by T. J. Lebbon
I want to be Mr Black.
Does Emma wear stockings or tights? Can you steal some?
That was Tim Roth. Wasn’t it?
Or Muppet T-shirts, with holes for eyes.
Maybe it was Harvey Keitel.
‘No one will lose out, apart from the Royal Mail,’ Andy said. He was a shadowy silhouette, silvered by moonlight, a stranger who Dom hardly knew. ‘And do you know what effect a forty grand loss will have on them?’
‘What?’ Dom asked.
‘None at all.’
‘I’m going home,’ Dom said.
‘Sleep on it.’
‘No.’ Dom snorted, standing from the small park bench. ‘No. I’m not sleeping on it. You might think I’m pissed, but I’m really not any more. To be honest, it worries me that I can’t tell whether you’re joking or not.’
Still seated, Andy smiled up at him and ate some more chips. He looked smug, confident, strong. Superior. Dom hated the way his friend sometimes made him feel.
‘You’re just taking the piss,’ Dom said. ‘I’ll walk home.’
‘Don’t always be a loser,’ Andy muttered.
‘What?’ Dom wasn’t quite sure what he’d just heard.
‘Huh?’ Andy asked, eyebrows raised. ‘Nothing. Thanks for a good night, mate. See you soon.’
‘Yeah,’ Dom said. ‘Soon.’ He walked through the children’s park to the gate, doing his best not to sway or swerve, head pounding with the promise of tomorrow’s hangover. With every step he felt Andy’s gaze upon him.
No one will lose out … no one will ever suspect us.
At the gate he glanced back, but Andy had already left.
At first Emma thought that Dom had gone to sleep.
She knew that he’d drunk more than usual, and he’d come through the back gate and thrown his arms around her, as if she was his one safe place. He’d kissed her and smelled her hair, and they’d hugged with an unusual strength. Usually it was an affectionate kiss before work or a fly-by hugging while they were busy around the house. But this was an embrace with need.
She’d wondered what had happened that evening. What he and Andy had been talking about. But when she’d asked his response had been, This and that. Can’t really remember.
He was breathing heavily, snoring very softly, lying on his back. They were both naked on top of the bed covers. If Daisy had been here they’d have covered up. But it was still swelteringly hot inside, even though it was almost midnight. Their house was a detached dormer bungalow, so essentially they slept in the roof. They’d talked for some time about buying an air conditioning unit for the upstairs, but it had remained just talk. The ceiling fan did little to alleviate the humid discomfort, but at that moment she didn’t mind being hot.
She was often the one to initiate sex. Especially after they’d had a drink, when Dom inevitably lasted longer, and inhibitions melted away. She lay on her side and stared at the shadow of him, listening to him breathing. Mandy was wrong. She didn’t think Dom was boring, she thought he was safe. Although sometimes, just sometimes, that might mean the same thing.
She reached across and rested her hand on his thigh. He was slick with sweat. He always perspired more after a few pints.
Emma closed her eyes. Her breathing came deeper. She was far from drunk, but she was tired and contented. The swish swish of the ceiling fan was soporific, and at last she was starting to feel a cooling chill where the shifting air passed across her own damp skin.
She dwelled in that nebulous dreamland between consciousness and sleep. Dom passed by her on a bike, chasing Andy but never catching up. They were on a desert road. The distant hills were snowcapped, the plain harsh and flaming here and there from the relentless sun. Even though he was way in the lead, Andy kept passing by where she sat at the roadside, grinning at her each time. He’s in the bath, she said every time he whipped past, dust roiling in his wake. But she spoke in his words, because it had been him who’d actually muttered them. Far across the plain a band played, their music silent but its anger painting the landscape around them red. From this distance she couldn’t see for sure whether it was Genghis Cant, the band she’d hung out with when she was in her early twenties, but she was quite certain it was. There was no other reason she’d feel the way she did.
Andy’s bike whipped past again and again, faster and faster, and the lead singer of Genghis Cant, Max Mort, suddenly screamed his most infamous song into her face, exhorting her to snort the heroin of life from the thighs of the dead.
