The fat man drinks some wine and wants to talk again about what happens when a kitchen gets busted. “Detection risk,” he says, “we’ve got to break the line back to us.”
Gregor says, “That means getting stooges in place. Who have we got?”
The dark man with the hairy hands says that he knows a guy who should be in the ring.
“Rocky, black guy, he’s got connections up north. He runs out of—”
“No,” says Gregor, “not him.”
“He’s worth considering if we want to move stuff fast. And once we use his connections, he’s disposable. He’s not that bright. Young, ethnic, they’d pick him up in a flash.”
“No,” Gregor says again, “no, don’t touch him, and if you have any contact with him now, break it.”
“Why? What do you know about him?”
“He does runs for Stranstec.”
For the first time Gregor moves his hands up to his face. They are clasped as if he is about to say a prayer. The air has suddenly tightened, there is a tension. The others round the table are fixed on him, motionless.
“Stranstec will pounce if he knows about Spiral. And when Stranstec is on your back, you’re never going to get up again. No. If we are going to put stooges in place it’s got to be someone who’s already in the ring. Someone who’s already in the ring but doesn’t know it.”
The fat man says, “Stranstec runs girls, doesn’t he? Why should he be?—”
“I said no, and that’s it, damn it!” Gregor slams his hands down on the table. There is a shocked silence, which is broken by Gregor waving a waiter over and ordering another bottle of wine.
The talk goes on and on and Spike keeps topping up Lucy’s glass. Another plate of food arrives. Gregor’s hands are back on the table now, relaxed, and he talks about purity ratios again and distribution channels. The other men answer deferentially, look to one another, listen and chew, drain their glasses and agree.
She wonders why he has brought her. She looks around at the men at the table. They all carry the confidence of men who are used to telling others what to do and how to do it. They have expensive watches on their wrists, large rings on their fingers. Gregor is not the strongest, nor the biggest, and certainly not the most threatening, but he is the leader.
She thinks of her time with Archie, of the lines and lines and lines of cocaine, the constant flow of speed, meth, and poppers for the ups, the roofies and ketamine for the come-downs. Long stretches where days and nights lost their meaning, when the traffic of people through the flat was so much that she would keep herself locked up in the bedroom, not because she was afraid of anyone coming in, but because she was confused by the changing faces, the friends of friends and hangers-on, the revolving conversations, and the swell of hysteria which some would bring with them. When Gregor had come along she had been on roofies for days, feeling momentum drain from every moment, like heavy time being pushed uphill. Since she’s been at Gregor’s she’s experienced more silence than she can remember.
When the talk’s over the fat man stands and brushes himself down. He smiles at Lucy and says how lovely it was to meet her. His teeth are still stained from the octopus ink and there are still bits of food in the folds of his shirt as he turns and walks away.
The dark man is next to go. He does not acknowledge Lucy at all as he stands and says to Gregor, “This shit is taking its time. I want to see some return. I want to see it soon.”
Gregor doesn’t stand. He extends his hand across the table.
“Ali, you know it’s got to be right before it goes. We all have a lot riding on it. When it hits it’s going to hit big. Don’t get nervous now.” They shake. Then he goes and there are just the three of them.
Gregor finishes his wine and beckons to the waiter for the bill. After he signs for it, he says to Spike that he needs him to keep an eye on Ali. Spike nods and leans forward. Spike speaks, and for the first time Lucy hears his voice. It’s not what she expected. It’s got a high tone and the words land lightly in the air between him and Gregor.
“He’s changed?”
“Something about him has changed, I just don’t know yet what it is,” Gregor replies.
The waiter comes back with their jackets. Gregor takes Lucy’s, saying as he puts it on her shoulders, “That must have been boring for you. Let’s go to church.”
* * *
The club is an old church, restored and renovated. The DJ is in the pulpit. They pass a full dance floor and go to a table on an upper level. Gregor watches as Lucy, who has been drinking quietly all night, comes alive.
“Well, how about that? Isn’t this black and white music? Is it?” he asks her.
Lucy tries to drag him to the dance floor.
“It’s remixes, come on dance, dance!”
He stays in his seat, shaking his head. “You go, you go. I can’t. I can’t dance. You go,” he says.
She downs her glass of wine and walks away from him. Gregor sees her step out of her inhibitions, sliding them off with a shrug of her shoulder. She moves away from the shadows of the club tables as Frank Sinatra starts to croon. All of me, why not take all of me, can’t you see I’m no good without you. A heavy dub drum beat kicks in and throbs throughout the club.
Lucy’s hips swing as she walks down the steps, away from the saints on the stained glass windows of the upper floor, down to where lights are spinning and bodies moving. Her diamond collar sparkles. You took the part that once was my heart so why not take all of me. The beat gets into her and she surrenders control. She dances wildly, twisting and grinding, pushing herself against the stone pillars of the club, running her hands over her breasts and twisting her hips, as she slides her back down the pillar and throws her head from side to side. Then she pushes herself back up, and her hips find the beat again. She holds her dress and whirls it like a flamenco dancer while the thud of the bass drum propels her across the dance floor. She knocks against couples and dancers, bouncing off them, her momentum unbroken.
