Life After Joe (4 page)

Not quite a rape. Maybe my struggles had excited him, or maybe hopeless premature ejaculation was one of his reasons for being out there in the first place. He pushed and pushed, while I stood with gritted teeth and tight-shut eyes, then shot his load between my buttocks, spattering across the small of my back. He made a whooshing sound, as if his last breath were leaving him along with his come, and I seized my moment: drove an elbow back into his gut and tore loose.

His knife was the edge of an empty tin, crushed and folded almost into two. It clattered to the ground as I shoved him away and stumbled out of his reach. I needn’t have worried: his interest in me was as spent as his limp dick. I watched, trembling and gasping, while he shoved it back into his trousers, zipped up and lumbered unhurriedly off towards the road.

I ran. There wasn’t any point, and I wondered, flying blindly across the orange-black moor, what was worse—being chased down by yobs or left to my escape with no one at either end to care if I made it. I just couldn’t slow down. If I ran hard enough, the awful, sick sobbing noises I was making could just have been shortness of breath. This was quite a good shortcut, diagonally out through the dark. I reached the Great North Road in no time and plunged across six lanes of traffic unscathed. No brakes squealed, no horns blared. Maybe I had become invisible to drivers too, insubstantial enough that cars could pass through me. By the time I reached home, I had forgotten all about Marnie’s plans for the property: it was just a door which I could slam shut behind me, a set of stairs I could pelt up, so well-known to me I didn’t need to switch a light on. It was a source of hot water and soap, and I stood under the shower until even the big Victorian tank gave up and started to run cold around me. It was a bathroom cabinet which contained the last of the supply of sleeping pills I’d been prescribed back in June, about a fortnight after Joe had taken my hand, sat me down on the rug by the hearth and told me that, much as he loved me, this just wasn’t what he wanted anymore.

***

Cloth hit my face. I put up a hand that did not feel like my own and made my fingers curl around the fabric. Okay. The next step was the eyelids. I levered those open one at a time. Why had my body turned into a machine whose separate parts each required conscious operation? When had I lost the autopilot?

I pulled the clumsy hand back to look at what it held. A shirt…There was light in the room, but not daylight. I blinked and saw that there was also a man stamping impatiently back and forth between the bed and the wardrobe. I opened my mechanical mouth, got the tongue dryly working. “Lou…What the fuck?”

“What the fuck is right, you fucking divvy.” Something else hit me. Trousers this time. Oh, all right. I understood. A long time back, in very dark days, Joe had given Lou a key to the flat. I remembered that conversation actually; it had suddenly risen up from the fugues and blanks of that first week. Joe, on his way down the stairs for the last time with his last rucksack. Where had I been? Sitting on the top step, if I remembered rightly. Clutching the banister as a viable alternative to running after him, prostrating myself and clinging to his ankles.
“I’m giving Lou a key, Matt. Don’t do anything stupid. If he doesn’t see you around, I’ve told him to let himself in.”

Plainly I had done something stupid. The alarm clock by the bed said half past nine. Professor McAllister’s lecture on disease control had been due to start on the hour. It was an important one: nonattendance would be frowned upon. It was very good of Lou to miss the first part to come and rescue me.

I didn’t think McAllister was gonna like these clothes. I sat up, making each vertebra do what it should, and had a look at them. My green silk shirt. Nothing flashy—more a moss colour—but it fit me skintight. My expensive black jeans. I was scheduled to A&E after the lecture. I cleared my throat of what felt like powdered-glass cobwebs. “Ta, Lou, but…I don’t want to get blood and puke on these.”

“Christ. Not another one of
those
nights…”

I frowned. My hair was in my eyes. It felt matted, as if I’d gone straight from the shower to bed without towelling it off or running a comb through. Night? Now I gave it consideration, at this hour even on a late-December morning there should have been some daylight beyond the drawn curtains. Lou was ferreting about beneath the bench where Joe and I kept our shoes. He emerged with a pair of my nice Italian Allegras. I never wore those to work either. For a moment, I thought he was going to chuck those at me too, but then he sighed and came wearily round the foot of the bed to crouch beside me. “Matt,” he said, gesturing towards me with the shoes. “I know…I
know
all the shit you’ve been through. But you have
got
to stop making such heavy weather. I can’t keep up.”

