by Simon Logan
She follows his gaze to her hands, sheathed in purple latex gloves. She tucks them into her pockets, removing them from sight.
“How do you get your hair that colour? So pink?”
“I dye it.”
“Oh. May I?” the man asks, already starting to sit down.
Bridget blocks him with one booted foot, shakes her head. “Sorry,” she says, then peers over his shoulder.
The couple are leaning into one another, exchanging breath and scents. The woman stands and pulls her coat on. The two make their way through the crowd.
Bridget gets up, pushes past the man without another word, and hurries to follow the couple outside.
A cold breeze snaps her to attention as she looks farther up the street. Locked in one another’s arms, the couple stagger along then cross the road before entering an apartment block. She climbs three floors and unlocks the door to her apartment, snaps on a light. On the wall beside her is a large corkboard littered with photographs of the man she had been watching in the club; some of them blurry Polaroids, others what look like grainy screen-grabs. Amongst these are sticky notes with times and addresses scribbled on them.
She peels off her gloves and takes a fresh set from a box on the counter, pulls them on.
She crosses to a desk on top of which are several small TVs and powers them on one by one. Static slowly gives way.
The first is a row of apartment blocks similar to Bridget’s own, fronted by a communal grassy court. The scene emerges just as the couple she had been watching come into view. They walk across the grass, the man’s hand sliding up and down the woman’s arm, caressing her tattoos, then they enter one of the buildings.
Bridget’s attention switches to the next screen, awkwardly positioned on top of two VCR decks. This one is a stairwell, the lighting dim but the couple still recognisable at the edge of the picture. The man presses the woman against a wall, kissing her neck. The woman smiles, then eases him away, takes his hand and leads up towards the stairs.
The next screen, showing a small and cluttered studio apartment. There’s a flare of light as a door opens, the glare blinding Bridget’s view like a nuclear blast. When it subsides the couple are wrapped in one another’s arms, frantically removing each other’s clothing. The door slams shut behind them. They move out of view.
The next screen is blank. Bridget waits, thinking it is just too dark to see anything, then slaps the side of the device. The TV blinks into life, the image jumping and fizzing. She hits it again and a bed comes into focus.
The woman lies out on it, her arms extended above her head towards the pillows as the man tugs at her jeans to remove them.
Bridget opens a drawer in a unit next to the TVs and removes a headset of the sort call centre workers would wear. The audio cable ends in a small, plastic box. She slides a button to switch it on and a red light glows. In her ears now, the sounds of laboured breathing. She closes her eyes to it for a few moments then opens them again. Reaches in with her gloved hands and removes a small, latex-coated vibrator.
She pulls a small armchair into position before the TVs and settles into it.
The couple are both down to their underwear now, the woman almost lost beneath the broad expanse of the man’s back. Her legs wrap around the back of his.
Bridget lifts her skirt and switches the vibrator on.
7.
She watches the man pull on his trousers and T-shirt then quickly tie his shoelaces.
He says something to the woman but the words are lost amidst static crackle. Bridget takes off the headphones and lets them sit around her neck. Then the man is gone from the TV screen, appearing on the one showing the staircase a minute or so later, still tucking himself in. Back on the bedroom camera the woman is now getting dressed, buttoning her jeans and pulling on a fresh T-shirt, black with the yellow smiley face on it, her tattoos like bruises in amongst the graininess. She quickly re-applies some make-up then pulls on a jacket and leaves the apartment.
With the woman gone, Bridget gets up and cracks open a fresh bottle of whiskey. She tips a couple of fingers into a glass then adds some coke. Swallows half of it in one go. Tops up the liquor.
She quickly burns through two glasses and is pouring herself a third when there is a knock at the door. She checks the spyhole before undoing the locks.
“Hey Liz,” she says, opening the door and letting her visitor in.
The woman breezes past Bridget, removes her coat and hangs it up on a peg on the back of the door. Medium height with rich black hair and multiple tattoos peeking out from beneath a black T-shirt emblazoned with a yellow smiley face.
“Thanks,” Liz says, taking the whiskey and coke from Bridget and downing several large gulps before handing it back to her. “You mind if I—?”
She doesn’t wait for an answer, crossing to the counter and pouring a glass for herself. She takes a swig, brushes her hair from her face.
“Well?”
“Well what?” Liz asks.
“How . . . how was it?”
Liz smiles, takes another swig. “How did it look?”
“Fine,” she says. “Good, I mean.”
“Yeah, well, that’s because you didn’t smell him,” Liz counters.
“Smell him?”
“Stank like he hadn’t taken a shower in a week.”
“Oh,” Bridget says, taking a sip of her own drink. “I thought he looked nice.”
“He looked the part, I’ll give you that. But not everything comes across through the screens, Bridget, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“He screwed pretty good but we’re not having him again, okay?”
“Okay,” Bridget says, knowing she has little choice in the matter despite all the planning she put into the evening.
