Submarine

by Joe Dunthorne

  He snaps off four long-necked whites and a few flowerless greens and holds them out.

  Zoe is waiting for me in the café, wearing thick-cut beige cords that droop on to her green plimsolls and a baby-blue T-shirt beneath a black zip-up hoodie. The top is unzipped to the point where her brand-new boobs strain against the zip. The audience are finishing their hot drinks. She is smiling, as well she might be. Her sheeny brown hair is tucked behind her ears.

  She doesn’t say a word about the Chinese gardenias. Taking my free hand, she pulls me through a set of double doors into near total darkness. She leads me up some steps. I use the darkness to imagine Zoe as a gross pancake stack, worming up the stairs. She stops briefly on a landing. To my left, down a short corridor, a thin dash of light at floor level implies the shape of a door.

  ‘That one goes backstage,’ she says, continuing up. At the top of the stairs, she opens a single door.

  The control room is hardly lit, darker than romance. She clicks on a long-necked lamp; it gives off a blue light like the ones in train-station toilets that stop heroin users from seeing their own veins. It gives the room the feel of being deep underwater.

  ‘Welcome to the boudoir. Make yourself at home.’ She rolls a leather-padded office chair towards me. I can see it has air suspension. ‘As guest of honour, you may also have a spinny seat.’

  I hold the flowers out. In the blue light, the white gardenias glow the colour of X-rays.

  She shakes her head.

  ‘They’re Chinese gardenias,’ I say.

  I doubt anybody ever gave Pie a bouquet.

  I’m still holding out the flowers.

  ‘Give them to me at the end,’ she says.

  The upper half of the far wall is taken up with plugs protruding from rubber-rimmed holes. It looks like an oversized version of the whack-a-rat game in the marina arcade. But with the plugs hanging limp and dead.

  ‘That’s called the patch bay,’ she says.

  Beneath the plugs is a coral reef of yellow, green and blue leads, bunching together, sticking out at all angles.

  Zoe says: ‘Check out me cans.’

  She’s wearing leather-trim headphones that have a microphone attached. The mic bobs in front of her lips like a mosquito.

  ‘I said: check out my cans,’ she says.

  I exaggeratedly perv on her tits.

  ‘Thank you.’ She slips her headphones to her shoulders. ‘We call headphones cans.’

  ‘Great joke,’ I say.

  I never thought I’d see the day when Zoe would deliberately draw attention to her own body.

  ‘It’s techie humour. We spend a lot of time in the dark.’

  Her sound desk sits in front of the window; there are rows of sliders, knobs and a single golf-ball-shaped roller. A computer screen displays rectangles of block colour: red, blue, green.

  Through the window I can see into the audience, blue side-lights run down the steps. The stage, brightly lit from above, is made from interlocking pine floorboards. Most of the audience are in their seats; one man is standing up, removing his jumper in silhouette.

  Using both hands, she repositions four faders, steadily lowering the house and onstage lights: the man quickly sits down; the audience focus on the stage.

  ‘It’s terrible but I’m so fucking bored of this play now.’ She jabs a rubber button on the control desk and then slumps into her leather chair. I sit down as well. ‘I know I shouldn’t get bored because it’s the holocaust yadda yadda but I can’t help it.’

  She flips a switch on a squat black box that looks like what I imagine an old transistor radio would look like. A red light pings on. She lifts her headphones from her shoulders to her ears and says: ‘Aaron, sugar?’

  Onstage, the narrator is wearing a dressing gown, sat in an old brown armchair. He is supposed to be missing a hand but I can tell it’s a trick of the sleeve.

  ‘Aah-ron?’

  She gazes blankly down at the stage.

  Her shoulder bag is under the table, unzipped and gaping.

  ‘Just wanted to say hi,’ she burrs into the microphone.

  I have a quick look for a purple diary but all I can see is a hairbrush, a fat black wallet and a tube of E45.

  ‘I’ve got a special friend with me tonight. Say hi, Olly.’

  She looks over at me. I stay perfectly still.

  ‘He’s waving,’ she says.

  As she flicks the switch on the black box, the red light dies.

