* * *
—
By this point, my phone’s storage was maxed out with close-up studies of the fake Fredek’s groin; Tan insisted she inspect every shot before I hit delete. Plus, she wouldn’t stop hassling me to “follow through, Cher, for God’s sake!” Of course I’d followed nothing through and so I’d been vague and defensive each time she’d quizzed me, but now—with Chloe kicking about in the wings—I started wondering if it wouldn’t be better, after all, to, like, try to appease her. So I started saying, Yeah, I called him—yeah, I saw him. And I started to describe what we’d supposedly done—these, like, mini-scenes that Malachy would have loved; he’d have called them tableaux. There was me and Fredek squished into the Hole’s unisex toilet cubicle after school; me and Fredek grappling in the hold of the meat-delivery truck; me and Fredek in the back alley, in the rain, in our pants. For maximum authenticity, I looked up the Hungarian for beautiful (gyönyörű) and “I love you” (szeretlek), and got her to repeat after me: John-you-roo, serret-leck.
“Fucking hell, Cher,” she’d said, like I’d turned up to school in a basque and silk suspenders.
“Yeah,” I said. “And he’s, like, really into licking my toes?”
I knew she was properly impressed because she talked: she told Chloe, and Chloe, of course, told everyone else. Becca Jameson from Year Eleven pushed me against the lockers and hissed, “Ho-bag! Foot skank!”
I’d turned scarlet, but Tan had been exultant: “You’re made,” she said, “you’re absolutely fucking made.”
I didn’t feel made, though; I felt fishy and exposed. Whenever I saw Fredek—which was, like, all the time: he came to the Hole most evenings with Jim for their dinnertime fix of marrowfat peas and Blue Tit IPA—I’d turn even redder. And, worse: he’d clocked the attention and started winking at me convulsively; now I was worried he actually would talk to me.
* * *
—
The Saturday before Tan’s YouTube shoot was Simon’s birthday. When Ma was around, we used to get steak from the Caribbean takeout and watch old Eurovision clips online; this year, Simon grilled pork loins and invited Miss York for tea—and Tan, too, to keep me sweet. And, for the first time in weeks, Tan was actually free: she said she had a water infection (“It burns like fucking chilis down there, Cher”) so there wasn’t any point in dragging Arthur down the Dip A Door. Really, though, she was avoiding him—she’d been muttering for a week now about looking for an “upgrade”; she’d started pestering me about Fredek’s friends.
Anyway, Saturday: the four of us sat squished around the foldout table. I sawed and sawed grimly at my food while Tan kicked me under the table and York went, “Oh, girls, I’m so glad you’re both doing so well!”
Simon clanked his can against my beaker of Coke. “She’s a little star, en’t yeh, Cher?”
Tan leered. “Oh, Cher’s totally making connections.”
“Shut up!” I kicked her back.
Simon grinned at Tan. “Yer doin all right yerself, but. Tabs, did yeh hear this one’s goin for an audition? For a film, is it,Tania?”
“A music video, actually.” Tan preened.
“Fantastic!” York beamed. “How absolutely wonderful!”
“It’s an open call, but,” I muttered.
“Did I tell yeh”—Simon slopped us each a celebratory extra dollop of mash—“Cher’s ma was in a panto once? Judy, like. Wallopin poor auld Punch.”
I looked at York, but instead of going decently quiet, she put her hand on the stubbly back of his neck and said, “You know I used to do a spot of improv myself?”
“Yeh didn’t!” Simon leaned back into the crook of her arm. “Did yeh?”
“Oh, yes. We used to just fling ourselves about the stage! It was very expressive”—she threw her free arm up, dramatically, knife in hand—“very rousing. I wanted to dance, you know, but of course I was terribly bowlegged—like a little frog. Not like you girls.”
“Cher can bow her legs,” said Tan, “can’t you, Cher?”
I put down my fork.
“Tania,” said Simon, frowning at me, “why don’t yeh show us yer audition bit?”
“Oh,” cried York, “that’s a lovely idea!”
“What,” I said, “like, now?”
