I shrugged. ‘Suppose so.’
‘Did that happen with you and Monobrow?’ she asked, sticking her legs up in the air and looking at them.
I sipped the syrupy liquid. ‘What do you mean? Fuck, this is disgusting.’
‘I know, right!’ She cackled. ‘It’s bottled diabetes and it’s so fucking good... I mean, that’s how you tell, isn’t it? You start off looking happy and then after a bit just them walking around existing makes you sad. Fuck knows Nic is really pissing me off with all the existing he’s doing right now. Even the way he eats Frosties makes me wanna punch him in the face, you know? Just... right in the face.’
‘Not so much. I don’t think I’ve ever been into someone enough to want to punch them in the face.’ I shrugged. ‘I want to punch random people in the face all the time though so I don’t think I discriminate on the grounds of whether I want to shag them or not.’
‘Bull.’ She rolled on to her side. ‘So if it’s not Monobrow, who is it?’
‘Who?’
‘Your bottled diabetes.’ She giggled, and carried on giggling for a while at her own joke. ‘Come on, I moan to you about Nic all the time and you’ve never told me anything about you. What about this guy you used to live with? Is he on holiday or something?’
‘That guy, um... No, he’s away for good, I think. And we were definitely never a thing.’
‘Then who is it? Come on, who’s the guy?’
I didn’t answer her. I was finding it weird enough having this discussion when not even two hours ago I’d shot a man in the head. I felt guilty even replaying the memory in my mind. I felt like Daisy would almost be able to see it.
‘Does Nic ever talk to you much about his job?’ I asked, finding it difficult to talk about him as if we hadn’t met.
In truth, I’d thought about him a lot since he had drawn the picture for me, the one that was now in my kitchen. He was a hard man to stop thinking about. Unlike Mark, who wore much of his cunning and delight in his profession on his face, Nic had the air of a naive introvert, as if, given the choice, he wouldn’t speak to strangers at all. It was compelling. I hadn’t been able to envision it before, but he and Daisy must complement each other with their antithetical approaches to life.
‘Oooh, nice evasion, Seven, how very smooth.’ Daisy winked at me. ‘Yeah, sometimes.’
‘Like, details?’
‘Well, not names and stuff but if I ask he tells me things. Think he doesn’t get much chance to talk about it and... this might be bad, but... I find it really interesting. Does that mean I’m sick? Some kinda psycho?’
‘You are a psychopath.’ I grinned at her.
She covered her mouth. ‘No way, I’m a sick puppy, right! I can’t believe I’m telling you this but... fuck, I enjoy hearing about it. Sometimes... I think I even find it attractive. There, I said it! I dig it, I think it’s hot!’
I mock-gasped. ‘You find danger hot? You deviant!’
‘Well no, I wouldn’t find the idea of me being in danger hot, but it’s just a fantasy thing. Sometimes... fuck, this is wrong, you can’t tell anyone! But sometimes I have this fantasy that he’s just gone out, been in this big fight, has blood all over him and then he comes home and fucks me.’ She screwed her face up. ‘Argh, God, it’s horrible, isn’t it! I’m a horrible fucked-up person!’
‘Please, like every woman who has a rape fantasy wants to be raped? Of course not, it’s fantasy, you don’t actually want it to happen to you in real life.’
She thought for a moment.
‘No,’ she said, grimacing. ‘Ew. I bet you’re into all that too, right?’
I shook my head, taking another gulp of Smirnoff Ice and feeling thirteen years old. ‘Uh-uh. Not my thing.’
‘What? You’re seriously telling me you don’t get sick of being your oh-so-empowered self sometimes and just want a guy to... throw you down and... do stuff to you?’ She looked positively giddy at the thought.
