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Seventeen 3 страница“You know what I want? I want to play some bingo. ” The warmth of the drink was in her now. She wrapped her arms around herself in a contented hug. “All these lights. I’m feeling lucky. ” “Aye? I asked them to turn them on just for ye. ” Fresh drinks came. Agnes fished around and pulled out the straw, the stirrer, and the two fat ice cubes. “This time I mean it. I’m going to win big. I’m going to start living. I’m going to give Sighthill a showing up. I can just feel it. ” She finished the brandy in one swallow.
Their rented room was at the top of a Victorian house that was set three streets back from the promenade. It was plain even for a Blackpool B & B, and it smelled like the kind of place that rented rooms to temporary lodgers, not families on holiday. Each carpeted landing had a different, settled-in musk. The place smelled of burnt toast and TV static, as if the landlady never liked to open a window. It was quiet at that hour in the morning. Agnes lay in a pile at the bottom of the carpeted stairs singing tunelessly to herself. “Ahh’m onny hew-man. Ahh’m just a wooh-man. ” There were feet moving behind closed doors and old floorboards creaked overhead. Shug put his hand lightly over her mouth. “Shh. Be quiet, will ye. You’ll wake up every soul in the place. ” Agnes pushed his arm away from her face, threw her arm wide, and sang louder. “Show me the stairwaa-ay ah have to cli-imb. ” Lights came on in one of the rooms. Shug could see it from under the thin door. He put his hands under her arms and tried to pick her up, drag her up the carpeted stairs. The more he pulled the more easily she slid through his hands, like a boneless bag of flesh. Each time he got leverage, she would become formless and slip free. Agnes spilt back on to the stairs with a giggle and went on singing to herself. An Englishman in one of the rented rooms hissed through his closed door, “Keep it down. Before I call the poh-lice! People are trying to sleep. ” To Shug he sounded like a small effeminate man, the way he dribbled out his sibilant esses. Shug would have liked him to open the door. Shug would have liked to leave a sovereign print on his face. Agnes feigned affront. “Aye, phone the police you spoilsport. I’m on my holid—” Shug clamped his hand tight over her wet mouth. She only giggled. With mischief in her eyes, she licked the inside of his palm with a fat tongue. It felt like a warm wet slab of flank mutton. It turned his stomach. Tightening his grip, he dug his ringed fingers into her cheeks till he forced her dentures apart. The smile left her eyes. Leaning his face close to hers, he hissed: “I’m only going to tell you this the once. Pick yersel up. Get yersel up they stairs. ” Slowly he took his hand away from her face. There was a pink mark where he had squeezed her jaw. There was fear in her eyes, and she looked almost sober again. As he drew his hand away, the fear melted from her eyes and the demon drink came back into her face. She spat at him through the ceramic teeth. “Who the fuck do you think y—” Shug was on her before she could finish. Stepping over her, he reached backwards into her hair. The hardened hairspray cracked like chicken bones as he wound his fingers into the strands. With a tug hard enough to rip handfuls out by the roots, he started up the stairs, dragging her behind him. Agnes’s legs splayed awkwardly, she flailed like a clumsy spider as she tried to find her footing. The ripping pain stung her skull, and she wrapped her hands around his arm for purchase. Shug barely felt the sharpness of her nails as she pierced his skin. He pulled her up a stair, then he pulled her up another, and then another. The dirty carpet burnt her back, rubbed the skin from her neck, ripped the paillettes from her shiny dress. Hooking his thick arm under her chin he dragged her across the next carpeted landing. In one motion he dropped her at the door, fished out the key, turned on the bare light, and dragged her inside. Agnes lay abandoned behind the door like a ragged draught excluder. The beaded dress had worked itself up her white legs. Her hand reached to her head, feeling for where her hair had started to tear. Shug crossed the room and pulled her hand away, suddenly embarrassed at what he had done. “Stop touching at yourself. I’ve no hurt you. ” She could feel the blood of her scalp on her fingers. Her ears were ringing from the bump, thump, bump of each stair. The numbness of the drink was leaving her. “Why did you do that? ” “You were making a show of me. ” Shug took off his black suit jacket and laid it over the single wooden chair. He took off the black tie and wound it neatly upon itself. His face was flushed red, and it made his eyes look somehow smaller and darker. While he’d dragged her upstairs his hair had come undone from the bald patch he tried hard to conceal. The loosened