“Mm. Met her in New York last year,” Lex was saying. “Great place. Went for a couple of days and stayed for a fortnight. Can’t wait to go back. We should hit some clubs when we get there, hang out a bit.”
He winked at me and Mel. It was automatic for someone like Lex to flirt with every attractive woman he met, and the wink was general enough to have no meaning beyond a friendly gesture. But Mel blushed slightly and looked down at her drink.
“I was wondering about that, actually,” Rob said. “Because they’re only taking us over for a couple of days, right? For the opening, basically. But I was wondering if we could change our tickets and stay on.”
“Have to sort out your own accommodation,” Lex said knowledgeably. “Carol’s putting us up in the Gramercy Park, but she won’t run to longer than she’s already agreed.”
“Is that what the hotel’s called?” Mel asked, her eyes still dropped.
“Mm. Great place.”
“Where exactly is it?” I said innocently, having sensed something a little vague about Lex’s response. I was forming the impression that he was the kind of person who loathed not knowing more than anyone else about the subject under discussion. Especially if it was a cool, happening kind of subject.
“It’s, uh, on Gramercy Park,” Lex said, as if this were the most obvious fact in the world. Still, he was avoiding my gaze.
“Is it near the gallery?”
“Oh, well, uh, it’s pretty central. Cool. Carol always puts up her artists there. Can I have a light, Mel?”
Clearly the precise location of the Gramercy Park Hotel would have to wait till we arrived.
“I’m not staying there, anyway,” I announced. “I’ve got a sub-let.”
All eyes turned to me.
“How come?” Rob said enviously. “Does that mean you’re staying for a while?”
“I have to get there a week or so before the exhibition opens,” I explained. “To install the sculpture. So, with what Carol would have had to pay for a hotel, I thought I’d see if I could find a flat to rent instead. A friend of a friend lives on the Upper West Side”—how easily I said that, without having any idea of what it signified. It might have been the equivalent of Mayfair, Brixton or Cockfosters for all I knew—“and she’s away for a month or so in October. She’s letting me have it for half the rent, as long as I water her plants and forward the mail.”
“Well, fuck me,” said Lex, summing up the general mood of the meeting in a few well-chosen, if not particularly elegant, words. “You jammy cow.”
“Bollocks! Bollocks!” This was Lex, in a near-seamless continuation of his previous ejaculation. Only by now it was many hours later, we had changed venue, and he was shouting the words over an insistently fast and thumping bassline. “How can you possibly fucking say that my work doesn’t inspire emotion? You should have seen people reacting to that piece I did at Black Box last year! They were all over the place!”
I sneered at him.
“I’m sorry,” I said, or rather shouted, as coldly as I could under the circumstances. “I really don’t see that a load of lads spitting out diluted cough syrup all over the floor counts as emotion, except perhaps in the most literal sense—”
“It wasn’t just sodding cough syrup! It was syrup of figs! It took me ages to get hold of that! And there was flat beer and tea, mixed together, in the Tallisker bottle, and vodka in the water—and,” he added with great pride, as if this would clinch the argument, “I left the chartreuse as it was! No one was expecting that!”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Lex!” I was exasperated by now. “Just because you lined up a load of bottles on a table with different stuff in them from what it said on the labels, and some idiot boys were fool enough to taste them—”
“It’s about challenging people’s perceptions of the real!” Lex insisted. “Breaking down our standard assumptions and showing how much we depend on labels—”
“Of course we bloody depend on labels! Take all of them off the tins you’ve got at home and then try finding the baked beans!”
“Well, that bit was more about mass-marketing,” Lex yelled across an increasingly loud break of sound, “how we expect certain things from a particular brand, because of advertising—”
“Then what you should have done,” I said, sighing, because it was so obvious, “is bunged a lot of bottles of vodka, say, on the table, right from supermarket brands up to Absolut or Finlandia, to see if people could taste the difference.”
Lex’s eyes went absorbed and distant for a second. “Nah,” he said, “that would be—”
“What?”
