Untouchable Things (10 page)

José stared, unable to think, unable to tear himself away from the eyes caressing him. Before he could act the man took his face in his hands and kissed him on the mouth, achingly lightly, so their lips just brushed, and brushed again. He felt like he had been pulled underwater. Abruptly the man drew back.

“Is that a yes?”

José swallowed and tried to collect himself. “Three hundred. A night is a long time.”

“Oh, I think this one will be.” The man looked him up and down. “I could haggle you down… but I think you’ll be worth every penny. Three hundred it is.”

Could I check again… it’s just if anything came out I’d be finished.

I assure you, Mr Sanchez, that everything you tell me here will remain confidential and no further action will be taken. Please go on.

He was regretting it as soon as he was in the taxi. What if this man was crazy? He’d heard the tales of boys being beaten to pulp, or even killed. And now the man would know where he lived. But three hundred pounds… what he could do with it. And that kiss, the memory still throbbing on his lips. Which got him worrying again. His first rule was already broken. Not only had he seen the client’s face but he’d fallen in love with it.

They went back to his place, his tiny bedsit, and José lit candles and put on some music. They danced. Not like in the club. Tenderly, like lovers, touching their way over each other. The sex was like nothing José had ever known. Afterwards they held each other in bed and José had assumed they’d go to sleep, but the man wanted to talk. He said his name was Seth but in José’s experience, people were rarely honest about their names. Their bodies, sometimes their lives, but never their names.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“What do you like talking about?” That was a good question. What did he talk about these days, since he’d started selling himself? Good patches. Bad clients. The fucking weather. He turned away slightly.

“Oh – you know, interest rates, the economy.” The bitterness in the echo surprised him. He felt a hand stroking his hair.

“What did you do before this?”

José sighed. “I – I was an art student.”

“In Spain?”

“Yes, in Siguenza.” His throat constricted at the vision of colourful houses on sunny streets.

“You miss it.”

“Not really.” He got up abruptly, slamming his hand on the bedside table without really knowing why. Great rent boy he was proving to be. The man would probably want half his money back. He leant over the sink and gulped down a glass of water. When he turned round, Seth was watching him from the bed.

“Have you ever thought of doing something artistic?” Just his luck to have shagged a career counsellor.

“No money in it.” What he meant was he’d come to London with dreams of doing just that. Something artistic. Wasn’t London bulging with artists? He had a vague notion of a studio shared with a few friends, nothing grand but something satisfying, a life worth leading. When he arrived he’d bunked down on a Spanish friend’s floor amidst cigarette packets and beer stains. He didn’t have a place to paint and quickly realised he couldn’t afford a flat on his own. He got by for a while doing crappy temping jobs, trying to save money. One night in Soho he’d been mooching around, unable to afford the bar prices, when a middle-aged suited man had sidled up to him and asked how much for a hand job. At first he had started to protest and explain, but the man seemed to think it was part of the act. Five minutes later he’d walked away with a sticky hand and twenty pounds.

Initially he was buoyed by the possibilities. How many men could he wank in a night? Five? Ten? More? The dream of the flat and the studio leapt into focus again. If he did this for a year, say, what did it matter anyway? It was no different from the saunas or the toilets or Hampstead Heath really. With so many bodily fluids being exchanged amongst strangers, what was a little cash?

And so he started his life as a rent boy. He planned to stick to hand jobs as they were easier, less messy, less intimate. But he quickly found that wasn’t going to work. His first client seemed to be an exception – most people wanted blow jobs or full sex. He wasn’t stupid, insisted on condoms and found he could expand his repertoire. The artistic dream shimmered in front of him, the eternal carrot, and kept him trotting along in his blinkers.

That was two years ago. He hadn’t thought about art or studios for at least half of that, not even when he looked at exhibitions in the trendy coffee bars where he spent his takings. He now had his own place on the edge of Soho, but he needed to work every night to pay the rent and then slept most of the day – so where was the time or money to paint? That was what he told himself. That dream seemed to belong to another him, a naïve boy with no clue about the real world.

