Idea in Stone

by Hamish Macdonald

  “Okay,” said Peter, “so we have to go on three dates tonight.”

  “Alright!” cheered Stefan. He sat on a wooden chair, while Peter put his towel down on the couch and sat there. “What should we do for the first date? Oh, I have an idea. Well, it’s kinda silly.”

  “Whatever. Just say it,” assured Peter.

  “I’ve never had a proper date. Even my prom—my mother ruined it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My mother is—oh, one thing first. Do you know who Delonia Mackechnie is?”

  “Should I? She some relative of yours?” asked Peter.

  “Oh, I could kiss you for that. And I will. Just not yet. Anyway, my mother was very proud that I liked boys, and thought it was important for me to make a political statement by taking a boy to my prom. But the only gay boy in my school was this big effeminate guy with this wavy blonde hair. He knew I was only taking him because my mother wanted to make a point, and neither of us had ever spoken to each other before this. Then at the dance, he got sloppy drunk and kept trying to kiss me. I decided to leave, but he insisted on going with me. When we got to the parking lot, the whole hockey team was out there smoking up. Needless to say, they didn’t like us. So they chased me and this fat guy in our tuxes across the football field into this swampy old river.” Stefan sighed. “Needless to say, it was not the magical night I’d imagined for my prom.”

  “So let me make it up to you. We’ll have a proper date.”

  “Deal.”

  “Do I have to get all dressed up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Damn. Okay,” said Peter, standing up. “Guess I should go and get ready then. I’ll be back for you at eight o’clock. And the other two dates are my call.”

  “I trust you,” said Stefan, “though I don’t have any reason to yet.”

  “That’s true. But you will.” He went to the door and slipped his bare feet into his shoes. “Here,” he said, squashing his socks into Stefan’s hand. “You can hold my socks ransom. Of course, I get your jumper. But they’re really good socks, so we’re even.”

  “Wait,” said Stefan. “Be careful. Make sure no one follows you. That phone belonged to someone who might have been killed, and there’s an investigation on.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Um, I started the investigation. Sorry about that. You should be okay tonight, though. I’ll try to sort it out when I get back to work tomorrow.”

  “Mm, that might not work.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll be skiving off work tomorrow. Me, too.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Peter leaned over and kissed him. Their lips slid together, then he rested his cheek against Stefan’s. Stefan had never known anything as intimate as the cold press of their skin as they paused there. His eyes looked over Peter’s shoulder at the window. Drops of rain hung, frozen in their path toward the ground. Peter’s heart pounded against his chest, beating strong enough for both of them. All time stopped but that rhythm. When Peter finally pulled away and went through the door, the drops resumed their fall and Stefan’s heart started again.

  ~

  Peter flipped the squeaky lid of the mail-slot several times instead of knocking, and Stefan immediately opened the door, which he’d been hovering near.

  Peter wore a brown suit two sizes too big for him, but Stefan thought he looked handsome in it. His own suit was tailor-made for the awards ceremony he attended with his mother earlier in the year, back when this city was merely a dream and his mother paid people to date him. He pecked Peter quickly on the lips to say hello, overjoyed that he could already take such liberties with this citizen of his dream.

  “Where are we going?” asked Peter as they left the tenement.

  “No idea. I figure we’ll just wander until we find a place that feels right. What kind of food do you like?”

  “Well,” said Peter, “I’ve been trying to eat better and learn to cook healthier since my dad took a heart attack last year.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry about that.”

  “Which, the food or my dad? Dad’s fine. I’m not sure how I feel about the other.”

  “If it makes it any easier to decide, I’m a vegetarian. Kinda.”

  “What’s that mean, kinda?”

  “Except for bacon.”

  “Okay,” said Peter. “I know someplace that can make whatever you want. Down here.” He took Stefan’s elbow and guided him down a close so narrow that, walking side by side, their arms brushed against the rough granite bricks.

