laughter.
'What a... crazed... yet rather fabulous notion... No, though I look it, I sadly skipped Tolstoy's time. It was a photo found by our picture editor.'
'Fate deals an unkind hand, yet again,' says Morgan. 'That... tattoo... it's ours. It's our friend, Tolstoy. He's dead.'
'Well of course he's dead, dear boy!' cries Del Cruz, swinging round. 'Aren't we all, somewhere out there? In here?' he says, pointing to his heart. 'This world is full of moral filth, and We View Horizons Kindly is riding the trash-wave through the heart of the MTV void.'
'No, no. I don't think you understand. We View Horizons Kindly is re-inventing dubstep and grime for an electro generation tired of synthpop nobodies...'
'You don't own the copyright on the name. I do. We have a clubnight, a music label, a creative marketing solutions service and an ideas tank, all under the same term.'
'What's an ideas tank?'
Del Cruz chuckles.
'I saw your performance on Come Dine With Me. It's... quite the YouTube phenom. I think you'd make a brilliant writer for us. Consider it? And maybe we'll think about that cover?'
'I'm not changing the band name though.'
'It's a shit band name. Admit it.'
'Not.'
'It is. You don't want to be here, do you?'
'Not. No. I mean. Yes.''
Del Cruz doesn't look convinced.

A young man in a very long jacket comes to escort a sweating, panicking Morgan out of ht eoffice.
'How was it?' says the man. 'I'm Roy.'
'Morgan.' he shakes his hand, rather stiffly. 'Oh, um. Great. He must be a very inspiring editor.'
'He's a nightmare. But I wouldn't have it any other way.'
They pick their way through an open-plan, curiously seventies, curiously flat office filled with strange posters, post-it notes and more copies of CDs; a 'breakout area' where three people sit tapping away at laptops and discussing things; the xx are playing on the radio, everyone has a computer, outrageous clothes fill a rail at one end of the office.
'What do you do here?' Morgan's unsure if he actually fancies 'Roy', on a baseline level, or if he's just a bit desperate.
'I'm the music editor,' says Roy. 'I've heard your band, actually. You guys are pretty good. Emily's a great frontwoman. We're doing this thing on the females of dubstep and we really want to get her in. Her, Katy B and Tulisa from N-dubz posing on that Old Street totem wearing parachute dresses. Adidas wants to sponsor it.'
'Blimey.'
'So you're going to be working with us?'
Morgan feels a curious longing.
'Yes. Yes I am.' he announces, and decides it there and then. 'I'm the new writer.'
Am I? he thinks, back out on the cold street.