Stake Me Out

I've never much liked the name Jake. There was this lad at primary school called Jake who had dirty fingernails. No one went near him. Even in the playground when we played bulldog, he'd be chasing people for ages because we would run faster to get away. I remember going in his house once and it was strange. The sofa still had the plastic on it and the living room was full of pointless trinkets and pictures. It had a funny smell about it, like Jake himself.

Jake was the name of Alex's best man. 'A friend from college', Alex said. Me and Steve pretended not to be bitter about it. I tried to talk about other things, but soon enough the conversation moved onto it.

'I've never liked the name Jake.' Steve said.

'No, me neither.'

'We're his friends. We've helped him enough. Like that time he got stuck in the store room.'

'And the walk-in freezer.'

He's always getting stuck in places, thinking about it.

'And I got them two together.' I bellowed. 'Does that not deserve anything?'

'I know. And I've been his Head Porter. What does that count for?'

Nothing, really.

'Tell you what, are you free tonight?' Steve asked.

'Why?'

'How about we go over to Alex's place and...check it out.'

'Check what out?'

'You know...the situation...'

'Steve, you're going to have to be more specific.'

'Jesus....'

The pieces of information he neglected to tell me was that this Jake lad was going round to Alex's house tonight, and that we should go and...well...you know, check it out.

'That's a bit weird. It's like stalking.'

'It's not stalking. We're not going to harm him. Just, you know...checking him out.'

'Like a stakeout?'

'Yeah, a stakeout. We'll go after we finish work.'

If you tapped me on the shoulder yesterday and told me that in 24 hours time I’d be involved in a stakeout, I'd have called you a tit. A massive time-wasting tit. And we all know time-wasting tits are the worst. But sure enough we were there, sat in Steve's green skoda (not the best coloured car to be hiding in) just over the road from Alex's flat and waiting for Jake to turn up.

'Have you got any binoculars on you?' Steve asked earnestly.

'Erm...let me check...cactus...bowling pin...shit, no...no binoculars.'

'Amateur.'

'Oh, so now I'm being accused of not being a professional stalker.'

'I've told you, it's not stalking. It's checking out.'

'I think the police will see it a different way.' I said, trying to gaze into Alex and Fran's living room.
'Right, Alex said he would be turning up at seven, for wine and nibbles.'
'Nibbles?'
'I know.' 

Nibbles? I already don't like this Jake lad, he just made it worse for himself.

'Right, where's the food?' Steve asked.

'Food?'

'It's a stakeout. We need food.'

'I've not got any food. We just came from work.'

'Jesus, haven't you seen Starsky and Hutch?'

'Only the film. It was a shit copy off my cousin.'

'The TV series.'

'I'm 23 year old, Steve.'

'Philistine.'

Right, so I'm not very good at stalking and don't have any appreciation for American TV shows that I've never seen. Good one.

'So what are we looking for in terms of this lad...'

'Well, I've written a few notes.'

Of course he had. If there's one thing you need before stalking someone, it's careful research. Steve got out his tattered notepad and flipped through it.

'Posture. E.g. Will he look good in a suit.'

'A fancy suit.'

'Correct. Greetings. E.g. How will he greet Alex and Fran at the door. If there's no hug I think we've got a case.'

'A case for what?'

'For one of us to be best man.'

'We never hug him.'

'That's different!' Steve snorted. 'We're colleagues. And good friends...'

'Next...'

'Last one, what they get up to inside. We've got a good view of the living room from here.'

This was turning into stalking now, but I didn't want to tell Steve. If he shouted our cover may be blown. And of course, you wouldn't suspect two men in a light green skoda, parked arbitrarily opposite a block of flats, would you?

It was getting dark and after an hour, we had yet to see anyone go in our out of the flat. We had exhausted all of our games. What You Rather...?, The A -Z Game and depressingly, Eye Spy. We were about to move onto another shit game when a tap on the window startled us both. We'd been to transfixed on thinking of a band beginning with Y that we hadn't noticed a car pull up behind us. I rolled down the window to see a young lad peering at us.

'Lads, sorry to bother you. But, is it free to park here?'

'Erm..I'm not sure...'

I was still a bit shaky from the shock, but I tried to play it cool.

'I think it is.'

'Good. I'm going in there for a few hours.'

The lad pointed at the block of flats. He seemed about Alex's age, will an attempted dark beard and hair with too much wax in it. It could have been Jake, but Steve wasn't taking any chances. He leapt out of the car and charged into the lad, banging on the car towards the back.

'What do you think you're playing at?' Steve managed to shout, through wrestle to pin the lad's arms onto the window.

'What the fuck are you doing!!?' The lad yelped.

'He's our mate! We should be the best men!'

'Steve!' I tried.

The wrestle went on for a few more seconds, then I got out of the car and tried to hold Steve back. The lad got his composure back and soon gave Steve a kick in the groin, making him reel backwards onto me with an 'ooooffff!' The lad scampered back into his car and sped off, not before shouting 'prick!' out of the window.

'What the hell did you do that for?'

'We should be best men, Dylan.' He cried, in between squeals of pain.

I dropped him onto the bit of grass next to us.

'I bet you that wasn't him.'

'Of course it was! All the signs were there. Stupid little beard, shit trendy car...he was going in there!'

'So's he.'

I pointed to the front door of the flats. A tall lad, with a bunch of flowers and a bottle of wine in his hand, buzzed the door and stepped inside. He was met by a smiling Alex and Fran as they hugged and exchanged warm pleasantries in the foyer. We sat on the grass for a few minutes and watched them inside the living room, laughing and joking likes friends do, probably helping themselves to an array of nibbles on the table.

'Come on.' Steve said. 'Let's go to the shop.'

'You want some food for the stakeout?'

'Yeah, and some ice for my bollocks.'