  ‘I can talk to him but he can’t talk to me because the audience would hear,’ she explains. ‘He’s the stage manager.’

  ‘I thought he was an actor.’

  ‘Ooh, I’ll tell him you said that. Aaron hates actors.’

  She leans over and presses a single button on the sound desk. The narrator’s spotlight fades. Zoe waits for a few seconds before pressing the same button again. A yellow wash comes up over the stage.

  ‘So, wow, sound and lighting director?’ I say, doing my impressed face. It’s important for Zoe that I appear to buy in to her new life.

  ‘Yeah, you can just call me Houdini.’ She waggles her fingers like an evil wizard. ‘Basically, I digitally preprogram all the lighting changes so that all I have to do is press the “go” button on cue. Not so mysterious.’

  ‘Oh. Still, that’s really cool.’

  ‘That’s why I always get really bored up here. I end up just mucking around with Aaron.’

  Aaron must have been the one who taught her how to fit in.

  During the first big musical number, we wheel our chairs up close to the sound desk so that we can see all of the stage. This is the bit of the play where the Jewish theatre company are practising for their upcoming performance. Some of the Jews keep getting the song wrong and messing up the dance moves. But it’s not particularly funny.

  Zoe introduces me to the cast.

  ‘Those girls singing are part-time lesbians. They had a threesome at the last cast party. Nathan – who plays Kruk – he’s only fourteen, claims he’s a paedophile stuck in the body of a boy. Owain, the short one on the left, is a sleaze. Arthur – who’s playing the dummy – he’s a slut but we love him. Jonny – the one talking now – is sweet and beautiful and in love with Arwen. Arwen’s playing Hayyah – the one with the red hair – she is in love with herself mostly, and a little bit with Jonny. Aaron hates everyone and sleeps with everyone in equal proportion. Honestly, this lot are unbelievable. Our last cast party was basically an orgy.’

  ‘Yeah, wow. Because there’s an orgy scene in the play.’

  ‘I know, you wouldn’t believe the amount of sexual tension after a whole day rehearsing that scene.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  She swivels her chair to face me.

  ‘Or even worse: watching your friends rehearsing an orgy.’

  ‘Ha.’

  I turn mine to face her.

  She makes a lot of eye contact. I think she has been watching too much theatre; this whole thing feels stage-managed.

  ‘So have you got a girlfriend?’

  ‘No, we broke up but I think that was for the best, in the end,’ I say, since we’re trading clichés.

  ‘Oh shit, I’m sorry.’

  She skits her chair towards mine. Our knees dock.

  ‘There’s no point having a boyfriend or girlfriend at our age. Me and Aaron went out for a bit but it was just pointless – we both knew that we wanted to have other people. In Versive, everyone goes with everyone. We’re all still friends.’

  She has certainly convinced herself. I bet he cheated on her.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘like a commune.’

  She reaches past my arm and presses ‘go’. A spotlight comes up on Hayyah, the beautiful redhead. She starts to sing.

  I remember this bit of the play. The song’s called ‘Swanee’ – a jazz number by George Gershwin. Kittel, the SS officer, forces them to play the song even though jazz is banned by the Ministry for Culture.

  ‘When did y
ou break up with your girlfriend?’ she asks, touching me on the knee.

  ‘About six months ago,’ I say, still watching Hayyah as she twirls across the stage. She is substantially more beautiful than Zoe.

  ‘Oh. What you need’s a rebound.’

  She flicks the switch on the transistor box; the red light blips on. She holds the microphone to her lips.

  ‘Aaron, you’d like to have sex up here, wouldn’t you?’

  She smiles at me.

  ‘Don’t you think this would be an amazing place to have sex?’

  ‘Who are you speaking to?’ I ask.

  She pulls the headphones down on to her shoulders.

  ‘Who do you think?’ she says.

  I look at her. Her ears have turned a dark crimson. I can’t help thinking of the times that me and Chips talked about what it would be like to have sex with Fat: Chips with his hands down his pants, making the farty squelchy noise with his foreskin.

