The Afterparty

by Leo Benedictus

  ‘It’s stopped raining,’ she said, glancing at the window even though the blinds were drawn. ‘Why don’t you go up on the roof terrace and I’ll join you in a minute? There should be some beers there.’

  She stood in front of him, one impatient arm propped, teapot-style, upon her hip. No clothes. Not even any effort yet to put them on. She looked amazing. Calvin wanted to do it again.

  ‘You know the way?’ Mellody added, brisk and businesslike.

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’ He had no idea. ‘You just go up. Right?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Right. OK then.’ He just could not stop staring. She was more wonderful than…

  Fucking hell. Mellody. He had just had sex with … Mellody! Mrs Hugo Marks.

  Get in!

  Hugo lay in a bridge from seat and sofa, hands screening out his face, continuously weeping. His back heaved its jacket tight, lengthening the stitches in the central seam, where Michael’s hand still sat. He had placed it there so naturally. Tough luck, know the feeling. Just a pal’s remark. Men did that, didn’t they, for mates? Yet Hugo had collapsed under the contact. Now Michael dared neither to remove his touch, nor smear it tenderly into a stroke. Instead, he held still and wondered: when would be polite to pull away?

  In the patio doors he watched his reflection, monochrome and slicing sharp. A man, sipping whisky, staring sideways, one arm resting awkwardly on the shoulder of a movie star. And behind this layer, a universe of night. To anyone standing in the garden, they would be lit up like an advert. God knows what for. Not whisky anyway.

  Hugo’s sobs intensified. They shrieked and swelled, gathering shoves of emotion until the force of his distress was overwhelming and he just shook silently, as if all his living air had been garrotted out. There was a drowning sound, then a redoubled wail. Michael wanted to get down among the furniture and hug his host. But of course he couldn’t.

  ‘… refused pleas from Vatican doctors that he should return to hospital …’

  He wished that he could turn the sound back down.

  ‘… which does suggest that he is preparing himself for the final journey …’

  At last he took his hand away, and Hugo slumped forwards across the sofa, forcing his face into a brown suede cushion.

  ‘… The chances of an elderly person in this condition with septic shock surviving twenty-four to forty-eight hours are 10 to 20 per cent. But that would be with very aggressive treatment. Without intensive care, the chances of his surviving are nil – unless there is a miracle …’

  Michael leaned back as far as he could without standing, and peered up the empty stairs. Where were the rest of Hugo’s friends? Was he all the man had left in such a moment? Pity, shame and pride alloyed themselves inside him.

  And now a face, blotched with red and shining damply, was rising from its burrow. The mouth opened, it seemed about to speak, then new convulsions overtook it. Hands returned to cover its disgrace.

  The howls continued. He was almost screaming now.

  ‘It’s OK, Hugo,’ Michael said instinctively. ‘We’ll sort it out.’ He did not know quite what this meant, but it felt good.

  The empty cushion lay beside Hugo’s head, still trenched with the indentation of his nose. At the bottom, Michael could not fail to notice where tears and mucus had flowed together into the suede, darkening it. So real, that damp little patch. It made him want to weep another of his own. The feeling passed.

  Mellody waited for the door to close, then locked it. She tottered over to her bag, took out and lit a cigarette, and placed herself delicately on the toilet seat, taking a long deep draw. Her mouth full, she inhaled, and a grey tongue of smoke flickered in and out of her lips. Below, the first dollop of Calvin’s mess slipped into the water.

  What a fucking idiot she was. What a total fucking moron. Pete was a waste of time. Hugo was a waste of time. But this kid … Jesus.

  And without a rubber.

  She steadied herself with another sip of smoke.

  She could actually now be pregnant with a child’s child. (Though she was early in her cycle. Somewhere.) And a baby – like that, with him … Mothers like her did not deserve to live. She belonged on Ricki fucking Lake. She was so stupid. She was selfish and stupid.

  A larger drip leaked out.

  Plap.

