The Afterparty

by Leo Benedictus

  ‘Well.’ He took the syringe from his pocket and twisted out a few more clicks of insulin, not bothering to analyse his blood. ‘I mean, I was coming up the stairs when it happened. Mike saw Calvin lying there. He was already hanging over the edge, wasn’t he, Mike?’ In went the needle, a feeble thread of pain through abdominal fat.

  ‘Yes,’ Mike said, and nothing else. Clearly he did not want to play narrator either.

  Renée noted everything, superfine nib scratching audibly on pad.

  ‘And you went up to him,’ she asked, ‘and said hi?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mike said again.

  Hugo remembered it all. The gawdy soles of Calvin’s shoes. Mike’s mischievous delight, that pantomime creep towards the edge. And his own paralysis, as if in a dream – one of those dreams – where one strained to act, almost retched with desire, and nothing came.

  ‘And then he hit his head and slipped off?’

  Hugo had forgotten about Calvin banging his head. Though he had, hadn’t he? He had banged his head. Could it still be suicide if he banged his head?

  ‘Yes.’ Mike was being minimal.

  ‘Right. Then what?’

  She looked at Hugo, like she was waiting to find out what to blame him for.

  ‘Then we rushed downstairs,’ Hugo said. ‘I got hold of a mirror to see if he was breathing, but it didn’t look like he was. And I didn’t want to start giving him CPR, because he looked pretty broken up already. I thought I might make things worse. So we called 999.’

  ‘We didn’t call straight away,’ Mike said.

  And Hugo looked at him.

  ‘Hugo wanted to get all the drugs out of the way first. I helped tidy up.’

  Mike had a face like a certificate. Or a fucking church.

  ‘How long did that take?’ Renée did not seem angry.

  ‘Twenty minutes.’

  ‘Ten,’ said Hugo.

  Her pen was in her mouth and she was thinking.

  Michael saw his own surprise written on Hugo’s face. Neither of them had expected him to say that.

  But he had. He had said that. Just by saying it. He tingled with power. If it was that easy just to say things then, well, he could do it again.

  ‘Hugo wanted to get all of the drugs out of the way first,’ he said. ‘I helped tidy up.’

  ‘How long did that take?’ Renée asked, showing no surprise, but lowering her voice a little.

  ‘Twenty minutes.’

  ‘Ten.’ Hugo tried to contradict him.

  But it wasn’t ten. It was twenty. Or more.

  There was a long pause. And timidly, in the silence, the idea of sleep announced itself to Michael for the first time. Just a gentle softening at his core. Going home must be his next decision.

  ‘Did you get rid of everything? If there’s a search will they find any drugs?’ Renée asked the question parenthetically, bracketing this admin from her prime concern.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Hugo said. ‘I can’t see anything. But we’ve just had a party. People leave stuff behind.’

  ‘And where is Mellody?’

  ‘She was in here a minute ago. I think she must have gone to bed. But I did tell her to get rid of everything.’

  Renée pulled a BlackBerry from her bag, nodding. It amazed Michael how calm she was. That they had misled the police. That they could have cost Calvin his life. These facts barely seemed to trouble her at all.

  ‘There was one thing we were worried about,’ he added, while he had his chance. ‘You were worried, weren’t you Hugo?’ Trying to keep co-operation in his voice. ‘When we got down there with the paramedics, there was this snail on Calvin’s body. I think they noticed it too. If they did, they might know we took longer than Hugo said to call the ambulance.’

  Renée put the phone down.

  ‘I mean, I couldn’t tell,’ Michael added hurriedly. ‘They were busy, so maybe they didn’t notice.’

  ‘A snail?’ Her forehead wrinkled, winding on another notch of tension to the retracted hair. ‘There was … a snail on Calvin’s body?’

  Michael nodded.

  ‘Halfway across,’ he said.

  ‘And they saw it?’

  ‘One of the ambulance people wiped it off with her arm.’

  ‘Were you going to mention this, Hugo?’

  ‘I didn’t think it was important.’

  And the way he said it. So cool. So well. Michael’s fury was set free.

