Katja from the Punk Band (2 page)

“Knock yourself out,” she says.

And she’s looking at the smiling trucker again because he’s looking at her.

She turns away, grabs a cloth and cleans the same spot on the counter over and over.

What now? What now?

What the fuck had she gone to the diner for anyway? To pretend everything was normal? To whom?

To whom?

Shit. Shit. Shit.

But she has the vial, she has her ticket off the island.

Not quite.

She tries to slow her thoughts down, tries to grab a hold of them so she can focus on them properly.

She has the vial, yes — but she doesn’t have Januscz, and those waiting for the vial would be expecting them both. So what now?

There is laughter and she turns to the booth with the men playing cards. The trucker looks up at her once again but this time he isn’t smiling.

He knows
, she thinks,
he knows. How can he know?

Stop it. Stop it. He doesn’t know. If he did why wouldn’t he just go straight to her and take the vial?

He doesn’t know.

She needs to get out of there, Katja realizes. She went to the diner because she was already late for her shift and didn’t want to arouse any more suspicion, because she had panicked, but now she realizes she has to get out of there. The trucker probably doesn’t know what she’s done but it will only be a matter of time until someone comes along who does.

Shit, they would know where she works, they would know where to come.

Get out. Take the vial and get the fuck out of here.

But she isn’t going to get anywhere without Januscz, and she doesn’t think it likely he will be turning up any time soon to help her.

Not considering the state she had left him in.

He goes up to the junkie and she says to him, “I need your help.”

He doesn’t seem to register the request at first, then looks up. His eyes fix on her lip ring, sparkling in the harsh lighting. He seems transfixed by it.

“Huh?”

“Do you have a car?”

“Huh?”

“Do you have a car?”

His fingernails are adorned with chipped nail polish and he wears thick leather straps around each wrist. “A car?”

“Yes. Do you have a car?”

He nods.

“Then I need your help. I need you to drive me somewhere,” Katja tells him.

“Drive?”

He looks like he’s still catching up on her first question, still processing it.

He chews on one of his fingernails.

“I need to get to the docks. I’m meeting someone there. Will you drive me?”

“Uhhh. The docks?”

“Yes. I’m meeting somewhere there. Can you take me?”

He looks around at the others in the diner and begins to say something but his tongue becomes wrapped around whatever substance he’s still riding and it’s nonsense that comes out. He takes a sip of his coffee and winces at its heat and/or sweetness. Chews his nail.

“I think some people might be after me,” Katja adds to see if it will spur him on. “I think I might be in danger.”

“Uhhh . . . yeah. Uhhh. Yeah.”

He takes another sip of his coffee, looks around once more.

“Hey,” Katja snaps. “Are you listening to me?”

“Mmmm,” the man says. “Yeah . . . you want me to drive you.”

“Yes.”

“To the docks.”

“Yes.”

And she’s beginning to think perhaps she should have asked someone else.

Anyone else.

“Okay,” he says. This fucked-up druggie says. “Sure.”

“Good. Can you take me now? I need to get there now.”

“Uhhh, sure. Uhhh, yeah.”

Katja looks across at the truckers and now they’re all staring back at her. The one that smiled at her before, he isn’t smiling any more. She sees his jaw muscles working.

“I’m going to go out the back way. Wait a minute then go out the front. There’s an alley that leads up the side of the building. Meet me there. Okay?” The man nods and Katja goes back through into the kitchen. She reaches into the drawer and for some reason panics that the vial won’t be there anymore but it is, it is there. She picks it up and puts it back in her pocket. Takes off her apron and stuffs the garment into the pot of chili. She’s about to walk out when she hears the junkie shout, “Hey.”

Her heart rate raises again and she pokes her head through the service window. The junkie is leaning over the counter slightly, conspiratorially.

“What?” Katja asks.

And he whispers loudly, “How much is it for the coffee?”

She’s watching beads of sweat like glass balls tumbling from his brow and he’s leaving smears of wet handprints on the steering wheel as he constantly adjusts his grip. The car is a battered old thing and looks about as secure as the man who is driving it but she has no other choice. She doesn’t even know what a clutch does.