strands hung by his left ear, thin and ratty-looking. There was a cluck in the back of his throat, like a switch firing, and then his hands were on her again. She felt the claw on her neck, felt it on her thigh. He used his fingers and dug into her softness, wanting to be sure he had a firm grip. As flesh separated from bone she cried out from the pain, and he hammered his sovereign ring twice into her cheek. When she was quiet again, Shug bent over and dug his nails into her shoulder and thigh and threw her on to the rented bed like a burst bin bag. He climbed on top of her. His face was a blazing shade of scarlet, his limp hair swinging free from his swollen head. It was as though he was filling with boiling blood. Using his elbows he pushed all his weight on to her arms, shoved them into the mattress until they felt like they might snap. He took the bulk of himself, all the driving weight he had gained from being so sedentary, and pushed it into her and pinned her there below him. With his right hand he reached below her dress and found the soft white parts of her. She crossed her legs below him; he felt the ankles lock one over the other. With his free hand he gripped her thighs and tried to pull the dead weight of them apart. There was no giving. The lock was tight. He dug his fingers into the soft tops of her legs, digging the nails in until he felt the skin burst, until he felt her ankles open. He pushed into her as she wept. There was no drink in her now. There was no fight in her any more. When he was done he put his face against her neck. He told her he would take her dancing in the lights again tomorrow. Three
That summer, when it finally came, was close and damp. For a nocturnal man, the days had felt too long. The long daylight was like an inconsiderate guest, the northern gloam reluctant to leave. Big Shug always found the summer days hardest to sleep through. The sun brightened the thick curtains till they were a vibrating violet, and the children were always noisiest when they were happiest, the door going constantly with mouthy teenagers from other flats and women in strappy sandals traipsing the hall carpet, clacking pink feet and pink gums at all hours. As night finally fell, Big Shug pulled his black hackney round in a small tight circle. It spun like a fat dog chasing its tail and headed out of the Sighthill estate. Seeing the lights of Glasgow, he relaxed back into the seat, and for the first time that day his shoulders fell from around his ears. For the next eight hours the city was his, and he had plans for it. He wiped the window and got a good look in the wing mirror. Smiling to himself, he thought how smashing he looked: white shirt, black suit, black tie. It was a bit much for work, Agnes had said, but then she said altogether too much these days. As the smile travelled through his body he wondered whether taxi driving was in his blood. Between him and his brother Rascal it was practically a family business. His father would have enjoyed it too, had the shipbuilding not killed him. Shug pulled up at the lights under the shadow of the Royal Infirmary and watched a gaggle of nurses smoke a crafty fag. He watched them rub their pink arms in the cold night air and shelf their tits over tight-folded arms. They smoked without using their hands, afeart of losing any body heat. He smiled slowly and watched himself react in the mirror. Night shift definitely suited him best. He liked to roam alone in the darkness, getting a good look at the underbelly. Out came the characters shellacked by the grey city, years of drink and rain and hope holding them in place. His living was made by moving people, but his favourite pastime was watching them. The thin driver’s window made a sharp slicing sound as he slid it down and lit a cigarette. The wind came rushing in, and his long strands of thin hair danced like beach grass in the breeze. He hated going bald, hated getting old; it made everything hard work. He adjusted the mirror lower so that he couldn’t see the reflection of his bare head. He found his long, thick moustache and sat absent-mindedly stroking it, like a favourite pet. Under it his spare chin wobbled. He tilted the mirror back up. The Glasgow streets were shiny with rain and street lights. The infirmary nurses didn’t linger, flicking half-smoked fags into the puddles and tottering back inside. Shug sighed and turned the taxi past Townhead and pointed down towards the city centre. He liked the drive from Sighthill, it was like a descent into the heart of the Victorian darkness. The closer you got to the river, the lowest part of the city, the more the real Glasgow opened up to you. There were hidden nightclubs tucked under shadowy railway arches, and blacked-out windowless pubs where old men and women sat on sunny days in a sweaty, pungent purgatory. It was down near the river that the skinny, nervous-faced women sold themselves