“That would be too practical!” he shouted. “So, what, you’re saying your stuff actually provokes emotion?” He put huge and sarcastic stress on the last two words.
I was drunk enough by now not to be embarrassed by the turn the conversation had taken.
“I dunno! I’m just saying that the emotional range you go through while swilling your mouth out to get rid of the taste of cold beer and tea mixed together and cursing the so-called artist at the same time—”
“I don’t bloody call myself an artist! Well, only as a convenient shorthand—”
“ANYWAY—that kind of sensation’s about as shallow as you can get. People probably experience a much more complex array of feelings watching Babe on video.”
“I can’t hear a word you’re saying! Let’s go and sit on the stairs, OK?”
I nodded. Lex turned and shoved his way through the crowd of people milling around the bar. I followed the shoulders of his battered fawn suede jacket as they jostled a path for me over to the staircase on the far side of the bar. Earlier I had taken one look at the dancefloor and beat a hasty retreat. A battery chicken would have sized up the situation and returned with relief to its cage, finding it pleasantly roomy and well ventilated by contrast. Still, it was better than the last drum and bass club I’d been to, just behind Regent Street. There no track had been longer than ninety seconds—without a tune there wasn’t anything else to sustain it for longer—and every time the DJ put a new one on he stopped dead and blew a whistle several times, at which everyone screamed and waved their arms around and joggled back and forth. A basic mathematical calculation will find that in ten minutes this had happened roughly six times, which was about how long I lasted.
And there had been the added handicap that practically everyone had been wearing puffa jackets tied round their waists, even while dancing, for some quirk of fashion whose reasons were obscured in the mists of time. Maybe Goldie had turned up at a club once looking like that and everyone had copied him, not realising that after about half an hour he’d taken the jacket off and stowed it somewhere sensible. So it was almost impossible to move because of all the duvets with sleeves slung at waist height, slipping against one another, scratching at any exposed passing flesh with the teeth of their zips. And the dancers, jerking up and down like Duracell rabbits in their little white vests, were sweating heavily under the low ceiling, the sweat running down their bodies and soaking into the channels of the puffa jackets….
“So, what were we saying? Whoah, I can almost hear myself when I talk normally, that’s got to be an improvement.” Lex dropped down on a stair and patted the tread beside him invitingly. I joined him, chugging back some of my beer, and then had to squeeze in closer because someone was coming downstairs. “Yeah, what were we saying?” he repeated. “Nah, fuck it. Enough of that.”
He drank most of his whisky chaser and turned to look at me directly. My thigh was pressed up against his jean-clad one, and the contact was very pleasant. Automatically I glanced down to check his footwear and made a mental tick against Caterpillar boots, rather sloppily laced. Under his suede jacket he wore a denim one with a T-shirt under that, a look I’ve always approved of. His hair was dark and cut short; I had the impression that it would be curly if he let it grow. His skin was a clear pale olive, his eyes big and dark. Indeed, he looked much as I might if I’d been a boy. Only
his eyelashes were much longer than mine, the bastard. When he opened them wide, as if he were protesting his innocence, they framed his eyes in great dark spikes Twiggy would have been proud of. And he knew exactly how pretty he was.
Mel and Rob had left already, the former, I thought, distinctly reluctant to leave me and Lex alone; my instinct in matters of sexual attraction has been finely tuned over the years. But she and Rob had boyfriends or girlfriends or pet gerbils waiting for them at home, and those claims must have taken precedence.
Lex’s thigh was pressing ever more insistently against mine and, enjoyable though it was, in the big picture this was not a good situation. We had a show to get through together, and in principle I was firmly opposed to shitting on one’s own doorstep. I decided to finish my beer and leave. Halfway down, someone else pushing past us jogged me and the beer would have gone everywhere if Lex hadn’t righted the bottle in time, his fingers deliberately closing over mine for much longer than the emergency warranted.
