Death & the City Book Two (50 page)

"Yeah - that too."

"I've got two cars and a bike," I say thoughtfully. "I'm not parking everything out on the lane, no matter how much of them is built out of scrap."

"This way." Fucheng leads the way back to the front entrance hall, opening a door opposite the 'office or study' room. I'd thought it might be a cupboard for the hot water tank. Instead it's an integral double garage, accessed from a concealed slip-road at the side. Fucheng opens the roll-up door to show me the access route. It's clean and modern, and the gradient is smooth enough to satisfy any sports car driver, that no bodywork would be at risk of scraping, jarring or bottoming out. Especially with War In A Box in the boot. I wonder how much premium increase that would put on my contents insurance by parking it inside an integral garage. Luckily, there isn't a button for that on the insurance website, regarding modifications to your vehicle. Probably a good thing to have it parked on the top floor, I think. Or I could always park it on the access driveway, up against the garage doors.

There's almost no downside to the idea. Except I hate moving. So much stress. I'm so stressed by it I have boxes I never unpack, just at the fear of re-packing them, at some unknown future date, to move again. I keep the empty boxes that things I buy arrive in, so that I can reduce my stress of packing them up again should I move. I'm afraid of being caught out by a move, and maybe my storage at home is disorganised because I'm afraid of being fully settled in and established, with everything in a place of its own and happy.

"Ooh, this is nice," Junior says again, running around so that her
Johnny Bones
loafers squeak on the garage floor. I notice even that has been scrubbed, so there isn't even a visible tyre-tread mark or oil-stain visible. "I could keep my bike in here, too."

Maybe it's time I just grew up, I think. He's right. We both need more room.

"Let's go back downstairs and look at the garden properly," I suggest. "See if there's a shed as well for the lawnmower, and for the cat to sleep in. If he decides to come back ever…"

Our old house feels absolutely microscopic when we get home. There's barely room in Junior's bedroom for her kite - it has to go inside the wardrobe. I make us both a pizza before getting ready for work, and we watch
CSI
, and the day starts to feel like a dream, that we didn't do any of it - that instead I woke up late, picked her up from my mum's, and just had time to grab something for dinner before going back to work again like most weekends generally were before… well, before Connor, to be honest.

We get into our usual debate over who did what to who on
CSI
, and during one of the commercial breaks, reluctantly I get up to take the plates out, to wash up.

"Can I look at the keys again?" Junior asks hopefully, for once not thinking about her Zombie kingdom.

"Sure," I say, and pass her my bag to rummage in herself. From the kitchen door by the sink, I watch her take out the new keys to the other house and examine them in great detail, test their jingle powers, and try them out thoughtfully between her toes.

If I change my mind, after Vegas, head office get the keys back with no obligation or fees due. If I choose to go ahead with moving there, I'll still have to give my notice on this place - so it'd be a slow overlap, meaning an easier, more gradual move. But I'm surprised at how reluctant I am to face change, even when it's a change for the better.

But then thinking again about Connor, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised at that.

Chapter 39:
Capital City Of Moonlighters

It's really weird back on shift at The Plaza. Compared to newly refurbished town centre venue The Zone with its shiny cover-girl manager Stacie Starkey, and supermodel bar staff, it's like going back to the tabloids after reading
Cosmo
. Watching
'
Enders
after
The Hills
. Eating a kebab, after
pâté
de foie gras
.

Or as head doorman Cooper Knightwood puts it, going back to web-cam jacking, after watching a bit of classic French old-school art-house porn.

"It's because The Zone hasn't been open long enough for the rot to set in," he tells me, looking a bit tired and pasty when he stops on his route by me, on the stairs of The Gods, heading up to V.I.P. in Cyberia Club. "None of the toilets are out of order yet, the bar staff haven't had the chance to get drunk together and show themselves up, and the managers haven't started bitching properly between themselves. But they will, mark my words - they will."

"Are you feeling okay?" I ask him. I've never seen him so pale. A girl stumbles on the stairs on her way down between us and he misses the grab, shrugging in resignation, but luckily I catch the brunt of her weight on my side. She giggles, blames her footwear, and totters onwards. "You look like you haven't slept for days."

Cooper shakes his head.

"Got man-flu," he says. "I'd kill for a Codydramol."

"Careful," I warn him. "You never know who's listening."

"Yeah, Doorman Harry got a written warning for calling a customer 'love' in front of the area manager when asking for her I.D, can you believe it?" he grumbles, turning and continuing his trudge up the stairs.

"Sounds like Harry on a good day to me," I call after him, with a smirk.

Everyone in The Plaza seems to be having an off night tonight. Perhaps they lost a lot of custom to The Zone since it opened. Or the area manager has also put his foot down about abuse of staff lock-in privileges, since Mgr Diane arrived from Sin Street, with her bottomless cast-iron alcohol-guzzling pit of an intestine. I'd had a text from Mgr Elaine at Crypto about Sin Street before starting work tonight, gleefully telling me that the venue's new re-launch name is going to be…
Bordello's
.
They might as well just call it Slags
, she said with at least three LOLs at the end of her SMS. I wonder if the new, young, hip company which has bought the Sin Street brand to make over, even know the definition of the word
Bordello
. Sounds like a made-up surname you'd find on a foreign national's dodgy passport and work permit, like Ben Trovato, Lord Lucan, or Igor Klamydia. Or Kaavey Canem, I muse to myself. And how's that particular investigation going now?