to men in polished estate cars, and sometimes it was here that the polis would later find chopped up bits of them in black bin bags. The north bank of the Clyde housed the city mortuary, and it seemed fitting that all the lost souls were floating in that direction, so as to be no trouble when their time blessedly came. Pulling past the station, Shug was glad the rank there was full of taxis and empty of punters. Tourists were dull, talkative, and fucking cheap. They’d be an eternity lugging massive cases into the back and then would sit there steaming up the taxi in squeaky Pac-a-Macs. Those ugly tight-arsed bastards could shove their ten-pence tips. He gave a snide toot to the boys and drove on lower towards the river. Rain was the natural state of Glasgow. It kept the grass green and the people pale and bronchial. Its effect on the taxi business was negligible. It was a problem because it was mostly inescapable and the constant dampness was pervasive, so fares might as well sit damp on a bus as damp in the back of an expensive taxi. On the other hand, rain meant that the young lassies from the dancing all wanted to take a taxi home so as not to ruin their stiff hair or their sharp shoes. For that Shug was in favour of the endless rain. He pulled up Hope Street and sat at the rank. It shouldn’t be long. Only two or three of the old boys were sat there, waiting for a hire. From here it was a short stoat from the dancing on Sauchiehall Street or a frozen trot for the working girls pitched out on Blythswood Square. Either way, it was a good spot for an interesting night. Shug sat smoking in the dreich and listened to the crackle of the CB radio. The lady dispatcher announced fares up in Possil and runs to be had down in the Trongate. Joanie Micklewhite was the only voice on the radio, and every night he listened to her hold this repetitive circular monologue asking for help, waiting for answers, giving orders, and bluffing any backchat. Always only half a conversation, like she was talking to herself or talking, it seemed, only to him. He liked the peaceful sound of her voice. He took a comfort from it. He finished his cigarette and watched young couples huddle together as they left the late picture. The drivers in front slowly started to pull fares and rattle off into the night. Alone at the head of the rank, he watched a group of young lassies dribble chips on to the street as they had a fight over how they should get home. It looked like they’d get in the taxi, but no, the fat practical one wanted to wait for the night bus. Leave her, he thought, let her get wet. The prettiest, most guttered one was still stumbling towards him. Shug practiced his smile in the half-light. He was dragged from his dirty thoughts as a set of bony knuckles rapped on the window. “Ye fur hire, pal? ” said a man’s voice. “No! ” shouted Shug, pointing in the direction of the wrecked girls. “Right, then, ” said the old man, not paying any heed. He opened the door before Shug could hit the automatic lock and pulled his small frame and voluminous coats inside. “Dae ye ken the Rangers bar on Duke Street? ” Shug sighed, “Aye, pal, ” as the pretty girl slid along the queue to the taxi behind his. He gave her a half-smile, but she paid him no mind. Ignoring the black leather seat that ran the width of the taxi, the old man pulled down a folding seat and sat directly behind Shug. This was the sign of a talker. Here we fuckin’ go, thought Shug. It was wet outside but humid inside the cab. The hackney filled with the smell of old milk. The old man sat in a yellowed shirt and a crumpled grey suit, over which he had piled a thin wool coat and on top of this had added an oversize topcoat. It gave him the look of a refugee, his tiny frame drowning in yards of Shetland wool and gabardine. On his head he wore a Harris bunnet, from the shadows of which only his red round nose protruded. The patter started almost immediately. “Did ye see the game the day, son? ” asked the milky passenger. “No, ” answered Shug, already knowing where this was headed. “Aw, ye missed a great game, a bloody great game. ” The man was tutting to himself. “Who do ye support then? ” “Celtic, ” he lied. He was no Catholic, but it was the shortcut to ending the conversation. The auld man’s face crumpled like a dropped towel. “Oh, fur fuck’s sake, might’ve known ah’d get in a Pape’s taxi. ” Shug watched him in the mirror and snorted under his moustache. He didn’t support Celtic; he didn’t support the Rangers either, but he was proud to be a Protestant. He would have turned his Masonic ring around, but the old man was paying no heed and moving like he was underwater. Bemused, Shug watched as the man worked himself up into a state of distracted despair, swinging from lachrymose to belligerent. He held his hands in front of him like he was pleading with God. Then he laid his arm across the back of the partition and brought