Johnny didn't care about the rain. He would wear whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted and what he wanted to wear was a sharp suit, a white shirt and a black pencil tie with the shiniest shoes known to man or woman. When he wanted to wear that was all the time. He would sleep dressed that way if he could, but he could not bear to wrinkle his suit and so made the ultimate sacrifice and hung it in the wardrobe overnight. He hated to have to do that.
A freshly lit cigarette hung casually out of the corner of his mouth, daring gravity to pull it from his lips and extinguish it on the cold, unforgiving bare floorboards. But gravity didn't have the balls to do that to Johnny and Johnny knew it. He loved taunting gravity, almost as much as he loved a crisp, white shirt.
The noise of the cars and buses passing by the window of his office was distracting. He needed to concentrate, focus, tend to the task at hand. But the damn noise! Trying to blank out the incessant racket of diesel-powered peasant-wagons roaring through two feet of water was almost impossible, but Johnny replayed a piece of advice his Father had given him. "Block out the noises, Son. They're just trying to tempt you". At least Johnny thinks he said 'noises'. The possibility that he actually said 'voices' would change the entire context of his Dad's mental state when that advice was proffered. Although his Father also told him "Don't show women your money, Son. Next thing you know they're eloping with a Chinaman". It dawned on Johnny that his Dad was potentially not the greatest role model. Anyway, using the technique on the assumption his Dad wasn't borderline insane, and a racist, and a misogynist come to think of it, Johnny gritted his teeth and completed the treasure map on the McDonald's placemat with an ease that made him think it was designed for children.
Since leaving the firm, Johnny constantly found himself seeking out anything that would divert his boredom away from having to analyse himself. He hated the thought of self-improvement, which would be an inevitable by-product of self-analysis given his keen intellect and hatred of anything deemed to be, well, shit. It isn't that he didn't want to improve, more that he hated the idea of acknowledging that he could be improved upon.
The tedium was officially broken with the overly-exuberant 'ring-ring' of a telephone, which was additionally intriguing because Johnny didn't own a phone. He hated the sound of a phone ringing. It was as though an uninteresting bailiff was banging on the door of your brain, screaming that your valuable time was going to be repossessed unless you paid the due attention.
For more than just a second, Johnny entertained the thought that the ringing may just be in his head. He did help a bottle Gentleman Jack get nice and empty last night because, you know, it was a Tuesday, and his vision was about three seconds behind the direction his eyes were actually pointing. But even for a Johnny Hangover, such vivid ringing was unusual.
Johnny followed the incessant, demanding, breathless scream of the 'ring-ring',adopting his patented demeanour of sighing heavily and swearing lightly, down the hall and found that it seemed to be emanating from the pocket of his overcoat. He did own an overcoat and remembered it well, so seeing it hanging at the end of the hall in all it's Savile Row splendour was, at least, not a surprise. The noise that it was making was new though. His overcoat was not usually so annoying.
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