Sailing past the shuttered travel agent, sliding past the greasy cheeks of McDonald’s, skimming back through the deserted heart of the city. She loathes people who urinate in public places —
‘But I have no choice,’ she says to the brick clock tower standing above her. She scrabbles her way into some bushes, rustling through crisp packets and discarded condom wrappers. And this is where we’ll leave her for the moment: squatting there at midnight, with twigs scratching her perfect behind. It’s a good time, a tactful time, to rewind.
LET’S GO BACK, FOR a minute, into the building recently vacated by Lace. That hulk of a 1950s block, designed for maximum human storage and minimum pleasure. Let’s reverse up the lift shaft, fifteen floors, and run backwards along the low-ceilinged corridor to re-enter the one-roomed flat. A gleaming galley kitchen, some shiny chrome furniture, and stuffy air stirred once a day by discreet vents near the floor. ‘The windows are designed to be looked out of,’ explains the man who lives here, ‘not opened.’
This place is a homage to static living. Lace says it silently; there’s no point in voicing what she thinks, especially considering the reason she’s here.
Her clothes come off easily. Her dress flakes off her pale body like a single petal. Then come her pink satin bra and her scarlet silk knickers. Matching underwear is necessary only for those who need reassurance: Lace is not one of them.
Walk with her to the bed, watch her topple in time; spin the hands of the clock backwards and forwards, to find the exact post-coital moment when she’s lying encircled in the muscular golden-haired arms of a man who’s professedly enamoured.
‘Enamoured,’ she muses. ‘Is it enamoured of, by, or with?’ She’s hoping to distract him with prepositions but this man is a banker, a person to whom figures are more interesting than words. And speaking of figures —
‘Has anyone ever told you,’ he murmurs, ‘how perfect your breasts are?’
‘Many people. I hear it quite often.’
He laughs in astonishment and he pinches her nipple a little too hard. He isn’t used to truth. Most of his days are spent in the company of testosterone-fuelled men who are paid big money to inflate balances and hook investors. And most of his evenings have been spent with young women whose luscious lips and burgeoning breasts have been bought for them, although they assure him their assets were bestowed on them at birth. Honesty? It’s so unexpected that he’s taken aback.
‘You’re so funny.’ He speaks into her hair. ‘Funny, gorgeous and intelligent. Remind me again what you do for a living?’
‘I’ve never told you.’ Lace is more intent on how to slip the human noose (one arm is lying over her stomach, the other hooked under her neck). ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ Suddenly the word ‘enamoured’ is pressing on her bladder; it’s made her nervous, like any variation on the L word.
‘Stay,’ he orders. His breath, tequila mixed with orange, settles over Lace’s face like a fishing net. ‘Stay with me.’
The black satin sheets are twisting into a dark knot around her ankles. Already the banker is becoming aroused again; he’s never been to bed with a girl with a sense of humour, who wears a white vintage dress and a black coat with holes in the pockets. He presses himself hard against her smooth arse. ‘You’re not sleepy.’ He speaks directly into her ear. Is this an order, too?
It’s now or never. Lace leaps out of the bed, pale limbs shining, long hair rippling down her spine. She can feel it: he’s not just trying to hook her, he’s hooked. The bachelor’s bed is awash with love. No wonder the girl is leaving in a hurry!
But stop. Let’s go further back still and find out how the unlikely pair met.
IT WAS A GREY afternoon, with a fraying wind. An unfriendly day — and Lace had no choice but to engage with it. She knotted a scarf around her neck and dived through the gritty surface; underneath, there was litter (always litter in this city) and tatty leaves that no tree would admit to. Above her stood the stern clock tower, admonishing her in familiar tones: Too late!
No one goes to the bank these days. Everyone else is able to sit at home, shuffling their finances about with small quiet clicks — so why does Lace always end up sprinting through the streets, sliding into the foyer of the bank with thirty seconds to spare before the navy-suited woman snaps her mouth closed, folds up her day, and marches towards the roller door? The details are dull: something to do with trust funds, paperwork and necessary human signatures, a legacy so weighty that Lace feels almost flattened by it.
