The Brodsky Touch

by Lana Citron

  ‘What bloke?’

  ‘He came up to you after the show. Academic looking, heavy beard, thick glasses.’

  I vaguely recalled a bearded bloke. ‘You mean … What? Not the one who said I should stick to my day job?’

  ‘Very same, I saw him today in the local deli.’

  I shuddered, a fearsome chill swept through my body. ‘Adrian, what was he buying?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘Come on, think.’

  Adrian glared at me like I’d asked the most stupid question. ‘Eh, pâté? Cuddly toys? I dunno.’

  I glowered back, demanding his concentration by pointing my Maglite key ring in his face.

  ‘Eh, herrings, that was it.’

  ‘Herrings. You sure?’

  Adrian nodded.

  ‘Nads, get Bambuss on the phone, pronto.’

  HE SHALL HAVE A FISHY ON A LITTLE DISHY, HE SHALL HAVE A FISHY WHEN THE BOAT COMES IN

  Reader, I know what you’re thinking: No way! How neat would that be? But think of all the movies you’ve seen where the psycho lives within spitting distance of the would-be victim, or actually in the same building. It’s practically mandatory. All whacko doppelgangers worth their psycho salt can be found within spitting distance of their desired victims. I ask you, why should my psycho be different from anyone else’s?

  Within the hour, there was a swoop on the house directly across the road from ours. Darren emerged handcuffed, with Bambuss marching triumphantly beside him, behind them were a handful of trigger-happy terrorist police in full combat gear, to their left side were a couple of coppers, to the right side stood Mrs Nesbit, Gordon McCracken and Dilys from the corner shop, gossiping at a tremendous rate. I looked down on the unfolding scene from the safety of the kitchen window. Darren stopped at the gate, his blood-curdling gaze turned upward and menacing eyes locked on mine. Slowly and inelegantly he licked his lips and then started shouting, ‘This isn’t the end, Issy Brodsky! I’ll have you yet.’

  ‘What?’ I cried out, terrified.

  ‘He said he’d have you yet,’ repeated Minger Two.

  ‘You and I, we’re just beginning.’ He smiled up at me inanely. ‘Mark my words, Issy Brodsky.’

  ‘What?’ I gasped in horror.

  ‘He said …’

  ‘I know what he said, Minger! Jesus Christ, can someone close this window!’ Below, Bambuss tugged at Darren’s arm while he remained glued to the spot.

  ‘We, Brodsky, have a lot in common, you and I …’ His voice was gruff and he enunciated every letter in my name and then compared me to the following, ‘Judas, Lucifer, Spawn of Satan, Beelzebub, Simon Cowell. May the curse of …’

  Mercifully, at this juncture Adrian managed to lower the sash window and drown out his spine-chilling threat, coinciding with Bambuss walloping him on the side of his head. The last I heard of Darren was, ‘Owwwwwwwwwww!’

  ‘You okay, Issy?’ Nadia asked.

  ‘Sure,’ I replied. My focus remained fixed. I saw a fat slug innocently loitering on the pavement fall victim to the underside of a little girl’s pink Adidas flashing trainers.

  ‘Christ, are you not totally freaked?’ Minger One enquired.

  ‘I feel sorry for Darren, to tell the truth,’ I mumbled half-heartedly. A gust of wind blew Mrs Nesbit’s hemline northward and revealed her left knee for a split second, but time enough for Gordon McCracken to file it in his memory. A glimpse of such a knee was a profound moment indeed. He breathed in deeply and lingered on the image.

  ‘Issy?’ yelped Minger Two. ‘You positive you’re okay, like?’

  A spider, as if on pointes, moved across the lilac-painted wall and a bluebottle came to a buzzing halt at the base of the window.

  ‘Issy …’

  I smacked my closed fist down on to the fly and squashed him dead. ‘Huh, Adrian?’ I yawned.

  ‘Do you want a cup of sweet tea?’

  ‘JUST MY USUAL, PLEASE’

  Back at my favourite, Café Blunt, I was in a mulling state, having waved Nadia off on the train back to London. By rights I should have been picking up my wee man and my parents but, due to psycho Darren, they cancelled their trip. Max was really disappointed, but much cheered when instead they surprised him with a trip to Euro Disney. It was, in the circumstances, the correct decision. My Edinburgh existence was as far removed from the daily routine of motherhood as it could possibly get, my work hours were still firmly rooted in the nocturnal world and there was no doubt that if Max had come up, he would have found it frustrating to stay with my parents and see me for just a couple of hours in the afternoon.

