Normal (9 page)

She hugged herself, looked away to the floor. “Thank you,” she murmured. “For the clothes. They’re lovely.”

Again, I didn’t know quite what to say.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

“That’s just wrong.” Rachel laughed as we stood side by side in the car park of the Rampant Rabbit, puzzling over the thought process involved in so naming a public house. “It looks a bit...seedy. I’ll bet you anything you like it’s full of dirty old men in grubby macs. They’ll all stop talking and turn round and stare at us when we walk in.”

It was certainly quiet; only the flickering of lights and the passing of shadows behind the stained-glass windows betrayed any sign of life. “I’m sure they’ll only be staring at one of us,” I remarked.

“Probably.” She giggled, nodding toward the fluffy pink bunny depicted on the sign above the door. “But which one?”

“Good point,” I agreed. “Whose idea was this again?”

“I’m sure it must have been yours.”

“Would it be ungentlemanly of me to remember things differently?”

“Only if you say it out loud.”

Bite bullet. Swallow hard.
“Did I mention that you look stunning in that dress?”

“In that case, I forgive you.” She clicked her heels together, straightened her back, let out a deep breath. “Ready?”

“In a do-or-die sort of way.”

She hooked my arm, and we led one another across the wet mud and gravel to the pub door. I’d never imagined that such a gesture could come so naturally; in those few seconds, the alienation melted away unnoticed, and I felt nothing but content. It wasn’t until we reached the door, and Rachel took a step back to study me, that my head fuzzed over and my insides fell heavy and my anxiety’s absence was made conspicuous by its return.

“By the way,” she said, smiling wryly as she looked me up and down, “may I just say that you look devilishly handsome tonight?”

I couldn’t say for certain, but I’m pretty sure I blushed. “Behave yourself,” I warned her. “My ego’s a real handful when it’s inflated.”

“Rubbish.” She laughed as she ushered me inside. “You’re a puppy and you know it.”

I knew right away that I was in trouble. It took a weighty shove to free the solid oak door, its thick rubber seal giving an exasperated sigh as it released a sonic onslaught into the damp evening air. No one stopped and stared as Rachel, wide-eyed, took my hand and led me into a maelstrom of strobe lights and bare female flesh.

The heat was intense, the noise almost palpable—the crackle of shouted conversation against a rapped vocal, a sampled Hermann film score and a floor-thumping bass track. And around us, the young and the restless in the throes of their lazy twenty-first-century courtship. Cocky young men in designer shirts and baseball hats, hell-bent on unleashing their rampant hormones at anything more animated than a tissue. Tight gaggles of teenage girls displaying acres of artificially tanned skin, their tender, supple flesh squeezed into push-up bras and hip-hugging skirts of immodest length. They thronged around the bar, seizing the opportunity to press themselves blamelessly against one another, eagerly jostling to allow the safe passage of the drink-laden, each benevolent undulation of the crowd a brief but exciting chance to hump a stranger’s leg. And they say romance is dead...

“The snot’ll slobbery pucker off when the blanket’s tarted,” Rachel reassured me. “They bony peel to the udder ache cloud.”

This could be a long night. I bowed to an awkward stoop, my ear an inch from her lips.

“I said this lot’ll probably bugger off when the band gets started. They don’t appeal to the underage crowd, the teenagers.”

I could only hope she was right; I was in grave danger of showing myself up as we carved a path to the bar through a smorgasbord of overapplied lip gloss, trowelled-on foundation, crumbling concealer. My throat tightened against the fog of cheap perfume, the sickly stench of mandarin, gardenia and honeysuckle. I closed my eyes, focused on the soft warmth of Rachel’s hand, the brushing of her arm against mine. I blocked out the profane chatter and the absurd bellowing laughter and the repetitive demands from the speakers above my head to “gimme some more” and for a fleeting moment, we were blissfully alone, sharing a peaceful stroll along some distant sun-drenched shore, away from prying eyes and groping hands and moronic sovereign-fingered binge drinkers. White sand between our toes, breeze barely feathering our hair, we watched the early-morning sunlight sparkle on the water, gazed up at an endless clear blue sky and swayed to the perfect lullaby of gentle waves rippling onto the beach. And then she turned to me, stretched up on tiptoes to whisper in my ear.

