Fishnet

by Kirstin Innes

  ‘I’m fine. Just trying to cool down. Hot up there, eh?’

  She nods, moves past me to the toilets, uneasy. After a couple of beats I follow her in, lock myself in a cubicle, listening to the stream of her forthright piss and a hearty, unabashed fart. She rustles. She flushes. The lock clanks open and the tap water runs as she scrubs, thoroughly. Oh Claire, you’re so healthy. So clean. So good.

  ‘Claire! Hi! Well done up there, by the way!’ Samira is here, suddenly, outside.

  ‘Oh, thanks. Thanks. Lovely to see you. Nice dress.’

  ‘You too. Well-bridesmaided.’

  Weak laughs all round and the door slams. I flush, come out. Samira is patting her shine away with powder, the contents of her makeup bag strewn between the sinks.

  ‘Has she gone?’ I pull a comedy face round the side of the toilet door.

  ‘Oh. Hiya.’

  ‘Oof. Hot. You looked bloody gorgeous up there by the way, Meer. Loving that frock.’

  ‘Mm. Thanks. Bethan looks adorable. Anyway, I’m off back up –’ and she’s trying to scrabble her various powders and liners back into the bag.

  ‘I mean it. Gorgeous. A cut above that buncha boring fuckers up there! I mean, a bit predictable, trotting out the same old dances, but it’s a by-the-book wedding, eh. And you were making it work for you.’

  Her face in the mirror freezes for a second, and her rich voice is clipped-off at the ends when she speaks.

  ‘It’s tradition, Fiona.’

  ‘Yeah, but you know what I mean. It’s just so safe. Exactly what you’d expect at this sort of wedding. I’m not getting at Heath– ’

  ‘I’ve been having fun. I’ve been having a great time. Maybe you should get up there and dance yourself instead of just leering away at everyone else. Even your six-year-old is having a better time than you.’

  I’m not sure what’s going on here. My brain sloshes, cheapwinely. I try to make a joke.

  ‘S’one of the pleasures of a wedding, though, the bitching about people’s outfits!’

  She whips round, not talking to me in the mirror any more.

  ‘Could you just say something nice? Just one thing?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘D’you know, I’d actually been meaning to meet you and talk about this after the hen weekend. But I thought, nah, just leave it. You probably wouldn’t even show, anyway.’

  ‘Meer, what –’

  ‘I was going to ask you to apologise to Heather. You ruined that weekend for her.’

  ‘I – what?’

  ‘Okay, I know, I know the choice of place was a bad one for you, but you didn’t make much of an effort to get on with it. Couldn’t hide your contempt, could you? And you were downright rude to poor Claire –’

  ‘Poor Claire? Everyone hated her, Samira.’

  ‘You hated her. And you made sure we all knew it. You made such a big point of not going on that fucking bike ride, too, and then you just disappeared, turned up an hour late to the pole dancing class and wouldn’t look at anyone! I mean, why come at all, eh? Why come at all. Me just left there, all of Heather’s workmates staring at me, wondering what kind of freaks she called her oldest friends. Why come?’

  ‘For the same reason you did. For Heather. Loyalty… the past.’

  ‘Loyalty? You’ve been staring at Heather’s dress with this horrid little sneer on your face all day. I know it doesn’t fit her, hey, but what if she’d caught you? How would you feel, seeing someone looking at you like that on your wedding day? Just couldny be bothered to hide it, could you? Don’t think I’d want your sort of loyalty at my wedding.’

  ‘Did Heather – did Heather say this to you? Did she send you?’

  ‘Of course she didn’t. Heather? Come on. I saw it with my own eyes well enough. My own eyes saw quite enough to get this angry, on my friend’s behalf.’

  Samira’s face, this redness, this spite. I don’t know it.

