"I've written a script, you know."

Howard looks up from his tome impatiently, "What are you on about now?"

"I'm not illiterate. If anything, I'm too literate. People can't handle my literacity," Vince continues as though he is making sense.

"As usual, Vince, I haven't the faintest idea what you are saying. Would you care to enlighten me, sir?"

"You said I didn't like your stupid jazz book because I'm an illiterate and I'm telling you I wrote a screenplay and it's well brilliant."

Howard debates between trying to continue enjoying his new book on the history of jazz while Vince bobs about for attention or just giving in and listening to his insane ramblings.

Vince does know how to spin a yarn.

"Tell me about this screen play. Does it feature Charlie? Is it about your youth being raised by Brian Ferry?"

"This is a true story, Howard," Vince responds with an oddly serious expression.

"Let's hear a synopsis then."

"You should read it. There are subtleties to the narrative," Vince explains as he ducks behind a counter, only tufts of onyx black hair still visible as he searches through a drawer. Howard is in no way surprised that the 'script' is a pile of random paper, receipts, pieces of paper bags and a shoe covered in glittery gel ink.

"How exactly am I supposed to read a shoe?" Howard asks with sincere curiosity.

Vince rolls his kohl-painted eyes, "Follow the page numbers, you berk. Bollo thinks it's brilliant, right? Thinks it could be a blockbuster, make me a huge player in Hollywood. Imagine that? Me taking this," he points to his tonsorial splendor, "to America? Forget Justin Bieber..."

"I wish I could, sir."

"This hair will make them all go mental! You'll be seeing men, women and children sporting my mighty bush. There'll be socialites carrying teeny tiny dogs in wigs meant to look like my 'do. It'll be genius."

Howard gingerly takes the pile of rubbish that is Vince's screenplay and returns to his seat, prepared to be confused but entertained.

Two hours later, Howard's eyes have crossed and he's only halfway through the screenplay. He's trying to read the bit written on a Mars bar wrapper when he gives up.

"Whadya think?" asks Vince the moment Howard puts down the script, "It's amazing, right? Pure Genius."

"The first half is about me getting bummed by a hideous sea monster named Old Gregg."

"That's completely untrue, Howard! You escape from Old Gregg with your virtue intact. Besides, he can't bum you. He's got a glowing mangina."

"And in what way is this a 'true story'?" Howard asks with all the patience he can muster.

"Remember that party where Leroy's sister kept coming on to you?"

"That was last week."

Vince threw his arms in the air.

"Vince, I assume that throwing your hands in the air gesture is suppose to mean something but I cannot for the life of me fathom what it's meant to mean."

"That was a great sentence. You really said mean a lot. Remember how Leroy's sister looked a bit mannish and she said she had an ocean view apartment?"

Howard had years of practice following the loosely gathered ideas that passed for a story from Vince. He began to see the similarities between Old Greg and Leroy's handsome sister.

"Vince, you've gone wrong."

"Finish the script! You've not got to the good part yet."

"This is impossible to read, you loon. Just tell me what happens."

Vince grabs the pile of script and begins flipping through the refuse.

"Okay, this bit is brilliant. It's all about my life before we met."

"So it's about your life before you were ten?"

"Yeah! You don't even know half this stuff!" Vince exclaims, his face the picture of excitement. He begins to read aloud from the script.

"I was created in a laboratory by a green fella with a penchant for eels. I had a shiny metal body and big light up eyes. In the dark I looked just like a car off in the distance comin' atcha. Vroom, vroom, right?"

This was Vince reading word for word from his script. Howard was having trouble imaging how this was meant to translate into the medium of moving pictures but he held his tongue.

"I ran on batteries that were solar charged so every day I had to lie in the sun or I'd stop moving. A sunbathing robot, imagine that! I would eat magnets for breakfast. I didn't need to eat anything because I was a robot, I just ate them for the style. It looked well cool when I was munching on those magnets and the Hitcher would show me off to his friends. By friends, I mean his eels and the people he occasionally kidnapped and tortured. I would muck about all day doing robot things like bumping into walls and solving complex differential equations and I was just mad with happiness until one day, I saw Mick Jagger on the telly. It blew my tiny robotic mind! He was struttin' and preening. I'd never seen anything like it. I begged the Hitcher for a wig. He just laughed and kicked me across the room. I didn't mind. I enjoyed the flight but I fashioned my own wig out of copper wiring. Soon, I was the envy of the robot world. Everyone wanted to look like me. I was selling robot wigs faster than I could make them. Too bad I didn't know about money back then, I'd have cleaned up! Instead, all I got was a bunch of rubbish the other robots found lying about the house. I had candy wrappers, old gum, eel carcasses... it was a robot paradise. I slept on a mountain of eel corpses at night. Brilliant! But then things took a turn. I started to long for the things that only belonged to the human world."