‘You’re such a westerner,’ I said, knowing how patronizing I sounded. ‘Where I come from a lot of girls are... Well, it’s got better as generations go by, but girls where I come from are so agreeable. It’s not the done thing to be loud and brash or... opinionated in front of men, really. Here you can do and say what you like. You can fetishize being dominated because it’s a novelty for you. Westerners wouldn’t know self-restraint if it smacked them in the face with a dildo. Though you would probably like that!’
Daisy cackled, but appeared to be thinking. ‘I never thought about it like that. Man, I don’t know if I could hack it where you come from.’
I sighed. ‘I’d go back and live in my old street in a second. I miss how clean everything is.’
‘Why don’t you?’ She snorted to herself. ‘Fuck, I don’t mean that in a bitchy way! But why don’t you, if you want to?’
‘Well, I can’t afford it, and there’s no one there.’
‘No great star-crossed love? Some guy? I thought there might be...’
I stared at her until she relented, sitting up and spreading her hands.
It seemed to have irritated her. ‘OK, OK, I fucking give up. You know everything about me and, as ever, I know sweet fuck-all about you.’
‘For the love of fuck, Daisy, there isn’t some guy!’
‘All right, chill, Winston!’
‘It’s a girl, OK.’
Daisy’s expression fell into confusion, then picked up so as not to seem offensively surprised. I wondered if she’d ever suspected or given it any thought. After she recovered from the initial shock, she shrugged.
‘So, you’re bi?’ she said.
‘You don’t have to sound so alarmed. I thought you said you were into all sorts?’
‘Well, yeah, in porn and in... my mind but I’ve never...’ She reddened a little. ‘I’ve never got down and... down with a girl. I mean, I’ve kissed friends when I’ve been drunk and stuff but, man, I’ve never actually had a real vagina in my face.’
Not long after that I managed to force her back out of my front door so I could get some sleep, but my ribs still hurt from how much I had laughed.
When I awoke at around twenty past five it felt as though I had a mild fever. I pushed the cover off me and hung my feet from the edge of the bed until they were brushing the carpet, but within a matter of seconds I was shivering and I pulled the duvet back across my body again.
I turned on to my side and checked if I was sweating.
I wasn’t.
My limbs felt large and awkward and I was overheating again.
I turned until my back was exposed to the air but my front was under cover, and that almost worked.
A shooting pain crossed the side of my head and I sat up, instantly becoming too cold.
Was I having a brain haemorrhage or something?
I lay back down, tried to get comfortable and turned my pillows over so my cheeks didn’t have to keep pressing against the bed’s unbearable heat. But the more I tried to keep myself still the more agitated I became.
My throat was dry so I got up to pour a glass of water, but drinking that didn’t help, and walking around just caused my hands and feet to go numb with cold.
I tried lying back down but another muscle spasm darted across my stomach.
‘Fuck sake!’
The next time I sat up I felt lightheaded, so I lay on top of the duvet, my leg spasming, certain I was dying and thinking should I call somebody?
Worried that I was going to pass out and that would be it, I walked to the kitchen again and drank some more water. Should I call NHS Direct? Should I call an ambulance? It took me a while to notice I was counting to myself, waiting for a heart attack or a stroke or a total blackout...
But it didn’t come.
I stayed awake, hot and cold, racked with muscle spasms and crying intermittently, until about nine in the morning. My feet kept twitching.
‘Onetwothreefourfivesixseven... Onetwothreefourfivesixseven...’
It was the fi
rst time for years I’d felt the urge to do that, whispering it under my breath. I made myself stop it and broke the never-ending chain of thought. I thought of Seiko, teaching me how to meditate the first time, making me visualize the mountain, the leaves, the wind...
I forced myself to eat a couple of slices of toast, even though I was barely able to raise them to my lips, and then fell asleep for an hour.
When I awoke the second time I felt totally normal.
When I asked Daisy about it she suggested that I’d had an anxiety attack.
I was to have anxiety attacks every night for a month before they went away. As penances go, I think I got off lightly.