  ‘You thought it was pretty fucking important at the time!’ he spluttered. ‘You were doing everything you could to get me to look at it!’

  ‘It was a shock. I admit that,’ Hugo spoke with slow and elaborate patience. ‘But it doesn’t prove anything. How fast are snails? Could one travel eighteen inches, across earth and silk, in ten minutes or whatever it was? And do you really think that the speed of snails is going to convict us in court? If we’ve done anything illegal. And I doubt that we have.’

  ‘Jesus, Hugo! Who cares if it’s illegal? Calvin could be dead because of what you did – what you made me do. You pushed me into this. You were the one who wanted to clear up all the fucking drugs first, not me.’

  ‘Fine, Mike. You can remember it that way if you want. All I know is I didn’t make this happen. I tried to tell you to leave Calvin alone, but you wouldn’t listen. I was nowhere near him when he fell. And who the fuck are you anyway? Why are you here? I don’t know a fucking thing about you!’

  Even though this comment had manifestly been designed to hurt him, it did. The stiffening charge of anger slipped out of Michael’s body, and with it went his strength. He did not reply. He felt instantly alone.

  Then a noise. The rigid thrum of Renée’s phone on the kitchen table, and the opening bass chops of ‘My Sharona’. It was not a choice of ringtone that Michael ever would have guessed.

  ‘Hi Hamish,’ she said, after checking the caller. ‘Yes, yes, I did. Have you seen the news? … What are they saying? … Uh-huh …’

  Michael refused to look at Hugo. The air sat between them, full of lumps.

  ‘OK … Sure,’ said Renée. ‘Absolutely … Well, he’s been through it all once with the police. He fell off the roof when he was drunk or high or something, and then Hugo and this other guy Mike went down to check on him before calling the medics … No, they were up there with him … I don’t think so … They’re with me now … OK … OK, sure … OK.’

  She tossed the phone down.

  ‘Calvin’s in a critical condition,’ she said. ‘Head injuries. BBC News have just picked it up. Hamish is still in London, Hugo, you’re in luck. Don’t say another word to the police until he gets here, he says. Don’t even repeat all the stuff you’ve already said. Be nice, and just say it’s lawyer’s orders. You too, Mike. And thanks for bringing up the snail. We need to know everything if we’re going to be able to help you. You understand that, don’t you Hugo?’

  ‘Yes Renée. I do actually understand that.’

  ‘Good. Hamish is going to be here in an hour. I think both of you should get some sleep. I’m going to work out a statement with him, and we need to have that out by lunchtime. So I want you both awake again at noon.’

  ‘Actually.’ Michael was confused. ‘I thought maybe I would just go back to my flat. I’m tired. I need to go home.’

  It took some time for Renée to understand.

  ‘Sorry, Mike,’ she said eventually. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. For any of us. We should all work together until we’ve moved this situation on.’

  ‘And the police told us to stay here, remember? Until the “sockos” arrive.’ Hugo spoke it drily. In the sunlight, his averted eyes glowed caramel brown.

  ‘Do you have a lawyer, Mike?’ Renée followed up.

  Michael shook his head.

  ‘Well Hugo has a good one. We can make sure you’re properly represented. And I don’t know if you’ve seen the press out there?’ She paused, but not for an answer. ‘They are not going to leave you alone, I’m afra
id. Not until this story’s over. Hugo, we can get you to your place in the Quantocks perhaps, or off to LA on an earlier plane. But Mike, do you want them all hanging round your apartment?’

  His ‘No’ sounded meek and superfluous.

  ‘Well, we’ll see what we can do to stop that happening. You’re lucky: at the moment, they probably don’t know who you are. But you’ll need to be ready when they find out. Don’t worry.’ She placed a hand on his arm. ‘I know this is all pretty crazy right now, but we’ll handle it, and then you’ll have a story to tell your grandchildren.’ She attempted a laugh. ‘Do you need a change of clothes? Is that the problem? I guess Hugo’s going to be a bit too big …’

  ‘Um, well …’

  ‘It’s done. I’ll have Theresa pick something up.’

  And to his shame, in spite of everything, Michael found he was excited by the thought of what the clothes might be.

