Brass

by Helen Walsh

  ‘I thought it was the lovely Millie!’

  He plants a kiss on my cheek. His breath is boozy and sexy.

  ‘Hot date?’ he asks, wiping a stray droplet of rain from my nose with paternal delicacy.

  ‘Nah, I’ve come to try my luck with one of them old boilers.’

  I point to the blonde tarts who are all looking over at Liam, a look of needing-to-be-fucked stranded on their faces.

  His smile expands a couple more inches.

  ‘Don’t waste your time,’ he says in a low whisper as though he’s implicating me in some dark secret. He looks around subversively before bending his head into me again. ‘They’re Mids.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know Middies, Midsters.’

  ‘Don’t get you’ I say, adopting the whisper.

  ‘Men in Drag.’

  I laugh loudly and one of the tarts throws me a filthy look. Her mate has a sexy face – big lips, cheekbones, hungry eyes, but Liam’s right. Her calves are that bit too pronounced. She may not be a fella, but she’s not far off.

  I go and sit in a booth with Liam and his mates who turn out to be the bouncers I spotted when I first walked in. Two of them used to work the door at Cream. Nice guys. The other, I take an instant dislike to – a big daft steroid head with a bad beak twitch and a burst capillary face.

  Liam raises his hand and a waitress with a black matt bob and a menstrual gut springs over.

  ‘Same again my love – and a glass for the lady,’ he says pointing to a gang of empty champagne bottles.

  ‘Thanks Liam,’ I say. ‘But could I have a bottle of Stella instead?’

  ‘Whatever you want, little’un.’

  He nods the waitress away and lights a cigarette.

  ‘Can’t half tell she’s a student, ay?’

  ‘Is that why you called her ‘love’, you wind-up merchant?’

  ‘Not her! You!’

  ‘Piss off!’ I snort. ‘You should know I’m allergic to cheap champagne, Liam. Burns my delicate princess’ guts red raw.’

  ‘Ay you, Lady Penelope! What d’you mean cheap? That’s fucken Moet, that is!’

  ‘I rest my case, darling.’

  ‘Fucking good swill, that!’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s not exactly Cristal is it?’

  He grins and feigns a slap to my face. The roid-head slings me a nasty sideways look.

  I like Liam. It’s hard to believe he’s Sean’s brother. And not just in terms of physical constitution – Liam’s half-caste, short and wide, Sean’s white, tall and slim – but just in terms of who they are, too.

  Liam’s a gentleman and, in his way, he has morals. He’s a great Daddy to little Tony and you rarely see him flaunting his money or power. In fact, most people don’t even know what Liam Flynn looks like. It’s just a name with it’s own mythology that’s as deeply ingrained in local folklore as Kevin Keegan or Paul McCartney. Sean, on the other hand, is a self-created B-grade scouse celeb who goes to more bar/club/restaurant openings then Tara Palmer fucking Tomkinson. And it’s not as though his lifestyle is something he’s earned through his own graft and flair. It was handed to him. When Liam went down for a five-stretch, he only had Sean to oversee the businesses – an impressive raft of tanning salons, cafés and tenancies – a tidy little earner for an eighteen-year-old.

  Poor Liam didn’t have a choice. His henchmen went down with him, and he had a Missus and a baby to feed. Sean may have kept the empire ticking over, but his wideboy antics did immeasurable damage. The family name, once revered by the city’s underworld, is little more than a celluloid How To Be A Gangster cartoon these days – and Liam knows it.

  Steroid cunt asks a couple of the blonde tarts over and offers them a glass of champagne. Both of them have identical crinkled brown breasts and hands that look as though they’ve been dipped in a chippy’s deep fryer. They’re pathetically pleased at being called to the table. Close up, they’re horrors. The skin around their eyes is cracked and thin and scummy with cheap blue mascara. When I walked in before with my sodden denims and blurry face they looked at me like I was a tramp. Now that I’m sitting here, as a guest of Liam’s, they’re all Colgate smiles and ‘In’t she pretty. Are yer a model, girl – yer pretty enough, well!’

  Slags.

