My Best Friend Has Issues (14 page)

When we tumbled out of the taxi Chloe insisted that we go and sit under the lifeguards’ look-out post. We had to help Lisa and Lauren drag their suitcases along the sand, tripping over and steering the heavy cases around groups of boys and girls sprawling on blankets. Although Lisa and Lauren had only come for a long weekend, they had made sure to stuff in as many cheap tops as their pink suitcases could hold.

In Barceloneta the beach was almost as crowded at 4am than it was during the sunlit tourist hours. Because they lived with their parents, Catalans came to the beach when the bars closed to smoke dope, swim, and have uncomfortable, chafing sex. Or at least that’s what Chloe had told me. I’d yet to know the delights of having gritty, imported sand worked between the cheeks of my bum. It was the quintessential Barcelona experience she’d assured me: the stars twinkling above, the waves lapping the shore, the buttock-grazing friction burns. I could hardly wait.

‘Come on, girls,’ said Chloe hustling us along.

‘Are we there yet?’ I asked petulantly.

‘Not quite.’

‘We haven’t got time to go all the way along the beach, these two have a plane to catch. Why don’t we just stop here? There’s tons of space here.’

‘Just a little further, nearly there,’ Chloe soothed.

‘Nearly where?’ I moaned.

‘Here.’

We’d come to an abrupt stop under the lifeguards’ look-out post. The clusters of beach parties had thinned out this far along the
beach and now we were quite isolated. Chloe was up to something. I glanced at her but she was giving nothing away.

Lisa and Lauren were grateful to slump down in the sand and they immediately began clawing at their clothes.

‘Wanna swim,’ Lauren mumbled.

If they went swimming, there was every chance that they might drown, which was no bad thing in my book, but as the responsible adult I had to say, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘Oh, loosen up, will ya?’ Chloe sneered. ‘They’re on vacation. You do what you want on vacation, right Lauren?’

‘Right,’ Lauren slurred.

She had begun to haul her top over her head but halfway through she’d lost momentum. Trapped inside the top, her arms dangled above her head, her head and shoulders bound like a mummy in the tight top. Her breasts toppling over the rim of her bra and an avalanche of loose flab lay piled below.

Chloe helped Lauren off with her top and then, without being asked, gently eased Lisa out of hers.

‘There you go, honey,’ she said mildly. ‘My, you’re both such big girls.’

She said this in an admiring tone and Lauren and Lisa, accustomed to her flattery, laughed and accepted it as such.

‘I mean Lauren, you are a whole lotta woman! You gotta be, what? One hundred and ninety pounds? And Lisa, you can’t be far behind.’

Lisa and Lauren giggled uncomfortably at this change in direction.

‘Now, help me out here girls, I can’t remember. Which is which? Lisa, are you The Hump or The Hulk?’

A glance passed between them and then there was a
shamefaced
glance from Lisa directed towards me.

I kept my head down.

‘Yep,’ said Chloe, ‘it’s a puzzler. What say we keep it simple, huh? Lauren you be… well, which is it, The Hulk or The Hump?’

Lauren looked to Lisa, then to me and finally to Chloe.

‘The Hulk?’ she whispered.

‘That’s my girl! Which makes things nice and easy for you Lisa. You’re The…’

‘Hump,’ said Lisa with her head on her chest.

‘That’s what I’m talking about!’ said Chloe gleefully. ‘Whaddaya think, Alison, think the names are a good match?’

I looked at them: both bulging out of their clothes, stupid, sweaty, shameful.

‘Whatever.’

Chloe laughed. No one else did and there were no more glances. We had nowhere to look but out to sea. Lisa and Lauren sat quiet and cowed, stupefied by drugs or shame or both. But Chloe wasn’t finished with them.

‘Hey, come on girls, I’m only fucking with you,’ she said,
producing
a small bottle of absinthe from her bag. ‘What d’you say we kiss and make up and have a little drink?’

I ignored her, continuing to watch the water.

Lisa and Lauren looked at each other and then to Chloe, smiling their relief at being let off the hook.

‘Come and get it, girls,’ said Chloe, pouring absinthe into the bottle cap. ‘Come to mama.’

Lisa fell forward on to all fours and laughed a throaty laugh as though she was doing something really naughty. She began to crawl heavily across the sand towards Chloe, who was holding out the capful of absinthe like a carrot on a stick. Lauren laughed too and began crawling, making it a race. They lumbered towards her, their breasts hanging like overstretched dough from their bras, and slurped the absinthe like slavering dogs.

When Chloe had fed them three or four capfuls each and they couldn’t drink any more, they rolled in the sand and laughed and gasped and stared into the sky. I sat rigid, scanning the shore.

‘Look at Alison,’ said Chloe, ‘she’s so slim and beautiful. Isn’t she just the cutest little Scottish girl in the world?’

‘
Hola chicas
!’ said a male voice.