But Tan was already on her feet and fiddling with her phone: it tooted the opening bars to Queen’s “Who Wants to Live Forever,” and she started to belt it out (“There’s no ti-ime…”) so loud that you could see Simon flinch, but he tapped his foot anyway, and beamed at her.
I got up and stomped out. Banged my bedroom door shut and waited. Nothing. Except, of course, a beep from my phone: a picture message. Delete. I got under the duvet. Hunched up. Waited—waited—
A knock on the door. Quickly, I sat up—but it wasn’t Simon, or even Tan; it was just York. Ugh, I thought, and lay back down. She’d started talking already—harping on in her softly-softly psych voice about family and needs. I need you to go, I thought, but she didn’t—she sat down on the bed. When she reached out to touch me—to stroke my hair—I snatched the hem of the duvet and yanked it so hard she almost spilled off the mattress.
“I—need—to go—to sleep,” I said, and I rolled away from her and shut my eyes.
When I opened them again, she was gone. And then I must really have slept, because when I next opened them, the flat was silent and Tan was sprawled snoring across the mattress in just her bra and pants, one leg flung on top of mine.
“Get off,” I hissed. “Tan! Go home, will you?”
Nothing. I sat up, poked her hard in the ribs, but she didn’t properly wake: “Art,” she mumbled, “stop it.”
So I got up, the duvet gathered in my arms: I’d sleep someplace else. In the bar, if I had to.
I went downstairs. It wasn’t as late as I’d supposed: the last of the drunks were still picking themselves up, the dishwasher was humming. Damo, Simon’s part-timer, was out in the Smoking Hole with the mop—though it didn’t matter how often you scrubbed, how hot the water or thick the Shake n’ Vac, the Hole always smelled like burnt rasher fat. I liked it: it reminded me of Ma, who’d hated it. When we’d moved in with Simon she’d gotten me, age six, to help her paint over the tobacco stains on the walls. I wondered, sourly, if York was handy with a roller.
“Ello!” I jumped: Fredek. He’d lurched up from the snug, pint glass in hand, pea stains down his dungarees. He winked at me. “Is time for bed, yes?”
“What?” I looked down at the duvet. “Oh! No! I mean, I—” I stopped.
He’d come to a halt very close to me; I could smell his breath. Cheese, parsnips, ale. “I think,” he said, “is yes?”
“No!” I swallowed—a grotesque gummy click, my tongue sucking against the roof of my mouth. “I didn’t say that—definitely not yes.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding, and he slipped a hand under the duvet; he found my bra strap and tried—failed—to unhook it from my shoulder.
I froze. I was thinking, Slap him, knee him in the balls, but also: What if Tan was right, and I should just get it over with? Like, let him do whatever it was he wanted, and then we—me and her—would be even. Wouldn’t we? I didn’t move; I let him carry on. He wormed a hand under the cup of my bra; he found my nipple and pinched.
“Ow!” I twisted away, but he kept hold of the gobbet of flesh: this time, then, I did kick him. “Let go,” I went, “God!”
Then Damo was crossing back toward us with the bucket. “Fred,” he called, “mate! You ready to go?” And now, finally, Fredek dropped his hand; now he stepped out from behind me and said, “Yes! Yes, we go?”
“I just gotta get locked up first, yeah?” Damo rattled his keys. He clicked his tongue at me. “Yo, Cher—you all right, babe?”
“Perfect,” I said, tightly, and I gathered up my duvet and headed for the stairs.
<
br /> * * *
—
Monday—audition day—Tan didn’t turn up to school. She called me at lunchtime: her mother had dragged her to the GP’s to give a urine sample for her UTI, and the doctor had told them there was nothing wrong with Tania’s kidneys—that, in fact, it sounded very much like she had chlamydia.
“He took a swab,” she howled.
“God,” I said. “What did your ma say?”
“I’ll kill the fucker, Cher. I’ll string him up and bloody Bobbittize him!” It took me a minute to realize she meant Arthur. “Chlamydia, like! I mean, where would he even go to get chlamydia?”
“Do you want me to come and get you? Is your ma still there?”
She wasn’t listening: “I’ll tell you what, Cher—he can take his greasy, contaminated arse, and—and—” And with an exasperated, guttural wail, she hung up.