That seemed fair enough. I didn’t recall ever asking him to try, but I knew he’d assumed the duty with good intentions. “Okay,” I said, taking the shoes, setting them in a businesslike pair on the floor. Ready for anything, once I’d found some underpants. “Sorry. I’m guessing you’re not here to wake me up for work.”

“Work? You’re fucking kidding me. If I had to come round here every time you missed a shift, I’d never be there myself…” He paused, brow furrowing in concern. “Matthew. It’s half nine at night, you dozy git. Friday night. My brother’s birthday if you recall him inviting you, same way he has every year since we were both about four years old. Get dressed.”

I sprang out of bed. My legs instantly buckled, but I made a good save, grabbing the bedside table before I could go down. My hand closed round a plastic pill bottle, and memory returned, one big flash. The good young intern I had once been knew you could down a hell of a lot of sleepers without killing yourself, and I had taken—well, a hell of a lot. I’d just wanted to sleep, hadn’t I? Not even that—just not to be sentient for a while. I’d sat on the edge of the bed, a half-full bottle of milk in my hand. That must have rolled out of sight somewhere, or Lou would have been on it, just as he would this near-empty pill vial if I hadn’t knocked it label-down behind the alarm clock. Milk. Right. Whatever I’d been doing, I’d wanted the dose to stay down. I’d taken the hell of a lot you could without killing yourself, and then I’d grabbed a handful more.

Fuck.
I palmed the bottle, hauled myself upright and staggered into the bathroom before Lou could see the state of me. I leaned my palms on the sink and stared into the mirror without recognition.

***

Lou’s brother’s party wasn’t too hard to endure. Some things in life were constant, and one of these was that every year, James would invite the same group of people to the same small pizza restaurant off the Bigg Market. It was nice. Joe and I had always enjoyed it. James was rather the star of Lou’s family, being straight and in the possession of legitimate children. But their parents, if set in their ways, were good people. Growing up, I’d spent at least as much time in their kitchen and back garden as I had my own. Joe—unforgiven even though he’d finally seen the heterosexual light—had not been invited, and Mam and Dad McNally kept bestowing compassionate looks upon me from over the table.

Ironically, this occasion was the first night when I could have handled Joe’s presence. Marnie’s too if James had wanted to extend the season of goodwill that far. I was numb from the skull-top down. When Lou, tiring of family bonhomie and tales of James’s promotions—I could have told him one straight accountant son was worth ten gay doctors—suggested in a whisper that we make our escape, I followed him wordlessly.

To the Powerhouse, where because it was Friday night, not Saturday, I’d had no thought of seeing Aaron at the bar. But there he was, leaning casually, exchanging the odd word with the bartender. He looked less obviously fresh from the rigs than he had before, less…heavy-duty, I supposed, dazedly trying to define it as Lou towed me through the crowd. He was wearing a plain cotton shirt and looked probably as ordinary as he ever could. As if he’d dressed up—or down—for someone. I knew that had I been functional, the sight of him would have made me shudder with desire. As it was, I could barely stay on my feet, and I was almost glad the club was so packed he wouldn’t have seen me even if he had happened to look up.

To my surprise, Lou steered me off to the tables near the back, where a dividing wall shut off some of the bass from the dance floor. You could talk there, more or less, though conversation wasn’t generally the object of Lou’s Powerhouse visits: he liked to see and be seen. He asked me what I wanted to drink, and before I could reply, snagged a passing glass collector for a jug of margaritas. The first one was a bad idea. The second and third were worse, but number one had disguised them, and I thought I might have been experiencing some kind of return to life. Enough, anyway, to reply to Lou’s small talk, which seemed nervous for some reason. Distracted. I nodded and smiled and probably kept my mask in place for a good five seconds after he fell silent, pressed his knee against mine beneath the table and reached for my hand. “Matthew. Matt, love…”

It was like being propositioned by your brother or some kindly old uncle who’s been around your entire life and never so much as looked at you sideways. I stared at him, trying not to understand. There had been times when I’d even wondered if Lou was gay, or if it was just simpler for him to act it because he hung around so much with me and Joe. Just as I was persuading myself that sleepers plus tequila probably did add up to hallucination, he tightened his grip, leaned in and tried to kiss me.