Two boys had approached us. They stood over us,
black-outlined
shapes against the full moon. Chloe spoke to them, or rather she spoke to one of them, the same one she’d spoken to in Plaza Real. I
knew
she was up to something. This was no coincidence.
That’s why we’d had to schlep all the way to the lifeguards’ post; she must have arranged to meet here.

Chloe and the guy spoke too fast for me to make out much. I didn’t want to ask in front of Lisa and Lauren. Since they’d arrived Chloe and I’d been putting on a pretty good show of me speaking Spanish. I’d ordered all the food and drinks and, with discreet nods and pinches from Chloe under the table, I was able to answer the waiter
‘claro que si’
or
‘no’
when he asked a question. But even my apparent fluency in Spanish didn’t much impress Lisa and Lauren.

Chloe and the guy were talking seriously and intensely while the rest of us sat silently. In amongst lots of other stuff I didn’t understand, I heard Chloe emphatically repeat the phrase ‘
nada de nada
’ – nothing of nothing. What did that mean?

With a command from the lead guy, the other one sat down beside Lisa and Lauren. They were handsome boys in that generic dark-haired, dark-eyed Latino way and they were smooth operators. Lisa and Lauren were too wasted to properly introduce themselves, lurching forward and giggling at everything. One of them stroked Lauren’s face and within minutes had begun kissing her, running his hands across her rippling love handles. Once this action kicked off Lisa obviously didn’t feel the need to stand on ceremony either. She hauled the other one down on top of her and pushed her face into his, kissing and fondling the boy before he knew where he was.

‘I need a beer,’ Chloe announced. ‘Why are there never any vendors when you need ‘em? I’m gonna get a beer. Who wants one?’

Lauren surfaced briefly and said, ‘Cheers Chloe, I’ll take one,’ before redoubling her efforts to suck the face off the guy. Lisa, her tongue too far down the other guy’s throat, didn’t reply.

‘Come on, Alison, help me get the beers in,’ Chloe said as she moved off.

Going for beer was a good excuse to get away from Lisa and Lauren for a while. I just wanted to go back to the flat, lock the bathroom door and lie in a hot bath. But I knew I shouldn’t leave them. I sat hugging my knees and trying to think. Chloe called over her shoulder.

‘Are you coming?’

We found a beer vendor within a few minutes. The man, an old Asian guy, was rummaging in the sand when we came upon him. He’d buried a cache of beer stubbies and was disinterring some of them. He was very edgy, probably worried that now we knew where his treasure was, we’d steal it when he left.

‘
Dos cervezas, por favor
,’ said Chloe.

‘
Tres
,’ I corrected her. ‘Lisa wants one as well.’

‘
Dos
,’ she repeated.

I shrugged, too tired to argue.

Chloe paid for the beers and continued walking away from the beach. We walked to the boardwalk and then upstairs on to the promenade. It was quiet up here and there was a fresh breeze. Chloe found a bench, we cracked open our beers and sat in a mellow silence. This was the nicest time I’d had all night.

I’d gotten so used to it being just me and Chloe. We knew where we were with each other. When it was just the two of us she was a different person, a real person.

‘Ringside seats,’ she said with a smile.

‘Eh?’

‘Can you see them, down there?’

I peered and below the lifeguards’ post I could just about make out two writhing bundles.

‘Yes, unfortunately,’ I grumped. ‘It’s not fair, those two lumps of gristle are getting the sand between their cheeks. They’re having the fucking quintessential experience before I am!’

‘I think you mean the quintessential
fucking
experience.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Hey, it’s not my fault you’re a virgin. Nobody’s fault but your own. You’ve had every opportunity.’ Chloe held her hand up as if to give testimony. ‘God knows I’ve done my best.’

‘I know,’ I said quietly and thought about it for a while. ‘I know you have.’

‘Anyhow, how comes you’re still a virgin? I thought you did it with that guy Ewan. You looked pretty cosy when I came in.’

‘Yeah, but we hadn’t done it. I wanted to, I wanted him to be my first. Wanca and the Silver Fox and those other guys, I don’t know, I really wanted it, but… maybe there’s something wrong with me.’

‘Easy, tiger. There’s nothing wrong with you, nothing wrong with being a virgin. I wasn’t judging. I was just surprised. I haven’t met any twenty-two-year-old virgins unless they’re Christian. Even then they’ve usually just fessed up and re-branded.’

‘Well I am. I wish I wasn’t. Lisa and Lauren don’t seem to be having that dilemma, they’re getting stuck in. Look, Lisa’s sitting on him, look at the way she’s bouncing on his balls. Ooow! That’s got to hurt.’

We giggled and swigged from our beer cans until Chloe turned back to watch them again.

‘We should have got popcorn,’ she said.

‘God, you can’t take your eyes off them, can you?’

‘Euuw, that is so gross, Alison! Why would you say that?’

‘Eh,’ I paused for effect, ‘because it’s true?’

‘Shut up! I don’t want to watch, I like to be watched, it’s totally different.’

