Last Chance Saloon (24 page)

Katherine and Liv quickly weighed in with light-hearted stories of their own. They’d stored anything even remotely interesting or entertaining that had happened to them that day, in the event of Fintan being sour or depressed. But the only time Fintan perked up was when Sandro came in, waving a pile of holiday brochures. ‘Long-haul,’ Sandro announced. ‘Just out. Fourteen new destinations in Asia and the Caribbean.’

That evening, when they all had to leave the hospital to give Fintan some space for his posse of new visitors, they were reluctant to part so everyone went back to Katherine’s where they ordered pizzas and reassured themselves repeatedly, incessantly, that everything would be fine.

‘How did he seem to you today?’ JaneAnn inquired anxiously. ‘You see, if we could escape with him just having it in his lymph glands, we’d be on the pig’s back. I read that it’s easy to treat and there’s a great recovery rate. So how did you think he was?’

‘A bit tired,’ Sandro offered.

‘A bit tired? Yes, he seemed tired to me, but we all get tired. It doesn’t mean anything terrible. In fact, isn’t it great that he keeps falling asleep? Sleep is very healing.’

‘And he ate his lunch,’ Timothy chipped out.

‘And what harm that he didn’t eat his dinner?’ Milo said.

‘Don’t we all have days where we couldn’t be bothered eating our dinner?’ JaneAnn agreed.

‘Besides, he’d had a Smartie at about six o’clock,’ Liv valiantly offered.

‘Two,’ Sandro said triumphantly. ‘A blue one and an orange one.’

‘And he was in great form nearly all day,’ Tara said.

‘Apart from that time he was cross and told us to go away, using the F-word.’ JaneAnn looked sorrowful.

‘And he was cranky with that social worker,’ Timothy said. ‘Small wonder. She was asking highly inquisitive questions and she’d only just met him. How was he feeling? Was he angry? Was he frightened? If he hadn’t told her to be on her way, I would have.’

This was the longest speech Timothy had ever made.

‘It’s good for Fintan to be bad-tempered,’ Milo soothed. ‘Wouldn’t you worry if he was as sweet as sugar all the time? Sure, that isn’t normal.’

‘And maybe his other visitors will sweeten his humour.’ JaneAnn had been moved to tears, as Frederick, Geraint, Javier, Butch, Harry, Didier, Neville and Geoff had shown up in dribs and drabs around seven o’clock, bearing four pounds of grapes, three books, twelve magazines, two Barbie lollipops, two bags of Hula Hoops, four little apricot tarts from Maison Bertaux, five litres of mineral water, a bottle of Marks and Spencer’s Buck’s fizz and one Kinder Surprise between them.

‘It’s right marvellous for him to have so many visitors. There’s not many people lucky enough to have eight young men sitting around their sick bed,’ JaneAnn said proudly. ‘And all of them so well turned out.’

‘Very
well turned out,’ Milo agreed.

‘But terrible noisy,’ JaneAnn sighed. ‘My head was ruz. So did you think his lump looked like it had got a bit smaller?’

‘Now that you mention it, it did,’ Tara lied.

‘He certainly didn’t look like someone who was dying, now did he?’ JaneAnn asked, jovially.

‘Dying? Hardly!’ went the scornful response. ‘Would a dying person be so bad-humoured?’

Everything about Fintan – good, bad or indifferent – continued
to be turned into something positive, to shore up their version of the cosmic plot, the one where he recovers.

But JaneAnn couldn’t sustain it. In the midst of the positive thinking, she burst into tears and blurted, ‘I wish it was me instead of him. To see him thrown in the bed, so sick and weak. He’s too
young
for that but I’ve one foot in the grave and another on a banana-skin.

‘You know what?’ she said, angrily. ‘It’s my fault. I should never have let him come over here to England. The other four lads stayed at home and none of them got cancer.’

As people rushed to comfort her, the pizzas arrived. And when JaneAnn discovered she was just supposed to eat it as it was, without potatoes or vegetables, she became even more upset. ‘Are you in earnest?’ she asked. ‘But that’s no dinner at all. Small wonder Fintan got sick if that’s all he’d eat of an evening. A mother’s home cooking could have prevented all this.’

