by Laura Marney
In the restaurant Chloe went to great and unsubtle lengths to flatter Lisa and Lauren: how lovely their Scottish accents were (she’d never mentioned mine), how funny they were when they described their crazy nights out at Clancy’s. She screamed and slapped the table when they said anything vaguely amusing. How great they looked: their fashion, their hair, their tan.
What the hell was she saying? They did not look great. Fashion-wise it was a case of The Devil Wears Primark. They both wore low-cut jeans over which spilled the muffin tops of their lardy hips and bellies. Lisa’s hair colour was so obviously out of a bottle, with dods of yellow blonde splodged on her head. Their tan was also out of a bottle; they had orange lines round their feet that rubbed off on their brand new white court shoes. When Lisa and Lauren went to the toilet I asked Chloe what she was playing at.
‘Relax honey, no need to get jealous.’ She put her arm around me and whispered, ‘You still my bitch.’
I shrugged her off.
‘It’s called winning their confidence,’ she said.
She had done that all right. She had them eating out of her hand. She kept them topped up with booze and insisted on paying for everything.
‘You’re our guests tonight, ladies,’ she told them. ‘Alison and I are picking up the tab. No argument, we invite you, it’s the tradition here in Catalunya.’
Chloe was pouring the charm on by the bucketload. Except that, although we passed close by our apartment twice, Chloe never mentioned it. I wanted Lisa and Lauren to see where I was living, the luxury I had grown accustomed to, but Chloe left them to drag their suitcases all around town, the plastic wheels on the cobbled streets clacking like trains on a track.
I liked that sound. Sometimes from our terrace above I could hear tourists’ suitcases in the street, arriving or leaving. It always made me feel sorry for them. Their time here was limited; sooner or later they had to go home. At least as Lisa and Lauren dragged their matching pink Primark suitcases around I knew they’d soon be gone. Their flight was at seven the next morning. Now that they could report back to Cumbernauld on how slim and gorgeous I was, they had fulfilled their function. I couldn’t wait to be rid of them.
Lisa and Lauren put up a show of reluctance but they greedily accepted everything they were offered. The next time they went to the toilet, Chloe went with them and all three came back giggling, sniffing and wiping their noses. Chloe passed me the coke for a solo mission but where was the fun in that?
In Plaza Real Chloe left us, Lisa and Lauren oohing and aahing at the antics of the busking acrobats, while she spoke to a young guy. She shook his hand and although the police were standing not five feet away I had a good idea what had happened. When we got to Cangrejo, my suspicions were confirmed. Chloe produced pills. Without saying anything to the others she handed me a pill and we both swigged from a bottle of water. Lisa and Lauren were curious and asked Chloe to give them one.
‘Well ladies, if you’re sure you can handle it,’ she laughed.
They laughed too. We all laughed and as Chloe handed over the water bottle I noticed that the pills Lisa and Lauren were throwing back were different from the ones we’d just necked.
The difference showed up pretty quickly.
We’d only been dancing twenty minutes or so when Lisa and Lauren started to go gaga.
‘What did you give them?’ I asked Chloe.
‘Ketamine.’
I’d never tried ketamine but I couldn’t believe the effect it had. Lisa and Lauren were still smiling but they had gone floppy and began stumbling around.
‘Let’s get them outta here,’ said Chloe. ‘Lauren, you forgot your suitcase,’ she reminded her.
Lisa and Lauren, staggering from the drink and the coke and the ketamine, held their suitcase handles and each other and giggled uncontrollably. ‘This is the best night out we’ve ever had,’ said Lisa, kissing me and pulling me into their girly huddle.
We picked up a taxi on La Rambla.
‘Get in the taxi,’ I barked at them.
They did as they were told in their awkward bendy way. It was like being in charge of two toddlers. We spoke about them as though they weren’t there, they were too monged to even be offended.
‘Let’s take ‘em to the beach,’ said Chloe.
‘No, let’s just send them to the airport,’ I remonstrated. The ecstasy I’d taken had kicked in and it always made me speak my mind. ‘I don’t want you to be friends with them. You’re my friend, Chloe. Their flight leaves in three hours anyway, they can sober up before they get on the plane. I’m sick of them. I don’t want them missing their flight.’