“I think
you’d
better try,” she shouted. “I’m never going to get served—the staff are all teenage girls.”

The noose tightened.

“Oh, my God, look at the state of that.” Rachel planted her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands, peering out between her fingers at the horror that stood before her. “Seriously, if you had that much going for you, you’d keep it under wraps, wouldn’t you? Don’t look.”

I looked. I agreed. I nodded.

“I said don’t look! She knows we’re bloody talking about her now. She keeps looking over here.”

“Go tell her not to look, then.”

“Wait, she’s coming over.”

“No, she isn’t.”

“I think she wants to talk to you. Wait...she’s got a rose between her teeth and a family pack of Durex. She’s going to take you home and suffocate you between her enormous sweaty bosoms. God, and you managed that with just one little look. Imagine what you could pick up if you put your mind to it!”

“I shudder to think what I could pick up in here.”

“I know. I actually put paper down
and
hovered when I wen— You probably don’t need to know this.”

“No, you’re absolutely right. I might have to make my excuses if I begin to suspect you’ve got functioning kidneys.” Deep, wincesome gulp of wine. “On the other hand, I do want to know everything there is to know about you.”

“Oh, believe me, you don’t want to know
everything
.” She deliberately crossed her arms over her chest, leaned forward to rest them on the table. “Most of it’s incredibly boring. My dad always used to say, ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it—and if you haven’t, get back in your box.’ And staying in the box doesn’t make for great stories. Ask your new girlfriend over there, I’m sure she’ll agree.”

I resisted the urge to look this time. “I don’t understand,” I said. “What is it that you think you haven’t got?”

“It.”
She shrugged. “Much worth flaunting.”

“So this whole long-sleeved, ankle-length thing you’ve got going on...” Her eyes dulled and darted away to the crossed cuffs of her dress. My own eyes had clearly betrayed the root of the question. Mayday. “What I mean is, I only have to look at you to want to flaunt you myself. God knows
I
don’t have much I can brag about.” Not in public, anyway.

A whimsical smile returned to Rachel’s face, and she looked up and laughed, that electric blue sparkle coursing through me, lighting up my nerve endings. “Well, I suppose that explains why we’re both sitting here,” she mused. “Because I’ve known you two days, and I’d kind of like you to flaunt me, too.”

The silence between us, as I racked my brain for a suitable response, was blissful. Maddeningly, the band disagreed.

Conversation thereafter was near impossible. The ear-blistering barrage of sleazy funk-rock was intrusion enough, but as the band settled into their performance, so the more drunkenly lithe among the crowd filled the makeshift dance floor. By the end of the first set, the rhythmic writhing of bare female flesh had brought my mind into sharp focus. I looked at Rachel, smiling inquisitively as she held my hand across the table. She offered me some pot. I declined. She shook her head and leaned in close. “I said it’s so hot,” she yelled. Relieved, I agreed.

I took stock. Saturday evening, nine forty-eight. Sitting at a sticky and unsteady table in a room full of Wonderbra cleavage and naked thighs, hand in hand with a spellbound stranger, a persistent ringing in my ear. The feeling was suddenly no longer a comfortable one. The fluttering in my stomach was gone, replaced by a gripping, itching anxiety. I felt my free hand begin to tremble, my right knee bouncing out of control beneath the table. Rachel was still talking, still laughing, her comments presumably punctuated by my own; they registered only as waves of distant sound. The intriguing tingle at the base of my spine gave way to a knot of tension, already unraveling, tendrils creeping slowly but surely up my back toward my brain.

“...fuck me while you drink my blood.” Rachel rolled her eyes and laughed at her own lack of foresight. Mercifully, I knew what she meant.

My buxom admirer hovered at the periphery of my vision, chancing frequent furtive glances in my direction. At the opposite corner, the close, shouted conversation between a bottle-tanned peroxide blonde and her bling-soaked beau was growing increasingly animated by the second. Puffed chests and violent hand gestures signaled impending fireworks and, sure enough, within seconds she was on her feet and reaching for the nearest full glass.

I gave Rachel’s knee a gentle squeeze and mouthed the words “be right back” through an approximation of a carefree smile. From earlier investigation, I knew that the corridor leading to the toilets led also, by way of a twist and a turn and a fire escape, to an alley at the corner of the car park. I passed the couple’s table as the blonde dropped her empty glass into the lap of her cider-soaked friend, snatched up her bag and staggered through me with a token slurred “Sorry, mate.” I smiled falsely at her back, submissively raised my hands and slipped out of sight into the corridor.

