{Transcription}
Narrator: ´1899, the tavern is now a parlour and London has spread all around it.
Lushing Lou: Hello, love! Give a girl a drive and a pale! No? Next time. All right, take care now, it's a nasty piece of supper (?) tonight. [step sounds] Oh, hello! Some you there? [screams] Oh, you get me a start, sir, per a second I thought you was bloody Jack himself.
Morpheus: No.
Lushing Lou: [gasp] I knowed that, sir, just joshing you. So how'd you like to buy a girl a drain of pale? Then maybe a quick bum-dance Give us a hard ride wiv yer cream-stick.
Morpheus: I think not. Please, release my arm. I do not care to be touched.
Lushing Lou: You pasty-faced pussy-cove! I bet you in't got it in you anyway, [distant] you skinny chickaleary!
Hob Gadling: I see you got a run in with Lushing Lou, in here they call her The Hospital.
Morpheus: Really? [sits down] Why?
Hob Gadling: Because she in them a great deal, and because she's sent so many men into them. Rotten thing, the pox.
Morpheus: I see.
Hob Gadling: This area's really gone downhill in the last hundred years. I starting coming here a month or so back. [sips drink] Don't wanna repeat last time's mess, do we?
Morpheus: I saw her again, you know.
Hob Gadling: Lady Johanna?
Morpheus: Indeed, she undertook to fulfil a task for me and succeeded admirably, I might add.
Hob Gadling: Mmm. Oh, by the way, I'm not the only one who doesn't die.
Morpheus: Really?
Hob Gadling: There's a bloke who's called himself Blood, I've met him half a dozen times, although he doesn't always remember me. And there is Mad Hattie on old Compton Street. Been there a hundred and twenty years, to my knowledge. Mad as a coot, but she ain't gonna die. Death's a capricious thing, innit?
Morpheus: Yes. Yes, she is.
Hob Gadling: Ciggar?
Morpheus: No, thank you.
Hob Gadling: You know, I think I know why we meet here century after century.
Morpheus: Really?
Hob Gadling: It's not because you wanna see what happens when a man don't die, you've seen what happens.
Morpheus: Mmm.
Hob Gadling: I doubt I'm any wise now than I was five hundred years back. I'm older. I've been up and I've been down, and I've been up again! Have I learned anything? I've learned from my mistakes, but I''d more time to make more mistakes. You were right about the slave trade.
Morpheus: Hmm.
Hob Gadling: I can't never make restitution for that, but listen, I've seen people and they don't change. Not in the important things. I doubt I'll ever seek Death. You've observed all that, but you knew it from the start. I think you're here for something else.
Morpheus: And what might that be?
Hob Gadling: Friendship, I think you are lonely.
[Morpheus lets out a breath, stands up.]
Morpheus: You... dare... You dare imply that I might befriend a mortal? That one of my kind might need companionship? You dare to call me lonely?!
[step sounds, door opening]
Hob Gadling: Yes! Yes, I do. Tell you what, I'll be here in a hundred years time and if you're here too, it'll be because we're friends, not other reason! Right?... Right?
Narrator: 1999.
[costumers talking]
Waitress: Another one, love? Or are you staying? Got stood up?
Hob Gadling: Very funny, Glad. I'll wait.
[door opens]
Waitress: Oh, Bob, your friend's here!
Morpheus: At the appointed hour.
Hob Gadling: I... I wasn't sure you'll be coming.
Morpheus: Really? I've always heard it was impolite to keep one's... friends waiting. Would you like a drink?
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