Green (53 page)

It's eerie, being this close to the scene of Frank and Zel's encounters, the lair of the Evil Ddotnor. I can even see the phone Frank called me on, next to the bed. It's ceramic and brass, and the ceramic parts are decorated with little blue flowers.

I can also see the door to the ensuite. And that guy in the bathroom across the hall seems to have taken up permanent residence. Okay, no contest. I've waited enough. The ensuite is mine.

I'm just about to flush when I hear voices—completely unfamiliar voices—coming into the bedroom, and then the sound of water thundering into the empty jacuzzi. All I can do is close the lid as quietly as I can, and sit down. The tub fills noisily, and more slowly than I'd like it to, then the hum of the engine and whoosh of the jets drowns out the words but not the giggling. Giggling and, within minutes, moaning. Two types of moaning—sharp panting moaning and a kind of deep buffalo moaning and what am I doing that I keep getting stuck in toilets? First the
Paradise
, now this.

It's the detail I don't like. This'd make a great story on Monday, or after my exams. The ‘who did what with whom in the jacuzzi at the party' story. I'm always up for those, but listening to the actual doing part is something I could really skip. I stick my fingers in my ears and think about amniotic fluid, but the sounds of cattle and panic will always win. Would you please get this dreadful bovine sex over with and leave?

One last moo and it's done.

I hear the slop of a large body coming out of the tub and the pad-pad of heavy feet on the floor. On their way, dammit, to the ensuite. The door swings open, and a big nude bald man from the Mowers darts team jolts to a halt.

I smile, shrug, as if it's just one of those things.

‘Towels,' he mouths and does a jiggly demonstration of drying. In case I ever doubted it, there's the evidence: the international symbol for towels is best not done nude, at least by men. Not unless you also need to signal the international symbol for pendulum.

I open a cupboard and, fortunately, it does have towels in it. I pull out a couple and toss them over. He winks, and shuts the door. There's a different tone to the murmured talk now, and it's mainly him speaking. Then the jacuzzi is turned off.

How does this kind of scene happen? Who is it who goes, mid-party, ‘Hey, why don't we go put one away in Ron and Zel's tub? That'd be a lark.' Or perhaps it's the darts victory ritual. The Chickens people were looking very much like the B team when I last saw the score.

They talk in whispers and I'm trying not to listen to their dressing noises. The towels hit the laundry basket, feet pad-pad away across the thick carpet, the door to the corridor clicks shut. The last of the water gurgles down the plughole.

I give them ten seconds, then another ten. I flush and I leave the ensuite. I cross the scene of the cliché and, when I open the bedroom door, the bathroom door on the other side of the corridor is open too.

Movement out of the window and down in the garden catches my eye. It's Frank. He's here. And he's with Sophie. He's chasing her off the patio, across the lawn and around to the sculpture garden. And he's holding my borrowed video camera up to his head as he runs.

I don't know what it is I'm seeing, but it looks like life passing me by again. They're too far away for sound, so it hardly even seems real. It's a silent movie of life passing me by, but it's real enough. I get to have a stupid conversation with her in the kitchen about bags and tissue boxes and toilets, Frank gets to chase her round the garden. And, since before he squeezed his first zit, Frank would have been chasing girls around gardens for one reason only.

Step away from the window, I tell myself. This is all getting much more depressing than it's supposed to be. It's yet another reminder I don't need that Frank's form is nauseatingly better than mine and his unpartnered intervals much shorter. It's easier, I guess, if you're prepared to go out serially with members of the same family, and not fussed about generational issues.

But nothing, no signal from Sophie in the kitchen, said ‘chase me' as she slouched against the counter taking mouthfuls of rum and Diet Coke and getting our conversation over with.

I want Clinton to come along now and break this up. A Frank and Sophie combination would make work hard to bear. Frank gives me details. Zel excepted, he always keeps me up to date with his liaisons, and here's one I really don't want to know about.