I rested the fire door on the latch and bolted from the alley. The blonde had paused, swaying in the glow from the windows, engaged in a struggle with the contents of her bag as I stalked briskly to the van. Happily, when she withdrew her hand it held a set of car keys, and she embarked upon a zig-zag swagger across the gravel toward me, and variously toward other things. I opened up the rear of the van and retrieved the syringe wedged behind the top of the ply-lining, flicking off the rubber cap and coiling for the strike as she passed by without so much as a glance.

She knew I was there, though. Her neck stiffened. Her grip on the keys tightened. She staggered in a circle as her focus shifted. “Whathefuckayoulookenat?” she drawled. And then she fell over.

Reflexively, I clamped the syringe between my teeth and scooped her up out of the dirt, hauled her about-face and propelled her into the back of the van. She slid the length of the floor and connected solidly with the bulkhead. Flopped like a mop, all splayed arms and legs and hair. A nice choice of veins ready to receive a light dose of etorphine. Hard part done.

Except, that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was what came next. I squirted the excess out of the syringe and tucked it back in its place, and I unhooked the two load straps closest to the bulkhead, and I stared down at my feeble prey lying cock-eagled on the floor, and I felt all of the craving, all of the desperate, clawing need simply evaporate. Abruptly, everything in my head was Rachel, everything in my gut was regret and everything at my feet was a ridiculous, unfathomable error of judgment.

“Shit,” I noted, shameful bile rising in my throat. “Great dating skills, dickhead.”

I could still undo this. Maybe the knots in my belly, too, if I was quick. Just leave her where she fell and let her soggy boyfriend scrape her up when he was ready. I bent and took an ankle in each hand, dragged her back toward the doors. “I’m sorry,” I informed her. “I’m not myself tonight. You’re very sweet, and I know it’s cold out but, you know...three’s a crowd and all that.”

And so is fourteen—the approximate number of noisy hoodlums who chose that precise moment to spill out into the car park for a smoke.

“Bollocks,” I said, in summary.

* * *

“I’m sorry I wasn’t a lot of fun tonight.” I was more relaxed as I threaded the van between pitch-black rows of towering pines, watching the headlights cut a hazy path through the mist.

Rachel was certainly more relaxed; she’d matched me three for one on wine and was resting her head against the cold, damp window with closed eyes and a soft smile. “Don’t be silly,” she said, her voice lilting with tired contentment. “I had a good time. I’m just sorry the place was such a dive.”

“It was only a dive until you walked in.” Christ.
Come here often? What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? Your legs must be tired ’cause you’ve been running through my mind all ni—

“Ugh!” She threw her head back into a fit of giggles that proved unavoidably infectious.

“Sorry, I have no idea who just said that.” I laughed. “I’m either a terrible lounge lizard or Tony Bennett’s crawled in the back while we weren’t looking.”

“If it’s Tony, I hope he doesn’t think he’s staying at mine tonight.”

“No, no strangers in parad—” Shit. My punchline was cut short by a hump in the road; the ensuing lurch brought about a heavy slap on the bulkhead behind us, followed a beat later by an almighty crack and a wet-sounding thump that I felt through the heels of my shoes.

Rachel bolted upright, shot me an anxious look. “What the fuck was that?” she muttered.

I didn’t need to fake a concerned expression. “I’m not sure I want to know.”

She removed her seat belt and clambered to her knees, pressing her ear against the thinly upholstered wall behind her seat as I looked out for a place to stop. Within yards the grass verge gave way to the mouth of a logging trail, and I pulled carefully off the road, swinging the back of the van in to face the trees. “Stay in here and lock the doors,” I instructed her, hooking out a penlight from the glovebox. “I’ll be right back.”

“Wait.” She gripped my arm, fixed me with a terrified stare. “What if... What if it
is
Tony Bennett?”

“Put on a happy face,”
I said. “He knows
the rules of the road
. If I find him stowing away back there
in the wee small hours of the morning
, he’ll
touch the earth
with his face.
It certainly won’t be the start of
a beautiful frien
—never mind.” I swung my door open and stepped out into the cold.