After Nothing (23 page)

‘Okay, no sex,’ said Kane, turning toward the television. He retrieved the remote control from the crate that was our coffee table and put the sound back on.

I sat down heavily on the couch beside him and crossed my arms.

Kane watched television while I watched him out of the corner of my eye. I could see his mind ticking over, and then he moved toward me.

‘Okay to make out though,’ he said, and kissed me. Hard. Demanding.

He then moved onto my neck, which he knew was my weak spot when it came to tipping the balance toward sex. Having worked my neck over, to the point where I was squirming beneath him, he bit my earlobe.

I took my own underwear off, and undid his jeans.

While I was lifting my hips up, trying to encourage him to get inside me, Kane put his mouth to my ear and asked for a blowjob.

I gave him a shove. Asshole just grinned at me. ‘Baby, you said no sex.’

I pressed up against him. ‘That’s fine. Go down on me.’

Kane pressed his mouth to my neck. ‘It was my idea.’

‘I don’t care; it’s my turn.’

Kane stopped kissing my neck and frowned at me. ‘It ain’t your turn.’

‘If I say it’s my turn, it’s my turn. It’s not about waiting in line.’

‘It is when I’ve been waiting in line three weeks. You’ve been there three days.’

‘Kane?’

‘Mmm?’

‘I’m going to bed.’

He sat up as I moved out from underneath him.

‘Night.’

‘Night.’

I counted. One. Two.

He turned the television off and followed me to our bedroom.

In the summer I changed workplaces. I knew my boss, Leonie, wasn’t happy about it – and I wouldn’t have been either if I were her. Having started there as a cleaner, I now just about ran her bakehouse, and far better than she ever had. She never told me what the increases in the profit margins were once I unofficially started managing the place, but she didn’t need to. I could tell just how much business had picked up simply by the till takings, the increase in customers and the additional food supplies we needed, which I was in charge of ordering. Of course, that didn’t mean she put my wages up any more than the bare minimum.

The other reason my boss wasn’t happy about my leaving was because I was offered my new job in her shop, by a man she had a romantic past with – a man she didn’t like that much anymore.

The first time I came across Harold he was standing just inside the entrance to the bakehouse. He was an older man – in his sixties at least. He was wearing a suit, he was clean-shaven and his grey hair was closely cut. He certainly looked better heeled than most people in our neighborhood. He stood there long enough for me to call out past the customers whose food selections I was bagging.

‘Do you need help with anything, sir?’

He shook his head, gave me a weird sort of knowing smile, and then left.

Next time he came in it was during our busiest time. I always worked the till then, because I was the fastest ringing up sales. I recognized Harold straightaway, and gave him my polite greet-the-customer smile.

‘Mighty fine bakehouse you got here, Natalie,’ said Harold, glancing at the name tag pinned on my red and white check bakehouse shirt.

‘Thank you, sir. I’ll pass that on to the owner.’

Harold shook his head. ‘’Fraid there ain’t no fooling me, Natalie. I might have been away for three years, but the ten years before that Leonie never had this place jumping like it is now.’

I narrowed my eyes at him. This man knew my boss – and was saying out loud what I never would. Did he know the whole of it, I wondered? That Leonie was smart enough to keep the business going, but too tight to really grow it? That she barely put any money back into the business? That in the fifteen years she’d had it, she’d never put a lick of paint on that place to freshen it up, let alone upgraded any of the baking equipment and machinery?

‘How old are you, Natalie?’

The tone of his question wasn’t threatening, or suggestive of anything. It was just a straightforward question, so I didn’t mind answering honestly.

‘I’m eighteen.’

I saw the surprise register in his face, and didn’t feel the need to point out I was only
just
eighteen. Before he could say anything else, I added, ‘But I don’t know your name, sir. Or your age.’

He held out his hand. ‘Harold Fife Junior.’

He didn’t offer his age. I shook his hand while glancing at the backlog of customers waiting to be served. Impatient and annoyed faces stared back at me.

‘Here’s your sourdough, Mr Fife,’ I said in that ‘move-along’ tone of voice. ‘That’ll be four fifty.’

The next time I saw Harold Fife Junior was after he’d rung me at work and asked to meet him in the city for a job interview.