  We were nearing the end of the Festival. The fizz was petering out, audiences running dry and our enthusiasm dampened. For most performers total exhaustion had begun to set in after nearly a month’s hard work and harder play. I barely saw Lisa – she’d turn up at the Caves halfway through the Mingers’ set, avoid all eye contact and then disappear straight after the show.

  ‘How’s the show going?’ chirped the friendly waitress handing me my usual.

  ‘Nearly over.’ I tried not to sound too suicidal.

  ‘Never mind, there’s always next year.’

  Not if Geraldine had anything to do with it. It forcibly struck me that I would be returning to London without a job or a (comedy) career to speak of. From Heathrow it would be straight back to Belsize Park and the job section of the Camden New Journal or Ham & High. Yep, my immediate future didn’t look so super-shiny. In fact it looked pretty darned bleak. Guess it was time for another career move, though in which direction, I hadn’t a clue. If the worst came to the worst, I suspected I could always do another course. Indeed, all things considered, I’d probably have to do another course. Maybe something like counselling – I’d be good at that, able to relate to others’ misery – or maybe interior design. There was always the café at the end of road. Come to think of it, waitressing had tided me over before. Silvio was always asking me to come back. He’d promised to up my rate by 50p an hour, which may I add, was getting perilously close to the minimum wage.

  ‘Great news, Issy.’ The Mingers had turned up full of the joys of Adrian and snapped me out of my self-absorbed glumness by announcing, ‘We all have tickets!’

  ‘Tickets? To what?’

  ‘Call yourself a comedian? It’s the Awards tonight.’

  THE AWARDS PARTY

  The if.commedies, or Eddies, were to comedians what the Oscars were to movie stars, or perhaps more appropriately, the Mercury Music Awards to musicians. Anyway, they were a massive deal. If you did manage to win one, it’s hello telly series and bye-bye humdrum reality. Post-awards was the party, which was pretty much the highlight of the Festival’s social calendar, in that there was a meagre chance you’d be turned away if you weren’t on the list.

  So, wearing my best smile and with our golden tickets, the Mingers, Adrian and I arrived straight after our show. It was a shabby-glam affair, nothing too spectacular, but anyone who was anyone was there.

  I left my coat in the cloakroom and was immediately accosted by the high, rising decibels of Crispin the ACTOR, master of articulation and pronunciation.

  ‘Four stars, Brodsky. Not bad for a beginner.’ He was looking his ultra-cute self. ‘What you drinking? Four Star? Crap joke, I’m pissed Lizzy … Issy, sorry. Come over here, come meet my crew.’

  I followed a dangling bottle of Champagne to the far side of the room, where a small group of people were arguing about human trafficking and how crap their so-called agents were at getting them auditions and there, amongst them all, sat Jan. Damn, but in retrospect it was so clear. The night of my death, Jan had been sitting beside none other than Crispin. How could I have forgotten the first rule of detecting, which is to revisit the scene, have a good old nose and then follow up on all leads? I hadn’t followed up on the most obvious of all leads (or any, actually. Look, I’d been really busy with Darren and Lisa and all that).

  When I clapped eyes on Jan, my heart flipped,
then pounded with such ferocity I thought it was going to rip itself from out of my chest, throw itself on the floor and pulsate at his feet.

  ‘Bugger them all,’ bellowed Crispin and introduced me. ‘This here is the wonderfully talented Isabel Brodsky …’ I went all coy, flattered by his compliments. ‘… whom the Scotsman branded a very good comedienne.’

  ‘Actually it was “excellent”,’ I corrected him.

  ‘My mistake, “excellent”. Our show unfortunately was written off as worse than a care-in-the-community project.’ Crispin swung round to Jan, ‘Jan, remember that female comedy show we went to see …’

  He looked at me blankly, ‘No, sorry.’ Well, at least he didn’t remember me from the death show.

  ‘Drink?’ asked Jan.

  My face was splashed a putrid red. I could barely meet his gaze. He cocked his head to one side. ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Yeah, okay, thanks,’ I gabbled and let him fill my glass.