‘Who wants a party on the beach?’ Chloe asked.
‘Woohooo, midnight swim!’ yelled Lisa.
‘Skinny dipping!’ yelled Lauren, and started to pull her top off.
‘Chloe, please, let’s just get rid of them, they’re no fun now anyway.’
‘You think?’ asked Chloe.
She looked Lauren and Lisa up and down as though they were sides of beef.
‘Nah,’ she said, ‘the fun’s just starting. Let the partying begin!’
Chapter 28
When we tumbled out of the taxi Chloe insisted that we go and sit under the lifeguards’ look-out post. We had to help Lisa and Lauren drag their suitcases along the sand, tripping over and steering the heavy cases around groups of boys and girls sprawling on blankets. Although Lisa and Lauren had only come for a long weekend, they had made sure to stuff in as many cheap tops as their pink suitcases could hold.
In Barceloneta the beach was almost as crowded at 4am than it was during the sunlit tourist hours. Because they lived with their parents, Catalans came to the beach when the bars closed to smoke dope, swim, and have uncomfortable, chafing sex. Or at least that’s what Chloe had told me. I’d yet to know the delights of having gritty, imported sand worked between the cheeks of my bum. It was the quintessential Barcelona experience she’d assured me: the stars twinkling above, the waves lapping the shore, the buttock-grazing friction burns. I could hardly wait.
‘Come on, girls,’ said Chloe hustling us along.
‘Are we there yet?’ I asked petulantly.
‘Not quite.’
‘We haven’t got time to go all the way along the beach, these two have a plane to catch. Why don’t we just stop here? There’s tons of space here.’
‘Just a little further, nearly there,’ Chloe soothed.
‘Nearly where?’ I moaned.
‘Here.’
We’d come to an abrupt stop under the lifeguards’ look-out post. The clusters of beach parties had thinned out this far along the beach and now we were quite isolated. Chloe was up to something. I glanced at her but she was giving nothing away.
Lisa and Lauren were grateful to slump down in the sand and they immediately began clawing at their clothes.
‘Wanna swim,’ Lauren mumbled.
If they went swimming, there was every chance that they might drown, which was no bad thing in my book, but as the responsible adult I had to say, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Oh, loosen up, will ya?’ Chloe sneered. ‘They’re on vacation. You do what you want on vacation, right Lauren?’
‘Right,’ Lauren slurred.
She had begun to haul her top over her head but halfway through she’d lost momentum. Trapped inside the top, her arms dangled above her head, her head and shoulders bound like a mummy in the tight top. Her breasts toppling over the rim of her bra and an avalanche of loose flab lay piled below.
Chloe helped Lauren off with her top and then, without being asked, gently eased Lisa out of hers.
‘There you go, honey,’ she said mildly. ‘My, you’re both such big girls.’
She said this in an admiring tone and Lauren and Lisa, accustomed to her flattery, laughed and accepted it as such.
‘I mean Lauren, you are a whole lotta woman! You gotta be, what? One hundred and ninety pounds? And Lisa, you can’t be far behind.’<
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Lisa and Lauren giggled uncomfortably at this change in direction.
‘Now, help me out here girls, I can’t remember. Which is which? Lisa, are you The Hump or The Hulk?’
A glance passed between them and then there was a shamefaced glance from Lisa directed towards me.
I kept my head down.
‘Yep,’ said Chloe, ‘it’s a puzzler. What say we keep it simple, huh? Lauren you be… well, which is it, The Hulk or The Hump?’
Lauren looked to Lisa, then to me and finally to Chloe.
‘The Hulk?’ she whispered.
‘That’s my girl! Which makes things nice and easy for you Lisa. You’re The…’
‘Hump,’ said Lisa with her head on her chest.
‘That’s what I’m talking about!’ said Chloe gleefully. ‘Whaddaya think, Alison, think the names are a good match?’
I looked at them: both bulging out of their clothes, stupid, sweaty, shameful.
‘Whatever.’
Chloe laughed. No one else did and there were no more glances. We had nowhere to look but out to sea. Lisa and Lauren sat quiet and cowed, stupefied by drugs or shame or both. But Chloe wasn’t finished with them.
