It was one of those miserable summer days when you feel like it couldn't get any hotter with your brain imploding, and when the air is so thick with moisture and pollution that you could choke on it.

Inside Monroe's, it's slightly better. Slightly cooler - although your skin is likely to stick to the upholstery on the benches - and somewhat darker. And there is milkshake in several flavours.

Tatters is taking up an entire bench in the back corner. His back's up against the wall, and his legs are sprawled out across the bench. One can imagine that they might be uncomfortably warm in the colorfully patchworked trousers he's wearing. These might have started out their life as jeans, but they're no longer recognisable as such. His feet - the left one wearing a blue flip-flop, and the right, a green one - are just hanging over the end of the bench.

One hand rests on the table, long fingers wrapped around the glass of chocolate milkshake and the other is draped across the back of the seat. His vest is white, and seems most to have disintagrated. It's held together with gun tape, and there's more of that then there is of shirt.

He looks purely exhausted, which is unsuprising, given as he's been out in the sun all morning. His eyeliner has gone all smudgy with sweat and his gold hair is escaping its bauble.

He also looks quite happy.

Josephine is not old enough yet to sweat properly. On a day like this, that can only be considered a good thing. Most of the adults around smell nasty while she still smells like soap; although that’s definitely less strong now she hasn’t had a wash in a couple of days.

Hey, these things happen when you grow up with five other brothers and sisters.

She’s dressed in clothes a little too big for her and a little too tomboyish to have been chosen by her. The bright red t-shirt almost reaches her knees and barely shows the shorts underneath it. They’re tan and a little smaller than the shirt. They belonged to a kid maybe a year older than her instead of one who’d already reached his teens.

She’s got plasters on her knees and bruises all over her skinny legs. Such are the perils of being ten. These aren’t, as the Mary Sues would have it, the result of foster care. Her foster mother is neglectful at best but would never actually stoop so low as to leave bruises.

The humidity is not good for her hair. Joey’s just reached the age where she starts worrying about what she looks like. Her hair is hanging in brilliant white candyfloss curls about her shoulders, once again defying Nikki’s attempts at taming it and even starting to dread at the ends. She should probably brush it more often if she’s going to look like a proper lady. Being a lady is about more than the splotchy pink nail varnish she’s currently wearing on her chewed nails (both finger and toe).

"Can I have a banana milkshake please," she commands in her most mature voice, jangling the change in her pocket. There’s a man in the corner who looks almost as grimy as her. Not street grimy, because he’s too glittery for that, just grimy from the roads and the dust in the oppressive heat.

Joey shoots him a toothy smile.

The little girl who's just come in is instantly noticeable, if only for her wonderfully white hair and the fact that she's not very big, but is all by herself. The hair is absolutely stunning - she may grow up and find it obnoxious, but it'll definately be an asset.

Picking up his glass and taking a long suck on the straw, Tatters watches her ordering at the counter and wonders, vaguely (his brain's feeling a bit slow, between the heat and the marijuana) what happened to her mother/father/aunt/sister/babysitter/whoever.

When she smiles at him, he almost automatically pushes some of the damp strands of red-gold hair behind his ears. A variety of bangles, plastic and metal, clatter up and down his arm when he does.

He matches her smile with a crooked grin that is hopefully doesn't look too much like he's some kind of creep who's about to give her some candy and ask if she'd like to come home with her.

Although, he might just do that.

"Thank you," Joey tells the server in the same robotic voice she used for ordering. It’s the voice used by kids worldwide when they’re trying to sound grown up and worldwide they end up sounding like they’re reciting lines instead.

Although not very big age wise, she’s a tall girl for it and knows how to carry herself. Her grandmother trained her well and she now has poise that would put a duchess to shame, so long as she’s not tired. When she’s tired she tends to slouch but she’s not slouching now so when she looks at the man again, she has to lower her head to do so properly.

He’s very recognisable and Joey’s good with faces. Of course, you needn’t be good with faces to recognise this particular man.

She wanders over to the long bench, lazily slurping up milkshake as she does so. She’s so sure she’s paid it hasn’t occurred to the server that while most things about this interaction went off as usual the only bit actually missing was the transfer of money, which is still in Joey’s pocket. Some people are sure of themselves. Joey extends that to make other people sure of her too.