  ‘I’m Jan by the way.’

  ‘I know,’ I replied, wondering how it was that he did not recognise me. Had I really aged so badly? How bizarre that two people should meet and the impact for one was life-changing yet for the other bore no significant relevance? It was then I took a deep breath, prepared myself and very quietly prodded his memory.

  ‘I’m Issy … Isabel … we met about six years ago, at Glastonb …’ The hardest sentence I’d ever had to stutter/mutter.

  ‘Issy! Glastonbury. Of course! Issy!’ His face lit up. ‘I knew it! I so knew it. I kept looking at you, you look so familiar.’

  He knew it. Of course he knew it. Of course he recognised me. How could I have doubted he wouldn’t?

  ‘Dizzy Issy.’ Hand slapped to forehead, in his wildest dreams he couldn’t believe it, the shock appeared genuine.

  ‘I know … I’ve changed,’ I explained.

  ‘A bit. But Glastonbury, with Issy …’ He ran his fingers through his fair locks. The conversation faltered then rattled on staccato-style before he said, ‘Where did you disappear to?’

  ‘Into the crowd.’

  ‘You never gave me your number …’

  I took a seat, a drink, another and soon my nervousness subsided. Jan was sexy, very good-looking in a pretty-boy way, though he knew it. He kept tossing his hair to the side and giving me a certain ‘look’, undoubtedly mirror-practised and probably in usage since adolescence.

  And I swore to myself that no matter how drunk I got, I would not blurt a word about him being the father of my son. For once I aimed to play it cool and avoid foolishly rushing in.

  ‘Issy, Crazy Issy,’ and reminiscing, he smiled. ‘Remember that weekend? I should have taken your number. Why didn’t I take your number?’

  At the time I’d been going through a fatalistic period, leaving all in the lap of the cosmos. ‘Guess I should have given it to you,’ I replied. Of course, at the time, I was also going out with Finn. Poor Finn. I heard recently through the grapevine that his wife was expecting twins. Poor, poor Finn.

  ‘Wanna dance?’

  We pushed our way through the crowd, towards the huge sweeping staircase. On the top step about to descend – and no, reader, I didn’t trip – no Sesame Street ‘baker falling with his cakes’ skit.14 Not a bit of it, see what happened was Jan stopped to chat with a friend and was momentarily pulled aside. So alone, top step, mid-staircase I teetered, dividing the upward stream of people when …

  Eye-lock alert.

  Eye-lock alert.

  My number-one choice came bounding up the stairs, straight towards me, wearing a black suit jacket over a t-shirt and a pair of jeans. Stopping on the step directly below mine, he looked up into my face and declared, ‘Sorry, I’m late.’

  Dear oh dear, but wasn’t it always the way? Never rains but buckets. I shook my head in mock disdain, folded my arms. ‘See, if there’s one thing I can’t bear it’s tardiness,’ I flirted.

  ‘How about tidiness?’

  ‘No tidiness is, well, close to Godliness.’

  ‘I’m a very spiritual man,’ Jake stated.

  ‘I could see that in your ascension.’

  His eyes sparkled. ‘Are you …?’

  Jan grabbed me from behind, wrapped his arms round my waist, nuzzled my ear.

  ‘Otherwise engaged I see.’ Jake Vincent stepped aside to let the pair of us descend. Damn it, but during those few exchanges my heart had gone giddy-up, our verbal challenges, teasing flirtations, my neck craned back for a final parting glance. Jake Vincent scowled at me, so I stuck out my tongue.

  Jan yanked my arm and I followed my Dutchman down the stairs, on to the dance floor. The DJ was playing a tune whose lyrics sounded like ‘Remember me, I’m the one who had your baby.’ I couldn’t help but laugh.

  Beneath the mirrorball we moved from tango to waltzing to grinding to disco, attempting each step with varying degrees of success. And then Jan cupped my face in his hands and we stopped moving and he kissed me. Full on the lips and he kissed me and again he kissed me and there are kisses and then there are KISSES and perhaps it was pheromonal, human, chemical, it was most definitely chemical …

  ‘WANT A PILL?’

  I was overdosing on happiness.

  Jan had a flat in one of the nicer Edinburgh hoods. It was huge, spacious, clean.