  A bossy lady from the seat in front was standing over him with a see-through handbag full of water. The strap muddled about his face. Why did other passengers have to fuss around so much with the overhead lockers when they could just jam their stuff under the seat?

  ‘I wonder what the film will be?’ Mum said excitedly. ‘BP still falling.’

  It had been a while since she flew. Probably she didn’t know that good planes always had a choice of films these days. Calvin did not say anything. It would be more fun for her to find out by herself.

  Mellody was not eavesdropping, though she had tried to, lying listening by the foot of the radiator wrapped in a Berber throw that she had never previously liked. ‘… editions,’ she heard, and ‘this’. But however hard she concentrated, the meanings of the sentences slipped past like mice. (Or rats, or roaches, or electric eels. She could not, in truth, grasp any of them for long enough to find out what their slipping past resembled.) And she was distracted by memories of Rebekah. The thought of getting into that car: it did not revolt her altogether. She found herself considering the sunglazed sanctuary of tinted windows, the clean embracing scents of leather and escape. Taking her somewhere not too far away, but quiet. Maybe Giles could come visit. Another advantage, that, against the prospect of lying low with Hugo. And then there was the feeling – a clownlike impostor of a feeling, to be sure, but real to her – that Rebekah did actually care. This was all business, Mellody knew it. She knew it. But the woman’s damn kindness, her concern for how all this affected her … She had needed so desperately to hear it. And now she could not forget.

  ‘… cares! …’ someone shouted from the kitchen. A sharp British spike, not Hugo’s, jutting from the muddy stream. Then ‘… you …’ and ‘… you …’ again, but louder.

  Disputes were under way. Battle plans.

  It was cold. The throw clung harsh.

  Her mind returned to Calvin. His graceless fucking, and now his wrong-way legs. Was it her fault? She refused the thought.

  ‘… fuck! …’ said Hugo’s voice this time, then ‘thing’. It wore the nasty, snooty tone he always used when he wanted you to be unhappy.

  Her phone buzzed once beside her on the floor.

  A text.

  Calvin mum: Judy Vance 0113 496 7614. But she already knows, is on way to London. Am on this number. Rx.

  To be rescued, thought Mellody. To call Giles. To sleep. To be taken care of for a change.

  His bedroom curtains were easily large enough, but no matter how much care he took to drape them, Hugo could not extract the final shades of day, nor the disapproving glower of his furniture. Meanwhile, noise simmered on regardless in the street. And behind the curtains on the opposite window, he knew from drawing them before, a forensic shrine was being erected. He had watched as a different policeman, taller and younger than the others, began sinking metal stakes into the earth, taking care to avoid all obvious plants. After this, the man had set about sanctifying the interior with blue and white tape, which he supported at each corner with a double winding that pinched its width into a bud. Calvin, of course, would have passed by this window on the way down. But Hugo decided not to think about it.

  And now a vertiginous little twinkle in his gut informed him that the sugar in his blood was dipping low. Whooah … really quite low. He must have overjudged the insulin a bit. Quickly, he opened the cupboard of his bedside table and took out a can of Dr Pepper – his last – finishing it as he gradually removed his clothes.

  Rebalanced, he slid naked into the envelope of his bed. The sheets were cold, as they always were without his wife. She would be slumped elsewhere about the house as usual. Often Hugo came down at morning time to find her garnishing a cushion pudding, or unconscious in the basement, snoring gently in the pastel kiss of daytime television.

  Why had she not been on the roof with Calvin? The thought nudged him for the first time. Had she upset the boy? Or lost interest in him? Both were likely. His mind ambled down the paths of possibility. His wife had humiliated her new lover. Sexually, or otherwise. Maybe he had been too wasted to perform – sex with Mellody was always a performance – so she had dismissed him. The idea even stirred something close to sympathy. Or, feeling queasy from his intake, perhaps the boy had gone upstairs for air and lain down across the building’s edge to vomit. This had been Hugo’s first assumption. But he had neither smelled nor seen the evidence, so it might be that the moment passed. And then as the boy lay there, perhaps a blacker notion had come upon him? A plan for closure and revenge. Did that happen? Expedited maybe by Mike’s sudden interruption? Could anybody reach capriciously for such decisive suicide? There was nothing penultimate about easing oneself off a roof. Was that how unhappy people acted? And did they go to parties first to have it off with people’s wives?