"Ah know you," she declares, one hand holding the tall glass and the other on her hip. "You juggle an’ stuff outside the mall."

Joey and the server may both be sure that money changed hands. Tatter lives in such a tangle of illusion that he's quick to recognise it and he's pretty sure that she didn't.

"Yeah, I do," he agrees, thinking that 'and stuff' is probably a could description of what he does. He's not suprised she recognises him. People always recognise him. It's what happens when you look like you walked out of a kid's picture book. All he's missing is a giant talking teddy bear.

His accent is warm, pleasent and intrinsically charming. Virginia, as it happen. He gestures with one hand that she can (and quite probably should) sit down on the bench opposite him.

No, no, of course he's not going to try and take her home and feed her candy. Leastways he isn't planning on it.

Well, if he did, it would be purely for honourable purposes. She looks too clever to go home with any strange men anyway. Although perhaps she's even smarter then that, and would know that he's really perfectly nice.

"Can you do a trick now? I saw you pull flowers out of a lady’s stroller the other day. That was real magic, not like those magicians that just hide stuff." Sometimes it seems like Joey’s lost her ability to stop talking. Like a child much younger than she actually is, she tends to prattle aimlessly and about nothing in particular. It stops people thinking that she’s thinking.

She sits on the bench that has been gestured to and inspects the man thoughtfully.

He looks friendly. Her grandmother used to give men money when they went past the mall; or at least, she’d press money into little Josephine’s hand and tell her to go put it in the nice man’s hat. The man from her childhood recollections is unlikely to be this man but they’re all from the same general family of ‘people we should be nice to because they’re worse off than us’.

Everyone loves candy but Joey would probably decline if offered it. While he looks like something from the carnival, Nikki has taught her that you never know and that there are often bad men willing to snatch up little girls.

What she’s doing letting Joey wander the streets is therefore anybody’s business.

Tatters sets his milkshake down on the table and swings his legs under it to take a better look at her. "Lemme see your hands," he asks. It's hard to tell if it's meant to be a command or a question - with Josephine, it's a question, of course. She doesn't look like she'll be bossed around.

He leans over to take a sip of milkshake while he waits for her to present her hands - if she deigns to.

He may be a bad man - opinion varies - and he may just possibly snatch little girls. Although that's not quite the right verb. It sort of implies picking them up and dragging them away, possibly kicking and screamed. He's much more persausive then that. And he's probably not about to cause the sort of problems that anyone's mother worries about. He's merely unthinking and irresponsible, not twisted or malacious. And there's nothing particularly dangerous about his candy.

Although it's like as not to be made of air and sensory delusion.

Since her left hand is currently occupied with a banana milkshake, Josephine can only hold out one hand, not both. She presents her right palm down and fingers slightly bent. It’s the position French women put their hands in when they’re expecting them to be kissed.

Josephine isn’t expecting to be kissed and if Tatter tries anything of the sort she’ll probably run a mile. However, she has the right prissy demeanour as if she were the one getting bothered by Tatter, not the other way round. Ignoring the chipped nail varnish, the baggy top and the ratty hair, she’s a girl in charge. She’d be the sort to organise every game in the playground if she had any friends.

She takes the last slurping rattle of her milkshake through the straw. She finished it quickly but still managed to keep Tatter waiting for her other hand, which she now holds out in the same position as the first.

"What you gonna do?" Because if it involves tickles she’s out of there.

Reaching over the table, he cups her hand in both of his and leaning over a bit and blows softly on it. His breath smells smoky - a mix of nicotine and something sweeter. Then he removes his hands to reveal that hers is full of tiny purple bubbles of the sort you might find in really posh bubble bath. They smell strongly of lavender and thyme.

He watches them, lazily, as they spill over the edges of her cupped hands and start popping. The bubbles aren't even what she calls 'real magic', but the fact that as they dissapear - by the normal method of popping - they leave her manicure seriously improved (unchipped and a shiny royal purple) possibly is. If that's what you want to call it.