  Her lilac blouse, a particular favorite, lay on the floor in front of her. She stared at it for a while. One sleeve was stuck down by a spot of fluid, and a boot stood up beside it, her panties hanging like a damsel from its brim.

  Slop.

  She never carried rubbers in her bag, of course, for fear of what that said. Besides, the counselors in rehab told her frequently that heroin, with time, could damage her fertility. She hoped it had. It suited her, to be a seedless grape.

  Slap.

  A human sound, something muffled, floated through the floor.

  And there was Pete’s plastic bag, crumpled up against the wall where she had left it. The thought of flushing away its contents entered and exited her mind. Or consuming it herself. But coke was no drug to devour alone. Really, it was no drug at all.

  Perhaps Malcolm was still around?

  Mellody sat up, leaving two neat discs where her elbows had pressed into her legs. First white, then reddening as the blood returned.

  Twenty-six minutes. That was how long Hugo had been crying. Michael could not prevent himself from working it out. Twenty-six minutes since Sky’s squat little clock said 03:31 and he had stared at the digits with his focus locked as if he hoped to hide himself between the pixels. Meanwhile he had asked himself the same repeated question: whom could he tell about all this? Camille? Never. No. That would be plain betrayal. Sally then? She would be rapt. He could see her gleaming as he gave her every detail of the night. Indeed, it would be a kind of lying not to. But could she hold the information in? Was that reasonable? The alternative was telling nobody. To live with heavy memories, to become a secret stranger to his friends … Michael really was not sure if he could handle that. He was a private person. Among his intimates he needed to be truly known.

  And now at last the howls were fading.

  Twenty-six minutes was a long time.

  ‘Sorry, Mike.’ Hugo said it very quietly.

  ‘That’s OK. You’ve done nothing to be sorry for.’

  What else could he say? It was Calvin who should be sorry, that priapic little rodent. At first sight he had seemed too young and stupid to be trouble. But then it was the young and stupid that you had to worry about, wasn’t it? Like immature rattle-snakes, Michael had once been told; more dangerous because they don’t know what they’re doing yet. And Calvin had been on X-Factor, too, it seemed, which made sense. There was a yearning, prime-time emptiness about the kid. But going back with a married woman, to her husband’s own home, at his birthday party … It took a very nasty kind of child to gratify himself like that.

  ‘I just don’t know where all this has come from.’ Hugo was shaking his head, avoiding Michael’s eye.

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He noticed, with a flinch, that he was patting the shoulder again.

  ‘Thanks.’ Hugo attempted a laugh. ‘This must be so embarrassing for you.’

  Was it? Michael was not sure any more. He was loyal. He was bored. He had finished his drink. He wanted another. He was angry at that half-grown little shit …

  ‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’m just glad you don’t have to cope with this on your own.’ That was a nice thing to say. He was normally not much good in the consoling role. ‘I’m sure it must be difficult,’ he ventured further, ‘you know, being famous. With all the pressure and photographers and everything.’

  ‘It’s a fucking bitch,’ Hugo agreed. ‘I spend half my time terrified of losing everything, and the other half feeling guilty about having it.’ He returned to his whisky, two salivary islands floating where the ice had been.

  ‘But you shouldn’t feel guilty,’ Michael said. ‘You w
orked for it.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Hugo blew his nose, and did not sound convinced. ‘I did. But I’m supposed to feel lucky, too. You know, like I’m living everybody else’s dream. Those people,’ he gesticulated at the outside world, ‘they think they own you. Like it’s, “We are the ones who put you where you are today!” Yes you are, guys! Thanks a lot!’ He expelled a single puff of bitter laughter, sounding drunker than before.

  ‘Slike.’ Hugo had momentum. ‘It’s like they consume me. And it’s like that gives them rights. That means they can camp outside my house, and send me shit in the post, and take pictures everywhere I go, and I’ve got to fucking smile about it! And they interpret everything I do. People think everything is part of a conspiracy, that it’s all about making them like me, or hate Mellody, or buy stuff, or whatever.’

  ‘They just need to feel important,’ Michael suggested. ‘They’d rather be manipulated by the rich and famous than ignored.’