It’s still raining outside and it’s starting to get dark too. In one hand she’s holding the vial she took out of her pocket when she climbed into the car in case it cracked or split. Even if she had anywhere else to put it, she is too preoccupied to bother hiding it from the man. She notices him glance at it then look away several times.

Finally she says, “This is what I’ve to take to the docks.” She uncurls her palm and lets the vial roll along her fingers. First joint. Second joint. Third. The liquid inside sparkles.

He seems too disinterested to not be interested.

And it only occurs to her now as she sits spinning it around and around in her palm that she could have made a mistake in picking a junkie to help her. He chews on a nail as he considers the vial.

But he doesn’t ask what it is.

“I need to pick up some stuff first,” she says. “I need to get my stuff.”

She gives him directions to her squat and looks over her shoulder, watches the headlights behind them to see if they are being followed. The rain batters against the hood of the car, a hundred little explosions of light and water and she finds herself thinking of a similar wet burst that had come from Januscz.

And then, in the silence, the junkie says, “You’re from that punk band aren’t you? The Stumps. You played at King Tut’s last week?”

Katja doesn’t say anything, feeling a little exposed.

“I remember you because of your . . .”

His eyes trail across the plastic tube sticking out of her throat. His words drift.

“You were good,” he says instead.

“It’s a tracheostomy tube,” she tells him, ignoring the compliment. “My name’s Katja.”

And she thinks shit, should have made a name up, but it’s too late now and does it really matter anyway?

“Nikolai,” he says.

“Nice to meet you, Nikolai.”

He swings the car around a bend, past the garish neon glow of porn signage and in the paranormal lighting women stalk with gazelle legs and heavy coats wrapped around themselves. They are only a few blocks away from the squat now and she finds herself hoping it’s either very busy or very quiet there.

“I have something to confess, Nikolai,” Katja says. “I need you to help me out a little more than just driving me to the docks.”

Nikolai doesn’t take his eyes from the road ahead and she isn’t even sure if he registered what she said. “Huh.”

Should she tell him? She has to tell him. There is no point in her risking involving him as she already has if she isn’t going to go all the way through with it.

“This vial, there’s a man waiting for it on a boat going to the mainland tonight.”

“The mainland?”

The mainland. Which meant that whatever was happening definitely wasn’t legal.

“You want to get off this fucking shit-tip island, Nikolai?”

“I . . .”

“’Course you do. Everybody does. That’s why they work so hard to keep us all here. That’s why the only boats that come to and from the island are either bringing shit or taking it. But I can get you off the island, Nikolai. Tonight. Do you have any friends or family?”

“I . . . no . . .”

“Good. Then you’ve got no reason to stay here?”

“I guess not,” he says slowly and finally looks at her.

“Next left,” Katja says. “My boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend, shit he wasn’t even really a boyfriend, just someone I hung out with and fucked every once in a while, but that’s not important. Anyway, he works for this guy, this guy named Dracyev and he’s a dealer, right, he’s a chemical dealer and he asked Januscz, that’s my boyfriend, he asked Januscz to make this exchange tonight, on the boat, to give this guy, this other guy, not Dracyev, to give him this vial.”

“The vial,” Nikolai says.

“Yeah, the vial. I don’t know what the fuck is in it, who the hell knows with those guys. I never liked Januscz being involved in that shit, but then again he never liked me screaming my head off every other night and coming home with blood crusting my trach tube, but that’s not important right now, okay?”

Nikolai chews his nail, works on it. He stops at a set of lights and waits patiently.

“Anyway, Januscz is meant to meet this guy tonight but the problem is, see, the problem is he can’t really do that anymore because we kind of got into an argument because the fucker, the fucker he was going to take this shit and split to the mainland and he never said a fucking word to me, he never said one goddamn word to me, he was just going to do this deal and get his ass over to the mainland and he was meant to take me you know, he was meant to. Dracyev had arranged it so we could both go, but Januscz was going to go without me.”

“Was?”