Emma experienced a moment of dislocation as she snapped awake, but it quickly faded. Dom had rolled across and taken her in his arms. The safe night enveloped her and she sighed in comfort, and relief, and an overwhelming desire for the man who had been her husband for so long.
They kissed passionately, saying nothing. Their skin was slick where their bodies pressed together. She reached between them and grabbed him, slowly stroking. His right hand explored her body, moving across her stomach and down between her thighs. He breathed heavily into her mouth and then kissed her cheek. He smelled of alcohol and sweat, but it was a clean, honest smell.
He gently bit her neck just beneath her left ear. Emma gasped, and a shiver went through her. He might have been drunk, but he knew what she liked.
‘Let’s go outside,’ Dom said. ‘Do it in the garden again.’
‘Really?’ She wished he hadn’t spoken. It broke the moment. And he’d paused, his passion held back even though their bodies were entwined, hands no longer working at each other, only holding.
‘Do one thing every day that scares you,’ he said, propping up so he could stare down at her in the weak moonlight.
‘You sound like Andy,’ she said, chuckling.
Dom stiffened, then pushed himself off, flopping down on his back. The loss of contact was a shock, and Emma felt suddenly cold.
‘Why would you mention him?’ Dom asked.
‘I was only … I didn’t mean anything.’
‘But why bring him up, now, when we’re doing this?’
‘Dom, you’re being silly. Okay, we’ll go outside.’
‘Forget it. Don’t bother.’
‘Dom.’ He got like this sometimes after a drink. Horny and passionate, but angry too. Alcohol loosened him in many ways.
‘I don’t feel like it anyway.’
She rolled across and grabbed him, squeezing. ‘Part of you feels like it.’
‘Maybe in the morning.’ He sighed heavily and turned onto his side, back to her.
‘What the hell?’ she asked. But Dom didn’t reply. His breathing was heavier, but she knew he wasn’t asleep. They knew each other so well. ‘Dom?’
‘’Night,’ he said.
‘Yeah.’ She sighed heavily and pulled a single sheet up to cover herself. She wished she hadn’t mentioned Andy. In a darkness suddenly made uncomfortable, she remembered that one awkward moment between them a year before. Neither of them had mentioned it since, and it had grown into nothing more.
Emma fell asleep unfulfilled, dreaming of more dangerous times.
Chapter Four
Not You
Angry at himself, at Emma, and most of all at Andy, Dom wanted to make things right. But he was stubborn. Alcohol increased that stubbornness, and though he so wanted to roll over and apologise to Emma, he couldn’t shake what she’d said.
You sound like Andy.
Why say that? When they’re lying together, naked and familiar, his hand between her legs and hers around his hard-on? Why was that an acceptable time to tell him he sounded like his fitter, better-looking friend?
He could hear Emma’s breathing, slow and even, and he guessed that she’d already fallen asleep. She would not appreciate being woken now.
Don’t always be a loser.
He wasn’t sure if he’d truly heard that from Andy. But the truth didn’t really matter. He thought he’d heard his friend muttering those words, so in reality it was Dom saying it to himself.
&nb
sp; Don’t always be a loser.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ he whispered into the humid, dark bedroom. He needed a drink of water. He couldn’t decide whether he was more drunk than he’d believed, or dehydrated from the heat. If he moved he might wake Emma. He also needed to piss.
He lay there for some time, drifting in and out of a troubled doze. The day felt unfinished, still primed with wasted opportunities for lovemaking with Emma, and adventure with Andy. Settled sleep evaded him. Eventually the need to urinate forced him towards the en suite.
Emma stirred and rolled from her back onto her left side, groaning in her sleep, a deeply sexual sound. ‘… in the bath,’ she muttered.
Dom heard her even breathing and smiled. Maybe the next day he’d ask her about her dreams.
But dreams were the last thing on his mind when he woke the next morning.
He slept in, partly because it was Saturday, partly from the effects of the previous evening’s cider. Jazz woke him. She licked his face, and as he shoved her away the phone rang. It was one of his customers, Mrs Fletcher. Her electricity kept tripping, and she was desperate for Dom to come and sort the problem.