his face inches from the glass separating him from Shug’s ear. Wet-lipped with the drink, he was spitting out random streams of patter, making faces like a toddler learning to talk. Big globs of wet spit misted the partition. Shug deliberately tapped the brakes, and the man’s forehead made a thunk sound as it skelped off the glass. Bunnetless but undeterred, he kept on with his rambling. Shug frowned. He’d have to give that a good wipe later. The auld Glasgow jakey was a dying breed—a traditionally benign soul that was devolving into something younger and far more sinister with the spread of drugs across the city. Shug looked in the mirror and watched the man continue his drunken solo, the conversation so low and incoherent that he could pick out only certain words like Thatcher and union and bastard. With no feelings of sympathy, he watched as the man laughed and then sobbed at intervals. The Louden Tavern sat dark and windowless, the door well recessed into the brick face of the low building. It was by design rock-proof, bottle-proof, and bomb-proof. The facade, painted with the red, white, and blue of the Glasgow Rangers, was gloriously defiant in the shadow of Parkhead, the home of Glasgow Celtic, the sporting Mecca of all Catholics. Shug told the man the fare was a pound seventy and watched him ferret in one pocket after another. All the Glasgow jakeys did this. Their Friday wages were splintered by every bar they passed till they rolled around in pockets as five and ten pence in change, the cumulative weight of the heavy small coins giving them a waddling walk and a hump. They would live on the coins for the rest of the week, taking their chances with their random findings. Even in sleep they were never to be separated from their trousers and large coats for fear their wives or children would tip them out first and buy bread and milk with the shrapnel. The man was an age looking in every pocket. Shug listened to the soft voice on the CB and tried to stay calm. By the time the jakey had paid and sailed into the dark mouth of the pub Shug was thundering back along Duke Street, trying not to miss the dancing letting out. Outside the Scala an auld dear stuck her hand out, waving it like a small bird. Shug had to stop short or run her over. He watched her climb into the back of the taxi and felt relieved when she sat square in the centre of the wide black seat. “The Parade, please. ” She sniffed, wrinkled her nose, and looked scornfully at Shug. It must have smelled like someone pissed in a pot of old porridge back there. The taxi started climbing the tenemented hills of Dennistoun. Shug looked in the mirror and watched the woman, who was watching him. The Glasgow housewives always sat square in the middle, never to the side looking out of the window or on one of the fold-down seats like the lonely old men who were hungry for company. She sat as they all did, upright and rigid, like a Presbyterian queen, knees together, back straight, with her hands clasped on her lap. Her coat was pulled close around herself, her hair was set and brushed, even in the back, and her face was set tight like a mask. “It’s a wild terrible night, right enough, ” she said finally. “Aye, the radio said it would piss all week. ” There was something about the woman that reminded him of his own mother, dead and gone. The raw hands and tiny frame belied the strength and power that surely ran through her. He thought of the nights his father would raise his fist on his mother. The more she took it the more he rained down on her, turning her red then blue then black. Shug thought about her at the mirror, pulling her hair over her face, pushing her make-up wider around her eyes to cover the bruises. “Ah wis just saying I don’t usually get a taxi. ” She was searching for his eyes in the mirror. “Oh, aye? ” said Shug, glad to have his thoughts interrupted. “Aye, but I’ve had a wee win the night, you see. Just a wee one, mind, but it’s nice all the same. ” She was rubbing her thumbnail raw. “It’ll come in right handy, you see, now that my George is out of work, ” she sighed. “Twenty. Five. Years. Out at the Dalmarnock Iron Works, and all he got was three weeks’ wages. Three weeks! I went up there maself, chapped on the big red gaffer’s door, and I telt him what he could dae with three weeks’ wages. ” She opened the clasp on her small hard bag and looked inside. “Do you know what that big bastard telt me? ‘Mrs Brodie, your husband was lucky to get three weeks. I have some young boys wi’ their whole lives ahead o’ them and they only got paid till the end of their shift. ’ Made my blood absolutely boil so’in, it did. I said to him, ‘Well, I’ve got two grown boys at home to feed, and they cannae find any work either, so just what do you suppose I do about that? ’ He looked at me and he didnae even blink when he said, ‘Try South Africa! ’” She closed the bag. “They’ve never even been to South