‘Hey, come on girls, I’m only fucking with you,’ she said, producing a small bottle of absinthe from her bag. ‘What d’you say we kiss and make up and have a little drink?’
I ignored her, continuing to watch the water.
Lisa and Lauren looked at each other and then to Chloe, smiling their relief at being let off the hook.
‘Come and get it, girls,’ said Chloe, pouring absinthe into the bottle cap. ‘Come to mama.’
Lisa fell forward on to all fours and laughed a throaty laugh as though she was doing something really naughty. She began to crawl heavily across the sand towards Chloe, who was holding out the capful of absinthe like a carrot on a stick. Lauren laughed too and began crawling, making it a race. They lumbered towards her, their breasts hanging like overstretched dough from their bras, and slurped the absinthe like slavering dogs.
When Chloe had fed them three or four capfuls each and they couldn’t drink any more, they rolled in the sand and laughed and gasped and stared into the sky. I sat rigid, scanning the shore.
‘Look at Alison,’ said Chloe, ‘she’s so slim and beautiful. Isn’t she just the cutest little Scottish girl in the world?’
‘Hola chicas!’ said a male voice.
Two boys had approached us. They stood over us, black-outlined shapes against the full moon. Chloe spoke to them, or rather she spoke to one of them, the same one she’d spoken to in Plaza Real. I knew she was up to something. This was no coincidence. That’s why we’d had to schlep all the way to the lifeguards’ post; she must have arranged to meet here.
Chloe and the guy spoke too fast for me to make out much. I didn’t want to ask in front of Lisa and Lauren. Since they’d arrived Chloe and I’d been putting on a pretty good show of me speaking Spanish. I’d ordered all the food and drinks and, with discreet nods and pinches from Chloe under the table, I was able to answer the waiter ‘claro que si’ or ‘no’ when he asked a question. But even my apparent fluency in Spanish didn’t much impress Lisa and Lauren.
Chloe and the guy were talking seriously and intensely while the rest of us sat silently. In amongst lots of other stuff I didn’t understand, I heard Chloe emphatically repeat the phrase ‘nada de nada’ – nothing of nothing. What did that mean?
With a command from the lead guy, the other one sat down beside Lisa and Lauren. They were handsome boys in that generic dark-haired, dark-eyed Latino way and they were smooth operators. Lisa and Lauren were too wasted to properly introduce themselves, lurching forward and giggling at everything. One of them stroked Lauren’s face and within minutes had begun kissing her, running his hands across her rippling love handles. Once this action kicked off Lisa obviously didn’t feel the need to stand on ceremony either. She hauled the other one down on top of her and pushed her face into his, kissing and fondling the boy before he knew where he was.
‘I need a beer,’ Chloe announced. ‘Why are there never any vendors when you need ‘em? I’m gonna get a beer. Who wants one?’
Lauren surfaced briefly and said, ‘Cheers Chloe, I’ll take one,’ before redoubling her efforts to suck the face off the guy. Lisa, her tongue too far down the other guy’s throat, didn’t reply.
‘Come on, Alison, help me get the beers in,’ Chloe said as she moved off.
Going for beer was a good excuse to get away from Lisa and Lauren for a while. I just wanted to go back to the flat, lock the bathroom door and lie in a hot bath. But I knew I shouldn’t leave them. I sat hugging my knees and trying to think. Chloe called over her shoulder.
‘Are you coming?’
Chapter 29
We found a beer vendor within a few minutes. The man, an old Asian guy, was rummaging in the sand when we came upon him. He’d buried a cache of beer stubbies and was disinterring some of them. He was very edgy, probably worried that now we knew where his treasure was, we’d steal it when he left.
‘Dos cervezas, por favor,’ said Chloe.
‘Tres,’ I corrected her. ‘Lisa wants one as well.’
‘Dos,’ she repeated.
I shrugged, too tired to argue.
Chloe paid for the beers and continued walking away from the beach. We walked to the boardwalk and then upstairs on to the promenade. It was quiet up here and there was a fresh breeze. Chloe found a bench, we cracked open our beers and sat in a mellow silence. This was the nicest time I’d had all night.