Later on, JaneAnn turned businesslike. ‘Now, girls, I want to talk to you,’ she said. ‘You both have fine important jobs and I couldn’t have it on my conscience if you lost them because of all the time you’re spending looking after us. You don’t have to drive us everywhere, we can get that tube yoke.’

Tara and Katherine both protested enthusiastically. But never so energetically as when Timothy said, ‘Those lifts in the hospital are great, aren’t they?’

‘Um, yes,’ Katherine said, tentatively.

‘I was never in one until yesterday,’ Timothy elaborated.

‘Me either,’ JaneAnn said. ‘Great sport, wasn’t it?’

‘You could go up and down all day in it,’ Milo agreed. ‘It was like going on the merries in Kilkee.’

‘We can’t set them loose on the London Underground,’
Katherine hissed quietly to Tara. ‘Not without lessons. They’ll be going up the down escalators and breaking the ticket-machines and not minding the gap and getting stuck in the doors and whatnot. I can just see it! It’d probably get on the news.’

Katherine hadn’t been in the office much all week – just running in between hospital visits to do a couple of hours here and there, and her mind wasn’t on the place when she
was
in – so it took her longer than it usually would to realize that a new nickname was doing the rounds. Gillette.

Despite all the horrors that were going on with Fintan, Katherine was surprised to find she still had emotion left over for Joe Roth. The few times she’d been to work that week she was highly sensitized around him and remained on full alert for any signs of sexual chemistry between him and Angie. She was very ashamed of this, but not ashamed enough to be able to stop. With her heart in her mouth, she listened anxiously to the men’s conversations to see just who ‘Gillette’ was and when her worst fear was realized and it became clear they were talking about Angie, she got a dull, heavy pain in her stomach, as if she’d eaten raw bread.

Gillette – why Gillette? What elaborate sexual tricks had Angie done that merited her being rechristened as a razor-blade? Katherine’s imagination went wild as she thought of the story she’d once heard from someone who’d been to a strip-show in Thailand and allegedly witnessed girls pulling strings of razor-blades out of their vaginas. But would Angie have done that? Where would she have learnt to do it? And would Joe like
it? Katherine was a ball of emotion – jealousy, anxiety, but mostly self-loathing for being so boring in bed. She wouldn’t know what to do with razor-blades – she’d be afraid of cutting herself. And, frankly, she couldn’t see how it was sexy. What was wrong with suspender-belts, little knickers and the odd bit of bondage?

Or maybe they were calling Angie Gillette because she shaved her pubic hair. Could be. Then Katherine found herself wondering if Angie had done it on her own initiative. Or did Joe ask her to do it? Did Joe help her to do it? Did Joe tie her up and
insist
on doing it? Jealous and strangely turned on at the image, Katherine didn’t notice in the expenses claim in front of her that Darren had included one restaurant bill three times.

As she continued earwigging, Katherine realized she hadn’t thought of Fintan in about ten minutes and was shocked and ashamed. How could she be worried about Joe Roth and Angie at a time like this? What kind of friend was she?

But she couldn’t help it. Again her ears pricked up as she overheard more talk of Gillette. She stopped banging away at her calculator, just in time to hear Myles singing, ‘Gillette! The best a man can ge-eh-et!’

Aaaahhh. Katherine suddenly understood. Gillette had nothing to do with Angie shaving her pubes or playing jack-in-the-box with razors. It was because – in the words of the ad – she was the best a man can get. Unlike her male colleagues’ usual rechristening of women, Gillette was a
nice
name, a complimentary name. The jealous pain in Katherine’s stomach increased. Angie was the best a man could get. Which man was getting her, anyway? There was no proof that it was Joe. Despite Katherine’s beady surveillance, she couldn’t find any definite indication that something was going on between Angie and
Joe. And at no stage had he been overheard referring to Angie as Gillette. But Katherine wouldn’t take that as any reason to stop worrying. She always liked to expect the worst, to meet disappointment half-way. She’d die rather than be caught on the hop.

Also she’d lost her black work shoes. They’d disappeared into the twilight zone created by all the extra people and possessions in the flat, so she had to go to the office wearing a grey suit and brown shoes. In a vague, exhausted way she was mortified.

