House of Cards

by Garrett Leigh

  “Stay here?”

  Brix fixed Calum with a glare that had silenced many a cocky apprentice or ignorant client. “It don’t take a genius to work out you’re up shit creek without a paddle, and I reckon if you had any inclination to hop it home, you’d have borrowed a wedge off me and done it already. Am I right?”

  “Maybe.” Calum lost himself in Bongo’s lizard-like gaze, hiding from Brix’s piercing stare. “I guess if I wanted to go home, I wouldn’t have wound up here in the first place. It’s not like the train didn’t stop before I fell asleep.”

  “So why didn’t you get off?”

  Calum shook his head slowly. “I didn’t want to. I just wanted to be as far away from him—from there—as possible.”

  Brix raised his eyebrows again, clearly catching Calum’s slip. “This is a long way to run. Are you in trouble?”

  “What? Oh, no. It’s nothing like that, I’ve just . . . lost myself, you know? And I don’t know how to get it back.”

  Brix plucked Bongo from Calum’s arms and set her down in the dusty run. “Know how that feels, mate.”

  Calum didn’t doubt it. Brix had always possessed a quiet wisdom that came from a life that had seen too much. “I suppose I could get one of those Wonga loans or something. It would get me back to London, at least.”

  “Is that where you want to be?”

  Calum thought of the shop in Rob’s name—filled with his cronies—and the barren flat in Paddington that had never felt like home. “I’d rather shoot myself.”

  “Then stay here, like I said. You don’t have to explain yourself. Reckon I know all I need to.”

  “But I haven’t told you—”

  Brix held up his hand. “So? I’ve got a spare room and some guest slots in the studio. It’s not like you don’t have a trade. You’re still tattooing, aren’t you?”

  Calum snorted. “It’s about all I’m doing, but I haven’t got any kit. It’s—” His voice fell away as his heart wept for Dottie. “I don’t have anything, Brix.”

  Brix laid a hand on Calum’s arm, his slender inked fingers wrapping around Calum’s wrist like a blanket of heated vines. “Then you best stay right here until we figure this shit out.”

  Brix threw a tin of tomatoes into the Bolognese sauce on the stove and stirred it in, scraping the meaty goo from the bottom of the pan with a little more force than necessary as he watched Calum stare a hole through the back door from the couch. Anyone else would’ve thought him obsessed with the chickens, but Brix knew better. Calum’s studied gaze was empty, and whatever he was seeing had taken him somewhere else entirely.

  If the subtle distress in his dark eyes was anything to go by, it wasn’t any place pleasant, and that was Calum all over—subtle—though that was the only thing Brix recognised in the shaken shell of a man he’d once counted among his closest friends.

  Not his fault, though, is it? You’re the one that bailed. The devil on Brix’s shoulder also reminded him to nip upstairs and neck his evening meds. When he came back, Calum hadn’t moved. Fuck this. Brix got his biggest pasta pot out of the cupboard and clanged it down on the stovetop.

  Calum jumped. Brix felt bad for a moment, but the brief spark of life in Calum’s tired gaze was a relief. It had been hours since he’d last spoken; he’d clammed up right after agreeing to stay the night in Porthkennack.

  “Sorry,” Brix said. “Checking you’re awake.”

  “I am now.”

  “Good. You can help me massacre the spaghetti.”

  Calum looked at Brix like he’d grown four heads, but got up from the couch and drifted to the breakfast bar anyway. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothin’ really. Just fancied some company.” Brix filled the pan with water and set it to boil. “And I was shitting it a bit that I’d lost you to the chooks.”

  “Sorry.” Calum scratched his dark beard with a rueful twitch of his lips. “They’re kind of absorbing.”

  Brix had lost more hours watching hen TV than he cared to admit, but he wasn’t fooled by Calum’s weak grin, and he didn’t like it. Calum had always been quiet—a bloke that watched and listened—but his bright smile and uproarious laugh had lit up the world.

  Anger tickled Brix’s veins. Some douche bag’s chewed him up and spat him out. The Calum he’d left behind had been a gentle soul, trusting and kind. It would’ve been easy for a heartless bastard to hurt him.