‘Well
excuse me
, I’d hate to suggest that you’re any kind of sexual deviant.’

‘Why, thank you kindly,’ said Chloe with a coy, southern
belle-type
nod before dismissing me with her usual hand wave. ‘Anyway, this is just the overture. The show hasn’t started yet.’

‘What else is going to happen? Remember, they have to be on a plane in two hours’ time, otherwise we’ll never get rid of them.’

‘Watch. It’s gonna be fun, and you know what they say. The show ain’t over till…’ she said, squinting towards the beach, ‘and boy, are these fat ladies gonna sing.’

We returned to quietly sipping beer. It was slowly beginning to get light, the dark blue of the sky getting paler, but still there wasn’t much to see.

‘But you shouldn’t have told them,’ I said.

‘Shouldn’t have told them what?’

‘You know what: about the Hulk. I understand why you did it, and cheers and all that, but I didn’t want that.’

‘They had to know. It’s part of the plan.’

‘What plan?’ I asked, but Chloe didn’t answer, she was too busy watching the beach.

Further along the beach as the sky began to get lighter other groups started to pack up and head home. Those that stayed pulled their blankets around them and settled down to sleep. It had been a long night. I started to nod off, my beer can tipping at an angle, when Chloe dug me in the ribs.

Lisa and Lauren and the two boys were standing now, all four of them naked from what I could see. The boys dashed towards the water, and Lisa and Lauren followed squealing and giggling, their breasts thudding their ribcages with every step.

A post-coital swim: something else I hadn’t done yet.

They were having great fun, young people cavorting the way nature intended: uninhibited, breasts and penises dangling free. The boys would run and then stop, almost letting Lisa and Lauren catch them, before running away again. This pointless
playground-style
chase went on for a good ten minutes. My eyes were tired and were beginning to close again. It was obvious that Lisa and Lauren were never going to catch them, the boys were far too fast. They still half-heartedly ran towards them but they had lost pace.

The boys stood at the water’s edge. The low tide had uncovered a huge expanse of smooth sand. This time they held out their arms to beckon them and let the knackered girls reach them. Almost. Suddenly the two lads darted past them back up the beach. The girls laughed and turned back. And then I saw what was really going on.

The boys ran to where Lisa and Lauren had left their stuff: their suitcases, their handbags, their clothes. The boys ran back, pulled on their clothes and lifted everything else.

They stuffed the girls’ clothes in the handbags, lifted the
suitcases
clear of the sand and ran with them above their heads. They ran fast, like experienced coolies, as though they weren’t holding aloft twenty kilos of size eighteen Primark leisurewear.

Lisa and Lauren squealed with laughter and ran after them. It was no use. The boys sprinted to the boardwalk, up the stairs, past our bench, ran across the road and disappeared into the back streets of Barceloneta. Lisa and Lauren hadn’t even made it back to the lifeguards’ post yet.

‘Get down, they’re looking this way!’ Chloe hissed.

We hunched forward on the bench and stayed still.

Naked and stranded, Lisa and Lauren weren’t laughing any more. To pursue the boys meant leaving the beach and coming up on to the street. With no clothes on. We lost sight of them as Lisa and Lauren headed towards the stairs.

‘You think they’ll come up here?’ Chloe asked.

As a precautionary measure we crouched down behind a dumpster, and lucky we did, because seconds later we heard them puff up the stairs. They were crying now. They weren’t making any sense, I could only make out garbled words through the sobbing: passports, tickets, purse. Being naked seemed to be the least of their problems.

Chloe could barely restrain her glee. She had to ram her hand over her mouth to hold it in. They were arguing now, blaming each other. Chloe’s eyes scrunched up with hilarity when Lisa and Lauren lumbered off in the wrong direction, away from Barceloneta.

I wanted to come out from behind the bin.
They went thattaway
! I wanted to shout but I knew I couldn’t. This was theft, a particularly heartless theft, and I was implicated. It was so obviously revenge for calling me the Hulk. Who’d believe it wasn’t set up by me, but on my behalf by my loyal but crazy friend?

Anyway, what good would it do? Lisa and Lauren couldn’t catch them on the beach; they’d never catch them in the back streets. Those guys would be miles away. They’d have taken the money and dumped the cases.

‘C’mon, Chloe,’ I said, as soon as Lisa and Lauren were safely out of sight. ‘We have to find those cases. They’ll have taken the cash and thrown everything else away. If we’re lucky they’ll have left the passports and tickets. There’s still time for Lisa and Lauren to make their flight.’

‘You gotta be kidding.’

‘Look, if we find the cases, at the very least they’ll get their clothes back. We can make out we found them while we were trying to buy beer. They might believe that.’

I was a hundred yards ahead before I turned and saw Chloe reluctantly following me. With the sun peeking over the horizon we entered Barceloneta, Chloe dragging her feet and me striding ahead, searching every corner and doorway for a glimpse of pink suitcase.