Emma was already up and dressed, ready to go and collect Daisy from the friend she’d stayed with the night before.
Dom was pouring coffee and waiting for toast to pop from the toaster when Emma said, ‘I was hoping we could go together.’
‘I really can’t say no to Mrs Fletcher.’
‘No. Sure. What about later?’
‘Later?’
Emma stared at him for a few seconds, and Dom didn’t like what he saw in her expression. It was like a stranger’s. She was someone he didn’t know assessing him, not the wife he adored. He felt a moment of frank appraisal, so intense that it made him feel uncomfortable.
Emma sighed lightly and looked aside, running a hand through her hair. As if she’d looked him over and found him lacking.
‘Lucy’s party.’
‘Oh, of course, I’ll be there. What time?’
‘Two.’
‘Right. Play centre, yeah?’
‘Thirty kids shouting and screaming in a ball pit,’ Emma said. ‘The joy of parenthood.’
They orbited each other in the kitchen for a few more minutes, then Emma left first. She gave him a perfunctory peck on the cheek.
He wanted to say something about the previous evening. But the day was gathering velocity, things were moving on, and he was already thinking about Mrs Fletcher’s electrical problem.
That, and something else. Sober, yesterday’s discussions with Andy did not feel quite as he’d first experienced them. His friend had been probing, rather than plotting. Behind every ‘No one will suffer’ comment had been a deeper, blander thought – Boring fuck. Stuck with the same woman for years. Drifting through life on the tails of those really living it.
As Dom drove through Usk towards Mrs Fletcher’s old cottage, he thought of Andy powering downhill ahead of him on his bike. Seeing the future first. Filling his face with the wind, daring fate, while Dom tweaked his brakes, preferring the climb because it was more tempered, slower, predictable and safe.
By the time he’d reached Mrs Fletcher’s, he’d already decided to text Andy.
Got time for a coffee?
And it was as if Andy was waiting for him, because his reply was almost instant.
Sure. Where you at?
Dom told him, named a time and a place, then grabbed his toolbox and went to work.
‘I’m talking, you’re listening,’ Dom said.
He sat opposite Andy. They were in the outdoor area of the garden centre cafe, two coffees and a selection of cake slices already on the table. Andy had arrived twenty minutes before him, and Dom had taken childish pleasure in making his friend wait.
Andy held his hands up, then drew one across his lips.
Dom glanced around and sat down. The cafe was busy with the usual Saturday morning crowd of squabbling families, elderly couples, and a group of local kids drinking hot chocolate. A couple of dogs tugged on their leads and snapped thrown treats from the air. Tame sparrows and a robin hopped from table to table, causing squawks of delight from children and smiles from parents.
No one was paying them any attention.
‘No weapons,’ Dom said.
Andy raised his eyebrows.
‘No one gets hurt. We don’t lay our hands on anyone.’
‘Right,’ Andy said, nodding. ‘Of course.’
‘We hide whatever we take, leave it for a year.’
‘At least a year.’
‘Any inkling that we might get caught, any reason why it’s not as easy as you seem to think it’ll be, then we’re out.’
‘Sure. But it is easy.’
‘Right, yeah,’ Dom said. ‘But any sign that it won’t be, and it’s off. I have a beautiful family that I love very much. I won’t do anything that’s a risk to them or me.’
‘You do have a lovely family,’ Andy said. ‘You’re lucky. They’re why you’re doing this.’
Dom nodded. Yes, because of them. But as he drank some of his coffee, slowly, savouring the taste, he knew that wasn’t quite true.
This was all for him.
‘I’ll think it all through properly today,’ Andy said. ‘Get back to you tomorrow. A call, not a text. You spend the weekend with your family, all very normal.’
Dom’s heart was beating too fast. He was sweating. He was also excited, and pleased at his friend’s surprise. He never believed I’d really do it, he thought. But he would not say that out loud.
‘When should we go?’
