by Zoe Strachan
‘So how does it feel mate? Your idea, and now it’s a millimetre away from being green lit.’
‘We’ve got to hear what the testers say. They might hate it.’
‘If they hate it,’ there was a pause as Neil started to urinate, during which Richard felt obliged to further scrutinise his face in the mirror so as make clear that he wasn’t trying to catch a glimpse of his colleague’s penis, ‘Fuck them. It’s a good game.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Rupe’s already been on to marketing about a title. And guess what?’
‘What?’ Richard said, edging out the way so that Neil could approach the washbasin.
‘He’s only gone and put the DaCapo credit card behind the bar.’
‘It’s going to be carnage.’
‘Yeah, and what do we say?’
‘Play hard,’ Richard said, giving him a high five and laughing as he remembered the slogan Rupe had proposed at his single, ill-advised attempt at a team-building day. Surely he must have guessed that his team would spend their entire paintball session shooting at his backside.
They went back out into the bar, just in time to see Tuula walking over to the table with a bottle of champagne. A barman hurried after her with an ice bucket and a handful of glasses.
‘Don’t worry Rupe,’ she said. ‘They only got the NV.’
Close to Richard’s ear, Neil said, ‘For someone who just pulled an allnighter, Tuula’s looking pretty hot.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Oh don’t worry, I know. Can’t help thinking it’s a bit of a waste though.’
The same could be said for Jonathan, Richard thought, seeing the art assistant talking to Lisa, who was already pink-cheeked and giggly. Neil went over and sat on the other side of her, and Richard wondered if he’d split up with his girlfriend or was just in high spirits. He wondered too when he himself had taken up running to release tension rather than other, more intimate, activities. Tuula waved at the bottle of champagne at him and he went to sit beside her.
‘I was just explaining them,’ she indicated Solange and Ben, who’d been hanging on to Rupe’s every word, ‘that I love you.’
Richard smiled. ‘I love you too Tuula. You worked miracles today.’
‘But we would not have straightened that bug without you. We would still be there in that fucking lab getting our eyes crossed about that fucking code if you,’ she grabbed a glass, poured until it overflowed and handed it to Richard, ‘If you had not worked out how to fix it. So, I love you.’
‘So I take it you love Richard then?’ Solange said.
‘Yes,’ Tuula said. She jumped up and straddled Richard, leant in and kissed him, pushing his mouth open and darting her tongue between his teeth. He allowed himself to go along with it, then she leaned back, still sitting on his knee, and ruffled his hair. Her eyes were twinkling, mischievous. ‘That,’ she announced, wiping her mouth, ‘is how much I love my friend Richard.’
‘Tuula, have you been taking drugs?’ Solange said, giving in to snorts of laughter that almost choked her.
‘And I tell you what Richard,’ Tuula whispered in his ear, ‘if neither of us get lucky here, we go out somewhere together later and see how we do.’
‘Is the club any better these days?’ he asked, feeling his inhibitions loosening and remembering the sticker advertising a men-only sauna he’d seen on the hand-dryer in the bathroom. She slid off his knee and sat beside him. ‘No, it is shite. Thank god straight girls aren’t straight as in former times.’
‘This place is a lot busier than I remember. And what’s with the dj?’
‘Exhibition opening upstairs,’ Rupe said, squeezing in between Tuula and Solange. ‘Some conceptual crap, childish scribbles and misspelled slogans.’
Tuula winked at Richard. ‘So maybe our chances improve.’
‘Are you on the pull Tuula?’ Rupe asked. ‘Why not try a spot more of this to get you in the mood?’
‘Cheers Rupe,’ Tuula said. ‘I like this retro high. Richard?’
‘Okay,’ he said, imagined his younger, less sensible self reaching out to him from somewhere in his memory, touching his fingertips, laughing.
‘You want to come to the toilet with me?’
‘Nah, you’re all right Tuula, you go first.’
Richard noticed that Neil seemed to have his arm around Lisa. Team-building indeed, he thought, then realised that Rupe was speaking.
