Dancing King

A man, a jig, and a machine

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Dancing King
Illustration by Ian Higginbotham

It’s 11 o’clock on a Saturday night and London’s drunk.

She gets like this from time to time, usually at the weekend. Sometimes the booze manifests itself in shouts and swagger, in fistfights sicked up by bar doors onto the pavement outside. Tonight, though, the city’s wrapped in a gentle sort of inebriation, an exaggerated swaying on the subway ride home, eyes clenched shut with concentration: Down stomach, down.