  My mind meanders over to the streets of Liverpool 8. Skinny whores with bad complexions, girls who reek of cheap perfume and rubber and the street. I can’t help myself. The very notion stirs something so deep in my groin that I should be shocked – troubled, at least, that I should itch so greedily for such a wretched thrill. But instead I feel alive – drunk and fearless and wonderfully, fervently alive. I contemplate what sort of girls will be braving the weather tonight. Crackheads, old women with cancer breath, girls with cruel pimps and other nightcrawlers driven by sheer desperation. Desperate enough to fuck me, maybe?

  I say my goodbyes, plant a suggestive kiss on Liam’s lips and flick my tongue at steroid head. I decide to walk it, some innate safety-mech stalling me, trying to change my mind.

  On Bold Street I withdraw £80 from a cash machine and march briskly in the direction of Hope Street. Storm light flickers the sky. I pull my jacket high above my head, but the wind only savages the chink of bare tummy that exposes. The skein of the sky rips open whetting the sting of the wind.

  Taxis flare past with drunken faces pressed up against steamy windows. Windscreen wipers flurry and skew, headlights burn through the rain and all along Leece Street, bodies duck and dive in and out of bars. It’s a horrific night for anybody to be out. There’ll be no one out on Hope Street.

  By the time I get up there, my clothes are saturated and my ears wind-burnt. My hankering for brass has slithered into the fomenting gutters, frothing vehemently with a wild and coffee-coloured spume. I curse myself for being like this, for being so unable just to shake it off. Forget about it. Other people do.

  I walk to the nearest bus stop on Catherine Street, but I spot another one with a shelter a little further down. I sprint over, leaping and dodging great gaping puddles. An old Somali gadgie with a long, grave face is huddled inside. He’s locked in thought, but looks warm and content enough. I delve into my jacket and my spirits soar at the discovery that I still have ciggies left. As I cower from the wind to light one, I spy a wraith-like figure sliding into a silver Mercedes at the top of Canning Street. A feeling of envy flares up inside but is quickly strangled and replaced by a feeling of folly. That I should feel jealous of him is absurd! A big fat suit, for fuck’s sake – somebody’s husband! And he’s picking up a whore, the wretch. He’s shopping for a crackhead. Where’s the challenge in that? There is none. Still, as a man, and a man with a car, he has privileges that I can only dream of. Even if he’s obese and miserable, even if she’s the lowliest, most rancid skag head, I still wish I were him.

  The rain relents a little but the wind howls and screams around the shelter, flinging debris into the road. Cars swerve this way and that, and a woman beeps her horn as an empty can launches itself at her windscreen. I ask the old guy how much longer for the next bus and he shrugs, lifts his arm up to consult his watch and shrugs his shoulders again. His hand is thick and knotted like a vine. He hunches himself up again and pulls a forlorn expression. His eyes loom large in his old head. I try a smile on him, but he’s back inside his thought chamber. I take out my last, crushed cigarette and straighten it out with my fingers. As I’m striking a match a sudden movement catches my eye. Over the road a woman is opening her curtains and lingering at the window. A naked light bulb hammers down on her. I narrow my eyes and squint through the slats of rain. She’s wearing a negligee – and she’s tidy from this distance, toned and lustrous. Too tidy for brass. She flicks her hair from her face, folds her arms and throws out her hips.

  I watch her a while longer and the miserable night explodes. There’s no doubting it – the girl is on the game. I’m still in the hinterlands of red light central, but women in windows? It just doesn’t happen rou
nd here. I know there are girls who bring punters back to their pads – I’ve ogled in silent envy enough times – but they use the streets to ensnare them. This is sheer audacity. It isn’t happening. Abandon the idea.

  * * *

  A blue Saab pulls up outside and a skinny bloke with a pony gets out. He hovers at her door for a while, then disappears inside. She draws the curtains.

  I let two buses roll past.

  Eventually he emerges and as his car pulls away, she opens the curtains and stations herself again at the window. I sidle closer to get a better look at her. She is thirtyish with brown shoulder length hair and a gaunt but striking face. The rain has stopped now and the streets are empty of life and activity. The air is damp and big in its stillness. I gulp hard and deep on it and cross the road.

  A length of rusty railing separates her house from the pavement. Condoms have been crucified on the railing spikes and the word SLAG is emblazoned across her door in green paint. I step towards it. There are three buzzers. Only one of them has a name. Sabrina. I press it.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Are you the woman in the window?’

  A broad Salford accent booms back, putting me on the back foot.

  ‘Oo are yoh?’

