by Marcus Bryan
SCENE X
THE RAT
Way back in seventh year, when the worst thing I had hanging over my conscience was Lucy Cogburn shooting me down, I would react to problems in much same fashion as I do today; curl into a ball and hide under my duvet. This is, of course, the dumbest course of action one can take when faced with such a predicament, since blocking out all sight and sound only serves to make the memories louder by comparison, and the voices in your head are always worse than the piss-taking or telling off you would get from your friends or your parents, respectively. The smartest course of action, right now, would be to get out of bed, take a shower, book a restaurant, get out of the house and spend as much time with Liz as I can before the hammer falls. So why am I still lying in my pants in the foetal position, sniffling from the pneumonia I probably contracted whilst walking home sopping wet last night, and rubbing my swollen left-knee in a pathetic attempt to convince it to stop hurting me? Because I know the whole thing would be an act, a hollow sham of normal life? That can’t be true. I love movies, after all, and especially the ones which are nothing more than a hollow sham of reality. Perhaps the sad truth is that I prefer my duvet and my self-loathing and my crappy movies to the normal life I could’ve had. That sounds more like me.
At a couple of hours past sunset I finally throw off the covers. My knee-joint grinds painfully as I shuffle, zombie-like, out of my bedroom and onto the landing. I do this mostly through guilt; my conscience can’t quite bear the idea of Liz standing around, alone, in the cold. Considering all the shit I’ve done to her of late, not to mention the fact that I am, as Charlie so convincingly argued, a murderer, this clearly suggests that there is some bad wiring going on in my head.
I don’t bother with the shower and head straight downstairs, transferring as much of my weight as I can from my left leg to the bannister. Charlie and Freddy are bunched together on the sofa, staring at Charlie’s laptop. Johnny, it would appear, is at the library or with friends or has found some other excuse to not be around us. Stretching a mocking grin across my cheeks, I make an educated guess about what they’re reading:
‘So. We famous yet?’
Freddy looks up without so much as a charade of mirth. With one hand he spins the screen around to face me:
21-YEAR-OLD MAN FOUND DEAD, SUSPECTED MURDERERED
A picture of a much younger version of Sid stares back at me from under the headline. He looks much happier than usual, or much less surly, at least. Half of my brain, and all of my stomach, wants to flee back upstairs and once again take refuge under my duvet, but instead I bend down and crane my neck to within a couple of inches of the screen.
A 21-year-old man was shot dead at his home in Byker, Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the early hours of this morning, BBC News can report. The victim has been named as Sidney Quinn, an unemployed father of one. There was no sign of forced entry at Mr Quinn’s home, and police have received reports of a person dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt, around 5’4” in height, leaving the scene shortly after a gunshot was heard. Anyone with information or sightings of a person fitting this description in the vicinity of Byker are urged to contact police as soon as possible.
In the ‘Most Popular Stories’ section at the side of the page, I spot a link entitled ‘One dead after hostages taken in Newcastle’. At least we’re not being labelled as terrorists anymore.
‘You never said he had a kid,’ I say to Charlie.
Charlie shrugs, and heaves himself to his feet.
‘Neither did he. Can I get anyone a drink?’
‘We got any Dr Pepper left?’ I ask.
‘Nope. We’ve got either single-malt or champagne.’
I sigh. It’s a more rock-and-roll approach than the duvet, I guess.
‘Champagne, then.’
‘Freddy?’
Freddy declines to answer. Charlie gives an inebriated titter and ambles off towards the kitchen. The very second he vacates the room, Freddy rounds on me:
‘You know we’re next, right?’ The whisper comes out louder than regular speech. ‘Black hoody? “Person”, not “man”? About five-foot four? Ring any fucking bells? She’s coming back for us next!’
I look appraisingly at him. Even by his standards, this is far-fetched. Why would Phoebe kill Sid? Sid doesn’t have the first clue who she is. Me and Freddy know barely any more than he did. If she was going to kill anyone first, it would be Charlie.
‘Lots of people wear black hoodies,’ I tell him. ‘I’d bet the guy who sold us the guns has a few in his wardrobe.’
Freddy stands up. He puts his hand on my shoulder, in a fatherly kind of way.
‘Look, I owe you an apology. I know you didn’t kill that girl in the storeroom. I know you couldn’t do that. But she can. I’ve fucking seen her do it, just…just blow someone away to make a point, like they were the full stop at the end of a fucking sentence. Whoever the guy who sold you the guns is, he’s not that. He’s just a kid who listens to too much Wu Tang Clan. Phoebe; she’s the fucking devil. She did Sid, and she’ll do the three of us without a second thought.’
I’m not sure why, but I have to stifle a laugh as I recall something Phoebe said to me a long time ago. Freddy notices this, and affixes me with a disparaging, albeit inquisitive, scowl.
‘She told me she’d bury me under a railway bridge if she thought I’d talk,’ I tell him.