I’d gotten so used to it being just me and Chloe. We knew where we were with each other. When it was just the two of us she was a different person, a real person.
‘Ringside seats,’ she said with a smile.
‘Eh?’
‘Can you see them, down there?’
I peered and below the lifeguards’ post I could just about make out two writhing bundles.
‘Yes, unfortunately,’ I grumped. ‘It’s not fair, those two lumps of gristle are getting the sand between their cheeks. They’re having the fucking quintessential experience before I am!’
‘I think you mean the quintessential fucking experience.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Hey, it’s not my fault you’re a virgin. Nobody’s fault but your own. You’ve had every opportunity.’ Chloe held her hand up as if to give testimony. ‘God knows I’ve done my best.’
‘I know,’ I said quietly and thought about it for a while. ‘I know you have.’
‘Anyhow, how comes you’re still a virgin? I thought you did it with that guy Ewan. You looked pretty cosy when I came in.’
‘Yeah, but we hadn’t done it. I wanted to, I wanted him to be my first. Wanca and the Silver Fox and those other guys, I don’t know, I really wanted it, but… maybe there’s something wrong with me.’
‘Easy, tiger. There’s nothing wrong with you, nothing wrong with being a virgin. I wasn’t judging. I was just surprised. I haven’t met any twenty-two-year-old virgins unless they’re Christian. Even then they’ve usually just fessed up and re-branded.’
‘Well I am. I wish I wasn’t. Lisa and Lauren don’t seem to be having that dilemma, they’re getting stuck in. Look, Lisa’s sitting on him, look at the way she’s bouncing on his balls. Ooow! That’s got to hurt.’
We giggled and swigged from our beer cans until Chloe turned back to watch them again.
‘We should have got popcorn,’ she said.
‘God, you can’t take your eyes off them, can you?’
‘Euuw, that is so gross, Alison! Why would you say that?’
‘Eh,’ I paused for effect, ‘because it’s true?’
‘Shut up! I don’t want to watch, I like to be watched, it’s totally different.’
‘Well excuse me, I’d hate to suggest that you’re any kind of sexual deviant.’
‘Why, thank you kindly,’ said Chloe with a coy, southern belle-type nod before
dismissing me with her usual hand wave. ‘Anyway, this is just the overture. The show hasn’t started yet.’
‘What else is going to happen? Remember, they have to be on a plane in two hours’ time, otherwise we’ll never get rid of them.’
‘Watch. It’s gonna be fun, and you know what they say. The show ain’t over till…’ she said, squinting towards the beach, ‘and boy, are these fat ladies gonna sing.’
We returned to quietly sipping beer. It was slowly beginning to get light, the dark blue of the sky getting paler, but still there wasn’t much to see.
‘But you shouldn’t have told them,’ I said.
‘Shouldn’t have told them what?’
‘You know what: about the Hulk. I understand why you did it, and cheers and all that, but I didn’t want that.’
‘They had to know. It’s part of the plan.’
‘What plan?’ I asked, but Chloe didn’t answer, she was too busy watching the beach.
Further along the beach as the sky began to get lighter other groups started to pack up and head home. Those that stayed pulled their blankets around them and settled down to sleep. It had been a long night. I started to nod off, my beer can tipping at an angle, when Chloe dug me in the ribs.
Lisa and Lauren and the two boys were standing now, all four of them naked from what I could see. The boys dashed towards the water, and Lisa and Lauren followed squealing and giggling, their breasts thudding their ribcages with every step.
A post-coital swim: something else I hadn’t done yet.
They were having great fun, young people cavorting the way nature intended: uninhibited, breasts and penises dangling free. The boys would run and then stop, almost letting Lisa and Lauren catch them, before running away again. This pointless playground-style chase went on for a good ten minutes. My eyes were tired and were beginning to close again. It was obvious that Lisa and Lauren were never going to catch them, the boys were far too fast. They still half-heartedly ran towards them but they had lost pace.
The boys stood at the water’s edge. The low tide had uncovered a huge expanse of smooth sand. This time they held out their arms to beckon them and let the knackered girls reach them. Almost. Suddenly the two lads darted past them back up the beach. The girls laughed and turned back. And then I saw what was really going on.