Animals (26 page)

Yeah
, said Jim through gritted teeth.

I hoped you wouldn’t, you know.

Jim turned and walked off. I didn’t follow him. The speeches finished. Applause. Kirsten turned and said to me: ‘You know, Jim’s such a special guy.’

I looked at her. She had a different look on her, a ruthlessness, her face was all hard angles. Maybe Kirsten and I weren’t going to be such good friends after all, especially since I usually preferred people when they were drunk.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘He’s been so supportive. It’s a lonely life this, all the travel, all the solo work. Jim’s been there for me so many times.’

Suspicion, now. Dripping and trickling and flowing in, walls bursting, villages submerged. ‘Yeah,’ I heard myself say.

‘I’m not always sure I know what I’m doing and Jim’s kept me on track. Guided me. He’s a real teacher. A nurturer, I suppose you’d say. I feel as though we’ve been through so many things together.’

‘Mm.’ Out of the corner of my eye I saw the shape and gait of Jim striding towards us. Suspicion smelted, emotional alchemy, and there it was: clean blue fury.

‘Yes,’ said Kirsten, ‘we really have been through so many things, together.’

I leaned towards her, closer, spitting distance. ‘Have you been through a fucking
window
together?’

I felt Jim’s hand on my right arm. He pulled me away. ‘Goodbye, Kirsten.’

I skidded in his grip and then shook him off. ‘DON’T YOU DARE FUCKING PULL ME.’ People turned and looked. Jim raised his hands,
Hands up, crazy woman in the house!
and followed me towards the double swing-doors.

‘Stop walking,’ he said. ‘Laura.’ His voice echoed along the stone corridor.

I turned to look at him. I was sick at our sex, sick at our love. ‘I need to find a bathroom.’

‘This way.’

I sat on the toilet doing nothing, staring at the door in front of me and listening to my phone vibrate in my bag. The tiles on the floor were huge and white, similar to what you’d find in a torture chamber or morgue. At one point it dawned on me that I was hearing voices and it took a moment for me to recognise that I recognised one of the voices and then another moment to tune in to what the voice was saying.

It was Kirsten. Words became sentences, sentences sense.

‘You know how cut-up I’ve been about this.’

‘Oh, Kirsten, babes.’

‘I’m sorry – I …’

Oh god, I thought. Oh no. Please don’t be – Fabric rustled against fabric. I could hear the water in the pipes and now and then a low quiet female cough like someone clearing her throat gently.

‘Can you believe what she said to me?’ Kirsten’s voice cracked as she said the words. ‘Do you think she knows? She must.’

I paused, held myself taut. I wondered whether I should get up, flush, make a sound, come out, cough, sneeze, call someone? Or just stay still and –

‘Nah, she’s just always pissed, isn’t she?’

A snort, sad not happy. ‘The way he’s been with me, Sylvia, ever since. So cold. Hard to believe it’s the same man. Like he hates me and hates himself – oh, I don’t know. I felt like what happened had been building up for so long but to him it was obviously just a mistake. And now it’s so hard to avoid him, this world is so fucking small.’

Oh for a sinkhole
, I thought.
Or a bomb scare. Even an actual bomb would be a blessing right now.
They fell silent. Liquid horror. Had they worked out I was in there? That would be too much to bear. I’d have to run if they saw me, have to. I couldn’t endure making them feel better on top of –

‘We should be –’

My cunt burned with held-in piss.

‘I know,’ said Kirsten.

‘I’m so paranoid!’

Footsteps. High heels on tiling. Their voices receding and a door creaking to a close. I sat there. After a few seconds, piss trickled out. I had no water pressure. It took a while and when I was done I wiped myself and stood shakily. Pulled up my jeans. What was I going to do what was I going to do? I didn’t know. Could I climb through a window? Was there a window? I opened the cubicle door and peered out. They’d gone. I rinsed my hands and wiped them on my thighs. I’d have to leave it a few minutes but not too long before I emerged into the bar. Could I just run away? Just running away would be preferable. I looked for a window. There was no window. I was having a heart attack. I put a hand on my chest and pressed it there.

What would Tyler do?

Just the thought of Tyler made me feel calmer. I knew what she would do. She would walk out there chin-first, down a drink for the road, and get the fuck out. That’s what Tyler would do.

That’s what I would do.