‘She meant it,’ Freddy says, with deadly seriousness. A pained expression suddenly crumples his face, as though he has either forgotten something or is trying to forget something. ‘[bleep], I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘What the fuck are you sorry for now?’ I ask.
‘Charlie came up with this idea, then he actually went through with it to try and impress her. I did it to prove to him that I’m not just big words and white guilt, but you… we just kind-of dragged you along for the ride. I’m sorry, man.’
‘You said it yourself; It was my plan,’ I reply darkly.
‘Yeah, but-’
‘No buts,’ I retort. ‘Let me make this very clear…’
But I don’t get to make anything clear, because Charlie suddenly announces something from the kitchen. He’s too drunk for his slurred words to make any sense, but the announcement holds a strange portent somewhere within it, nonetheless. Me and Freddy glance at each other.
‘What?!’ we shout back in unison. Charlie emerges into the doorway, swigging from a large mug of what for his sake I hope is tea and not whiskey.
‘I said, I think the devil might be on our doorstep.’
Before I know what’s going on, Freddy’s yanked me by the collar and tossed me across the hall, like Charlie with a dish of baked beans. I splat against the wall, bounce off, and careen into the bannister. From the heap I land in at the foot of the stairs, cradling my knee, I whimper:
‘Were you holding a grudge from last night?’
‘Shut up – she’ll hear you!’ Freddy responds, this time in an honest-to-God whisper. Personally, I think that all the shouting and banging about we were doing just a few seconds ago renders the whispering now a bit redundant, but I obey all the same. Freddy inches up to the peephole. The sudden tensing of his shoulders tells us that Phoebe’s on the other side. I can literally see the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. Standing there, motionless, impotent, I watch a single pinprick of sweat at the tip of Freddy’s spine swelling into a bead, then a blob, then a trickle as it slips down under its own weight and into his t-shirt…
And then his shoulders deflate. She must’ve moved on. When he turns away from the peephole, the transparent relief on Freddy’s face is enough to confirm this suspicion.
‘You know what, Charlie?’ he says. ‘I think I might need that drink, now.’
Charlie hands one of the mugs over. Seeing as how he’s suddenly in a position to be buying champagne I’d assume that the whiskey inside the mug is worth a fair bit, but as it passes under my nose all I can smell is paint thinner. I gues
s I wasn’t built to be rich. The funk of Freddy’s terror-sweat forms the aftertaste, and that’s only a slightly less pleasant aroma.
‘So we got away with it that time,’ Freddy says, after a generous glug of Glen-something, ‘but she’ll be back. I don’t know why she didn’t try to force her way in, though. That would’ve been more her style.’ He addresses these musings to me, since Charlie has migrated back to the kitchen for a fresh drink. I’m barely listening, though; the smell of Freddy’s sweat - or, at least, I think it’s Freddy’s sweat – has unlocked some strange, Pavlovian canal in my brain. The smell of it makes me nostalgic, almost, for something I never realised I had.
‘Because she had a feeling that someone’s bedroom window would be unlocked,’ a voice mutters in response to Freddy’s enquiry, as Charlie’s bedroom door opens to reveal Phoebe behind it.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Charlie exclaims, returning to the hallway just as she makes her appearance. ‘Have I got to pour you a drink now, as well?’
Charlie’s nonchalance throws an even starker light onto Freddy’s reaction. The tension which clasped his shoulders at the peephole has now taken his entire body prisoner. Even the muscles around his eyeballs seem to have tightened, pulling the glassy orbs back into his skull. Along with the deathly shade of white his skin has taken on and the black hoody that Phoebe is wearing, it’s like watching the Grim Reaper coming to collect a fresh corpse. Phoebe, being Phoebe, examines Freddy with mild, mischievous curiosity. Freddy, despite being large enough to pick her up by an ankle and shake her like a disobedient puppy, looks as if he’d abandon me and Charlie and flee for his life if she were to make any sudden moves.
‘So I guess I’d better get this out in the open,’ Charlie says. ‘Phoebe; are you planning on murdering any of us? Because if you are, it would be very poor etiquette not to give us some kind of warning beforehand.’
A very slight shift takes place in Phoebe’s features. It’s not quite anger, it’s something more controlled than that, more threatening. A twinge of a tendon here and there and I can suddenly understand why Freddy is so terrified of her. Only Charlie remains unabashed.
‘Is this about the guy in the breakroom?’ she enquires.
‘Him, and anyone else you’ve murdered,’ Charlie replies.
Phoebe shrugs.
‘He wouldn’t have cared if I’d lived or died, and the feeling was mutual. If he wanted to live, he should’ve killed me first.’
‘And what about us?’ Charlie asks. There’s still an eerie casualness to his manner. ‘Are you going to off us, just in case we decide to do you first?’ Freddy, though trembling, raises his hands slightly and forces himself within throttling range of her, in case she goes for a weapon. Phoebe fixes him with a glare, but doesn’t bother to move anything more than her pupils.