  ‘My name’s Sarah. Can I come in?’

  ‘What d’yoh want?’

  ‘I’m gay,’ I say, despising the sound of the word. ‘One of the girls on Hope Street told me you’d sort me out.’

  ‘Fuck off, will yoh! Oo told you that?’

  ‘I can’t remember her name. She had a bad scar on her face and…’

  ‘What d’yoh mean, sort yorrowt?’

  ‘Look, it’s teeming down, here. I’m not going to stand here making a cunt of myself. I made a mistake. Sorry. Goodnight.’

  I linger for a while, staring at the buzzer, the silence razored by the chattering of my teeth.

  ‘Yoh better not be wasting me time.’

  Another silence follows broken this time by a tentative sigh. Then the buzzer clicks me in.

  I shut the front door behind me, and am plunged into a dense black fog. The sheer thickness and intensity of the dark panics me but a chink of light soon appears at the end of the corridor. The same voice, softer now, calls out.

  ‘Down ee-yoh.’

  The door throws me straight into a kitchen that’s tiny, dank and depressing. There are bowls of cat food strewn across a dirty lino floor but no sign of a cat. A badly constructed archway separates the kitchen from a cramped lounge where I find her sitting on a small couch, her bare legs crossed and arms folded. She’s hard but fuck, she’s sexy. The room smells the same as the kitchen – cigarettes and cat food. I can’t help staring at her face. She has an ochre complexion and deep sunken misty blue eyes. She blinks a lot. When she first sets eyes on me, her surprise – her pleasan surprise – is plain to see. She was expecting a Diesel.

  ‘Av o seat’ she says, eventually. ‘Me name’s Sabrina.’

  Sss-ebb-rrrr-eee-noh.

  I sit down on a rocking chair opposite her. ‘Sarah,’ I tell her.

  ‘I thought yoh were Filth.’

  The quip’s sitting up pointing at its chin, but I let it pass.

  ‘First time?’

  ‘What – with a woman or with a … where I’ve had to pay for sex?’

  ‘Either, I s’pose.’

  ‘No. On both fronts. But it’s not something I make a habit of you know? I was just …’

  ‘Look, yoh don’t have to explain nothing to me, it’s not in me profession to make judgements is it?’

  She flicks her burn-blue over me, calmly appraising the goods.

  ‘I’ll tell yoh though, Sair-oh. I was a bit shocked when yoh walked through that door.’

  ‘Half expecting Pat Butcher were you?’

  She grins.

  ‘So? Am I your first woman, then?’

  ‘No. Don’t talk daft.’

  Somehow I’m not convinced.

  She unfolds her arms and folds them back again.

  ‘How old are yoh?’

  ‘Twenty one,’ I lie. ‘Do you have a cigarette?’

  She unfolds her arms, reaches down the side of the couch and lobs a packet of Lambert and Butler at me. The lighter’s inside the pack. I take a cigarette out and shake the lighter to life. I inhale deeply, holding the smoke in my lungs like it’s a joint. I feel oddly at ease, now. I feel in charge.

  ‘You can’t quite get your head around this, can you?’

  She shakes her wiry head. I exhale a thick plume of smoke up to the ceiling, nicotine-stained and strewn with cobwebs.

  ‘Like I say, it’s not in me profession to make judgements – but yoh could have any girl yoh wanted, you.’

  She throws me a nervous, vacillating look.

  I shrug my shoulders.

  ‘How d’you know I haven’t got a girlfriend?’

  I raise an eyebrow playfully.

  ‘Fifteen years on the streets, love. Bet yov got a fella, though?’

  I raise the other eyebrow and shake my head.

  ‘I was watching you from across the street.’ My voice drops to a whisper. ‘You’ve got an extraordinary face. Stunning. What’s your – you know? What’s your background?’

  She folds and unfolds her arms again, and runs a shaky hand through her hair. She’s blushing!

  ‘Me mam’s Icelandic. I was born in Reykjavik. My father, he’s from Manchester. I grew up in Salford.’

  ‘You’re beautiful.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She gulps and looks away.

  I’m deadly horny. My cunt is throbbing so hard it hurts and my limbs are starting to feel warm and floppy. And it’s not just the idea of being here that’s turning me on – that I’m about to have dangerous sex with a stranger who’ll do anything, anything I want her to. It’s more than that. There’s chemistry between us. The room is charged with it. I want her badly and she knows it and she wants me, too. She tries to regain the balance of power.