"Imma do that," he tells her brightly. "Instant manicure, see?"

He takes another sip of his milkshake and watches her. If she knows - or knows about - 'real magic', he doubts she'll be particularly impressed. It's the sort of thing that works a whole lot better on unnies.

Joey’s heart skips a beat as Tatter takes her hands. She’s most definitely not used to strange men touching her at all, let alone blowing purple bubbles and nicotine breath over her hands. The bubbles don’t feel wet or soapy. They feel like mousse, maybe, although since she’s never used it on her hair it’s not a comparison Joey would make by herself.

When the bubbles have all popped, her hands are left feeling soft. A scrape she had on the back of the left one has disappeared. That’s the first thing she notices; that, and the oily bubbles popping in technicolour. It’s therefore a while before she gasps: “oh!”, grins at Tatter and admires her nails with delight.

"It’s good," she nods approvingly, "real proper magic. An’ I wouldn’t be able to tell how you did it if I didn’t know already it’s proper magic." Translation for those who don’t speak ten-year-old: she would have been one impressed unnish.

Tatter laughs, pleased with her reaction. "Most people don't," he agrees, "if they don't know 'proper magic'. Is the purple okay?"

He wasn't sure about the shade. It really just happened without much thought. And it looks just fine, if you ask him. He's got a shirt about that colour. But he's not sure how it measures up on the tenish-year-old girl scale for these things.

He twirls the straw in his glass, as best you can twirl anything in a substance as thick as milkshake. "Do you usaully have banana flavour," he wants to know, "or is it subject to change? Do you like it, or are you simply potassium starved?"

These are not child-snatcher questions, he reasons. He wonders where her mum - or whoever - is, but it wouldn't seem prudent to ask. It would quite possibly be alarming to her, or to the lady at the next table, who is giving him a kind of weird look.

The purple does not go very well with her bright red top but since it’s her second favourite colour after pink, Joey doesn’t pay too much attention to that. Clothes change. Nails are forever, or at least until they chip off and get so scabby that Nikki notices and scrubs Joey’s fingers with the varnish remover while swearing mildly under her breath.

"It’s nice," she says. It’s also nice to be asked her opinion on things.

Potassium rings only very vague bells of familiarity in Joey’s head. It’s a metal – she thinks – but from what he’s said, it sounds like one of the ones you need in you, like iron or zinc. "Sometimes banana and peanut butter," she says, unwilling to let Tatter know she’s not sure of the potassium properties of bananas, "which is my first favourite but it costs a dime more."

Ten isn’t that young and Joey can pass for older in a good light, or with someone who measures age by tallness. Nikki lets her out safe in the knowledge anyone trying to abduct her will have quite a fight on their hands.

"Want to see what I can do?" Joey’s own hands are now on her chin as she rests her elbows on the table. Tit for tat. Trick for trick.

Although satisfied with the niceness of the colour, he wrinkles his nose. The freckles scrunch up. He doesn't much like the sound of peanut-butter and banana milkshake, for some unfathomable reason. Peanut-butter and banana sandwhiches are nice, so there's no real reason why it wouldn't work in a milkshake.

He picks up his glass and takes a sip. It's comfortingly chocolate and quite free of any nut flavour. The straw pokes him.

"Sure," he agrees. "I mean, I want to. If it's horribly obvious, best not. I mean, exploding diners isn't really considered to be good behaviour. But I'm sure you know that. Mustn't scare the general public and all that sh... stuff."

In the same way that 'don't reveal magic to the world at large' has been ingrained in Tatter's mind, 'don't swear in front of young innocent children' has been lodged somewhere in there. Not that Joey strikes him as particularly young or innocent, but he's still applying the rule, as though to mantain some sort of facade of manners.

Joey’s not seen a man wrinkle his nose before and looks on in interest. This is behaviour more suiting a boy or a particularly fussy woman. Tatter would certainly fit the ‘boy’ description. Joey’s not sure how much older than her he is, but however old he is he’s acting like he’s a lot younger. Urgh, pronouns.

Josephine’s been sworn at and around many times in the past, so while she can guess where the ‘sh…’ was going it still makes her giggle. She doesn’t usually giggle a lot but swearing makes her, as does talk of exploding diners.