The DJ in the pulpit mixes in another old classic with a drum and bass backbeat. Now you say you’re lonely, you cried the whole night through.
Gregor watches as men try to dance and flirt with her. Some of them try to keep pace with her, try to dance alongside her, but it is like trying to hold a whirlwind, like trying to catch lightning. Man after man approaches her, and each one resigns in a matter of minutes. Every now and then she glances back up the steps at where Gregor is sitting; she can see him in the shadows, sitting at the table with Spike, his drink in his hand watching her. Spike is talking to him.
“You’re still uptight. Everything okay?”
“I don’t think that Ali mentioning Rocky was a coincidence.”
“You think he’s in with Stranstec?”
“Stranstec is going to get as close as he can and Ali has been around for years. He’s bound to have dealt with him. Who’s to say they haven’t kept a connection? Stranstec knows how to work people. That’s how he works, he manipulates. He’s got people working for him that don’t even know it. He’s a clever bastard. Spike, I need you on Ali. It’s a critical time.”
“You got it. Ali doesn’t know the process though, does he?”
“No, but he did all the sourcing and the distribution channels. If he spills to Stranstec, there’s no need for him to know the process, he’ll just wait and bandit the distribution line. We’ll have done it all for him. Is that bag still safe?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Gregor hasn’t taken his eyes off Lucy all this time. She looks up at him now. She starts to crawl back up the stairs toward him, keeping her eyes locked with his, before she stands again and turns, running one hand through her hair and the other over her hip, going back down to the dance floor, giving herself back to the music. Well you can cry me a river. Gregor sips from his drink. Spike leans into his ear.
“She’s crazy man.”
Gregor nods.
“Yes. Beautiful and
crazy.”
“If she’s like this now, imagine her on Spiral.”
***
Chapter Thirteen
It rained for weeks. From the window of the writing room Martin watched the puddles gather and grow. When she had got back from her parents’ boat house, Alison told Martin that she had been standing in front of the big glass wall when the clouds came over the horizon and the rain started to fall on the lake. She had never seen clouds like them, it was straight out of a painting or a CGI scene in a movie and then when the rain hit the big glass windows, it was like someone had suddenly thrown a bucket, and she knew that it was going to stay. The wind that followed seconds later shook the boat house and pushed waves across the lake. The floor was moving, she said, the whole house was moving. It was the first time that she really felt like she was in a boat. She realised there were no foundations beneath her.
Her parents were glad that she visited, and they both sent their love back to Martin. That was what she said to him, but Martin imagined her mother topping up her wine glass and her father refilling his pipe as she told them both how useless he was, how he still wasn’t earning any money.
That evening they had curled up together on the sofa and promised that they would pay more attention to each other. Alison suggested making goals that they would try to achieve before the end of the year. Martin agreed that this was a good idea. When she suggested that there might be areas of life he was not fulfilling by concentrating on his writing, he became defensive. Until I get this, I don’t want anything else from life, he said. Well, she replied, there’s no harm in thinking what else there might be for you, but if you stay where you are, life can’t offer you anything. You’re not giving life a chance, she said.
That talk was weeks ago and it still burned in his mind, through the days of rain, those words, you’re not giving life a chance, always there like the constant tap-tap-tapping on the window behind him as he sat at his desk.
When he wrote, all he wanted to write about was Lucy. Each paragraph made her more real, in each line she revealed more of herself for him. He would sit back in his chair and picture her just doing something mundane, perhaps eating, absentmindedly brushing crumbs over the edge of the table and looking out the double doors at the back garden. She would stare at the statue, the two bodies embracing and twisting together into the earth, before finishing her mouthful and getting the cloth and brush. He wanted to appear behind her now as she rubbed the cloth over the table and put his arms around her, press his lips to the curve of where her neck and shoulder meet, and feel her exhale slowly and then match his breathing to hers.
As the rain continued to fall, Martin rewrote and rewrote chapter after chapter. The walls of the room began to crowd with sketches in black pen, boxes with sentences and arrows pointing to circles with words inside. When he was not writing he would close his eyes and look on Lucy, watching her wander aimlessly and beautifully around Gregor’s house, being careful to not leave a mark, wiping any trace she left away.
He watched her take the books down from the shelves one at a time and read, the way she tucked her legs underneath her when she was on the couch, the way she licked the tips of her fingers before she turned the pages. She’d sit there for hours, in that curled up position on the big couch reading books about terrible and noble men.
Martin felt sometimes that he was losing sensation in his body, all he was using was his fingers and eyes. Occasionally he would rise from his seat to stamp his feet and walk around the small room, just to regain feeling in his legs.
One night as he stamped his feet, Alison said as she came up the stairs, “I’m going to the gym. Do you want to come?”
“No.”
“You could go in the pool while I’m in the gym.”
“No, I’ve got to keep going on this. Next time.”
Alison sighed “Okay,” and went into the bedroom. The door was not closed. Through the thin gap he saw her pull tight leggings up to her waist to where folds of flesh bulged and hung over the top. She put a t-shirt on, covering her pale plain body and then went downstairs. The door closed.