‘What were you saying Rupe?’
‘You know Hamburg is developing a new engine?’
‘That middleware one?’
‘It’s done. This is a full game engine.’
‘No.’
‘Yeah, in the first instance it’s for something about Mexican drug wars.’
‘They don’t need a new engine for that.’
‘When has this business ever been about need? Sure, they don’t need it, but they want to make something that’ll work on PDAs as well as across the major platforms. They’ve been asking if someone wants to go over on secondment from here.’
‘Oh right?’
‘So think about it, okay? You did well on this one Rich, and if you go in at the ground level on this new software you can bring it back here. If Somme goes to sequel, maybe we can give it a more modern edge.’
‘Okay. I’ll think about it.’
‘That’s my man. An opening in Hamburg, what could be more up your street, eh?’
Rupe got up before Richard had time to reply. The noise level was rising in the bar and there was a sense of suppressed hysteria. He noticed for the first time the exposed frame of the building, iron pillars riveted to girders, hints of some industrial past. Ben slid along to sit next to him. ‘This is so cool. Is it always like this?’
‘No. Sometimes we’re up all night and there’s shouting and crying and by the time the bugs get fixed all we want to do is go and collapse in a dark corner somewhere.’
‘But the bugs get fixed?’
‘Yeah. Or Rupe chooses one of us to sacrifice live online to Lars.’
Ben removed his retro eighties glasses and polished them on his neon paint splash t-shirt. ‘This placement has just been awesome. I know I’m a bit drunk now, but I totally feel like I’m living the dream.’
Tuula came back, her eyes glittering, and Richard patted Ben on the back before palming the small package she held out and retreating to a toilet cubicle. Hearing Ben’s enthusiasm had made him think of Stephie; he was the same age as her, Richard guessed, but if Ben had landed the DaCapo placement the odds were he was going to get work in the industry as soon as he graduated. Whereas Stephie, even with an HND in Psychology, might find her ambitions somewhat trickier to fulfil. He checked his iPhone just in case she’d been in touch, thinking as he did so of Loren, and whatever absurd form of politeness or fear had prevented him from whipping his hand away from her as soon as she’d touched him. Instead there was an email from Calum, an invitation to come and stay, anytime – but you’d get more peace in a B&B now that Kaylar’s teething (still can’t believe I managed to marry someone who’s as big a Trekkie as I am!) … ran into Luke again, his number is 07774 381200 if you ever want to … Richard scrolled back, thinking for a second that the first rush of the drug had made him imagine the phone number. It was still there, sharp and clear on the screen.
Richard could remember telling Luke once that he’d prefer a pretty art student to a bit of rough – or had Luke suggested that to him? – and now, an hour or so later he found himself trying his best to get a very pretty art student drunk, and not having to try very hard at all. He had an intensity that Richard found attractive, an openness about his artistic influences and pet theories that hovered somewhere between confidence and naivety, with a pleasing hint of geekiness thrown in. And then he mentioned playing football, scoring a winning goal, Richard felt himself respond to the more robust masculinity that this seemed to convey. Over at the bar he could see Tuula leaning in close to listen to a girl with an asymmetric haircut. Lisa
had already gone home, helped by Neil; chivalrous to the last, as Solange had commented wryly.
I was thinking of swinging by the old place next weekend. Will you be around? Richard
Richard had to check his phone to make sure that he really had sent the text. And once he’d done that he had to keep checking, wishing he’d phrased it differently, knowing that now, years later, Luke must have other old places, and perhaps other Richards too.
‘Are you waiting on a call?’ the art student – Sam – asked, his eyelashes perfectly pale and very unlike Luke’s, though maybe there was a hint of resemblance in the slightly girlish lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ Richard said. ‘Just checking in. My sister and her friend are staying in my house.’
‘Ah. Worried they’ll set fire to the Persian rugs and drink the Margaux?’
‘Not Stephie. Maybe her friend.’ He almost told Sam about the pass Loren had made at him, and then wondered what it would prove. ‘So where do you live?’ he said instead.