‘Too late?’ She echoes the clock, but at least she’s inside, pushing hair out of her eyes, picking leaves off her coat. All around her is a buzz of navy-suited drones; she’s the only non-worker-bee in the hive.
‘Technically, you’ve made it in time!’ It’s the first time she’s seen him, the golden-haired man who’s making a rare appearance on the ground floor. He’s dazzling, in his dark blue jacket and his sapphire cufflinks. ‘Technically,’ he muses, ‘you have eighteen seconds before we close.’
‘Disappointing.’ Lace’s breath is burning in her lungs. ‘I usually make it here faster. But the lights were against me.’
‘You’re a risk-taker,’ says the golden-haired man approvingly. Does he whisper rule-maker, ball-breaker, heart-acher? It’s hard to say because of the din that’s going on in Lace’s body: the blood thundering in her arteries, the pulses hammering behind her ears, the breath rasping in her throat — not to mention her brain announcing that, the way the blue-eyed man is looking at her, it’s only a matter of time.
‘Yes, it’s only a matter of time.’ She smoothes her wind-blown dress over her knees.
Out of context, it’s unlikely that the golden-haired banker understands this, but he smiles regardless. ‘Time is of the essence,’ he nods.
‘Time and the hour run through the longest —’ Lace loves competitive word games, but she’s interrupted by a cough coming from behind her, so pointed that it jabs through her hair and her scarf, and into her neck. ‘Ouch!’ She spins around.
‘Technically,’ says the navy-suited brunette who’s often rolled down the door in Lace’s face, ‘The Customer is on time.’ Is she joining in the Time Game, too? But no — almost immediately it becomes clear that she’s not the game-playing type. ‘Practically, however —’ she looks at the blue-eyed banker — ‘no member of your staff, however well-trained, can affect a transaction in eighteen seconds.’
‘E-ffect,’ corrects Lace politely. ‘Affect used as a verb usually implies some form of pretence.’
Most appropriately, the brunette pretends not to hear this. ‘You’ll have to come back tomorrow.’ She heaves some keys out of her buttoned-up neckline and positions them between her fingers like knuckledusters.
‘Jacinta-Jones!’ The banker enters the fray before it becomes physical. His hyphenation of the brunette’s name is masterful: slightly flirtatious, yet respectful. Lace admires his technique, even though she’s strangely irritated by the blush that rises in Jacinta-Jones’ already rouged cheeks.
‘Sir?’ Jacinta-Jones pulls her ponytail over her nylon shoulder, twirls the split ends.
‘Surely,’ suggests the peace-brokering banker, ‘we can accommodate our client just this once? What do you think, Jacinta-Jones?’ In the space of two short sentences, he has a) succeeded in elevating Lace from Customer to Privileged Client, b) ostensibly deferred to someone beneath him, thus asserting his superiority.
Jacinta chews her berry-glossed lip. ‘I was hoping to get away on time tonight. It’s…’ She pauses, ploughs on. ‘It’s an appointment with my beautician. It’s been months since I got my eyelashes dyed.’
No! Lace winces: doesn’t Jacinta-Jones realise that beauty secrets should remain exactly that — secrets? She adds this to her long list of planned projects that will help women feel more confident about themselves. What might she call this one — Classes in Subterfuge?
But the banker is speaking to his employee. ‘Of course. Run along to your beautifier.
I’ll take care of our client.’ Lace senses him behind her; already the air is redolent not only with expensive cologne but also desire.
Jacinta looks stricken, realising she’s been backed into a corner, pushed out of the picture. ‘Perhaps I should postpone? You shouldn’t have to stay, sir.’ Now her cheeks are so red that her neglected eyelashes look bleached of all colour; Lace would feel sympathetic if the roller-door keys weren’t still pointed like knives at her stomach.
‘My pleasure.’ The golden-haired man nods sincerely, callously. And with those two final words Jacinta fades off the page, and Lace is borne on the air of the chosen and the victorious, out of the scuttling ground floor, through some sliding doors, into the stairwell.
‘We have to climb the first flight,’ explains the banker. ‘Jacinta-Jones has already done lockdown on this floor.’