Lanarkshire, never mind South Africa! ” She kept rubbing her red thumb. “It’s no right. The government should dae something. Shutting down the ironworks and shipbuilding. It’ll be the miners next. Just you watch! South Africa! I never! Go all the way to South Africa so they can build cheap boats there and send them home to put more of our boys out of work? The shower of swine. ” “It’s diamonds, ” Shug offered. “They go to South Africa to mine diamonds. ” The woman looked as if he had contradicted her. “Well I don’t care what they mine, they could be pulling licorice out a black man’s arse for all I care. But they should be working here at home in Glasgow and eating their mammy’s cooking. ” Shug put his foot on the accelerator. The city was changing; he could see it in people’s faces. Glasgow was losing its purpose, and he could see it all clearly from behind the glass. He could feel it in his takings. He had heard them say that Thatcher didn’t want honest workers any more; her future was technology and nuclear power and private health. Industrial days were over, and the bones of the Clyde Shipworks and the Springburn Railworks lay about the city like rotted dinosaurs. Whole housing estates of young men who were promised the working trades of their fathers had no future now. Men were losing their very masculinity. Shug had watched the thinning out of the working classes from their poor neighbourhoods. Middle-class civil servants and city planners had seen it a stroke of genius to ring the city with new towns and cheaply built estates. Given a patch of grass and a view of the sky, the city’s ills were supposed to disappear. The woman sat stiff and still on the back seat. The skin was wearing off around her thumbs, and worry sat around the corners of her mouth. Only when she patted the back of her hair did Shug know she was still alive. The taxi dropped her at the mouth of her close, and she pushed a pound tip into Shug’s hand. “Here, what’s this? ” He tried to pass it back. “I’m no needin’ that. ” “Gies peace! ” she shushed. “It’s just a wee bit of my winnings. I’m spreading my luck around. Luck’s the only thing that’s gonnae get us out of this mess. ” Shug took the tip reluctantly. Fuck the English tourists and their bastarding Kodaks. Shug had seen it before, those with least to give always gave the most.
By the time Shug got back to the city centre the last picture had let out and the city was settling in for a few hours of cold sleep. Some of the late-night clubs were banging out music, but it was suicide to sit outside them waiting for a fare because the first drunks wouldn’t be spilling out till well after midnight. Shug sighed and thought about waiting around. Maybe he’d pick up a bird who’d been left holding all the Babycham while her pals danced with some fellas. The ugliest bird usually left first. He’d driven them home before, even waited with the meter off while they got some consoling bags of crisps and chocolate biscuits from the corner Paki. If you talked nice to them they were dead nice back. He had loosened his tie and settled in for the long wait when the soft voice came over the radio. “Car thirty-one. Car thirty-one. Come in. ” His heart sank. It was Agnes, it had to be. He picked up the black reciever and pressed the button on the side. “Car thirty-one here. ” There was a long pause, and he waited for the news. “You’ve been requested up at Stobhill, car for Easton, ” said Joanie Micklewhite. “I’ve got a fare, and I’m taking them out to the airport. Do you no have a car closer? ” he asked. “Sorry, sunshine! You’ve been specially requested. ” He could almost hear the smile. “Punter said to take your time, there was no rush. ” He hadn’t thought it’d be this. Agnes surely, or even his first wife after money for their four weans, but he hadn’t thought it would be this. They weren’t there yet, surely? The drive up to the old hospital was quick this time of night. The Royal Infirmary was where the football stabbings and giro-day domestics went. Stobhill was where Glasgow was born and where Glasgow died. Now a mousy girl was stood there in the glow from the foyer, wearing a blue cleaner’s apron. She clawed at her saggy tights and wriggled them straight and flat. Her make-up had spread from the cold and the tears, and he could see the ring of burnt doubts at her feet, like she must’ve been waiting in the cold for him her whole break. Shug smiled. She was only twenty-four and already his doormat. “I didnae think you were coming, ” she said, climbing into the back of the taxi. “What did you call me out here fur? ” “I missed ye, that’s all, ” she said. “I haven’t seen ye in weeks. ” She rolled her thick legs open and shut coquettishly. “You’ve no gone off o’ me, have ye? ” She grinned. Shug turned in his seat. “Who the fuck do ye think ye are, Ann Marie? I’m tryin’ to make a livin’, and ye call me across the city like I wis a dog that pissed