I step away from the window, go back into the bedroom and stand there for a while feeling stupid. I'm tired and I've stopped caring about what people think, so I lie down on the bed. If anyone else wants to have sex at this party, they can do it in a fern enclave or wait till later. This room is for depressed single people who are no good at darts and should be home studying.

And I wish the ceiling didn't reflect that quite so honestly. There I am in the mirror on this big purple heart, my head in the left atrium, my body in the left ventricle, looking very unbullworked and very over this. In the sculpture garden, Frank kicks sand in my face and Charles Atlas tells him he won't stand in his way.

They can do whatever they want, of course. Of course they can. Frank will, given the chance, because that's what he does. He even told me he might do this, and Frank would call that considerate. ‘What more do you want?' he'd say, and maybe he'd be right. But he doesn't understand. There are some things you don't admit to, even when provoked. People should sense them if they know you, and they should act accordingly. And they shouldn't make a move on Sophie and chase her round the garden. But that's never been Frank—sensing things—and I can't complain if it isn't Frank now.

With Sophie it's not the same. I deserved better. We were friends and then it all changed. She thought I was having an affair with her mother and she kept it to herself for weeks, turned cool and less friendly. And I behaved like an idiot for her and did every single thing Frank thought I might, because it was fun to do it but also because there was a chance she might have noticed.

And how does it work out? Frank has the affair with her mother, I don't tell her and he gets to chase her round the garden. How could she think that about me, and how could she think it for weeks and let it spoil things? I'm angry again. And that stupid conversation in the kitchen. She's shut me out. She's a bag handler and a giver of directions and we share a chicken suit and, after these past few months, that's what it's down to. All it's down to. And I'm angry because I let her get to know me, a lot of me, out the back of World of Chickens. I'm angry with me for doing that too, for putting quite a lot on the line without ever taking one actual risk.

‘Phil,' she says. She's at the door. Standing in the doorway, her drink in her hand.

‘What?' It's not friendly, the way it comes out. But that's fine. It's not supposed to be.

‘What do you mean, “what”?'

‘I'm having a break from the party. Remember?'

‘I just wanted to talk to you. To talk to you about something.'

‘Some other time, maybe. After the exams. That'd be better. If the timing of things in my life is any issue to anybody.'

As if I want to hear about her and Frank now. As if I'm some loser who needs to have it broken to him that there's something going on. I should tell her I'd be happy just to watch the video highlights later. Next weekend, maybe. They can both come over. There'll be pizza. How about that?

‘You should leave me alone,' I tell her instead. ‘I've had enough of all this for now. And thanks for looking after the bag so well. Good to see No one fucked around with the camera.'

‘No, I . . .'

‘I've got exams next week, and you know how that affects people's moods? Put it down to that.' I sit up. I stand. I wanted to keep lying down to look as if I didn't give a shit, but it doesn't work that way. ‘I've had enough of this, right? You, Frank, every bloody Todd I've ever met, my parents, Gilbert, Sullivan and this whole stupid small-town life. You don't even know what life looks like anywhere else, anywhere that really counts. Have you read
Bright Lights, Big City
? It's about New York . . .'

‘I've read it. And it didn't seem to be about New York to me. Not really. It seemed like it was about a guy . . .'

‘Whatever. It would really be better if you left me alone now. We were friends, you thought I slept with your mother and you kept that to yourself for weeks. The fact that you even thought it . . .'

‘I'm sorry. I'm sorry about that. Give me a break. I had a lot of things happening at that time, and . . .'

‘Busy? You were busy? Busy, so therefore I was sleeping with your mother, and now I give you a break? Usually when I see people are busy, I sleep with their mothers.'

‘That's not it.'

‘I have had enough of hanging around with people who think that way.'

‘You don't know how I'm thinking.'

‘Well, that's fine, because I'm pretty much sick of how other people are thinking, and what I'm thinking is that I've had enough. All my life is at the moment is study, shit from everyone I know and time in a chicken suit. There's not a whole lot of fun. I think I could do better.'