‘You’re staying in a hotel though, right?’ Sam said, with a grin that might have meant nothing at all.
‘No, the company has an apartment. Rupe’ll be staying there too, he’s usually based in London.’
‘Hmm. Let’s go back to mine then. But I’m warning you, it isn’t a palace.’
When Richard saw the room, like so many student dives he recalled from years before, places he’d lived and places he’d woken up with a parched mouth and the air musty with the stench of sex, he said, ‘It’s perfect.’
‘Bring back a few memories?’
Richard nodded, though the memories were not of his time in Dundee. He recalled that as flat and grey, despite the city’s pride in being the sunniest town in Britain. Working in the games department at HMV, as if finally to redeem all those rejected applications to Boots and the Co-op back home. Cooking packet pasta in his bedsit, calling round for people who were never in. Programming had been the spark that illuminated it all, and he’d never been sure whether sex hadn’t featured much by inclination or lack of opportunity.
Sam put on music – something Richard didn’t recognise, with lyrics in German zigzagging between electronic loops – and made cups of tea and they sat together on the couch for just long enough for Richard to wonder if he’d misread the situation after all, but then he caught the slightest tremble in Sam’s hand as he put his mug down, and when he looked at Sam’s face in profile his lips were parted and Richard knew that he wasn’t imagining the fizz of energy between them, the urge to push it further and see where it would take them. He put his own mug down, let his leg rest against Sam’s, let the silences in their conversation expand until they became replete with possibilities.
When at last Richard reached out, made an unmistakeable move, Sam responded as though he’d been constrained for too long. He kissed Richard’s mouth and his face, bit the skin on his neck, a little at first, then when he moved over Richard’s throat he opened his mouth wide, sucking at the flesh as though he might suddenly tear it with his teeth. Richard arched his head back and gasped, opening himself to the sensation, feeling for a second as though that alone would be enough. As Sam unfastened his belt and slid his hand inside Richard’s trousers he whispered, ‘Anything you want. As rough as you want.’
Later Richard found himself thinking of Loren, with her scars and her desperation, chose not to think about Sam in the same way. Instead he concentrated on Luke, the images he had of Luke from all those years ago. He ran his hand down the line of Sam’s cheek and jaw, then pressed his hand over his mouth to muffle the noises that might have indicated pain as much as anything else and kept going, until everything else disappeared and he felt that he was in the moment, alone.
0
We went to Lucy’s room that night, Luke and I. Diane had been trounced at pool, outdrunk at tequila, and with an eye to her safety we’d walked her home, drawing tactfully aside as Lucy held back her friend’s hair while she vomited in the gutter.
Part of the appeal, I suppose, that it would happen in a narrow, single bed, under the gaze of Lucy’s childhood teddy bear and the photos on her pinboard of friends, family, pet dog. A red setter, if memory serves, bounding through an herbaceous border towards a wholesome mother in gardening gloves, clipping stems with her secaturs. Luke examined the pictures with care, asking who was who amongst her school chums and those from her year abroad.
How sweet, he said, smiling his most guileless smile. Boys don’t do that, put up photos of their loved ones. Boys aren’t as nice as girls, are they?
She laughed and tossed her hair and lured him to admit, pretend reluctant, that there wasn’t anyone he’d like to have a photo of beside his bed. Not a close family, he told her, passing his hand over his face as though even thinking about it upset him. We drank some more, lots more, and Luke trumped Lucy’s soapbar with a pungent bag of pure homegrown, until we felt much older and wiser and cooler than her. Soon we were overtaken by that oddness, that almost-recognition that happens when things get out of hand and you know there’s no point in going back, so it’s as if you’re sleepwalking, not really there. Until the morning, when it’s crystal clear, and you try to layer that gauziness between your waking self and the memory that you can’t afford to give house room.