I nearly went back over out of my chair. I didn’t mean to shove him away—it was a reflex, and I made up for it as best I could an instant later by catching him, returning him gently to his seat. “Jesus Christ, Lou!”

“Ah, come on, Matt!” It was a raw shout, and the other lovers and hopefuls who’d come back there to try their luck began to glance around. “Why the fuck not?” he continued a little more quietly, glaring at me over the salt-lined rim of his glass. “We’ve practically lived together all our lives—you, me and Joe. And Joe’s gone, in case you hadn’t noticed. Not coming back, or he’d never have asked you to sell the sodding flat. What’s the matter with me?”

My brain was working slowly. I’d been asleep for twenty-four hours or so, and anything could have happened in that time. Maybe I’d walked in my sleep, had some kind of conversation with Lou that would mean he now knew my latest property news. I saw that he was slowly catching up with himself, realising what he’d said. He put his head in his hands. “
Shit,
” he said, muffled through his fingers. “Look, Marnie came round to see me yesterday. She said she’d told you, and…she wasn’t sure you’d taken it in. She wanted me to keep an eye on you, make sure you kept the place decent for viewers. Let the agent in. That’s all.”

Weird. I’d thought I’d hit bottom a fortnight ago when I’d dirty-danced to orgasm with Nicky in the middle of this club. Again last night on the moor. But this was its own new kind of low. “Lou,” I said, hardly knowing my own voice. I’d done plenty of yelling in my time but not had many occasions for cold anger. “I’d appreciate it if…from now on you, Joe and Marnie stayed the fuck out of my private life. And…what made you think that if Joe was out, you were in?”

“Why not? You’ve shagged everything else with a Y chromosome since he left, haven’t you?”

My gut tightened. Despite the quelling remains of the temazepam, a hot stone lodged in my throat. “Christ. Is that what you want, Lou? A shag?”

“No! Well—yeah, but…more than that. I want to look after you. Live with you, now you’ve got to leave the flat. We’ll get somewhere together.” That sounded reasonable enough. Up until five minutes ago, I might even have agreed. But my continuing openmouthed silence scratched his surface once more, and his face twisted. “Listen, Matt. You’re practically a drunk. I heard your supervisor telling Dr. Andrews this morning she was thinking of letting you go. I’ve seen all your crap, and I’d still…I’d still have you. Who else will? Nicky fucking Harris?”

I sat staring into the filmy disc of my last margarita—the one Lou had bought and poured for me. Lou was very generous. I returned the favour as often as I could, but seven times out of ten it was Lou who got the round. Made sure I was topped off.

I didn’t have to drink them, though, did I? I knotted my fingers together. I heard myself say, quiet and polite as if we had been strangers, “Okay. I’m gonna go now, all right? You stay here.”

“Oh Christ.
You
stay, you fucking loser. You’ll be lucky if you can still walk.”

Was he gone? I supposed so. The lights from the dance floor were no longer beating out his shadow on the table. Just at the moment, I did not want to lift my head and look.

I did not want to lift my head. The stone in my throat had become a boulder, a scald. I thought about what Lou had said. Rationally, I knew he’d been sitting on something—jealousy, resentment, whatever—and for whatever reasons, it had all just come clawing out. I was astonished—Lou, for God’s sake!—but I shouldn’t give his outburst too much mind.

But I had started thinking about Joe. I’d never been that much to write home about, had I? I’d thought so once—not in any particularly arrogant way, just aware that I was reasonably intelligent, decent looking, capable of loving. Oh yeah, certainly capable of that. And I’d always assumed Joe’s defection had been just for the reasons he’d given me. He wanted a girl, and no matter how lovely a bloke I might be, I couldn’t answer that. Now I began to wonder.
“You fucking loser…”
I hadn’t been a loser or a drunk back then, but maybe I was lacking things other than tits and a womb that Joe couldn’t live without. Maybe I’d been bristling with things he couldn’t live
with
, and he’d never been able to tell me.