It is frustrating, not having the background knowledge or insight, on every case I run in. Means there are gaps my imagination wants to fill, and sometimes head office join in with the speculation. Inventing little soap operas about the guest stars as they pass through our radar. Lately, working with Connor, though, it has meant more pieces to the jigsaw are available between us, and like a poker player, I suspect he keeps back a number of key pieces, out of the game, that aren't in his interests to share yet. He teases me about trust. Maybe it's him that has the issue, as much as me.

Maybe he's just over-protective, a different viewpoint chips in. I flex my fingers and shoulder blades as surreptitiously as I can, trying not to fidget under the all-powerful camera surveillance in the nightclub, watching the dance floor from my security post on the stairs. New voices in my head again. New points of view. Usually come hand-in-hand with new information, and new complications. I know I've got a stressful couple of weeks ahead of me, including a long-distance job, and potentially also moving house. Stress means my personalities tend to clash more, instead of co-operate. I should probably avoid eating cheese for a bit. Stick to flapjacks and turkey burgers. Keep my adrenaline down as much as possible. Drink less caffeine and more water. Keep myself distracted, not trapped in my own head, hypnotized and wound up by my own inner dialogue.

It's Saturday night, and at peak hour, between midnight and 1:00 a.m, the place doesn't seem to be suffering economically from competition by other sites in the city. But then it is the biggest venue in town, and anything below six hundred people rattle around inside it, barely making a dent in its two thousand capacity. The bars are busy though, meaning customers can't get served quick enough to be too drunk this early, so in comparison, the door staff aren't so busy.

"Lara," Doorman Hurst greets me, approaching to switch positions on the rotation. "What's this Coop says about you being booked as security for a tour with D.J. Crank next week?"

I shrug.

"He asked for me," I say, honestly.

"I was gonna be polite, but who did you have to shag to get that job?"

"It's not like that," I say, giving him a thump on the arm sociably. "Just that he can afford me."

"Bloody Hell, I'd have gone, AND I've have shagged whoever he wanted me to," Hurst remarks, still shaking his head in disbelief. "Are you really getting paid twenty-four hours a day for close protection?"

"No, I'm getting twelve hours a day and expenses," I correct him. "And Heath Gardner said exactly the same thing when he rang me earlier, to confirm booking. Who did I shag and why did nobody ask him instead? I told him because he had a Heavy Duty office to run responsibly, and people's wages to get right. And I don't sleep with anyone to get a job. Going by how other girls end up, that's how you lose a job, not gain one."

"Not if you're one of us guys at the minute. Manager Diane already reckons she's got us all on a sperm donor roster we have to fulfil in order to keep our hours up." Hurst pulls a face, and I guess he's not joking. Diane has come out with worse when she's had a few. About her ways of keeping the staff in line. "We should get together and do her for sexual harassment just for suggesting it, but nobody wants to be the whining pussy."

"You'd rather be her compliant pussy?" I suggest, suppressing a giggle, and he pushes me off the top step good-naturedly. I grin and head for the toilet check route, before my next observation position.

I am glad I'm not one of the guys. There are about half a dozen psychos per male doorman in this job. The good-looking ones get more than their fair share, of course, but even the geeky ones and weird ones get their own special fan clubs of women living in a certain fantasy world. As for the Hollywood hit-man doorman stereotypes, the only woman they're ever sorry to see is me, cleaning up the business with extreme prejudice.

While checking up on the toilet attendant - who stops me for the usual small-talk about the mess the girls leave the cubicles in, always trying to steal the lavatory paper to use for themselves, or take home, or stuff in their bras or whatever - I get a text from Joel Hardy working at Crypto.
Hi Miss Lotta Vein I hear you have got a job in Vegas next week, can I come as your back-up? Love from Mr
.
Fang Boner xxx.
I've already had texts from Viv Henson at Pole-Ka, Jag Nut at Southside, and Niall Taylor and Steve Jackman who are both only on the front doors downstairs, all calling me a jammy tart. It's not even as if I'm on Facebuddy or Twaddle to broadcast the good news myself. It's just good old-fashioned grapevine gossip. I'm just ignoring all of them. It's a good thing none of them know what my day job is, or the city will be a shooting gallery while I'm away, or be named as the next best thing to Rio as a contract killer's sanctuary. Cooper has already confronted me at the start of shift, saying how shocked he is that I'm going away on a special sub-contract, how there are no decent female door staff around anyway, and how
'It's always the quiet ones'
. I have no idea what he meant by that, except along with everyone else who's mentioned it, he's possibly a teeny tiny bit jealous. The barmaids are all thrilled for me, of course. All thrilled, basically, because I'll be away for at least a week. Not around for them to compete with. It's one single woman less in the club, as far as they're concerned.

I don't know how technically single I am anymore either. I'm still wary of Connor, about all of his motives for everything - I can't help it, it's in my own best interests to analyse, for my own sanity. Part of his showing me the empty house earlier might have been another of those psychological imprinting exercises. We've looked at a property together, that makes us a couple, kind of thing. It's the sort of thing weirdly vacuous New Yorkers do on dates together, just to see if they click, or look good together in a new apartment or house, or to see if the agent gives them some sort of magical blessing, feedback, or sign that they're meant for each other. It's like a dating changing-room. Like you can just pick a partner, and parade up and down with them in front of a mirror, in different outfits and in different scenarios to see if they fit, or other people give you the nod of approval that you suit each other. Not like actual intimacy or understanding. Just like checking you've got the right accessory on your arm.

But I can't be sure with Connor. He does seem to understand me a bit, and he does have a point about my current scale and condition of housing being unsuitable. And he wasn't suggesting moving in together, or anything too freakishly early or scarily keen. Although he admitted it was a bit closer to his place, but not by much - just in the opposite direction.