  ‘If yoh go through to the bedroom and take the door on yoh left, yol find a bathroom.’ She switches into business mode. ‘Take a shower. There’s clean towels in the cupboard above the sink. Put them in the linen basket when yov finished. There’s a clean dressing gown hanging behind the bathroom door. Put it on and I’ll meet yoh in the bedroom.’

  She holds my gaze for a while, contemplating some thought and then continues.

  ‘And I’ll be needing payment first. D’yoh know what you want?’

  I open my mouth. Words form but she continues.

  ‘I’ll do yoh a massage for fifteen, oral and masturbation for thirty and I’ll do the full Monty for forty.’

  She stands and with a coquettish flick of the hair walks into the kitchen and squats down at the fridge.

  ‘I’ve also got a selection of vibrators and dildos in the bedroom but that’ll cost extra. Water sports, scat, I don’t do.’

  Rather than estrange me, the clinical tone of her voice excites me badly. Partly because it implies that my identity as a punter has superseded my identity as a female but mainly because it alerts me to the fact that this is a whore. A woman prepared to hand over her body and allow me to indulge myself in any which selfish way I choose. It’s filth – sheer filth and I can’t get my head around that, that you can buy sex, like fags, books or beer. The most potent and precious of human interaction reduced to the price of a new top from Morgan. I saunter over to the kitchen. She looks dirty squatting down there like that. Like a reader’s wife.

  ‘How much to stay the night?’

  ‘Fifty,’ she says, peering into the fridge, ‘But yol have to be gone by 7.30.’

  She looks up at me and the nervous, vacillating look returns.

  ‘Can I get yoh a drink. Av got coffee, tea or yoh can av a bottle of lager but yol have to pay for the booze.’

  She pulls a bottle from the fridge and eyes the label with squinted eyes.

  ‘Scorpion?’

  ‘That’ll do. Are you going to have one too
?’ I ask, beseechingly.

  ‘Yeah. Why not.’

  She smiles coyly and sets about opening them.

  I go through to the bathroom. I peel my wet clothes off and hang them on a radiator. I wonder how many other bodies have stood naked in this room. I shower but don’t wash my hair, put my panties back on, remove them and put them back on again. I slip into the dressing gown and go through to the bedroom. It is chaste and harsh and the naked light bulb gives the room a jaundiced glow. There is a box of tissues and a never watered plant clinging on to life on a bedside cabinet. An imitation Monet hangs lopsided on the wall. It’s like a consulting room of a backstreet abortion clinic. It dawns on me that apart from the bowls of cat food I saw in the kitchen, there are no trappings of her life in this flat. I know absolutely nothing about this woman I am about to fuck. For a few fleeting moments I feel absurd stranded here on the bed in this silly silk dressing gown. But then she appears with a candle and our bottles, and the sight of her skinny legs gives me gooseflesh. She flicks off the switch with her tongue, hands me a bottle and slides alongside me. On the walls, our candlelit shadows are big and deformed and have already made contact.

  I take a few swigs and tell her I want full sex but without the massage. She kisses me softly on the cheek. She smells of cheap body spray. She runs a hand up and down the inside of my thigh and my legs spread instinctively. Then, removing the bottle from my hand she rolls it between my legs and shocks me by pushing the ice-cold length of it into my panties. I gasp. My cunt somersaults and pulses against the numbing cold. She misinterprets my arousal as apprehension and slackens the pressure, rubbing me gently with the tip of the bottle.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say, slipping a hand round her neck and pulling her towards me, ‘I like it.’

  She sinks her fingertips into my hair, twisting and pulling and a madness enters her eyes. We pause momentarily, then kiss deep and urgently and when she withdraws, I am breathless and limp, pleasure rippling through me, overwhelming my senses.

  She lifts the bottle to my lips and tilts it so that the liquid froths and trickles in parallel streams from the corners of my mouth and spills onto my tits. She shadows the liquid with her tongue, over my chin and neck, lingering to gnaw at my tense nipples, flicking them hard with her scaly tongue. I watch her mouth against my tits, breathing life into them, altering their shape and texture. Strange and beautiful sensations skid up and outwards from some gorgeous inner coil that I never knew existed.