She wasn’t planning on making the diner explode.

She relaxes as much as you can while purposefully trying to relax. It’s hard to explain something little Joey does on an instinctive level, but I shall try anyway. At the moment she’s putting up a mental wall that separates her from the rest of the world and specifically Tatter. She’s gazing somewhere above his left ear and wishing to be somewhere else.

For Tatter and anyone else looking in her general direction she might as well be. She hasn’t turned invisible or anything quite so obvious; just become infinitely less noticeable.

Then with a blink and a shake she’s back and grinning.

"Impressive."

Tatter is indeed impressed. She's not so small that it's an easy feat for her simply to go 'poof' - although frankly, his mind isn't quite up to standard. Sometimes you could dissapear the mall in front of his face and he wouldn't think much of it. "That's good," he tells her. He means it quite honestly and he's not trying to be patronising. Trying not to be, in fact. But not too hard. He doesn't try too hard to do much of anything. "Useful, too. Is that how you got away from your minder?"

Oh, bad. Bad child snatching man. And the lady at the next booth is shooting him a killer look, too. He sends her back an equally stony grey glare and turns back to smile at Josephine. "Sorry," he says, apologetically, "that question was quite possibly out of line. Forgive me. I've got horrid manners, haven't I?"

He hasn't even intoduced himself. Although possibly that's another one of those alarming things that one should avoid doing to small, unknown girls. Or not.

"I'm Tatter, by the way," he adds, anyway.

Joey burns with pride at being told she’s good by someone so much older and cooler than she is. She’s been practising hard since she first discovered it as a skill, although sometimes it seems like the harder she concentrates the more likely she is to fail. And useful? Hell yes. Especially since disappearing isn’t her only talent in that range.

“Nu-uh.” Joey shrugs. “She don’t know I can do it.” Of course, knowledge that the magician can do magic is rarely essential to the trick. Often it’s better when the audience doesn’t know what’s coming next. A lot of the tricks in Josephine’s repertoire work like this and it’s true Nikki’s a little more careless with her than she is with any of the other kids.

Joey doesn’t think Tatter’s got horrid manner. She thinks he’s funny and bold and pretty. She joins in with glaring at the lady in the booth opposite (but not hard enough that she’ll feel ashamed, beyond the normal feelings of shame when you’re thinking of interfering in an older man’s grooming process ie not at all).

“Ah’m Josephine.” She holds his gaze. For once, she’s not given a false name to a stranger.

Tatter takes her first remark to mean that her... whoever... is unnish. Which suggests there's a story, but he's not going to pry. He takes a gulp of milkshake instead, and then has to lick it off his upper lip - in another gesture which will be doubtless considered immature, even though his tongue brushes across a bit of a five o'clock shadow.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Josephine," he says. The woman is still looking their way. People staring always makes him want to conjure up something big and loud and obvious to suprise them. He resists the urge. "You gonna put this talent to use," he inquires, grinning. His grin is a bit lopsided. "You could 'juggle and stuff'. Do you know how to juggle?"

Juggling is one of those things Tatters can actually do. Well, there are quite a few. He's good with disapearing people's watches, and card drinks, and juggling and all that jazz. As in, he can really do it, not just magic it so it looks like he did.

"Nu-uh," Josephine replies slowly. She has the feeling Tatter is making fun of her. Nobody calls her Miss Josephine, ever. Her teacher sometimes comes close with a sarcastic ‘Miss St. Clare’ when he thinks Josephine’s being cheeky… which she never means to be. She knows respect for one’s elders is very important. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to respect people who don’t command any.

She’s never tried her hand at magic tricks, although she’d probably be very good at the misdirection part of them. "I can…" she thinks hard for a skill that might impress Tatter, and from the depths of her brain brings out: "I can make scoobies? And I can do a wheelie on my bike for more than ten yards."

Neither of these skills are likely to impress crowds over fourteen.

Tatter wasn't at all attempting to make fun of her. He was simply being polite. Josephine's bearing seems to require a certain degree of respect. "You should learn," he tells her seriously. "To juggle, I mean. It's one of those things that everyone else seems to find massively impressive."