There were conversations in which she tried to show off her liberal attitudes, her half-formed riot grrl feminism, but was soon left out of her depth and feeling she had something to prove. She couldn’t match Luke’s easy, acerbic worldliness, her attempts to hide her privilege were transparent and pathetic. He’d invite further confidences – about her house at school, her pony club rosettes – then trample over them with the lightest, most devastating footfalls. Until she lost ground, needed reassurance, realised there was one way she could get it. And so she flirted with him more, tried to win him over. Stephanie flashed through my mind, so eager to please, hiding her lovebites under polonecks.
I was sitting next to him on the floor by the bed when the first twitch of an erection started. So close that his taut, denim clad thigh was pressed against mine. I excused myself and left the smoky haven of Lucy’s room, pushing through the nearest set of double doors into a corridor, long and spacey with flickering fluorescent strips overheard. Through the windows I could see trees contorting in the wind. I stumbled along, looking for a toilet, finally finding a dingy communal bathroom with no light switch that I could locate. After I’d relieved myself I hunched over the sink and drank some water from the tap, giving up when it turned lukewarm rather than colder. I mopped my face with a rough pink paper towel, the same as the ones they’d had at school.
When I crept back into Lucy’s room, closing the door gently behind me and resetting the snib, they were both on the bed. Luke was lying half on top of her, kissing her, his hand up her tie-dye skirt and edging its way inside her white cotton panties. What a cliché, I thought, though even in the moment I recognised it as a detail that would stick in my mind. White cotton, with a pink scalloped trim, stretched tight over the bridge of his hand.
I’m sorry, I said. Will I leave you to it?
He rolled over. His t-shirt was all rumpled up so that I could see his scar, and below it, the firm length of his cock against those dark denim jeans. It seemed huge, eager, pulsing, ready to spring through the fabric, uncannily reminiscent of the Incredible Hulk cartoons I used to like as a child.
No, he said. We don’t want you to go. Do we Lucy?
Struggling to prop herself up on one elbow, she wrenched her glazed gaze from him and said:
No, we don’t want you to go.
She pulled a stray hair from her swollen lips. Luke leaned over and picked up my tumbler of vodka, held it towards me. There was a poster above the bed, I noticed, of Kiefer Sutherland in The Lost Boys.
I hesitated when Lucy pulled Luke’s t-shirt over his head, looked away so I couldn’t see what he was doing to her in return. But he met my eye when he unfastened his belt, he was looking straight at me, and I looked at
his chest, bare and pale, wanted to touch it, wanted to trace his collar bones with my fingers and then my lips. When I looked at his face again he was still looking back at me, although Lucy was leaning forward to unbutton my jeans, and I thought, maybe, just maybe.
And Lucy, why did she go along with it? (Did she go along with it?) Women like to feel dirty, he’d told me once, and Lucy was the kind of girl who talked a good game, pornography as liberation and all that, the kind of girl who thought keeping lube in her bedside cabinet was a statement. She moved toward me of her own accord, or maybe he nudged her. Her mouth was clumsy and she faltered, moaning as Luke pushed his fingers inside her, but by then I was so hard it hurt and nothing else mattered. He was looking at me.
And so, and so. Let’s cut to the chase. The three of us balanced on that narrow college bed, its sheets stamped with the blue logo of the university linen supplier. It’s alright, he’d said earlier, Richard’s gay, but when it came down to it that was the ace in his pack; she could help me, I don’t know, be certain, fulfil a wish. He made it seem both safe and some kind of special privilege, awarded just to her. All the while kissing her, touching her, tender and firm. The next step was to guide her round to the idea that this was the way I was used to, the way it should be. I played my part well, it seems, struck exactly the right balance of innocence and yearning. He just pushed a little more, and a little more, to see how far she would go. All the way, it seemed, and then some. She didn’t consent, not in strict legal parlance, but she didn’t say no, of that I can be absolutely sure.
Do it, he said, and I did, closing my eyes and gently pressing until I gained ground.
While I stayed still but still hard in position, he eased himself in from the front. He began, slowly, to move, and I thought I would explode then expire for the pleasure of feeling him so close to me.