  She leans towards me: ‘You can see them but they can’t see you. You can hear them but they can’t hear you.’

  This is the bit where the Jewish actors are choosing costumes for their play. Weiskopf, an entrepreneurial Jew, has recycled the clothes of people who died in the war. He says that all the blood’s been washed off and the bullet holes have been darned. I liked the character of Weiskopf. He makes the best of a bad situation.

  She drops the headphones into her lap and puts her hands on my knees.

  ‘You’re embarrassed,’ she says.

  She moves her hands up to my thighs.

  I am embarrassed; Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct was more subtle than this.

  ‘I’m not embarrassed,’ I say. ‘It would be an amazing place to have sex.’

  The more she comes on to me, the more I think of her in the dinner hall with a gob full of turkey burger, taking a sip of orange squash anyway.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asks.

  Her tongue sneaks out to wet her bottom lip.

  This is the bit of the play where Kittel announces that the Führer will accept no increase in the population of the Jewish race and, therefore, Jewish families are only allowed up to two children. The chief of the Jewish police is using a stick to count the number of each family’s children. Father, mother, child, child. The third child gets sent away, offstage, which means that they are killed.

  ‘Logistics,’ I say.

  I have no condoms. I will have to use the rhythm technique.

  ‘Logistics?’ she says, leaning towards me. She takes a quick glance at the stage – the surviving family members have just finished a depressing song – before reaching past me to press the magic button. The stage darkens; a reading lamp picks out the narrator, who’s asleep in his armchair. One person in the audience tries to start a round of applause but nobody else is up for it.

  She pulls a lever to lower her chair; there is a shush of air escaping as she descends.

  Onstage, they are clearing the set as the narrator snoozes. I watch two men heave off a suitcase.

  She lifts the headphone mic close to her lips. Resting her forearms on my thighs, she leans into my crotch as she speaks: ‘This is your thirty-second booty call.’

  My chair rolls backwards slightly. She yanks me back towards her by my belt loops. I don’t own any belts.

  Zoe holds one ear of the headphones against her skull and listens.

  She raises an index finger. ‘When I say go, you press the “go” button, okay?’ she says.

  ‘Yup,’ I say.

  She can’t even see the stage.

  ‘Go,’ she says.

  I poke the rubber lump with my forefinger.

  A mellow light bathes three ghetto girls; they are hanging out by a pram.

  ‘And again,’ she says.

  I press again.

  The narrator wakes up as a dusty brown light puddles around him.

  ‘Now we’ve got three minutes ’til the next cue.’ She reaches under my chair and pulls a lever. The chair hisses down as my eye line sinks out of view of the stage. She’s certainly planned this all meticulously.

  ‘Mind these,’ she says, putting the headphones on my head.

  She stands up, unzips her top and lets it fall off her arms.

  Through the cans, I can hear the dialogue onstage but I can’t see who’s saying it.

  ‘I’ve got rather a headache.’

  ‘Take a sequence of headbaths. You’ll never suffer again.’

  Zoe’s T-shirt says Prozac on it as if it were a washing-powder logo.

  ‘A sequence of headbaths?’

  ‘Yes! The sequence is: put your head in water three times, take it out twice.’

  As she yanks off her T-shirt, it gets caught on her large head. I take this moment to have a really good look at her belly. There’s still a fair bit of give, her flesh tucks into her belt, but, yes, I’m willing to admit that she may be attractive.

  She pops the T-shirt over her head and throws it on the floor as if nothing has gone wrong. Her boobs are big, they bulge from her bra. The blue light gives her skin a semi-fluorescent sheen.

  Pulling the headphones off my head, she slots them back round her own neck. She adjusts the microphone so that it hovers near the side of her mouth like a thirsty fly.

  She speaks very clearly, as though reading from an autocue: ‘You know you need a special theatre licence to show nudity.’

  It’s a bit sad, but I do have an erection.

  She smiles with her teeth slightly apart, her tongue mousing out, as though she is about to laugh. She straddles me tightly, pressing her legs round my belly. The chair absorbs the pressure with a humph.

  ‘So you’d better not tell the authorities about this,’ she says, yanking at my T-shirt.