  ‘Exactly!’

  Hugo clapped his hands together.

  Michael was emboldened. ‘You guys …’ He swigged his empty scotch with feeling. He had never thought this through before. ‘… you guys are special because you are the unignored.’ He felt dizzy. Flushed. As needed, perhaps, as he had ever been.

  And Hugo nodded. ‘But I wish I wasn’t. Sometimes I just think about giving it all up. Fucking off somewhere with a bag of cash. Grow a beard, buy a bar. I know where I’d go as well.’ He looked very serious.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Peru.’

  ‘Why Peru?’

  ‘My movies always bomb in Peru. Sometimes they bomb in loads of places.’ He laughed. ‘But I’ve never had one do well in Peru. They just don’t fucking like me over there. Sounds like my kind of place.’

  Michael glanced over at the television again. The cut-out Pope still hovered above Sky’s sleek and indefatigable anchorpeople.

  04:28.

  And still he wasn’t tired.

  ‘I know it’s rude,’ he said to Hugo. ‘But is there any chance we could try one of the other …?’

  He meant it too. Everyone thought he was joking, or dreaming, when he talked about Peru, but he’d picked up the phone on more than one occasion, seriously intending to make the booking. One ticket, one way. Taxi from Lima Airport up the coast, through Ancash, and into the region of La Libertad. Stop in Trujillo, city of eternal spring, spiritual home of the asparagus. Then busk it. He’d picked up a little Spanish over the years – enough to know that he could pick up plenty more. Then all this would be over.

  ‘I know it’s rude,’ Mike said. ‘But is there any chance we could try one of the other …?’

  Hugo laughed loudly.

  ‘Another malt?’ he asked, knowing the answer.

  ‘If that’s OK?’

  ‘Of course it is. My pleasure. Glad you’re enjoying it.’

  He lumbered over to the cabinet, and stopped in an inspecting crouch. A Speyside this time. The Glenfarclas?

  He felt much better now.

  The bastard blue ball pinged off an indestructible brick, slipped past the right-hand edge of Calvin’s bat and disappeared into virtual oblivion. A jingle taunted him with sympathy code. Game over.

  For the fourth time in succession, he had failed to get beyond the second level. A sorry showing, even in his state.

  Fuck it.

  He slipped his phone back into his pocket. A murmur of light had slunk into the sky. Greyly he examined his surroundings. A large wood-decked roof garden, bounded by brickwork on two sides, front and right, with a low guard rail offering token safety around the rest of the perimeter. Furniture, plants, a folded-up sunshade and some heavy-looking sculptures casually populated the space.

  It was a miracle, Calvin realised, puffing wryly on a fag, that he had not had a serious accident when he first came up here. To think he had been stumbling around, in search of beers, the dithering flame of his lighter illuminating nothing but the hand that held it … It must have been those sculptures that had blocked his path repeatedly, announcing their existence with solid interruptions on his toes. His gut lurched at the thought – too easy to conjure up – of himself steering close to that edge, the rail invisible, the chasm on the other side not known …

  Then he noticed something. In the middle of the floor: two trapdoors with brass handles, like you might expect to find on a well-appointed pirate ship.

  He pulled the left one.

  Fucking result!

  A sunken fridge, filled with wine, champagne, and perhaps a dozen bottles of Budvar. No wonder he had missed it!

  He put down his cigarette, reached in and withdrew a beer. Its neighbours tittered musically around his hand.

  And yes! Set into the underside of the trapdoor, there was even a bottle opener. With an effervescent wrench, it opened Calvin’s bottle.

  Beneath the other door were glasses, and a stack of towels. He took one and wrapped it around his shoulders for warmth.

  This, Calvin reflected as he strolled, was just about the coolest thing of all time. He made a vow on the spot: one day he would own a sunken roof fridge. Perhaps one day soon. This, after all, was his world now. The thought daunted him a little, but pleased him more. If he started seeing Mellody, even for a just a few weeks … He lingered on the prospect.