  “Wait,” said Stefan, stopping under an old gas lamp that was refitted with an electric bulb. “I brought you something.”

  “What?”

  “This,” he said, and kissed Peter on the cheek. Peter rolled his eyes, and started walking again. Stefan felt embarrassed, and decided to play it cool the rest of the evening. No showy gestures, no acting goofy, and under no circumstances would he use the L-word, even though he was certain that he L-ed Peter already.

  “Wait,” said Peter, putting a hand on Stefan’s chest. “I’m sorry, Ste, that was sweet. I brought you something, too.” Stefan waited, holding out his cheek. Peter punched him hard in the arm and ran off.

  “Bastard!” yelled Stefan, running after him. His leather-soled dress shoes were unsteady on the hard, worn cobbles, and he found it difficult to keep up with Peter. They turned a corner onto a side road. Across the street in a doorway, sheltered from the last light of dusk, stood the familiar figure of the scratchman in his dark cloak and wide-brimmed hat. “Peter,” said Stefan under his breath, grabbing his arm and tugging him in the opposite direction.

  “What?” He saw the scratchman, but kept walking. “That guy? Come on, he’s just standing there. He won’t bother us.”

  “Peter, really, just—”

  “No, Ste, the restaurant’s this way, and that’s the way I’m going.” They walked opposite the man now. Peter nodded to him and asked, “Alright?”

  The scratchman looked confused and nodded back, for want of any other response.

  Stefan nodded, too, and hurried past.

  “I don’t know what you were worried about,” said Peter. “He didn’t seem terribly threatening. Actually, he looked pretty poorly to me.”

  Stefan put his arm around Peter, and they continued up the road.

  ~

  The restaurant was in a well-maintained Georgian hotel with antique furniture arranged beneath enormous paintings and mirrors hung in thick, ornately-carved gold frames. “Wow,” said Stefan, looking up at the patterns in the plaster ceiling.

  “Hello,” said the head waiter, addressing Peter in a familiar tone.

  “Hiya,” replied Peter, equally familiarly.

  “I’d like a table, please. For two.” The waiter picked up two leather-bound menus and gestured for them to follow. Peter stopped him. “At the back,” he insisted.

  “Oh yes, a special evening,” said the waiter quietly to Peter as they changed direction. He led them to a small room with heavy velvet curtains parted to expose large windows of antique glass like disquieted water. Through them was a large garden full of trees with yellow leaves that blazed in the lamplight.

  They sat, and the waiter handed them their oversized menus. He left, and Stefan found himself wrestling with jealousy. The man was unthreateningly plain, yet Stefan felt uneasy about a stranger in public being so familiar with Peter. “So who’s he?” he finally asked.

  “He’s the head waiter.”

  “I figured that. But how do you know him?” Stefan worried that his suspicion was leaking out. He hated himself like this, and wished this were their six month anniversary, or even their second date, just so he could know it was going to turn out between them.

  “I work here,” answered Peter.

  “Oh,” said Stefan, and sighed, laughing.

  “Would you like anything to drink?” asked the waiter, who’d returned silently.

  “That sounds like a go
od idea,” said Stefan.

  ~

  Supper was elegant, served on large plates drizzled with sauces and sprinkled with powders, followed by a similarly dressed dessert. They shared a bottle of wine as they tried to piece together an understanding of who each other was. Stefan briefly mentioned that his father had died, but avoided talking about his mother, turning the conversation back to Peter whenever they got close to the topic.

  Peter’s parents were separated, he said. His mother lived in England now, but they didn’t hear much from her anymore. The children—himself and an older brother and sister—received pleasant birthday cards with not enough words in them each year. They figured she was remarried. His father, on the other hand, was still single, living in the same house Peter grew up in, on the outskirts of Edinburgh. It was part of a housing scheme, but the house was paid off. “You can’t beat that,” said Peter.

  “No. No, you can’t,” said Stefan, self-consciously aware, without having seen the house, that his mother’s place would seem a mansion in comparison.