  “Thought I was the one in a world of my own?”

  Brix blinked to find Calum watching him, his expression a contradictory mixture of cautious curiosity and apprehension. “What’s that?”

  “You look pissed off.”

  “Nah, not me, mate. Just worried I’m gonna fuck up your dinner.”

  “Seems all right to me.”

  “Yeah?” Brix peered at the pan of bubbling meat. “I haven’t made this for a while. My friend Lena usually helps me, and she does this bit. I don’t think I’ve put enough stock in.”

  Calum was apparently mystified. “I can’t cook for shit. Beans on toast or oven chips is about my limit. Reckon I’ve got kebabs and fried rice in my blood.”

  Brix tried to conceal his displeasure. After all, it hadn’t been that long ago he’d lived on his own city diet—cornflakes, and lemon chicken from the all-night Chinese—but his life had evolved since then. Necessity, plus the slower pace of Porthkennack, had changed his ways, and cooking had become an activity he enjoyed, especially when he had company.

  The pasta water came to the boil. Brix threw in a packet of spaghetti. Calum didn’t seem particularly hungry, but Brix was hoping that would change when he had a bowl of food in front of him.

  “I’ll stir it if you want.”

  Brix jumped. Somehow he’d missed Calum rounding the breakfast bar and peering into the meat pan. “Erm, thanks. I’m a fucker for that. Burnt so many pans I’ve got shares in Tefal.”

  Calum raised another weary half smile. “Multitasking, eh?”

  “Aye.”

  “Aye?” Calum’s grin widened enough to reassure Brix he was truly with him. “You sound like a fisherman.”

  “In another lifetime, I might’ve been. My dad and all my uncles lived on the sea, my brother too, on the mackerel tugs and the lifeboats.”

  “How many do you have?”

  “Uncles or brothers?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  Brix swirled the spaghetti. “Three uncles, one brother. Most of them live around here somewhere, except my brother, Abel. He’s in Belmarsh.”

  Calum nodded. “I remember you visiting him from time to time. How long does he have left?”

  “Two years.”

  Brix picked up the olive oil, turning away from Calum so he wouldn’t have to look him in the eye when he inevitably asked what Abel had gone down for.

  But the question never came. Calum reached around Brix and snagged a strand of spaghetti. He tossed it at the tiled wall. “It’s stuck. My ma always told me that meant it was done.”

  That was good enough for Brix. He drained the pasta and tossed it in the meat pan. “Grab some bowls, will ya?”

  “Okay.” Calum glanced around the small kitchen and opened a few cupboards. The second one he tried dumped a stack of tattoo designs on his head.

  “Shit, sorry. I keep meaning to collate those.”

  Calum gathered them up. “What are they? Flash for the studio?”

  “Some. Most of them are just doodles, though. Lena, who runs the place for me, puts it all online. I don’t have much flash in the studio anymore, unless it’s custom—once it’s gone, it’s gone. I haven’t done the same design twice in years.”

  “Lucky you. I wanted to scrap all the shit I had hanging around my place, but Rob—the, uh, person I worked with—had this idea in his head that the place should look like a seventies scratch parlour.”

  Brix didn’t miss the bitterness lacing Calum’s usual gentle tone. Rob. Hmm. He filed it away for future reference. “Where’s your place?”


  “It’s not actually mine.”

  “Okay, where have you been working?” Brix busied himself tossing the spaghetti in the sauce. “You were destined for big things last I saw, but I ain’t heard nothing about you since you left Dark Box.”

  “Maybe I haven’t done nothing.”

  Calum found the bowls and placed two on the counter. Brix served up the spag bol, resisting the urge to pile it up on Calum’s plate. He knew from experience that too much food when you were fucked up made the sick feeling in the pit of your stomach a hundred times worse.

  He pushed Calum’s bowl along the counter. “If you’d been doing nothing all this time, I reckon you’d have told me already. What studio were you at?”

  “Black Star Ink.” Calum accepted the fork Brix held out. “You won’t have heard of it, though. I had a long waiting list, but that was probably because there were no other studios nearby.”

  “Where the hell were you? London’s got more studios than I’ve had hot dinners.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re made of string. The studio was in Paddington.”