‘I wasn’t planning on it.’
‘Well that’s good enough for me,’ Charlie whoops. ‘Anyone fancy a pint?’
‘So answer me this,’ I say to Phoebe, as I walk to the restaurant to meet Liz and her and Charlie walk towards a pub which happens to be on the same route. Freddy elected to stay at home. ‘Where the fuck did you go?’
‘You said we’d be in and out in under ten minutes,’ she replies. ‘I gave you just under ten minutes.’
‘And a dead body,’ I reply. She raises her eyebrows, then quickens her pace to catch up with Charlie. A homeless man they pass asks for spare change, and I notice Charlie surreptitiously remove a large wad of bills from his back pocket, fold it in half and toss it into the man’s lap, all without the slightest break in his conversation with Phoebe. The homeless man barely seems to notice; either that or he’s – understandably – assumed he’s hallucinating. I wonder to myself how much of the takings Charlie pocketed last night. All of it? Even with the strange way he’s been acting over the last twenty-four hours, I can’t see Charlie stealing mine and Freddy’s shares, right from under our noses. Phoebe, however…
Despite the fact that I can feel my knee angrily protesting at even my current, meandering pace, I force myself into a stumbling jog until I’m back alongside her.
‘You know,’ I say, ‘you never struck me as someone who takes losing particularly well.’
‘Actually, I think she’s someone who doesn’t take other people winning particularly well,’ Charlie corrects.
‘Whatever gave you that impression?’ Phoebe asks me.
‘Every conversation we’ve ever had.’
‘What, all four of them?’
‘Don’t dodge the question,’ I reply. ‘You wouldn’t have bailed out without taking the money first. I wouldn’t have put it past you to burn it once you’d got your hands on it, but I’m fucking positive you would’ve wanted to get your hands on it first.’
She smiles.
‘You want the truth?’
‘I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.’
She lifts her arms up slightly, as though in a half-arsed gesture of surrender.
‘I was planning on shooting the tall guy – just a gut-shot, of course, nothing too serious - then I was going to take the money off him and stuff it in an air vent, where I could come back a few days later to collect it. Unfortunately for this dastardly plan, I only realised you’d rationed me out three fucking bullets when I pulled the trigger on him.’
I wonder if Charlie has gone so pale because he’s realised that if he’d paid his share towards the guns, Freddy might be dead right now. God works in mysterious ways, I suppose.
‘I wondered why Freddy didn’t seem so happy to see you,’ I remark. Phoebe shrugs.
‘You win some, you lose some. I don’t see why he has to hold a grudge.’
Since I already told Liz that I’d get us in at the Italian place, then stupidly left my phone at home so I won’t be able to tell her if there’s a sudden change of plans, it is with no small amount of trepidation that I ask the Maître d’ whether he has a spare table for two available. He says that they’re all booked up. I look around the empty restaurant and ask if he’s sure. He informs me that every table in the place is booked from fifteen-to-thirty minutes hence until closing time. Rather that call him out on this lie, I slip my hand into my back pocket, into my wallet, and tease the fifty quid I had budgeted for tonight into my fist.
‘Are you sure you can’t find anything?’ I ask mischievously, bringing my hand up to shake his. The three balled-up notes fall out of my hand and onto the carpet between us. We both glance down for a few conspicuous moments at the scrunches of money, and then we glance back up at one another.
‘You get the gist,’ I mutter. He gives me an almost sarcastic appraisal, then grunts:
‘The table by the window. Over there.’ I follow his gesture, take off my coat, sling it over the back of the chair and sit myself down. After a couple of minutes’ silence, I call to him:
‘I wouldn’t mind a beer, to start me off.’ I give a very deliberate look around the empty restaurant. ‘If you’re not too busy, that is.’
Liz is led over to the table by the waiter. She walks in the ethereal, gliding fashion that first made me fall in love with her on that night in the student union. Being in her company has instilled so much unease in me lately that I’d begun to forget just how gorgeous she is: her eyebrows, which can, with the slightest movement, convey even the slightest hint of emotion; the brown-in-darkness, blonde-in-sunlight hair she’s always made such an effort to tame, but which retains just a hint of disobedience, as if it has its own unshakeable character and cannot be cowed by any mere appliance; that peculiar way her toes point inwards when she’s abashed, like Tommy from Rugrats. All these small things, and all the others, adding up to something that will always and forever be her, no matter how much the years may grey and wrinkle the details. Something that I, in all honesty, never had any right to claim as my own. The waiter, who had continued standing quietly polishing glasses when I asked for a beer, now puts on all the bells and whistles that his employment demands, pulling out h
er chair and offering to take her coat. ‘Noting’ that my trench coat is slung over the back of my seat, he offers to take it as well. I refuse.
‘Please, sir; it’s the restaurant’s policy to leave coats at the door.’
‘It’s my policy to keep my possessions where I can see them,’ I reply, firmly. For a moment his mask of propriety slips, but he quickly hoists it back up when Liz looks up at him. ‘Now, could we make a drinks order?’