I opened the door. The noise of the corridor hit me like a train. Jim was standing there, stone-faced, by a sandy beige pillar. I turned and walked in the other direction. I knew there was an exit round the back of the town hall. Would it be open? Would I be granted that small mercy?

The back exit was open. Hosannas! I flew out and started to run.

‘Laura!’

He grabbed my hand and pulled me to a stop. I turned and looked at him. Everything had receded within, sucked back like the tide going out or the thaw after an ice age. Just wet rocks remained. A deserted beach. The moraine after the glacier.

‘When?’

‘Christmas. The party at the Bridgewater.’

‘Did you fuck her?’

He shook his head.

‘You kissed her, though.’

He nodded.

‘What else?’

‘I was drunk. I don’t –’

‘Did you see her tits?’

A nod.

‘How about her nipples? Did you see her nipples?’

What was this, soft-porn rules? Yes. Yes, it was.

Another nod.

‘Did you touch them?’

Yes, he had touched her nipples.

‘Did she see your cock?’

He looked at me.

‘Answer the question, Jim.’

He nodded.

‘Did she suck your cock?’

Yep.

‘Did you eat her pussy?’

He looked down.

‘DID YOU EAT HER PUSSY, JIM?’

My imagination didn’t spare me the visuals.

‘I was so drunk, Laur …’

The hotel room. The bed. The two of them grabbing at each other like zombies at a combination lock, futility beckoning, along with some half-awareness of it. He’d had a dopey hard-on, scrabbled unsuccessfully with a condom – the non-application of which had become a momentum-sapping distraction. They’d done everything they could with the tools to hand.

‘I get it. You
would
have fucked her but you couldn’t.’

‘I’m sorry, Laur. I’ve tried to make this right.’

‘Impossible. There’s nothing more to say.’

‘This is the insane thing with you,’ Jim said, sitting down on a step. ‘This is why I couldn’t tell you. You’re so extreme.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘It is. And you’ve been fighting this wedding, you and your wreckhead friend.’

‘YOU LEAVE MY WRECKHEAD FRIEND OUT OF THIS.’

‘Look, I made a mistake because I am a human being. It hasn’t happened since and it won’t happen again.’

‘A “mistake”? You didn’t use an apostrophe incorrectly or get on the wrong bus, Jim. You fucked someone else.’

‘I didn’t fuck her.’

‘ONLY BECAUSE YOU CAN’T PLAY SNOOKER WITH A ROPE.’

Someone came down the steps, looked at us and jogged across the street to the newsagents.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Jim said. ‘This is my career.’

3.46 a.m.

I wandered the streets for many hours. In my head I performed several staircase soliloquies and fantasy action scenes. I burst from the toilet cubicle with a gun and shot Kirsten just to watch her die – shot her friend, too. During the speeches I threw my drink sideways in Jim’s face without changing my expression. I left the party in a blaze of
Carrie
-like telekinesis, the town hall roaring with fire behind me as I casually lit a fag on a smouldering gargoyle. None of them helped.

When I got to Tyler’s I knocked.

No answer.

I knocked again.

Nada.

I found my key and unlocked the door. Stepped into the hall.

‘Tyler? Ty?’

No sound or light but a meteorological sense of something not right. Rather, something terribly wrong. I turned on the hall light and went through to the lounge.

A lamp was on and a CD was playing. The Faint. Hilarious. Funny what you manage to appreciate even when …

She was on her back in the middle of the rug and there was sick all over her and all over.

TYLER

TYLER

TYLER

TYLER

I shook her by the shoulders – nothing, nothing oh god fuck – and then turned her on her side into my best approximation of the recovery position. Why had I never taken a first-aid course? Why had I never had a job in a coffee shop? She would have known what to do. She would have. I banged her on the back once twice three times in case more sick was in there.

‘TYLER!’

I scooped sick out of her mouth with my fingers, held the back of her head and put my ear close to her mouth, moved my fingers to the side of her neck where the pulse should be. Oh god oh fuck oh please –

Then I felt and heard them, soft, soft – very faint but very there – there was a pulse and she was breathing. Thank all the gods and all the fucks and all the angels and Jesuses. She coughed and retched a long, horrible retch.

‘Tyler, it’s me – what the fuck have you taken?’

I scanned the room. Wine glasses on the table with purple liquid inside. The mandy was gone, wasn’t it?

‘I’m calling an ambulance.’

She shook her head. Coughed again. Retched again. ‘Nawp.’