  ‘Fuck the authorities,’ I say, getting into it.

  ‘Now, I want you right up inside me,’ she says, arching her back. She’s supple. I hold her at the waist. She moves my hands on to her tits.

  ‘Uh!’ she uhs.

  She is very responsive.

  Up close to her body, I examine the gentle curves at her sides and on her upper arms.

  She is ruffling my hair frantically.

  ‘God!’ she says.

  Me and Chips used to joke that it would be like having sex with a custard slice.

  I do have an enormous hard-on.

  She gyrates her hips; her bum and thighs rub my cock through my trousers.

  ‘You’re so fucking hard,’ she says.

  She rolls her head around on her neck like a boxer warming up.

  She whispers in my ear: ‘Tell me that you wan’ fuck me hard, make me sweat.’

  In the excitement, she misses out a word.

  ‘I want to fuck you so hard that your body drips with sweat,’ I say, grammatically.

  We have not kissed yet. I lean forward and kiss the space in between her tits. She smells slightly musty. Like someone who has spent three weeks in the dark.

  I put my hand on the crotch of her cords; it is difficult to define her clitoris – each thick rib could be the sweet spot. She doesn’t seem concerned.

  ‘Uuuh, yeah, fucking right,’ she says, leaning into my ear again. The microphone prangs against my neck. ‘Now say that you want to lick me, to eat me out.’

  I can’t help thinking of the filling in a chicken and mushroom pie. Or a Calippo.

  ‘I want to lick you out.’

  I kiss her tits through her bra. I can make out the shadows of her nipples.

  ‘That’s it – lick my tits!’

  I tongue her scratchy, synthetic bra. The polyester makes me want to retch.

  She smiles and writhes.

  I feel quite close to coming so I think about all the skinny bodies looking through the barbed wire at Auschwitz.

  ‘Tell me that your dick is hard. Tell me that you’re hard for me.’

  I can do one better.

  ‘My dick is stiff as a Nazi salute, for you,’ I say.


  ‘Hmm, mmm, ooooh,’ she groans.

  Her thigh is squishing my erection.

  She pushes off the floor with her legs and we roll and spin across the room, knocking against the desk.

  Her belt is held with two complicated-looking clasps so I just keep rubbing the crotch of her trousers as if it were a magic lamp.

  She groans, long and shuddery, her breathing cuts in and out.

  I don’t bother about undoing her belt, I just shove my hand down the top of her trousers and delve into her knickers. Because she is so close to me, I cannot turn my palm towards her and have to settle for using my knuckles as a makeshift sex tool.

  She glances across at the red light, glowing like a clitoris, on the transmitter.

  I move the top of my hand back and forth against the tacky, hairy space between her legs.

  ‘Nh,’ she breathes.

  I try and nestle my knuckles inside her.

  ‘Okay!’ she says, before stiffly pulling my hand out.

  She leans over to the transmitter and flicks a switch: the red light fades.

  She stands up, shakes her hair, plucks her bra.

  My penis is chomping at my pants.

  ‘Oh fuck, I’ve just realized. I haven’t got any condoms.’

  The audience applaud. Some of them stand up, their heads appearing in silhouette.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I forgot them.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘I’ll get one from the library toilets.’

  She picks up her Prozac T-shirt and slips it on.

  ‘Shit, look, I’m really sorry. Don’t forget your flowers, babe.’

  She turns to the desk and adjusts some of the switches.

  I can feel a little bit of pre-cum, wet against my belly.

  ‘Come on, Zo, it’s alright,’ I say, feeling suddenly helpless, desperate.

  ‘It’ll look pretty weird if we come out together. You go down to the foyer and wait for me,’ she says.

  I watch her turn a couple of knobs. She told me that all you have to do is press the ‘go’ button.

  Onstage, Hayyah is singing and dancing.

  ‘Oliver. You should go. The show’s almost finished anyway. This next bit takes my full concentration.’

  I walk down the stairs in the dark, repeating the words ‘full concentration’.

  Mr Linton, my history teacher, says we should be careful about using the phrase ‘concentration camp’.