‘By all means, sir.’
‘Great. I’ll have a pint of beer, and Liz…’ I pick up the cocktail menu and look it up and down in a theatrical fashion. ‘…Liz will have a Bellini.’ Liz raises her eyebrow ever so slightly. I wonder if I’ll be able to pop to the bathroom between courses and apply for an overdraft extension without her picking up on it.
‘Very good, sir,’ the waiter responds. I watch him walk away, and try to imagine the look on his face now that I can’t see it.
‘So,’ Liz begins. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Why am I here, specifically?’ I ask. I pick up the cocktail menu again. ‘Apparently, because I’m sixty-grand deep in student debt, but I’ve still got more money than sense.’
Twenty minutes later, the whole thing is going so well that I don’t even notice the restaurant filling up around us, nor the fact that the waiter hasn’t even taken our orders yet. I zone out of the finer details of what we’re talking about and allow the sensation of the conversation to take over me. This must be the reason why some people treat dating like a more expensive drug habit, as they scrounge for a hit of: I think this person might want to fuck me! Please God, let him or her want to fuck me!
The slightest of twinges on Liz’ expression brings the whole illusion suddenly crashing to the ground. I follow her grinding gaze over my shoulder and see Charlie and Phoebe chatting to the Maître d’. Charlie’s bleary eye meets my own, and the contents of my stomach flop down into my bowels.
‘Ah, the lovely [bleep]!’ he exclaims jovially, wandering over like George Plimpton dressed in a tuxedo when he’s in fact rather drunk, dressed in a T-shirt and torn-up jeans. ‘Ah, and Liz, who is so very much lovelier that I’m forced to amend my previous comment!’ He turns back to me, and - with his sincerest commiserations - informs me that, by comparison, I look like an aspiring crack-whore who was never quite pretty enough to join the professional ranks. As he unravels this spiel of greeting, he drags the empty table next-door up beside ours. He then pulls over a chair and sits down, leaving Phoebe to drag over her own. The Maître d’ suddenly materialises at the table – or tables – but Charlie heads him off before he can even open his mouth:
‘So sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude,’ he claps the Maître d’s hand in both of his and shakes it passionately, ‘but I was simply excited to see these great friends of mine; I haven’t seen them in a very long time, you must understand, and I don’t want to waste this chance to be in their company. I do hope you can accommodate us.’ He lets his hand fall gracefully southwards and allows it to caress the stem of his wine glass, leaving several notes poking out of the Maître d’s fist. Smooth prick, I think to myself. Even blind drunk, he pulled it off far better than I did. The Maître d’ looks torn, for a moment, between his principles and the potential tip he’ll be getting at the end of the meal. The moment doesn’t last long.
‘Not a problem at all, sir,’ he responds, with a simpering smile.
‘Wonderful,’ Charlie grins back. He picks up Liz’ unfinished Bellini and hands it to him. ‘Would you please take this away, and replace it with a bottle of your second-most expensive champagne, and four chilled glasses. I always find that the second-most expensive one is the best, don’t you, Liz?’
Liz seems half-confused, half-annoyed, half-intrigued.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she replies.
‘Oh, but you will,’ Charlie winks back. He plucks our menus from the empty place settings in front of us and hands them to the Maître d’. ‘On the food front, we’ll defer to your judgement.’
A smile creeps up one side of the increasingly well-off Maître d’s face. If he’s buying, at least I won’t have to extend my overdraft, I think to myself. As the Maître d departs Charlie goes quiet, leaving poor Liz to force conversation:
‘So Charlie, what’s with the sudden wealth?’ she asks.
‘I will never be wealthy, Elizabeth,’ he replies, holding up his empty wine glass and inspecting it for some reason. ‘You’ve spent enough time in my company to realise that much. And, as such, I would like the chance to play the part of a rich man, just once, before I drop dead.’
He leaves no avenue down which to pursue this conversation, and doesn’t seem all that inclined to provide Liz with another, so she instead turns to Phoebe:
‘Sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’
‘Daphne,’ Phoebe replies. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Liz.’
‘I dread to think,’ Liz chuckles. The chuckle is forced. ‘So, you’re the one who finally tamed Charlie.’
‘“Tamed” is a strong word,’ Phoebe remarks, with a wry glance at me. Again, the false laugh from Liz.
‘Then I’ve heard a fair amount about you, too. So, Charlie has a girlfriend; I never thought I’d see the day.’
‘Girlfriend?’ Phoebe replies, with a smirk.
‘Well, Johnny seems to think so.’ A pause. ‘Is he mistaken?’
‘I’ve never quite understood what being a girlfriend entails,’ Phoebe/Daphne answers. Liz looks at her as though she’s a caveman she’s just defrosted, and Charlie butts-in to translate:
‘It means you have a verbal contract with someone that says neither of you will fuck anyone else.’ Phoebe raises her eyebrows in amusement, like a parent surveying a macaroni picture their kid threw together.
‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly…’ Liz begins, but I interject:
‘Nah, nah; it’s where you can spend half your time telling someone how perfect they are, and the other half telling them how much of an arsehole they are.’ Liz shoots me a glance before responding, half-smirking and half in a growl:
‘Don’t be an arsehole.’ All of the tension I’d been holding in since I first spotted Charlie walk in here bursts out in my laughter:
‘Ha! Told you.’
Liz leans back on her chair, like a high-rolling gambler, and throws her own witticism onto the table.
‘It’s that thing men are most afraid of, until they get old enough to worry about dying alone,’ she declares. Charlie raises his glass at her, as if to agree.
‘Hilarious though I’m sure all those are,’ Phoebe drawls, ‘it still doesn’t bring me any closer to a definition.’
‘You want to be serious?’ Liz asks. ‘Fair enough: it’s when someone you’ll admit to being in love with will admit the same thing about you.’
‘I’ve never quite understood what that means, either,’ Phoebe shrugs. Once again, I burst out laughing.
‘What are you, the fucking Terminator?’
‘The what?’ Phoebe enquires.
‘You’re trying to bail the Atlantic Ocean with a pint glass here, Liz,’ Charlie comments, taking the bottle of champagne from the Maitre D’, pulling out the cork with his teeth and pouring the overflowing bubbly liquid into each of our glasses. ‘When I sat her down and made her watch Star Wars the other day I actually had to explain to her which ones were the bad guys. That’s the level of sociopathy you’re up against.’
Phoebe shrugs.
‘One side blew up a planet full of people; the other blew up a space station full of people. I don’t see the difference.’
‘I’m not so hot on Star Wars,’ Liz admits, ‘but I’ve watched too many French films to not know what love is. Love is when someone sees you for what you are - the real you, buried under all the make-up and sexy accents - and still likes you more than anyone else on the planet.’
‘There is no real you. How you act is determined by context,’ Phoebe returns.
‘How you act is, but not
who you are.’
‘What’s the difference?’ Phoebe shrugs. ‘Except for the fact that you’re the same person, you share less in common with the kid in the picture on your parents’ mantelpiece than you do with the person who sits next to you in your literature lectures. So why pretend otherwise? Don’t stay shackled to people when you’ve heard every tedious word that can come out of their mouths, just so you can say you’ve got friends and a family; don’t tie yourself to a place for so long that you might as well be a part of the fucking brickwork, just so you can call somewhere “home”; don’t try to dress up working in data management as something fulfilling, just so you can convince the kid on the mantelpiece that you’re not what he was afraid of growing up into, and so you’ve got something to say when a grown-up asks, “so, what do you do?”’
‘Seriously, what have you fucking art students got against data management? Did John Nash fuck you and never call you again, or something?’ I ask, throwing my hands up in the air. No-one responds. Phoebe leans across the table, inspecting Liz in that characteristic way which is rapidly becoming something of a tired gimmick. As she does so, her scent again floats past my nostrils. That sense of nostalgia for something I never possessed, which I felt back when we were at the house, engulfs me once more. The memory attached to it, however, remains infuriatingly out of arm’s length.
‘Why not be free, instead?’ Phoebe asks Liz, as a psot-script.
‘You sound like a kid eating bubble gum,’ Liz replies. ‘Chew people up and spit them out when they’ve run out of flavour.’
Phoebe grins wolfishly.
‘That’s a pretty apt metaphor.’
‘Life’s about more than what you can chew out of someone.’
I’m expecting Phoebe to say, ‘no, it’s not,’ but she doesn’t.
‘Fuck it, maybe I’m wrong,’ she concedes, allowing her shoulders to slink back and her arse to slide forward in the chair. ‘But you can’t help what you believe. It all depends on when and where your mother spat you out. A quirk of geography could’ve seen you strapping TNT to your chest and blowing up shopping centres.’
‘No offense, but I don’t think you believe in anything,’ Liz returns.
‘I never knew my mother, and I’ve never had a place to call home,’ Phoebe answers sullenly. With a dismissive wave of the hand, though, she perks herself back up. ‘But, to be honest, I think you’re the ones who don’t believe in anything. You just pretend you do, so you can tell yourselves you’re consistent; so you can tell yourself that you don’t just do things because you’re hungry, or bored, or angry, or horny, or lonely.’
Liz smirks, and raises her glass in a mock-toast. The effect, however, is somewhat marred by the pink glare in her cheeks. ‘I suppose you’re lucky you’re still a university student; we’re the only people on the planet with enough free time to pretend we believe in things.’
‘Who ever said I was a university student?’ Phoebe asks.
Liz raises her eyebrows. Charlie does not.
‘No-one, I suppose. I just assumed.’