He laughs when she says she can do a wheelie on her bike. For more than ten yards. "That's infinitely better then me," he says, twisting an escaped piece of hair between his fingers, "I can't even make a bike stay up."

Not that he's tried in the past twenty years or so. Bikes are just one of those things that have always wanted to thwart him. He has long since admitted that they've won this fight.

And to be very honest, he hasn't the faintest idea what a 'scoobie' is. His first and last thought on the subject involves crime-solving dogs.

"You could teach me," Josephine replies equally seriously. If the man’s good enough to make a living out of it he must be able to teach. Opposite-table-woman, who’s now collecting her bill, looks pissed off. Joey smiles at her. She’s going to be taught how to juggle.

Her eyes widen when Tatter says he wouldn’t be able to wheelie even if he was riding on a unicycle. "You mean," she says, all dark eyes through white fluff, "you can’t ride a bike?" Impossible!

"I’ll teach you how to ride a bike if you teach me how to juggle." He’ll also end up learning, quite accidentally, what a scooby is. The long bits of plastic that you braid to make… thicker bits of plastic are inescapable when you spend time with preteen girls.

"I could," Tatters agrees, also giving the woman a cheerful smile, and then nonchalantly sipping milkshake. "And no, I can't ride bicycles. I haven't found it to be one of those life skills that I actually need. I can't drive either. But, uhm, I can..." he leans over the table to pull a toonie from behind Josephine's ear and offers it to her, "do that. I could probably show you how do that as well. It's not even real magic so you could doubtless figure it out. Also, I can ride horses."

As in, yes, Miss Josephine. I will be happy to teach you to juggle, and whatever else you'd like to know how to do. But please, please, please little scary kid, don't even try to make me learn how to ride a bicycle.

Josephine takes the toonie dismissively. It came from behind her ear, therefore it’s now hers. It also came from the sort of magic anyone can do. "You had it in your hand already."

Not driving is pretty pathetic. Every grown up is meant to be able to drive. The horses have her a little impressed, but not for long.

She flicks her hair back behind her ears and stares at Tatter. She’s all elbows and hands at the moment, going through one of those growth spurts that have Nikki bewailing her pitiful clothing allowance. "Go on then, teach me how to juggle."

"Do you really think I'd give you two bucks if they were mine to start with," Tatters asks her, reasonably enough. "That would be kinda stupid of me, wouldn't it? You can almost get a can of pop with that much money. And definately get peanut-butter in your milkshake. Although I don't much fancy that."

Driving is a useful ability. Tatter has no skill at it, though. He's a pretty talented hitch-hiker and a fan of the public transit system.

"Happen to have any balls on you?" He doesn't, obviously. They wouldn't fit in the pockets of his jeans or in the duct-taped seams of his shirts.

Well, it’s possible. Josephine’s still at that stage where although she’s not going to say a car costs ‘uh, a zillion dollars’ she might put down something equally improbably like ‘three hundred’. Which means she’s also not sure how much Tatter is likely to make busking outside the mall.

"Peanut butter an’ banana is nice," Joey reasons. "So it’s nice in milkshakes too." The diner is the sort of place that will put anything in a milkshake if you ask politely.

Damn. Nope, no balls. "Can’t you magic some to appear?" She asks hopefully. "My Nana could magic stuff to appear an’ not just coins an’ stuff."

Tatter makes a good amount of money, as busking goes. "I suppose that one way of thinking of it," Tatter agrees, shrugging. He more pulls his shoulder-blades back then lifts his shoulders. "And it does kind of make nice sandwhiches, doesn't it?"

He reaches his hands under the table and apparently discovers four purple and pink striped foam balls. "Have a couple," he offers, holding them out to Josephine. "They're quite unreal, I assure you."

He's already figured out that pink and purple are her favourite colours - of course they must be, because pink and purple are all little girl's favourite colours.

The sandwiches are where everyone first thinks of putting banana and peanut butter together. It’s one of those foods that make it easy to take to excess, Elvis-style. Joey finds peanut butter in general is like that.

