by Kate Johnson
The bar was a dive, full of people like myself, too wretched to care who was walking in the door. Could be salvation, could be damnation.
A blast of cold air announced another lowlife looking to drown his misery in liquor and blues music. I didn’t look up. It wasn’t like I wanted to get noticed in this place.
But someone did notice me, sauntered over and stood blocking the dismal light until I mumbled, ‘I’m not interested.’
‘Can I at least buy you a drink?’
‘No. Thanks.’ I stared into the half-inch of cold beer in my glass.
Undeterred, he took a seat beside me and signalled to the bartender. ‘I’ll have a Bud, and whatever the lady wants.’
I ignored him.
‘So how did a girl like you end up in a place like this?’
I looked up. ‘Seriously, has that line –’
And suddenly the world crashed into blinding Technicolor.
‘Jack?’
He flicked back his hair. Two days of stubble graced his jaw, his eyes were dark and mean, and he reeked of cigarette smoke. He looked like he should be the guy with the black-and-white narration, not me.
‘I guess we think alike.’
‘I guess we do,’ I said, still dazed. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Same as you, I expect. Belinda Marple?’
I nodded. Jack took out a packet of cigarettes and lit up. The bartender swooped and shook his head.
‘No smoking.’
‘You’re kidding?’
He nodded. ‘It’s a public place.’
‘Jesus.’ Jack picked up his bottle and stood up. ‘You coming with?’
I looked at the half-inch of beer in my glass, then at Jack. ‘Sure.’
Jack threw some notes down on the bar and I followed him through the door. Outside it was freezing cold, the kind of cold you can taste, and I gasped and swore as I shoved my hands into my jacket pockets.
‘New clothes?’ Jack enquired.
‘Uh-huh.’ I was too cold to think. ‘Where?’
He pointed to a car. ‘My hotel is just …’
I nodded and stumbled after him. Jack stopped at a late-night liquor store and bought a bottle of JD. I suppose I should have been worried about that, but all I could think was that they almost had the same initials.
His hotel was a small, family-run, farmhouse type place, a B&B I guess, right out on the edge of East Penobscot, miles from anywhere. Certainly it was miles from any phone signal. It overlooked the river. It was white-boarded and pretty and Jack’s room was in an annexe on the side.
He flicked on a small MP3 player and Sheryl Crow came on. The Globe Sessions. Music to drown yourself to.
‘Bourbon, please,’ I said, and held out my hands. I actually hate bourbon, but I was freezing cold and had a definite feeling I’d need something alcoholic if I was going to get through this. Jack might still hate me. The jury was still out on how I felt about him.
There were no glasses, so we used the little plastic cups from the bathroom. Big measures. Hot, burning bourbon. I shuddered like Buffy drinking tequila.
‘You been okay?’ Jack asked.
I nodded. ‘You?’
‘Never better.’
I looked away and drained my cup. This was a stupid idea. I ought to go back to my hotel, get some sleep and try to figure out my next move.
‘I should go,’ I said, and Jack looked surprised. A little hurt.
‘No. Look, I’m sorry, all right? I blew up at you the other day.’
‘Again,’ I said pointedly.
‘I’m feeling a lot of stress right now.’
‘Ditto.’
‘We really ought to work together on this. I mean, two heads are better than one and all that.’
I nodded. ‘Just don’t get mad at me any more, okay?’
‘Well, don’t give me a reason to get mad at you any more, okay?’
I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Right. Okay. Have you found out anything else useful?’
Jack settled down on the floor with his back to the bed. ‘About as much as you have, from the sounds of it. I went to see David-John today but he wasn’t home.’
‘Me, too.’
‘Maybe we should go see him together.’
‘Sure.’
Oh, this was a disaster. How were we supposed to work together like this?
‘Sit,’ Jack said. ‘Have another drink.’
I sat. I drank. I wondered how I was going to get back to my hotel since I didn’t expect there’d be any buses and I was certainly over the limit for driving Jack’s car.