  “So what brought you here?” asked Peter.

  “Oh, it was my father’s idea,” he said, brushing the question aside.

  “I thought you said your father was dead.”

  “Right. Yes, I did. Well, you see, he wrote this play before he died, and... Let’s have another drink.” He gestured to the waiter. “I was kind of stuck in my life in Toronto, and I decided I wanted a change, to find something to do that seemed meaningful, and there was this play hidden in our attic, but the raccoons showed it to me first so I’d know it was there. And my father was with them. Oh, but first I got these notes.”

  Peter looked confused. “Start again,” he said.

  ~

  They walked hand in hand under the giant stone archway of the Cowgate. “So that bloke we saw tonight, he’s one of the—”

  “Matholics, yes.”

  “What do they want with you?”

  “I don’t know. They seem to be worried I’m going to do something. At first it was the play, but, disruptive as that was, that wasn’t it.”

  “So he’s after you for something you might do but don’t even know about?”

  “Or something.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to keep him away from you. Because whatever designs he or your father have on you, I’ve got some of my own. We didn’t meet after all this time for nothing.” He turned them up a steep street, then down the staircase of a basement bar. A neon sign of blue and green beside the door read “Dig Nation”. They clicked down the steps in their dress shoes and stepped into a smoky, vaulted space like a man-made cavern.

  “What can I get you?” asked Peter, heading for the bar.

  “A pint of eighty.”

  Peter nodded, and turned to the bar. The woman working there raised her arms and jumped up to hug him. Music filled the air along with damp human heat, and Stefan couldn’t hear what Peter and the woman said to each other. Peter returned a moment later with their drinks.

  “Who’s she?” asked Stefan above the noise.

  “My sister.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. She works here. I work here, too. I work at the restaurant we went to tonight as an apprentice chef on a Saturday, and the rest of the time I’m a line-cook here.”

  “Cool,” said Stefan. “That must be nice, working so close to your sister.”

  “You are an only child, aren’t you?” He nodded toward the depths of the bar and tugged Stefan along with him. “My friends are here somewhere. They’re always here.” They ducked under a low brick archway and entered a small room at the back. There, around an old wooden table like something from a Viking ship, sat his friends on mismatched church pews. They waved to Peter when they saw him. Peter put his arm around Stefan and pointed to his friends in turn, speaking close into Stefan’s ear.

  “Iain,” he said, indicating the stout, red-haired young man. “Rab,” he said, pointing out the tall, lanky, loud friend who’d been with Peter in Portobello. “And that one’s Calum,” he said, pointing to the handsome blond man at the end of the table, “watch him.”

  “I think I could enjoy that.”

  “Hey.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Stefan, “he’s got nothing on you.”

  “Cheers. Actually, if there’s anyone you need to watch, it’s Rab. He’s a good lad, but he’s a bit of a bampot.”

  Stefan looked at him, puzzled.

  “Crazy. But he’s alright.”

  “Okay.”

  Rab was holding court about an idea he’d had, but stopped to welcome Stefan. “So you’re him. Good to meet yeh. No bad, Peter me man.”

  “Shut it,” said Peter. They sat with their drinks. “I had to ring him to explain why I didn’t show up this afternoon. I should have known better than to tell him anything.” Stefan didn’t mind: Peter talking to his friends about him was a good sign.

  Peter’s sister came to their table. “Hey, Fi,” said Peter.

  “So?”

  “Ste, this is Fiona, my sister. Fi, this is Stefan Mackechnie.”

  “Good Scots surname.”

  “My dad’s from here.”

  “Hey,” said Peter, “you just met my family. This is our second date.”

  “Cool,” said Stefan.

  “My dad’ll be at home, and my brother’s in Aberdeen. So Fiona’ll have to do.”

  “Thanks,” she said, whipping him with her bar-towel.