‘A taxi, then. You’re going to hospital. I’ll clean you up a bit first if that’s what you’re bothered about.’

‘No no no no no.’ She moved her arm and I saw two pieces of paper in her hand, scrunched in her grip. They fell in a flutter as she got onto her elbows, her bottom. Sat up. Brought her fingers to her nose.

‘What did you have?’

She looked down at her chest and grimaced at the sick. ‘You don’t want to know.’

‘I really do.’

‘I need a bath.’

‘I’ll get a hot cloth and then we’re going to hospital.’

She sniffed hard and rubbed her face. ‘Look, I appreciate the offer but I’m not going so you may as well drop it.’

‘Tyler, we are going –’

‘Listen, they don’t even pump your stomach any more. They just put you on a drip because they’re fucking pussies. Then I’ll have to lie there for hours hydrating until some fucker comes in to lecture me or tries to send me to rehab or some shit when really I’m fine. I just had a bad day.’

I looked at the papers on the floor. ‘What happened?’

She flapped one hand then the other, like she was trying to bat away a fly or not cry on TV.

I looked at the wine glasses on the table. ‘Take it that’s not Vimto?’

‘It’s GHB. Mixed with Vimto.’ She retched as she said it.

Arithmetic assaulted me. Two glasses. One Tyler.

‘Who was here?’

She rubbed her face again. She had no mascara left on her lashes but plenty on her cheeks. Her beauty spot was smeared with lipstick. ‘Nick.’

‘Did he bring the GHB?’

‘Naturally.’

I nodded. Motherfucker.

‘Do you think you can stand?’

‘No promises.’

I helped her. She was very weak, leaning almost all of her weight on me and banging the wall as few times as we walked to the bathroom. I sat her down on the toilet while I ran the bath, took her clothes off and helped her step in. I washed her very slowly and gently.

‘He didn’t hurt you, did he?’

‘You mean did he rape me?’

‘I mean did he anything.’

‘I’m not sore so I don’t think so. It hardly matters, though, does it?’

‘What?’

‘It’d be more like necrophilia than rape. Look at me. My life hasn’t changed in ten years, I work for The Man, I’m covered in fungus, I haven’t got the memory of the Sixties to keep me going and the Nineties feel like some sort of bad in-joke.’

‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had something to eat.’

A series of grunts and snorts. I could hear the night in her chest.

‘Come on, piglet, I’ll roast you a pizza.’

I dressed her in my clothes – not that fucking kimono. When the t-shirt, baggy on her, was over her head she pulled it down and held the bottom hem.

‘Do you love me, Lo?’

Sometimes.

‘Tyler, I’d give you my ass and shit through my ribs.’

I put her to bed and went to the shop for food for myself. When I got back she got up and sat next to me on the sofa as I ate pizza (she couldn’t eat). We watched the Olympics. A string of mozzarella dangled from the piece of pizza I was eating. Tyler eyed it warily then looked back at the TV.

‘Who was it?’ she said, still looking at the TV. I put the piece of pizza down. Saliva deluge pre-empting a bathroom dash. On the screen, teenaged girls bounced around, landing and posing. Tyler nodded at the TV. ‘Would you look at the American girls nailing this shit. I want them to flick the bird as they land and yell FUCKYEAH! at the apparatus.’

Sparkling leotards flitted across the screen. A tiny American gymnast started doing a routine on the horse. Halfway through a pike she fell onto the horse and banged herself badly between the legs, falling to the ground in agony.

‘Get up!’ Tyler shouted.

‘She’s hurt, by the look of it.’

‘Get up, you stupid girl.’

‘I think she’s trying.’

‘Don’t you know the rules?’ I shook my head. ‘She has to be back on that horse in ten seconds or she’s disqualified. How whack is that? You’ve just taken a sledgehammer in the puss and you’ve got ten seconds before your whole country hates you.’ She stood up and motioned wildly. ‘GET UP, GIRL, GET UP!’ She sat down again quickly. ‘I feel very nauseous,’ she said. ‘Will you get the vomitarium, just in case?’ She lay back, closed her eyes.

The wine glasses from the previous night were still on the table (they wouldn’t be helping) so I picked them up and as I passed the papers on the floor I picked those up, too. I glanced at them in my hand. There was writing on them. They were letters – one long, one short. I read the short one first, almost walking into the door frame.