  It would have to be done secretly, of course, for Hugo. At least until he left on tour. Though secrets were never kept perfectly. There would be speculation, as there was with Pete. He’d be in the papers every day. No question. Sienna Miller was. Pete Doherty was.

  Rich and everyone at Warehouse would be delighted.

  Though his brother Jason still would not believe it.

  Calvin sucked on his cigarette, which delivered just a draught of stale air. The shaft was wet, from an ashtray full of rainwater. He stood up. The lights of London lay before him like a mixing desk. Its levels rose and fell. Small, precise adjustments to the city’s pitch. When you were bored of this place … What was it?

  That’s right.

  ‘When you’re bored of London, you’re bored of life.’

  Classic.

  Calvin hugged the towel around him and flicked at the trapdoor handles with the tip of his shoe, seeing if he had the skill to lift them.

  He wanted to talk to someone. He wanted to talk to someone about the night he’d had. He wanted to talk to someone about the night he’d had so much that he could not stand still.

  He took his phone back out.

  Jason would no doubt still be going strong. Up to something, somewhere. Calvin could text him. He didn’t text him enough.

  Ur not gonna beleve this bro, he typed, his fingertips scampering intuitively across the glowing interface. im on roof at hugo marks n mellody house in Idn!

  He paused for a moment, and lit another fag. He did not want Jason to think he was showing off.

  Then, i cant beleve it ither!! he added. theyv got a beer frij hidn in the flor!

  But fuck. Let us not forget that he had just had sex with Mellody. He did very much want to show off about that.

  n that is just the start ;-) Calvin chuckled. talk soon m8. amazing scenes! cal

  Send.

  He sauntered to the front wall and gazed out over it.

  Jesus!

  He ducked down fast.

  There were paparazzi in the street. Maybe ten or twelve of them. They could easily have seen him. But had they? No, he didn’t think they had.

  Calvin breathed.

  Why were they still here? Surely they knew that the party was all but over? Could they be keeping track of who was still inside? It often amazed him what those guys found out. An underpaid waitress, perhaps, had tipped them off for cash.

  ‘Mellody’s still in there,’ she could have said, pocketing a fifty. ‘Calvin too. But Sheen left a while ago.’

  Or Hugo could have done it. That did happen. Calvin knew this. Though Hugo did not seem the type.

  But Pete did.

  (And he knew, didn
’t he, what Mellody and Calvin were up to in the bathroom? Yes he knew.)

  ‘Where’s Mell, Pete?’ the paps would have asked him as he left.

  ‘Still in there,’ Pete would have said with a wink. ‘Having a chin-wag with Calvin Vance.’

  And now they were waiting. For the story of the night. Something for the Sundays, at a price.

  He shuddered with fantastic panic. How would he escape unseen? Through the back garden again? That might hide him.

  Or in daylight it might not.

  Jason really never would believe this. Not unless they caught him, anyway. Not without seeing his brother’s picture. The papers’ stolen proof.

  Unless.

  Here was a thought: unless he took a photograph of them?

  Calvin peered round the side of the wall, his head beneath the guard rail. Yes, he could see the men still. But could they see him? It was too risky.

  He tried a new position at the back of the roof. Here, if he lay down beneath the railing on his towel, his shoulders off the edge, holding his phone out just a little, would it see round the side of the house?

  He tried it.

  Nearly. Six more shuffled inches over, stretching out his toes for balance.

  He tried again. The device whirred and snapped.

  And there they were. Dim shapes between trees. It was still too dark to see them clearly. But it was getting lighter.

  Calvin lay and waited.

  This would be brilliant.

  He waited.

  Blood rushed through his ears.

  He waited.

  He waited. Fuck it. He dialled his brother’s number.

  It rang.

  Jason would believe him.

  It rang.

  Jason would believe him.

  It rang.

  Where was Mellody anyway?

  The final track of Tinariwen’s Amassakoul was still playing to an empty lounge. Mellody could see the CD case lying open on the floor.

  No sign of Malcolm in the kitchen, either. (Which the caterers and Renée, thank God, had abandoned too.)

  The games room was empty.