As Katherine pushed open the office door she was hit by the atmosphere of tension and exhaustion. Cigarette fug swirled in the air, coffee cups and takeaway bags littered the ‘creative’ area, four or five of Joe’s team were slumped around a storyboard, looking dishevelled, grey-faced and sleep-deprived. ‘You look as if you’ve been here all night,’ she said, in surprise. She wouldn’t usually have commented, but her defences were down and normal services were suspended.

‘That’s because we have,’ Darren replied wearily. ‘Presentation to Multi-nut Muesli this morning. Bastards never told us they were adding chocolate chips to their recipe. Only found out five o’clock yesterday. Had to change everything.’

Katherine couldn’t stop herself glancing at Joe – now that he no longer came near her, she was constantly aware of him. He was unshaven and bad-tempered-looking. For a cold moment he held her eyes, then stood up and stretched. Hypnotized, Katherine watched as his shirt pulled itself out of his trousers, revealing for a brief, breath-catching moment the pearly skin of his concave stomach, the line of hair that trailed like a frayed rope from his navel. Then he slumped his arms back down by his sides and the beautiful view disappeared. Katherine felt bereft.

‘I’m going to have a shower,’ he announced, and stalked out of the office.

There was a shower in the gents’ at Breen Helmsford, ostensibly for occasions such as this – although company rumour had it that the real reason was that the head honcho, ‘Call me Johnny’ Denning, had insisted on it so that he could wash off traces of the sex he’d had with his employees before going home to his wife.

Katherine sat down and tried to make a list of things to delegate to Breda. But she couldn’t concentrate on her work, hadn’t been able to since Tara had made that life-altering phone call on Monday. For once, though, instead of agonizing about Fintan, Katherine was transported, imagining what would happen if – just
if –
she followed Joe into the shower. The steam, the slipperiness of the soap as she rubbed herself against his thighs, his stomach, his groin. His erection flipping stiffly, heavily, this way, then that, as she moved against it. The feel
of his big hands on her waist, her buttocks, lathering the soap, using it to lubricate between her… Christ Almighty! She exhaled in a shudder and forced herself to stop. Work. She was here to
work
.

An awful thought hit her. Where the hell was Angie? Breathlessly she scanned the office and to her relief saw her at her desk. Good. If she couldn’t have a shower with Joe Roth she was damned if Angie Hiller could.

Joe returned to the office in a cloud of sharp freshness. His dark hair was wet and slicked back and he was dressed in his suit. But his tie hung loosely around his neck and his shirt was open a few buttons down. Through the gap in his shirt, Katherine stared at the hair on his chest. She was shocked. Deeply affected by the incongruity of having such naked sex appeal in a place as inappropriate as an office. And alarmed by the intensity of her own response.

She couldn’t stop herself watching as he buttoned up his shirt, then grasped both strands of his tie.

‘I really need a mirror for this,’ he realized, and, as he made to return to the gents’, Angie was over to his desk waving a little compact.

‘I’ve got one here. I’ll hold it for you,’ she offered.

Briefly, Joe looked discomfited, then smiled, ‘Thanks,’ and began deftly to knot his tie, folding it back and forth on itself, as he hunched over and stared into the mirror with great concentration.

Clammy dread flushed down Katherine’s body. Angie holding the mirror was a gesture that was way too intimate for Katherine’s liking. But weak with wanting, she kept watching, as Joe rubbernecked backwards and forwards, from side to side, tying a big, fat knot. Why did she find this such a turn-on?
Was it his single-mindedness as he tried to get it right? Because it was such a uniquely male thing? Echoes of masturbation?

Smoothly Joe glided the knot along the shaft of the tie, until it was in place. Katherine felt another wave of desire. Then he gave a final tug, his big hand clasped around the length of fabric and her mouth went dry. He looked great. His shirt collar snow-white against his shaven jaw, the tie knot fat and even. ‘Thanks.’ He smiled at Angie.

‘No problem.’ She smiled back, snapping her compact closed. She lingered in front of him, smiling goofily. Katherine tasted metal in her mouth. There was no mistaking the intimacy, the connection between the two of them. Joe Roth had to be the mystery man, Mr Gillette. Katherine felt terrible. But whom could she blame? Only herself. She’d messed it up. She could have had him and she’d sabotaged it.

Then she thought of Fintan lying in his hospital bed, not knowing whether he was going to live or die, and waited for things to assume their correct proportions. To her great shame, they didn’t. Joe and Angie still seemed important.