Of course he wouldn’t be doing this forever, at some level he assumed that. But how he would stop or what he’d do next – these were questions he was always too tired or busy to answer. To ask.

And yet here was a complete stranger asking him. Why? London, or maybe his occupation, had taught José cynicism: as far as he could see, self-interest was the bedrock of all communication.

“You haven’t answered. What if it was an artistic pursuit that brought in money?”

“What if? What if there was a tree outside my window that grew £50 notes, what if this tap poured with wine, what if you shut the fuck up and left me alone?” He waved his hands and waited for the man to get angry, to leave without paying him. He didn’t care about the money now, he just wanted to be alone. But instead the man reached out his hand. “Come back to bed.” And José found himself walking towards the compassion in a stranger’s eyes.

He went pretty crazy. He was rough. The man not only let him but matched him, gave it back. It was if they had swapped roles and José was calling the shots, demanding his needs be met. They grabbed, tussled, bit. José growled and howled like a cornered animal. After coming he pushed the man to the bed and locked himself in the bathroom where he crouched and sobbed and sobbed. Something had woken up, something that made him retch with grief for what he had lost. He heard a door closing, footsteps disappearing, but he stayed on the floor until his tears and feelings had died down.

Painfully he straightened up, opened the door onto the emptiness of his room, the day ahead. No money had been left. He hugged himself, shivering. He couldn’t deal with this now. He needed to sleep, to blot himself out for as long as his body allowed. A sudden chirp from the door buzzer made him jump. Probably some drunk who hadn’t made it to bed – it wouldn’t be the first time. He caught sight of himself in the full-length mirror, clutching his nakedness like a madman. The door buzzed again, and then continually for five seconds. Wearily he picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

The answering voice was both strange and familiar. “Your coffee’s getting cold.”

Seth stayed for the whole day. José was scared by his rising feelings of neediness towards this person, this client. He didn’t know how he could have got through the day alone. He found himself talking, opening up, about the dreams he’d had and the decisions he’d made that had left him pinned in a trap. No one from his old life visited him, not even his parents, because he had told too many lies. They all believed he was in sales. Which he was, but the product would have appalled them. His only friends, such as they were, were fellow street workers. Even his Spanish friend Carlos had thrown him out of his flat when he’d found out what José was doing. With no one to hold a mirror to him he lost sight of himself.

Who could have imagined that one of his clients would provide the mirror? The reflection was not pretty. Part of him wanted to smash the glass but it was too late, he had seen himself. This was not who he was supposed to be. This face belonged to a nightmare.

“You should go. You must have things to do.” He tried to throw a veil of lightness over his terror of being abandoned now.

“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we go out for some food and a bottle of wine?”

José recoiled at the thought of stepping outside, his rubbed-raw face on view to a city of watchful strangers.

“Come on, it’ll do you good. You’ve been hiding away in here for long enough. I’ll look after you.”

José managed a wan smile and shook his head. “It’s okay, you go. I have some thinking to do.”

“Then let’s think together.” Seth took his hand and squeezed it, almost tenderly. “Whoever managed to do any decent thinking on an empty stomach?”

José squeezed back and then, like a little miracle, he felt a bubbling of hunger in his belly. “Well, there is a little place round the corner …”

He took you out for a meal. Did that not strike you as a little unusual, given the circumstances?

Of course. But everything about Seth was unusual. That was the attraction.

They drank wine and ate paninis. José felt like something had lifted. He had stopped wondering why Seth was still there and was just enjoying this moment, two lovers – or two people who had made love, he corrected himself – sharing a meal. He sat back, looking around at the familiar space.

“Very bad décor in here, isn’t it?”

Seth looked surprised. “You don’t like the minimalist look.”