Fifteen minutes later, she called me back: Arthur had dumped her.
“Wow,” I said. Then: “You’re not—are you, like, crying?”
“No! God. I mean, it’s not like I care! He’s a gimp, I never—” A pause while she snuffled and sighed, and then she said, “I swear to God, Cher? If I don’t get this part? I’ll tear his bloody cock off.”
“Right,” I said, but she’d put the phone down again.
We’d already arranged to meet after school, in the McDonald’s toilets, where I was to help her prep for the audition, so that’s where I headed at four o’clock. On my way I passed Arthur coming out of Tesco’s with his arm around the waist of the twitchy little Year Eight girl from Malachy’s. I didn’t even know her name. I stopped—they hadn’t seen me—and I thought about yelling at them: Whores! Septic mutants! But at the last minute, I changed my mind: what did I care who Arthur hooked up with? I wanted Tan back, was all. So I scurried on; I ran the rest of the way and got to McDonald’s early.
Tan, who was never anywhere on time, was there already, bent over the sink. The whole left side of her face was bruised—she was troweling concealer over it like you’d ice over a burnt cake.
“Oh my God.” I stared, then thought I shouldn’t, but kept staring anyway. “What happened? Who did that?”
She’d not heard me come in; she started, scowled, ducked her head—went dab-dab-dab again, furiously, with the sponge. “Excuse me?”
“Not, like, Arthur?”
No reply. Dab-dab-dab.
“I’m just asking, is all,” I said. “I’m just saying if it was, then you should—”
“Should!” She turned around. “What should I do, Cher? Tell me!”
“I don’t know! What about your ma? Should I call her? Does she know?”
“Does she know.” Tan laughed. Barked. “Yeah, Cher, great idea. You tell her all about it, will you? Or, like, you could just shut the fuck up?”
“What?”
“What?”
I frowned. “Okay! God, I’m sorry. I’m just—”
“Just drop it, will you?” She tossed the sponge in the bin and shut the makeup case. Then she got changed: wriggled into a leather skirt she’d borrowed from Chloe and a gold crop top I’d borrowed from Ma’s drawers that Simon hadn’t yet sorted through. There was another yellowish bruise on Tan’s rib cage, but I kept my promise; I shut the fuck up. And then we set off.
The audition was in the old Scout Hut, a dumpy, windowless, pebble-dashed extension to the Tesco Express by the railway tracks, where once I’d gotten a Brownie badge for starting a fire in a bin lid. A handwritten sign was taped to the door: FLIM SET.
“So far, so good,” I said.
But Tan had stopped; she bent over the bonnet of a battered old Skoda Rapid parked outside, and looked like she was going to puke. “I have to get this, Cher,” she said. “I have to.”
“I know.”
“You don’t!” She thumped the hood of the car. “You don’t know even the stupidest little thing! Jesus!”
“What? What’s that supposed to—oh, shit. Wait.” My phone was ringing. Simon, I thought, after I’d told him we were—
But it wasn’t Simon: the screen said FREDEK.
“Here,” said Tan, “if that’s Ar—if that’s him, tell him he can go fuck himself.”
“No, it’s not—it’s—”
“Oh, God, whatever! Come on.” She checked her costume—plucked off a nub of lint, smoothed her hair—and, without waiting for me, slammed through the Hut door.
The phone was still ringing.
Hang up, I thought, throw it down a drain—or get Tan back, make her answer it! But then I’d have to explain, wouldn’t I, that FREDEK wasn’t Fredek, and where would that leave me? And if I hung up, well, it’d just keep on going, wouldn’t it?
FREDEK. My hands were trembling. I pressed the green button. I said, in a dry croak, “Hello?”
There was an intake of breath, and then: “Karla? Is that Karla?” A woman. My stomach flopped. “He’s with you, isn’t he? Jonny!”
“Jonny? No, I d-don’t”—my voice was shaky, puny, a kid’s—“I mean, I don’t know who—”
She was crying. “You must think I’m so dumb—but I seen what he’s been sending you! I fuckin seen it!”
“No,” I said, “it’s not—I’m not like that!”