She takes two of the balls from Tatter’s outstretched hand. They feel a lot more real than they are, squishable and, like their conjurer, slightly on the tatty side. They’re not the leather stitched ones she’s seen Tatter use before but they feel light and good for learning. She gives them an experimental squeeze. For tricks of the light they’re not half bad.

"Thanks. What do I do first?" Well, first she’s given one of the balls and experimental throw and caught it in the other hand – she always did well on the hand-eye coordination tests – so really she wants to know what to do next to make it proper juggling.

Tatter takes a ball in each of his hands. "You know how people always kind of think you throw both balls up and catch them at the same time," he asks. "It's basically... not that. You throw one ball up into the air. Say you do it with your left hand - then you have to catch it with your right hand. But you have the second ball in your right hand, so you can't. What you have to do is switch the second ball to your left hand, as fast as you can."

He's not sure if this will make any sense at all to her, but he demonstrates, doing it as slowly as he can. "And then you keep throwing the ball in the left hand, and putting the ball from the right hand to the left."

He does it as he talks, the balls switching from hand to hand faster and faster. "Only, probably somewhat slower then I'm doing, to start with."

Josephine looks a little dubious, as does the waitress. Tatter’s talking fast and without making a lot of sense; it’s only by sheer luck that she manages to grab what is, basically, the essence of what he’s saying.

One ball she can do. It goes up and comes down again. Except the hand it comes down again into is already holding the other ball. So she’s got to get rid of it before the other ball comes down. She throws that one up too and manages to juggle for one rotation before both balls come down on the table, bounce gently and roll to a stop.

"Huh." Josephine says thoughtfully. "Juggling is hard. Do people pay you a lot of money for it?"

Tatter grins crookedly. "It'll get easier with practise," he assures her, "but no one will ever pay you as much money as you'd like. If you want really good advice, I'd advise getting a nice, honest, nine-to-five sort of job. The sort that comes with insurance and a regular paycheck. It's easier and it pays better."

So it's a bit of a mystery as to why he doesn't have one, of course. His mother certainly demands to know why, every single time he calls her. It doesn't encourage him to make the call. He doesn't have any answers that don't sound wishywashy and cliched.

He's got four balls going now, although where the second two came from is a bit unclear. They're green and blue polka dotted.

As much money as Josephine would like is not necessarily as much money as Tatter would like. She considers asking him why he continues to do it but this would probably count as cheek.

“I want to be a doctor when I grow up,” Josephine announces. She hates the phrase ‘when I grow up’ because it makes her sound like she’s still a kid. “But Nikki says you have to be real smart.” That bit’s added quietly, and there’s the suggestion of ‘...and I’m not’. Which isn’t really true. She likes to read and she’s a quick learner.

She could even learn how to juggle if she put her mind to it.

Cheek is not a word Tatter has ever thought to us, except as in a variety of body parts. He expects people - even the shorter ones, like Josephine - to give him as much respect as they get. Not bloody much.

He raises his eyebrows at her ambition. Both of them, not just the half-purple one that usaully goes up when he's suprised. "A doctor," he repeats. He pauses, sipping milkshake and considering it. "Yeah, that pays well," he says, finally. As if that's what matters. "I reckon you're pretty bright, whatever Nikki says."

He's no idea who Nikki is, but he doesn't really think she's got any business telling Josephine that she's got to be really smart to be a doctor. She could figure that out by herself, surely. And she probably didn't need the implied 'and you aren't'.

"Well," replies Josephine primly, "thank you." Tatter hasn’t known her long enough to know how bright (or otherwise) she is. He doesn’t know about how even at nine she sometimes slips into French when she’s not trying and so has more than once been graded ‘F’ on papers she’s written in Franglais. Or that she still has trouble with spelling.

"What did you want to be when you grew up?" It takes a very special kind of little boy to want to be a busker when he grows up. Tatter must’ve had some ambition even if it was a long way in the past.

What did he want to be when he wanted to grow up?

This is a hard question for Tatters to answer. He has to think about it for a moment. The balls he was juggling are no longer there. He takes a sip of milkshake. "I think I must have wanted to be a vet at one point," he answers, eventually. "But I was, like, five. I don't know. I guess I didn't particularly think about it."