  “Och, get that minky thing away from me.” He turned to his friends. “So, what are you lads up to tonight?”

  “Robert here thinks he found something interesting,” said Calum.

  “I did, I tell you,” insisted Rab.

  “And he’s got it in his head we should check it out,” said Iain, “but I think it’s a bad idea. We should just leave it alone.”

  “What is it?” asked Peter.

  “New development work,” said Rab. “This is the biggest bit yet. It’s a different developer, but it seems like the same kind of job.”

  “I’d like to see what they’re up to,” said Peter.

  “It’s easy enough to get to, and no security.”

  “We don’t want to do this,” said Iain. “You know what happened the last time we went into one of those sites.”

  “Yeah, Peter found himself a free mo—” Peter cut Rab off by elbowing him in the ribs.

  “That site wouldn’t happen to have been developed by a Reginald Mackenzie, would it?” asked Stefan.

  “He’s the one who died, isn’t he?” asked Iain.

  “Yeah,” said Stefan, “and that’s whose phone you had, Peter. That’s why they were after you.”

  “Thanks for getting me out of that.”

  “Yeah. So what are these companies doing?”

  “Some of them are doing renovations,” said Calum, “and others are restoring listed buildings.”

  “I think they’re doing a really nice job,” said Iain. “Some of those buildings are in really bad shape. It’s dangerous, too. Bits keep falling off them onto people.”

  “Yeah, but half of Edinburgh is covered in scaffolding,” said Peter. “It’s a city on crutches. And I don’t trust the companies that are getting these contracts. So where’s this place, Rab?”

  “Guys, we shouldn’t,” said Iain.

  “Come on, Rab’s been there. It’s safe, right, Rab?”

  “Sure.”

  “On we go, then.”

  They left the bar, waving to Fiona as they went. Stefan followed the young men through the streets. The route took them around corners and down wynds he’d never seen before. They stood in a queue for twenty minutes to get into what turned out to be a basement dance club. Calum and Iain got drinks and leaned on a small, high table, watching while Peter and Stefan went to the dance floor. Rab flailed beside them for a while, then vanished, leaving them to laugh, dance, and make a sport of trying to touch each other in ways that wouldn’t be obvious to the others around them.


  Rab reappeared and gestured to the others, who followed him off the dance floor to a hallway where a few people leaned against the brick walls, talking in drunken earnest to each other. Rab stood close to them, insinuating himself into their conversation. “So what’re we talking about?” asked Rab.

  “What?”

  “What’re we talking about? What’s your bird there greetin’ for?” he said, pointing to their female friend, who was crying, being consoled by another of them.

  “None of your business, mate.”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to be friendly. No need to get huffy.”

  “Fuck off,” said the man. “Come on,” he said, and the group left the hallway.

  “Perfecto,” said Rab. He went to the end of the now-empty hall, where boards were piled against the wall. He shifted them to either side, exposing an arched brick entrance. “Vaults,” he said.

  “Someone should move those back after you go in,” said Iain.

  “That’s right,” said Calum, “you stay here, shift them back after us, then maybe your mammy can come pick you up.”

  “Hey, maybe I have a life and don’t want to go to jail just for looking at some mingin’ old building site.”

  “Fair enough,” said Peter. “How about you make sure nobody follows us for a while, and I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” said Iain. Calum patted his round white cheek as he passed through the archway.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Stefan, as he followed Peter and Rab in. He felt nervous, but tonight he’d follow Peter anywhere.

  Rab clicked on the small torch he carried with him, evidently accustomed to doing this. Stefan was further surprised when Calum and Peter had small torches, too. This was not a first. The damp passageway was so dark that the small circles of light were a significant help.

  They stopped at a junction. First Rab led them to the left, where the passageway ended in a low room. He flicked his light the other way, and they followed him. The second route led into a space whose size they could feel more than they could see. The hall’s dampness gave way to an open, cold space so large its ceiling ate their torch-beams without revealing any details.