19
‘Vaughn died yesterday in his last car-crash. During our friendship he had rehearsed his death in many crashes, but this was his only true accident. Driven on a collision course towards the limousine of the film actress, his car jumped the rails of the London Airport flyover and plunged through the roof of a bus filled with airline passengers. The crushed bodies of package tourists, like a haemorrhage of the sun, still lay across the vinyl seats when I pushed my way through the police engineers an hour later.’
I paused, and spread my legs a little wider. ‘Is that... OK?’
‘Perfect.’
Darsi Howiantz was on his knees in front of me. Over his shoulder were the ranges and valleys of books, papers, odd figurines. He was holding one of those large circular back massagers against my clit, which somewhat obviously was making it an ordeal to read out loud, but it was what he wanted me to do so I obliged.
‘In his vision of a car-crash with the actress, Vaughn was obsessed by many wounds and impacts – by the dying chromium and collapsing bulkheads of their two cars meeting head-on in complex collisions endlessly repeated in slow-motion films, by the identical wounds inflicted on their bodies, by the image of windshield glass frosting around her face as she broke its tinted surface like a death-born...’
‘Ah – “... Aphrodite...”’ I gasped and halted again, blood rushing to my face and between my legs.
He had told me to keep reading for as long as I could, but surrender was what he was after. It was only my second time here, but I loved that I was Noel’s go-to girl for Darsi’s house calls. It was refreshing, being with a guy who was so completely turned on by someone else’s pleasure.
The book was Crash. I’d read it before, the first time, when we were having sex and I had a finger up his ass and I was practically screaming the words.
I was glad I wouldn’t have to spend the entire night in the club waiting to see Noel or Ronnie and the looks on their faces, the distracted scowls etched between brows that at any moment I envisioned being directed towards me, because they knew, somehow...
‘Ten days ago, as he stole my car from the garage of my apartment house, Vaughn hurtled up the concrete ramp, an ugly machine sprung from a trap. Yesterday his body lay under the police arc-lights at the foot of the flyover, veiled by a delicate lacework of blood.’
My hands started shaking a little. ‘Hm... “The broken postures of his legs and arms, the bloody geometry of his face, seemed to parody the photographs of crash injuries that covered the walls of his apartment”.’
My hair was beginning to stick to my face and I took one hand off the book to brush it away.
He was moving the device against my clit with a rapid pulsing motion.
‘“I looked down for the last time at his huge groin, engorged with blood. Twenty yards away, illuminated by revolving lamps...”’ I shut my eyes, legs tense, momentarily distracted by the low hum below me. ‘Um... Sorry. “... the actress hovered on the arm of her chauffeur...” Fuck...’
I grabbed a handful of his hair. It was all I could see. My whole body was rigid. I was so close, so close, but then the urge to come subsided for a moment.
‘Vaughn had dreamed of dying at the moment of her orgasm.
‘Before his death Vaughn had taken part in many crashes. As I think of Vaughn I see him in the stolen cars he drove and damaged, the surfaces of deformed metal and plastic that for ever embraced him...’
‘Oh... oh... fuck...’ I gasped and the book sprung shut across my finger. My limbs shuddered as I cried out, every violent breath shaking me from the inside. I arched my back, slid down in the chair, moaning until the tremors began to subside.
My first instinct was to laugh with relief but I stifled it.
Darsi had switched the device off and stood up, tentatively stroking the side of my face. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
I’d been so wrapped up in my own orgasm that I hadn’t even noticed him come as well, but he must have done. As he stood up, he discreetly wiped his right hand off on a tissue that he must have had in his pocket.
I pulled myself up straight in the office chair again, breathless and smiling. ‘Um, yeah, sure.’
As he crossed to the other side of his study to pour a glass from the two bottles of champagne I’d been sent with, I pushed my leather skirt back down again. He hadn’t even requested that I undress this time, apart from quietly slipping off my knickers. They were lying on the floor and I became anxious over whether to go and get them or not, but in the end I didn’t. Why did I even care anyway?
