by Adrian White
“Oh,” said Mike, “I think you’ll see a lot more of that in the future. We got in first, that’s all, and as I say – it’s costing them nothing.”
“But what – ”
“But, but, but,” said Mike. “If we get found out, we get found out; until then we just enjoy it.”
On the rare occasion that Mike was open and frank with Katie, she was left with more questions than she was given answers. They continued to visit the White Horse on a Saturday night and it became their thing, the one time on their own together. They might go on to meet the others at a casino in town, but Katie liked the times she spent alone with Mike. She didn’t feel under any pressure; she was comfortable with Mike, despite everybody knowing how close they’d become.
“Mike,” she asked one night, “where do you get all your money from? Are your parents loaded?”
Mike laughed.
“You’ll be glad to hear that I’m completely self-supporting – well, apart from having my fees paid for by the government.”
“So where does all your money come from?” Katie asked.
“Well I . . . I don’t receive a maintenance grant as such,” said Mike, “but I do get some money for being from Northern Ireland at a college in Britain. And because I’m Irish – because I have Irish citizenship – I get some money for that too.”
“You have Irish citizenship?”
“Yes,” said Mike, “and British.”
“How can you have both?” asked Katie.
“It’s worse than that,” said Mike. “I’m also a U.S. citizen because I was born in the States.”
“You don’t get money from them too, do you?”
“No, not directly,” said Mike, “but I do have a scholarship with an American company with an office in Belfast.”
“A law company?”
“No, a stockbroker, or an investment banker as they like to call themselves.”
“And they’re paying for you to get through college?” asked Katie.
“They’re paying something towards it,” said Mike, “and I’ve agreed to go work for them when I graduate.”
“In Belfast?”
“Or London, or the States – they decide.”
“But what does a stock broking firm want with a law graduate?”
“Everybody needs a lawyer, Katie; you should know that.”
“And is that what you want to do – work for an American stock broking firm?”
“Not forever,” said Mike, “but it’s as good a place as any to start.”
“That’s hardly what I call self-supporting,” said Katie.
“Well, it is in that I’ve used my initiative to make life easier for myself.”
“Oh, you’re good at that,” said Katie. “It still doesn’t explain how you have enough money to go gambling several nights a week.”
“I don’t gamble,” said Mike. “I play to win.”
“You do gamble,” said Katie, “I’ve seen you. It’s not only blackjack you play; I’ve watched you place a whole night’s winnings on the roulette table.”
“That’s just for a bit of fun. You have to take a risk every now and again.”
“Whatever,” said Katie, “you still seem to have a lot of money – more than you should have.”
“You only have to look for it,” said Mike.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that there’s money to be had, if only you’re prepared to take it.”
“I still don’t understand,” said Katie. “Where are they giving money away?”
“The banks, for one,” said Mike. “They were only too keen to open an account when I started college, so I opened several.”
“Under your own name?”
“Some, but not all.”
“How many accounts did you open?”
“Quite a few,” said Mike. “About thirty, I think.”
“Thirty?” said Katie. “But what’s the point – you can only take out what money you put in, surely?”
“Not necessarily – the banks are so slow in clearing funds, half the time they don’t know what you might have in the bank. I create such a convoluted trail of accounts, I can disappear with their money before they figure out what’s happening.”
“But it all leads back to you, doesn’t it?” asked Katie.
“No,” said Mike. “I keep my own accounts completely separate. Most of the others are bogus business accounts.”
“Now that is fraud,” said Katie. “They can put you in jail for that, or throw you out of college – Mike!”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t be going anywhere near those accounts again.”
“So what now?” asked Katie. “What mad, illegal scheme are you dreaming up now?”
“Not illegal,” said Mike. “I earn a fair bit at the casino, but nothing too spectacular; and I have a broker buying and selling shares on my behalf. Together, they make a lot of money; certainly more than I need to support myself through college.”
“A broker?” asked Katie.
“Yes.”
“From your Belfast firm?”
“No,” said Mike. “I don’t want them to know about it. I have someone based in London.”
“And he advises you on what to buy and sell?”
“Occasionally, but it’s mostly my own decisions.”
“So what – you study the Financial Times each day, or something?”
“Yes,” said Mike, “I do, but a lot of it is just common sense.”
“Mike!” said Katie.
“What?”
“There’s nothing common sense about it! You’re studying for a law degree, for Christ’s sake.”
“So? I’m doing okay on the course; maybe not up to your standards, but I’ll pass the end of year exams.”
“But what if you get caught?”
“Caught at what?” asked Mike. “I told you, I’ve stopped with the banks thing, though they’re so stupid it’s tempting to rip them off all over again.”
“Promise me you won’t,” said Katie.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to lose everything, and I don’t want to lose you.”
Mike looked up at Katie.
“I mean,” she said, quickly, “I don’t want you to be kicked off the course.”
Mike took a moment to reply.
“They won’t kick me off the course,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere; unlike Bruno – I think he’s had his final warning.”