“Wheel” I said when I’d got my breath back. We were both cackling with laughter, for some reason. Clearly we were drunker than I had realised. I cleared my throat and mentally slapped myself around the face.
“I’ve got to go,” I said resolutely, impressed by my own maturity.
“Oh, what? No way! Come on, Sam, don’t wimp out on me.” He grinned. “I’ve heard all about your staying power.”
“Is that a challenge?” I said, rising to it immediately.
“It’s a fact.” He looked at his watch. “Shit, it’s only one! You can’t bottle out this early!”
“I really do need to go home,” I said feebly.
“Tell you what.” Lex batted his dark silky eyelashes at me. “Let’s go do a line of charlie. That’ll keep you going.”
It was the drugs and not Lex’s eye-work that persuaded me to stay. I swear it on my life.
The minuscule cubicle in the women’s toilets was painted a pale yellow. The walls were filthy, thickly encrusted with graffiti—some of it quite witty—and peeling like a terminal case of psoriasis. I made an amusing little crack about them having had too much AHA cream which Lex, being a boy, didn’t understand. Too many scientific terms for his tiny mind. In mitigation, however, it could be argued that he had his mind fully on the wrap he had produced from one of his jacket pockets. Unfolding it, he tapped out a steady stream of white powder onto the equally white cistern. I noticed that the wrap was cut out of a football magazine. He might as well have had “New Lad” tattooed on his forehead.
“Ladies first,” he said, gesturing to the cistern.
“All right if I go instead?” I said satirically. Bending over, I hoovered up a line. It cut sharply at the lining of my nostrils.
“A bit speedy, isn’t it? Not,” I hastened to add, “that I’m complaining.”
“Yeah, it’s nice,” Lex agreed, bending over in his turn and thus providing me with the kind of view I could have watched for much longer than the sadly brief few seconds it took him to snort the other line. He ran his finger over the cistern and smeared anything left, together with most of the dirt and grime that had been there already, over his gums. New Lad, new hygiene.
“So,” he said, looking at me, “here we are.”
And then he kissed me.
It wasn’t a tentative buss; it was full-on, shove-the-girl-up-against-the-cubicle-wall, hands-all-over-the-place. PG Wodehouse would have called it the Stevedore, as opposed to the Troubadour, approach. The only word for it, frankly, was snog, and I am sorry to admit that, mainly but not entirely due to these shock tactics and my advanced state of drunkenness, I found myself responding with enthusiasm, despite the proven uncleanli-ness of his gums. We crashed back into the small space between the toilet and the wall, radically disarranging each other’s clothes, tongues wrapping themselves around tonsils with abandon. My head knocked back against the wall. I heard the ageing plaster crumble under the pressure. Lex’s hands were closing around my bottom, smoothing the shiny material around my hips enthusiastically.
“Mm, sexy,” he purred into my neck, kneading the skirt like a feeding kitten.
For some reason the way he said it struck a false note. There was something self-conscious about it, as if we were making a porn film and he was talking for the benefit of the camera. I pulled back a little and caught such a smug expression on his face that my fingers snapped back from one of his fly buttons as if it had given me a short electric shock. No one ever takes me for granted.
“Close,” I said. “But no cigar.”
I pulled my sweater down again. With the increased vision this permitted me I was happy to see that Lex’s face had wiped itself clean of anything remotely resembling smugness; for a moment it was blank—which quite suited him—and then his lips parted in disbelief. He looked very fetching when he pouted.
“What? Bollocks! Come here!” He dragged me towards him and ground himself against me. The tender romance of this caress softened neither my heart nor any other part of my anatomy.
“Sorry, gorgeous. Got to go.”
“What?” he repeated. “Sam, you can’t do this to me! Come on, baby, it was going so well—”
How Seventies of him. “You sound like the singer in Hot Chocolate,” I said, adjusting my skirt and picking a couple of pieces of yellowing plaster out of my hair.
“What’s wrong with that? Hey—” He started kissing my neck. This was very pleasant, but I ignored it womanfully. “It needn’t change anything! We can still be friends afterwards—”
I always loathe it when someone says that.