I jerked up one hand to my mouth, pressed my palm tight. For a second I thought I was going to be sick. Then my vision blurred, and I knew it was worse.
God no,
I prayed silently to whatever deity might look after feckless drunks in nightclubs. I couldn’t cry here…

The air changed. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly, and all I could see was a retinal jump, red to black, as the pulsating lights swept the room. I didn’t really care, but little hairs all down one side of my neck gave a prickle and lifted; olfactory cells fired. Sunlight. No, because that had no smell, but something I associated with sun, as if someone had picked up the Powerhouse from its city-dregs location, dropped it on sand dunes and lifted its roof. Salt. Warm grass. A breath of life from a different bloody world. And weirdest of all, I recognised it. Last time Aaron had stood close to me, I’d been too busy hitting on him to notice the way he smelled…

It must have registered, though. I opened my eyes, and he was there, holding out a hand to me. In the shifting lights, the air which still managed to be smoky, despite the ban, he looked utterly solid and real. His eyes were unfathomable as ever, but their expression was somehow so kind it loosened my joints. He said, smiling faintly, “Do you want to dance?”

Of course I didn’t bloody want to dance. If he wanted to talk to me, he could take the seat Lou had just vacated. I looked at his hand. Its palm was broad, the fingers long, eloquent of power. I could see them manipulating steel, vast machineries, hauling up oil from its ancient hiding places under the North Sea. I could see him drawing me to my feet against my will if I put out my hand in return to touch him. I did. I hadn’t realised I was cold. When his grip closed round mine, its warmth seemed to shoot up my arm and into my chest. He exerted a gentle tug. “I’d have come over sooner,” he said, “but you gave me a good demo the other night of what happens around here to men who move on other blokes’ boyfriends.”

“Lou’s not my boyfriend,” I said unsteadily. I didn’t want to move. I wanted to hide in this corner until this latest humiliation—public tears, worse to me than public sex—was over. The tugging sensation increased, and I got up, only half voluntarily. He looked into my face. “Come on,” he said softly. “It’ll be better. Come on.”

I didn’t believe him, but the sheer technicalities of making my doped body walk with him onto the dance floor distracted me, restored to me some kind of control. I tried to recognise the track. Not “Riverside,” thank Christ—something older, from about six years ago. “Pray” by Syntax. Rippling, insistent bass line under a bone-melting vocal. The floor was heaving. I couldn’t imagine Aaron leaping about with this bunch of kids, and for me, it would be a physical impossibility. I tried to break away from him.

He put an arm around my waist and, without the least effort or hint of force, reeled me in. I didn’t even know what was happening until I was pressed close against him, breathing that sun-and-earth scent. There was no leaping involved. He moved with an unhurried power, picking up the strong first beat in the bar, drawing me in with him, instant sweet synch. His hand went to the small of my back. I clutched at him reflexively, first just in order to stay on my feet, and then because I never wanted to let go.

We were the last men standing that night in the House. Midnight came and went, then small hours, and the club emptied out of all but its hard core. The dance floor population thinned down. I saw them go, saw space appear between the grappling, gyrating couples and groups. I watched, held fast, from over Aaron’s shoulder. Time became strange for me. He slid his hands slowly down my back, leaving trails of warmth behind them. He found his target on my arse, his grip large and competent, and when I returned the embrace in kind—hesitantly, because something about him made me shy, even after my recent performances—he smiled against my ear.
Ah yes.
A whisper through the bass, hot, racking me with shudders.
Yes.
He pushed his hips against me, and time was strange. I thought I could soar straight to silent climax there and then if he held me like that, and I could feel that he was hard and ready too. But whether the cocktail of drugs and tequila inside me was holding me back, or his guiding rhythm was deliberately slowing me down, the arousal prolonged itself, stretched out like pouring honey. I gave up my grasp on his backside and put my arms round his neck. He rocked me, and time stretched. I closed my eyes.