“Really? Do you think so?” asked Katie. “Won’t they wait until after the exams? At least give him until the end of the year?”
Mike shook his head.
“No,” he said. “From what I heard this morning; I think Bruno’s gone.”
Bruno was gone, in more than one sense of the word. Katie couldn’t understand how he ever hoped to hold down his place on the course; couldn’t see why he even applied to study law in the first place. He was obviously very intelligent, but was in a permanent state of self-destruct. Katie felt uneasy in his company, particularly when they were alone. He’d never actually done anything to upset her, but she could sense the potential for him to do so. Part of it was sex: Bruno fancied Katie and showed it. Everyone else – Eugene, for example – was either embarrassed by Katie’s good looks, or presumed she was with Mike and therefore off-limits.
Katie recognised that Bruno’s self-harm was much more public than her own; she didn’t know if it was any the worse for that or any better.
Katie never understood why Mike gave Bruno so much of his time. Mike was under no obligation to explain his every action to Katie, but it was unlike him to do anything that wasn’t in his own interest. If the crowd of them were out together – at the casino, say – it was obvious to Katie that Bruno acted as a form of protection; otherwise, they were just a bunch of nerds let loose on the town. But Bruno was also such a wind-up merchant that he could never resist having a dig at the likes of Eugene and Rory. Bruno wasn’t
always happy to be seen out with them, and they would certainly have been happier without him.
But Bruno was also there for Mike’s own personal protection. Mike was always just one step away from being in a scrape with some dealer in the casino and Bruno’s presence was an unnerving deterrent to anyone starting trouble. The pit bosses – the floor managers – weren’t quite so in awe. It was their job to watch out for the likes of Mike and forcibly eject them from the casino. All Bruno could do then was to provide a barrier while Mike got out with his winnings; it could get pretty intimidating when they asked you to please accompany them to some back room. It got really ugly once after they’d repeatedly been playing a Chinese casino in town – Bruno was no match for twenty or so baseball bats and they all ran out as fast as they could, winnings or no winnings. Bruno often caused more trouble than he prevented; he was forever being guided out of a club or a casino, with Mike pleading for him to please just walk away.
If Katie thought they would be seeing less of Bruno once he was thrown off the course, she was wrong. Nothing much seemed to change. Katie suspected that Mike felt sorry for Bruno – as she suspected he had her when they first met – and that this was what bound the three of them together. Was this the basis of Mike’s friendship with Bruno and Katie – a sympathy bordering on pity? Mike denied it, but the impression remained.
At the end of the first year, Mike persuaded Katie to hold a party in her flat and, despite her reservations about her privacy, she agreed.
“It’ll be fine,” said Mike. “Everybody will be so drunk or high, they won’t be looking in your drawers and things.”
“Great,” said Katie, “so they’ll be throwing up in my bathroom?”
“If they make it that far,” said Mike, and smile. “I promise you we’ll all help tidy up, and who else has a place like yours? It’s ideal for a party.”
Katie felt as protective of her flat as she did of the White Horse – this was her space and she wanted it to remain so. But she understood what Mike was doing. He was right: Katie’s flat was the ideal place for a going away party, but this had more to do with Katie loosening up and not being so uptight amongst their friends. She’d never looked at her things through the eyes of other people before; even Mike was a rare enough visitor to her flat, and only once got past the front door.
“I need to use your loo,” he said, after he’d walked Katie home one night.
“Well, you can’t,” she said.
“What do you mean, I can’t? I have to.”
Katie stood in the doorway and looked at Mike. Their friendship demanded that she let him in. She was scared that he might see something he shouldn’t, some incriminating evidence she may have left lying around in the bathroom. It was decision time again: let Mike in, or retreat back into her own private world. She stepped back, and allowed him through.
“I didn’t snoop around,” Mike said, when he came back down. “I just concentrated on my aim.”
The party raised the same issues for Katie, only on a larger scale; but at least she had time to prepare for it.
“It’ll be fine,” repeated Mike. “You’ll be fine. Everybody hides their stuff before a party. Clear away as many things as you can and by the time we arrive in from the pub, we won’t notice a thing.” He seemed to be saying that it was normal for Katie to have her secrets, that he understood her need for privacy and it was fine – but then, he didn’t know her secrets, did he?
“You’re not all meeting in the White Horse?” she asked.
“Where else would we go?” said Mike. “Come on, Katie, I’ll talk to the bar staff; they won’t mind a crowd of students in for one night.”
“No,” said Katie, “but I might.”
“But these are our friends,” said Mike.
Katie thought of what Mike said as she got the flat and herself ready for the party. It helped her avoid repeating the disaster of their first night out together. It was normal to strip the flat bare of anything that could be damaged; it was normal to hide any personal stuff she didn’t want to be seen – this is what people did when they held a party in their home. But it was inside her head that Katie feared the most; there was nothing normal about what went on there.
Why did Mike push it so? Why did he keep putting her in a position where she had to confront what she did to herself? She thought she knew, but she didn’t understand – how could anyone in his right mind fall for her? He couldn’t possibly know – could he?