‘You want to be careful with that,’ Phoebe warns. There’s a certain viciousness, a sort of hunger or lust in the way that she runs the tip of her tongue across her top teeth after letting go of the final syllable. Liz either doesn’t cotton-on or isn’t intimidated by it.
‘I guess that raises a question, then.’ she says. ‘So, Daphne, what do you do?’
‘Depends in what sense you’re asking.’
‘Well, I’d hope that, after that rousing speech about freedom and not needing to rely on anyone, it doesn’t turn out that our parents’ taxes are paying to keep you fed and sheltered?’
Phoebe’s black lips curl backwards. She’s almost panting.
‘Not their taxes,’ she sneers. ‘Paperwork’s not really my thing.’
‘So, what, robbery?’ Liz asks. ‘Ah… So when you said you weren’t Charlie’s girlfriend, what you actually meant was that you’re just buttering him up until you get the chance to empty his bank account?’ I recognise her tone of voice. It’s the one she used when she was speculating about me having been one of the Haymarket terrorists.
‘Well, maybe not his. He’s kind-of cute,’ Phoebe replies. ‘I’d prefer to call it “redistribution”, anyway. “Robbery” implies that you spoiled fucks did something to earn it.’
The pink flush in Liz’ cheeks grows darker.
‘Alright, Robin Hood,’ she scowls, derisively, ‘if that’s true, what would stop me from calling the police and telling them what you just told us?’ She still carries the last hint of mockery in her brow, pinning back the mounting rage. Charlie looks far less sceptical. Phoebe reapplies her dismissive hand-wave. This time she adds a hyena-esque cackle to go along with it.
‘What would you tell them? A girl called Daphne with black hair and tattoos told you she was a criminal? By the time they’d bothered to chase it up, I’d be in a different city, with a different name, looking different enough that he -’ she jabs a thumb towards Charlie - ‘wouldn’t recognise me if I was serving him from behind a bar.’ Charlie lets out a bitter hiss masquerading as a snigger. ‘A splash of make-up here, a few less swear words there, and you three would never look twice at me, because you just think of me as that goth girl.’ She wags her finger. ‘See, you’ve assigned me an identity, and that makes you all too easy to dupe.’
I look at her, and something strikes me. Phoebe has fewer tattoos than I gave her credit for. Only three small ones, but they’re placed in such a way as to create an impression of her as a ‘tattooed person’, rather than ‘a person with tattoos’.
Phoebe crams both the first and last forkful of her entrée into her mouth, standing up as she does so, and announces to the table:
‘And with that little revelation, I’m off to the shitter. Liz, what’s say you don’t call the police just yet, so we can continue this enthralling discussion?’ She winks, casually tosses the fork onto the table, then turns and walks away. In doing so, she allows her eyes to meet mine, for just a snatch of a second. For the first time, I notice that Phoebe has green eyes. As if it’s tethered, my neck turns upwards to watch her go. The strange, airy gait. The oddly familiar scent. I know why I recognise them. I can grasp the memory in both hands, now.
‘I might go for a piss, as well,’ I declare to the other two, jerking out of my chair and following Phoebe down the corridor. Social protocol tries to hold back my hand as I catch the door to the female toilet, but I force my body into obedience. I push it back open. I’m expecting a screaming girl to jump out and Benny Hill chase to start up at any second, so I swiftly make for the locked cubicle at the far end of the bathroom, kick down the door, and drag Phoebe out by the back of her sweater. She’d been trying to clamber out of the window. Clamping my hand firmly around her forearm, I wheel her around, push her towards the sink, squeeze some soap onto the inside of my cuff, and scrub it furiously against the naked woman ‘tattoo’ on her wrist. She winces in pain and anger but I pay no heed, stopping only to rinse it under the tap and check to see if the mark has begun to fade. On the fourth rinse, I notice that the naked woman’s belly button has disappeared. Despite the fact that Phoebe’s skin is going red, I give it one last malicious burst of effort with my cuff, to make sure, then I let go of her arm. She lets it fall to her side.
‘So that was you, the girl in the storeroom,’ I say.
‘In a manner of speaking,’ she replies.
‘I assume the police spoke to you after you left?’
‘Yep.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘That I just wanted to go home.’
‘And they let you go?’
‘They phoned my parents. But the parents of the person whose driver’s license I’d stolen live a long way away, so - once the girl you sent out in the getaway car confirmed my identity, and they’d taken a statement - they let me go, and said they’d call me again in a day or so. I’m guessing by now the parents have told
them that their daughter has no recollection of being at the police station yesterday.’
‘Guess that leaves you with about 24 hours to skip town and find a new identity, all that stuff you were just talking about.’
‘Guess it does,’ she replies.
‘You know this is the equivalent of the bad guy in a movie telling the hero his plan, rather than using that time just to kill him?’ I ask.
BAM. With what seems like steel-toe-caps, Phoebe gives me a good, hard punt to the groin. With a pathetic squeak I fall to the floor at her feet.