  “Paddington?” Brix let the string jibe slide. “What on earth’s in Paddington?”

  “Fuck all . . . that I was interested in, anyway, but the place did okay. I just didn’t see much return. My, uh, ex handled all the money stuff.”

  “Rob?”

  Calum grunted and appeared suddenly interested in his bowl of food.

  Now we’re getting somewhere. Not that picking Calum’s life apart and forcing him to talk when he so obviously didn’t want to held much appeal, but Brix couldn’t deny he was curious. More than that, and had been ever since he’d found Calum huddled on that damn fucking bench. “What kind of work have you been doing? Traditional is still big down here, but we get a bit of abstract and watercolour through the doors, and some of my guys are bang into their neo shit.”

  For a moment Calum looked like he wouldn’t answer, then his gaze fell on the stag on his hand. “I’ve done a lot of dot-work sleeves this year, and some geometric stuff. Did a pretty cool portrait a few weeks back.”

  “Can I see?”

  “It’s on my phone.”

  The faint light in Calum’s gaze faded like it had never been there at all. Brix touched his arm. “I’ve got a bunch of pads upstairs. We can get sketching after dinner, if you want? I could use fresh eyes on a manga piece I’m doing for a sleeve.”

  Calum shrugged absently, and Brix let him be. After all, it wasn’t like he didn’t know what it was like to be trapped in his own head.

  Brix woke early the next day, acutely aware the moment he opened his eyes that Calum was—hopefully—asleep on the other side of the wall.

  He sat up, listening for any sign of movement from the spare room or downstairs, but there were none, save Dennis yowling on the landing, waiting for Brix and Zelda to get up for breakfast.

  Brix swung his legs out of bed and padded silently to the bedroom door, avoiding the creaky floorboard that sounded like a dying cat first thing in the morning. Zelda came with him, weaving sinuously between his legs, doing her best to trip him.

  “Stop it!” Brix scooped her up, draping her tiny body over his forearm in a re-creation of a black-and-white photograph Lena had snapped of him last summer when she’d brought Zelda to his door and persuaded him that his home was meant to be hers too.

  Zelda gave him her patented death stare, but her rumbling purr gave her away. Beneath her scathing belligerence, she was the sweetest cat in the world. Brix tickled her chin, then set her down as he came to the spare room. He eased the slightly ajar door farther open and took a tentative peek inside. Zelda followed his gaze and sashayed forwards, leaping soundlessly onto the bed, sniffing the empty space where, by the rumpled sheets, Brix assumed Calum had been.

  Brix went back to his own room and threw a vest on over the tatty jogging bottoms he’d slept in, then he darted downstairs, suddenly struck with a stomach-churning fear that Calum had slipped away in the night. Or worse. The notion was grim, but Brix couldn’t deny the cloud of despair he’d sensed around Calum. Rock bottom was a tough place to be. And if you couldn’t see a way out, Porthkennack offered plenty of scenic places to carve your own.

  The numerous nights Brix had considered doing just that flashed into his mind. He stumbled, saving himself on the banister he’d only painted the week before. The smooth satinwood was cool and calming against his palm, but the blue shade bothered him, like it had since he’d stepped back and studied the finished project. Shame he still couldn’t say why.

  Brix bounded off the last step and strode through the open-plan ground floor. Calum was nowhere to be seen, and his shoes were gone from the door. Movement in the garden drew Brix outside, barefoot and shivering against the early-morning chill, and he found Calum by the nearest hen house, holding Bongo to his chest and gazing out at the sea.

  “I didn’t notice yesterday that you can see the ocean from here,” Calum said without turning round. “Didn’t notice much of anything.”

  Brix closed the distance between them and followed Calum’s stare. “The seafront is a five-minute walk away. I’ll take you there later, if you want?”

  “Is it near your studio?”

  “They’re pretty much one and the same.”

  Calum nodded and gently petted Bongo.

  “How is she?” Brix asked. “Sometimes the upheaval of being rescued does ’em more harm than good.”

  “I don’t know jack about chickens, but she’s doing the same shit she was yesterday. The others seem okay too.”