“Who says we’re friends now?” I inquired, and stepped neatly past him and through the door. A couple of girls had just come in, sweaty from dancing, their eyes bright. They were both wearing the ubiquitous puffa jackets round their waists and the cladding was enough, in the small space, to cause a traffic jam of M25 proportions. As I was squeezing past one of them said, separating out her words for emphasis:
“God, I am so fucking up for it it’s not true. I could’ve grabbed him right there and given him what for, and I don’t even fancy him that much, know what I’m saying?”
“You’re on heat!” her friend bawled, giggling madly.
I had a flash of inspiration.
“Well, someone in there could do with it,” I broke in, nodding to the cubicle. “If you don’t mind finishing what I started.”
They broke into noisy and raucous laughter.
“All right, Shaz, what about it?” the first girl said as I left the toilets. She was the size of a house even without the jacket bulking her out. Lex had better get out of there quickly if he wanted to remain unmolested; once she cornered him between the toilet and the wall she’d have him bang to rights. I hadn’t warned her about his hairy back. It had felt like he was wearing a mohair sweater under his T-shirt. Oh well, she’d just have to find out for herself. You opens your cubicle door and you takes your chances.
The brief amusement I felt at the way I had handled my exit faded fast, the smile on my lips spreading wide into a silent scream. I rolled over in bed whimpering and biting the pillow, and not, I stress firmly, because the memory of Lex’s tongue halfway down my throat had rekindled any passion in my loins. Oh, the shame, the horror. It was worse than anything I could have imagined. I had kissed—no, Sam, look the brutal truth right in the face without flinching—I had fumbled in the Blue Note toilets with a young British artist. How I was going to live with myself after this I didn’t know.
And what on earth was I going to tell Hugo?
“Are you going to tell Hugo?” was how Tom chose to put the question when he came round the day afterwards.
I couldn’t deny that the idea of pretending the whole small sorry incident had never taken place appealed to me with near-overpowering force; but against that I had to weigh the possibility of it all coming into the open later, and how much worse it would look if it did.
“The thing is,” I said, topping up our vodka and tonics—it
made me feel incredibly sophisticated and mature having a mixer to hand rather than just a bottle of hard liquor—“the thing is that Hugo’s really good at spotting when something like that’s happened. Particularly if he ever sees me and Lex together. Because, knowing Lex, he’ll either ignore me pointedly or try to get off with me again in a proprietorial kind of way. Either of which will be so obvious to Hugo’s super-trained powers of observation that Lex and I might as well have neon signs over our heads saying: ‘Have Had My Tongue Round That Person’s Tonsils Recently’ and arrows pointing to each other.”
“Does Hugo really have super-trained powers of observation?” asked Tom jealously, going off at a tangent. Being a poet, he considered himself to have the monopoly on mots justes, piercing insights and an unerring perception of the subtleties of human behaviour. Sheer fantasy, of course. But he was very good at descriptions of plants in iambic pentameter.
“He is horribly sharp about anything to do with sex,” I admitted. “And it extends into more general areas. He says it’s the actor’s honed eye onto the world.”
“Sammy, please. Not honed eye.” Tom shuddered. “Just try to imagine what that would look like.”
I did. “Ick.”
Ever since Tom’s first collection of poems had been published a few months ago (covering, fairly extensively, the flora and fauna of India, which he had visited last year, with a side order of heartbreak and despair) he had become unbearable about picking people up on their less wisely chosen metaphors.
“What I can’t understand is why you’re getting hot and bothered about it,” Tom complained. “I mean, what’s it matter to you? You always run a mile if the bloke you’re shagging starts trying to tell you that you can’t feel up other blokes in toilets. Frankly, I’ve always thought you considered that a basic human right, like not being tortured, or proper sewage provision.”
India had really scarred Tom on the dysentery front. He had lost two and a half stone and was now obsessed with plumbing.
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