Animals (20 page)

‘She’s asking the barman something,’ Nick said, smiling. He was doing well, considering. Clearly he was enjoying a mission.

‘Right,’ I said, smiling back. ‘Is she buying a drink? Don’t look for a bit but …’

‘No,’ Nick said, gazing lovingly at me, ‘no, she’s turning around.’

‘Okay, stop looking.’

‘She’s walking out.’

Through gritted teeth: ‘Stop looking!’

‘She’s gone.’

A cold wash of relief. ‘How about the boys?’

‘Gone.’

I looked down to Tyler. She climbed out, sat down and emptied the bottle.

I went to the bathroom to cool down. It was tiled like a Parisian subway, all Fifties emerald and cream. There was a bank of four butler’s sinks along one wall, big rectangular bowls and arching taps. I put the plug in to get a nice little pool to cool down with, but the water was so inviting I had the urge to get closer, to lap at it.

I told myself that I would go back to Tyler’s for a polite hour and then head over to Jim’s.

As we walked to Hulme I went ahead at every corner to check that Marie and her henchmen weren’t waiting. After fifteen minutes we reached the bridge over the Mancunian Way. I stopped to spark up. A taxi went past, engine clattering. The noise of the traffic on the motorway below was terrible, like something huge that was breathing too hard. I looked ahead, and saw Tyler and Nick walking arm in arm. A feeling of relief washed over me. As though I could slip away and leave them to it.

A few weeks after I’d moved in with Tyler I woke in her bed to find her gone. As I strained in the darkness I heard the front door click shut. I got up and went to the door, opened it, and heard the main door slam downstairs. I went down, barefoot, my pyjamas loose and letting the cold in. I hugged myself as I opened the main door and stepped out into the night. She was walking twenty metres or so ahead. I followed her down the road and then right along the next road towards town, past the chicken-wired scrubland. It was the very middle of the night – that exact point between late and early – when everything is poised, waiting, and not a bird or an engine breaks the stillness. I had to be very quiet. I thought she might be sleepwalking and you know what they say about waking sleepwalkers but also I didn’t want her to stop. I followed her to the bridge, stopping when she stopped and concealing myself behind the base of a streetlamp. She started to climb, stood on the third rung, her boot heels biting the steel and hooking her on. She raised her arms like a warlock and tipped back her head. She stood there for a long time, fifteen minutes or so, just balancing. I knew she was awake. I left when I saw her start to get down, went back to the flat and got back in bed, pretended to be asleep.

Back at her place she poured us each a glass of wine and then smeared the remains of the night onto a CD case. She did. He did. I didn’t. There was blood on the note they were using. Tyler noticed and said, ‘One for the wash.’

Nick lay across the sofa (a true gent) and I sat on a cushion on the floor by the coffee table, tapping my fag in a dead beer can. Tyler brought out the jar from the ice-box, too, chucked some of that down for good measure, and stood in the middle of the room talking. Whenever Nick or I tried to interject she interrupted and talked over us until we ceased; surrendered to the Mighty Goddess of Birthday. I checked my phone. It was 1 a.m. I could leave soon.

I looked at Nick. He seemed oblivious to everything except Tyler’s tits jiggling in her dress. Saucer-eyed, rubbing her rigid arms, rocking back and forth, she looked like a T. rex having a mild epileptic fit. She jiggled over and took a fag from my packet. Took my lighter and jiggled back to her position centre-stage. Put the fag in her mouth. ‘I can’t be doing with it,’ she said, around the cigarette. I stood up and walked towards her, turned the cigarette in her mouth the right way round and lit it.

‘What’s that?’ I said.

‘Oral.’

I looked at Nick. He was looking at Tyler. How had they got onto –?

‘What, not at all?’ Nick said.

Jim’s. Bathroom, then Jim’s.

‘Nah. It’s frustrating. It’s like some fucker hovering with the lighter or the note. I feel like saying, Put a cock in it, love.’

‘Typical,’ said Nick. ‘You spend decades telling us you’re not getting enough –’

‘Try centuries sweetheart and who is this “you”?’

‘– and now we’re doing it –’

‘It’s not me this “you” I know that much.’

‘– too much. There’s no –’

‘Be specific that’s the first rule of argument you silly boy.’

‘– pleasing Women.’