  Brix glanced down at the bald hens pecking around their run, gobbling up seeds and worms, and looking for all the world like they’d lived like this their whole lives instead of being crammed thirty to a cage and fed on the remains of their siblings. “Bet they’ve laid too. Never known a battery chook not give me an egg a day. They’re good girls.”

  “I’ll take your word for that. I fed your tiny devil cat this morning, by the way. She kept licking my ear and biting my face.”

  Brix winced. “Er, yeah . . . she does that. Zelda don’t mean no harm, though. She’s lovely really.”

  “That right?” Calum shot Brix a disbelieving stare before the barest hint of a smile brightened his features. “I didn’t mind it, actually. At least you know what you’re getting.”

  The loaded sentence did odd things to Brix’s heart. Calum’s dark eyes, though clouded with the beginnings of a dangerous apathy, were soulful and deep, and Brix was in danger of getting lost in them, and in Calum’s inky hair, chiselled cheekbones, and strong, corded forearms.

  And the dark beard that hadn’t been there four years ago—

  Behave yourself, twat. Calum had always been beautiful, but he’d had a girlfriend when they’d first met, and then later, when he’d confessed his bisexuality, Brix had been tied to someone else. Someone who’d left a darker mark on his soul than any ink ever could.

  “I used your phone again.”

  Brix blinked to find Calum staring at him, like he’d spoken already and got no response. “No worries. Who’d you call? Your sister?”

  “Fuck no.” Calum shook his head. “She’s more useless than I am. I called the bank. They gave me an overdraft on an old account that I can live on until I sort myself out. It’s gonna cost me a kidney or two in fees, but it’s a lower price than before.”

  Brix wondered if that meant Calum was staying, and was surprised by how much he hoped he was. Arsehole. Do you really want his whole life to fall apart? But even as Brix berated himself, he knew whatever was wrong with Calum’s life had already happened. Why else would he be here? And why else would fate have taken Brix past that bench yesterday?

  Everything happened for a reason, right?

  Brix gave in and laid his hand on Calum’s warm forearm. “Do you want a cuppa?”

  “Please.” Calum didn’t seem to notice Brix’s hand. “After that, I better get myself some clothes and a job to pay for the fuckers.” />
  Jesus Christ. Calum took in the urban grunge of Blood Rush’s inner workings and could hardly believe his eyes. With its black fixtures and fittings, colourful Day of the Dead skulls on the walls, and huge gothic mirrors, the place was about the most awesome studio Calum had ever seen. Wow.

  Calum gazed at the sleek leather chairs and the latest-model guns, all interspersed with vintage machines that made his soul weep once more for Dottie. “I like this.”

  It was the understatement of the year, but it seemed to please Brix as he shut the shop door. “I work over there. Lee works here. Jory and Kim share the back when Kim’s here, which ain’t that often these days.”

  “What’s the other one for? Piercing?”

  “Fuck no. We don’t do that here. If you want your bellend skewered, you’ll have to go to the scratcher down the road.”

  That was something else Calum remembered about Brix: his aversion to body piercing, to the point where he’d often had to turn his back on the piercing chair in the studio they’d both worked at in Camden. “You sure? I can do piercing for you if there’s a demand—”

  “Why would I want you to punch holes in people when you can ink? The spare station is for guest artists. We had Chips Brown in last month. I was going to leave it for a while because I can’t be arsed with the hassle of finding someone else, but I’d love you to do some days . . . if you want to? You can set your own hours and rates. Just pay for the space? Ten per cent?”

  It was a ridiculously fair offer. “Twenty per cent.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “It’s a maybe. What if I don’t get any bookings?”

  Brix grinned as the back door to the studio opened and a statuesque woman with electric blue hair let herself in. “Morning, Lena. This is my mate Calum from London. Can you give him a butcher’s at the waiting list? He’s worried we won’t have any work for him.”

  By Lena’s smile, Calum got the feeling he was about to be shown up. He shook her hand and followed her to the reception desk. She powered up the sleek iMac and opened the appointments system. “Brix is booked out until early next year. Only Jory has slots in the next six weeks. This is the waiting list.”