Jack poured me a third drink, and I was drunk and miserable enough to drink it. And after that, I was drunk enough to suggest we play Truth or Dare.
He raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Are we twelve-year-old girls on a sleepover?’
‘No, we’re people who don’t know very much about each other but need to be able to get on.’
He ran his eyes over me speculatively. ‘Strip Truth or Dare. If you don’t want to answer, you take some clothes off.’
I considered this. In my semi-inebriated state, it seemed like a decent prospect. I mean, what kind of secrets did I have from Jack?
I nodded.
I therefore blame myself entirely for the sequence of events that followed this ridiculous decision.
‘Is my sister really gay?’ Jack asked.
I nodded. That was easy. ‘Yep. I’ve seen them kissing.’
‘Is it that Australian girl who is living with her?’
‘That’s two questions,’ I said. ‘It’s my turn.’
He shrugged and took a swig of his bourbon. He lit up a cigarette. In the low light, he looked like Johnny Depp in Once Upon A Time In Mexico. Before the eye thing, obviously.
‘Who’s the last girl you slept with?’
Jack took a deep drag of his cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke in my direction. ‘Uh, Michelle Santorio. She’s now doing time for grand theft auto.’
‘Did you know she was a criminal when you slept with her?’
‘How do you think I caught her?’
Yipes.
I reached over and took a cigarette from the box, and held out my hand for the lighter. Jack looked surprised.
‘I didn’t know you smoked.’
‘I don’t.’ I lit up and breathed in deeply. It was about the third cigarette I’d ever smoked, and it felt good. To fill my lungs with pungent, acrid smoke, breathe it in deep and blow it out, to smell the air and know I’d changed it. To suck the nicotine into my veins. It felt good.
‘Why did you become a spy?’
I took another drag. At this rate the fag would last about another thirty seconds.
The real answer was that it was an unsolved mystery. Well – my own motivations were a bit murky, but I’d still never had an answer from Luke about why he hired me in the first place. ‘Because you’re hot,’ was what he usually told me. I figured Jack could stand to live in the same suspense I was on the matter.
‘Because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life checking baggage. And I really fancied Luke.’
I poured more bourbon into my cup and thought about my next question.
‘Why did you become a bounty hunter?’
Okay, so not very original, but pertinent nonetheless. But Jack’s reply was succinct.
‘Money.’
‘Seriously? Not through any deep-rooted desire to do good?’
‘Is that why you became a spy?’
‘Is that my next question?’
‘Sure, why not.’ Jack drank some more.
I thought about it. The God-honest truth was that I’d been bored, and frightened. Bored of my life, of the mundanity, the repetition, of the knowledge that while nothing about my life was bad, nothing would ever get that much better. I watched my friends, people I went to school with, graduate and progress in their careers and get married and start families, and while I knew I didn’t want that, I wanted �
�� something. I wanted more.
And I was frightened. That one day I’d wake up and I’d be forty, or sixty, or eighty, and I’d still have done nothing with my life. That the days which merged into weeks would become months that merged into years and I wouldn’t be able to remember any of them.
I was a spy for less than a year, and I crammed more into that time than the rest of my life combined.
‘Sure,’ I said to Jack. ‘I wanted to make a difference.’
I just didn’t tell him who I wanted to make the difference to.
I shook myself. Jack was watching me through an untidy fringe of black hair.
‘Did you ever kill anyone?’ I asked.
He dropped his eyes. He drank some more. He sucked on his cigarette.
And then he pulled his sweater off.
It took me a few seconds to realise what he meant, then it clicked.
‘You don’t want to tell me?’
He shook his head.
‘Wuss.’
‘My prerogative.’ He looked me over, and I wished I hadn’t taken off my coat and scarf and shoes. ‘Do you love your boyfriend?’
Easy. ‘Of course I do.’
‘Would you –’
‘Hey, my turn.’
Jack ignored that. ‘If he was guilty of something, would you turn him in?’