  ‘Listen, I had a lot of stuff going on that weekend that I have no intention of apologising for. Bethan was ill, for a start, and as you said, the place isn’t exactly good for me. As you don’t have kids you won’t understand…’

  ‘I won’t understand how hard it is for you, as a single parent, yeah yeah. Know what? Heather and I have done nothing but understand. For six fucking years. We’ve offered you solid gold support whenever you’ve needed it, and we’ve done that without expecting anything, precisely because we know how hard it is for you. We’ve reminded ourselves of it every time you’ve turned down invitations, cancelled on us at the last minute, or been fuck all use when we’ve had problems of our own. But after that hen weekend, I think we both realised we’re gonny have to admit to ourselves that you just don’t actually like us that much. In fact, you don’t like anything, do you?’

  Upstairs, applause as another dance finished. Footsteps on the stairs outside.

  ‘Come on, Samira. Of course I like you. I like you fine. You’ve maybe had a hard week. We’ve both had a lot to drink. This isn’t you talking.’

  ‘How would you know this isn’t me? How would you know? Because we send each other emails once a month, see each other what, three, four times a year? Because we went to school together a decade ago? People have kids all the time and they don’t just disappear!’

  ‘Yeah. Nice choice of words there. Thanks.’

  ‘Oh, for- you know what? Let’s just leave it, eh? Let’s just go. I won’t email you again, and you won’t respond two weeks later saying sorry, you totally meant to get back to me sooner. This isn’t a friendship. Let’s just leave it.’

  She scoops up the last of her makeup and storms out of the door, nudging past the person who’s coming in, muttering a quick sorry.

  ‘Ah. There you are.’

  It’s the older woman from the table, the one I’d left Beth with.

  ‘Your daughter was wondering where you’d got to?’

  My big flushed face, in the mirror.

  Private

  The café Sonja/Anya picked is written in a language I don’t speak.

  There’s some sort of thrashing girly punk music on the stereo. It’s awful. Really. And all the people in here are thin, and there’s something strange about their clothes, their hair. Some sort of structured fashionableness that I just don’t get. It’s not like those places Samira likes, where even though the people are all thin, they’re gelled and groomed and manicured. Sure, the, ah, clientele are still beautiful, but there’s something just off about the cuts of their fringes, their shabby knitwear, their makeup.

  Their spectacles, where they wear them, seem to have been cast-off by Deirdre Barlow from Coronation Street.

  She is keeping me waiting.

  The abrasive music stops, fades into something lisped in a Scottish accent. At least it’s quiet. I look at the menu. There is no meat on the menu. Beside me, a boy with the raggedy beginnings of beard types into a silver Apple laptop, his face glowing with electronic purpose. Under masses of eyeliner and coiled, streaming black hair, a girl picks at her phone and a salad, intermittently.

  ‘Hi, what can I get you?’

  A tired, skinny girl with a faint twang of something Australian, a stripy t-shirt, a pen behind her ear.

  ‘I’m waiting for someone,’ I say. ‘Just a white coffee, please.’

  ‘No probs. Just to check – you know we only serve soy milk here?’

  ‘Oh this?’ says a girl’s voice. ‘Vintage. Fleamarket in Brooklyn.’

  My lunch hour ticks away.

  She is definitely keeping me waiting. Playing trust games.

  Look at these people. Look at them closely. I’d assumed at first glance that they were all art students, loafers, killing time in their inoffensive vegan playrooms, their dressing up boxes, before having to come out, blinking, into the drag and assimilate, join the rest of us at our imitation plywood desks, our wheezing black computers. But they’re not. There are wrinkles here, grey streaks. And they aren’t just here for pleasure. The woman wit
h the salad takes a call.

  ‘God darling, if they won’t move on the matched funding we’re going to have to ask them to reduce the number of performers they’re flying over. Could we ask a local choir to do the choral number?’

  Across the way, there’s a couple I’d assumed were out on a date, the boy with thick specs, sharply quiffed like he’s Buddy Holly or something, the girl with fake eyelashes and a fur coat draped over her seat. But he’s asking her questions and there’s a digital tape recorder sitting between them. She’s got a tiny blue sequin stuck on the end of each flick of her eyeliner. It’s a Tuesday lunchtime.