When the moment came – that look in the mirror before she dressed – Katie tried to slow it down. She wanted to freeze that precise moment – now, is it now? She wanted to know the exact second. She wanted to know what made her reach for the bathroom cabinet. Was it fear of what the evening might bring? She thought of the girls in The Great Gatsby – girls who knew that an evening would soon be over, that a party would always end, that none of it really mattered at all.
Katie thought of Mike. She didn’t want him to know what she did to herself; she didn’t want him to see the cuts on her thighs. Well, it was too late for that; her scars would never heal.
It’s not as though he’ll ever see you naked, she thought. Not tonight – and not ever?
Katie didn’t want to keep doing this to herself. She didn’t want to live her life in this way. She wanted to use her intelligence to beat this thing.
She looked in the mirror, but her reflection laughed at her.
In the end it was the thought of the bloody mess that slowed the moment down.
If you do this now, she thought, if you lose it now, then you have to clean up the blood. You have to wash yourself and clean the floor; you have to check for splashes, and you’ll be crying so you won’t be able to see.
It would add an hour on to getting ready, and Katie would be late for the pub; there was every chance that people might start arriving at Katie’s flat.
Katie looked down at her thighs.
Don’t look down there! You know what’s down there – nothing’s changed there. Are you going to do this, or what? Is this the moment?
Katie reached for the door to the bathroom cabinet. She looked hard at her reflection in the mirror and felt for the packet of razor blades. She unwrapped the blade and held it between her thumb and forefinger. She lowered her arm so that her hand lay flat against her right thigh. She pressed the cold metal surface of the blade against her skin.
“This is the moment,” she said, and she moved the edge of the blade across her skin. The blood trickled over her fingers. This was too good a feeling for Katie ever to stop; this was her sex. It hurt, but she hadn’t lost control.
When Katie arrived at the White Horse, she was relieved to see that Bruno wasn’t there. The last thing she wanted was Bruno starting trouble, completely off his head on some drug or other. Not that Katie was a saint when it came to drugs, and Bruno kept her supplied with whatever she might need, but Bruno took everything to excess. Katie couldn’t keep track of what he was on, and he could turn a harmless occasion into an unpleasant scene within seconds of arriving.
This happened a few weeks before the party, when Katie was at the gym in town. Bruno turned up, and Katie saw immediately what a volatile state he was in. He was always worse when Mike wasn’t around; or rather, he was always in the same state, and only Mike had the ability to talk him around. Bruno began by muttering something to the rhythm of his weight machine; each time he brought his arms together, he repeated this one phrase. At first, the noise of the gym obscured what Bruno was saying, but he grew louder and louder with each rep. Katie hoped the exercise would act as a distraction for Bruno, but she could see he was getting worse.
“I wanna fucka nigga,” he said. “I wanna fucka nigga.”
Katie heard what it was that Bruno was chanting. She stopped her tread machine and grabbed her towel. Bruno’s chant became a shout, and Katie ran into the changing room. She sat and listened to the disturbance outside in the gym – Bruno’s shouts of protest, and the scuffle as the other member
s threw him out. They didn’t even wait to call security.
Why would Bruno do such a thing? Or say such a thing? Katie found at later the same day that Bruno had been thrown off the course, but this didn’t even begin to justify or excuse his behaviour. She knew that somehow she was mixed up with all the things in Bruno’s head, but if Bruno was sweet on Katie, he had a strange way of showing it. Unlike Mike, Katie felt no pity for Bruno at times like this – only disgust.
Katie knew that Bruno would appear at some point on the night of the party; she just didn’t want it to be at the White Horse.
“He feels really bad about that day at the gym,” said Mike.
“And so he should,” said Katie. “I just don’t see how you – ”
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Mike. “You don’t know why I bother with Bruno. But he thinks the world of you, you know.”
“And he thinks a stunt like that will make me like him more?”
“He’s trying to get your attention,” said Mike. “He wants you to at least notice him once in a while.”
“Is he stupid?” asked Katie.
“No,” said Mike, “he’s not stupid, but he loses the run of himself when you’re around. He doesn’t know how to cope with you – just as you don’t know how to cope with him.”
Katie knew that sooner or later she had to come clean with Bruno, and let him know that nothing was ever going to happen between them. She knew he wouldn’t be as understanding as Mike; Bruno could never have a relationship with a woman without sex.
But later, when he arrived at the party, Bruno was quiet and almost respectful of being in Katie’s home. When he took the time to talk to Katie properly – as he had at the Buzzcocks concert – she found him to be good company and a breath of fresh air. At times like this, Katie liked having Bruno around; he lent an edge to their group, and suddenly the party was alive and full of potential.
“I’m so sorry about the gym,” he said to Katie. “It was a stupid thing to do, and I apologise.”
“It’s nothing to do with me,” said Katie. “It’s the other members you should be apologising to.”
“I know, I know,” said Bruno, “and I have. I’ve spoken to everybody who was there, and I’ve written to the gym to apologise. They say they’re reviewing my membership.”