‘Oh whinge whinge whinge you know I’d have a lot more sex if I didn’t meet so many fucking whingers and ditherers last guy I slept with was down there for hours I wanted to say look my friend I appreciate the effort but the sensation went a while ago.’

‘Hey, Tyler,’ I said, ‘I’m calling a cab.’

‘So this is a length issue?’ Nick said. A wonky smile at his own mangled cleverness.

‘Not so much as a variety issue.’

‘Tyler.’

Any minute now he’s going to start asking her for tips. The conversational orgy going back to basics; Tyler taking advantage: Hey, maybe I can just show you, that’d be quicker. On your knees, pilgrim!

She looked at me.

‘I said I’m calling a cab.’

‘A cab? Where?’

‘Jim’s. I’ve got my flight tomorrow afternoon.’

‘So you’re leaving?’

I looked at her face. Crushed and spoiled and hole-punched near the top with two nocturnal-woodland-creature pupils. She was six years old with two people at her birthday party. She was a worm, drying out in the sun …

‘I am if you keep talking about your sex life.’

She looked at me. I looked at Nick. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘I was only talking.’

‘We were only talking,’ Nick parroted.

Tyler seemed to remember she had a cigarette in her hand and looked at it with a sort of strained, Botox-gauche surprise-delight (one eyebrow half-involved, forehead struggling to catch up), and took a drag. ‘So there was this one time me and Lo were at a festival and we got home and she had a shower and this insect fell out of her
vagina
.’

‘It fell out of my
pubes
.’

‘Whatever it was, a fucking tick or something –’

It was a tick. Bloated and slightly frilled round the edge, like a broad bean. It had been living in the crease of my groin and I hadn’t noticed because for two days I’d only taken a piss in a long-drop toilet, in the dark – barely wiping, never mind inspecting myself.

‘Really, Tyler, I thought we agreed to save this anecdote for dinner parties …’

‘– so she had to shave off all her pubes like for a Hollywood or Shirley Temple or whatever the fuck they call it and when she came out the bathroom I was there and I said
JESUS LO THAT HAIRCUT’S TAKEN YEARS OFF YOU
.’

It took Nick a minute. Well, five seconds. It felt like a minute. It felt like a fucking
age
. Then he burst out laughing and had to sit himself up on the sofa so he didn’t choke. Tyler was dancing to what I could only presume was the sound, in her head, of her own wit resonating off the walls. When he’d finished laughing, Nick said: ‘Why are you freaking out? It’s barely Saturday.’

‘I’m not freaking out.’

Fucking artist. Who actually called themself ‘an artist’? Did he have business cards with his name, colon, ‘Artist’ on them? Was Tyler actually going to fuck him, again? His eyes were all pupil. If he managed to get an erection tonight then I’d eat my own pussy. Lengthily.

‘You need to chill your beans,’ he said. He looked at me. Tyler laughed. I knew what this was. I looked at the CD case. Hackles rose on my neck and back, accompanied by a sudden recollection of a sibling roughhousing. Melanie screaming on rollerboots, smashing her temple into the brake-light of my mum’s car as I spun her round, rage-fast …

‘Give me that fucking note.’

So: first, honour – and then a bigger balloon expanded inside: brazen exhibitionism. I ran into my room to get my laptop. Ran back. ‘I’m going to read you the beginning of my novel.’

‘Here’s to that,’ said Nick, raising his glass.

In all honesty I was starting to like the guy.

At 4 a.m. I told myself 5 a.m. was my absolute cut-off point. 5 a.m. would be totally fine.

‘Have you ever listened to the Beach Boys?’ said Nick. ‘I mean, really listened? There’s never a pause. There’s always something upfront. The Beach Boys never stop.’

‘Fuck
that
,’ I said, ‘who wants to hear some Yeats?’

At 9 a.m. I said ten was fine. Fine. Absolutely. I could always have a shower when I got to Stockholm, at the hotel. All I had to do was pack, which was easy. I could even go straight from Tyler’s – no need to go via Jim’s.

At 11.30 a.m. the Fear and Horror hit me. I ran in and out of my room, flailing, grabbing at random items of clothing.

‘DON’T PANIC!’ Tyler said.

‘I’M NOT PANICKING!’

I called a cab, grabbed my barely packed bag and ran out of the flat with half my jacket on. I heard Nick’s laughter resonating all the way down the stairs.