Liz returns the armchair to its normal position in front of a larger TV suspended from the adjacent wall, then sits down. Bridget turns off the little screens one by one, then the recording decks beneath them. She plucks the photos and sticky notes from the corkboard and drops them into a wire-rimmed bin.
“Then we’ll find someone else,” she says, stamping on them to crush them into the bin. “Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Hey, you may have gotten your rocks off but I certainly haven’t,” she says. “And this time I get to choose, okay?”
“Okay,” Bridget says.
Liz grabs a pen and paper from the desk next to the TVs and scrawls the word Romeo across the top of the first page.
“First up—looks,” she says. “Johnny Cash—obviously. A young one . . .”
She writes that down then tilts her head upwards in thought. “What else?” she ponders aloud, rolling the pen around in her mouth, the devious grin still on her lips. “Smart. He’s got to be, like, stupid smart.”
“Body?”
“Athletic is fine. Oh and maybe a bit of nail polish or eyeliner just to spice things up.”
“You don’t ask for much do you?” Bridget says, downing the rest of her drink and perching on the side of the chair. “Look, I’ve got to head out for a bit,”
“Now?”
“Yeah.”
“But what about my dream man?”
“I won’t be long, I promise.”
“At this time of night, what . . . ?” Her words trail and she feels stupid for even having asked the question. “Oh.”
“I’ll be as quick as I can,” Bridget says, taking a clipboard and pen from another drawer in the desk.
“I’ll be waiting,” Liz sings, adjusting her position to get comfy in the chair. Then, more seriously, “Be careful, okay?”
Bridget says goodbye then is gone. Liz shifts her position again, something hard beneath her, then reaches under her legs.
Pulls out the vibrator.
8.
Leaving the line of wasters standing in the rain, Bridget dr
ives across town then turns the car into the small private parking lot at the front of Stasko’s clinic, stopping next to the surgeon’s racing-green sports car.
She gets out then opens the door for her passenger, motioning for him to get out. He does as instructed, looking up at the brief line of business shop-fronts to either side of the clinic. She knows he’ll be wondering why the clinic is open so late but says nothing as she leads him up to the front door.
Inside, the building is compact and head-ache white, each surface gleaming and sparkling. The main corridor is short and empty save for a framed painting, Roland Penrose’s Octavia, and a small shelf on which a high-heeled boot is placed. They follow the corridor into a reception and waiting area with elegantly designed Swedish furniture and a small collection of high-end fashion magazines scattered across a glass table. A young woman is seated in one of the high-backed, white metal chairs, her manicured hands clasped over a large leather-bound book. She looks up at Bridget as they pass and there is a moment of recognition there but Bridget leads the guinea pig past her and through another door.
Beyond the door the lights are out, save for the glow coming from one room at the end of another short corridor. Bridget leads the man to one of the smaller operating theatres and snaps the lights on. They buzz overhead for several moments, flicker and flash, then illuminate the room. Again everywhere is a pure white—one wall lined with shining cupboards and a chair of the sort a dentist might use in the middle of the room.
“Take a seat,” Bridget tells the man. He looks momentarily panicked until she points to the small stool next to the operating chair. “If you could fill this form in and give me a sample of your urine—there’s a small toilet in the corner there if you want to use it. I’ll be back in a minute to collect some blood.”
He nods, still assessing the room and possibly the situation he has allowed himself to be led into, and Bridget leaves, heading for the room at the end of the corridor. She knocks gently then opens the door.
Stasko is bent over the architect-style drawing table before her, furiously scribbling some measurements into a small notepad.
“Bridget,” he says without looking up.
“He’s in the other room,” Bridget says, remaining in the doorway.
Stasko turns, flipping up the magnifying glass which is clipped to his glasses. “Of course,” he says, smiling vaguely. “You got one?”
She nods. “He’s filling out an assessment form. Who’s the girl?”
“What girl?”
“The girl in the waiting room.”
He considers this. “Oh,” he says finally. “She’s still there? Of course she is.”
“Isn’t that what the . . .”
She indicates the sketches and measurements pinned to the drawing table.
“Yes. Yes. That’s correct.”
“Are you okay, Doctor? You seem a little distracted.”
He nods but it doesn’t seem to be in response to her question, instead the response to some internal dialogue she is not privy to.
“I have something else I need you to do for me, Bridget.”
“What do you mean?”
He rubs his jaw and stands and she can see a mad sparkle in his eyes. He holds up one of the pieces of paper magnetically pinned to the drawing board. It appears to a poster of some sort, badly photocopied and with hand-scrawled print on it instead of proper lettering. The bottom half has been torn away but the top half reveals a demented, screaming woman with spiked hair and something jutting from her neck.
“Did you make that?” she asks him, wondering if his grief was finally starting to spiral fully out of control.
He shakes his head, the nervous energy within him palpable as he hands the poster to her. “I want you to find her, Bridget. I want you to bring her to me.”
“Bring who to you?” Bridget asks.