We met in a small coffee shop on one of the main streets of the business district. He told me he’d recently bought the coffee shop we were sitting in, and he needed a manager for it. He asked what my current wages were, and said he’d increase them by a third if I took the job he was offering. He also pointed out that as the coffee shop only catered to those who worked in the business district, I wouldn’t have to work weekends. Lastly, he said he had misgivings about my age, but not my attitude.

Do you know, I wasn’t even a little intimidated by the offer. Not even when he said he was going to renovate the place, and part of my job would be making sure that happened. I just looked around me and took in the old display cabinets with their soggy tomato sandwiches and hard-looking bits of brownie, the peeling wallpaper and the loudly humming drinks refrigerator. I saw the possibilities of the shop, and felt my excitement growing as I realized I could make real changes to it all. I leaned forward on the table that wobbled between Harold Fife Junior and I, and I told him I wanted the job.

The commute was a pain, but I didn’t have to start as early as I did at the bakehouse. There was a cook and a kitchen assistant who started at five, but I didn’t have to get there till six thirty for opening at seven. I had to work later though. We closed at four; if I was organized I could be done for the day by four thirty.

For the first week, Harold came in once a day, but he just kind of shuffled round, and read the paper, and otherwise didn’t do much. He wanted to meet Kane, so on the Friday he took me and Kane out to dinner. We meet him at the restaurant: just a pizza place in the mall. Kane, who had thought it was weird Harold wanted to meet him, stared at him more than he talked.

‘What did you think?’ I asked him as we were leaving the mall.

‘Baby, he a freak.’

‘He’s alright.’

‘I wouldn’t want to work for him.’

‘Your boss is an asshole.’

‘Yeah, but he straight up. That guy ain’t right.’

‘At least he’s paying well,’ I replied.

The second week Harold came in to the coffee shop three times, and we discussed some of the more significant changes I thought he should make.

The smaller changes I made without consulting him. Like telling the kitchen staff that they needed to wear gloves at all times when handling food, and to wash their hands between handling different types of food.

I gave the cafe servers their job descriptions again as too many times they seemed to conveniently forget that clearing tables, and wiping them down, was part of their job.

I didn’t make too many friends those first two weeks. Everyone who worked there was older than me. Antoine the kitchen assistant was the only one who was remotely friendly; the rest tried several times to undermine me or dis me. I’d managed nearly three times as many staff at the bakehouse, and recognized what action was required to make them understand change was happening whether they wanted it to or not. I was tough, but effective. I got Harold’s okay and then met with each of them. I told them their performance was under review and that I decided who would and wouldn’t keep their jobs going forward. Nothing was said to my face, or in my hearing, after that.

I sent myself on a barista course two evenings that second week, and then decided the new espresso machine Harold had ordered would be my responsibility until someone else could make a better coffee than me.

My third week at the job, the coffee shop was closed for remodeling. Harold picked the colors and the furnishings. The furnishings looked good, but the colors were terrible – purple and red just didn’t work together, in my opinion. I told Harold so, but he liked it, and it was his shop so I couldn’t argue with that,

On Thursday afternoon Kane came in. I was surprised to see him there, and glad.

The place was still the dump it had been all week. Bits of wood and machinery everywhere. So much dust I didn’t know how we’d clear it all in time for opening on Monday. When I saw Kane come in I nearly tripped on a band saw getting to him. I threw my arms around him, kissed him on the mouth and said, ‘Hi, baby,’ really loud. I never called Kane baby. He frowned, his arms loosening around me, but I just hugged him tighter and kissed him again.

Harold hadn’t been on site that day; it had just been the two builders and me. The builder in charge had been getting progressively friendlier with his looks and his words over the week, and today, he’d propositioned me for an after-hours hook-up. He was in his forties and married. I’d turned him down a lot more nicely than I normally would have, purely because I didn’t want him to compromise any of his work. I wouldn’t say Harold had hired the most honest, hardworking builders in town, which was why I wanted to be at the shop for every moment they were doing the fit-out.

I was so caught up with the affectionate show I was putting on, it took me a moment to register Kane’s face. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Fucking Wayne,’ Kane blurted out.