The taxi company sent a minibus. Of course they did. The drive lasted four hundred thousand years. At the airport I checked in and then went to the Ladies before security. I emptied out my handbag, checking and double-checking each compartment of my purse. I made eye contact with the security staff once each and no more. I walked like an innocent. I bought a diet soft drink from a machine and drank it in a corner by the gate until my flight was called. On the plane I adopted the brace position, made it my own.

Jim couldn’t meet me at Arlanda due to rehearsals so I took the airport bus to the City Terminal and walked to the tunnelbana. I stood by the entrance of T-Centralen station listening to a solo violin rendition of ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’. The busker finished the song with a flourish, a dreadful sort of deadening
Wogan
chord, and struck up another I didn’t recognise. I bought a ticket, dropped a coin into the plush hollow of the open violin case and moved into the dirty-warm air down the stairs.

Stockholm is a city of islands. The old town, Gamla Stan, is a maze of winding pedestrian streets packed with shops where you can buy fripperies or stop in a café for a ‘fika’, that Swedish ritual of afternoon coffee and cake. We were staying on a floating hotel, a refurbished cruise ship from the Fifties, anchored at Söder Mälarstrand. A little blue bridge connected the boat to the dock. Checking in, surrounded by wood and russet leather, felt like stepping into an Agatha Christie novel. On the far wall, the side of the ship, small gingham curtains were bunched either side of six or seven porthole windows.

After I’d checked in I dropped my bag in the cabin – which I was relieved to see had a double bed; I’d been dreading some unromantic bunk-bed situation whereby jokes about who got to go on top could have only alleviated the disappointment for so long – and brushed my teeth in the cubicle shower-room. I washed the holy trinity.

I had a wander en route to the venue. Scandinavian design seemed almost utopian. The whole city hummed with the promise of telepathy. I walked round admiring the buildings, the strange familiarity of it deepening – I tried to think where it was in the world that Stockholm reminded me of. Where had I been that was similar? Then I realised. Stockholm reminded me of Jim. I loved him. I did. Sometimes.

At the concert I was seated in a box alongside the venue manager and his wife. I had learnt the Swedish for ‘Thank you’ (‘tack’) and said it repeatedly, like an imbecile, whenever either of them looked at me. I’d decided not to have a drink before I saw Jim but the urge to dash out to the foyer and buy one before the concert started was strong – especially when I saw the venue manager and his wife attacking a bottle of champagne. I resisted, and found myself resenting my own resolve. It wasn’t as though Jim would mind. Would he? I wasn’t sure. I deliberated too long and the lights went down.

When Jim walked onstage I saw him look for me and I did a little low wave near my chest so he’d see it just above the front of the box. He held my gaze a few seconds, which was all he ever did in concert situations.
If you get nervous just imagine me naked
I’d said to him the first time I’d gone to see him play.
I don’t get nervous, but I will anyway.
He walked to the piano, flicked out his coat-tails and sat. The restrained applause faded to a few last-minute coughs, and then there was silence. He began – briskly, baroque-y?
Is it Mozart?
I thought,
I should know this by now.
I watched his fingers moving, his torso held strong and still, his head tipping and shaking, the parts of him not adding up to the sum. There were things in him I hadn’t quantified, might not ever quantify, and yet he made no sense without them. I had forgotten what he looked like from a distance. I had forgotten how good he was at what he did. I wished he didn’t know I was there so that I could watch him, innocent of the knowledge of my presence. I wanted to see what he looked like when he was alone. The recesses that gave him his shape. I should watch him sleep more often, I thought.

The aftershow was up in the venue’s polished wooden-floored café. I fetched two orange juices from the drinks table and waited by the dressing room door. The juice was from concentrate, oily, and tasted vaguely of the afterburn of vomit.

Jim came out, freshly changed, a bottle of water in hand, and was accosted by the venue manager and wife – champagne-giddy and both of them tactile now – before he could get to me. I smiled and looked into my drink. Half of it was gone. I didn’t want another. I’d have to make this one last. I sipped it in greasy little mouthfuls until he came over.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘Very good.’ I held his chin, kissed him.

We stood together, holding hands, as a stream of people came over one by one to congratulate him. I thought,
Isn’t this lovely, just being together, celebrating Jim’s talent in a beautiful city? I am a lucky wretch.
After half an hour or so the well-wishers slowed, the odd one bursting forward for a handshake on their way out. I thought absurdly of microwave popcorn.