I’d sagged against the Skoda; I was staring at the backseat den of takeaway containers and umbrella frames, a green scarf winding along the floor like the dead skin of a snake. “It was just a sort of joke,” I whispered.
“I’ll give you a joke! I’ll find you, I’ll fuckin kill yous both—Jonny! Jon—”
End Call. I jabbed the red icon and dropped the phone; I heard a crack. I picked it up again: the glass was fractured in a great jagged fork, but the phone still worked, because immediately, he—she—called again. I switched it off this time, and then took out the battery, but it still seemed to vibrate. I shoved it in my coat pocket. Breathe.
It’s all right, I thought, forget about it—block the number. I wiped my eyes; I stumbled toward the building. Tell Tan, she’ll—
I pulled the door open.
—she’ll what, exactly?
The Hut’s tiny anteroom smelled like Plasticine and wet socks. There was Tan, alongside a woman in her twenties in a floral catsuit and a scowling boy in a tight yellow dress, all three of them sweating; they looked up as I came in—the two strangers raising their eyebrows at my school uniform, then resuming their nonchalant poses like I wasn’t there at all.
“Tan,” I said, uncertainly, but then a short, balding, ponytailed man barged through the door at the other end of the lobby, followed by a younger, reedier chap with a clipboard: “Right!” barked Ponytail. “Let’s get a look at you all—quick now!” He scanned the three of them, frowned, then went, “No! Wait!” He strode toward me and took my chin between his finger and thumb. “What’s this one—seven stone? Tom, what do you say? Jailbait, or—?”
“Uh,” said Clipboard, “no?”
“All right!” He snapped his fingers. “Get her in costume, will you? People, thanks for your time, much appreciated, lah-di-dah, good evening!” He crashed back into the main room, and Clipboard beckoned to me. “All right, love, come on.”
“Wait,” I said, “I didn’t—” but Tan cut me off; she’d rounded on him.
“The fuck?” she said, in a high, rattled voice. “What do you want her for? I mean, God, look at her!”
The boy in the dress nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Hey,” said Clipboard, putting up his hands, “I’m not the creative here. You, now—quickly!”
They were all looking at me now. Again. Sneering. I was looking at Tan. I’d been about to back away—I’d been going to protest, say they’d made a mistake, that I was just the moral support—but now I was thinking: Look at her? What did that mean? Why shouldn’t he want me? There wasn’t anything wrong
with me—how come everything always had to be about her? So I looked at her and I shrugged. I said, “Well, I guess I’m up! Wish us luck, Tan, yeah?” And when I let Clipboard tug me away, I didn’t swing round to grimace at her like I was joking or like I was sorry, and so I didn’t see what expression she had on her face—if she was raging or shocked or jealous or sad—before the door fell shut between us. I did know, though, what I was thinking: for once, I thought, Tan could just go fuck herself.
* * *
—
Two days later. Three. More: a week. I stayed off school; I told Simon I had a stomach bug and couldn’t leave the flat. He kept asking how Tan’s gig had gone: “Fine,” I’d said, over and over, “I told you,” until I thought I actually would vomit. In fact, I kept checking YouTube to see if they’d uploaded anything, and rejoicing when it seemed they hadn’t—then five minutes later I’d feel nauseated again and I’d have to run the search over. I kept remembering Ponytail’s caw of hilarity when he’d seen me in the bikini that Clipboard had produced (two brassy shreds of sequined polyester that had cut into my belly and gaped at my chest); he’d sprayed driblets of spittle over my shoulders.
“All right,” he’d said; “so you just keep on looking awkward, yeah?”
The lighting techs had swung their lamps around on me. They’d cleared the hall of the Scout troop’s plastic chairs and wobbly trestles, hung a huge black felt drape over the mural of Baden-Powell, and replaced the lot with a glaring copse of light stands and hairy booms: I’d stood in the midst of all this and looked at the floor. A dead ant lay by my big toe, its thorax crushed beneath a strip of yellow tape.
“Rolling?” yelled Clipboard. “Speed? Okay, and—ACTION!”
The O. Henry Prize Stories 100th Anniversary Edition (2019) Page 20