  I’m suddenly overwhelmed by the idea of other people my own age, getting out, experimenting, making things new for themselves. Not just surrendering to a box and a screen and the first steady income they’re offered. A great long line of twentysomethings, thirtysomethings even, with their eyeliner and their strangely-cut pretensions and their vintage and their Brooklyn and their laptops and their busy, busy lives. The instinctive sneer and bristle in me melding into something else, and I’m ashamed of the thin, plasticky material of my supermarket-bought work trousers. That’s what I’m aware of. The slight itch around my thighs and knees from it.

  But then. None of them have children. I bet none of them have children.

  ‘You are Fiona, aren’t you?’

  Suddenly, she’s just there, in front of me. Eighteen minutes late, my phone says. She doesn’t mention that she’s late; there’s just a small smile, guarded, and I’m rushing the words out, absurd supplicant I am.

  ‘Yes, yes. Yes. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you for this.’

  ‘You did not have too much difficulty finding this place, then? I like the atmosphere, the vibration in here? Also, it is very difficult to find good vegetarian food anywhere else in the city centre?’

  I nod like I know this, like I understand the way these sentences are sliding into questions. I am very, very conscious suddenly that I don’t understand anything, and we look at each other for a second before I realise the onus is on me to talk, explain my purpose, juggle, dance, be something.

  ‘So. Yes. So. I just – thank you for coming. I just wanted to, needed to talk this out, with someone. And. I found your website by accident – I was just looking for people who had been writing about the protests at my work, you know. Eh. Because I wanted to understand it from another perspective.’

  This is what I had decided I would tell her. I thought it would go down a lot better than saying ‘since we met I’ve become obsessed with you to the extent that I’m now confused about my sexuality’.

  ‘Through there, through your blog, I found the punter forums, and the various sites the other girls use, and…Well, with all this in mind, and knowing what I know about my sister, that new knowledge. I’m just – phhh.’

  I exhale, trying to indicate confusion, blown minds, appealing to her with my eyes.

  That guarded smile again, but before she can say anything, the waitress comes back over, and while Anya/Sonja is ordering, I take the chance to actually look at her properly. With her clothes on, face unblurred, hair longer and smoother than in the pictures. Her tiny waist is obscured by the bulk of a battered-looking leather jacket that she hasn’t yet taken off. Tight jeans tucked into glistening biker boots - all hard angles, but at her neck, under the jacket collar, there’s a flash of something ribboned, soft, red.

  They’re both looking at me. It’s my turn to order. I’d planned jokes in my head about supposing they don’t have any steak, then, but stop myself just in time. There is a thing in my eyeline on the menu, a grilled courgette and pine nut salad. I would absolutely never order that, ever, usually. I point to it.

  Anya/Sonja, this enviably cool woman, her accent and her fine, clear skin, leans across the table at me, as the waitress nods, smiles, scurries off.

  ‘So, my god. You have been on the forums?’ She sighs. ‘We are very public, all of a sudden. If I am on the forums, I can look up and there will be a counter, it says there are maybe fifty, sixty ‘guests’. People who don’t register, they just watch. Like ghosts, you know. Silent. Maybe getting their kicks, who knows.’

  Her laugh is a deep hoot, one burst.

  ‘People are fascinated by us. I think you must be feeling very confused now. I can understand why you would need to talk to someone.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. I thought I could maybe, maybe if I pay for lunch, you might, there might be questions I could ask you?’

  ‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘It depends on the questions.’

  ‘Of course. Of course.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Ask questions.’

  ‘I think the main problem is that I don’t understand. I don’t understand how my sister – how anybody ends up doing this. How you - you’re so intelligent! I’ve read your blogs. You’re not even writing in your first language and it’s fluent, well-reasoned –’ I’m tailing off because her eyebrows are knitting disapproval.

  ‘You are new to this, and you are in grief, I think, so I give you this one pass, just once. But please understand, I do not answer this sort of question.’

  I want to just look at the way her lips move, how sure she is of the words they make, and so I almost miss what she’s actually saying. Almost.