At that I stalled. It was on the tip of my tongue to say that of course I wouldn’t, because I did love him, but how did that stand in the light of my pronouncement that I wanted to do good in the world?
‘Guilty of what?’ I asked cautiously.
Jack shrugged. ‘Killing someone.’
‘He kills people professionally. I mean – it’s part of his job, sometimes –’
‘I mean not professionally. Out of hate, or revenge, or maybe on your behalf.’
I opened my mouth, and closed it again. Because I knew Luke would be capable of that, just as I was.
I carefully put down my cup of bourbon, handed Jack my cigarette, and pulled my sweater off.
He nodded in a self-satisfied sort of way.
‘Show me your tattoos,’ I said, reasoning that he had to have at least one.
‘That’s not a question.’ He handed me back my cigarette.
‘Okay, will you show me your tattoos?’
‘No.’
‘That’s not fair –’
‘But it’s true.’
‘Aha,’ I said, waving my fag at him, ‘but if you take off any more clothes then you will be showing me. So that’ll be a lie.’
Master of drunken logic, that’s me.
Jack looked pretty pissed off at that, but he stood up, unfastened his jeans, and pulled them down to show me a small heart on his hip with the name Amie scrolled across it.
‘Who –’
He narrowed his eyes at me and fastened up his jeans. ‘Who’s the last guy you cheated on and why?’
I tried to look offended. ‘I have never cheated on anyone!’
‘Never?’
‘No.’ Matter of fact, I’d only had one other proper boyfriend before Luke, and had the chance come to cheat on him, I’d have done the kind thing and put him out of his misery first. He just really wasn’t worth stringing along.
And as for Luke … well, hell. What was that thing Paul Newman said about not going out for hamburgers when you’ve got steak at home?
That is to say, assuming you’ve still got the steak at home.
No. It’s just a blip, Sophie girl. He’ll still be there when you get home. He has to be. Get your head in order and call him.
Call him in the morning.
Jack looked bored by this information. I wrinkled my nose, drained my drink, and asked the inevitable, ‘Who’s Amie?’
Jack wordlessly took off his shirt and leaned back against the bed. Hah, if he thought being bare-chested was going to distract me he could think again.
‘Have you ever had a sexual experience with a woman?’
Men.
‘Yes,’ I said, and the cigarette fell from his lips and nearly burned a hole in the carpet before he scooped it back up again.
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Well,’ I poured more bourbon, ‘I kissed my best friend.’
He looked relieved. ‘That doesn’t count.’
‘Twice.’
‘For a bet?’
‘Passing on a message.’ From Harvey, as I said. Before he and Angel got together. ‘Have you ever had a sexual experience with a man?’
Jack went very still. Seriously, he didn’t think I’d ask? Looking down at his feet, his gaze fell on his socks.
‘They don’t count,’ I said.
‘Of course they do.’
‘Nuh-uh. Socks are not clothes. They’re accessories.’
‘Well, I say they count.’
‘Well, I say they don’t. Answer me or take your trousers off.’
Jack looked like he might have shot me, but I was the one with the gun. Moodily, he stood up, removed his jeans and threw them at me. Underneath he was wearing those stretchy boxer-brief things. I found my eyes lingering helplessly on his crotch, and made myself drag them away.
So Jack had got frisky with another bloke? Interesting. Very interesting.
‘How many people have you really killed?’ Jack asked me, settling back down on the floor, looking very fine in his underwear.
‘Two.’
‘Did they deserve it?’
I stared at him. ‘One of them was responsible for killing a hundred-and-forty-three people,’ I said, ‘and the other one –’
‘Yes?’
The other one ran over Tammy.
He’d murdered several people just to keep them quiet. He tried to kill me several times. He blew up Docherty’s Vanquish, which ought to come with a death penalty.
He tried to kill my cat.
And now he was dead, and felt nothing. People rotting in jail could feel remorse for what they’d done. They could be pounded into shivering wrecks of humanity by guilt. Dead people were absolved.