“Her,” Stasko says, stabbing a finger at the poster.
“Doctor, I thought I’d already made it clear I don’t want to get involved in . . . that side of things.”
“You brought me the guinea pig.”
“And that’s as far as it goes. I’ve just brought him to you—what you do with him is between you and him.”
“Nurse Soelberg,” he says, leaning in closer. She knows the switch to the more formal method of addressing her is deliberate, that it is designed to reminds her of his authority over her. “We spend all day plumping people’s lips, paralysing them with toxins and sucking out pieces of them through a hose only to pump it back in somewhere else. People have domain over their own bodies so that they can choose to do whatever they like to them. There’s no difference between what goes on here during the day—and what goes on at night.”
“The difference is I only work during the day.”
“You work when I need you to work,” he says, his voice still calm but his teeth clenched. “All I’m asking is that you find this girl and bring her to me just like you brought me the guinea pig. Bring her to me and your involvement will end there, I assure you, Bridget.”
Back to her first name again.
“How am I meant to find her?”
She looks down at the poster. Whatever details there had been as to what the poster had been for must have been on the part that has been torn off.
“You’re a bright girl,” he tells her. “As soon as I have finished with my patient I’ll participate in the search but for now I must delegate to my most trusted employee. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”
He removes the woollen sweater vest he wears and plucks his doctor’s whites from a hook on the wall.
“What about the guinea pig?” she asks.
“Have you finished his assessment yet?”
Shakes her head. “I still have to run bloods and urine.”
“Good, then get it done now before you leave and have him sent to me afterwards. Walk with me.”
He holds the door open for her, making it clear that she has no choice but to accompany him.
They stop by the door to the surgery and Stasko puts a hand on her shoulder. “I trust you will achieve,” he says, then strides down to the waiting area.
A few moments later he emerges with the woman from the waiting room and now Bridget gets a clearer view of her she realizes how young she is—probably no more than eighteen. Her lips are painted purple and sparkle with a pair of lip rings and there is a hesitancy to her movements as she is led out the front door of the clinic by Stasko. She looks over her shoulder, exchanging the briefest of glances with Bridget, before the door closes.
Bridget enters the surgery to find the guinea pig still seated where she had left him, the form she gave him now filled with his personal details. She scans it quickly.
“It’s all I could manage,” he says, holding up the plastic sample bottle filled with a small amount of a dark orange liquid. “Sorry, I must be kind of . . . dehydrated.”
“It’s fine,” she says, then checks the name he has noted down. “Nikolai.”
She takes the bottle from him and inserts it into a little pocket attached to the assessment form.
“I wouldn’t have thought that was your type of music,” he says.
“I’m sorry?”
Then she realizes he is looking at the poster Stasko had given her, still clasped in one hand. “Your gig poster.”
She shrugs. “Is it your type?” she asks absently as she completes some of the details on his form.
“Used to be,” Nikolai says. Then he adds, “I know her.”
“Know who?” Bridget asks, not really paying attention, just wanting to get it all over and done with and back to Liz.
“The girl in the poster. Katja.”
Bridget stops writing and looks up. “Know her how?” she asks suspiciously.
“I . . . I used to be in a band with her. We stayed in the same squat. But then . . .”
“You stay in the same squat?”
“Used to,” Nikolai corrects her.
“But you know where she lives?”
Nikolai suddenly becomes defensive, perhaps sensing the urgency in her voice. “Well, I mean, I could be wrong, it sort of looks like her but then . . .”
“It’s okay, I’m a fan,” Bridget reassures him. “I mean, I’ve heard that she’s worth seeing, that the band is worth seeing. Is this a gig poster, is that what it is? I found it but it was all torn.”
“I don’t know,” Nikolai says, nervous twitches starting to affect him. “It could be, I don’t know anything about it.”
“Come on, Nikolai, I just want the chance to meet her. I . . . I want to form my own band, you know? This job only just pays the bills. If I could just talk to her, get some tips. I could maybe swing an increase in your fee?”
He stops rubbing his legs but doesn’t look up. Several seconds of silence pass, then:
“Yeah I know where she lives,” he says.
9.
Bridget has been in the car long enough for her breath to start fogging the windscreen when she spots someone walking towards the building she’s been watching. Small and wearing a hooded top, arms wrapped around themselves, it’s difficult to tell age or whether the figure is male or female but it’s the only person she has seen in a long while.
She sits bolt upright as headlights flash across her rear view mirror, quickly followed by the screech of tires. She looks out the window in time to see an old station wagon ramp up onto the curb outside the building and a man pull himself free of the vehicle. He stumbles out of it and chases after the hooded figure, jumping on his target and sending them both crashing to the ground. Bridget continues to watch the two struggle, resisting the urge to start the engine and get out of there, but if the guinea pig were to tell Stasko about the information he had given her then the surgeon would be expecting something as a result.
The man, fat and swathed in a dirty raincoat, presses himself down onto the hooded figure, clutching something to his prey’s face.