  ‘This question, it comes from a place where for a woman to work in the sex industry, it’s shameful, wrong. I don’t think like that. I know many, many women who don’t think like that. It is maybe not your ideal job, but you have to realise that you don’t know anything about what it involves, what it really is. What you know is horror stories of rape and powerlessness, that teach us to prize our virtue, to keep our legs closed, that nice girls don’t do things. What you think you know is stereotypes about drug addiction, about desperate girls out there on the street. About the bodies that they find, whenever some fucking lunatic goes on a killing spree. And yes, this is all there; I am not so stupid as to say to you these things don’t happen, and that they are not awful, but it is not a complete picture. This is not my life. It may not be your sister’s life, how it was. If we are going to talk, if we are going to be of use to each other, you are going to have to accept this one very vital point that I am making; that what people call ‘the sex industry’ is not always, not completely, a bad thing. That just because a person sells their sexual skills, it does not mean that their life is – bam! – forever ruined.’

  Her eyes are sharp on me.

  ‘Do you think you can begin to consider that a possibility, for the time that we are here? There is no point to us talking otherwise, because you will be always in the back of your head pitying me, maybe wanting to rescue me, and therefore nothing I can say will have any sort of effect on you.’

  I get the impression she has had this sort of conversation many, many times before, the weariness in her voice. And I think that I’m going to need to accept that, in order to accept the brick-built reality of this woman sitting in front of me. I’m going to need to try and think like that, just for just now, just to get through this.

  ‘Yes,’ I tell her. I try to sound like I’m as firm and confident as her, like I’m an equal. ‘Yes, I can do that.’

  Her eyes. We look at each other for a long time. Glaciers move. Species die out.

  ‘Good. That is good,’ she says suddenly. ‘I am not going to sit here and pretend to you that it is all wine and roses, that every woman who does this job does it because she just loves sex. We make a distinction. There is a world of difference between someone like me, who has chosen this job, actively chosen it, who made an informed decision, who works from a flat or hotel rooms and manages her own advertising – you know, there is almost nothing the same with me and someone who is forced out on the streets to fund her addiction. I mean. I do it, still, because I need the money. I am a student! But the vast majority of the world, they will run the two lives together in their heads, you know? It all comes under the word pros-ti-tute, and oh, that means bad things.’

  The waitress
is hovering by, staring, two big plates in her hands. They come down on the table suddenly, like she’s frightened of us, and this woman, my lunch companion, this person whose clitoral piercings I’ve seen but whom I don’t know what to call, Anya, Sonja, hey you, anything, flashes me a killer smile.

  ‘That salad,’ she says, pointing over at my plate, ‘is amazing.’

  She’s right.

  I don’t know what to ask. I didn’t really think through a list of questions.

  What – what do you do? With the men?’

  Stupid. What do you think, idiot? She’s patient with me, though.

  ‘There are limits. There are some limits. French kissing, for instance. I remember when women who did that were looked down on. Nowadays, most clients want the ‘girlfriend experience’. Even the ones who come to me, with all my piercings and my leather, mostly they are just wanting very sweet, plain, vanilla sex, lots of kissing, lots of cuddling afterwards. It’s just like, making contact with someone. Touching base, hah?’

  That hoot of a laugh again.

  ‘Touching base for an hour. Just reminding yourself that the world exists again, and that you exist within it, hey. I think we all need to do that sometimes. But no, there are limits. I mean, I have a client who is eighty-five. A regular. And I am not going to French kiss him. I’m not. He knows the limits. And there are the awful ones, yes. The really unattractive ones. You get around that by just giving them lots of oral. You can shut your eyes, for oral.’

  I want to ask something about the sex, the act of it. Your body, and another one, one that you haven’t selected, aren’t attracted to. The feeling of sex of that sort. I want to know how she does it, and to try and phrase it in a way that does not imply that I think she’s degrading herself. I want to try and think that myself. Instead I ask her how this all started for her. She tells me about when she first moved here from her home country. She doesn’t say what her home country is, and I think of her website, the Scandinavian Sonja headline. She was trying to fund her first degree, which was in Manchester, and I start again, think Manchester, always Manchester.