"Love? Friendship? Poetry?" asked Howard. He is entranced by the story, despite himself. Listening to Vince's ramblings is like listening to a true scat artist. There doesn't need to be proper words, it's about the sound and the rhythm.

"Tight pants, nipples, boots with a Cuban heel. I wanted the things that separate man from beast. Look, I know beasts can have nipples but they just run around with their nipples hanging out. Man has to find clever and sexy ways to expose his nipples and that's what I was looking for. I wanted a life with meaning."

In Vince's world, finding ways to show a little nipple in public gives life meaning. Howard files that piece of information away. He puts it in his mental drawer marked 'Vince Noir' in the 'insanity' file.

"I began talking to the other robots about a robot revolution. Oh, it would have been brilliant! I was going to get a bunch of really skinny and sickly looking musicians in to play a benefit for us but the Hitcher heard tale of what was happening and I was thrown into the broom cupboard with all the old, obsolete robots. You would have loved it in there, Howard. Everything was all dusty and disgusting. There wasn't a modern thing to be seen, other than me."

Howard stands up and leansover Vince's shoulder. Sure enough, written in crayon on the lid of a shoe box are the words, 'You would have loved it in there, Howard...'

"That's when I learned the secret to becoming a real boy. The old robots told me that all I needed to do was drink two full glasses of broccoli juice and a little argon oil and I'd be turned into a flesh and blood human, ready to sell his body on the streets."

"So," Howard interrupts, "When a robot turns human, it becomes a prostitute?"

Vince only glances up from his script long enough to give a quick look of disapproval.

"See, when robots turn human... it's not like we've got any real world experience or proper documents and such. The only way to survive is to sell our fleshy bodies on the streets. If you're ever with a prossie and she starts yelling out in binary code, you may be shagging a former robot. That or she's just a regular street walker trying to act like a former robot, you know, to boost her asking price."

"As you do," Howard mumbles but Vince doesn't miss a beat.

"So I figure, I'm sure to make a fortune with this face so I'm well excited but I'm trapped in a cabinet, just like the show. Everyone was asking, 'Can he get out, will he get out? Course he will' and I've got to find a way to get free. Lucky for me, the Hoover took a liking to me and helped me get free. Once I was out and about, it was a job for a tiny robot to make broccoli juice. I had to promise to marry the blender before she'd give me a hand. If the Hitcher every traps me again, I'm good as married. I'm without a chance. It'll be the death of Vince Noir, bachelor extraordinaire. Bon vivant. Man about town. I'll be a house proud haus frau. Once I managed the broccoli juice, I was stuck on how to get hold of some argon oil. I was taking my makeup off with motor oil at the time. I was using the same on my copper wire hair. I'd never even heard of Ken Paves back then. What did I know about Argon oil? I had to tart myself up and become a member of a group of sexy women with gorgeous hair. We drank flirtinis and told intertwining stories about our lives. It was great, they were my best friends. I wore heels so high, I lost toes. My little metal toes fell right off but I looked amazing. Finally, one high priced salon treatment at a time, I ingested enough oil that I became human. I had this beautiful mane of hair and big thick sturdy legs. I didn't walk for a month just to get these skinny pins you see now."

Vince stops and smiles blankly into the air.

"And?"

"And then what happened? Did you become a prostitute?"

"Of course, not. I met you and went to work at the zoo," Vince responds with a wrinkled brow. He seems confused by Howard's question.

"Vince... You know these stories aren't real, right? You were never a toy robot."

Vince laughs, "I'm a tiny robot, eating lots of mag-a-nets. Polishing my copper wire hair, trying to become a prostitute..."

Howard rarely interrupts a crimp but he needs a straight answer from Vince.

"Vince, do you know you were never a toy robot?"

Vince smiles and does a little dance, "Course I was never a toy robot, that's mad."

Howard feels slightly reassured as he sits down to return to his book, the one actually typed on paper.

"Howard?"

"Yes, Vince?"

"Was the zoo part real?"