‘No more for now,’ Andy said. ‘Cake. Coffee. Check her out, over there.’ He nodded behind Dom.
Dom turned to look over his shoulder and caught the eye of an attractive young woman in shorts and T-shirt, just as she was looking their way. He glanced away, embarrassed, and Andy laughed.
‘Bastard.’
‘You know it. She’s giving me the eye, though.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I’ll be whoever she wants me to be.’
They chatted some more, but Dom’s mind was on one thing. He felt like he’d made a commitment, even though the deed itself still seemed distant and unlikely. He felt lighter.
His horizons had been opened to a new beginning, and it was time to start living.
‘Monday,’ Andy said.
‘Really? That soon?’
‘Why wait?’
‘So … how?’
‘Bike ride tomorrow? We can chat then.’
‘Sure.’
‘I’ll be at yours about ten o’clock.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Have a nice evening, mate. Say hi to Emma for me.’
That Saturday evening, Dom played with Daisy in the garden while Emma cooked some chicken for a warm salad.
The weather was scorching, and Daisy wanted to play Scrabble. Usually that bored Dom. Most games bored him, and he’d often feel more inclined to watch some TV with her, or perhaps encourage her to get some sketching paper out and keep herself occupied.
That evening, however, he felt different.
Later, with Daisy in bed, he brought out a bottle of Emma’s favourite wine. She liked dry white straight from the fridge, so cold that it sometimes gave him brain freeze. They sat in the garden together and drank the bottle, then when they went inside around 10 p.m. he made them mojitos.
‘A less suspicious woman would think you were after something,’ Emma said.
‘Innocent me?’ Dom asked.
They made love on the sofa, moving to the living room floor when they became more energetic and the leather made too much noise. Jazz barked at them, and Dom had to jump up and shut her in the kitchen. Then he returned to his wife, and the heat didn’t matter, the uncomfortable rug bothered neither of them. They came together.
Dom knew it was one of those evenings that would stay with him forever. A perfect time.
‘I like today,’ Emma said later when th
ey were snuggled in bed. It was hot, but they both enjoyed the contact. ‘It’s a very not-like-you day.’
‘Oh, thanks,’ he said. But he was not offended. He liked her thinking that.
Soon they disentangled themselves and Emma fell asleep.
Dom took a lot longer to drift off. He spent a long time staring at the ceiling, thinking, and feeling not quite himself.
Chapter Five
Loony Tunes
‘Mad dogs and Englishmen,’ Dom said.
‘Huh?’
‘Go out in the midday sun.’
‘What the hell are you on about?’ Andy was in the driver’s seat. It was Dom’s car, but Dom had not wanted to drive. He’d muddied up his own number plates and stuck colourful sun blinds in the back to distract attention.
Andy had just switched off the engine and left the keys in the ignition. They’d discussed that. It was to aid a quick getaway.
‘It’s a saying. A song, I think.’
‘Dom, you’re not flipping out on me, are you?’
‘Nah. I’m good.’ But Dom really couldn’t decide whether he was good or not. His body wouldn’t let him. He felt sick, his stomach rolled like he wanted a shit, he had a headache, sweat soaked his T-shirt and shorts, slick against the car’s upholstery. It was due to be the hottest day of the year so far, with a forecast that records would be broken. Even this early, sunlight scorched the air so that he could see everything with a crisp, awful clarity.
‘Because this is your last chance,’ Andy said. ‘Last time either of us can back out. You know that, right? I explained? Once we get out of this car suited and booted, it’s on. No going back.’
‘Yeah, Andy, I’m fine. Honestly. Just nervous.’
‘Nervous is good. It’ll keep us alert. But you look petrified.’
Dom closed his eyes and took several deep breaths. Andy let him, and he was grateful for that. Somewhere in the distance he heard the trilling of a kid’s bicycle bell, and it took him back thirty-five years to a childhood summer – playing cards taped between his Chipper bike’s spokes; TV footage of empty reservoirs with cracked beds; the smell of calamine lotion as his mother tended his sunburn. He took in a deep breath and the smell of sweat and latex snapped him back to the present.