“Yeah, was, ’cause I found out what he was planning and I kind of lost it a little, I guess, and I sort of shot him.”

“Shot him?”

“Just in the neck or the shoulder or somewhere around there, I’m not sure because I didn’t stick around long enough to make sure, you know — plus, what the hell difference does it make anyway?”

“Is this the place?” Nikolai asks, pulling onto a quiet street lined with old buildings scarred with graffiti and broken windows. There are several vehicles parked ahead of them but only one that looks drivable.

“Just at the end here,” Katja tells him. “I need to get some stuff first, you know? At the end there. Anyway, so I sort of shot Januscz and then I just took off because I thought if someone finds out what I’ve done, well, you know, some serious shit is going to happen so I figure well, fuck, he was going to screw me over and leave without me anyway so I’ll do the same to him. Here. Just here.”

And Nikolai pulls the car over to the curb next to a building in a worse state than most. The steps leading up to the main doorway are partially blocked by two dumpsters stacked end-on-end, and there is the faint sound of bass-heavy music coming from inside.

“But this guy who’s going to make the exchange, well, he’s expecting Januscz and me to turn up, right, the both of us together, so he’s going to figure something’s up if it’s only me and I’m not the mule, right, I’m not Dracyev’s man, so I need you, I need you to act like you’re Januscz, pretend to be Januscz, that is.”

“But won’t he know I’m not . . . ?”

“Januscz isn’t a player, not the player he thinks he is. He’s never done anything like this before, a deal I mean. I don’t know why the fuck Dracyev has suddenly decided he can trust a loser like Januscz to do this sort of thing but he has, he did, so this guy that’s waiting for him, for me, for us, on the boat, he’s wearing a red suit. This guy has never seen or met Januscz before. He’s just been told to wait for a guy and a girl with this vial coming tonight, and in exchange to help them get to the mainland. A red suit.”

“Right.”

“So I need you to be Januscz. Pretend to be, I mean. Will you do that?”

“Just say I’m Januscz?” Nikolai asks.

“Just say you’re Januscz. Then we’ll be taken to the mainland and we can leave the vial with this guy or take it to someone on the other side or whatever the fuck was meant to happen and then we’re out of there and you can do whatever you want once you’re there. I just need your help to make this exchange.”

“And I can get off the island? With you?”

“Yes. I just need to get my stuff first.”

Nikolai nods and for the first time seems lucid, fully comprehending. “From here?”

“From here. Just wait for five minutes. Keep the engine running.”

“Okay.”

And she smiles, or grimaces at least, and gets out of the car. She is aware of a small handful of people lingering in doorways and the alleys that run between the buildings, but she knows the area well and knows that there are always people lingering in the darkness and shadows. Regardless, she keeps them in her field of vision as she presses herself through the gap between the two dumpsters and climbs the steps.

The front entrance has long been nailed shut so she walks around to a stack of packing crates leaning up against one of the walls. In the rain she slides the crates to one side and reveals a gap in the brickwork that probably started as a small hole but has since been worked into an opening big enough for her to crawl through.

The others in the squat have their own entrances, through corroded iron plates bolted over the lower floor’s windows to ramps that lead up to damaged roofing, each inhabitant like a separate species of insect, creating their own personal nests.

She drops down into the basement chamber that passes for her own nest and instantly feels a strange mix of security and vulnerability. Of claustrophobia.

Home.

Punk posters litter the walls, curling where the tape that holds them up has weakened and come away. Packets and wrappers lie like shed skins and there are audio cassettes scattered across the floor. Several guitars sit propped up against a large, stained amp in one corner.

She grabs one of the guitars, a battered black one with stickers scarring it like surgical wounds. The logos of other local bands and some from the mainland. The torn fragments of dead idols. The renowned and honourable mission statement of the Zapatistas — everything for everyone . . . and nothing for ourselves.

She slips the guitar over her neck backward so it hangs at an angle down her spine, then tightens the strap to hold it more firmly to her body. She turns to decide what else she needs to take, just the important stuff, just whatever she can’t live without, when she hears the voice.