  ‘I can’t believe I met you again,’ he whispered.

  ‘Me neither,’ I replied staring deep into his eyes. Part of me was scared, expectations of past times lay on the horizon. It could never live up to my memories of Glastonbury, yet the other part of me was feeling sluttish. I mean, I had my reputation to consider. Did I really want to go home a Festival virgin? Peer pressure was getting to me. Physically we connected. How naff would it be not to, at the very least have tried?

  Jan slumped on to the sofa and pulled me down with him.

  And the light went click.

  Some things are best left unturned, like stones, or in the dark, like ugly people, or out, like painfully cringey sex scenes in novels – it can go either way, cold and pornographic or Mills & Boon fairytale floral-scented tripe. I bow out to your imagination, reader. (Wow, that was good, you dirty, dirty reader you!) And then the light went on again. The mood changed, shifted dramatically. For one, the light was piercing. I squinted, pulling the covers up over me. With a groan, Jan stopped midway … ‘Sorry Issy, I can’t.’ As if struck by a guilty conscience, he fell away from me and lay back down on the pillows.

  ‘What do you mean you can’t?’ I thought he was joking – he very clearly could.

  ‘I … it’s … Can I tell you something?’

  ‘Sure,’ I sighed, disappointed.

  ‘I really fell for you that weekend,’ he smiled.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘It was intense, what we had.’

  I nodded, ‘I’m so glad you said that …’

  He interrupted me.

  ‘My girlfriend’s pregnant.’

  When Trisha left Edinburgh she handed me an envelope. The scary envelope that I was loath to open. It contained more than my expected P45. It contained the following information.

  Jan de Groot

  Born 1975, eldest of three children to Lucia and Dieter de Groot. Father, deceased, was a furniture designer, a master craftsman – the de Groot plastic chair is considered one of the most innovative pieces of the ’70s and made a fortune, which he subsequently lost to gambling. His mother was a watercolour artist, prone to bouts of depression. He had a bohemian shabby-chic, middle-class upbringing, private schooling, read philosophy at Manchester University and graduated with a third. Spent his twenties drifting between jobs, a stint in the City followed by a year in India, then two years in Paris working with an avant-garde circus company. He returned to London [which was probably when I met him] and completed a masters at the Webber Douglas Academy drama school. Currently living in Shepherd’s Bush in a house with Amelia Davis, an actress and his on/off girlfriend of five years.

  ‘Wow, pregnant.’ Trish
a had obviously missed that bit out. ‘That’s fantastic,’ I commented.

  ‘Six months. I’m being a jerk,’ he said indicating the ‘bed’, which I interpreted to mean what we were doing in it.

  ‘I guess these things happen.’

  ‘Time to get serious.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I nodded, ‘having a kid is a big deal.’

  ‘What are you doing?

  I had slipped from under the covers and began dressing.

  ‘Where you going?’

  ‘Home.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Issy. I saw a scan of the baby today, she emailed it to me. Our baby. My child.’

  ‘I’ve a son,’ I announced. I had to say something, for Max’s sake.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How old is he?’ he asked.

  ‘Max is five-and-a-half.’ I met Jan’s gaze. ‘Here, have a look.’ I showed him a picture of Max from my mobile phone.

  ‘He’s beautiful. I’d no idea you were a mum.’

  ‘I didn’t have your number,’ I explained.

  ‘Sorry?’

  I sat on the edge of the bed. ‘You should look after your girlfriend, she needs you right now.’

  ‘Issy, you don’t have to go.’

  ‘I do.’

  My thoughts had turned to Max and I fused, emotionally short-circuited, feelings of vulnerability clashed with aggressive protection. The infinite depth of love I feel watching Max grow and develop compounded with the unfathomable loneliness that comes from bearing the weight of this responsibility on my own. All the challenges Max had met on his journey. The tiny things, from discovering his toes to discovering shadows, learning to feed himself, getting the spoon into his mouth, then the food on the spoon into his mouth. Communicating with him by way of gestures, then one-syllable words, short sentences to now, learning to read and write. And it didn’t stop there, the immeasurable joy Max has brought to my life, the meaning he has given it, even illuminating my own shortcomings as a parent – the times I’ve lost my temper with him, not to mention the sheer exhaustion and drudgery of child-rearing that had me nearly trounced.