‘I don’t really watch movies,’ she smiles. ‘See you around, Sundance.’ She heads back towards the cubicle I dragged her out of. As she reaches the window, she turns back to me. ‘I wouldn’t exactly call you a “hero”, but - for what it’s worth - you guys were the most interesting group I’ve ever ripped-off.’
And with that, she’s gone. As I’m rolling around on the floor, wondering which of my bollocks has been kicked up into my stomach, and which of my organs has jumped up into my throat to make room, Typically, it’s at this, my most humiliating moment, that I hear door swing open.
‘What are you doing in the women’s bathroom?’ Liz enquires, in a tone halfway between anger and weary resignation. I try to clamber up to my feet, but I can’t get any further than doubled-over, with one hand clutching at the crotch of my jeans.
‘She was running out on the bill,’ I gasp. ‘I tried to stop her.’
Liz’ face crumples up.
‘Oh, for Christ’s – what is wrong with your…’ Her voice trails off. She pushes both her arms down tight by her sides and takes a deep breath. ‘Look, if I go back out there and Charlie’s disappeared too, I’m giving them his name and address. I’m not doubling my student loan just because he’s decided he’s got expensive tastes.’
‘And so you should,’ I reply, through a wince. Personally, I’d be relieved to go out there and find an empty table waiting for us. At least that would put a glass ceiling on what can go wrong tonight. ‘Shall I meet you back in the restaurant?’
‘No,’ she replies.
‘I assumed you were taking a piss,’ I say.
‘I can hold it. I need to make sure that you don’t disappear, too.’ There’s none of the old wry humour in her voice.
‘Fair enough,’ I shrug, still holding on to my balls.
As I feared, Charlie is slumped at the table, with his wine glass hanging from his fingers and his arm hanging over the side of his chair. With the other hand, he languidly plucks items of food from the four plates in front of him, everyone else having been absent when the main course was served, leaving him with a buffet. As Liz and I retake our seats he lifts the glass back up to the table and reaches for a bottle of red wine – one of the many unfinished ones strewn across the table. Examining the label, he says, half to himself:
‘You know, I don’t think I was built for opulence.’
‘And it only took a two-grand dinner bill to help you figure that out,’ Liz mutters, sarcastically.
‘What were you built for, Charlie?’ I ask. He puts the wine back on the table in front of him, resting his hand beside it. His fingers tap against the rim of a plate.
‘Bargain-basement excess, maybe. That and bullshitting about movies,’ he replies. ‘Remember the theory I had a few months ago? The one which necessitated throwing my lunch against the wall?’
‘I vaguely recall it,’ I concede. Liz cocks an eyebrow. ‘“Most of what we call morals and ethics is just arbitrary cultural bullshit, put there to prevent us from really going off the rails.” Something like that?’
‘Something like that,’ he repeats, nodding with dead-eyed acquiescence. ‘But I missed the point of the point I was making. Or part of it, at least. Tell me; why didn’t you stop me from throwing beans at the window?’
‘Because I’d momentarily forgotten that you were dumb enough to actually do it.’
‘Nope, because you couldn’t convince me that it was the wrong thing to do, and I wasn’t afraid of the consequences you would be able to bring down on my head if I did it.’
‘I’m not the most imposing of people,’ I admit, smirking.
‘You want to be, though,’ he returns, sternly. ‘I can shoplift because I’m not afraid of being caught.’ He gestures around the restaurant. ‘I can make a fool out of myself tonight, because I’m not afraid of these mother fuckers judging me.’ His face snaps back to me. ‘But you are. I think you’re sick of being afraid, and now you want to be the one all these mother fuckers are scared of.’
His hand closes around the bottle of red wine. He lifts it up and down, slowly, a couple of times, as though checking its weight.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Charlie,’ I groan. ‘Don’t fucking do it.’
He shoots me a resolute, mischievous grin.
‘Are you going to stop me?’ he asks.
Maybe I could wrestle him to the floor. Maybe I could grab the wine bottle off him. It would still cause a scene, and it would mean that the aforementioned mother fuckers would be staring at me, too, rather than only at him.
‘No, Charlie,’ I say. ‘I can’t stop you.’
With one last glance at me, he whips around and hurls the bottle of wine across the room. It hits the wall with a terrible CRASH! and the restaurant instantly erupts into pandemonium. Charlie has already stood up, tucked-in his chair and given me a theatrical bow of goodbye before I’ve even had time to look away from the claret asterisk on the wall and form a reaction. As soon as my wits re-establish themselves, I grab Liz’ hand and hiss:
‘Let’s go!’
As I’m dragging her over to the door, my coat flailing from my trailing hand, I see that Charlie has gone to talk to the Maitre d’, who is standing behind the bar. He opens his wallet and removes a large stack of notes from within.
‘This is for the bill;’ he says, slapping a good couple-thousand pounds down onto the bar. ‘This is for the tip.’ A grand or so more. ‘This is for the damage.’ A further couple-thousand is laid down next to the second pile. He appraises what is left – three notes – slaps two down on the bar and puts the last back into his pocket. ‘And that’s for the pint I’m going to swipe on my way out.’