“Minimalism without soul is empty, just for effect. See, if you splashed some colour on the walls, got rid of these ridiculous hard chairs, put hand-written menu boards up it would start to feel human. Every time I come here I think this place is trying too hard to be ‘modern’.” He shrugged. “I guess I keep coming though.”

Seth was leaning in, looking alert. “What else would you do?”

“Oh, don’t get me started. Wooden table and chairs with funky coloured cushions. Big bright painted blocks on the wall. Soft side lighting instead of these Nazi spotlights. It would still be modern but it would be…”

“Welcoming.” Seth looked round, nodding in slow motion. “Do you regularly sit in restaurants mentally improving them?”

“I suppose I do. I’d never really thought about it. It’s something I’ve always done.”

“And you never thought about being a designer?”

José laughed. “Not seriously. It seemed a bit – ambitious maybe? Like I’d have to be a young, thrusting – what’s the word? Gobshite. I only thought about the studio thing really.”

“And is that still your dream?”

José spoke slowly, thinking his words out. “It seems far away, a dream I had when I was someone else. I don’t feel the same desire or connection. It doesn’t seem very practical.”

They were both silent.

“José, I think I have a proposition for you.”

“Does it involve another night at my place? Because you still haven’t paid me for the first one.”

They both laughed. “Well, actually it could involve quite a few nights at
my
place.”

José raised his eyebrows.

“Here’s the thing.” Seth looked excited, spoke quickly. “I have a couple of other flats in London. I’m one of those revolting rich people everyone despises.”

“I couldn’t have guessed.”

Seth smiled. “Anyway, I rent one of them out, in Shepherd’s Bush, and the last tenants trashed it. It’s not the most amazing flat in the world but I’ve always thought I could do more with it.”

José nodded, no idea what was coming next.

“It’s obvious. You need somewhere to live to get off the game. You also need an income and to develop a career in something else. Yes?”

“Ye-es.” It was all true but José felt odd having someone else articulate it so matter-of-factly.

“Well, how about this, you come and live in the flat, rent free of course, and at the same time use your creativity to give it a makeover – no, a full facelift. I’ll pay you for that and at the end of the day you might find yourself on a new career path.” He stopped, keeping his eyes on José’s face.

José almost laughed. How could this man, this stranger, make him an offer like that? How could he accept? It was wine and sexual attraction talking and he’d retract tomorrow.

He shook his head. “It’s an amazing offer. But I can’t accept.”

“Because?”

“You don’t know me. It’s crazy. I would never be able to pay you back.”

Seth pulled a cigarette out of a tarnished silver box. “Okay, number one, I don’t know you well but I never know my tenants or the people who do work for me. What’s the difference? Number two, it may be impetuous but it’s not crazy – it’s actually a divinely logical solution. Number three, you would have nothing to pay back in either the financial or moral sense. I don’t hand out charity. I always make sure there’s something in it for me.”

The last sentence hung in the air as José tried to think. Seth had been following him around, had wanted something from him from the beginning. What was he getting involved with? But to say no, to turn down this opportunity… What was it the British said, something about horses?

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, José,” said Seth softly, causing him to jerk his head up and stare. “And don’t think I’d be looking for payment in kind. In fact, if you say yes, I think we should agree that there will be nothing more physical between us. Keeps it cleaner.”

“Of course.” José had to work to keep his face neutral. The man had made him the offer of a lifetime and yet he still felt rejected. Seth put a hand over his. “Not that I wouldn’t like to. But I’ve been in this situation before and it can get messy.”

José squeezed the hand lightly before removing his. “Okay, you’re the boss. I think I should be getting home now – I need to think this through.”

Seth nodded. “Think away but don’t take too long. In my experience your first instinct is always the right one.”

José slept for eleven hours that night and in the morning rang Seth and said yes.

You’re telling us that Seth Gardner helped you when he barely knew you?

He didn’t help me. Let’s get that straight. He saved me.

Scene 14

Did you feel accepted as part of the Friday Folly, Miss Laurence?