He starts up the stairs in front of her, though keeping slightly to one side; a man who works in the penthouse office has no need to ogle women. Lace watches the way the hems of his trousers rise and fall over his leather heels, never revealing even a millimetre of sock, never falling in bags. How is this possible? It preoccupies her all the way to the first floor, where the lift waits for them like an obedient horse.
Ting! The door opens and the golden banker ushers her in. Once he’s swiped his card he stands elaborately away from her, as if adhering to the unspoken rules. (This is Lace’s first misreading of the situation.)
They rise together into the grey-yellow evening, the city tilting beneath them. Each surrounding glass wall bears small human smudges. Lace looks down, past her red-suede toes, through a number of transparent floors to the pit of work, wistfulness and lust below. ‘So, are they all in love with you?’
‘Only the women I haven’t slept with.’ He laughs, making it unclear whether this is a joke. ‘The men don’t like me at all.’
‘Really? Women don’t like me.’
‘I can’t imagine why,’ says the banker dryly.
It’s in his office — a vast well-lit space, hanging high above the evening like a spaceship — that he first touches her. She feels slightly dizzy from the altitude, and the swiftness of the progression from client to prospect. How does he touch her? By nothing more than placing a pen in her hand. But in less than forty-eight hours, he will have slipped his hands inside her dress and caressed her full and perfect breasts.
‘You told me the wrong name.’ He studies the details on his computer: it seems he has her whole life displayed on the screen in front of him. ‘Why did you do that?’
Lace looks at him coolly. ‘I changed my name as soon as I was old enough to think for myself. I simply haven’t bothered to inform the official world.’
He takes that as she wants him to: with silent acceptance. By now it’s clear, not only to Jacinta-Jones and the entire Customer Service section, but also to the dust mites in the carpet and the gulls soaring outside the windows and the stars that are now appearing in the dusky sky, that Lace and the banker are no longer in the ‘officially professional’ category. They’re already intimate. It’s only a matter of time.
On the way back to the lift, he touches her once more. As he reaches for the lift button his hand brushes the curve of her left buttock. The lightest of touches, but it burns through her coat, her dress and her lacy French knickers, branding her skin. ‘Dinner,’ he states. His blue eyes are so brilliant they outshine the spotlights in the wood-panelled ceiling. (The way he gives orders rather than asking is the second misreading on Lace’s part.)
‘I’ll ring you.’ She takes his card, winds her white scarf about her neck like a pilot and looks at him levelly. His hair, swept back from his forehead, almost reaches his collar. ‘Aren’t bankers supposed to have short hair?’ She knows already how it will feel to touch it, smooth it, then pull it a little. ‘See you later, then. À bientôt!’
He stays up there in the haze, she descends. By the time she reaches the fourth floor, the golden-haired banker’s card has already fallen through the hole in her pocket onto the scuffed floor of the lift. For the next twenty-four hours, his identity will fly up and down, over and over, trodden on by countless heels and kicked by careless toes. In fact she doesn’t know his name, has deliberately not looked at the plaque on his door. In her head she calls him ‘Sir’, just as Jacinta-Jones does, but in a mockingly deferential tone, and she continues to do this even when she meets him the following evening (as she hasn’t rung him, he rings her). As she chooses a cocktail, eats a steak, drinks water, sips wine, accompanies him outside for a cigarette, accepts his kisses, slides her hand inside his trousers — ‘Sir,’ she says, though who she’s mocking (her date, his employee, or herself for entering the ring) is impossible to tell.
WHEN THEY MEET AGAIN, the second evening in a row, he’s wearing an expensive leather jacket and blue jeans. ‘Do you think I look too much like an off-duty banker?’
‘Well, you are an off-duty banker,’ she retorts. Her white dress — the one you’ve already seen — is being wrapped closely around her legs by the amorous wind.
‘That doesn’t mean I want to look like one. Do you want to look like what you are?’ But he doesn’t ask what she does, which leads to the third misreading. He really seemed not to care! He was completely cavalier! (This is Lace some hours later, chastising herself for her misguided certainty as she flees down the corridor with her shoes in her hands.)