His mother had wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer or something. Of course. It's what ever respectable mother wants her little boy to grow up and do. She's still not given up on him getting a normal job, a nice girlfriend, and also 2.5 children and house with a white picket fence.

"A vet, huh," Josephine repeats thoughtfully, gazing at a point about three inches left of Tatter. "Naw," she says dismissively, "I don’t think you’d be a vet. You’ve got to work too hard. I thought you’d be an artist or something. Or a student, maybe." Or an art student, although she’s still not sure about how that works and he’s far too old to be a student anyway. He’s old enough that Joey would classify him as An Adult if not for those ridiculous clothes and that hair. Instead he’s A Young Adult, maybe; definitely too old to be A Teenager, anyway.

Tatter’s mother should be careful what she wishes for and make sure not to stretch the definition of 'nice'.

"I was," Tatter tells her. "A student. Once. An English student. I even have a degree lying around somewhere."

Well, his mother does. She's got his diploma framed on the wall in the parlour back home. It gives her hope, he suspects, that one day he'll turn out all right. "I went to school in England," he adds. His voice is somewhat lazy. The heat is getting to him. He twirls the straw in his glass, absent-mindedly. "Nice place, England. Hell of a lot cooler then Bayfield."

He should really go back to England, instead of hanging around in Canada, but he can't quite get up the energy or the money. And he still has to find Jessica.

Josephine doesn’t know what you can do with an English degree. Write, maybe. Whatever it is she’s suspect that Tatter isn’t doing it. Only high school dropouts are meant to busk since busking is only one step above begging. Unless they’re wearing nice clothes and playing the violin, in which case they’re music students who Beatrice always said were poor as anything.

"I’ve ne’er been outside Bayfield," Joey admits cheerily. "Did you go to Oxford or Cambridge?" Not did you go to one of them but which one did you go to. Since everyone knows England only has two universities just like America only has three.

Of course that’s assuming Tatter’s talking about the American ‘school’ which is really university instead of, say, prep school.

Tatter has very little idea what can be done with an English degree. As he's proved, they're quite good for hanging out on streetcorners and disappearing people's watches. He was only ever a student of English becase it's the default subject of the lazy and uninspired. Not that he'd say this was true of all English students, but when you turn up at uni with not a clue of what you want to do... Well, English looks easy.

He shakes his head. It should be obvious, if just from the way that the smell of marijuana clings to him, that he's not really that bright. Not exactly Oxbridge material.

"Nah. Sheffield, Sheffield University. Nice city, but horridly ugly uni."

Hey, it’s not as bad as sociology.

But... flying from city to city is expensive, right? More expensive than Tatter looks like he could afford. In Josephine’s pretty little head Tatter has now inherited thousands (thousands) of dollars and now can afford to bum around while the money pays for everything.

Josephine has only recently been introduced to the concept of the middle class.

"Sorry," she says, "don’t know it. Was it fun?" Of course she doesn't. She's nine. And of course it was. Tatter makes things fun.

Tats can't really afford much. He makes enough money to get by and like every second innish, he's pretty good at confusing all those poor, susceptible unnies into believing they've been paid.

He's also pretty good at persauding his mum that he'd really like to come home for Christmas, but gosh, it's so expensive.... Hint, hint.

"Yeah," he tells Josephine, "it was pretty cool. Fun, yeah. More fun then primary school ever was, anyway. Or do you like it?"

Primary school is a blurred memory of hand prints on newsprint, people thinking he was a girl and endless sheets of stupid math problems.

"Elementary school?" Tatter’s crazy accent makes for almost as much confusion as Jessie’s. Jessie and Tam together could confuse and beguile the Canadian unnish to their hearts’ content.

"It’s OK." She wishes now that she hadn’t finished that milkshake quite so fast. Tatter still has some of his left, the bastard, when she finished hers’ to see his magic trick. "I liked my old school better."

Her old school had French Immersion lessons that really meant it. She would have been able to get away with speaking only French until the age of eleven (if not for the fact it would make social situations a little awkward). Her new school has one French lesson a week. Poor bilingual Joey is thoroughly fed up with it.