The last men standing. The music had stopped, harsh overhead neons flickering up to kill the strobes and whirling colours. We were alone. I jerked my head up. We were still moving—only just; the shadow of a dance. I’d slept on my feet in his embrace. I felt myself blush to the hairline. “Oh God. I’m sorry. I…I think I had too much to drink.”

“It’s all right.” He didn’t let go of me. His eyes were hazel again—a little tired in the neon, full of amusement and an affection I couldn’t remember deserving. “Did you ever think about stopping?”

I stared at him. I’d thought about cutting back of course. Staying off spirits, not drinking alone, keeping it for weekends or every other night. Weaning myself off nice and slow, because I could sure as fuck see that I needed to. I’d make a schedule of withdrawal in my head and lose myself in its complexities. “What? Just…stopping?”

“Yes. From now. Just stopping.”

“I dunno. I…” Glasses were rattling on the tables around us as the collectors went to work. The overheads flickered on and off. Somewhere off in the distance, I heard a vacuum cleaner start to whine. “Don’t know if I could.”

“Okay,” he said, as if this and any other spineless piece of ambivalence I cared to expose were all fine with him. Nothing to worry about. “You fairly sober now?”

I gave it thought. I should have been. I’d slept most of it off on his beautiful shoulder. I ran a surreptitious check for marks of drool. “I think so. Fairly.”

“Good. I want to take you home, and I have to know yes means yes.”

“Oh.” Breath left my lungs. I shivered. I should at least appear a little bit harder to get, shouldn’t I? But I didn’t have the strength. Not to say no to the sunlight. “Okay,” I said. “Yes. I mean yes.”

***

We sat in the back of the taxi like strangers. This was the awkward part. I’d bailed at traffic lights before now, unable to face the complexities of extricating myself politely from my latest social entanglement. I was tired, and I hadn’t lied back at the club—I was sobering up. I hadn’t done this before. Never gone home with someone in clearheaded knowledge of what I was doing. Some blokes wanted to neck like randy teenagers on the backseat, as if showing off their conquest for the (usually disgusted) cabbie. I was relieved Aaron seemed happy to keep to his own side. His profile, caressed by oncoming headlights, was calm. Distant somehow. Lost in thought.

I swallowed, suddenly nervous. It made a tiny sound. Aaron looked up. He didn’t shift from his seat, but he put a hand across it and took mine.

The cab pulled up outside a big, featureless block on the Quayside. Its frontage looked out over the water. Having offered to pay for the cab and been courteously refused, I stood on the kerb, trying to take in the sheer cliff of brick and glass—felt my elbow warmly clasped as the night shifted round me, tipping on its axis.

“Come on inside. Before you fall down.”

His flat was on the sixth or seventh floor. I lost count as the digits in the lift flickered by. I’d run out of small talk, and now my energy was going too. Standing so near to him in a confined space was making my head spin. He filled me with a need I was afraid I’d soon be too weak to assuage. I’d been living for the last day or so on artificial toxins and air, and thinking about my life at the moment gave me a vision of circling, snapping wolves. God, I should have grabbed that abandoned half bottle of wine I’d seen on my way out of the club: with that inside me, I could have been entwined around him, not standing mute, staring at the industrial carpet…Finally the doors hissed wide, and he pressed a hand between my shoulders, as if I needed guidance.

There was a corridor. The place looked like a hotel. Aaron said, “I work on an oil rig. It’s normally four weeks on, two off, though I’m back and forth a bit more than that just now…This is where they put us up on our off duty.” He pulled out a bunch of keys from his pocket, and after drawing me to a halt outside one of the anonymous doors, unlocked it. Pushed it open. This was all fine. Routine, although he was certainly politer than most, gesturing me ahead into the hallway. I smiled at him. Made my casual walk inside, glancing about me with polite interest, except all I could see were flickering sparks. My shoulder hit a door frame, and I crashed to my knees on the carpet.