I put Crash down beside my feet and tried to forget about it.
An aftershock of the orgasm shot up through my abdomen and I jumped, crossing my legs. I couldn’t even remember the last time a man had been able to get me this wet.
Darsi handed me a glass.
I’d forgotten to specify something non-alcoholic but accepted the drink anyway.
‘I’m glad I was sent to see you again,’ I said, almost bashful.
‘The sentiment is shared.’
‘I wanted to talk to you more last time. Not that the other stuff wasn’t... great.’
He eyed the champagne bottles with bemusement, as if he couldn’t understand what they were doing in his house, and shrugged. ‘You seem to be interested in human nature.’
‘Well, only the interesting parts.’
‘The criminal parts.’ He understood. ‘It’s why I went into criminal psychology.’
‘What’s the actual definition of a psychopath? I know you kinda told me before but how would you spot one?’
‘I could lend you some of my articles if you want? I’ve got some journals, if psychopathy particularly interests you.’ He sat back in the swivel chair and drifted left and right. ‘There are lots of different symptoms that define a psychopath, but put most simply I think it’s a person who lacks a basic capacity for feeling empathy of any kind towards another human being. So combine that with a lot of other contributing factors, like childhood trauma, upbringing, education... so many things... you could end up with an unrepentant killer, yes. Serial killers are rare, in the way that CSI portrays them. That’s why they all become famous.’
I thought about the gunshot, covering the body, the strange episode in the night, and felt somewhat reassured. But with the mental image came the sudden fear that he knew. Could he see it in my face that I’d killed somebody? It was his job after all.
I almost drank to mask any discomfort but the smell made me grimace so I lowered the glass again.
‘Could a psychopath act as if they had empathy?’ I was keeping myself unnaturally still.
‘That’s more of a typical sociopathic trait, someone who mimics human emotions to manipulate people, but yes.’ There was a line between Darsi’s eyes that looked permanent, even though he couldn’t be over the age of thirty-five. ‘This is all very simplified though. That’s why I’m still researching it.’
‘And you help the police?’
‘When I can. I work with prisoners and patients too.’
I considered telling him about Leo Ambreen-King, if he was so open to working with people. But now wasn’t the time. I wanted the chance to talk to him more first, not least because I’d never had any dealings with a bent police officer or their ilk before, and wasn’t sure how it was done.
; ‘Will I be coming back here again?’ I asked. ‘I mean, will you still be doing favours for Noel to repay?’
‘As Noel probably well knows, in the real world I couldn’t even afford you.’
‘The real world?’
‘The one where you don’t pay people by sending champagne and beautiful women to their houses.’ He smiled, and I realized I’d misjudged how much he knew about Noel’s work. ‘In the real world, violence is a thing that’s controlled and legislated against, it’s something that happens to states and armies, but not people. In his world, it’s... just communication.’
I left him my number written on a packet of Rizlas.
20
Darsi didn’t live that far from me so I walked home instead of taking the pre-booked taxi. I needed the fresh air.
I used to love coming into an empty house. Now it felt like walking into a mausoleum.
I crossed the road to avoid a group of teenage boys arguing about splitting money to pay for something in Tesco before it shut. Maybe it was because I had witnessed more death than most people, but I was definitely paranoid. In the last few years I’d developed a habit of looking at different people in the street, in a shop or on the tube, and imagining how they might kill me.
The last time I did it I imagined a guy standing up from his seat on the Northern Line and coming over to stab me. It freaked me out so much that I had to get off early.
By the time I got home I was almost certain someone was following me, but I put it down to my usual paranoia and just turned every light on in the flat to make myself feel better. A parcel had been left outside my postbox: too big to fit inside, so left out in the hallway for everyone to see or steal.
Thank fuck the knives were still there.
I put them down in the living room, changed out of my leather outfit into a white Beatles T-shirt with holes in the back, then sat down on the floor next to my sofa bed to hack them open with a pair of scissors.
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