Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys by Will Self

She was writhing. He was saying something impassioned –’
    ‘Dave –’
    ‘She said, “Come here.” But I was watching the pol, who had pulled out a gun. It was quite clear that this was real. All shot by a live-action news camera. He put the gun in his mouth. Big fucker – long-barelled Colt –’
    ‘Dave you –’
    ‘I look from the screen to the bed. She's got her hand up under the rubber dress. She's playing with herself. On screen the pol just does it. Blows –’
    ‘Dave, you told me this yesterday! – ’
    ‘His brains out.’
    Silence in the café. I realise I've shouted. A hiss of steam from the Gaggia, a small cloud floats over me, sends shadows racing across the sward of Dave's face. I look up to where a peg board is affixed to the pine cladding. A peg board with plastic letters, detailing the café's fare. I scan the lettering, picking out As, Vs, Es, and of course, Ds.
    Why did he do that? Repeat himself like that. It undermines my whole sense of him. The fact that he could repeat himself so comprehensively, sentence for sentence. It must mean that he didn't register who he was talking to. He didn't know that he was talking to me. He does, after all, have a lot of friends, Dave. And it's often remarked upon how sympathetic he is, how warm, how caring. But it's also true that this quality has to be spread about a bit; a margarine of feeling.
    ‘I have to go now.’
    ‘But –’
    ‘No, really. Velma. I'm going to see her. I told you.’
    ‘Are you sure about . . . I mean that it's a good idea?’ He's half rising. Bobbing slightly in the awkward, rigid gap between banquette and bolted table. With his horsy head, painted-on hair and simian arms, he looks puppet-like to me. He isn't in any sense a real Dave, this Dave. How could I be so fooled? His very posture suggests thick, yet invisible, threads running up, through the ceiling tiles, to the spatulate fingers of a giant Dave, who squats above the café, trying to coax dummy Dave into a semblance of humanity. ‘Are you seeing Dr Klagfarten again today?’ His brow is corrugated with ersatz angst.
    ‘What's it to you?’ I'm plunking a handful of change down on the table, rising to leave.
    ‘Oh come on . . . I'm only concerned for you . . .’
    He's concerned. Hell, I'm concerned. We're all fucking concerned. We're united in concern, wouldn't you say? United like so many Stickle-bricks, pressed together to form a model society. From the door of the café I turn. All three Daves are in the same positions, frozen. Fat Dave, his hand on the big knob of the Gaggia's handle; Old Dave nodded out over the Sporting Life; dummy Dave still deanimate, dangling. I raise an arm, and in imitation of Dr Klagfarten swivel a palm.
    I walk swiftly, listening to the arguments of my conscience: pro-Dave and anti-Dave. I know I've been stressed recently. Dr Klagfarten says I shouldn't look to anyone of the several therapies we are applying for succour. Rather, I should try and apprehend them as a manifold entity, that cushions and constrains me. But even so – there just is an objective creepiness, a not-quite-rightness about Dave at the moment. Far from finding his very Daveness reassuring this morning, it has instead gravely unsettled me. I can't stand duplication. It is replication.
    I'm heading back past the old administration building. It's not the most direct route to Velma's house, but I have a kind of urge to make contact again with Dr Klagfarten, if only in the most glancing way. Looking up, I see that a drape or curtain has been pulled across the window of his office. It reminds me of Dave's egg. If a fork like a prop for a Magritte painting were to be plunged through the window of Dr Klagfarten's office, a gush of yellow neurosis would undoubtedly ooze out.
    My route to Velma's takes me across the park. As I enter, between cast-iron gates, the sun at last begins to seep through the clouds. I keep my speed up, concentrating on the internal dispositions