on yer carpet. ” He slammed the heel of his fist on the glass partition. “We have to be discreet. Cool like. What the fuck do you think would happen if Agnes found out, eh? I’ll tell you what would happen. She’d get a haud of you by the scruff of yer neck and drag the length of the Clyde wi’ ye for starters. When she was done dragging yer body she would drag yer good name. She’d phone yer parents every night just after they’d gone to their beds. She’d wake them up and tell them that their good wee Catholic girl was carrying on with a married man. ” He paused, watching his words take effect. “Is that really what you want? ” The tears were running down her face and pooling on her apron. “But ah love ye. ” Shug pulled the taxi in a sharp arc and parked in a dark corner of the empty car park. He glanced at his watch and then met her gaze again in the mirror. “Aye, well, take yer fucking knickers off then. I’ve only got five minutes. ”
Shug felt hungry as he headed back into the city. He was certain Ann Marie wouldn’t call the rank for him for a while. She was a nice lassie, heavy tits and eager too, but she was cramping his style. That was the problem with the young ones; they saw no reason to not expect better for themselves. She’d definitely have to go. He was just thinking of the voice on the radio when it spoke to him again. “Car thirty-one, car thirty-one, come in. ” He picked up the receiver and held his breath; he was running out of luck. “Joanie? ” “Phone. Home. Now, ” came the terse reply. He pulled the hackney over at the mouth of Gordon Street, and clipping coins out of his dispenser he made a quick dash through the rain to an old red phone box. It was wet on the inside and smelled like piss. He had tried ignoring Agnes’s orders before, but that just made things more difficult. She would be insistent and get more abusive as the night wore on. The best thing to do was Phone. Home. Now. It barely rang once before it was answered. She would have been sat at the pleather phone table in the hall, just drinking and waiting and drinking. “Hell-o, ” said the voice. “Agnes, what is it? ” “Well, if it isn’t the chief hoor-master himself. ” “Agnes, ” Shug sighed. “What is it this time? ” “I know, ” spat the drunken voice. “Know what? ” “Know. Everything. ” “You’re no making any sense. ” He shifted uncomfortably in the tight phone box. “I knoo-ow. ” The voice boomed, her wet lips too close to the mouthpiece. “If you’re gonnae keep this up, I’m gonnae have to get back to work. ” There was a deep sob on the end of the phone. “Agnes, you cannae phone the rank any more, I’ll get the sack. I’ll be home in a few hours, and we can talk then. OK? ” But there was no answer. “Well, do you want to know what I know? I know I love you, ” he lied. The sobbing got louder. Shug hung up. The rain and piss had soaked through his tasselled brogues. Picking up the black receiver again, he hammered it against the side of the red booth. He knocked out three panes of glass before the receiver broke, before he felt better. Back in the taxi he had to sit still for ten minutes until his knuckles would let go of the choke they had on the steering wheel. Maybe he would feel better if he ate something. He fished around under his seat for his plastic piece box. It smelled like margarine and white bread, like marriage and cramped flats. The corned beef pieces Agnes had packed turned his stomach. He dumped them into the gutter and cut up several side streets till he pulled up in front of DiRollo’s chippy, open twenty-four hours, bog-standard. DiRollo’s was popular with both cabbies and prostitutes because of the unsociable hours and the discretion of its owner. There was a big red lobster painted on the sign, but nothing as exotic on offer inside. Joe DiRollo stood behind the counter, as he seemed to do every hour of the day. At night the fluorescent light made him look deceased. A small man, hair thin and slicked back off his face, with chip grease or Brylcreem or both. Like an oily iceberg only his swollen head and shoulders were visible above the counter. The rest of his sallow bulk was squished up against the machete he kept under the counter. He greeted everyone with a phlegmy clearing of the throat and tilting of his fat head. “How ye doin’, Joe? ” asked Shug, with no genuine interest. “Aye, no so bad. ” “Been busy with our fair ladies the night? ” Shug shoved his thumb in the direction of a gaunt-looking customer who, eyes closed, was swaying on her feet. “Ehhhh, they been a-cumming and a-going, you know? ” He laughed at his own joke. “No’ so good for business any more. They eat half a bag of chips, drink a ginger, that’s it! They ask to use the toilet, my own toilet, and auld Joe says, OK. He’s a nice guy, but they don’t come out for an hour, you know. They eat a half a bag of chips, and then they wash their cunts in my toilet. ”
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