  Hugo took a bottle of Ambien from the bedside table. Without the strength to get himself some water, he gulped one down dry. He would sleep. He always did. It was getting up that might be difficult.

  He closed his eyes.

  Flick, went the brow. Flick, fli-ick, flick, flick.

  And Calvin probably would die. A subdural haematoma, if that was the diagnosis Mellody had heard, was definitely bad. And, honestly, if the boy desired death, then Hugo hoped that he would get it. There would follow inquests, drug tests, a reverberating scandal, of course, but nothing that the world had not survived before.

  Or Calvin might live, and after days of dreaming wake inside his treatment nest and speak. Then what would he reveal? Truths about Mellody, the party, about the price of fame? Or nothing? Would his brain not recover the few faculties it had? Would it hoard its stories in a living corpse? Drooling Beauty. A motorised parable for the drug war, trundling towards its long-prepared obituary.

  Flick, flick.

  It made no difference in the end. And Hugo felt no sorrow. His mind seethed quietly in a fervent and unhealthy fizz. Wandering unpurposed.

  Fli-ick, went his eyebrow. Fli-ick.

  Then there was a knock on the door. He sat up to see that it was already opening.

  ‘Listen, I need to talk to you.’ Renée’s voice, for her, was soft.

  Hugo said nothing at all.

  ‘Is Mellody in here?’

  He shook his head.

  And finally, ‘Asleep somewhere,’ he said.

  ‘OK. Well, anyway, we’ll need to get you both to a safe house after the statement goes out. I’ll square it with the police. Bonzo and his guys are coming over. I’m not happy that you sent him home, by the way. But I think it’s going to be too hectic for them to handle long term.’

  ‘What about Mike?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk about. Sorry I was a bit rough with you downstairs, but it’s important he feels we’re on his side.’

  Hugo shrugged.

  ‘Listen.’ She took up a sympathetic perch on the corner of his bed. ‘You did the right thing. You were right to get rid of all the drugs, and you were right not to lie. But I’m worried about Mike’s role in this. How much did you actually see?’

&
nbsp; ‘Of the accident?’

  She nodded.

  Hugo raised himself into a sitting position, not bothering to conceal his naked chest.

  ‘Not much,’ he said.

  ‘OK. But what do you think happened?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I really don’t know. The police were asking if Calvin was depressed, and I was wondering why he might have crawled under the barrier …’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I mean I don’t know the guy. But maybe he was trying to top himself?’ He sounded hopeful. He could hear that he sounded hopeful.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I mean I don’t know. I’m just saying.’

  Renée nodded again, with slow understanding.

  ‘The only thing is,’ she said, ‘that with the situation so unclear right now, we need to consider all the possibilities. The cops certainly will. Like, say it was an accident, OK? Maybe he got dizzy because he was really high. He’d been taking stuff, right?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably. He had some coke with Mell, I think.’

  ‘And did anyone else give him anything?’

  ‘Jesus, Renée! I don’t know. The guy’s old enough to find his own …’

  ‘I know, I know. But we have to think about these things now. Or, take another example: what if Mike nudged him off by mistake?’ She looked directly into Hugo’s eyes. ‘If that’s what happened, Hugo, then we have to make sure we’re not protecting him unfairly. If Calvin recovers and says Mike knocked him over the edge then how will it look if you’ve been saying he didn’t? And we also have to think about what Mike might do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, if he feels guilty, he’ll probably try to blame other people. He may even convince himself that it’s all someone else’s fault. Yours probably. It would be a natural reaction. I mean I don’t want to suggest that Mike is responsible – I wasn’t there, after all – but you say he tried to grab Calvin’s legs when he was falling?’

  ‘Yes. He kind of grappled with them.’

  ‘So if you were Mike you probably would blame yourself a bit. And we just saw how he tends to focus that anger outwards, on you.’