The builder looked between Kane and me as though I should introduce them. Idiot. Kane was taller, way more built and a hell of a lot meaner looking. And right now he was angry. Really, really angry. At that moment, if Kane had got even a sniff of what had just taken place, that builder would have been going home with a broken nose at the very least.

I knew the range of Kane’s moods and expressions. I quickly took his hand and led him through to the kitchen. Right now his anger was right up there at ‘Natalie-broke-her-own-arm’ levels.

In the kitchen, he pulled his hand free of mine and looked around, like he was searching for something he could throw through one of the walls.

‘Kane, tell me what’s happened.’

He clenched his jaw, shook his head and sniffed, and then I saw hurt join with the anger in his eyes.

He rubbed the back of his neck – something he always did when he was tired or at his most defeated – and just shook his head again.

‘You don’t want to tell me?’ I asked, as gently as I could.

‘I ain’t nineteen,’ he blurted out. ‘I’m twenty-one.’

I didn’t respond because I knew he had plenty more to say.

‘And my name isn’t Kane. It’s Alexander. And I’ve got a middle name. It’s Bryant. Alexander Bryant. Do I look like an Alexander to you? I don’t remember being called that. He changed my name and my fucking age. All those age groups I fought in, and me being bigger than most the kids in my year going through school: it’s because I was over a year older than all of them. Nat, he let me fucking fight outside my age. Everything I ever won was by cheating.’

‘Oh, Kane. But surely not all of them? Some of those fights you would have been legit for. And don’t some of them go on weight?’

But Kane wasn’t up for reasoning. His jaw was clenched as he hissed, ‘He’s a fucking asshole.’

‘How did you find this out?’

‘He told me. But not straightaway. Wasn’t even man enough for that. I said to him a couple of weeks ago that I needed to get my proper paperwork ’cause my boss said I’ve been there so long now that he doesn’t want to pay me under the table anymore. You know, I just thought he changed my last name when he took me out of that home. I just wanted to give him a heads-up, you know. Tell him what I was doing. I mean, he knows I’d never lead anyone to him. I’d just planned to say to whoever that I hadn’t seen him in years and I’d been living on the street. Motherfucker! How could he have just given me another name? I was two fucking years old – I would have known my name.’

‘Come here,’ I said, putting my arms around him and hugging him tight. But I didn’t get a hug back. He was all hard muscle and unresponsive to my touch.

‘He’s a fucking coward,’ said Kane.

‘Kane, he did what he thought was best for you.’

‘Don’t fucking defend him. I’ve been fighting guys younger than me. Danesh is younger than me.’

‘That wasn’t an age fight.’

‘Every fight I ever had with him before was, though.’

‘Kane, he had his reasons.’

‘You think he should have changed my age?’

‘I think he had to protect you from people who wouldn’t care for you properly or love you like he could. No matter what he had to do.’

‘He should have told me.’

‘And made you grow up lying?’

‘He could have changed my age back a couple years later. Don’t you get it, Nat? My whole life is a fucking lie.’

‘Kane –’

‘That ain’t my name.’

‘Of course it is.’

Kane just stared at me, and then shook his head. ‘I trusted him.’

I thought about what Wayne had taken from Kane: his name, and his age. Two of the most certain things a person can know about themselves. But equally, I thought that Wayne had done what Wayne had to do.

‘Life isn’t ever that straightforward,’ I said quietly, looking up into Kane’s tortured face.

His head snapped up. ‘You don’t get it. You never fucking get it.’

I said his name, which of course in that moment was the wrong damn word to say.

Then he left, and I spent the whole afternoon making lists in my head of how I could make him feel better.

Kane couldn’t sleep that night. He kept waking me up – wanting sex, wanting to talk, not wanting to talk, wanting sex again, tossing, turning, and then getting up at 4 am to have something to eat.

I could hear him pouring granola, then the refrigerator opening and closing. Then silence.

I found him leaning on the kitchen bench, staring down at its scratched surface, the bowl of granola untouched next to him.

‘It’s okay, Kane.’

‘No wonder school wasn’t that hard for me. I was a year behind.’

‘I don’t know if it works like that.’

‘And when we were living with Cal and his mom, no wonder I always kicked his ass when we fought. I was stronger than him ’cause I was over a year older.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’