With that, he strides off towards the door, picking up a grey-haired gentleman’s half-full pint glass as he passes his table. Pushing Liz through the exit ahead of me and ignoring the noises she’s making about her coat, I stalk after him.
I see Charlie amble off down a side street ahead. I make chase, partly because I’m concerned for his mental wellbeing and partly because, if we go our separate ways, it’ll be me and not him who stumbles into the lights of a police waggon. Liz is peculiarly quiet, and lags behind me as I trot after my drunk, possibly insane housemate. She still holds on to my hand, but the tightness with which she clasps it has nothing, I fear, to do with affection.
‘Sorry about that,’ Charlie mutters as I pull up alongside him. ‘Just wanted to prove my point.’
‘Why use words, when a grand gesture will do?’ I reply, in an attempt at humour.
‘Exactly. You’re still getting the speech, though. What I was trying to say was that there are no real laws; there are only people who tell you what to do, and people who make you afraid to not do as they say.’
‘What about your conscience?’ I ask, sarcastically.
‘Like a quadruple amputee thrown in a river, who convinces himself that he’s swimming,’ Charlie replies. Suddenly, his eyes lock-on to a girl with a ponytail tied at the top of her head, who is lurking under a streetlight flanked by two teenaged boys built out of fat, muscle, acne and barely-suppressed rage. ‘Oi!’ he calls out to her. ‘Just because I’m pretty, doesn’t mean you’re allowed to stare at me like I’m some kind of sex object!’
‘What the fuck did you just say?’ asks the larger of the two large male companions.
‘Ah, the lawmakers of a very specific sub-section of our society,’ Charlie says, striding up to meet
him. ‘Tell me; did you actually not hear what I said, or are you just looking for an excuse to beat me up?’
It’s the latter. The quiet Crack of the boy’s forehead hitting the bridge of Charlie’s nose has none of the panache of a wine bottle hitting the wall of a restaurant. Charlie lands against the floor with a thud. The other boy, who has come over to join in the festivities, pulls the pint glass out of Charlie’s hand and slams it against the side of his face. Charlie doesn’t make a sound. A white light appears beside me – Liz is keying ’9-9-9’ into her phone.
‘No!’ I demand. ‘Go home, Liz; I’ll sort this out.’
‘No!’ she replies, with even more force, and presses the call button. I snatch the phone out of her hand and slam it shut.
‘Leave, now!’ I tell her.
‘No! They’re going to kill him! He’s your friend! Call the police!’
‘What the fuck did this bitch say?’ screeches the girl with the ponytail on the top of her head. I look away from Liz, and see the two boys taking it in turns to kick a prone Charlie. I look at the young girl advancing towards her and hate bubbles up in my soul. Almost outside of myself, as though I’m playing a videogame, I watch my fist slam into the side of her face. She hits the deck.
‘What the fuck did you just-’ the larger boy says, as though that’s the trio’s catchphrase. He advances on me. My hand goes into my coat pocket, and pulls out the revolver. Charlie wasn’t the only one who kept hold of some of the evidence. The moment he recognises what I’m pointing at him the teen freezes. The colour drains from the few acne-free areas of his face. His snarl disappears, and suddenly his youth becomes much more pronounced in his features. His hands raise and his knees slump involuntarily. With one hand I grab the back of his neck and with the other I thrust the gun into his mouth.
‘You taste that?’ I ask him. ‘That’s gunpowder, from the last bullet I fired out of this gun. The next one’s going straight out the back of your head.’
The other boy has stopped hurting Charlie, now.
‘Then the one after that’s going right between your tits, you fat fuck,’ I call to him. ‘That is unless all three of you cunts run away from here, right this second.’
By the time I’ve finished the sentence, the girl and the smaller boy have faded away into the dusk. I know the bigger one will do the same the second that I take my hand off the back of his neck, but I can’t quite bring myself to let go.
‘You ever touch anyone I know again, and I’ll kill you,’ I spit at him. Twenty years of being the little-guy parade through my jugular. He coughs and splutters and tears flop down his cheeks. I increase the pressure on the back of his neck, and force the gun past his tonsils. ‘Your friends ever touch anyone I know, and I’ll kill you. A friend of mine gets hit by a bus and I just want someone to blame for it, I’ll kill you.’ I take a deep, hard breath and scream: ‘ARE WE FUCKING CLEAR?!’ He tries to nod, but can’t do much more than tremble and gag on the barrel.
‘Then off you fuck,’ I say to him, allowing my lips to curl at the corners.
I pull the phlegm-drenched revolver out of his mouth and he staggers backwards, awkwardly turns, stumbles, and scrabbles off into the darkness, tripping over Charlie’s body and falling over once more in his haste to escape. I turn to hand Liz’ phone back to her, but she, too is gone.