Each time Martin looked from the window of his writing room to the fields beyond the red brick estate, they were more flooded with brown water. One day he saw that two plastic bags had got into the thin rectangle of grass that was the back garden. He went outside to gather them up. The ground was soft and the mud moved beneath his feet as he walked. Getting to the end of the garden, his feet slid beneath him twice, and twice he ended up on his back. The mud stuck to him. The second bag had blown against the trunk of one of the trees against the back fence. Martin, soaking wet with his back and legs covered in mud, bent low and ducked under the branches to get the bag. Under the trees, the ground was dry and hard. In fact, this low space between the trees with the fence behind had been sheltered from the constant rain and stayed dry.
Crouched over, he turned around to face the house and sat down on this piece of dry earth, wondering how this one space had escaped the creeping water that was spreading everywhere he looked. With his knees against his chin, he looked back at the house. The branches from the trees dropped low in front of him and crossed over each other. He looked through the branches up to the window of his writing room. He imagined himself standing up there, looking out on the fields beyond the estate. I can’t be seen here, he thought. He stayed there for a while, holding the two plastic bags, watching the rain throw itself against the back of the house.
***
Chapter Fourteen
In the back of the private car on the way back to Gregor’s house that night, Gregor leans over and kisses Lucy. She kisses him back. His heavy breath rushes out as if he has been keeping it in since he first saw her. She puts her hands to his face and their mouths open wider. They grope each other as they kiss. She pulls at his belt and he says, Not here, inside. She whispers in his ear, No, now and takes his hand and pulls it under her skirt. He gets two, then three fingers inside her. Her mouth opens more and more and he sucks on her tongue. When the car stops outside the gates of the house, Gregor fumbles in his pocket for the remote control to unlock it, then thanks the driver as Lucy climbs out of the back seat with her skirt around her hips.
Inside she pulls him into the first room, sits on the dark wood table, and grabs his shirt, pulling him to her and kissing him. Then she puts her hands on his shoulders and pushes him down so that he is between her legs. She pulls the fabric of her panties to the side and then with two hands tears them from herself, moving herself right to the edge of the table. She takes his hair and pulls his face to her groin, stretching her legs out as she does. He puts his arms beneath her legs and lifts her up from her hips, her thighs are on his shoulders and he is holding her. She throws her head back and arches her spine as if in the grip of a seizure, and she sees behind her, upside down, the canvas of moving colour.
* * *
She wakes in Gregor’s bed. The room is bare; the walls are flat and have no decoration or pictures. The wardrobes are set into the walls and are a pale wood. There is one mirror, a single pane which doesn’t go as high as the ceiling or as low as the floor. Lucy and Gregor are underneath a light blanket. He has his back to her. She feels the collar still around her neck.
She leans upon one elbow and looks around the room. There is no bedside table, no chest of drawers, no sign of life other than the bunch of twisted and entwined clothes on the floor and the two of them in the bed. He turns over so that he is facing her. He rests his head on his arm. His chest is broad and covered in hair. She smiles at him. He is neither smiling nor frowning, his face is neutral. She moves closer to him. He lies flat and she moves down in the bed so that her head is resting on his shoulder, her cheek at his chest. She expects to be able to hear his heart, but cannot. They lie there awake together in silence until he suggests breakfast.
“Yes, I’d eat something,” she says. “Although I did eat a lot last night.”
“You danced a lot, too.”
&nb
sp; “That was a fancy place we went to, before the club.”
“That’s one of my favourites.”
“It’s nice eating out.”
“Mmmm.”
“That club was good, too.”
“The Church. Yes.”
“Do you go there a lot?”
“No. I don’t usually go to clubs.”
“Why not?”
“It’s all decadent. The short skirts and high heels, women showing themselves off. It’s not the women that turn me off, it’s the groups of men looking for something to stick their dicks into. I bet you went to a lot of clubs with Archie.”
“Why did we go last night?”
“For you. You had to listen to us talking about business all night. I thought you might enjoy it.”
“Well I did. Thank you.”
“Did you know the songs the DJ played?”
“Of course. I mean, they were remixes, but I know the originals. Did you?”
“No.”
“Well, I guess if you don’t listen to music …”
“Hey, I hear music all the time, I just didn’t recognise those songs. I’ve never seen anyone dance like you.”
She smiles and leans up on her elbow to look down at him. “That’s that swing thing, baby.”
He turns over onto his front and folds his arms on his pillow, resting his head. She lies back down facing him. They smile.
“Tell me about that swing thing.”
“Well it’s a dance, you know. The music was for dancing. Not formal dancing, just a few steps and then a lot of shaking.”
“A lot of shaking? Not a very specific dance.”
“That’s just it. A dance where you can let go and do what you want. And when people get to do what they want, they dance crazy dancing.”
“Who danced it?”
“It started with the slaves bringing their rhythms. The rhythm, the dance, shaking it all up, letting it all out, that came from underneath, from the poor, from the ghettos, the shacks.”
The Fly Guy Page 11