‘
Better
? What's that about? This gets so boring. Every time you shit on your life—which is pretty often—you're shitting on all of us. Me, Frank, whoever. If you've got a problem with all of us, line us up and tell us. Don't just leave it at having a go at me. If you've got a problem with yourself, deal with it. I made one mistake, one fucking mistake, and you've decided it's unforgivable. You think you could do better? You think you could have some better smarter life somewhere else? You don't even have the guts to try. You were born for that chicken suit. You'll never go to UCLA.'

And, with that, she hurls her drink at me and it's almost as though it has physical force, rum and Diet Coke cannoning into my chest and sending me backwards until I'm sitting on the bed.

‘Fuck,' she says. ‘Fuck. That was stupid. I didn't mean that. I . . . oh, fuck.'

She runs from the room and the rum and Diet Coke soaks through to my chest, cold and trickling down inside and showing up dark on the front of my shirt. A door slams. She's shut herself in her bedroom, and I can't believe the things I said. There are ice cubes on the carpet and brown streaks of drink in the off-white shag pile.

I go after her. I run down the hall and I knock on her door and she says, ‘Go away.'

‘Do you really . . .'

‘Yes, I really want you to go away.'

I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do.

‘Sophie . . .'

‘I have several tubes of Colgate freshmint and I'm not afraid to use them.' She laughs at her own joke and, for a second, things aren't as bad as they were.

Frank appears at the top of the stairs, video camera slung casually over his shoulder.

‘What's happening, kids?' he says.

‘I want Phil to go away.'

Frank mouths the word ‘winner' and comes up to the door. ‘Okay, Soph, Philby wants to know, is this one of the times when it actually means go away, or does it mean you want him in there?'

‘I'm so embarrassed,' she says, probably to herself. ‘So embarrassed.' And that's followed by the sound of punches thumping into pillow.

‘Looks like we should go,' Frank says. ‘It sounds like she's beating the shit out of Holly Hobby in there.'

‘Phil.' It's Ron's voice from halfway up the stairs. ‘The chickens need you. Your World's falling apart at darts, mate, and I'm thinking only you can save them.'

‘Go,' Frank says. ‘Go. Do it for chickens everywhere.'

‘But what about . . .'

‘Don't worry. Just go.'

So I leave him outside Sophie's door, I go with Ron and my feet even make a sound something like ‘trudge' in the shag pile. I am escaping from my escape from the party. I don't know what's going on now. I'm not used to fighting with people, and I'm not used to anything that ends with a door between us. And then walking away, leaving Frank in my place.

Ron points to my shirt front on the way downstairs and says, ‘Bit of an accident with a drink, hey? We should all stand well back when you've got a dart in your hand, should we?'

‘Standing well back could be a very good idea.'

Ron's behaving like the host with the most because people throw drinks at his parties. He thinks it's all going perfectly, and that there's nothing better than a lot of beer and a lot of darts. Party Central, and he's the station master. Ron, ugly people just fucked in your jacuzzi. I want to tell him that, but today he can have the contented smile and I'll play the darts and eventually this'll all be over.

‘Hey, mate.' It's Frank's voice. He's up at the railings above, looking down at us. ‘Sorry, Ron, but I might have to come and get Phil soon. We've got to head off and hit the books.'

‘You guys really earn those degrees, don't you?' Ron shakes his head as though our dedication's something to marvel at and it'll kill us to leave. ‘Still, can't go before you've had a game, can you?'

Darts. I expect that I'd be bad at darts, or at least not good, at the best of times. This is not the best of times.

Soon, I'm flinging the darts into the board with some force but no aim, and I'm working a few things out. Ron's cheering me on, unambiguously my buddy and, let's face it, I want his daughter so much that I've sent her to her room and left her punching her Holly Hobby pillow, with only Frank to help the situation. Sophie and I have had a conversation that I will never understand. Perhaps two conversations—one in the kitchen, one upstairs—fitting neatly together like the Titanic and a large iceberg, and ending in grinding and carnage.