Certainly he does all the quintessential bachelor things: he’s the very image of someone who would never call a girl for a third date. He orders tiramisu for her without asking if she wants it, and orders cognac only for himself. One minute he’s tilting her face towards him, the next he’s taking a phone call and blocking her out for minutes on end; he buys her a mountain of casino chips, then concentrates only on his own game; and at the end of the night he gives his address unhesitatingly to the taxi driver with only a quick sidelong glint at Lace.
Yes, it had been a case of so far, so good. Only later, when he’s carefully undressing her (her skin so pale, like porcelain! she might break!), does she have the first doubt. As he unbuttons her delicate dress, revealing the fuchsia-pink bra, he gives a small laugh. ‘You’re different from anyone I’ve ever known.’ This, although a cliché said by many men in the moments before sex, is undoubtedly true — but it also sounds close to emotional.
She pushes him away, looks around for reassurance. It is a single man’s room, the room of an assuredly single avoider of intimacy who has plenty of overnight guests and no long-term ones. Designer furniture in leather and chrome, unused kitchenette, impersonal dark carpet —
‘Fuck me on the carpet!’ she entreats. She lies spread-eagled on the black wool, turning her head to look at the floor-to-ceiling view of tall lighted buildings. But instead he picks her up, in surprisingly muscular arms, and carries her to the bed with an unnerving reverence. And afterwards he wraps those arms, covered all over with ginger-gold hairs, around her and murmurs something like, ‘You greatly affect me’ (was he remembering her lecture to the wretched Jacinta-Jones?). And then, even worse, lying so close that his voice buzzes through her body, he says the word that sets her heart fluttering — something about being enamoured.
Opposite his room is a building with a glass-tiled stairwell: the light goes on when someone enters, and off when no one’s there. She turns her head on the pillow (his grip feels a little vice-like), watches and counts. Light on, light off. Person, no person. On the fifth count, she promises herself, she will take flight.
Finally she’s free, flying down an unfamiliar green-painted corridor that clangs underfoot like the gangway of a ship. No time for a toilet stop when you’re fleeing the Titanic and a once-reliable captain who’s lapsed into love. One shoe on, one in her hand, hasty buttons on a crooked dress, bed-head hair and a sultry bee-stung mouth. (No more kisses from the banker? This alone gives her a pinch of regret.)
‘Do you have the key?’ Sharp voices are ahead of her. ‘No, you’ve got the key.’ She
bounds past a pinch-mouthed woman and a poker-arsed man who have taken an icy dip in the city and are returning, chilled, to their cabin door.
‘Who are you?’ The woman’s mouth folds in on itself like a paper clip. She stares at Lace as if she’d like to ban her from the building.
‘Don’t worry!’ reassures Lace, hopping, cramming on her second shoe. ‘I’ve already banned myself.’
‘You’re losing something!’ The ramrod husband loosens up at the flash of pink underwear. He starts after Lace, picking up what she’s dropping: a handful of mints.
‘Keep them!’ calls Lace, sprinting. (She must mend her pockets; men collecting her possessions is becoming a predictable line of pursuit.)
‘You pussy-chasing pervert!’ she hears behind her. ‘Shut up, you paranoid piranha!’ Then it’s ‘piggish’ and ‘prudish’, ‘predatory’ and ‘predictable’, alliterative insults ringing off the vomit-green walls, bouncing behind her all the way to the end of the corridor.
The lift is on her side; of course it is. It’s waiting for her, open-doored, glad to receive her into its empty mouth and spend some time alone with her. What is it with glass in this city? wonders Lace, who suffers slightly from vertigo. Why does no one build opaque floors any more, or walls behind which you can hide?
But at least no one’s following her, nor is anyone waiting below. At last she’s free, suspended in her own private fall: not falling from grace, rather falling into it. For being alone is what Lace does best; it’s the only time she’s not aware of the world’s hot breath on the nape of her neck. ‘So tired,’ she whispers to the four glinting walls, which stand back to give her space and sympathetically remain silent.
Suicide Club, The Page 2