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The next day, Bernard was returning from a hectic morning shopping trip of his own cigarettes, booze and new red buttons for his day shirt. The nerve! Manny was nowhere to be found, in fact he had disappeared off the face of the Earth since he last saw him pinning up that ridiculous poster marathon. Luckily he could manage most of his own domestic tasks before leaving the shop. He had trimmed his own nasal hairs, sprayed the windows with wasp killer and even adjusted the 'Dickens' bookshelf so the spine colours made a perfect mosaic of a lion's leg.

So Bernard stumbled back into the doorframe, hit someone's shoulder and leapt forward into the shop. He stood upright quickly and took off his sunglasses. About thirty people were queuing up from the front desk, round the shop and out the door excluding customers trying to browse the shelves. His stunned but rather angry expression sniped killer looks at everything that seemed totally wrong with the morning set up.

'MANNY!'

'…yes, thank you! Oh, hi Bernard!' Manny grinned cheerfully, behind the desk. He was sitting comfortably, greeting people and giving them a pen to write their signature on a blank space in a ledger's book. Bernard sauntered up while a young man in a business suit strolled up at the same time.

'Did I walk into a prison line up? Because there are some shifty looking characters marching towards you, they must have done something wrong to deserve this kind of treatment?' Bernard said in a low voice but audible enough for Manny to grasp his anger.

'Well, Bernard, people saw my flyers from last night and thought it was a good idea! See, people want to give themselves a creative side!'

'Then where the hell were you? I was worried sick for hours!' Bernard snapped.

'I sent you a text!' Manny frowned.

'Oh,' Bernard looked down at his phone. 'Bernard am staying at a friends I met earlier on Bronx Street, see you in the morning for the competition opening. Lots of love from Manny xxx'' Bernard was not fixated. 'That made no sense! I read it last night and I thought you'd be home!'

'It couldn't be any clearer!'

'Excuse me; I want to write my name please!' The business man pleaded.

'Oh, yes, sorry!' Manny gave him a pen. 'So what are you planning to write?'

'I don't know. There was this one comical moment that happened to me on a bike when…'

Before he could finish, as Manny looked interested, Bernard slapped his hand on the desk and yelled, 'Just Write! I'm going back to bed. Maybe the tooth fairy has been generous and given people who keep their teeth in a pound or two! I'm starting now!' Making no sense, he half tripped over the threshold and went upstairs.

A few hours later, the shop was virtually deserted and Manny was set occupying himself putting the 'Duck Tales' in alphabetical order. With a squeak, the front door opened and Fran walked in as happy as a person whose date went really really well. 'Oh, there you are, Manny! Thank you so much for this book writing thing, it's turned my love life into an art form!'

Manny gave a cheesy grin and shrugged his shoulders in a oh-it-was-nothing way. 'So your date likes the idea of this story competition?'

'Liked it? He's from a bloody long line of creative writers; he said so on our date! His uncle is in fact best friends with Jacob Lawrence!'

'Isn't he a famous artist?' Manny questioned.

'And hasn't he spent the last seven years er, dead?' Bernard scoffed.

Fran looked confused, 'well anyway, his mum and dad are respected writers on biographies of television actors and directors, and they've had many books out for the last three decades!'

'Manny, find so said books!' Bernard yelled at him, so Manny skulked around finding the respected biographies.

'I didn't know you went for the book type!' Bernard sniffed, settling himself back in the chair and pouring another glass of wine.

'Well I don't really, why do you think I rejected your proposal for a date?'

Bernard gave her a narrowing glare, 'I never asked you out and you know it!' He pointed a threatening finger at her.

Fran laughed, 'it was that Halloween night Bernard, when we were both drunk out of our heads flinging candy at small children across the streets – particularly those weathers originals Manny gave us from his trip to the newsagents! Do you not remember? Manny was wearing a Winnie – the – pooh outfit!'

'So why did I ask you out?'

'Because apparently I reminded you of Marilyn Monroe…actually I was probably dressed like her, I can't remember…'

'Oh yes!' Bernard clapped his hands. 'I was that cowboy what was his name? Johnny Depp! And you were the Queen of hearts!'

'Was I?' Fran tried to recall, 'you said I looked like Marilyn Monroe!'

'That's because your skirt was hitching up around the back and you spent two hours trying to keep it down and you had a hysterical laugh that night…' Manny said, coming out of the darkness of shelves. 'And it wasn't Johnny Depp, Bernard it was Johnny Cash.'

'Manny, shut up! So, what have you found?'

'Well, there's a few biographies here it's just you forgot to tell me what their names are, Fran!'

'Harry and Georgina Penniless.'

'Oh, right. Here they are!' Manny beamed and took down three books from the shelf. 'Hard not to miss that name! Right…'a biography of Helen Mirren…'

'Penniless? Seriously? Kyle Penniless?'

'What's wrong with that?' Fran snapped, annoyed at Bernard's bullying. 'His name is Kenneth actually but he doesn't like using it.'

'…A biography of Van Diesel…'

'Bernard, if you really wanted to make fun of names look at yours in the mirror!' Fran said unconvincingly. He gave her a triumphant look and gleefully drank from the bottle. 'I'd like to be the first to congratulate on the marriage of Fran Katzenjammer-Penniless…!'

'And the biography of the man-who-made-The-Madness-of-King-George…' Manny read from the title. 'Yeah, they sound like real swanky people to me Fran!'

'Oh, you two are such morons! You will have to decide for yourself when you meet him tomorrow! Good night everyone!' And with that, Fran left the building with a dark stare at both of them that made Manny's beard stand on end and Bernard's cigarettes to burn out with a crisp puff.

It was the eve of the book writing competition deadline. Bernard was at his desk at midnight, half asleep cuddling an empty bottle of wine. The room was pitch black except for the clean line of blue light reflecting from the outside world, lingering on a wall. It was no use; he couldn't sleep knowing that his shop would be filled with those idiots again. He turned on the lamp on his table and sleepily looked around.

'Well it can't be that hard can it?' He said, grabbing a piece of paper and jotting down something with a jam covered pen.

'Sally went for a walk and found some cheese. She ate the cheese and turned French. Blah blah blah, coming home and everything was fine. The end. Oh, crap. What did Manny say?' He fumed. 'A comical moment in your life…a story on the news…a fantasy world of your own.'

He picked up the pen again and began writing, 'it started off on a cool day, and my dad went out picking potatoes from the field…'

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