I realised I’d been silent for a long time when Jack reached over, uncrossed my arms, and lifted up my t-shirt.
‘No answer,’ he said, ‘no top.’
‘No, I was thinking –’
‘Nope,’ said Jack, and pulled my t-shirt off. His knuckles grazed my breasts as he did, his eyes steady and dark on mine.
Whose bloody idea was this?
‘Do you –’ I asked, and my voice came out very shaky. ‘Do you think I’m innocent?’
Jack was still kneeling beside me. ‘Of what?’ he asked quietly.
‘Sir Theodore?’
There was a very long silence. Jack put his thumb under the waistband of his boxers.
Cold dread ran through me.
I grabbed my t-shirt from him, snatched at my sweater and started scrambling to my feet.
‘Wait,’ Jack tried to pull me back down, ‘no, Sophie, wait, I didn’t mean –’
‘Let go of me.’
He had his fingers hooked around my belt loops. I smacked and clawed at his hands, shoved at his face, and eventually lashed out with my foot, connected with something soft and kicked him onto the floor.
‘Fuck,’ Jack gasped, eyes watering.
‘Fuck off,’ I replied, shoving my feet into my unlaced boots, grabbing my coat and scarf and bag, and wrenching the door open. Outside it was deadly quiet, very black and so cold my breath clouded in front of my face. Shivering immediately, I pulled on my coat and tried not to trip over my laces as I stumbled across the path to the road, stopped and tucked in my laces so I wouldn’t fall and break my neck, and started running.
But I’m crap at running, I wasn’t wearing the right shoes or the right bra, it was so cold it felt like my lungs were burning, and I was far too drunk to race about on an icy road in the middle of the night, somewhere totally unknown.
Flakes of snow started to fall.
I slowed to a fast indignant walk and started muttering prayer
s that I was going in the right direction. And then I heard footsteps pounding after me and knew it was Jack. I changed my prayers to wishing he’d fall and break his neck. Or at least catch hypothermia.
But evidently God wasn’t listening, or maybe I’m too much of a sinner, because Jack caught up with me, wearing jeans and an unfastened shirt, his breath making hard, white clouds in the air.
‘Go away,’ I said, not stopping.
‘No. Sophie, look, I didn’t mean – I mean, I … I don’t think you’re guilty. I mean I trust you. As much as you trust me.’
‘So not much, then.’
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘No, Jack, quite frankly I don’t.’
‘So why have you been –’
‘Using you to help further my own cause? Figure it out,’ I snapped, glad it was so completely dark he couldn’t see my eyes shining.
Jack stopped. ‘You were using me?’
I nodded and carried on walking.
‘The whole time?’ He grabbed my arm and spun me round. ‘The whole damn time? I don’t believe you.’
I don’t know what made me do it. I was pretty drunk, I’ve never been good with spirits, and I was angry and cold and homesick and horribly depressed. I bunched up my fist inside my scarf and slammed it into his face. Jack reeled back, lost his balance on the ice and slammed onto the dark, dirty road.
I reached into my bag, pulled out my gun, and aimed it shakily at him.
‘If you come after me,’ I said, and it would have sounded a hell of a lot better if my teeth hadn’t been chattering like falsies in a bad comedy sketch, ‘I’ll fucking shoot you. Savvy?’
Jack stared at me, and I flicked the safety off, concentrating on the gun, quite terrified I just might shoot him.
For a long second neither of us moved. Snow melted on Jack’s exposed skin and frosted his hair. My hands began to ache in the cold.
Then, one hand to his face, he raised the other in surrender. I backed away a few steps, subtly flicked the safety back on, and walked away.
It was about two miles back to my hotel, and the air was below freezing. By the time I got there, my toes were lumps of ice, my hands throbbed, tears were frozen to my face and I felt like I’d never be human again.
Luke opened his eyes to see an antique dressing table, a painted screen and a window twelve-feet high, draped with fine muslin.
This was interesting, since it corresponded to precisely none of the bedrooms he’d slept in during his entire life.